Little hand's on E.

[mrissa]

So our news of the moment is that markgritter is changing jobs. He'll be working for NVidia, telecommuting but visiting the Bay Area from time to time. It really seems like the right thing for him, and we're glad.

(Also glad to have one less thing left uncertain around here.)

On Saturday at the Minicon LJ party, cakmpls was sympathizing with my PT woes, and she used a word that I hadn't been getting much. It was a very important word. That word was boring. And was she ever right. Boring, boring, BORING. DONE NOW. Something else's turn. Blah blah blah vertigo vertigo dull dull DULL. "What've you been up to lately, mrissa?" "Oh, staring at the letter E on a Post-It note while I move my head in various ways." "How...nice for you." "Yah, it's a dream come true." (And people always want to reassure me that it's my journal and I can write about what I want. It is not primarily your boredom with this that concerns me, folks.) We're seeing progress, though. We're seeing functional progress, and feeling progress will follow that, we're pretty sure. I'm allowed to stand in the corner again. (Dream. Come. True.)

And if I have to make it through this short story in paragraph-long sessions with breaks to let my ears settle, dammit, that is what I will do. Because enough. Enough of this. I'm tired, but I'm also tired of this.

Also I've ordered some things from the library. Comfort rereads have been the right thing, and they may continue to be the right thing, but I'm going to intersperse them with new stuff. New-to-me stuff, at least; I don't think Raymond Chandler counts as new to very many people.

You know that feeling you get when you've had the flu for several days, and you still have the flu and are nothing like well, but you're so sick of having the flu that you do things like hauling the laundry basket around totally unnecessarily because you are just so tired of having the flu? And then you have to go have some tea and a lie-down because you still have the flu, dummy!? I feel like I'm in that stage, and like it's going to last me weeks. I've had decluttering urges since almost the beginning of this PT stuff, and I'm not really steady enough to sort through the living room closet and reorganize that, or to go down to the basement to repack one of the boxes into something better organized and more proof against damp. So I am stifling the decluttering urges in one sense, and in another I'm trying to redirect them to things I can do without breaking anything.

I NEED PATIENCE RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE.

Comments

[brooksmoses]

I NEED PATIENCE RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE.

"Yeah, yeah, how long will that take"?

Congratulations to Mark on the new job! I recently ran into one of my old colleagues who had somewhat surprisingly turned up working for Nvidia. (And then, rather more recently, I've ended up looking at graphics-card programming for work reasons.) What part of things will he be working on?

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

I'll be working on systems-level software for their mobile application processors, like the APX 2500.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Just remember that if the little hand's on E, that must also imply that the big hand's on 120. Go big hand!

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Excellent news about Nvidia. My best friend Trish Homis works there.

Being ill is always boring. But having something that needs weeks and months of fixing is triple boring. Nerts to that.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Teresa Nielsen-Hayden has a great bit in one of the essays in Making Light about chronic illness being boring.

It's actually kind of a shame that it can't be someone else's turn now. If you could swap out your inner ears, and lend them to other folks, we could get a bit of distributed PT going on. I'm always willing to lend an ear.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

*groan*

If you were truly willing, I suppose we could give it a try, but what I wrote was that it's something else's turn, like, I don't know, pleasant walks in the thawing muck, baking scones, something other than hanging around doing PT and feeling crappy.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Er, so you did. My reading comprehension must have fled at the first whiff of a bad pun.

[aedifica]

People keep telling me how patient I am, so I think I probably have some to spare. Here, have some patience: *hands you a glob of it*

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

People tell me I'm patient, too. It used to confuse me until I realized they meant with people who are not me.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

I think you've just said something very important there.

[aedifica]

People who tell me that mostly seem to mean I'm patient with their computers. But having decided to believe them, since patience is a virtue, I'm making a point to see patience in other areas of my life. :-)

[barondave.livejournal.com]

"You need to learn patience."

"Patience. Yeah yeah. How long is that going to take?" -- The Frantics

Real Life (tm) is tedious. Cons are fun precisely because they allow us to escape, to live in a different world. Somehow, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

Feel better. Perhaps you could develop a Waiting Technique. Hum songs (to yourself). Write (or at least rewrite) in your head. Feel the love. Om.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Except that Minicon totally did not allow me to escape the vertigo for the weekend. So there's that. The rest of my Real Life is not actually particularly tedious. Just the vertiginous part.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Well, I hope Minicon ameliorated the boring stuff, at least for a while. Swaths of my life are tedious without being particularly unpleasant (he said, sneezing as he types). I many ways this is a good thing, as sensory overload is an increasing problem as my hard drive fills up. Sometimes, boring can be a respite. I don't think you're at that point, so I wish you the best, and hope you develop coping mechanisms (and eliminate the vertigo).

[ckd]

I'm completely unsurprised that I'm at least the third person (since some probably didn't comment) who immediately thought of the Frantics upon reading your last sentence. I just wish I didn't have Ed Gruberman types to support some days.

Here's to continued progress and comfort re-reads. (I just put a collection of Clarke's short SF on the top of my "night-time reading" stack, so I'll probably start on it tonight. Totally a comfort re-read.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I never emotionally bonded to any of Clarke's stuff. It was always interesting rather than gripping for me. (I know, I know, The Gripping Hand was some other dudes completely.) I found it really interesting to read the tributes people with somewhat similar taste to mine had upon his death, because it read sort of like an alternate history: if I'd come upon these books at another time, in another mood or with slightly different prior experiences, it could have been me writing those essays, rather than just me feeling sad for the people who were close to him.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

<not_the_Frantics>
Moe: "This baby can flash fry a buffalo in 30 seconds!"
Homer: "Awwww, but I want it now."
</not_the_Frantics>

Nobody puts Mrissa in the corner! Nobody! Oh, wait, I guess PT puts you there. Dang!

