Saturday, December 18th, 2010

Doctor, doctor, give me the news.

I have come to the contusion that the arm and hand pain I’m experiencing mayt be less a function of my hands than of my neck/shoulders. So this morning I staggered off to se my chripractor Tammy to talk with her about potential remedies.

She apparently decided I was too short, for after aiming several of my chakras in the general direction of the equator and aligning my spine at right angles to the space time continuum, she put me in traction.

Not the kind of traction you see people in movies, where they’re attached to a frame over a bed, but one of these.

I’m supposed to go back for more treatments. I wonder how long before I look like this.

Not that I’ll ever look asian, mind you.

My company purchased a Kindle

that I might use it to keep blueprints etc. on a small portable device that didn’t take 12 minutes to turn on everytime I use it. I’m still working on making that work.

In the meantime I’m reading at a breakneck pace. Years ago, I took a Developmental Reading course, which lasted ten days. Humans can acquire information much faster than the pace at which they read, and most humans read at about a spoken pace. You can easily train yourself to read very quickly- at one time, I read comfortably a couple thousand words a minute. I still read very quickly, and the Kindle is the first device that I have played with that didn’t take too long to change pages, it switches with only the minutest of delays.

I used to read about a novel length book in a day. That was in addition to everything else. Time and convenience have messed with that some, but the Kindle is bringing my reading speed back a great deal. I finished Monte Cristo in two and days and change, mostly reading in bed before and after work. Of course, it helps that it’s something I want to read; I still cannot read a whole Fanuc manual, or anything by CS Lewis. In fact, I’m a little afraid of even having a Lewis or Rand novel on the kindle, for fear my instinct will take over, and ten words in, throw the Kindle against the wall.

Overheard at dinner

From the table directly behind us.

“Yeah, can I get some of that Shrimp Afraid-o?”

Must be a special left over from Halloween.