Mishaps and other haps

People get married. They find different jobs and their schedules change. They develop more solitary interests.

An online social life isn’t a social life for me. It’s a social fiction, even though you can have real feelings for the people involved. I would consider a guildmate in an online game a friend in real life, but how many of my guildmates will I ever meet or interact with much in real life? To what extent will I really ever witness what they are like as people out in the world doing their thing? It’s one thing to hear someone say what they do, but it’s another thing to actually be with a person, in person. Physically present.

Some days I have a strong reluctance to come home and sit in front of yet another computer. What was that anime with the ongoing storybook thread about the world where people were all more interested in their machines than in each other? Oh yeah, Chobits. Totally ridiculous anime, but that haunting idea about disconnect from the world, complete world disconnect in fact, stands out as a disturbing image.

For those of you who do not live in Wisconsin, we received a challenging amount of snow this weekend.

Here’s the dizzle.

Gruntac and PhysOrg went out to shovel yesterday evening and reported:

1) A four or four-and-a-half foot drift at the end of our driveway

2) The snow plow and its snow-tossing rampage has slightly damaged our mailbox. I am guessing that the previous owners were considering this possibility when they chose to purchase a plain, inexpensive mailbox.

The guys spent an hour and a half or so shoveling the walkway and the drive so that travel would be possible this morning.

(More)

Our little (local) trio of house owners went to Takara on State Street for dinner last night and all ordered hibachi. It had been over a year, maybe a few years, since we had been there together. Seems like it was 2005. I know it was sometime after Mlitiagrl and I visited Ron of Japan in Chicago because we kept comparing our first meal at Takara to Ron of Japan. Poor Takara might have stood out for us on its own if it had not been preceded by a similar-style restaurant that is better. However, that is not to say it is not tasty and very entertaining. After the tiring week we’ve all had, we really enjoyed watching the chef light things on fire and flip bits of cooking vegetable into customers’ mouths. Hibachi salmon, filet mignon, and tofu (guess which one was mine) were followed by green tea ice cream.

We kept talking about types of food made with fungi during dinner (sake, for one). And highly reactive substances used in lab that can cause painful death if you try to answer the phone while pouring them. Yes, we have a botany Ph.D. student in our household! Why do you ask?

Snow started to fall when we first arrived downtown, but the snowfall increased during dinner and a thick white blanket was already in place when we set out for home. This is supposed to be the norm for the weekend. I expect there will be a lot of shoveling in our future.

I would say that I have read a moderate amount of historical material on illness and disease, most of it back in my grad school days when I was studying that sort of thing. History of Medicine encompasses many interesting topics that we might be interested in for personal reasons, just being human and mortal, as well as scholarly reasons.

The statistics indicate that most of us will suffer from one or more chronic diseases in the course of our lives. The severity of these diseases, their impact on our lifestyles, and whether or not they will shorten our lifespans is something we don’t know ahead of time, but may muddle over from time to time when we think about growing older. Yet it’s really startling when we actually do get sick, whether the illness is as minor as a passing cold or something with long term effects.

It’s an inconvenience, it’s uncomfortable; it may be frightening and life-threatening; it may be painful to endure or treat. It may make us feel fatigued and elbow aside many things we would be doing with our time if we were well. Biological illness can impact us and those around us emotionally. It’s easy to forget all of this if we haven’t been sick in a while. We take wellness for granted.

There are reminders and exceptions. We may have friends and loved ones who have been ill. We realize that life is unpredictable.

Still, it’s a shock to have a chronic condition that has been treated and has improved so that you don’t think about it very often anymore, or not with the same kind of intensity as you once did, only to wake up one day and start experiencing familiar symptoms again.

In my case, it’s thyroid disease, not curable, but not usually life-threatening. I was diagnosed about a decade ago. I took medication daily and had routine checkups for several years. The condition improved and I was weened off medication, but the endocrinologist I saw indicated that it was more of a pause in the disease and that as I grew older, it was likely that my thyroid would sort of peter out, stop functioning.

This “petering out” happened to my dad (it’s a genetic condition) around the time I was diagnosed. He had surgery to remove the enlarged thyroid, which was also pressing on his windpipe and causing some breathing difficulties. He lives a normal life without a thyroid gland since thyroid hormones can be synthesized. A small, round pill can substitute for an entire gland responsible for regulating metabolism. It’s nifty. Medicine may not have all of the cures and all of the answers, but it can make our lives easier, more normal, and more comfortable.

I thought we were pretty late taking down our Christmas tree this year. It stayed fresh a long time and we enjoyed having it up, so we just took it down a few weeks ago. This morning I noticed that the neighbors around the corner from us still have holiday lights up on a bush in their yard– they were on as I drove by. I guess we weren’t the last people to put away our decorations.

Yesterday it looked like the lawn was starting to win out over the snow. It occurred to me that as soon as the last snow disappears this Spring, we should plant a large pink flamingo on our lawn. Mostly, I figured it would tick off the neighbors and there wouldn’t really be anything they could do about it.

It sounds like more wintry weather for the coming weekend, though. We may have more snowy lawn and icy patio to contend with.

