Les Bonnes Choses

I just noticed that I got a random blog comment from a total stranger, which means that my audience goes beyond my list of facebook friends. Gille, whoever you are, you made my day. I see now why Alan got so intense about blogging. I think I may be drunk on power right now.

If you happen to come to visit me sometime, take a look at the side of the road as you drive down Edenridge, just before you get to my street. You will see orange traffic cones at the side of the road, marking off sections of the concrete curb. They're tearing it up. Again. The very same section of curb has been torn up at least three times within the last year, most recently this past August. This is my impression of the work order from city hall:

1. Apply jackhammer to 100 meters of curb along Edenridge
2. Remove debris
3. Pour concrete to form new curbs
4. Repeat

Your tax dollars at work.

I am presently in Wisconsin, just outside of Milwaukee, for an fMRI hands-on course. We're staying at a Holiday Inn Express, and yes, I kind of do feel smarter. Ken and I got back from dinner about 45 minutes ago. Ken was under the impression that it was about 1.6 miles from the medical center to the hotel. That figure, however, may be accurate only for cars that can drive on the highway, because experience on the treadmill has told me that I walk about 3.0 to 3.5 mph, and so 1.6 miles should have taken well under the 50 minutes that we took walking through what is basically an industrial park.

So that's basically just a journal update on one part of my day. The actual course is going along nicely. I learned a few things. I also got to skim over a few things, as pretty much all morning was spent discussing the intricacies of the unix-like shell environment on Mac OS X.

Oh, and the title? That's referring to what prompted me to jump over here for lack of anything else to do (Rebecca seems to be unavailable for chatting at the moment). I have the TV on right now. Nothing on, really. I had tuned into a PBS channel based on the title of a program appearing on that TV Guide channel. I think it was called Supernatural Science or something like that. Instead I am watching the Windows 95 Starfield screensaver on that station. No, I am not exaggerating. That is literally what is on TV: a bloody screensaver -- and possibly the most boring screensaver ever, at that. I think that really shows a lack of effort.

I think the guys from Amabile may appreciate the following complaint:
Oh, my sciatica!
I somehow managed to get something that I think is a pinched nerve. At some point on Saturday, I started to get some kind of radiating numbness/tightness that starts in my lower left back somewhere around my tailbone that seems to travel along my left hamstring into the calf and down to the foot -- I assume that it's nerve related. For those of you who aren't really limber, it kind of feels like that unpleasantness you feel when you sit with your legs flat to the floor and lean forward to touch your toes without bending your knees. Except, it's correlated with movements that are nothing like that action. It sucks. I suck. Good thing I'm not a horse. I'd be in a bottle of Aylmer's by now. I just googled sciatica, and this is what I found:

Sciatica occurs most frequently in people between 30 and 50 years of age. Often a particular event or injury does not cause sciatica, but rather it tends to develop as a result of general wear and tear on the structures of the lower spine.

Awesome. I'm just entering into that demographic, so I guess I have another couple decades of this to look forward to. And know what else I can look forward to? Read on gentle reader!

Sciatica symptoms that may constitute a medical emergency include:

• Progressive weakness in the leg

• Bladder/bowel incontinence or dysfunction
  

Granted, that would be an extreme that constitutes a medical emergency, but at least now I have a good excuse to buy adult diapers for those long trips.

I really like dreams; I find they are often very entertaining. They usually fall into one of two formats: the first, where I am experiencing the dream as myself, or the other, where I am watching events unfold as if on TV. In fact sometimes my dreams aren't just like TV, they are TV. The other day, for example, I dreamed up an entire episode of House. Generally the plot to each episode runs along the same lines, so I basically used those elements to fabricate a new episode. Now, bear in mind that I was asleep, which meant that, 1) the storyline was probably full of holes, but also 2) I didn't care. I mean, really, can you write a script for a 1 hour prime time show in your sleep?
I also generally have enough control over things in my dreams that it never gets out of hand, as in a nightmare. If it starts to go south, I usually do something like turn it from a 1st person perspective to a 3rd person perspective and decide that I'm actually watching a movie or something. Or I arbitrarily change things up a bit to give myself an edge. Last night, for example, I was being hunted by a bounty hunter. I think it had something to do with crossing the border. A handy skill to have when you are being hunted is the ability to make yourself undetectable, which is exactly what I suddenly became able to do. Then I'm not sure if I switched to a different but thematically related dream, or what, but I found myself with another related ability: I was barbequeing some sausages and hamburgers, and I was able to render invisible and otherwise undetectable the food I was cooking, allowing me to perplex a curious onlooker. That would be a superpower with a somewhat more limited scope of usefulness, I think.

