One step forward, two steps back

So I forgot someone very important on the "must kidnap while living outside the confines of real time" list: LOPEZ. I would love to manage to spend a whole day (at least) with the man and figure out what the heck is going on in his life. We speak to each other only tangentially at best, and I have only third hand information about bits and pieces of what he's up to. The rest of the time is spent reminiscing about how I used to know him better. :(

Timelessness

I have frequently thought about how great it would be if I could just have some days which weren't actually in the timeline. Have a weekend or better yet, a week, to live that, at the end of it, wouldn't have actually expended a week's worth of time at all. Living outside the week, or something. There's so much stuff to talk about and do, and yet, the real days fly by too quickly for everything to be done. So I've started a mental (and soon to be blogged list) of what I'd do in my timeless days:

1. Kidnap Michael and spend several days talking with him about VIA, medicine, and life.
2. Similarly kidnap Steve and spend days talking with him, preferably overnight for a few nights, about martial arts, massage, psychology of pain and fear. I think we have our best conversations when the sun's down.
3. Talk with the Brandeis karate club for hours, preferably inside, somewhere warm, unlike last night's hour long outdoor fingers-freezing-off conversation.
4. Hang out with Kristian and Eric. Play Myst IV. Or Riven XVI. Or whatever it is now. Gabriel Knight.
5. Take a long car trip. Convince Glen that car rides are fun.
...
1006. Clean my room, clean the house, clean the bathroom, settle receipts, file paperwork. (Note this is FAAAAR down on the list. Needs to be done, but I don't "look forward to it" or get wistful about it the way I do the other items on this list!)

What would you do if you had time to do anything and it wouldn't take up "real time"?

Going down

This morning after class, I had a few errands to do in the same building, and when I got on the elevator for about the sixth time to go from the 3rd floor to the ground level, I nearly crashed into a guy on his way out of the elevator mistakenly thinking he was at the ground floor. He apologized and I said, "I'm sorry I interrupted your trip." "No problem," he said with a thick accent. Then with a bit of a bow and a grin, he said, "Velcome aboard."

I want you to hit me as hard as you can

(Other possible titles for today were, "A standing ovation, without the standing" or "You give me something I can feeee-eeeeeeeel".)

It's cold, and rainy. And my trunk is leaking again. On the upside, I've figured out where the water's coming from - at least on the inside. So it will go back to Paul on Thursday.

Today was my last epidemiology class, and it was very good. Actually kind of sad. At the end, the class applauded, but not just in a "yeah yeah thanks" kind of way. We clapped for a long time. I've really enjoyed the class, despite myself!

Now that I heard the new U2 song "Vertigo" courtesy of our TiVo, I've been hearing it all the time on the radio. I think I like it. But it doesn't jump out at my as fantastically awesome or anything. Although it does get stuck in my head.

Speaking of TiVo - the entire two week, all Farscape, all the time Sci-Fi marathon wrapped up last night and I have successfully captured it all on burned DVDs. This massive amount of recording and burning certainly put our unit through its paces. It performed well, despite one freeze-up during which it refused to recognize any blank DVDs. But Glen fixed it with a restart. (And thankfully, we did not have to go through the guided setup again...)

I think Steve and I are getting into a Fight Club mode. On Mondays, before class, we have arranged to meet to work on hitting each other. (Yes, this was my idea.) I know that I can hit someone hard enough to do damage to them. The question in my mind was, "How hard can I hit someone WITHOUT doing damage to them?" And Steve has graciously volunteered his person for the experimenting and fine tuning of my (at least until three-ish weeks ago) lack of blunt trauma control. So we've been having a good time beating on each other before class starts each week. It is Steve's goal to be "bulletproof", as in, not having to prepare for a hit each time. For me, right now, just being able to be hit and killed is startling! (And, for you moms out there - don't worry - we're not even bruising each other.) Actually - I think it would be kind of funny and Roswell like if we ended up with handprints on our torsos afterward! (heh heh) And I am surprised at how hard I can hit without hurting. People are much more resilient than we are led to believe! I've found I have a much harder time turning off my overly cautiousness with strikes than I thought I would. I didn't realize how much of that is built-in, and it takes a lot for me to let go enough to hit Steve. Usually he has to hit me with some juice first before I realize, okay, I can do this and not kill him! It's very cool to explore, and I'm looking forward to becoming better and better at it.

