Thank You, Immune System

So I once again have gone a few weeks without posting, and believe me, there's lots I would like to talk about, but alas, I got swamped with end-of-semester craziness yet again. However, this time around, the whole episode has left me saddled with a case of what is likely exhaustion. The problem is I have no problem working myself for 12 or 14 hours a day, day after day, if it's things I enjoy and if I allow myself a spare hour or two here and there to chill. Unfortunately, my advancing age has apparently left me unable to deal with this for long stretches. Throw in a Saturday night where a scheduled alcohol-related "tension-breaker" turned into being out past 4am, and here we are. Sick as a dog during the nicest stretch of April weather I can recall, and with still a week left in the semester.

In short, it sucks.

So I have been spending today trying to relax and rest up so I can get back to work tomorrow; after all, there is still much work to be done. I tried going outside for a while and enjoying some fresh air, only to discover that doing so causes me to get hyper-sensitive to bright sunshine and also causes gallons of fluid to start streaming out through my eyes. Not a pretty sight.

Now you may ask how I know exactly what's wrong with me without going to a doctor? Well, simple. Being almost 30, I have several friends who are also in that age area, and to a person, they all have told me that they find themselves getting sick more often these days as well. Then a co-worker went down 2 weeks ago with what was originally thought to be strep but turned out to be exhaustion from working crazy shifts all the time. I told him he was a "cautionary tale" for myself... not that it stopped me from being up for 21 hours that same day and working for 15-16 of those hours, followed by the aforementioned 4am night the following weekend.

I am quite disappointed in my immune system, considering that until a few months ago, I was the picture of health (just ask the doctor who did my last physical). I think I'm much better able to deal with stress than I used to be, I have a more positive outlook on life than not too long ago, but that alone can't turn back the mileage you already accumulated during the previous years of stress, ulcers, and insomnia. I guess all I can do is learn to live with it.

Sooooo... one way of making myself feel better would be to offer you a mini-vent on the issues of the day. After all, that's pretty much the purpose of this blog:

Hillary won Pennsylvania. No shock there. She won by 10 points, which was impressive after many expected it to be closer. To recap the last few weeks, Obama put his foot in his mouth and said that small-town Pennsylvanians cling to guns and religion because they are bitter with government. As someone who lived in a couple of small Pennsylvania towns during college and after, I knew immediately how that would be received, and sure enough, Snyder County (where I went to college) and Franklin County (where I lived from 2001-04) went pretty solidly in the Hillary column. Next up is Indiana (where Hillary will probably win because it's the same people as Ohio and Western PA) and North Carolina (where Obama is the favorite).

Obama is still acting like he's the presumptive nominee and spending all his time repeating the latest DNC/23% Crowd mantra: McCain = Bush. This led to an interesting letter to the editor in our local paper this week, where a local Democrat ripped Howard Dean for attacking McCain. And then you have all the Hillary supporters who say they'll vote for McCain if that "elitist" Obama wins the nomination. And then of course, there is the fact that ever since liberal Democrats started trashing McCain for his mortgage crisis solutions and calling him "Bush's 3rd term", McCain has RISEN in the polls. It's looking good for my man McCain... it's looking VERY good.

We're also starting to hear a lot of what I thought we'd hear by about this point in the proceedings, whether we had two clear nominees or not: people being sick of how long this election is taking. I saw this coming a year ago, and now that I've patted myself on the back for this, I'll tell you what this all means.

You know who the biggest winner in this entire election process is? Not Hillary or Obama, not even John McCain. It's PENNSYLVANIA. Because they resisted the temptation to move up their primary to February with everyone else who wanted to "have a say in the process", they got SIX WEEKS of non-stop media attention, practically becoming a second Iowa. And now North Carolina and Indiana get all the attention, and later it will be Oregon, West Virginia, Kentucky, and the last few states all the way up to Puerto Rico at the beginning of June. All those "Super Tuesday" states? A long-forgotten memory. It's the reverse of the last 3 presidential elections. Instead of most states not getting the attention because the nominee was decided well in advance, most states this time didn't get the attention because they all went too early and left this big gaping 6-week hole in the schedule.

One hopes that this means that these states who all envied Florida and South Carolina and New Hampshire and Iowa so much that they moved up their primaries will now be so envious of Pennsylvania that they'll all move their primaries BACK to March and April, thus allowing the early states to move their contests back to a sensible date and bringing this whole process back from the verge of overkill to which they have now pushed us. I can't stand all these people who think that the possibility of the Democratic Convention actually MEANING something is somehow bad for politics. I don't want to see Chicago '68 but I think the younger generations should see a nominating process that isn't 4 months of debates, followed by 3 weeks of voting, followed by having to wait 6 months for a meaningless rubber-stamp convention that gets ignored by the major TV networks. This HAS been good for politics, because younger people everywhere are excited about having a voice and healthy debate is ALWAYS good for the country.

And of course, listening to Hillary and Obama call each other "Republicans" for daring to attack each other is pretty fun to watch too...