the umbrella, friend to misanthropy

[jinian]

I quit taking the topiramate last night due to ongoing catastrophic bellyache, but I still feel approximately as unpleasant today. (Also things went wrong all day, very annoying.) After the first couple days of taking it, the noticeably stoned and lovey feelings went away, along with basically all the side effects apart from the digestive. I expected a headache today, which didn't arrive as such, but hadn't quite considered that an episode of thinking the worst of everyone might be in store. Some annoying stuff did happen, but I also overreacted to not finding all my CDs where they belonged in the confocal room, and was luckily saved from sending pissy email to everyone by running into the person who'd been using them to adjust the height of some samples. I'd been convinced that someone had made off with them. I was not saved from spending over half an hour feeling weepy and copying them all to the hard drive so I could protect my belongings better, instead of, you know, working.

So, hating all or at least most, I walked home today in what turned out to be about as heavy a rain as we normally get in Seattle. How nice an umbrella is for avoiding interactions with your fellow trail users, especially when the wind is from the front. Those cyclists were obviously thinking bad things about me, but I could just block them away with the umbrella and never even see most of their faces. Walkers were harder to obscure completely, but no one could be too surprised if I happened to be looking elsewhere for the brief time their face was visible. Hurrah for umbrellas. Hopefully by the time the rain is over my bad mood will be too.

(And the rain did result in an injured worm for Hex. Even misanthropes appreciate an adorable hunting axolotl.)