Erin Miller

Today was a good day.
I got to wake up to an email from my wonderful boyfriend, which always helps the day start right. We don’t get to actually wake up beside each other much, but its fun to read some of his thoughts first thing in the morning.
Classes went well and I managed to get in a few hours of studying for my midterm tomorrow. I also learned about some of the interesting public health efforts going on in Harlem, and was excited to learn that I officially live within Harlem’s boundaries, though I apparently live in “west Harlem,” which is much healthier than east or central Harlem.
Wednesdays are my wicked days “wicked Wednesdays” because I have classes from 10-4 and then work from 4-9, but work went well today. We have a great new office assistant working with the program and I was able to come back after a week out with the flu and things were running smoothly; very nice.
I got an email from my little sis asking for advice for an “argumentative essay on racial discrimination,” or something like that. The language initially shocked me for its complete grown-upness (she is my little sister) then I remembered that she was 17. I’m pretty lucky to have siblings that are so much fun to talk to.
On my walk home from the subway I stopped by one of the Spanish markets as the workers were putting away their fruits and vegetables and I found big packs of strawberries for a buck fifty, and that was very exciting. I also found some bananas that look pretty good, which can be sort of a hard find in my neighborhood, though evidently not as hard as in central and east Harlem.
I stopped in to pay my tab at the bodega on my way home, which was awesome. Not because I had to pay it, but because I got to have a tab at my bodega, and Paul Simon sings about the bodegas along Broadway.
“She makes the sign of a teaspoon
He makes the sign of a wave
The poor boy changes clothes
And puts on after-shave
To compensate for his ordinary shoes
And she said honey take me dancing
But they ended up by sleeping
In a doorway
By the bodegas and the lights on
Upper broadway
Wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes.”
I swear the song is referencing the bodega under our building.
When I got home I found out that one of my roommates had taken my dog to the dog park. (Where Spot had actually behaved herself marvelously according to reports.) And another roommate had made me some extra dinner. Did I mention I had the best roommates in the world?
Anyway, just thought I’d share some of the experiences of the day. Thanks to anyone who might read this who had anything to do with my good day. Now its time for some studying and to hit the hay.
For anyone who might be wondering — no, I am not completely over my illness yet, I started coughing so hard last night I couldn’t sleep, but I am getting better. My coughing and general exhaustion kept me out of my dodgeball game last night, but the staff team pulled through in a huge way, and I hope to be ready to play by next week.

The doctor had been out of the room for five minutes. I should have known how sick I was because I was starting to think that the exam table looked like a fine place to curl up and rest. I had to lift myself up when the doctor walked in. He plastered himself against the far wall, handed me a mask and said, “well, you tested positive for influenza.”
great — I guess now I know what it feels like.
It’s too late to try any anti-viral stuff for it, so for now it is just rest, chicken soup, and kleenexes. It forces me to spend lots of time at home, and I feel like I should be getting stuff done — working on internship applications, getting caught up on reading, getting ahead on assignments — but mostly all I can do is sit around and let my nose run and my eyes water. I’ve already had to attend to the liquid falling out of my face twice since I started writing this.
At my appointment, from under my mask, I optimistically looked at the doctor and said, “So, I’ll be better in a week?” He took another half step backward and said, “um, no, maybe in ten days.”
People often toss the word flu around to mean any general cold or stomach upset. I remember when I use to give flu shots, I would sometimes recommend them to parents or their children and they would say something like, “ah, it’s just the flu.” I was always tempted to say something similar to, “no, what you are talking about is a cold, what I am talking about is more like the plague.” (For the record, yes, I did get my flu shot this year, but apparently it wasn’t that good a guess.) Anyway, I just finished a book about the black plague — the sneezing, the watering eyes, the insatiable thirst — the images are not entirely comforting. The book talked a lot about bleeding from the nose though — and so far, so good on that one.

I am sitting in a computer lab on the 17th floor of the NY Presbyterian hospital, looking out a sun-filled window over the densely packed city. I came in and annoying raised the blinds in front of my computer to allow for some sunshine to stream in — the New Yorkers are not amused by the glare I am creating, but I find that I am pretty dependent on getting at least a few minutes of sunshine a day, and besides being on the 17th floor of some building or another, it can be hard to find.
I should be working on environmental health economics, or my research technologies lab, but I know that a certain someone has probably checked this blog three times today and rolls his eyes every time he sees that I still haven’t made a post, even though it’s been three weeks since I posted. I guess there is a reasonable argument out there too that if I have time to play on the staff dodgeball team I should at least have time to create some minimalist blog post. Our team name, unfortunately, is not “Off in the shower” and that probably had something to do with why we lost in a close 7th match last night, but I don’t like to talk about it.
I just got back from a long weekend visit in Denver where I spent three wonderful days celebrating Valentine’s day with Dan. I got to meet up with the bro for dinner, make some delicious crab with Dan at home (which seems to be rated as the eighth best way to celebrate Valentines day), and check out a flobots show with some friends. Dan got my number at a flobots show over two years ago. At the time, Dan and a small group of his friends constituted the majority of the flobots fans at the show and we danced to their performance at a small venue where they were opening for some other band. The flobots have grown a lot since then. They won a big radio contest in Denver over the holidays and are now on regular rotation on a Denver radio station. It was wild to see them in their own head-lined sold out show at a 1000 capacity venue in Denver. It was amazing to hear complete strangers singing along to their songs and cheering wildly. It’s good to be reassured that good things really do happen to some really good people. I was telling this story to one of my friends in the city and he said, “man, you and Dan don’t just have a song, you have a band.” I guess that is sort of a fun way to look at it — the band’s growth mirroring in some way our nearly two-year relationship — though it also might be so mushy as to border on disgusting.

I went three months in Honduras without stepping into a single elevator. I remember being awed and confused when I first got into one at the hotel I brought my parents to when they visited. Now I use elevators approximately a dozen times a day. I live on the fifth floor of my building, and I use our elevator to get downstairs about half the time and almost always to get back up. Last week, our elevator broke. I hadn’t really understood how much I liked having an elevator until I didn’t. Five flights of stairs doesn’t sound like that many, but after two days of living on a stair master, my legs ached as soon as I thought about going up a single step. Our elevator has finally been back in working condition the last few days. After Spot and I took our afternoon walk today, I gratefully slumped into the elevator and hit the button for the fifth floor. The door closed and the machine started making noise, but Spot and I didn’t move. My heart started to race. I was officially stuck in an elevator. And it was surprisingly frightening. The closed metal created an immediately intense feeling of claustrophobia. The inner door was closed and the outer door was stuck, but I couldn’t get the inner door to open so that I could close the outer door. I tried to take some deep breaths and called one of my roommates who thankfully happened to be home. She ran downstairs and tried to open the outer door to the elevator, but it wouldn’t budge. I began to sweat. Then my roommate thoughtfully kicked the door in and the elevator began to move, letting a relived animal and human out on the second floor. Spot and I will be taking the stairs this evening.