Sent this to a friend a few minutes ago.
So, here’s the deal. A neighbor decided to take down a big tree a couple of weeks ago. She asked us whether we wanted the wood from it. Not really, since it was a live tree (meaning it would need to cure at least a year), and not one particularly good for firewood (soft maple) anyway. But to save her having to pay to have it hauled off, I told her I’d get it first chance I had if no one else got it first. Figured I’d just stack it up for next year.
I noticed it was still there this morning when on my walk with the dog. Figured since I had a social thing over at a local arts school my wife is involved with this afternoon, the day was going to be something of a wash anyway, and I might as well go move the lumber. The wet, heavy lumber.
Got the first couple of carloads moved, and stacked. Went back for the last one, this the largest bits of trunk. Took my two-wheeled hand truck, since those remaining pieces are simply too heavy for me to move any distance on my own. Got three of the seven pieces shifted and loaded. Went to move the fourth, transferring from being on top of another piece to the hand truck.
Then my luck kicked in.
Hand truck leaned back (I didn’t notice this) as I shifted over the wood, since I had cleverly put my foot behind the wheel to stop it from moving. When I then dropped the wood the 18″, it hit the bottom of the hand truck with considerable force. This functioned as a lever, the wheels as the fulcrum, slamming the upright part forward. This I *did* notice, because it smacked me upside the head – right on the right temple. And me having given my SCA helmet away just a month ago . . .
Well, I didn’t lose consciousness. And after the world stopped spinning, I checked, and yes, was bleeding profusely from the large lump swelling on my temple. But I didn’t feel any shock or anything serious, so I finished moving that piece of lumber into the car, tossed the hand truck in the back, and got in. From what I could see in the mirror, it didn’t look too bad – not enough that I needed to go straight to the ER, anyway.
Came home, went to the bathroom, asked my good lady wife to come take a look. Nasty knot the size of a half golf ball, pressure split of about 3/4″ just outside the hairline. Lots of blood (head wounds always bleed a lot), but didn’t look serious. We cleaned it up, applied antibiotic, and I walked my good lady wife through applying suture strips to the wound. I have some symptoms of a mild concussion, but nothing too serious – thanks to lots of SCA/martial arts experience, and being a klutz all my life, I know how to deal with it from here out. Unless things go significantly downhill, there’s no reason to go to the hospital.
But I think I’ll skip the social function this afternoon.
Jim Downey
PS 10/18 8:30 AM: Got through the rest of the day and last night just fine, with only the usual and expected symptoms. Doing much better this morning, though it’ll likely be a couple of days before I’m back up to par.
Filed under: Ballistics, Book Conservation, Flu, Health, Publishing, Science Fiction, Star Wars, University of Missouri, Writing stuff
I had business over on the MU campus early in the week – needed to check something out at the bookstore.
So, of course, the next day I started coming down with some viral infection.
Yesterday I had a previously scheduled appointment with my doctor, just a follow-up for my blood pressure treatment. When she came into the exam room, she asked how I was doing. I told her I had to go over to campus, so of course I now had whatever hideous plague was making the rounds. She nodded knowingly, said “oh, yeah, and there’s a *lot* of stuff going around over there.”
Anyway, the bp remains under control. And I likely have some mild variation of H1N1. But I did share it with my good lady wife. Not exactly the 22nd anniversary present I had in mind. Oh well.
Things, however, continue. Now through Chapter 10 of Communion of Dreams on the revisions, and have trimmed over 16,000 words from the text. Also about 3/4 of the way through my editing of my content for the care-giving book. Downloads of CoD continue, and we’re now past 18,500 of those. And of course the BBTI project keeps plugging along, with again more than 100k hits in September, bringing us to over one & a third million hits total since we launched the site 10 months ago. I am behind a bit on my conservation work, but not horribly so.
So, I suppose a mild case of flu isn’t much to complain about. But still . . .
Expect to hear from me when you do.
