Wednesday, March 25, 2009

On The Nature Of Perceiving Time

I know it's not an original thought, but I was reflecting last night while I lay awake in bed on the nature of our perception of the passage of time. How unfortunate it is that when things are great, or at least status quo, time evaporates before you know it. When things are lousy, each moment is torture and seems to last forever, yet you can look back and not know where the last week went. Why can't the moments of flow seem to last forever, too?

I guess we're evolutionarily wired to be very aware of what's going on when we're under stress. If there's a tiger in the bushes, you don't want to be sniffing at the roses and daydreaming. Perhaps the combination of seeing evidence of a loved one's mortality and knowing you are also mortal is what keys the stress that causes time to stretch out. Even though there's no one to fight and nowhere to take flight, you get wound up when confronted by incontrovertible evidence of the inevitable.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Not Such Good News

Dad's been having some complications. The exact nature of the complications is not really relevant to the story. I'm more worried about him getting tangled up in the Medical/Industrial Complex. It seems like no matter how good of a medical care facility you go to, there's always the threat of this tipping point where the unintended consequences of the treatments you receive start to snowball and cause more problems than the number of problems that get solved.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he hasn't crossed such a line, but I'm getting the same nervous tic in the pit of my stomach that I sometimes get about the Netflix website when I see something hinky on one on the graphs or reports. Any given signal is innocuous all by itself, but everything goes up in flames before you know it.

I guess I should keep the travel websites handy.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

This made me laugh

Heard about a fabulous party idea via LinkedIn. A Depression 2.0 party. What can I say? It made me laugh.

As I said on the invitation's comments:
That is *freaking* hilarious. Or, it would be if current economic conditions weren't so sad. Talk about making lemonade from life's lemons, though. Speaking of which, have a Lemon Drop for me.