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so when the air pressure inside your inner ears is greater than the air pressure outside your ears, they pop. because pressure wants to be the same wherever it is...

this can be alleviated by releasing trapped air (by yawning or making weird faces which require you to open your mouth wide) through your eustachian tubes...

I have done this hundreds of times (to the point were I don't notice I'm doing it anymore) but this last sunday night I think I was coming down with a cold or something because when my ears popped they stayed...

it was as if I was listening to the world with a glass over one ear...

I tried to pressurize my ears, akin to when I go snorkeling or scuba diving, but I couldn't seem to get anything to my left ear.

weird...

(this whole time, however, I never noticed the increasing laboriousness of breathing through my nose)

so I decide to go to sleep - with very much difficulty.

At this point I feel like I am listening to a sea shell because of the hollowness which has replaced my ear...

however, the cars on the freeway a few hundred feet, which I can usually tune out, were quite noticeable and very irritating. maybe the dampened hearing of one ear was being compensated by the increased acuity of the other...

by this time, I noticed that I had begun breathing out of my mouth... I shifted my sleeping position so as to make use of one nostril - in shifting, my glasses - which I was wearing because I decided that the three months in which I kept in my contact lenses was quite long enough (and was exacerbated by my newfound alleric reaction to the long hair of dogs) - were not co-operating with my position on the pillow, thus rendering my left eye, and ultimately the whole left side of my head, useless for the night.

when I awoke, I noticed that, although I could hear normally, I was coughing something fierce and I was still congested.

so I called in sick.

so from sunday night to monday night (once I discovered that we had cable and hbo ondemand) I watched the first 8 episodes of the second season of entourage and the first 8 episodes of carnivale, contact, the terminal, ray, and first daughter (don't ask me why I watched the last one - it was late and it just jumped out at me)

I can breathe out of my nose, but I have some sniffles, and I'm not coughing anymore, but on my drive in my ear closed up again. it's fine now, but I can't pressurize my left ear again...

in any case, I can't focus today on anything - not that I have much on which to focus.

I think I just want to sleep some more. I debated crawling under my desk and sleeping, but it is quite easy to see me when you look into the cube.

here I go... trying to get back to work.

"I don’t want to punch you in the nose big chicken, I’m just gonna lay down and die now. Ok, here I am dying."