Jim Downey
As noted, I have been spending a fair amount of time working on the care-giving book, about the years that my wife and I cared for her mother here at home. And mostly this has consisted of going through all my old posts here which touched on that experience – there are at present 125 posts tagged with ‘Alzheimers’. Add in email excerpts, and the similar amount of material from my co-author, and you can get a sense of just how much editing and organizing work is involved.
But there’s also something else. It’s a odd sense of vertigo I get from re-reading this stuff. Because I am now far enough from being in the middle of it to have some perspective, but still close enough that a lot of the emotional content is immediately accessible and somewhat overwhelming. And then there’s articles like this one in the NYT by Natalie Angier, which really resonate:
Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop
If after a few months’ exposure to our David Lynch economy, in which housing markets spontaneously combust, coworkers mysteriously disappear and the stifled moans of dying 401(k) plans can be heard through the floorboards, you have the awful sensation that your body’s stress response has taken on a self-replicating and ultimately self-defeating life of its own, congratulations. You are very perceptive. It has.
As though it weren’t bad enough that chronic stress has been shown to raise blood pressure, stiffen arteries, suppress the immune system, heighten the risk of diabetes, depression and Alzheimer’s disease and make one a very undesirable dinner companion, now researchers have discovered that the sensation of being highly stressed can rewire the brain in ways that promote its sinister persistence.
Ayup. Independent research confirming a lot of the stuff I talked about in all those Alzheimer’s posts. Another excerpt from the article:
Unfortunately, the dynamism of our stress response makes it vulnerable to disruption, especially when the system is treated too roughly and not according to instructions. In most animals, a serious threat provokes a serious activation of the stimulatory, sympathetic, “fight or flight” side of the stress response. But when the danger has passed, the calming parasympathetic circuitry tamps everything back down to baseline flickering.
In humans, though, the brain can think too much, extracting phantom threats from every staff meeting or high school dance, and over time the constant hyperactivation of the stress response can unbalance the entire feedback loop. Reactions that are desirable in limited, targeted quantities become hazardous in promiscuous excess. You need a spike in blood pressure if you’re going to run, to speedily deliver oxygen to your muscles. But chronically elevated blood pressure is a source of multiple medical miseries.
“Think too much.” Gee, I don’t know anyone who does that.
Well, I mean, those 125 posts about being a care provider can’t possibly be evidence of that, can they?
Jim Downey
An old SCA friend was in town for a visit, and we got together for lunch. After, we came back to the house, since she hadn’t been here since forever. As we went through the place, showing her how we had settled in, we got back here to my office where I also have my reloading bench and my big safe for guns and rare books waiting to be worked on. She hadn’t remembered that aspect of my life from way back when, and was a little curious. After discussing the matter a bit, she asked whether I also hunted.
“Haven’t in years, though I used to a fair amount. Grew up hunting. I’m thinking that it’s about time I did a bit again. We’ll see.”
* * * * * * *
I just checked my blood pressure. 123/90. Yeah, the diastolic is a little high, but my bp tends to be up a bit in the morning. Still, that is dramatically better than when I wrote this 11 months ago:
Actually, my blood pressure was scary bad. When the aide took it earlier, she was startled by how high it was. Let’s put it this way – it’s in the range where if it were just a bit higher, hospitalization would be indicated in most cases. If I walked into an ER with that blood pressure, people would start rushing around.
What was my bp then? Well, I was hesitant to say, since it was so bad, and I didn’t want to cause concern among my friends and family. But it was averaging 230/120. Like I said, scary bad.
But as time has gone on, and I have worked with my doc to tweak meds this way and that, we’ve gotten it under control. As I expected we would. Which has allowed me to write here that I am a lot healthier than I really have any right to be, considering the stresses I have placed myself under these past few years. So it was from that perspective that I had this email exchange with a friend this morning:
Me: “Though I don’t actually feel old yet. I did for a while, there, but not so much now.
