Life Stuff

Let's see... no taiji Saturday. I hadn't been planning to go anyway, as I didn't want to get Don sick. Melissa had some sort of thing going with her church. Mark decided to go hiking. So Don just cancelled class, before I could e-mail him that I wasn't coming.

Sunday, I decided maybe I ought to start writing my philosophy paper that is (more or less) due Wednesday. The firm deadline seems to be Friday, but I've got a decent draft now. I may post it when it's cleaned up a bit. The assignment was to compare any two of the texts we'd read this semester, looking for similarities and differences. I specifically looked for unity of opposites, and unity in general.

I was also feeling well enough to walk Buster yesterday. I recently got him one of those retractable leashes. It's sixteen feet long, but I can lock it shorter when needed. On the canal, I just let it go, and he can wander almost freely. The interesting side effect is that he's better behaved on it now when I do lock it short. I think maybe having a bit more freedom, where he would wander without pulling, made him realize that it felt better with a bit of slack in the leash. Or maybe I'm just projecting. Whatever the reason, I'm glad of it.

Today, I finally caught up on backlogged bills. Not sure why I got so far behind on them. I also went to College Market with Will, Jen, and Dr. Levenson. It was mostly a discussion of suffering, and whether it's possible for it to have a purpose. If there was any sort of consensus, it was that, purpose or not, the pain is still real. For me, it doesn't matter if there is a purpose to it. What matters is how we respond to it. Maybe it serves a purpose; maybe it doesn't. While it is happening, that doesn't matter in the least. A purpose of suffering is to bring us into the moment, to allow us to feel. Whether that makes it worth anything is left as an exercise for the reader.

In other news, the left half of my mom's face is rather swollen, like there's a rather large golf ball that's taken up residence in her left cheek. She's also having some cold symptoms, which may or may not be connected. It could be a complication of her sinus operation, an infected tooth, a nasty cold, or something else entirely. I wonder...what would a sinus infection do to someone whose sinuses were still a bit raw from being messed with? Probably nothing good. She's going to have it looked at tomorrow.