Thursday morning random

* I was complaining earlier this week about my teeth hurting again (my top teeth, and in particular, the pain centers around one eyetooth - it's the one that sustained some damage a long time ago so I worry about it. My dentist seems unconcerned but still I worry). Anyway, the pain comes and goes. Sometimes it moves to other teeth. It was bad yesterday and the day before and I was just beginning to think, "Maybe I need to woman up and go see the dentist" even though when I was in four or so months ago for a checkup (and x-rays) he didn't see anything at all wrong with it.(And it was hurting then, and actually worse than it is now)

Then, late last evening, not having had dessert after dinner and deciding I was slightly hungry, I got myself some ice cream (more properly: gelato. I've been buying the Breyer's gelato; it's fairly good).

I realized, while I was eating it: wait, the cold doesn't hurt my tooth. If it was a screwed up tooth, wouldn't the cold hurt it? And then, afterward, I realized: it doesn't hurt any more.

So, maybe it's just inflammation from stupid sinuses, and the cold ice cream dealt with that? I hope?

Also, I would think if it were an infected tooth I'd be sicker, and it would get progressively worse, rather than teasing me by getting better and then suddenly coming back. I don't know. I don't want to lose the tooth but I also don't want to go through a whole bunch of procedures either.

* Grass pollen is extremely high here right now, which is perhaps part of it. And my neighbors to the south have an unmown yard - the grass is 14" tall in places. And I know I should be more forgiving, but it rankles me that I spent a couple weekends LAST summer obsessively grooming my lawn and garden after the city griped at me for one patch of grass that wasn't even 8" tall. I know life isn't fair but sometimes I feel like I'm the (to use an animation-trope term) the butt-monkey in a lot of life situations and I catch stuff other people wouldn't.

Also, most of the grass in that tall lawn is flowering and it's cranking out pollen. When I first get up in the morning I have a hard time focusing my eyes for about 10 minutes, I'm sure that's allergies. (Also my eyes feel kind of "gummy" first thing in the morning).

* Weirdness in my building: some strange things have happened this summer when no one was around - snacks the Administrative Assistant keeps on hand disappeared, one weekend some dog dropped droppings in one of the halls. And now, one of my colleagues had the grate at the bottom of his door (we have metal grates in our office doors, for ventilation) kicked in. Our doors are impossible to jimmy using the simple credit-card technique so I'm guessing someone tried to get into his office. Why? Either to steal stuff (nothing was missing, but then, the only "valuable" thing in that room is a uni-issued desktop computer and I have no idea if a desktop has any "fence" value) or to try to get a look at his tests (I don't think he had any copies of an upcoming exam out).

Though I kind of suspect it was the former, because another colleague had an electronic balance stolen out of her lab. (I checked mine. They're all still there, but then, the prep room where I keep stuff is a huge mess - the one colleague who used to use that room too has kind of abandoned it - and I suspect I'm the only one who knows where stuff is)

But yeah. It's unsettling. The chair said it was apparently happening on weekends when "no one" was up here. I am frequently in on Saturdays but often keep my office door closed when working. (Still, I don't think I'm going to come up here this Saturday. I have work I COULD do but I may just load it all onto a flash drive and take it home with me and work at home.)

The low-level-stuff-being-stolen bothers me (we don't have ready funds to replace stuff, and it's creepy to think of our balances winding up in a meth lab, especially if they still have the "control tags" on them marking them as university property) but it would bother me a lot MORE to meet up with someone who was not supposed to be here when I was the only one in the building.

Campus police are aware and are supposed to step up their checks, but we're a distance from the rest of campus and we kind of wind up being the "red-headed stepchild" in these things. (There's been a boom of building apartments in the past couple years and more people right around us, so I don't know if that's the source of the intruders)

* Had a long meeting yesterday afternoon, part of which involved dealing with some fallout from two people (neither at the meeting) who have giant personality conflicts, should probably NOT be working together on stuff, and who apparently had a screaming fight at one point.

I don't know. I think the last time I screamed at someone it was my dad when I was a teenager. If there's another adult I have to work with who is being difficult I tend to sigh a lot and maybe modulate my voice *downward* (sometimes speaking more quietly gets the other person to shut up a little and listen) and all that. In a worst case scenario, if I felt myself getting angry to the point where I might say something I'd regret, I excuse myself from the situation and just walk away until I calm down. Or, in some cases, I just decide my opinion is less important than theirs, obviously, and try to do what they want (within reason, of course).

But I will say I've tangled with one of the people involved and yes, they can be somewhat abrasive and difficult to work with. I generally deal with it by being very, very quiet around them and when they're ranting, just letting them get it out.

One thing I've learned as an adult is that a lot of people don't have anyone who listens to them on a regular basis and sometimes that makes people a little....pent-up. And I sometimes wind up as sort of an unwilling audience to someone like that. I kind of hate it, and sometimes I do try to politely say, "I'm sorry, but I really have to get off the phone, there's somewhere I need to be..." and in my more self-centered moods I gripe to myself about how I often have no one to listen to me when I need to talk (hence the blog, hence the Twitter account...) But yeah, I can understand the feeling of not-being-heard, and I sort of wish no one (self included) felt that way....

I never know how to deal with 'difficult' people. My usual method is to avoid them, but you can't always do that. The unfortunate thing is I have enough people-pleaser and conflict-avoider in me that I often tend to placate people in ways that sort of enables them to continue in being difficult. If I were tougher I'd probably call people on their rudeness or abrasiveness or whatever, but....I get tongue-tied and never know what to say, and my heart starts racing and I feel kind of sick when I have to confront someone over ANYTHING. (even when I have to tell someone who plagiarized a paper, "Yes, you received a zero, and you did because HERE is the webpage you copied verbatim from, without even bothering to cite it.") I don't know why I am that way but I am. (Nature or nurture? Too many times as a kid being told "I won't be your friend any more if..." teaching me that unless I always give in, no one will like me? Too many introvert genes? Spent too much time as an only child or older sibling who didn't really have to fight for attention? I don't know.)

The meeting itself was kind of stressful and I admit after I got home and ate dinner I went and got my Dr. Whooves stuffie and carried it around with me for a while when I was working on other stuff. I tell myself that I'm an adult and that kind of thing shouldn't help me but strangely enough it does.