It appears that I am a werewolf. I have no other explanation for it. As soon as the sun goes down, Pokey wants nothing to do with me. In fact, he actively retreats from me. I have checked to see if I have pointy ears and fur, but I can't detect any. But then, I heard somewhere that kids have extra-keen senses, so maybe it's something only he can see.

Rebecca had been reading the Harry Potter series to me when we would go on extended trips. I was timing it so that we'd get through a book before the movie came out, and I wouldn't want to start the next book until after the movie. It worked okay for the earlier books because in a 3 or 4 hour car ride (one-way), it was possible to get through them in one trip. The later epics took more than one trip. And the last two, well, I had to read most of the 6th book on my own. Fortunately, I was lagging behind the book releases so that the 7th book had been out for months by the time I finished the 6th book. Good thing too, because the 6th book didn't really stand alone -- at least, not if you wanted some kind of closure. I mean, sure, if you are into books where the main character just gets crapped on for 500 pages then you might check it out. But otherwise, you're kind of obligated to read the next book. I don't know how the hardcore fans handled it because I would have been pissed off after finishing the last page of the second last book.

I had been reading the books on the bus, and made the mistake of not finishing up the last couple of chapters of the last book so I would have something to read the next day. For those who haven't read the book, the last couple of chapters are basically where the fit hits the shan. As in other things in life, stopping halfway through the climax can have irritating consequences. In this case, I ended up with a case of the Mirandas that night because I kept compulsively thinking about the book. That, and Jude was kicking me in the head. I finished the book the next day, and am now looking for something else to read. Until I find it, I'm not as eager to take the bus.

I got through the NSERC application process intact. It felt like I was on a holiday this weekend with that thing taken care of. Today I set about the task of doing some number crunching that Ken assigned me a couple weeks ago that had been on the back-burner. I had written some programs to do this before, and fortunately, I had backed them up. Unfortunately, I wrote them a few years ago, and can't get them to run on the new lab computer we got in about a week ago. If you're reading this, and know anything about XML/XSLT, please let me know (I'm talking to you, Morgan)!
Let's see, what else...hmm. I have a head cold. That's new. It's also not very excellent.
This past weekend, I played 10 minutes of hockey with what I took to be old friends. I'm hedging on that because I only played in the context of a really vivid dream I had on Sunday morning. I actually can't play hockey to save my life, mostly because I can't skate to save my life. However, in the dream, I was a competent skater, and believe me, hockey seems much easier when you don't have to worry about falling on your face or flying into the boards because you can't stop. So yeah, that was kind of fun. I seem to remember that Mike Szekeres and Jeff DeBruyne were there. That's all I got on that one. Unfortunately, it will probably be up to Jude's uncle to teach him how to skate. He'll only get encouragement for field sports like football or football (US) from me; I only know how to run.

Is there a term that's sort of the opposite of penultimate (second-last)? A word meaning second from the beginning. I mean, besides "second", smartarse.
So I like the default layout. I may change it, though I may not, because the simple black looks nice and clean. It also didn't post my gmail address on the page as far as I could see either, so I think we have a keeper.
Alan and his posse, Kevin and Amanda, and John and Panic just left from our epic games night. Good times were had by all. I think I might suck at trivial pursuit though. For some reason, I contribute next to nothing for the Pop Culture Edition (part 2). Unless it's a question about 80s pop music, forget it. There should be a drop the needle game featuring pop music. I'd do well at that. It would also sell well. But the costs for licensing all that music would probably be prohibitive.
Okay. Well, it's time for bed. It's now technically Jude's birthday, though he wasn't born until after 2am. But I was definitely awake this time 1 year ago. That was a long night. This one will certainly be more restful.

So I have just started up this here alternate blog to replace the one on windows live. I had been meaning to do so for many moons now, but never really overcame the inertia until this evening, when a series of clicks starting at lifehacker.com ended up with me at google analytics. I guess google owns blogger. Neat, I guess. Except I don't want my gmail account to get published all over the internet, as it has so far been fairly spam-free.

So I guess this is a sort of test-post. I'll see whether this blogger account does what I want it to, and if it does, I'll move in for good.

Oh, and in other news, 1 year ago right now, Rebecca and I were playing Ziggity in the hospital room while she was in labour. Yay Pokey!