Tuesday 1 January 2002

Pic of the day: Unfocused on purpose.

Unfocused

I drink way too little alcohol for my own good, or so the experts say. As a male, I should have 1-2 glasses of wine, or the equivalent in beer, a day. Red wine is supposedly still the healthiest. But I can't stand the taste and the headache. And as for larger amounts of alcohol, music is a much better way to get totally unfocused. Once you turn off the trance music, IQ returns to normal in seconds or minutes at worst. With alcohol you remain incapacitated for hours at best.

As an experiment, I shall now write this entire entry while senselessly repeating the song Dancing naked in the rain by Infinity and turning off all bright lights. I reckon this should unfocus me for a few tenners of IQ points. It sure feels good at the start. (Incidentally, it is not in any way an erotic song. It's about a woman who tries to get the attention of her man, who has become distant and withdrawn. Sad text, happy music. Then again, happy music is the only thing this group know how to make.)

I'm dancing naked in the rain
let the raindrops wash away your pain.
I'm dancing naked in the rain
- you know it's you I mean.
I'm dancing naked in the rain
let the raindrops wash away your pain.
I reach my head up to the sky:
Please tell me why?

Infinity: Dancing naked in the rain - if I guess all the words right, at least! ^_^

***

It's not raining here. It's even better. A mild wind has been blowing all day. It took the snow away, and as the night was growing deeper, it was still eating away at the ice that cowers the roads. Yay for the greenhouse effect! Keep those engines idling. I'm sure there will be room in the Norwegian mountains to build new homes for those people who must leave small pacific islands when these drown over the next fifty to hundred years.

OK, I'm not dancing naked in the wind. But I took off my winter caps when I was outdoors. And I have turned down the heating and am typing in my pajamas. Pajamas are good! But you already know that. That is, they are good indoors. They are not so good outdoors, and not really recommended for any combination of the two. But you already know that, at least some of you.

***

Moving on to the whine of the day. I did not eat anything all morning, and around 3 in the afternoon my stomach started to hurt. It had no work at all, and still it complained. What's up with that? It should be grateful for a day off. If not for the stomach, I could easily go a day or two without eating. I don't have hard physical labor, and I don't dance much or do active sports. So I don't grow weak from hunger in a day or even two. I have tried that. My body seems to be good at providing blood sugar on demand, and keeping it down otherwise. Good. But I ought to do something about that stomach.

I didn't go see my doctor after I was released from hospital. Hey, I survived, so obviously everything should go on as before. "If it ain't broken, don't fix it." Well, I guess it is slightly broken. Perhaps I should try to get some prescription for my acid. Or perhaps I should eat few, small meals. Instead of going all day without anything and then wolf down 1 liter of food. OK, it wasn't quite a liter, but nearer that than a half, of fruit soup. I still had one package of soup powder left. That should certainly not be much of a challenge for a 43 year old stomach! And then I dipped a teaspoon in the bowl and tasted. And when I regained full consciousness, I stared at the bottom of the bowl, and my stomach was full. I'm not sure there are prescriptions against this.

Speaking of prescriptions, the doctor I love (and who at least tolerates me) told me when I visited her this Christmas that elderly people tend to have a lot of prescribed medication. When they come into hospital, whatever they are there for, they tend to have some medication against hypertension / too high blood pressure. She thinks this is because the pharmacy companies have a slightly different standard for what human blood pressure should be than nature has. She is concerned because old people typically have 10-20 different medicines. Even if they were able to take them all at the right time, there is no telling how all these chemicals interact with each other. She agreed with me that some of them probably are given to counter the side effect of combinations of others. No doctor dares to discontinue a prescription given by another, even if that would probably be the healthiest thing to do.

(I probably mean physician when I write doctor. That's what we call them here, and I understand many English speakers also do, regardless that most of them don't have a doctorate. The grrl I love is a general practitioner in training, I think. Our culture differs more than the languages in this respect.)

Oh yes, and speaking of the young lady, I really hope she gets a job down here from next spring. She is aiming at that. Not because of me, of course! We're Just Friends, and I'm a lot more friendly than she anyway. She has friends and a sister with babies here. (She loves babies. What woman doesn't, as long as she hasn't had any of her own?) But I guess I should have my medical needs taken care of well before she shows up. Wouldn't accidentally want her to give me a full check, now would we? Heh. The question is who of us would run screaming from the room first.

Well, that is plenty enough of writing about female friends while playing that song. Yes, I have set it to senseless repeat before I started. I notice that I have not written about the things I had thought to write about. This is as expected. Perhaps another day, if there are enough such left, I shall share my thoughts about the stunning similarities between online roleplaying and reincarnations. Tentative title: "Many lives, one Master". ^_^