... an hour after my last post, I was in the ER for chest pains.

An overnight stay, lots of bloodwork, and a treadmill exam, and the cardiologist gave me a clean bill of health, at least as far as the ticker is concerned.

So it's all good, more or less; I just wish I'd held off before dropping a fairly hefty chunk of change on closing out that student loan, because now: MEDICAL BILLS.

Yay!

---

And so, another year ends, and Your Obedient Serpent will be more than happy to be shed of this one. I bid 2010 adieu with two upraised middle fingers and a shout of defiance.

It's time to face forward.

I've mentioned that sometimes, the radio talks to me, that the station I most often tune to has a tendency to play certain songs over and over again, and sometimes, the songs that cycle into that repetitious rotation are ones that directly address my moods and circumstances.

Back in November, as I was preparing to move a lifetime of belongings out of quelonzia's garage, this one played nearly every day.

I was going to post it tomorrow, but it played again, just minutes ago.

This, then, is my New Year: No Resolutions, Just Resolve.

I've got a world and a life and a future in front of me.

And it's mine.

---

---

( I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams ... )

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Happy New Year, one and all!

---

From The Rachel Maddow Show, a few nights back:

Right now, we have a catastrophic uncontrolled petroleum gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, and another spill up in Alaskan waters.

Who needs new footage? We can just rerun reports from 1979, when almost exactly the same thing was going on.



To recap (no pun intended):

• A blowout on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
  
• A rig run by the company that eventually became Transocean.
  
• Exactly the same techniques used to stem the flow
  
• In exactly the same order
  
• With exactly the same results:
  
  • BUPKIS.
  
  
• After months and months of gushing oil, matters were only alleviated when relief wells were drilled.
  
• Why didn't they just go for the relief wells first this time?
  
• Have "top hats" and "top kills" ever worked?*

The only difference is that in '79, the well was 200 feet down; now, it's over five thousand.

My father used to have a saying about four wheel drive vehicles: "They won't keep you from getting stuck. They just let you get some place even farther from help when you get stuck."

The oil companies keep talking about how their technology has imnproved—but it's just let them get even farther from any solutions. If When shit hits the fan, they don't actually have any new solutions; they're just trying the same things that didn't work before.

"But that trick never works!"

---

*Yes, that is a request for specific instances, if anyone out there feels like dredging them up. Like Wikipedia, however, I want citations.

---

I have today off, so I decided to go for a walk. My usual walking route, since moving here, has been along Coyote Creek Trail.

It's a nice, warm, sunny day, and we've been getting plenty of rain. The trail was lined with tall stands of tasseled grass on one side, and bright, colorful wildflowers on the other.

Now, Your Obedient Serpent has had allergies all his life. That's four-plus decades, folks.

Usually, though, the cause and effect are subtle, even if the symptoms are anything but. If I get the sniffles or sneezes or random patches of irritated skin, if I get the Sinus Attacks of DOOM, there's usually a delay between exposure and symptom, and there's usually some difficulty trying to pin down the trigger.

Not this time, boy!

As soon as I passed the first patch of grass, I sniffled and coughed.

By the time I realized that this was hitting now now now, I was at a point in the trail loop where turning around would have taken me just as long to get home as plugging on. By this point, I was sniffling, sneezing, coughing, my eyes were watering, and I was even having some trouble breathing.

And as soon as I got out of that chunk of the trail, I instantly cleared up. Oh, I was still a little sniffly, I still had to cough a few times, but the worst of it was gone.

Real allergies don't work like that! Cartoon allergies work like that!

I've had reactions to obvious, visible irritants, like smoke, but to the naked eye, that Allergy Hellstorm was completely invisible. Not even a bit of haze. I've never experience anything like that before—not even yesterday, walking along the exact same part of the trail.

I'd say it was like getting tear gassed, but tear gas doesn't affect me.

---

According to my manual (a used car that came with the original manual! Amazing!), the "Service Engine Soon" light is indeed the "Check Engine" light.

Modifications made to the engine, transaxle, exhaust or fuel system of your vehicle, or the replacement of the original tires with other than those of the same Tire Performance criteria (TPC) can affect your vehicle's emission controls and may cause the "Service Engine Soon" light to come on.

