The Glass is Half Full

So, whenever I think of optimism and "the glass is half full," I can't help but think of the following routine from Demetri Martin (slightly edited):

Those who see the glass half full are considered optimists. Yeah, but shouldn't we be more specific about the contents of the glass? If it's a glass of poop, I'm going half empty. I don't like poop. As an optimist, there's a half-empty poop glass here, so don't worry about it. Baby blood, that's even more complicated. Is this blood going to a baby or coming from a baby? If it's to a baby, yeah, we got a half-full glass of baby blood here. It's gonna be fine. Don't worry about it. From the baby, okay, hold on. It's a half-empty baby-blood glass. Don't ask me why he collected the blood in a glass. Just listen to what I'm saying.

Anyway, the reason I've got optimism on my mind is because I've had an ear infection for about about a week now. It started out really mild, but it's gotten a fair bit worse the last few days (I've been to the doctor a couple of times about it). Well, I haven't really been able to hear anything through my left ear since Tuesday night because my ear is all swollen up. While the infection has been quite annoying and painful at times, this lack of hearing has had it's benefits.

Take, for example, the fun it created at work. We have a couple of pressure regulators in our lab that make a hissing noise when air is flowing through them. Yesterday, while I was in the lab, I noticed that I couldn't hear the hissing at all when my left ear was facing the regulator and that the hissing would get progressively louder as I turned my right ear towards the regulator. Well, I was really fascinated by this and started testing it out. While everything I was doing made perfect sense to me, my research assistant got this really confused look on his face when he looked over and saw me spinning around in random circles in the middle of the room. Maybe he thought that the pressure of grad school had finally gotten the best of me. Anyway, we had a good laugh about this.

My favorite benefit, though, was discovered last night while I was in bed. I was still awake when my roommate started snoring. I was not happy when this started. Normally I just kick his bed when he starts snoring, but he had work early in the morning and I didn't feel good waking him up. So, I was lying there not knowing what to do and ended up randomly rolling over onto my right side, thus blocking my good ear. The snoring stopped instantly! It was wonderful.