Category: Troy and Montreal, 2000

My 25th RPI Reunion and a trip to IBM’s Corporate Technical Recognition Event in Montreal

Back home again

Our flights yesterday were uneventful, though crowded; for some reason, our travel agent had given us separate reservations and hadn’t linked them, and so we were scattered throughout the plane on our final leg. Jeffrey did not appreciate this (nor did we!), but once we found a person who had a middle seat next to one of us, we were able to make a deal. In the end, Jeffrey and Diane sat together just in front of the exit row, while I was at the back of the plane (but no one was in the seat next to me). The flight attendants were impressed by my eye, so I gave them a pointer to my home page!

After my experience in Montréal, I decided it was best to take it easy today, so I started the day at home with three consecutive phone calls taking up two hours. Then I finally tore myself away and visited the optician, who reshaped my glasses — though later on, I realized that they weren’t quite right and went back to let her wield her pliers some more; they’re much better now, and I should be able to get by until my regular appointment in July, when I expect to get a prescription for bifocals (*sigh*).

My eye continues to progress through the spectrum — it looked like this yesterday evening after we got home and now it looks like this.

Time for dinner, then to Shir Hadash for services. Shabbat Shalom!

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….