Various Things

I'm not normally up at this time of night, but tonight, I am. Not sure why. I've been sitting out here in the living room, thinking about various things. One of those times when I'm almost too sleepy to think, but too awake to sleep.

Having a little problem with blood sugar control. Not panicking, yet, but still. It spiked up really high yesterday morning, and I thought, while I was still in bed but half awake, that perhaps I ought to go look, given my body's habits. Glad I did -- took some drugs.

I've been going through the Eureka first season DVDs. I'm enjoying it. Part of it is simply the environment- who wouldn't like to be surrounded by really, really bright people (even if some of them are, to put it mildly, delusional). And what about that technology that's so casually scattered around? Fusion reactors? Personal AIs? Feh, that's so last year. The actors are pretty good, too, particularly the fellow who plays the (comparatively) dim Sheriff. He usually figures out what's going wrong when the technology or one of the techs goes astray -- not so much a I think we need to increase the roentgen scattering to compensate for the supraluminal backscatter as a Well, what if Jim was actually spacing out and thinks that anime characters are real? What would he do then? It's a lot of fun.

I saw an article in the public television magazine about a woman who's set up what they're calling a concierge medical practice, locally. Not sure if I'll read it. On the one hand, she could be doing exactly what the doctors I've read about in This Side of Doctoring say they want to do -- making a practice (literally) of taking the time to care, professionally and personally, for people's health, doing it without going insane or going broke. In that case, it'd be an interesting read. On the other, the intro to the article mentions that her office has quiet taste, elegant artwork, and the like, and the picture of her on the cover shows her to be very well dressed, which plays to the and I want to make a lot of money while doing exactly what I want to do image I've had of concierge medicine for a long time.

We went to make a medical appointment for my mother to see a pulmonary guy, see if we could get anything done for her labored breathing. There's one fellow she particularly likes because he takes the time to carefully explain things to her -- he wasn't available for two months. On the other hand, the other doc in the practice was available Thursday morning. Not sure what to make of that. It could be as simple as the first guy not being in full-time practice here; it could be... otherwise.

We're ready to get the HDTV (even if which one varies from day to day). We were thinking that we could simply use the coffee table which has served as a TV table and general detritus collector for the last dozen years to be the support for it. The table's about thirty years old, and I understand that it has a distinguished provenance; my wife's sister got it out of a dumpster, refinished it, and used it for several years before giving it to her to furnish her apartment. I'd like to do better than that. Not a lot better, though it seems that you go from relatively inexpensive tables and such to oh my god HOW much is that? And that's not even the expensive ones. Thing is, I'd like to improve the quality of what's down there in the den. Better chairs, more comfortable arrangements. Right now, its not bad, but it's pretty messy, and I'm thinking that if we're ever going to improve it, this would be a good time to start. I'm even willing to spend serious money on it -- and I'm never willing to spend serious money. Take audio equipment. I realized the other day, though, that much as I dislike the idea of getting an audiovisual amplifier to go with the television, there's a benefit that would come with the improved sound; it could (if we pick the right one from the confusing options) 'upconvert' the image from our existing VHS tape player so that it would look decent - well, semi-decent, but we have loose standards - on the hi-def screen. We don't actually watch tapes all that much -- we don't even watch our own DVDs all that much -- but it's like still having a turntable even though its been years since we listened to a vinyl record -- we don't like giving up on the technology. That's not sentimentality, by the way: we paid for that stuff, dammit! And yes, I realize how illogical it is to spend serious money so that we can watch/listen to technology that we don't watch/listen to routinely now. I do know that.

Learned the other day that HP plans to eliminate the EDS name -- once the EDS stuff is integrated into HP, it won't be 'EDS, an HP Company', but HP, period. That saddens me, even with the losers that EDS has had for management, lately. I gather that HP is happy they bought the company, from their financial results (though the culture merge isn't going particularly well; no doubt, though, on who's going to win that one). They have a funny way of showing that pleasure.

I spent some time with my daughter last night, helping her review biology questions. She's apprehensive about how she'll do, because she did poorly on a test. (When she's willing to tell me that she did poorly, she really did.) She says that the reason is that she was out for part of the material, which is true; this teacher's my least favorite, not only because he's one of the ones who sees no reason to put any of his material on the web. Part, too, is because it's a tough course; the notes are not labelled Biology but Biochemistry, and the words and concepts that she was reviewing sound to me like they come from a college biology text. ATP? Nucleotides? SPONCH? It would feed my -- well, not ego, but whatever it is when you guiltily admit that you're living through your child's achievements -- for her to do well in this course, and to want to do well, but we suspect that the reason she wants to do well is not yearning for academic achievement as that she has a couple of things riding on how her interim grades do (they come out next Tuesday), ranging from being able to go to an anime convention in Valley Forge to being allowed to continue in color guard for the remainder of the semester. One or two other things, too. I don't like motivating her through pain, but so far, it seems to be working.

Funny how it's frequently reasonable to urge other people to get past their anguish and problems -- think Lockerbie, 9/11, Pearl Harbor -- but when it's your stuff, the standards are a lot more relaxed. I'm thinking the furor over the arrest of Roman Polanski, the jailing of my neighbor, and how I'd feel if it were my daughter in either case.

I've been edgy and mad intermittently, lately, and I don't know why. Part of it is irritation -- muted rage, actually -- at my oral surgeon and his surprise news of the other day. Part of it (though I am a little ashamed to admit it) is irritation with my mother's medical condition; I am not a particularly empathic person, and I find myself thinking how long is this going to go on? I know the unpleasant answer to that, by the way. I'm not sure what else is motivating my emotions. Whatever it is, it's not enjoyable, for me or the people here. I am beginning to think that at sixty I'm no more emotionally mature than I was forty years ago. Perhaps, I never will be.