This weekend was nice and fun and quiet and also full of laughter. That’s really the best you can ask for. The only thing that sucked was my allergies acting up. My head felt like a balloon and I was sniffly and sneezy and my eyes were watering and itching unbelievably. I ended up stopping at the supermarket while we were up there and getting some allergy eyedrops and using them yesterday and today… itchy itchy.

Yesterday, we got up and went to the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY. That was pretty cool. They had some new interactive displays where you could select elements off of the periodic table and find out how they would affect the color of glass if added to the main elements of glass (silicon, calcium and sodium). Manganese turns it purple or violet, iron turns it green and cadmium turns it red.

There was also a really cool LIVE glass-blowing show where a master glass-blower made a mug. That was just cool because you could feel the heat radiating off of the glass oven from about 20 feet away… it stands to reason since the oven is kept at around 2300 degress Fahrenheit and the glass is the same temperature as lava, and has the consistency of honey. MMmmm. That would be a messy mistake.

Anyway - about halfway through the day, I fell into a bit of the depression and that, coupled with allergy ickiness, made me a less than lively roadtrip friend for the latter portion of the day. Theresa and her boyfriend were very good about it though - and I think we were all pretty tired and none of us really felt like being “LALALALALALA” happy at that point.

The funniest thing was probably that the play we saw on Saturday night - in which Theresa’s nephew was the lead - ended up being at a Christian academy and was a Born-Again recruitment event. Prior to the play, during the intermission, and after the play, there was prayer and a devotional, telling us that if we hadn’t accepted Jesus Christ as our personal saviors yet, that we could talk to anyone there and they’d help us learn more. The play wasn’t religiously themed at all… but the manner in which the 17 year old girl leading the devotion connected it to Biblical matters was sort of creepy. Tenuous at best and weakly constructed… and it was particularly disturbing to me to see this young girl preaching in a threatening way, warning the “non-believers” in the audience that God could see into their hearts and tell that they weren’t truly Christians and that they can’t fool him (ominous, ominous!)

Afterwards, we went out for ice cream and then spent the ride home discussing religion and whatnot.

This morning, I woke up a little late, with a nasty sinus headache and earache, but not bad enough or late enough to miss the train. I got to the train station and realized that I had forgotten my train pass. I didn’t have enough money to pay for a ticket… and while I had enough money to pay for parking, my brother used my car this weekend and left me with an empty tank. Literally, light-on, running on fumes, empty. So I didn’t have enough money to get enough gas at $3.19 a gallon AND pay for parking. My headache got worse as I stressed out over this, and my ear pain became sharp (like a knitting needle in my head) and I went back home, took some Motrin and got into bed.

I called my allergist, but he was booked solid. I guess lots of people are getting hit hard with their allergies right now. I left a message with the nurse who answered asking if the doctor could call in a script for me, but since I haven’t been there in over a year, I don’t think he’d do it. They haven’t called me back… or they might’ve tried but might’ve called my old phone number, even though I gave them the new one. The nurse didn’t sound like she was particularly attentive to those details.

Anyway - I slept and did a saline rinse, even though my nose isn’t that runny. But it will help clear out any infection in my sinuses. I also have some major stomach cramps, but I think those are the result of eating more raw vegetables than usual late last night.

My wrist is also experiencing some sharp pain today. I’m just falling apart, I guess.

I’m going to make myself a nice cup of tea. That will help my tummy (ginger tea or chamomile) my head and ear and sinuses (steam + heat) and hydrate me. All good things. Yay, tea.