Couple of nice packages due today! I keep peeping out the window to see if the delivery van’s here yet.
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It’s a normal day tomorrow, which is sad after 3 days of off-timetable theatre rehearsals. But then afterwards, 3pm till 9:30pm I have practice then a dress rehearsal! Very tense. But fun.
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It hasn’t been a great week. Some personal issues combined with tremendous heat (the temp reached 99F on my back porch on Monday) and the air has been very hazy and muggy and gross. Lots of wind whipping up dust, and the smoke from burn piles, and it has been just awful.
But while I slept last night it rained 2 inches and cleaned the air and brought the temperature down 15 degrees-- it’s only supposed to hit 85F today. And everything is washed and sparkling and the flowers are revived… it’s the white and purple period for flowers (following red and yellow which followed blue and pink) and our whole place is covered with purple and white flowers. Also, the final mystery bulbs I planted months ago are blooming, and they’re stargazer lilies! So they smell incredibly sweet and are gorgeous.
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40 year old C64 operational.
I finally found an interface to convert the C64’s composite output to HDMI.
What fun.
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I finally took the time to go through all of my many open browser tabs today, and closed about half (maaaaybe a little less) of them. I still have too many open, but the difference is noticeable, and every time I notice it I feel a sense of relief!
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Dan and I just had like, a four hour call, and it was cathartic and lovely and good to hear his voice and speak to each other about everything that’s been going on lately. It was a much needed conversation, and one I’m flopsying mopsying in bed all warm and fuzzy about. Good night.
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Dan asked me on call how I had known about the hearing loss associated with anticoagulants risk- as if it hadn’t been addressed when it had, it’s suspected by his doctor he probably would have gone profoundly deaf (especially given the reoccurrence after the first round of oral steroids, he’s finishing up his second course now.) It was apparently a startlingly niche bit of information to know, let alone act upon in such an immediate matter.
The answer kind of stupefied the both of us in terms of demonstrating the butterfly effect.
Back in 2016, a sixteen year old Sophia was writing the first in depth paper on hemophilia I would research for a school assignment, for a Biotechnology independent studies course I was taking: a semester long research paper.
As part of the topic of ‘the impetus, advent and industrialization of recombinant coagulation factor IX in treatment of hemophilia B’ from a medical-historical perspective, I would run across the use of FIXKO mice- (coagulation factor 9 knock-out mice; mice who are bred to have their copies of the coagulation factor 9 gene to be defunct/dysfunctional).
I felt bad for the mousies, and wondered what on earth they did before they custom bred mousies to be little freaks of nature. So, I looked into research that talked about lab mice being treated with warfarin to emulate the hemorrhagic (excessive bleeding) phenotype of hemophilia, rather than recreating the genotype of the dysfunctional gene and associated produced protein/coagulation factor.
Warfarin is an anticoagulant. An anticoagulant that is one of the main ones associated with SSHL (sudden sensorineural hearing loss) associated with anticoagulants targeting the Vitamin K pathway.
While Dan was on a newer generation drug, I knew that the risk between hearing loss and anticoagulant therapies existed- and that a symptom was ringing of the ears, which was a symptom he mentioned offhandedly while we were talking. Turns out the newer generation of drugs doesn’t eliminate the risk, it just reduces it, but can cause the same hearing loss if steroids are not given ASAP.
In a bizarre way, sixteen year old Sophia caring about the mousies and feeling bad for them would… go on to prevent Dan, someone I wouldn’t meet for 7 years, in a hobby I had no idea I would participate in, from going deaf.
Talk about astounding butterfly effects…
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Also I showed Dan all the silly animal pictures I photographed and he thought the juvenile mourning dove was very cute and laughed about the squirrel eating pizza with dip and agreed it was a good thing I took a picture because he totally wouldn’t have believed me otherwise because it was so absurd of a concept and remarked it was most definitely an urban squirrel. It was really nice to hear his voice all sparkly with happy.
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Enforced afternoon off. I was having hallucinations, intrusive day nightmares and confusion about reality while on my run this morning and that is NOT GOOD. So I’ve deleted all the politics feeds I was reading (I don’t think the stress and anger associated with the campaign for the upcoming UK general election is helping matters much) and cleared my diary for the rest of the day so I can give my brain the rest it needs.
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cheers, at least are surely less heated than Italian elections… (we have the EU election 9th of June…) and I know first-hand that here fists (the punching ones, not the raised ones), kicks and brawling in general is still considered “part and parcel” in political debate…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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I’ve been a lot happier since I stopped reading political stuff except for headlines. The headlines tell you all you really need to know, which is usually just that the details will sadden, horrify, and depress you. I try to only read news that will make me both happier and more informed now. I’ve followed politics closely for decades and it hasn’t gotten me anything but arguments and anxiety.
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On the topic of bizarre connections between things, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately talking with my family about my grandmother (who passed away a few weeks ago), and as part of that I learned that the inventor of warfarin once had feelings for her and, when she mentioned having an infestation problem, showed up at her new house in a dashing cape to demonstrate his new invention and its effects on household pests.
Every time I hear a new story about her I just have to pause for a moment and go “…huh”. She’s the same one who turned Gary Gygax down when he asked her to publish his new “Dungeons and Dragons” idea, saying it would never get anywhere.
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for real ???
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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@Draconis Condolence for you about your grandmother.
Around 1991/92, on a German game con, there was a D&D stand. I told to the (American) guy that I considered the “red box” very silly because there was nearly only slimes of different colours [edit: and nearly no other monsters]. I think it was a man with black hair but I don’t think it was Gary Gygax. (But I don’t know.) He sort of got angry and told me that I could invent monsters.
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Yeah, she and my grandfather owned a small publishing company in the right area of Wisconsin at the right time! But they thought D&D wouldn’t be a good investment.
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Oops.
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Gygax left TSR in 1986. TSR was the company Gygax co-founded that published D&D before Wizards of the Coast bought it.
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Sorry ti hear about your grandmother, although that’s an interesting story.
On the positive side, I am in 2 theatre performances today! Yeah baby! (I’m Peter Pan in one, so it’s a big deal since although it’s a school performance it’s been done on the level of a proper performance…)
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Went for a run and didn’t hallucinate today. Yay!
Also finished and rated the last of the TALP Jam games I still had to play. They’ve been a lot of fun this year.
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Day 1 of 2 done! Performance 2 of 4 done! A lot of people I personally know we’re in there. A lot of throwing myself across the stage and slamming my fists painfully into the stage. It’s so fun!
(The play, not the pain…)
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