The Ninth Strange Day

I stayed home from work today. I slept from 10:00 pm to 6:15 am and realised that it was just not going to happen. It was around 7:00 am when I went back to bed and slept until sometime after 3:00 in the afternoon.

I’m the sort who normally sleeps about four or five hours a night, so sixteen hours is a pretty impressive stretch for me. Now I’m out of sorts. I’m not sure what time it is because we keep the bedroom dark to begin with. My internal clock is completely skewed. And I feel like in the time I’ve been awake all I’ve done is eat. I’ve had two bowls of cereal, a cup of tomato soup, and a grilled cheese sandwich.

My mouth still hurts. It’s nowhere near as bad as it was yesterday, but I’m still aware of it. I might be aware of it until I get the permanent crown. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow. I’ve got a meeting and things to do and then I’ll be on vacation on Friday.

Root Canal Stage 2 has been completed. They drilled away the tooth and put the temporary crown on. The joy of it is that it took about two hours to do, because they did the whole thing and while fitting the temp crown realised that they really did need to put a peg in the hole to stabilise things. Which meant more drilling, another impression for the final crown, and remaking the temp.

I have had so much novocaine injected into my gums that I feel sick. I’m itchy and uncomfortable and very tired and so far the Tylenol has done nothing. I actually feel a little bit like rocking back and forth and crying. Except I won’t. Because I don’t do things like that.

I’m whimpering though. And in my head I’ve been singing a song from The Electric Company.

There’s a bit in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the book) where it’s speculated that people talk so much to avoid using their brains and developing telepathic ability. The longer I take the bus the more I wonder if that’s actually true.

Every day there are conversations around me that are so completely meaningless and so utterly pointless that they really are just white noise that prevent thinking. Total strangers will strike up a conversation just for something to do. People talk on mobile phones. People talk to themselves. There’s just no such thing as quiet.

The people who talk to strangers don’t even always talk to the person sitting next to them. Sometimes they’ll just say something loud enough that everyone can hear and see who answers them. Someone always does. How about the weather? Did you see the news? Hey, that store’s new. Oh, when did that place close? Oh look they’ve gutted another rowhouse. My isn’t the grass brown.

Occasionally you get the street preacher who likes to spread the gospel between bus stops. They usually only last one or two stops and then get off before they can be thrown off.

The mobile conversations are worse. Onna bus. I said onna bus. I SAID I ONNA BUS. Where you at? WHERE YOU AT! She home? I AXED YOU IS SHE HOME. Bonus points if you get to hear the other side of the converation, punctuated by Nextel “chirps”.

I have overheard conversations about people’s arrests, surgeries, pregnancies, drug convictions, assault cases, domestic violence, and jobs. People talking about “baby daddy” and “baby momma”. Who got fired. Why they got fired. Who goofs off at work and never gets caught. Who’s sleeping with whom. What playstation games are great (it’s always playstation. I wonder if that’s become the generic term for video game systems).

The people who talk to themselves are generally praying.

I wear headphones so people will know I’m not available for conversation. It doesn’t stop everyone, and sometimes I have to take the headphones off and say “Sorry, what”?

“Sure is hot today, isn’t it”.

… Look, I’m just going to put my headphones back on and resume reading my book and pretend that this never happened, okay? Some of us are actually trying to hone our telepathic abilities.

Me: Pluto’s no longer a planet. Poor old Pluto.

BC: …how will this affect Micky Mouse?

Me: We’ll just tell him that Pluto went to live with some relatives in the country, where he gets to chase bunnies all day.

They changed my job title from “technical writer” to “analyst”. Not “technical writing analyst” or “writing analyst” or anything descriptive. It’s just “analyst”. This led to the following fake conversations.

Person: so what do you do?
Me: I’m an analyst.
Person: Ooh, like stock market analyst?
Me: Nnno… I write technical manuals….
Person: Wouldn’t that make you a technical writer?
Me: One would think.

One of the other technical wri.. I mean analysts… had this fake conversation when I said I wanted my job title to be changed to “pirate” instead.

Other writer: Oh, COOL! Then you would get to have conversations like

Person: so what do you do?
Me: I’m a pirate.
Person: Ooh, like Jack Sparrow?
Me: Yes, pretty much exactly like that.

I’ve been getting braver about letting people read what I write. It’s necessary. No one’s ever going to see it otherwise. I still foster the dream that one day something I write will be published, but I’m a realist. I’ll keep writing my little technical manuals for pay and writing my fiction for myself and whatever happens, happens. But I am finally starting to let people see what I’ve done, instead of just keeping it in a file on the computer to be deleted later in a fit of depression.

I’ve put some of it online at http://theninth.net and more will be added as more gets written.

A few warnings, though. I do occasionally venture into the realm of fanfiction, and not everything I write is worksafe, and might not be agreeable to all tastes. Each story is rated and a brief description is given so you can judge for yourself if you want to read it or not.

TheNinth.net is actually a subdomain of The Torrents website. The space already existed and was being paid for, so I thought I’d get a little use out of it as well. Nothing I’ll do will take up too much room, so it won’t intrude on Torrent space.

I got a three-page email from a friend of mine, giving me thoughts and feedback on the novel-length thing I’m working on. She found a lot of things I’d missed, asked great questions, and had some of the same problems that I’ve been having with the story but couldn’t articulate (because who wants to admit there’s a problem with their own writing?). I’ll be doing some heavy revisions this weekend and hopefully getting the first chapter into something so solid I won’t need to deal with it again until the whole thing is done and ready for “one last review”.

All those years of astrology, wasted.

Astronomers have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

About 2,500 scientists meeting in Prague have adopted historic new guidelines that see the small, distant world demoted to a secondary category.

The researchers said Pluto failed to dominate its orbit around the Sun in the same way as the other planets.

The International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) decision means textbooks will now have to describe a Solar System with just eight major planetary bodies.

Pluto, which was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, will be referred to as a “dwarf planet”.

There is a recognition that the demotion is likely to upset the public which has become accustomed to a particular view of the Solar System.

“I have a slight tear in my eye today, yes; but at the end of the day we have to describe the Solar System as it really is, not as we would like it to be,” said Professor Iwan Williams, chair of the IAU panel that has been working over recent months to define the term “planet”.

Read the whole story here.