Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

[Again with the mysterious failure of the scheduled posting, but this time instead of "errors logging in", it was "unknown error". Odd.]

From a Washington Post web chat (quoted by midwinter on 2004-04-29):

Janice Shaw Crouse, PHD: I haven't mentioned religion a single time this morning.

Oakton, Va.: You did mention religion when you said that any child, no matter how they were conceived, was a blessing from God. I noticed that, too.

Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D.: OOPs -- guess I did -- in some peoples' view. I don't consider that "religion." I consider that a statement of fact.

Friday night I had trouble sleeping (and based on mutterings in various friends' journals, a bunch of other people were unintentionally awake as well). I was supposed to show up at the recording studio "in the afternoon" on Saturday, so well after dawn Saturday, when I started finally feeling sleepy, I SMSed Mike to ask whether that could mean 14:30-ish, and he said the mornings folks were running late, so yeah, that'd be fine. So I got a wee nap. Not enough, but enough to do at least a little good. (14:30 wound up being more like 15:15; the Purple Rock Lobster Eater post was from my phone at a stoplight on the way to the studio. Jim and Felicia were just packing up when I got there, so I wasn't actually late.)

Then I turned wrong or something as I was putting instruments into the trunk of my car, and I felt a muscle in my back do Something Uncomfortable. I could tell at the time that it was not going to be a simple, "Oh, that hurt but it'll stop soon," but I still hoped it wouldn't get any worse. *sigh* It did. I grew steadily more uncomfortable as the day went on, didn't realize when I should have begged off and gone home to lie down, and finally realized I had A Problem when the act of getting off the couch I'd been sitting on turned out to be excruciating. And that was despite having taken Ultram and ibuprofen earlier in the evening.

(As it turned out, I didn't wind up doing any recording after all. I lent my ears to the mixing process, and was shown how to work the recording software, and Mike re-did a couple of flute tracks. It was a productive day, just not in the direction I'd been expecting when I got up.)

Getting into the car to go home was rather a bit of a challenge, but I managed driving okay except for finding left turns quite painful. I unloaded the car very slowly and carefully, one item at a time, then went and took stronger drugs. Between the pain itself whenever it was time to start thinking about the next dose, and the way the drugs sometimes throw my sleep cycle off, I'm not caught up on sleep, but my back is noticeably better. I spent yesterday feeling sleep deprived and feeling like I was taking a Lot Of Drugs, but looking back at my notes I see that I actually only took codeine twice yesterday; the other times were Ultram and ibuprofen; I guess it felt like a lot because I was so spacey from sleep deprivation? Anyhow, it was clear that I wasn't driving anywhere yesterday; it was less clear (until I tried it) that I also couldn't wash dishes. (Yow, that hurt.) I tried to call my mother to wish her a happy Mother's Day and apologize for not being able to drop by (I'd originally intended to ask what her plans were and whether I should visit), but I got her voice mail. I left a message that I would try again later, but when I finally did get some sleep I didn't wake up again until after her bedtime. I feel like a bad son.

Today my head is still fuzzy in that "I've slept but I haven't really slept" way. When I feel well enough to drive I'll see about making my way to Arlington and asking anniemal to repair me. (Well, that'd already been the plan -- the visit, not the repair -- before I hurt myself.) I've got some furniture I need to move, but I don't think it's moving this week (especially since I want to move it to the third floor). I'm continuing to explore this Visor thing in between bouts of being too distracted by sleepiness or pain to concentrate. (Or even by actual sleep, but that's not happening often enough.)

It could be worse. I am feeling a whole lot better than Saturday night, and I'm not having trouble with the stairs. Now if I could just find the location of that subwoofer that's been thumping for the past fifteen minutes ... Hey, how hard would it be to build a sound-seeking missile (akin to a heat-seeking one)? It wouldn't have to be very large; just big enough to be sure of tearing the speaker cone when it finds its target.

On a chatty photography mailing list I read, someone said something or asked something about gravity last week, and this led to the expected "the Earth sucks" jokes (yeah, I chimed in with one), and then jokes about science, and now discussions of physics that are less joking. And less narrowly constrained to gravity. Today someone made a comment about "phonons" (bits of sound that act like particles), reminding me of how I first reacted when I found out that all matter has a "wave nature" as well as a "particle nature":

For the past couple of decades I've had this image in my head of a huge wall with two Volkswagen-sized slits in it, an even bigger wall (probably made of Niven's Ringworld material) about a light-week away on one side, and a Beetle canon a light-week away on the other side firing cars at the slits at relativistic velocities one at a time so that physicists can look at the interference patterns in the Bug splatters on the far wall and measure the effective frequency of a VW. (Or Rabbits, or Golfs, or any other Volkswagen as long as you're consistent. But not Things. Things are too rare and nifty to do that to.)

Yeah, I know a car isn't a particle, but that's the image that got stuck. You try getting rid of it!