There must be a gadget for this

Plague is still hanging on in an annoying way. I'm not incapacitated, but I'm exhausted from coughing instead of sleeping all night, and I'd give a lot to make my ears pop.

It would be great to find some kind of pain medicine that can make an exhaustion headache recede. My eyeballs are the wrong size for my skull. Excuse me, sir, I'd like to return these. They don't fit. ... Yes, that's okay, I'll take one blue and one green. I'm not going anywhere fancy for the next week. Do those come with glasses?

What I'd really like, though, is some kind of gumdigit to force my ears to pop. (The clever tricks for this work -- or mostly, don't -- on healthy heads.) When I am Queen I'll set a team of scholars to work on it. The gadget might be very simple. Poke a small glass rod up into the little canal until it goes SQFFFFFT and lets all the air in. Yeah, maybe it would need to have a channel indented along the edge to help break the seal; don't bother me with details. Think of all the human suffering that could be alleviated! We have neti pots, for goodness' sake; why not this? Somebody needs to invent it and then sell one to me. Bonus points for hanging around to show me how to find the little canal.

Eyeroll du jour

I almost didn't get the chem report in on time after all. It was on a USB key that I left in the computer center on Tuesday, and I discovered this fact Tuesday evening, and the computer center doesn't open until nine in the morning, and the lab was due at 7:30AM Wednesday. I'm really glad the place was still open Tuesday night when I went back. I would have hated to spend half the night redoing that fool thing.

(If you have something to say about backups, make it clever and original, okay?)

Chemistry lab needs to focus more on practical applications, such as synthesizing really serious cough syrup so I can get some sleep and stop being stupid. I think I need to suggest this to the professor.