My sympathies. Especially to the part about lugging the laundry basket around and then needing a lie-down --that is exactly my morning to a T. Except I watched the first half of "Man for All Seasons" while having my lie-down. And now I think I will go fold some socks and watch the second half.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Patience. In my experience, it's acquired only by the millimeter.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

man, i have much sympathy, no advice or helpful remarks, but sympathy and ... baseball. hey! baseball soon.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Baseball earlier, for some strange values of baseball that would involve getting up at 5 a.m. Which I did not do. But still, the season has started!

[jebbypal]

As dull as it may be, it's a testament to your writing ability that you always manage to make your vertigo updates ... amusing. Don't take that the wrong way, I'm over here cheering you on with every head tilt.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I would far rather be amusing than not. Really.

[redbird]

I have no further patience to spare, I'm afraid. But you aren't required to think the physical therapy is interesting, as long as you do it. (Sort of like laundry--balance and clean clothes are more likely to be interesting than PT or laundry.)

Congratulations on Mark's good news.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If only PT smelled good when it was done.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

You have my sympathies of course. And admiration for:

"And if I have to make it through this short story in paragraph-long sessions with breaks to let my ears settle, dammit, that is what I will do. Because enough. Enough of this. I'm tired, but I'm also tired of this."

The persistence of the mris is, aside from being personally useful, a wonderful thing to behold. And fortunately, in some ways mitigates some of the effects of a lack of patience since even when tired of the slow rate of progress and the problems that result, you will persist in doing the things which you need to do (within reason). Albiet, probably with less inner peace than a patient persistent person.

I don't think I ever congratulated you on the greater-than-zero vestibular function. Yay for improvements. Adding to the catching up, while my comfort activities/books/music vary considerably with the nature of the discomfort, here are some (attempting not to duplicate things already said) with reasonably wide applicability.

reading
Patricia C. Wrede The Book of Enchantments (with The Frying pan of Doom)
James Burke and Robert Ornstein The Axemaker's Gift
L. E. Modesitt Jr. Adiamante

listening
Mary Chapin Carpenter Come on come on
Lhasa De Sela The Living Road and La Llorona
Sophie B. Hawkins Timbre
Sarah Harmer All of Our Names
Spider John Koerner and Willie Murphy Running, Jumping, Standing Still
Loreena McKennitt Book of Secrets
Flapjack Flapjack
Melanie Doane Shakespearean Fish
Thea Gilmore - quite a lot, but particular ones My Beautiful Defence, and we'll dance, The Cracks, straight lines
Sarah Slean - Day One, Night Bugs
Judith Owen Some arrows go in deep, Dancing Tree, Conway Bay, I Promise You
John McDermott A Day to Myself

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the Burke/Ornstein. What is it? I also haven't heard a great majority of that music. Wow. What a list of places to start!

[seabream.livejournal.com]

If you've read/watched any of The Day the Universe Changed, Connections (1, 2 or 3), or Don't drop the apple (I think that was the title), you've got an idea of the kind of structure the book has. Burke has been doing research and communicating how various historical events, developments, insights, inventions, discoveries etc... connect with each other to make significant changes to how societies work, for several decades now, starting at the BBC, and now with The Knowledge Web online.

This book in particular looks at ways abstraction, cut and control, short term optimisation processes/philosophies developed and how the effects are playing out globally. It is certainly a book which can be read optimistically and pessimistically in relation the prospects for collapse of civilizations and what options are available to us. It has a really wide ranging bibliography which I keep meaning to explore in more depth. When I first read it around the beginning of my second last year of high school, it had a strong effect on my world-view. Not that it doesn't have problems. I disagree(d) with some of the arguments made as far as the inevitability of the effects of x on y, but overall, I still feel that the book has a lot to offer on multiple levels.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched or read any of those, but I think I get what you mean here.

patience..

[dlandon.livejournal.com]

you realize that I have none to spare, right? :)

But I'm glad Mark found a new job. Yeah new job!

- D

[careswen.livejournal.com]

I'm allowed to stand in the corner again. (Dream. Come. True.)

Okay, that made me chuckle. You know, in sympathy (not the laughing-at-you kind).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We're livin' the dream, honey.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

"paragraph-long sessions with breaks to let my ears settle"

I'm now picturing your ears as young, enthusiastic, rather bouncy dogs: "Ooh, a paragraph!" Bark bark boing boing KER-Flop. It would be nice if the exercise meant they go to sleep for a bit, like taking a puppy to the beach. Sorry it isn't something else's turn yet.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They are a bit like young, enthusiastic, rather bouncy dogs: they don't always go in the directions you want them to, and you have to sort of chivvy them along, and sometimes they flop down and stop going completely right in the middle of the path. The problem is, we really do need middle-ear input all the time. Sigh.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

So the PT should work a bit like puppy-training?

Good Ear! Have a rawhide chewy thing! And here I think the analogy breaks down...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Um. I hope so. In any case I don't want to be the test group for that therapy.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Many sympathies. I have been tweaking a "must be productive" and "can't be productive" impasse recently too. Apparently, my best tweak is 5-minute bursts of productivity followed by substantially more of blerg. Also apparently, I have more body memory of my highschool sports training days than I thought, because "boring" has fallen back to "tedious."