now that i’ve actually found a mirror that works…

there aren’t that many of you, but that’s the way i like it anyway…

~przxqgl~

whoo boy… it’s been a tough day. i got up at my normal “work” time, i.e. when moe got up, around 6:30 am or so, and took the bus downtown, to avoid having to pay for for 5 hours of parking, because i had an appointment for a neuropsychological examination… except that as the bus was pulling into downtown, i realised that i had neglected to print out the address of where i was supposed to be. so i called moe at work, but she couldn’t find a phonebook listing for the doctor, and i wasn’t even sure of the doctor’s name anyway. i was vaguely remembering that it was somewhere near broadway and madison, but there are all different kinds of medical offices in that neighborhood, and i didn’t know the correct address… but i managed to figure it out, with the help of the old lady information person at swedish hospital.

then, i actually had one half of my neuropsychological evaluation (the other half is going to be another 5 hours on friday next week), which literally wore me out mentally. they had me listening to lists of letters and numbers and then telling how many numbers in the list, or listing them back, with the numbers in numerical order and the letters in alphabetical order… or repeating them back, only in reverse order… they had me read a list of nonsense words like zoop and prefqua… they told me three short, and relatively meaningless stories (one about a woman named thompson from south boston who reported to the police that she was robbed of $56, that she has 4 children, and the rent was due, one about a guy named joe garcia from san francisco, who was getting dressed to go out when the TV program he was watching was interrupted by a weather bulletin concerning a storm, and the third was meaningless enough that i don’t remember what it was about at all), and then asked me to repeat them back, as close as i could get to verbatim, 2 hours later… which didn’t happen… and the math questions! i’m not very good at math anyway, even before my injury… but they asked me questions that i wouldn’t have known before my injury: probability questions, the area of an irregular polygon and that sort of thing. there were also questions for which i knew the answers, like “what does the aphorism ‘shallow streams are noisy’ actually mean?”, and questions which i new the answers to, but i didn’t know how to describe them… aphasia questions, like what is the definition of “fortitude”, and questions which i don’t really know the answers to anyway, like “why do we have to pay taxes?” they had me duplicate designs with 9 blocks, including the final design which didn’t actually show the individual blocks, so i had to figure out which way the entire 9-block set as a whole was oriented, as well as figuring out how to duplicate the design… but i did that one, unlike the exact same test that they gave me when i was in the hospital.

then i had an hour-long interview with the phd neruropsychologist (he’s a doctor, but not an MD), where i had to tell him all of the ways i felt my injury had changed me, and also went into my relationship with my parents, and the fact that i spent 15 years in counselling. i thought about mentioning what i’ve heard about AS, but i know that would just complicate things even more, and i’m also aware of the fact that a professional (who it’s not happening to) has a vastly different opinion than a person who actually has a "qualitative" impairment about what, exactly, is a "qualitative" impairment, so i decided to keep my mouth shut for the moment.

so, after 5 hours of tests and an interview, i was spit out of the medical system again, and left to find my way home on the bus. before i left downtown seattle, i checked my seattle PO box (two pieces of actual junk mail and two pieces of mail addressed to others, one to box 368, and one for the architect who hasn’t had that box for 10 years). naturally i was a quarter short on both the bus from downtown seattle to renton, and the bus from renton to home, in spite of the fact that i bought coffee (that and a cookie were all i’ve had to eat today) on the way. when i got home, i turned around and went out again, this time in my car, to check my renton PO box (one piece of junk mail that was a duplicate of the two i got in seattle, plus a catalogue for stuff that i never have ordered (and probably never will), and a CD backup copy of WinRAR). also i went and bought my sweetie ob-flowers and ob-chocolates. obviously, i celebrate valentines day, but then again, i’m not culturally hindu. maybe things would be different if i were culturally hindu, but then i wouldn’t be who i am, so i can’t really say what would happen. also, there’s this article about pornography not having it’s beginnings at the same time as the photographic process, but it’s not really news to me, because i am hindu, and familiar with things like angkor wat.

i found another possibility for a Drunk Puppet Night performance, that’s not based on a frank zappa song! it’s called "They’re Made of Meat" and unlike my idea for the frank zappa song (which hasn’t yet been codified), this should be really easy.

uh oh… dude, where’s my country?