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Category Archives: so sickly

Engineeringoma

A good while ago, not long after I first started working, I noticed that I was having some speech difficulties.  I would often forget words, mix up my gendered pronouns, and I was starting to affect a stutter.  I was really annoyed with myself.  Forgetting words occasionally doesn’t bother me.  It happens.  But it seemed to be happening more frequently than normal.  And what was going on with mixing up my gendered pronouns?  I was raised in the US.  I may have learned Chinese first, but English is definitely my dominant language.  I never had problems with pronouns before.  And I have no idea what was going on with that stutter.  I figured, I was just tired and I just needed more sleep.  But I was wrong.

I learned that I have engineeringoma.  I am quite fortunate that I have friends who are healthcare professionals to set me straight.  My respected medical professional friend defines engineeringoma as a

cancerous growth of the engineering, which is located somewhere in the brain.  It causes compression of the ventricles and the lobes to swell up, affecting Broca’s area and thus causing stuttering.  Progressive state causes sickliness.  Growth metastasizes into all organs.  There is no cure.

When he told me that, suddenly it was all clear.  I used to get headaches (this was pre-MLC) sometimes.  They were probably one of the symptoms of the growth getting bigger and causing pressure in my skull.  It was affecting Broca’s area, an area of the brain necessary for speech production.  That probably explained my forgetting of words and stuttering.  I was getting sick more often.  I totally had engineeringoma!

Or…not really.  Sometimes my friends and I like to pretend we have weird, fake, and often gruesome diseases (or really, I like to pretend that I have weird, fake, and often gruesome diseases and they are more than willing to oblige me and make up said diseases for me if I find the real diseases to be not gruesome enough…then we make them even worse in banter).  But what was really funny was that I had written the definition (it’s a really good definition) on a scrap of paper and put it up on the outside of my cube wall.  One of the other noob engineers came by to talk to me one time and saw the definition.  He thought it was real.  He was having similar symptoms and he was actually sick during that time.  He came in to ask me how I found out about the disease.  Then he did a double take, probably because I looked so amused at his reaction.  He figured out rather quickly that it wasn’t a real disease.  And then he learned that my sense of humor is parched and arid and I really wasn’t to be trusted regarding these things.

Good times, good times.

I shall entice motivation with a vacation

A friend suggested a candy trail to lure motivation back.  I…just don’t think that will work very well.  For one thing, I don’t know what kind of candy motivation likes.  More importantly, Yaris and Choco would more than likely eat all the candy before motivation even realized it was there.  Candy trails work wonders at bringing unlost dogs back to you.  Instead, I’m going to talk about Iceland.  Why?  Because I like it.  I would like to go there.  I almost did, but then no one wanted to go with me and I didn’t want to pay for a hotel room by myself.  I was so close though.  I think next time, I might as well just go by myself anyway.

Anyway, through Jetsetter, I because aware of Elves and Trolls, a travel site that specializes in Iceland.  I really like Iceland.  I really want to go to Iceland.  I would like to spend a lot of time in Iceland.  Iceland is number two on my list of places I really want to go (Australia is number one, but right now I’m talking about Iceland).  And this package from Elves and Trolls sounds really interesting and I want to do it.  It’s similar to what was offered on Jetsetter that one time and no one wanted to go with me.  I don’t know about the “viking” level of difficulty though.  I’m not sure if I’m as fit as a viking.  How would I go about training for something like that?  Should I try and sail the seas like in the old Norse sagas and plunder and loot towns?  You know, I don’t think I really read about any females doing plundering and looting.  It was probably just the men with their horned helmets and and spears and braided beards and smoked fish and tankards of ale.  Wait, did the Norse drink ale?  I can’t remember.  Maybe just mead?  Mead tastes better than ale anyway.  But do you drink tankards of mead?  Maybe just goblets of mead.  Holding a goblet in your hand while sailing the icy seas doesn’t seem very viking-like to me though.  Maybe they just held goblets at the dinner table and they would switch to tankards when they were at sea.  Although, I would think most captains would have rules against drinking while sailing.  I’m sure that’s about as dangerous as drinking and driving.  Also, it probably would hinder your plundering and looting.

Er…what was I talking about?  Oh right, a trip to Iceland.  I would like to go to Iceland.  If not for that, then this sounds pretty interesting too.  Again with the viking level of difficulty though.  Or maybe this?  Or this.  Sugh, all of those requires people to have prior knowledge of the viking way of life though.  I don’t know how I would train for something like that here, which is not like Iceland at all.  And it would be hard to continuously hold my mustache/beard combo on a stick to my face so I could kind of have a braided beard.

Aside: my beard/mustache combo on a stick looks a lot like this but not quite so looped and it’s ginger and I don’t have a picture of it right now and I left it at someone’s house so I can’t take a picture of it.  I’ll put it up some other time.  In other news, if you want to make your own, these instructions are a good place to start.  Or these.

Btw, you should definitely check out the World Beard and Mustache Championship.

I am realizing that this doesn’t sound very enticing at all.  It’s kind of incoherent and rambly.  I’m not particularly tired…I don’t think.  I just…don’t have motivation.  And I guess I will continue to not have motivation.  Maybe I need to figure out a good viking workout in the meantime.