Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax

...Cabbages and Kings.  The time has come, as the walrus said, to talk of many things.

First off, I am (finally) feeling better. Still not completely well, and maybe after the small amount of sleep I'm getting tonight I'll be worse, but (knock 3 times on wood, spit 3 times over left shoulder) here's hoping this current mood is a trend and not a fluke.

For those of you I haven't spoken to in the past few days, some explanation is probably needed.  Here goes: last Tuesday I felt myself getting sick, but was determined to achieve a kind of mind-over-matter healthiness.  Wednesday we didn't have class and our only excursion was bowling at night with our peer tutors. Because of that, I slept most of the day and generally rested. By the time I ventured into the Russian night, I was feeling well enough.  Thursday, I was tired and coughing a lot, but I went to class anyway. This is where the Emergen-C into sparkling water tale comes in.

As every good often-ill person knows, vitamin C is essential for getting better faster and fending off colds. To that end, I discovered Emergen-C a few years ago. Please google it if you have no idea what I'm talking about.  The way that Emergen-C usually works, is that you put it in water, it fizzes a little, solutes nicely, and turns your water into a tasty and healthy treat.  The danger in Russia, however, is that when one simply asks for water and forgets to say "without gas" they hand you sparkling water.

Being slightly ill, as I was, and not really paying close attention, I was distracted by the speed of the cashier's speech and forgot to stipulate "without gas". Sitting down with my friends, my blin (with sweetened condensed milk--so yummy) in front of me, I grabbed my vitamin packet from my bag, opened the water, and started pouring it in. Then disaster struck. The carbonated beverage mixed with the packet that fizzed created a kind of reactio that I can only compare to baking soda and vinegar or cola and mentos. Perhaps not quite as explosive, but I was caught off guard. Not knowing what to do, my first reaction was to save my pancake from the overflow, which meant moving the bottle closer to my lap. The problem with that, of course, was that now it was spilling on my clothes and the floor, dangerously close to my backpack.  My next solution was perhaps even more without forethought. Thinking of overflowing soda and my usual solution to that problem, I put my mouth over the bottle top.  Of course, contrary to soda, this chemical reaction continued even without the oxygen of the air, so this move just filled my cheeks with gas and made me feel foolish.

Giving up on the idea of saving any of the Emergen-c, I finally grabbed a handful of napkins and held them over the overflowing bottle for a few minutes until it calmed down. Then I proceeded with my lunch.

Walking home on Thursday, I was so tired that I thought I might fall into a snow bank and sleep. That night, I couldn't bring myself to do any homework, so I decided to get up extra early on Friday and do it.  Friday morning, I awoke feeling worse. At around 8 I decided that I simply couldn't get myself to class and besides, my coughing had been disruptive the day before and was now worse.

This story will continue tomorrow including my trip to the clinic and discovery of a new allergy in one of the worst possible ways.

Also still to come: losing/recovering my debit card, pictures of the neighborhood, going to the "palace" where Rasputin's murder began, improvement in understanding servers.