Feeling...short!

Woke up this morning early to the sound of rain and thunder. By the time I'd gotten ready to leave for work (for the last time this trip), the front yard was an inch or so deep in water. A complete lack of foresight on my part resulted in my having to trudge a couple-three hundred yards from the parking lot to the MCC in a light, but steady rain.

Dinner last night was at the "Central Texas BBQ," for about the third night in a row. Of all the places I've been to over the past few weeks (and looking back, to previous visits), this place has served consistently good, tasty, hot food. The prices are okay, too.

A couple of nights ago, Lee ordered the stuffed baked potato and the spud that was served to her had to be one of the largest Idaho potatoes I've ever seen. I think it took some effort on her part to finish the thing.

By the time we'd gone to eat yesterday, I'd had time to imbibe two bottles of Grolsch beer, and so when the discussion turned to going to see AotC last night, I declined. Beer, after all, is not bought, but only rented, and for a short time, at that.

Instead, we watched some anime that I'd not seen before (something about an island named Lodoss, if memory serves), but I could not stomach more than half the DVD before deciding my time could be better spent reading some Linux magazines.

Two nights ago, upon returning the movies I've written about earlier, Lee and I rented something called Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, by the same crew that did Ghost in the Shell (which I enjoyed) and Akira (which I didn't enjoy as much as GitS, but is considered a classic).

Technically, Jin-Roh is very impressive. The animation is first class, with great attention paid to detail. Like many examples of the genre, the violence is graphic.

It was the story that I didn't understand very well, or to be more exact: the motivation of the young lady who suicides at the start of the film and that of the young lady who allows herself to be murdered in cold blood at the end of the film elude me. The elusiveness may have a cultural basis, or it could just be that I'm one thick lummox.

* * *I'm 99% sure that Lee will not go back to Colorado with me; she seems intent on staying in Pearland.

Based on that, and assuming that the rain (which appears to still be falling, if the umbrellas of the oncoming OpsPlan shift aren't lying) stops by the time I get out of here, I plan to stage the stuff I'm taking home tonight. Then tomorrow, I'll get the oil changed and the tires checked (front left went soft on me a couple of days ago), and try to be on the road by mid-morning.

* * *All radiograms received today are done and posted. With any luck, that'll be it for the day. In the meantime, I've got some light file housekeeping to do.

Cheers...

A triggered, triggered memory...

Was just downstairs, talking to the air-to-ground interpreters, when Leonid S. mentioned something about one of the Italian engineers in town to work on MPLM issues. (The MPLM is the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, which is basically a shipping container that's launched in the Shuttle's payload bay and then removed and docked to the ISS for transfer of its cargo.)

That triggered a recollection of something strange that happened to me last night, as I was trying to fall asleep.

Shortly after turning off the light and lying down, I began to doze off. Suddenly, I snapped awake and said, very distinctly, "Avanti, Bartolomeo!" As if I were issuing an order.

I think what I said was "Let's go, Bartholomew" in Italian.

But I don't speak Italian (though I'm sure I've heard the word 'avanti').

In any event, I know no Bartholomews (period, end of story on that one).

That got me to thinking - I suppose trying to tie in 'Bartholomew' to something - and the end of my train of thought led me to Edgar Allan Poe's story The Cask of Amontillado. I was pretty certain there were no Bartholomews in it, yet ended up trying to remember a name from that story, but couldn't wrap my mind around it.

PUSH

Sometimes, when I'm trying to remember something, I can often identify certain structural aspects of what it is I am trying to remember, without actually remembering what I need.

For example, I might remember that someone's last name starts with "D" and is two syllables long. Or that a word I want to remember is three syllables long, with the stress on the second syllable.

Last night, the name I initially came up with while thinking of the Poe story was that of one of the flight directors at JSC - a certain Mr. Montalbano - but I knew it wasn't the right name.

PUSH

In the course of my life, I've come to realize that sometimes the best way to achieve a goal is to stop trying to achieve it.

Back in college, in senior year, I became interested in stage magic. Among the subjects I studied (but never attempted to practice) was hypnotism, which is often a sideline of stage magicians called mentalists.

Frankly, I was pretty skeptical of some of the stories I'd read. A typical scenario would involve a subject who'd been given a suggestion along the lines of: "Here is an ordinary unlocked door. It is shut. When you next attempt to open it you will be unable to do so. As hard as you may try to open it, you will not be able to." I found this idea specifically, and the whole idea of hypnotism in general, to be a bit far-fetched.

Then, one morning some time later, I found myself frozen into inactivity when my alarm clock went off.

I still recall with some incredulity my lying in bed, leaning on my elbow, wanting more than anything in the world to reach over and turn off the alarm clock. It was making an awful racket (which is why it had been chosen for service; its squawk was particularly raucous and annoying). But the more I wanted to turn it off, it seemed, the more frozen in place I felt. The more I wanted to turn it off, the more I couldn't.

I finally was able to turn the alarm off by forcing myself to lie back down and clear my mind of the desire to turn it off now. I concentrated on the texture of the ceiling paint. This disruption of my state allowed me to roll over and turn the alarm off.

I had an opportunity to consciously test this technique once more, albeit in a rather public manner.

As part of my "studies," I and the rest of my class attended a performance of "The Amazing Kresgin" at a local community college. I managed to be selected as a volunteer for the hypnotism portion of Kresgin's program. To make a long story short, he suggested to me that I would forget my name whenever he snapped his fingers.

"Ridiculous!" I thought, when he told me that.

When my turn came at center stage with the performer, he told the audience what it was he'd suggested to me and then turned to me and asked, "What's your name?"

"Alex," I replied, without hesitation. I was primed.

Kresgin snapped his fingers. "What is it?"

My mouth opened, but nothing came out. The audience tittered. My mouth opened and closed, like that of a beached fish. The more my mouth worked, the louder the audience laughed.

All of this took maybe 5 to 7 seconds, but the bottom line was: I could not remember my name!

So I focused my attention on someone in the front row and cleared my mind.

"Alex," I said a moment later.

Snap. "What is it?"

I forgot again, for real. I repeated my little trick, but held off answering for a few seconds (now, I was milking the crowd, albeit cautiosly). When I did say my name again, Kresgin directed his attention to his next subject.

My completely amateur hypothesis is that there are certain mental modes that one can get into where one is so anxious to do something, that the connection between thought and action is not made correctly. In both the case with the alarm clock and my forgetting my name, I was really "wired" emotionally to do something, but for some reason (unknown for the clock, and a suggestion in the second case) the progression between wanting to do x and actually being able to do it never was completed.

Furthermore, the I-really-wanna-do-this aspect of the situations (wanting to stop the alarm and wanting to prove to the audience that I did too remember my name) just made the disconnect worse.

So, I have come to rely on this little trick of clearing my mind and focusing on something else when I reach a certain kind of mental impasse. I have found this to be particularly effective when I'm trying to remember something that's "on the tip of my tongue." More often than not, what it is I'm trying to remember will pop into my mind in seconds, though this is far from a guaranteed technique. Sometimes, it does not work.

POP
POP

So there I was, feeling that the name from the Poe story was something like, but not 'Montalbano'. I cleared my mind, and in a few seconds, I remembered the name:

Fortunato.

This is a departure from my normal mode of remembering the initial letter of the name, but what the hey.

So here I am, running my eyes over the first line of the story and wondering who Bartolomeo might be, and why he reminds me of Poe's story (if he does at all).

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge...

Admit it. It's a marvelous opening line.

Cheers...