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Randomality Again
Jul. 1st, 2004 08:55 amToday, philosophical musings with a dash of advice. Advice first:
In Case of Emergency, Log On
Put this in someone's comments, but bringing it out for everyone - one of my favorite useful web pages:
NCEMI's Common Emergencies page at www.ncemi.org/cse/contents.htm NCEMI is short for National Center for Emergency Medicine Informatics which in turn is doctorese for "ER doctors giving advice to ER doctors." Way down on the left of the main page is a list of Common Emergency Room problems, listed by system affected and then symptom. (The link above is direct to that page.)
It's not meant for the layperson, so it's not an easy read, but it has been dead on in its advice. I've spared myself two trips to the ER because of it ("Hell, if they're just going to brace and ice the knee, I'll do that at home") and hauled one person off to the hospital on its advice. ("It says you're NOT going to be able to tough this out, you need medicine.")
When I'm hit with medical questions beyond what I learned in first aid, this is where I turn.
Kind of a brag
I recently got bed linens. As in real linen sheets. I had to go to Madagascar, or Mogadishu or some country like that to find ones that were even remotely affordable, via a website amusingly called "Buy the Things." And you can tell that it's somewhere without the "bigger is better" 'Merkin mindset, because the sheets have seams 'cause the original fabric isn't wide enough.
But - daaaaaaang! I haven't slept so well in quite a long time! I can't count the times this summer alone I've overheated in my sleep (exacerbated by a cat on each side), woken up, had to figure out the logistics of removing sheets without removing cats, cooled down, finally gotten back to sleep... only to chill too much and eventually wake back up and have to do it all in reverse.
Not once, not once since I got the linen. Nor will the weave "run" the way the knitted cotton sheets did once the cats got a really good claw into them. I may have paid more than your basic set of sheets should cost, but in a mere week it's made a huge, huge difference in the amount of rest I get. Who knew?
This is, in the long run, going to be rather like the time I got a new shower curtain and ended up slowly redecorating the bathroom (a task to be completed over the next two months). In this case, I want to save my pennies/loot my fabric stash for a contrasting linen sham. And my old feather pillows are rather ratty and almost too small for the new pillow cases (but then, they are really OLD feather pillows, once belonging to my father, I think.) There are other, more important household expenses to come first (fence fixed, external walls repainted), but don't be too shocked if "Redo bedroom" shows up as a 2005 resolution. I've been thinking about repainting it for a while...
Philosophical Musing
I was recently asked if I had a happy life. (Right now, I think, in general, as opposed to a sum total of the last *cough* decades.)
And on the whole - yes.
Oh, there are things I'd like to change, some of which I will deal with, some of which I'll see if time resolves, and some of which I'm just going to end up living with. And I have a wierd urge to get involved with things that make me spastic (school, Shore Leave, Farpoint, Team Wench) - if I live without something like that for too long, I'm driven to go find something to make me crazy, assuring myself that "this time it will be different."
But in sum total? My friends are the best. I like the job & coworkers, can live with the commute. If I don't have as much money as I want, I have slightly more than enough than I need. My house is beloved and in relatively good shape, and my neighborhood is safe. My folks are close enough to get to and far enough to keep us out of each other's hair. If I'm choking in sheer stuff, it's because I'm affluent enough to be a packrat, and this year is dedicated to pruning down to prudence anyway. If my vacations aren't as long and extravagant as I might like them to be, I can still travel. (I'd rather spend a weekend in Stratford and a day & a half at Worldcon than not go at all!)
Sometimes I'm happier than others, but on the whole, yes, it is a happy life.
May we all be able to say the same.
Current book: The Turning of the Screw
In Case of Emergency, Log On
Put this in someone's comments, but bringing it out for everyone - one of my favorite useful web pages:
NCEMI's Common Emergencies page at www.ncemi.org/cse/contents.htm NCEMI is short for National Center for Emergency Medicine Informatics which in turn is doctorese for "ER doctors giving advice to ER doctors." Way down on the left of the main page is a list of Common Emergency Room problems, listed by system affected and then symptom. (The link above is direct to that page.)
It's not meant for the layperson, so it's not an easy read, but it has been dead on in its advice. I've spared myself two trips to the ER because of it ("Hell, if they're just going to brace and ice the knee, I'll do that at home") and hauled one person off to the hospital on its advice. ("It says you're NOT going to be able to tough this out, you need medicine.")
When I'm hit with medical questions beyond what I learned in first aid, this is where I turn.
Kind of a brag
I recently got bed linens. As in real linen sheets. I had to go to Madagascar, or Mogadishu or some country like that to find ones that were even remotely affordable, via a website amusingly called "Buy the Things." And you can tell that it's somewhere without the "bigger is better" 'Merkin mindset, because the sheets have seams 'cause the original fabric isn't wide enough.
But - daaaaaaang! I haven't slept so well in quite a long time! I can't count the times this summer alone I've overheated in my sleep (exacerbated by a cat on each side), woken up, had to figure out the logistics of removing sheets without removing cats, cooled down, finally gotten back to sleep... only to chill too much and eventually wake back up and have to do it all in reverse.
Not once, not once since I got the linen. Nor will the weave "run" the way the knitted cotton sheets did once the cats got a really good claw into them. I may have paid more than your basic set of sheets should cost, but in a mere week it's made a huge, huge difference in the amount of rest I get. Who knew?
This is, in the long run, going to be rather like the time I got a new shower curtain and ended up slowly redecorating the bathroom (a task to be completed over the next two months). In this case, I want to save my pennies/loot my fabric stash for a contrasting linen sham. And my old feather pillows are rather ratty and almost too small for the new pillow cases (but then, they are really OLD feather pillows, once belonging to my father, I think.) There are other, more important household expenses to come first (fence fixed, external walls repainted), but don't be too shocked if "Redo bedroom" shows up as a 2005 resolution. I've been thinking about repainting it for a while...
Philosophical Musing
I was recently asked if I had a happy life. (Right now, I think, in general, as opposed to a sum total of the last *cough* decades.)
And on the whole - yes.
Oh, there are things I'd like to change, some of which I will deal with, some of which I'll see if time resolves, and some of which I'm just going to end up living with. And I have a wierd urge to get involved with things that make me spastic (school, Shore Leave, Farpoint, Team Wench) - if I live without something like that for too long, I'm driven to go find something to make me crazy, assuring myself that "this time it will be different."
But in sum total? My friends are the best. I like the job & coworkers, can live with the commute. If I don't have as much money as I want, I have slightly more than enough than I need. My house is beloved and in relatively good shape, and my neighborhood is safe. My folks are close enough to get to and far enough to keep us out of each other's hair. If I'm choking in sheer stuff, it's because I'm affluent enough to be a packrat, and this year is dedicated to pruning down to prudence anyway. If my vacations aren't as long and extravagant as I might like them to be, I can still travel. (I'd rather spend a weekend in Stratford and a day & a half at Worldcon than not go at all!)
Sometimes I'm happier than others, but on the whole, yes, it is a happy life.
May we all be able to say the same.
Current book: The Turning of the Screw
