Scheherazade in Blue Jeans

Administration
Happy birthday to enderfem, silme, wcg, and ysabel!

Hello to new reader cihuateteo!


Medical
I seem to be having an okay meds day so far.

Liz
Today would have been tx_db8r's 22nd birthday. She died a year-and-some months ago. Before she could get married (she was engaged) or turn 21 or finish college or, or anything.

I don't know what happens after you die. I do not have a good sound theory. The closest thing I have to a theory is that maybe we all go where we expect to go, where we believe we will go. Heaven, Hell, Valhalla, the Summerland, reincarnation, worm food.

I don't know what Liz believed. Her illness came on so suddenly, she died so suddenly, that there was no time to talk about this stuff. She was just there-and-gone.

But if she believed in an afterlife, I hope she is in the best Heaven in it. And I hope that she knows that she is still thought about down here. Not just by her family, but by people she never even met, too.

Happy birthday, Liz.

Daily science and Daily BPAL later, because I don't feel much like it right now...

Blogathon
Up to $545, thanks to more Anonymous, ydnic, i_descend, liamstliam, and talix18! If I have not thanked you by name and you thought you told the site to use your name, it did not. This has happened to at least one person. Tell me who you are! :) EDIT: And enderfem!

And please, please, sponsor me!

Anonymous Confessions
hughcasey is hosting a thread over here...

Disney Princess Strike Force!
I love headlines like this: "Shrek 3 Casts Ninja Princesses".

Mail Call!
Got BPAL from cissa! Also got sartorias's Crown Duel!

Daily Science
Oh, this one's superinteresting. Unsuspected Brain Cells May Cause Epilepsy.

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Daily BPAL
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When I was a child, my favorite nonfiction book was Joe Kaufman's What Makes It Go? What Makes It Work? What Makes It Fly? What Makes It Float?. This was a massively oversized '70s-yellow hardcover. And it was full - full! - of cross-sections of, well, everything. Everything a wee tiny 'song could think of, anyway, and some things I hadn't. Cars, and their component parts! Locomotives and ships and airplanes! Lunar modules! Washing machines, air conditioners, faucets, toilets, pianos, telephones, radio, microscopes, telescopes, all manner of cameras. Television. Radar. Satellites. And descriptions, on a wee tiny 'song reading level, of how - everything - worked.

Whooooa.

I am certain that my parents bought me this book because they were sick of me asking how everything worked; I was a child with a massive case of the "why?"s. Still am, really. This may have been the best purchase they ever made. I would sit around studying this book for hours. "That's how that works? I wonder how they discovered that! Maybe I can build that..."

This led to me nearly blinding my sister with my chemistry set - it was an accident, I swear! And essentially playing Choose-Your-Own-Adventure with the World Book Encyclopedia. And dissecting animals in Science Club in fourth grade.

Yeah, I was that kid.

I've graduated from washing machines and airplanes to the human body and nanotech and astronomy. But that's where it started - a big yellow book, almost as big as I was, that showed me how things are put together...

You must go do this.

Via Tamson House...

The penguin penis pouch.

I am doing arts and crafts. *nod*

The box has been stained - I'm going to touch it up with a wee paintbrush later. Decorative papers have been glued to the lide, inside lid, and inside bottom. So pretty! I have decided which key goes on the center of the top of the box. (This is an important decision! You never know what you might accidentally unlock!)

Now it's mosaic time.

I have lots of broken-up stained glass. And I am pushing it around on the recessed lid of the box, trying to figure out what I want, humming. Deet deet dee, la la la, fish fish fish, mm mm mm...

Arts and crafts!

P.S.: Yarr!

About yesterday at the clinical psych's office, regarding short-term memory:

Remembering things and repeating them?
Nope.
Math?
Nope.
The thing with math is that you have to hold one operation in your head as you do another, then do stuff with the results.
Which is easy if your hippocampus and temporal lobe are functional.
I couldn't do anything that wasn't utterly basic. The first operation would just slide right out of my head.
And that was the written test.
The verbal...
Sample. Paraphrasing, because of course I don't remember!
Mangosteen has 3 red paper clips, 7 green paper clips, and 6 blue paper clips in a drawer. What are the odds of him picking up a green paper clip?
Now, forget even working out the prob/stat thing.
I can't hang onto how many paper clips there are.
I can hang onto the fact that they're three different colors. But I can't keep the numbers connected to the colors.
And I remember being perfectly capable of doing this before brain damage and drugs.
Yesterday was very Flowers for Algernon for me.