GEEKERY  
ADVENTURE  
CONTEMPLATION  

20120527

concussion!

N heard word on Friday that he passed his general exams, meaning he's officially a PhD candidate. To celebrate, we went down to Gettysburg and planned to bike around.  I remember waking up, packing, sleeping most of the drive down, parking, and going into a visitor center.  I sat in the back of the car with the hatch open and put on sunscreen, and have a hazy memory of stoping to look at a monument while going up a hill.*

But then I biffed it pretty bad going down that hill. I think it was a combination of my going to fast (which I tend to do), a gravelly road, and my brakes being a little worn down.  I got a concussion, had an accompanying seizure, and spent about 5 hours in ER--good times! I also go scraped up pretty bad, especially on my face, but it should heal pretty well, with maybe one or two small scars.

I had some severe short term memory loss initially.  N got the car to drive me to the ER, and when he got back, I said something like I don't know what happened, but I know I'm married to you and I love you.  N said I kept asking the same things over and over again.  Did I just finish my first week at Hunch?  I have to get a new helmet now, right?  Are you cold?--you can get in here with me.  I'd get stuck on one to five things and just repeat them over and over, with less than 30 seconds between repetitions of the same question.  He says I thought it was July 2011 for the longest time, and that I talked about my first garden here.  I was pretty punchy too.  When we checked in, N was getting a little worked up, and I told him, blood running down my face, that he needed to calm down.

I feel like I'm pretty back to normal memory-wise now.  I can't remember what happened after visiting the monument or much of the ER, but I'm able to remember most of what happened after checking out of the hospital.  However, it's still pretty early in the recovery and they say that it could take up to months for me to get back to 100% memory.  I need to have a follow-up early this week in order to see if I'll be allowed to go to my conference in Ireland (I'd have to leave about a week from now).  Part of me wants them to say I can't go.

* The monument memory came back to me when we drove by it, but I forgot about it until I was writing this.  I also remember seeing signs for an auto tour, and saying that that's what we did when I visited as a kid with my family.


Above: When we checkedout out of the hospital, we drove by where I crashed before heading home.  There I be.

20120519

a quote


Experience with real-world data, however, soon convinces one that both stationarity and Gaussianity are fairy tales invented for the amusement of undergraduates.

- Thomson, 1994

20120510

no more clover

As of yesterday, there were easily a million clover blossoms dotting the lawns around our apartment complex.  Most people don't pay much attention to clover, but I've spent hours just looking at it, either while searching for four-leaf clovers (of which I have found more than my fair share), in harvesting some for salads, or in picking the blossoms.  Because of their sturdy stems, they braid really well, and I think they smells really nice too.

They are in full bloom right now, and they kept prompting me to sing I often go walking.  Yesterday, while procrastinating, I picked a bouquet of them and while I couldn't give them to my mother, I could send her a picture, which is what I did.  (Love you, mom!)

Then today, they mowed the lawns, leaving on the order of thousands of blossoms, but no where near the magnificent abundance that there was before.  And it led me to think: what has happened to all the meadows?  With our manicured lawns in the suburbs, we don't really see meadows unless we go out to the more rural areas.  And even then, with factory farming we concentrate our animals and plant crops on the remaining land, which takes away much of the grazing land.

The point is: I can think of lawns, parks, and farms, but I'd have to think hard to tell you where the closest un-mowed meadow is, and we live in a relatively rural area.  I don't know why, but I find this sad.

20120501

the things we don't clean (little moment of compulsion #5)

My mom taught me to make sure to clean the light-switches, because people rarely do.  I realized today that the same thing applies to lamp switches, doorknobs, and the faces of doors right above the doorknob--where people catch the door when it swings or where they push it when they don't need to turn the knob.    What else gets touched often that isn't on my radar of things to clean?