Category: Life

What do Steve Young and I have in common?

Today, I attended the general CTRE session in the morning — all of the speakers were excellent. We had one talk from Bernard Buigues on the
raising of the mammoth, and another from Jane Lapotaire (a renowned Shakespearean actress and President, The Friends of Shakespeare’s Globe) and Professor Andrew Gurr on Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre — both talks got standing ovations, which really impressed me; IBM audiences are not usually so moved.

Then Diane and I had lunch and she headed out to take a Montréal city tour, while Jeffrey and I went ice skating. All went swimmingly for a while, then something happened (I don’t know exactly what and probably never will, because whatever it was caused a small amount of retrograde amnesia), and the next thing I knew, I was on a bench with two people trying to help me decide if I wanted to take a taxi or an ambulance to the hospital. And I didn’t remember having being out cold on the ice for ten minutes, either.

The rest of the evening was spent at the hospital, waiting for my X-rays and CT scan to be read. To make a long story short, everything appears to be well, but I sure looked awful, and neither my shirt nor my glasses will ever be the same (actually, my shirt will never come home). And I missed the grand finale of CTRE, the circus.

So to answer the question: both of us have suffered concussions within the past year. And apparently neither of us is playing in the NFL this year, either.

Tomorrow, it’s back home, and Friday, it’s work. After stopping at the optician, that is….

Memorial Day Weekend

Saturday, Jeffrey went to a friend’s birthday party, while Diane and I saw “Having Our Say” at San Jose Rep. The play was excellent — the audience gave the cast a standing ovation, the first one I’d seen at the Rep for several years, and I thought it was well-deserved.

Sunday, I started the day with a trip to the Y to work out for the first time since going to Amsterdam (and boy, do I need it!), then we puttered around the house — I tried to replace the filter cartridges for the kitchen sink and failed (somehow, I screwed the sumps on more tightly than I can manage to unscrew them). I’m going to try again today — this should not be beyond my capabilities. After that, Diane went to the Y and Jeffrey and I went to the video store, where we bought a fine motion picture, Eegah. But by the time we got home, it was too late to watch it.

This morning, Jeffrey woke up early and watched Eegah (twice — once with the bots and once without). While he was watching for the second time, I installed the USB driver and TWAIN support for my camera so I could upload pictures to my underdesk machine instead of always having to use the laptop. And now we’re going to go do the Los Gatos year-round volksmarch and have lunch en route.

Well, I was close. We did the volksmarch (here are before and after photos as proof (you can tell that Diane is more attuned to long walks than Jeffrey is)), but we noshed instead of eating actual meals. Oh, well. And we passed an typical Los Gatos parking lot, full of Ferraris (we don’t own one) on the way.

Then we came home and puttered for a bit; eventually, some friends came over (bearing a USB hub, no less!) and we had dinner. They also helped unscrew the filter housing, and I was able to put it back together correctly this time, so we have filtered water again.

And after they left, we watched the first half-hour of Spaceballs, which is not in the best of taste, but is very funny (just what I expect from Mel Brooks). I hope Jeffrey doesn’t have too much homework tomorrow so we can finish the movie before it gets late fees.

It’s nice being in California in the spring!

Tomorrow, it’s back to the regular grind for a couple of days.