In more pleasant news, I have made my first academic paper (and an interesting one at that; how many people can say the same? :-) One of you quoted a poem of mine ("You'll Understand When You're Older, Dear") in an essay on the word 'fuck'. It seems oddly appropriate to me that that should be the subject of the first paper that used my work. :-)
In stranger news, I've discovered that my first boyfriend has a web page. This is odd because I never really thought he would, and I've said not very complimentary things about him in fictionalized stories, and I used his first name, which probably wouldn't have been enough for anyone to find him, but he has links to both my page and my book, so he's apparently willing to have people make the connection. I sent him an e-mail; hopefullyhe'll be willing to confer on the subject. I want to make sure he knows what he's getting into.
It was undoubtedly an error of judgement to use even his real first name, and even worse, in one of my other stories I use someone's real first and last name -- hopefully that won't rebound on either me or him. My only excuse is that I was young and stupid -- and never expected my stories to become as public as they have been. I could yank the offending stories, but they've been archived since 1993, at least, so it wouldn't do much good.
The net is so permanent that way. When my parents were really upset about my stories, and asking why I didn't switch to pseudonym at least, I had a hard time explaining that at that point, it was essentially too late -- too many places had permanent records of the stories under my name. What's that saying about how many people can keep a secret? Certainly not thousands...
In other news, I had a spot of excitement two nights ago. I went to bed a bit late, around 10:30, and woke up at 2:30 with tons of mosquito bites and a tight chest and throat. I was kind of out of it, but I figured I should at least check whether this was likely to be anything serious. So I called an emergency room and described my symptoms and they said to come in right away because I was having an allergic reaction, and if it got worse, my airways could get blocked. And if you don't breathe, you die. So I said okay, and thanks, and hung up the phone. I wasn't short of breath or anything, and I didn't really want to wake up Cliff or Ian or drag David over to drive me to the hospital, so I called another emergency room, the one that actually went with my insurance. They said that if I took some antihistamines, it should be okay, but if it got worse, I should definitely call 911 or have someone drive me. Also that I shouldn't actually go for the antihistamines myself, if I didn't have them at home, but should send someone else. Well, I got off the phone again, and I still didn't want to wake anyone. We are so trained not to 'bother' people. I decided to wait and just monitor myself closely and if it got *any* worse I would wake someone and go in, but otherwise I'd just wait. It got better in about an hour, and so I stayed up and worked and was eventually fine. Except, of course, Cliff and David and Ian all told me the next morning that I was an idiot not to have woken one of them, which is undoubtedly true. What made me feel really stupid is, of course, that Cliff is highly allergic to all sorts of things, and routinely carries antihistamines and if I'd just remembered that, I could have woken him up and gotten somewithout anyone having to drive anywhere. Sigh. El also tells me that we have some in the medicine cabinet, which I didn't even think to check 'cause I knew that *I* was out. What a twit I am sometimes...
I should probably go pretend to work. Hope y'all are having a nice week (ideally less exciting than mine has been :-)