Hmm. I should think more about that.”
My friend: “That would make sense, actually. You’re not in pain from your own chronic illness, nor exhausted from trying to be a caregiver for someone in the last throes of hers.”
* * * * * * *
I never really *enjoyed* hunting. Not in the sense some people think of hunting as just going out and killing things, anyway. No, I grew up hunting from a young age, and just took it for granted that it was something you did. When I got older, and grew more reflective on why I did the things I did, I still found that hunting was a good thing for me to do.
Why? Well, I thought then, and still think today, that if you are a meat-eater you should occasionally actually go kill something and then clean and butcher the animal. It helps keep me honest about the fact that with every bit of meat I eat that an animal died.
Oh, there are other aspects of hunting I enjoyed. Getting out in the woods/fields. Challenging my skill with firearms. Making me more aware of the sights and sounds around me. Maybe being with friends or family, though I have just as often hunted alone. I usually enjoyed sharing the meat with friends – wild game just tastes so much better, and few people have the opportunity these days to enjoy it.
But I didn’t enjoy cleaning the game, or even the actual killing part. Necessary, yes. But not enjoyable. Not for me.
* * * * * * *
I have been . . . avoiding . . . working on the caregiving book for the last couple of months. Oh, not consciously. But it is clear to me upon reflection that I have managed to keep myself too busy with this, or that, so that I never seemed to get back to working on the book.
It is about 2/3rds done. Maybe more. My co-author and I made huge progress on the book through the spring. Seriously, about two or three months of work would finish it.
Then why avoid it?
Well, I’ve been thinking about that a lot this last week or two. And I think that it has to do with the fact that I am feeling healthy. That I am largely recovered now from the years of being a care provider. Working on the book earlier this year helped a lot in getting me to this point – helped me to understand and see the whole experience in some context. Yeah, it was really emotional. But coming to terms with those emotions was a good thing. I feel like I have slain my dragons.
And now I just have the carcass to deal with.
Understanding this now, I think it’ll be relatively easy for me to get back to it. I have something to share with others – this isn’t so much about me working through my issues, not any more. It is about helping others to work through theirs. It is sharing the bounty of my hunt, as it were.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Feedback, Guns, Health, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA, Science Fiction
Feeling better, though still not entirely over the gut-bug. But I thought I would share some numbers with you.
In the six or so weeks since the last update, another 1,500 people have downloaded Communion of Dreams, which puts the total number of downloads at 17,000. This makes me happy. And we have a small publisher who is interested in the book. Maybe.
In other number news, BBTI continues to get a lot of hits. July had over 100,000, and that puts the total so far at 1,126,943. This also makes me happy. Feedback generally on the whole project continues to be positive, though we’re always getting comments like this:
ANALYZING UR STATS for 9mm, KEL-TEC (which I own). Dont know when this study was done. looks like maybe mid ‘2008??? which is current enough to be relevant. However…> WRONG AMMO for analysis w/KEL-TEC. ANYTHING with a long barrel should ALWAYS use +P or +P+ to take advantage of – via specific brands at that. FEDERAL & SPEER ARENT right choice because they’re specifically designed for short-barrel. “Fps gain” would expectantly be marginal over short barrel. CORBON might be close to reality – but this is only marginal. Would LOVE to see something like BUFFALO BORE or DOUBLE TAP +P/+P+ 124gr & 147gr put thru these. This is what I shoot all the time with it, and can only base “visual” on what I think… would bet its substantial “fps gains” over pistol barrel, then.Any chance of u updating ur chart to include some +P super-stuff specifically? Would even volunteer to send u a box or 2 of the BUffalo Bore if I could get a “yes” commitment from u!!
*sigh* Proof that, no matter what you do, somebody, somewhere, will bitch about it. It’s just the way people are.
But you can’t let that drive you nuts.
Too much. 😉
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI Blog.)
