3.29.2012

I've Uncovered the Secret of Ancient Egyptian Medicine

Consider the following scenario:
Ancient Egyptian Peasant: Dude, my eye hurts like Set's asshole!
Other Ancient Egyptian Peasant: Don't you mean like Horus's eye? That Set poked out. That we draw on everything. And that will rank in the top 10 unoriginal tattoos.
Peasant 1: Shut up, asshole sounds funnier.
Peasant 2: whatevs
Priest/Healer: hey, your eye hurts? I can fix that! Let me smear some of this on it.
Peasant 1: Um, is that poop?
Priest: No! Don't be ridiculous! It's poop and mucous and some straw.
Peasant 1: Hey, what do you know? My eye is totally better! I need to, um, go do some stonecarving. Bye!

Yep.

Bittersweet

My birthday is tomorrow and I just realized it will be the first time in my life my Nana won't sing Happy Birthday for me.
But it does make me smile remembering all the times she did.

In other news, I hate mosquitoes. And the Topamax has not yet made me a total wreck. My arthritis is flaring up like whoa though. I have sausage fingers and a swollen knee. Grumble.

3.28.2012

Whoa have I been slacking off

Topiramate
Topiramate (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Between teaching (which sucks a lot of prep time as I do a lot of slides) and having a cold or a flare or both I have not been blogging with anything like normal regularity.

Latest news: I am teaching in the summer and probably next fall. Sweet! Both are things I've never taught before, but, um, yeah.

I finally got in to see a neurologist here. He was wearing a black t-shirt and a pin-striped suit, which made me do confused head-tilt, but he seems competent and is probably not a mobster, so we're cool. I am trying Topamax to prevent migraines.
I'm a little nervous - the side-effects do not sound fun, but willing to try it out. Everyone cross your fingers I don't turn into a suicidal zombie, which seems to be the most scary possibility.
I have enough trouble with brain fog as it is...

Ummm, what else?

I had to drive far-ish (for me) for the neurology appointment yesterday. I discovered (re-discovered?) that driving makes me question the size of other drivers' penises when they do stupid things. Or are in sports cars. Or it's Tuesday.

Oreo and I have been sitting on the patio for a while every day. He likes soaking up the sun and having a leisurely sniff-survey. I have to be  really careful to avoid sun rash/burn between my autoimmune disease and the meds to treat it (because making photosensitive people MORE photosensitive is AWESOME!!!), but I do like sitting out or at least having the door open for a lot of the day.

My birthday is coming up and I'm hoping to get the hat linked below and some sun gloves and sleeves so I can be outside more during the day.
Sundancer UV Protective Hat

3.05.2012

Archaeology that makes me squee!!!

Today my class took a test the first half of class, so I did some reading to prep questions about the other textbook I assigned: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt
This resulted in the following gems:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Feeding Cup
Why, yes, that is an ancient baby sippy-cup. And it is awesome.

The other thing was this:
...white dogs with large black spots make a regular appearance in Middle Kingdom tombs as pets, and even as guardian deities...
Yup, totally a guardian deity.