March Madness

Oi vey! March Madness has begun--and I'm not talking about the fun basketball version of it (which, by the way, I'm very excited for on Thursday). I'm sorry that I didn't write on my blog yesterday, but it was a very long day, and I went to bed very sick last night. It was a good day, though, because it was St. Patty's Day :-) And, check out the crazy clouds that were in the sky yesterday!! Do those not look like Van Gogh clouds??? As I was headed back to the apartment for a minute before class last night, I looked up, and it was like Van Gogh's painting "A Wheatfield, with Cypresses" was stuck in the sky! That was pretty cool. And, I loved seeing everyone's St. Patrick's Day blogs and e-cards. :-)

When I woke up yesterday morning, I was uncharacteristically thirsty and my head hurt. I promptly drank a large glass of chocolate milk, then a large glass of o.j., then ate breakfast and took some Ibuprofen. I thought this would cure me, but it seemed to get worse during the day. I had class in the morning, then I worked with Dr. Hardeman all afternoon. I had a few minutes to lay down before heading to class last night, but that seemed to only make my head feel worse. So, I went off to Dr. Barnhart's class not feeling well--and class made my head hurt much worse! Dr. Barnhart rambled and rambled, and then he started talking about how the United States is an imperialist country (of course everyone except for me agreed with that statement, but I didn't say anything because I was in no mood or condition to fight, so I just rolled my eyes).

FINALLY, after he stopped talking Aly and I were able to start working on the assignment for Mr. Riccio's class that was due today. When we left for spring break, it was a one-part assignment, but then this past Saturday night, Mr. Riccio sent us an e-mail and added five other parts to the assignment. The original assignment was to design an object mount for one of the museum exhibit artifacts. But then we had to write a narrative about how people would perceive the object mount (hello, they're not supposed to notice the object mounts!!!), and then we had to draw scaled instructions for how someone would assemble the mount. He said, "Write instructions so that a fabricator could just look at what you give them and create the mount without asking any questions." BIG PROBLEM: Mr. Riccio has never taught us how to do anything besides bend and glue-together Plexiglas!! We don't know how to build object mounts, but we all figured it out on our own.

So, last night Aly and I stayed after class and worked on finishing the assignment. We were there until about 11:00 p.m. By this time I was so dizzy that every time I stood up I thought I would tip over. I was not hungry, but I was very thirsty, and my body temperature kept jumping back and forth from hot to cold. My neck felt really weak, and my head felt really big and heavy. My throat was also starting to feel weird, so I determined last night that I had mono, but now I don't really think I do. I wanted to take my temperature last night, so we stopped at Wal Mart and I picked up a thermometer. My temp was 101.9. I was really cold when I went to bed, so I put on my warm pj pants, a t-shirt, and a warm sweatshirt, then I heated up my heating pad, and put my two cozy blankets on top of my sheets, bed blankets, and bedspread. I think my fever must have broken during the night because when I woke up this morning I was really sweaty and I had kicked off all of the blankets and sheets, my heating pad was on the other side of the bed, and my sweatshirt was on the floor :-) I was supposed to go work on a project for Dr. Small this morning, so I had set my alarm for 8:00, but when I woke up I realized I needed to go back to bed, so I left Dr. Small a message (which must have sounded quite terrible because Dr. Small was very concerned about me when she saw me later today), and I went back to bed. I was having all of these weird dreams, and when I finally woke up again at 11:00, I thought I needed to get up and feed my pet hamster (I don't have, nor have I ever had, a pet hamster).

I felt a bit better when I got up (after having almost 11 hours of sleep), and I had to hurry in to school for class. For Mr. Riccio's class we went to the school's sculpture studio which is where (we just learned this today--it would have been nice to know sooner) we will be constructing all of our object mounts and other random things like the blasted train cars. This guy was trying to show us how to use all of these power tools, and all I can say is that Alisha with a large power saw is not a pretty (or safe) sight!!! On our way back to school, I said to the others: "Our exhibit opens one month from tomorrow. Are we really going to be able to build and paint a three-section train car by then? NONE of us are carpenters." Nobody had an answer for that. I mean, we're still arguing about what to put on our labels and what colors to make the text on our interpretive panels--and in four weeks we're supposed to have an exhibit filling two galleries at the Tarble Arts Center, as well as accompanying electronic and printed instructional materials. Hmmmmmm.

After going to the sculpture studio, we met with the director of the Tarble Arts Center and she said, "You guys know that the exhibit opens a month from tomorrow, right?" Thank you! I'm not the only one who realizes this! The meeting with the TAC director was really funny because she and Mr. Riccio were arguing about everything, and it turned into a two-hour meeting. I wrote a note to Aly and Laurie that said, "This is like the Continental Congress," because you'd have thought you were watching James Adams and John Dickinson arguing the fate of our country. Mr. Riccio needs to realize that the Tarble is our client, and we should do things their way, which is what we are going to do now, but now we have to change a bunch of things because we had done them Mr. Riccio's way. I could write about this all night, but I won't because I imagine it's getting boring.

Anyway, after all of that, it was time for our weekly meeting. I knew that our meeting would be more of the same madness, which I knew my body was not up for tonight, so instead of being at the meeting and out in the cold rain, I am snuggled in my bed working on stuff. Thankfully no one objected to my skipping out on the meeting--because everyone realizes that it would be better for me to nip this thing in the bud than to be down for the count later on. We decided that maybe I just have a strange form of the flu that doesn't involve stomach problems--because all of my symptoms seem flu-like. I am feeling a lot better tonight than I was last night, but the glands in my neck are a bit swollen. Hopefully if I go to bed early tonight I'll wake up as good as new tomorrow--because tomorrow, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are already jam-packed. Is it only Tuesday? :-) As much as I dislike Dr. Barnhart's and Mr. Riccio's classes, I absolutely love Dr. Small's and Dr. Reid's classes (and I loved Mrs. Miller's class last semester). So, it's all good and I am learning many, many, many things. Aly left for the meeting tonight at 7:15, and it's now 9:15 and she's still not home, so I am SUPER glad I decided to take it easy tonight!