The nasty bit of lower GI gak I mentioned earlier this week has been an ongoing joy since. Yes, I saw a doctor yesterday. No, it is nothing to worry about. Just a bug, probably viral, which has kept me more grumpy and less productive than usual.
But this news made me smile:
‘Alien’ prequel takes off
Ridley Scott attached to return as director
Twentieth Century Fox is resuscitating its “Alien” franchise. The studio has hired Jon Spaihts to write a prequel that has Ridley Scott attached to return as director.Spaihts got the job after pitching the studio and Scott Free, which will produce the film.
The film is set up to be a prequel to the groundbreaking 1979 film that Scott directed. It will precede that film, in which the crew of a commercial towing ship returning to Earth is awakened and sent to respond to a distress signal from a nearby planetoid. The crew discovers too late that the signal generated by an empty ship was meant to warn them.
Well, that last paragraph is a rather pathetic summation of the original film. Here’s the original trailer:
Which doesn’t explain much, granted, but sure captures the feeling a whole lot better.
Anyway, having Scott involved should be good for the project. We’ll see.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi.)
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here previously, but I’m a big fan of the Talking Heads. Have been since college. Yeah, I know, I’m getting old.
And while I can’t embed it here, you should go watch this video of Road to Nowhere.
But it isn’t by the Talking Heads.
It’s by a bunch of old folks. People even older than me. Who had a movie made about them that you should also watch. This one. Seriously. Put it on your NetFlix queue.
And have a box of tissues handy when you watch it.
Jim Downey
I’m sick with a nasty lower GI thing, which might explain why I think this is hilarious:
**GAH! F***ing YouTube pulled it, and I can’t get the Hulu version to patch. Go HERE to see it.**
Anyone who remembers Bill’s other spoken-word stuff will recognize this for the genius that it is.
Jim Downey
(Via Balloon Juice. Cross posted to UTI.)
And a worse sort that doesn’t even work that way.
OK, briefly: on Monday I did one of those things you’re supposed to do when you reach a certain age. No, I didn’t join AARP. I read a Dave Barry column. Actually, I lived a Dave Barry column. Well, minus the ABBA.
I didn’t write about it because it wasn’t very interesting, all in all. Or at least I didn’t think so until a couple of days later. Following the procedure, after I got home and was feeling more or less human again, I sent a note out to a couple of friends and family members letting them know that everything went fine and I didn’t have anything to worry about. In that email I mentioned that it actually went so well that the doctor didn’t even see the need to chat with me afterward, nor did they bother to show me images from the procedure. I mentioned this in passing to a couple of other people when discussing the procedure.
But that’s not how it actually happened.
My wife, who was there in the recovery room with me following the procedure, told me that the head nurse did indeed go through the images taken during the procedure with me, explaining how each just showed a happy pink colon and other bits.
Say what?
What seems to have happened is that I came out from under the anaesthesia, and part of my brain engaged well before other parts did. I was seemingly fully awake, lucid, conversational, even joking. But the little DVR in my head hadn’t rebooted yet. I had absolutely no memory of having seen the images. Some scattered fragments have since come back to me, showing that the images were stored somewhere in my head but probably the indexing function that the brain usually uses was inoperative.
This is not the first time something like this has happened to me. I have a history of waking and holding conversations, seemingly fully conscious when I am actually still partially asleep. My wife has learned to discern when this is happening. I think that it is related to my tendency for lucid dreaming – that some part of my brain is capable of still functioning in normal waking condition when other parts are in sleep mode.
Which makes me wonder – is this part of the reason why I am so creative? Is part of my brain tapping into a dream state more readily than is typical? It would be interesting to see whether other writers and artists have a similar slight scrambling of their neural abilities, a related ability to smear the seemingly discrete stages of consciousness into a blur.
And hence the quote used in the header. Because if anyone was capable of tapping into dream imagery, it was Lewis Carroll.
Jim Downey
*From Through the Looking Glass.
Communion Of Dreams 