Um... okay, I think that's all for the moment. And yeah, most of you reading this probably knew all that stuff. Tune in again some other time for potentially more interesting news!

Where everybody knows your name

Except people who call my cell phone. Some of you know that my cell phone number has the misfortune to be just one digit dyslexic of the listener line of a local radio station. (I'm 842, the radio station is 824.) So, periodically, I get calls from people who either want to request a song or who think they've won something. Some of them call me repeatedly. In those cases, I have very nearly said, "Yes! Congratulations, you're the tenth caller!" and taken their name and address, or at least taken a song request. These wrong number calls come and go in cycles; it's very odd. I'll get a bunch for a month and then none for six months. Apparently, a new cycle has started up again this week. I was called on Saturday AM by the same girl twice, and then last night by some guy.

In the meantime, one of my local Starbucks' (and I do mean one - I can arrange to pass FOUR on the way to work, and I live only a mile away) has taken to not only asking for your drink order, but also your name. The interesting thing is that we're conditioned to say our names without really thinking about it and without being able to say anything else instead! I wanted to ask why they cared what my name was, but couldn't think past the "Jen" coming out of my mouth. Then, instead of repeating my drink order when my grande vanilla americano (thanks Glen) was ready, the barista just said, "Jen?" and placed my cup on the counter. I wonder if they're having problems with people taking other people's drinks, or forgetting what they've ordered!

How I changed the world

Caffeine just wasn't doing it this morning, so I e-mailed the DJ at KEXP and requested "Miracle Drug" by AC Newman. She played the song about half an hour later. It's so cool to know that I influenced radio all the way across the country in Seattle!

I caved

This has been a week of late nights and extremely early mornings. It's not that I'm really going to bed so late or much later than usual, but even getting to bed at 10:30 or 11 when I'm usually going to bed at 10 feels late when my week included three 6 AM or earlier mornings. In fact, I can't remember the last time I woke up with our "usual" 7 AM alarm. This morning, I was at my desk by 7 AM because I had a physical therapy massage (hip, knee still bothering me) at 7:15. Except the woman didn't show up until 8, so I spent 45 minutes nearly falling asleep in the waiting area of the PT office. And when the therapist did arrive (traffic problems), lying down seemed heavenly, we talked less than usual, and I contemplated dozing off. Afterward, I came out of the building and took three steps toward my office, then turned around and headed to Bruegger's for coffee. I didn't make it farther than Starbucks. (Bruegger's is a block farther.) Then found I didn't have enough cash. I hate charging $4 at a time to my credit card, so I bought a "rechargeable" Starbucks swipe card and put $20 on it. Now cash won't be a problem - which might be a problem. I'm better able to resist caffeine and highly priced beverages if I don't have cash on me with which to buy them. Now I'm off to the Starbucks website to "register" so if I lose the card (highly unlikely), I'll be able to rescue the money from it. Now if only I could give in to this urge to put my head down on the keyboard...

Luke, call your father

My phone rang yesterday evening. Caller ID informed me it was Jonah. "Hi!" I answered enthusiastically. "Hey, is Dad there?" he said. "What?" I said. "Can I speak to Dad, please," Jonah repeated. There was a pause. "Jonah?" I said, "It's Jen. Can I help you?" Another silence. "Jen?" he said. "Yeah..." I said, "You called me." "Oh," he said, "My phone has this voice-command thing, but it must have thought when I said 'Dad' that I said 'Jen'." "Weird," I said, turning the words over in my mouth and deciding they're really not at all alike. "I've got a cold," he said, "Maybe that's why it was confused. But anyway, how are you?!" Seems technology still has a ways to go with this whole voice recognition stuff...

Time in Oz

I've decided to keep a separate web-based travelogue for my Australia and New Zealand trip. (This means that Distances will sit idle for a few weeks.) You, however, should all keep up with me by following my trip on my new site, Oz Travels Fast. (That's http://jeninoz.blogspot.com for those of you too lazy to click it...) It's up right now, although likely to not change much for most of October. Still, you might as well go introduce yourself, bookmark it, and get acquainted... Yes, there will be pictures. No, there aren't any right now. Yes, eventually, it, too, will be long and upside down and many other ways inconvenient, but that's the life of a blog.