August 09, 2002 - 6:50 p.m.

i finally made it to the computer. whew!

first, the big news. i am the smartest person in my office.

i say this because on wednesday night, channel nine hosted a nation-wide IQ test. i know, it's crazy, but they had over 43,000 internet entries alone. this doesn't include the people who text-messaged the answers from their cell phones or the people like me who took the test at home. i know, too, that nearly every person at work took the test because they were comparing scores the next day. it was a really weird water-cooler conversation topic, i must say. it's not something you normally share with your coworkers.

and now, some back information. when i was a freshman in high school, i had chronic fatigue syndrome for six months. well, at least the doctors who believed in it thought that. in fact, it was so controversial that i went to stanford children's hospital for nearly a week. they made me take all these tests, including a rorshach (ink-blot) test and a psychological analysis, to make sure i wasn't faking my "illness". sample questions from the psych test that i remember include:

* do you urinate more frequently than others?

* do you defecate more frequently than others?

* when you see others' possessions, do you feel like taking them, even if you have no need for them?

* when you are on top of a tall building, do you feel the need to jump?

mind you, this test went on for 500+ questions, each to be answered on a sliding scale: always, sometimes, never, and two in between. i am not making this up.

they also made me take an IQ test, i suppose to make sure i was actually clever enough to fake my illness. all i remember them telling me is that it was very high, but they never revealed the score. i begged, but they wouldn't cave in - classified information, they'd say. so to this day, i've wanted to know my IQ but haven't had a proper chance to get it tested.

...until australian randomly decides to test the whole country. simon and i ordered pizza (there's a pizzeria down the road that has "the vegan" listed as its first special!) and made a night of it. poor simon was tired, though, so he went to bed while i waited up and graded the results. let's just say he was probably better off sleeping because i got a much higher score. it really surprised me, too, because his intelligence is one of the things i value most. so half of me is stuck in the "hooray - i am so smart" school of thought, and the other half is firmly entrenched in "this test doesn't mean anything." now that i know i'm in the top 2% (and eligible to join mensa, apparently), i must say i feel a little strange. it's similar to the way a birthday feels - you want everyone to congratulate you but feel silly if you announce it.

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did i mention that i have a double ear infection? well, i do. i know because i just got back from the doctor. in case you were wondering, this is what my evening cost:

$40 - consultation
$20 - ear wash
$19.60 - antibiotic tablets

i also threw in three months of birth-control pills for $48. considering i have no insurance or public health cover, i don't think i fared too badly.