2013 — 6 September: Friday
Hello, pension. Meet (depleted) bank account.1 I had a cunning plan, this morning, all (sort-of) worked out, to nip out on a nice early supplies run, but have been thwarted (so far) by two minor circumstances:
- as I woke up late2 it's already now after 09:30 (and that's usually Bad News on a Friday hereabouts), and
- it is indeed raining, though not heavily, just as forecast.
Needs must when the devil drives... but I find needs needn't when the rain drives. The allure of my morning cuppa proved far more tempting. Besides, "rain before seven, fine before eleven" (though I've no way of knowing if it was actually raining here then). I can always grab some supplies before calling in for my late afternoon session with Dr Fang.
I got as far, last...
... night, as removing the shrink wrap from that borrowed DVD of "Jack Reacher". Quite enough to be going on with, as I wasn't in the right mood for the "heart-pounding, explosive ride" the blurb promised me. A bit disingenuous, don't you think, to place five stars immediately above said phrase...?
It might well give the less than eagle-eyed, slack-jawed punters the impression that both thoughtfully insightful assessments originate from the same fevered hack's brow.
Meanwhile, "where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" (as Heller's Yossarian asked). The story gets ever richer. "Gobsmacked"? Really? (Link.)
To be fair...
... this is an interesting essay. But is it fair? Or do I simply prefer Pinker? Source and snippet:
The first of those ideals is that "the world is intelligible." The second of those ideals is that "the acquisition of knowledge is hard." Intelligibility and difficulty, the exclusive teachings of science? This is either ignorant or tendentious. Plato believed in the intelligibility of the world, and so did Dante, and so did Maimonides and Aquinas and Al-Farabi, and so did Poussin and Bach and Goethe and Austen and Tolstoy and Proust. They all share Pinker's denial of the opacity of the world, of its impermeability to the mind. They all join in his desire to "explain a complex happening in terms of deeper principles."
Nice to see my beloved Jane make the cut :-)
Having teased...
... Big Bro by proxy (in the shape of an email exchange with his number #1 daughter) and lunched lightly but tastily after the outing for supplies, I can now relax and enjoy the countdown to my next meeting with Dr Fang. Given the amount of time he's set aside today, I'm suspecting he intends to remove the existing root filling, temporarily repack it, and then put a lid on and see how it all settles down. Mention was made of a 5- or 6-week total elapsed time for the process, culminating in that second crown. Gives me time to save up. <Sigh>
Not the funnest way of spending a (now) sunny afternoon, frankly. [Pause] I was mistook. He spent most of his time "building up" an adjacent tooth that I've apparently spent the last 50 years or more gradually grinding away. And then super-gluing a temporary top atop the crater alongside. I'm now somewhat dubiously wondering what it's all going to feel like should sensation return this side of Xmas. But how did he find out I'm an ex-IBMer? I certainly never said anything. I suspect the innocent-looking assistant :-)
To be continued...
I also had to...
... give in and crack open the Yaris manual to see exactly how the three inter-related seat adjustment controls work. I was OK re-setting the wing mirrors and rear view mirror back to where they should be. I have yet to work out the steering wheel height and tilt adjustment. That's what comes of having a vertically-challenged engineer driving my car to and back from its service yesterday. [Pause] So where did this day escape to? It's already nearly time for an evening meal. Incredible.
If you read this...
... young Michelle down in NZ, I must say I think I did quite well with "Jack Reacher", if lasting nearly 30 minutes is doing "quite well". I just can't take the Cruiser seriously and, by the way, where did they find all those actresses shorter than him? The film of his I retain my warmest memory of remains Paul Brickman's 1983 "Risky Business" — and that was largely for a combination of the Tangerine Dream soundtrack music and Rebecca De Mornay. Bite me.
The "local" has worn off, and I feel confident my next cuppa will remain undribbled. [Pause] My late night listening — one of a treasured stash of "Late Junction" programmes with Fiona Talkington (this particular one being from 18th June) has just featured Aidan O'Rourke's TAT-1 — following which, Fiona has just told me something I really should have known already. In 1956, TAT-1 was the transatlantic telephone number #1 of the cable laid between Oban (which I visited in August 1971) and what John Wyndham named Newf3 in his wonderful 1955 novel "The Chrysalids".
And now I belatedly further learn, via Paul Kantner's "Lyrica", that Jefferson Airplane's "Crown of Creation" takes both title and lyrics (with Wyndham's permission) from the same novel.