Scared Straight

I woke up at 4:11 this morning feeling not right. As I walked to the bathroom (because that's where you go when things don't feel right) I realized that it was quiet... a little too quiet. I recently moved to a house near the train line and it is quite loud at night and especially in the mornings. As a way to counter that, my girlfriend bought me some earplugs - little guys I'm only just getting used to. I've taken to cramming them in pretty well since they inevitably course their way out overnight, rolling to cerumen-less pastures no doubt. As I sleepily padded to the bathroom, I made to take out my plugs and found that they weren't there. Or, at least, they weren't poking out or on the bottom of my floor, where I normally find them. As sleep quickly drifted off me I realized that they were ALL UP IN MY SHIT. I could barely finger the polypropylethelene border preventing me from being woken up by loud noises and I started to panic. I did what any normal person would do and went to the kitchen. I got some chopsticks and a toothpick. I then went back to the bathroom to try to extrude the foreign bodies. My second attempt with the toothpick came up with a bit of bloody stain - Ohohs! I forced myself to sit down, breath a bit, and have some cold water. After a bit of more-awake and more-worried digging, I managed to slice off a piece of the bud, at least letting me be sure that I wasn't crazy and I did have these things inside me. I finally got one out, breathed some relief, and noticed the hard rain coming down. I managed to get the other one out a couple minutes later and went back to bed. As I was lying there, I was wondering where it all went wrong. Warning, it may get a little nerdy here. Normally, there's a bit of air left in between the ear drum and the ear bud. As the air is being smashed in there behind the plug, it is under high pressure. The middle ear is connected to your mouth via the pharyngotympano tube and it is this tube that allows you to "equalize" or "pop" your ears on an aeroplane. So over the course of the night, I would have equalized several times, slightly, without knowing it. So what? Well it was raining quite hard and I seemed to remember from The How, Why and Huh? Book of Weather that rain = low pressure systems. Pressure likes to move from high to low and I wonder if the difference across my ear drum (really, the tympanic membrane... pretty thin) was pretty great, drawing all the pressure from behind my ear drum inside, trying to escape, created a vacuum that squashed and trapped the ear bud inside. This is what I was thinking about at 4:30 am, trying to go back to sleep.
So what?

So I realized it was time to start blogging again. I've shirked responsibility - neglected my duties out of fear or desire to not catch up. And much like the plagiarizers curse, it all catches up with you. I've done a lot since I last reported - I cannot lie. I been to several cities, countries, airports, restaurants and hung out with a lot of people. But the difference between me and a regular ol' plagiarizer is that I don't have academic culpability. I don't need to play catch up with you, my loyal blogging republic. Huzah! Maybe I'll just put up a couple of piccies to quell your hunger for things past for the time being. That's the coward's way out. But also the efficient man's.We should be back to normal soon enough. Cheers!
Jesus, I didn't know that!1
Very brief: apparently smoking as little as 1 cigarette every 5 days increases risk for cardiovascular disease and whatnot. That's the amount that a person gets in 2nd hand smoke if they live with someone who smokes 10 cigs a day.