Obviously, I just changed a tire -- it's the same kind as the other three, but there are differences in wear patterns, and I don't know if they checked and filled the pressure in the old ones, so there might be enough difference there to freak the chip out.

Rewiring the fuel pump might also count as "modifications to the fuel system".

halfelf revealed that AutoZone stores will check the OBD II chip for free, so, once I grab a shower, I'll head out to the closest one.

[[Edit: Crap. No, they don't, anymore—at least not in California. Argh.]]

I didn't mention the odd not-quite-metallic smell that I noticed when I got out of the car last night; thoughtsdriftby confirmed it. If it was coming from my car, then it might still be a bit more complicated than New Tires.

Oy.

---

When I described last night's adventure to my mother, on the phone, she said, "You had a blowout at 70 miles an hour in the fast lane, and you got over to the shoulder without you or anyone else getting hurt. 'Blowout at 70 miles an hour' usually winds up on the news. You are an awesome driver."

I've got to give some credit to my Saturn station wagon, which is lower-slung and has much better suspension than the Aspire did. Things might not have gone so well if I were still driving the Grape.

That aside, though, I have to say...

...yeah, I am pretty awesome.

---

Today, I went up to help my sister in the last stages of her move from Berkeley to Vallejo.

Although I've driven to the house in Berkeley several times before, this time, I made the error I've told myself not to make every time before, got in the wrong lane, and wound up heading toward the Bay Bridge with no way to abort. I had to pay the toll and turn around on Treasure Island.

The move itself went off with no hitch, though I did miss ANOTHER turn in Vallejo, and wound up having to do a bit of maneuvering to find Big Sister's new house.

Unpacking went smoothly, with half a dozen people helping. By the time we finished the traditional Moving Day feast of pizza, it was after 9, and time for me to head hom.

I took 680, which was disconcerting. Unlike 880, which passes through that long strip of dense habitation along the coast of the Bay, 680 passes through...nothingness. Mile after mile of blackness, punctuated only occasionally by a community or two, full of exit signs I didn't recognize.

And then, I ran over something. No idea what. My car veered a little, but I steadied it.

And then, there was a rhythmic noise from the back.

Mental activity over the next minute or so:
"Crap, did I knock something loose when I hit that bump?"
"It's just road noise."
"What if it's not? Maybe we should pull over and see."
"It's late, we're tired, and we have no idea where we are."
"Hey, Mission! We know where that is!"
*signal for a lane change, accelerate to pass van that keeps trying to pace me*
[FWUMP]
"OH CRAP WHAT WAS THAT?"
*smack hazard light, start lane change*
[[THOOMPslamSKREEEEEEEEE]]
"This is very bad."
*absolutecalmfocusedonlyongettingtoshoulder*

...and then, after the car was more-or-less safely on the shoulder, and after checking the wheel (shreds of rubber clinging to the rim), and getting back in on the passenger side, and picking up the cell phone to call quelonzia to see if our AAA was still active...

...THEN, I lapsed into hysterics, on the phone with Quel. She calmly reminded me that I had a card in my wallet with AAA's number. I called them, and they had a truck out in about 30-45 minutes.

The AAA guy replaced my rim with my emergency donut, and then noticed that the tire had damaged a wiring harness when it blew. So, we checked the lights: Hazards worked, obviously; tail lights worked; brake lights worked; turn signals...didn't.

"Try starting the car."
[[Car turns over but refuses to keep running. Lather, rinse, repeat.]]
"Well, THAT'S interesting."

Current hypothesis: the wiring harness also leads to the fuel pump.

The car is currently in a shop in Milpitas. The tow truck dropped me off at the Denny's on Mission; Quelonzia picked me up and dropped me off at home (thank you, Precious!).

I got home around midnight.


I have now decompressed sufficiently to sleep.

I await phone calls on the morrow.

---

The other day, I came home to find a note on the door from the local utility company, warning me that on Thursday, 18 Feb 2010, there would be two scheduled power outages for foir maintenance: one from 9:00-9:30 AM, and another from 2:30-3:00 PM.

On waking up this morning, I started to turn on the computer, and realized that it was 8:30. I decided, instead, to leave it turned off, and just curl up with a book until the first outage had come and gone.

At 2:20, having read the whole day without interruption, I went off to an appointment. When I returned at 4:40, all the clocks were still functioning happily, with nary a blink to be seen.