I have been waking up early most mornings the past several weeks. I like having some time alone when no one else is awake. Generally, I have some coffee and poke the computer a bit or read. As I wrap things up and prepare to head out into the working world, I tiptoe into PhysOrg’s room to say goodbye. Usually, he is in a semi-conscious state, often with mouth lolling open a little, but always very sweet and loving and amiable. That’s the happy thought I have as I am walking out the door in the morning.

Then it’s on to deal with the Beltline asshats, the gossipy, petty co-workers, the people I encounter who want my time, my attention, and an ego boost for themselves. I have come to distinguish between what’s important and what’s a waste of my time or just something I tolerate.

In the land of defaultlisa, all is good.

::yawm::

I am a little sleepy.

I finally filed federal and state taxes tonight. Well, actually I’m still waiting for the acceptance e-mails, but I consider myself done until further notice. Wow, it’s so easy to file electronically now and refunds are deposited so quickly! I think this really motivates most people to file earlier than they did when everything had to be done on paper. I haven’t been in a huge hurry since my returns are going directly into savings, but I used to drag my feet until mid-March, so this is an improvement for me.

::yawmyawmyawm::

Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them is in my book satchel this week. I picked up the hardcover a few weeks ago, but Amazon indicates that a paperback version will be out in April. If you have lost track of why you read or need a refresher course on how to read closely, this might be the book for you. I am enjoying it and getting a lot out of it.

Daylight Savings Time starts three weeks earlier this year (March 11th) and ends on November 4th.

My computer downloaded a patch to update its clock the other day and we received a technology-related e-mail at work.

Does that mean Spring will arrive three weeks earlier this year? It seems to be warming up a little already …

PhysOrg and I played a lot of WoW this weekend. A lot of WoW was played in our household. We hadn’t really intended to start doing much with our Blood Elf Paladins, but Inle (who has been in Salt Lake for a few weeks now) and a friend of his signed on to their characters and we spent a lot of Saturday running around the Belf starting region with them.

I think I am going to do mining and jewelcrafting with this alt. I still want to do leatherworking and engineering with characters, though. If I ever work on levelling my rogue and shaman, this will happen. I HAVE TEN HORDE CHARACTERS ON THE SERVER NOW … which is ridiculous … I have really only sunk time into two and from past patterns, I seem to only really have time to work on one main and an alt at a time.

Like the Sith.

Other things happened this weekend. Mlitiagrl and I met for dinner Friday night at King of Falafel downtown, which was very tasty. We will be going back. In the meantime, I will be making falafel at home tonight because I’m a repeat offender.

I went shopping for spices on Saturday, which was trippy for me. Penzey’s rocks. The last two times I have dropped by the place for a couple of things, I have exited with a huge shopping bag full of spices. Who doesn’t need two varieties of paprika and three types of cinnamon, plus tons of black pepper and French grey sea salt? Yes, the kitchen and I are friends.

Our Sunday game was cancelled, but there was shopping to do for the week and Teqnoq and Minni had things to do, including a successful run of Slave Pens (Underbog, here we come!). Plans to cook during the week are still going fabulously. We have definitely been ordering out less and PhysOrg is skipping dinner less and snacking less. Mmmmm, taco night.

I am just about ready for February to be over, though. It finally warmed up enough this weekend to melt a fraction of the snow. Now we have water dripping everywhere, creating ice on the patio and huge icicles on the back of the house. It’s messy out. It was 23 above yesterday afternoon and that felt … warm.

I need to sit down and figure out my tax refunds sometime.

I was at lunch, thinking that I should really write a second post to recommend that people read Field Notes from a Catastrophe, when a man and a woman sat down at a table next to me and abruptly started talking about global warming. Apparently, a petroleum company is offering a $10,000 reward to any scientist willing to “disprove” global warming. (Alright, Men of Science– here’s a perfect opportunity to abandon your integrity!)

The woman said something vaguely dismissal to the effect of “well, I really believe that the Earth goes through normal heating and cooling cycles.”*** I thought about walking over and recommending a book … like the one I had just been thinking about. At the same time, I considered, does it really matter what we *think* about global warming? What matters is what happens. Do we have the motivation, as a society, to change our lifestyles when people are so deeply in denial that it’s necessary?

Then the man (who seemed to think he was still on-topic) started talking about the weird friend he has WHO READS NON-FICTION (as if it wasn’t weird and socially-isolating enough to read anything at all, but something that isn’t a NOVEL? ::gasp:: Why ON EARTH would he want to do that? Well, this friend of his should have been a professor!).

If that random overheard conversation wasn’t enough of a coincidence (A GODDAMN SIGN, PERCHANCE?), all of this happened about five minutes after I stumbled across an article in a random newspaper about how the availability of the Toyota Prius has risen as gasoline prices have dropped in the last six months. It concluded that Americans (as a nation/culture) are only interested in environmental conservation, alternative power technologies, and limiting gasoline consumption when it affects their wallet.

Then I started thinking about the little fantasy worlds people create for themselves, whether it is submerging themselves in family life or hobbies or television … things that allow people not to think too seriously about very serious issues when their minds are free from work.

Yet these themes keep creeping back into our conversations and our newspapers that we leave scattered on tables, even if we’re not really “readers” per se.

*** not that this isn’t true, but it is a very poor argument/excuse for denying that human beings are changing the climate on Earth

Even if you feel neutral about Valentine’s Day, or if you’re completely hostile toward it for being a “Hallmark holiday” … it’s an awfully nice day to do things with someone special.