Category: General

As I drank my coffee this morning, a thought arose. I was pouring liquid into a bag of liquid. More than that: my body is made up of cells, which are, themselves, tiny bags of fluid.

Even our bones, which seem pretty solid to us, and are the structure that everything hangs off of, are made of cells.

We’re bags of fluid made up of bags of fluid.

So what holds it all together?

Or maybe I need more sleep.

I had my temporary crown put in yesterday. It was only going to be a partial crown, or “onlay”, but when Dr. Jill saw the extent of the crack I’ve been living with for the past two weeks, she decided that it needed the full crown treatment.

First step was to take an impression to build the crown from, and “prep” the tooth. Prepping means using a drill and grinding down the tooth into a smooth nub, onto which the crown will be placed.

While the crown is being made, a process that takes 3 weeks and consists of fabricating a gold-and-porcelain replica of my old tooth, I wear a temporary crown made of acrylic.

Or plastic, if you will.

Since leaving the dentist yesterday, as the massive amount of anaesthetic slowly wore off, I’ve been feeling the replacement. You know that feeling, that there’s something new in your mouth, and it’s odd and out of place? That’s what I feel. I keep biting down on it, then remembering that I’m supposed to baby it, because it’s only plastic.

This morning it felt “smaller”, meaning I’m noticing it less. But it’s still there. And it occurred to me: it’s just like the classic “plastic tooth” spy story cliche!

I hope Dr. Jill didn’t include cyanide. That’d be awkward

Because I was lazy, I was early for work today.

I was lazy yesterday and did not wash my coffee pot. So when I got up this morning at my normal time, the time that gives me time to make coffee and make breakfast and do a little surfing before work, I could not make coffee.

Instead I showered and shaved and got dressed early. Then I was still hungry, so I headed out to a coffee shop to get some coffee and wake up.

Having done that, I took the bus to work. Where I was early.

Because I was lazy.

Caution: the clip below, from “The Soup”, contains a spoiler for last week’s episode of 24, which I do not watch nor care about, but is a set-up for Michael Emerson to riff on themes of LOST.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRJvaQuCh5c&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hd=1]

And it made me laugh. Out loud.

A fascinating talk from TED by Derek Sivers on leadership:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW8amMCVAJQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hd=1]

Building a movement requires a leader… and followers. And following is framed as a brave act.

(via Charles Lemos @ MyDD.)

As the amount of TV shows and motion pictures I watch increases, the amount of blogging I do decreases.

I hope that this is just a fall/winter phenomenon, and that as the days grow longer once again, I’ll spend more time outside and away from the glowing small screen.

Saturday of a three-day weekend, the third day of which I have been granted a paid non-work day due to the American penchant for honoring elected leaders as if they were gods.

I’ve eaten breakfast; thick sliced applewood smoked bacon, nine-grain whole wheat bread without any high fructose corn syrup slathered in real organic butter and the preserved fruits of the marionberry vine, and farm-friendly organically grown coffee beans, blended half-and-half with decaffeinated beans and beans meant for use in espresso, but ground and brewed in a drip machine, flavored with low fat vanilla soy milk and raw sugar.

I’m listening to Lady GaGa sing about being Starstruck while I sit here at my desk. I can raise my head to my right and look out the window, and see the occasional runner trudge by dressed most often in dark-colored form-fitting synthetic fabrics from neck to ankle as protection against the rain and cold. When I hit the F12 button on my keyboard, a transparent overlay falls over my screen and displays, among other things, a widget that tells me it’s 47º Fahrenheit in my zip code.

I take a sip of my decaffeinated and flavored coffee. Yeah. Saturday.

Scene One

I walk into the elevator lobby. The guy there before me has already pushed the up button; since I’m going to the basement, I push the down button.

We wait.

An elevator arrives; the up light lights up. The other man gets on.

He looks at me, leans out, holds the door open. “You going up?” he asks.

I look at him, blankly. I point at the still-lit down button, directly in his line of sight. “Uh… no. I’m… I’m going… down. That’s why I pushed… the down… button.” My voice drips with snark.

He lets the door close, shaking his head.

Scene Two

Hours later, I’m ready for a break. I leave the basement, go out in the sun; I want to take a walk and get some fresh air.

I approach the intersection and the lanes of the one-way street are clear, except for a lone white SUV approaching in the far lane.

The SUV slows. The SUV stops. Inside, I see the driver, an older woman, wave me across.

I double-check and the lady has no stop sign. There is no other traffic. In my head, I calculate that if she hadn’t stopped, she would be well on her way and I would already be half way across by now. Why did she stop?

I wait.

I feel anger at her, though I’m not sure of the reason, or even if it’s reasonable for me to feel this way.

She waits.

Finally, she rolls down her window and waves me across again.

I look around. Still no traffic – wait, a car approaches from the other intersecting street. The driver of that car sees me and the lady’s standoff and appears confused.

All three wait.

Finally, the late-arriving car pulls out and around the front end of the SUV, which was slightly blocking him.

I still have not moved from the sidewalk where I stand.

The lady rolls forward and looks out the window at me. “Why didn’t you cross?”

“Why didn’t you just go?” I ask her in return.

“Because if someone is crossing the street, the law says I have to let them cross.”

My anger returns at what I see as her lecturing me. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

She’s still there, in front of me. There is still no other traffic. “Were you going to cross?”

“I’m waiting for someone,” I say, and I think, I’m waiting for you to leave.

“Oh. OK.” She pulls away.

I immediately cross behind her, hoping she will see me.

I don’t know why that made me mad. Or perhaps I started out mad.

Scene Three

Back at work, I wheel an empty cart out to the elevator bank. I use my key on the freight elevator and wait for it to arrive.

A lady, dressed in a professional outfit, in contrast to my jeans and t-shirt, walks out of the training room. “Are you going to one?” she asks. Just then, another non-freight elevator arrives, and she walks into it. She turns towards me, holds the door open. “Do you want to take this elevator?”

My anger returns, unreasonably annoyed. “No I am waiting for the freight elevator because I need to get this cart to the loading dock and I can’t get there from those elevators.”

“OK,” she says. “Fine. Sorry.”

Epilogue

Is it just me? Was I in a bad mood? What the Hell was going on?

It’s probably just me.

first, I saw that Michael Lopp, writing as Rands, posted a long, thoughtful essay on the hierarchy of information, and about how the data points available to us are getting shorter and shorter (going from long newspaper articles to short, 140-character tweets), and how those of us who love Twitter are taking the small data points and creating a narrative, a story, from those tiny bits:

“Those frustrated with Twitter are frustrated because they have a belief that a story needs a beginning, middle, and end. And that it should have all of those parts before it’s presented to them. What the hell am I supposed to learn from a tweet? The point of Twitter isn’t knowledge or understanding, it’s merely connective information tissue. It’s small bits of information carefully selected by those you’ve chosen to follow and its value isn’t in what they send, it’s how it fits into the story in your head. There are great stories to be found on Twitter, but you have to do the work.”

And then I saw Google’s Super Bowl ad, and it demonstrated the point perfectly:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

The small pieces of information we get from Google aren’t the story; it’s what we do with the information.

Brilliant.

I guess my favorite non-Portland-Oregon city had something to celebrate this past weekend.

Does this look insane, or what?

And this is the edited-for-polite-company video.