Neither scheduled outage occured as scheduled.

Needless to say, there was Stuff I Could Have Been Doing Today -- not just on the computer; I needed to get laundry done, as well.

I refuse to acknowledge that this is a subversion of my Lenten refutation of procrastination, however. The book in question is Neal Stephenson's Anathem, a 900-page doorstopper that I've renewed twice, but heretofore had only read about 140 pages. I'm now on p. 422 -- so I did something I've been putting off for more than six weeks, even if it wasn't what I'd planned.

---

After sleeping in far too late yesterday, I went to bed earlyish last night, determined to roll out of bed at a decent hour, hop in the shower, and fire up the computer for the usual rounds of email and job boards.

I did indeed wake up around 7-ish, looked at the clock -- and, rather than blurry LED numerals, saw nothing. The power was out.

No Net. No TV. No lights in the bathroom.

I wound up going back to bed until 8:45, then taking a shower by candlelight.

(I do so love bathrooms in candlelight.)

Needless to say, the power came back five minutes after I got out of the shower.

It was only a few minutes ago that I realized that it was the Second of February, and that I had gotten up, seen my shadow, and gone back into my hole.

Looks like six more weeks of winter, from here.

---

More water-themed dreams last night; how much of them were due to the sound of rain outside, I can't tell. Not the usual crystal-clear water, this time; in this one, the nearby creek actually ran through the backyard. The usual gang of Generic Dream Friends and I were looking it over. The water was higher than usual; I noticed that conditions were exactly right for a flash flood, and suggested that we should get back over the creek and into the house. Of course, everyone blew me off, right up until the big muddy rush of water hit.

For some reason, I was wearing robes of some sort, as was at least one of the others.

---

Last night was gaming night, and, as a result, I caffeinated for the first time in a week and a half. As a result, I didn't get to bed until after 01:30, and when sleep finally came, all manner of vivid and surreal dreams occurred (with recurring water symbolism, for the record).

The dream that left a real impression on me, however, happened between "Well, I guess I'm awake now" 07:15 and "Wait, how did it get to be" 08:30, a time more associated with hypnopompic states than REM sleep.

Like the dream of the Dolphin in the Library, I was watching this one unfold from a third-person vantage. The protagonist in this case was a female lion-like creature, not anthropomorphic in the humanoid sense, but definitely possessing language, culture, and some degree of tool use. She was pregnant, and not entirely "with it"; in retrospect, there was a hint that those caring for her had her drugged. They her kept giving her puzzles to solve, and treating her solutions as oracles for the fate of her unborn offspring.

The most distinctive feature was an entity that looked like a cave painting of something a gaunt coyote, visible only to the dream's protagonist -- and not entirely visible, at that. It seemed more a fleeting shadow of an entity that whispered in the protagonist's ear, giving different interpretations to those oracles, or dismissing them entirely. Despite its sinister appearance and bearing, there was a suggestion that it was actually more benign and well-disposed toward the protagonist than the tangible and superficially-benevolent people caring for her.

It called itself "Nine-Moons-Winter"; the dream's protagonist thought of it as "the Winterthin Thing". Either name was an obvious reference to its gaunt appearance: as gaunt as something that had survived a winter that lasted nine moons.

The Winterthin Thing was more visible than the "real", tangible creatures, as if I were observing the action from the Dreamtime -- which I was, I suppose. There was definitely some Ursula Vernon influence here, visuals of cave paintings twining around and interacting with vaguely-seen but definitely "real" creatures, vivid black charcoals over soft gray pencils; the captions were even in the same font ursulav uses for Digger.

(Yes, there were captions. The "format" of the dream was somewhere between a comic and a movie. And yes, I can often read very clearly in dreams, contrary to popular lore that says you can't.)

It was a very vivid dream, one that stayed with me on awakening and fairly well demanded that I record it here.

... did something just introduce itself?

---

Two days before the con, I have the sniffles, and it's clear that this isn't just an allergy attack.

Bed rest. Fluids. OTC medicine. I should be okay by the weekend.

---

Yet Another Power Failure Knocks Out The Large Hadron Collider!

This makes me a little nervous; I'd joked earlier that the last few LHC glitches coincided with the escalating assaults on my late, lamented Grape.

I have a NEW car now, dagnabbit!

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