health

Tuesday links

  • I’m with xkcd on this: fuck cancer.
  • The Prescription to Save Ailing Superheroes. I can’t say I agree with everything here, but it’s an interesting article, particularly the argument against having Thor and Captain America both do double-duty by setting their characters up for The Avengers.

    That said, I enjoyed both of them just fine as summer entertainment, and while I enjoyed X-Men: First Class no small amount either, I think it’s ultimately the least successful film of the three. (I haven’t seen Green Lantern.) Matthew Vaughn’s “auteur vision” seems cribbed from a few other places (like Bryan Singer’s first X-Men movie, and like Mad Men), and there’s some pretty iffy racial and gender issues at work in the film as well. But maybe that just underlines Pappademas’ main argument: at least the movie has some distinctive stamp to it, however flawed. [via]

  • NY motorcyclist dies on ride protesting helmet law [via]
  • Soap operas moving online. This will bear further watching. The news, not the shows. (God no.) [via]
  • And finally, Who owns the copyright on a photo taken by a monkey? [via]

A weighty Wednesday

This afternoon at work, we had one of our semi-regular “brown bag lunches,” where they invite a speaker in to talk about any number of topics, and give us a free lunch for attending. Today’s talk was on “An Expert’s Perspective on What Does and Does Not Work in Weight Loss,” given by Dr. Sasha Stiles of NYU’s Langone Medical Center. It was reasonably interesting and informative; if nothing new, her advice and perspective were at least sound. Usually the company gives us lunch before the talk, but today it was reversed. I don’t know if that was to fit with the speaker’s schedule, to discourage people who RSVP for the lunch but don’t stay, or just to ensure we were all in the mood to eat less after hearing about weight loss for an hour.

Meanwhile, taking a page from Neil Gaiman, I’m trying for a little weight loss of my own, working out a little in the evenings to an audio book. In my case, I went with Frank Herbert’s Dune, which I’ve been meaning for ages to re-read. (I’ve seen the movies, and the endless parodies and tributes, but I haven’t read the book since high school.) It’s much too soon to say if the workouts are having the desired effect, but I’m really enjoying the book. I’d almost forgotten how good it is.

Of course, I can’t mention Dune without also mentioning this caption I made last Saturday night. I am inordinately proud of the silliness of the pun.

Sick day

Any thought that my Monday would be more productive than my Sunday was wiped away in the first few minutes, when I realized, hey, I think I’m sick, and I decided to call the doctor for an appointment rather than go into work. What I have seems to be a slight sinus infection — no real fever to speak of, but chills and tiredness all day, a general feeling of ugh. I probably would have shuffled off to work despite all that, if it hadn’t been for the slight pain along my left jawline that seemed to suggest sinus infection rather than just cold.

So I spent most of the morning sleeping, off and on watching more television — the current season of Supernatural, mostly, though also the latest episode of The Killing — and I’m on antibiotics for the week, which will hopefully kick out anything and get me feeling better.

I’m going to try to turn in early tonight — I’m still pretty tired — but I expect to be back at work tomorrow.

The new digs

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning, so I got to sleep just a little bit later than usual. I left the house in what I thought was plenty of time to make a 9:15 appointment, but I ran into a ridiculous amount of traffic, all of it apparently headed to the parkway exit right before mine. What should have been a fifteen or twenty-minute drive, even with morning rush-hour traffic, took the better part of half an hour. And then I made a slightly wrong turn getting off the parkway — if you turn right instead of left, and go in the exact opposite direction, that still counts as “slightly,” right? — and drove straight into even more traffic. I made a u-turn when I, finally, realized I’d gone off-course, and arrived at the doctor’s office only about ten minutes late. I signed in and took a seat.

And proceeded to sit for the next hour. I had brought a book along, when I thought I might get there early and need it, but then when I ran late, I left it in the car. So I basically just sat, occasionally posting to Twitter about how I was just sitting. After an hour of it, I went back up to the desk to ask what was going on…and discovered that they’d lost the sign-in sheet with my name on it. They hadn’t known I was there.

So anyway, we got that cleared up. And shortly thereafter I actually went inside to see the doctor. It was just a follow-up, so nothing to worry about, and I was back home a little before 11:30. I saw almost no traffic headed back in the opposite direction.

Then I caught a train into Manhattan. I sort of had to: today’s the day we moved into the new office. (I’d actually tried, and failed, to reschedule my doctor’s appointment when I learned it overlapped with move-in.)

I’ll say this about the new place: it’s nice. It looks very professional, and I think it’s the sort of office we’d be pleased to have authors visit. I’m not sold on everything about it, including the open plan layout and my position in it, and some things are going to be a big adjustment. But it is a nice office.

I think tomorrow will be better gauge of how much it messes with my commute. I walked it both ways today, and in the evening it took me maybe twenty-five minutes from our floor to Penn Station. I may give the subway a go tomorrow and see if that helps me any. I don’t mind the extra ten minutes of walking so much — I have podcasts — but I have only so many trains to choose from in both the morning and evening.

Longer term, I’m still planning on moving. My sister and my brother-in-law even bought me a copy of Home Buying for Dummies as a birthday present, so I guess this means I really need to do it. The idea is to find a realtor, find some areas I like — I’m thinking Queens, maybe Forrest Hills — and go from there.

Although, wherever I move, I may have to put up cubicle walls in it, just so I can have them again.

Monday various