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Of Shuttles, and ships, and sealing wax...
Jan. 8th, 2003 08:33 pmOn January 28, 1986, I woke up with something that felt like a fever. I called in sick, made an appointment to see our doctor later in the day, and went back to sleep. A little while later, Galina woke me up and said "something happened to the Shuttle."
I planted myself in front of the television and watched the unwatchable: the Shuttle Challenger blowing up 73 seconds after liftoff, killing everyone aboard. Acting true to form, the media - having nothing much to say, but impelled to say something, anything - kept playing the footage over and over again.
I left for my appointment with the doctor, but was forced to wait to see him. To kill time in the waiting room, I leafed through a copy of National Geographic, which featured photographs from the first submersibles to visit the Titanic on the bottom of the North Atlantic.
Have I ever mentioned my vivid imagination? As I turned the pages, I could easily imagine people in the glossy pictures, blissfully unaware of the tragedy that was about to strike. When the nurse called my name, I put the magazine down and went in to see the doctor. By this point, I was well and truly feverish.
Once home and suitably drugged down, I lay down to sleep and proceeded to dream a most troubling dream.
It was not exactly a nightmare, at least not in the sense that I understand a nightmare. There was no clearly defined sequence of anything, but I felt as if I was aboard the Challenger and the Titanic, blowing up and sinking, all at the same time, over and over again.
It was, to say the least, not a very restful sleep.
Similar kinds of dreams have occurred in the years since. They all occur when I'm sick and they involve concepts that - for better or worse - have either intruded on my consciousness or been the subject of an "abnormal" focus just as I was getting sick. Although I know I've had similar dreams since Challenger exploded, I do not remember them.
I do remember the one I had last night, though. A classic, though not as intense. Again, there was no clearly defined sequence of activity - no "plot," if you will - and this time it had to do with packages, and styrofoam peanuts, and people wanting to send boxes of cash through the mail.
* * * There is apparently something to this, according to a doctor I met while working for NASA in Moscow.
A few years ago - I think it was January 2000 - I was part of a NASA group in Moscow. Our subgroup was visiting the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center when I suddenly started to feel feverish. Upon returning to the "prophy," I managed to stick close to the astronaut leading our group as he hunted down a "flight surgeon," for he, too, was starting to feel bad. (Prophy is short for "prophylactorium," which is the transliterated name of the building allocated to the Americans for office space, dormitory facilities, etc. by the Russians.)
I forget what our respective temperatures were, but mine was 0.2°F higher than the astronaut's (I won! I won!), and we were both feverish. The doctor prescribed various tablets for us both, and cautioned us not to take these red pills unless we were mentally at peace with the world. If something was bothering us, or if we were agitated about something, she said, we'd be better off not taking the red pills.
That, and my memory of Challenger, got my attention real quick. I was fading fast, but in the course of a brief exchange with the doc, it turns out that taking the red pills while bummed about something could result in the kind of dreams I had experienced. In my case, though, I need no red pills.
* * * My investment in translation memory programs paid off yet again today, as I opened an Excel spreadsheet with nearly 900 lines... on the first worksheet. Fatigue plagued me again, today, but I managed to take care of the first 30% of the job in the first hour, and managed to finish nearly 90% of the job by the end of the second hour. (Interestingly enough, the last 4% of the job took 30 minutes!)
There are two other files in the assignment, and if memory serves (it better, as I do not plan to open any more files today), they are each one page long, with a lot of white space. :^) I will do them tomorrow.
* * * A computer-generated voice left a voicemail message on my cell phone's number. It turns out that Dell won't be able to ship my CD and DVD players on time, and they have rescheduled the ship date for the 28th.
Boy, am I glad I talked them into free overnight shipping.
In other computer news, I ordered a BIOS upgrade a couple of days ago. It cost $60 and will allow me to install the 120-MB drive on the machine that formerly lived at the store.
That's about all the news from this end of the world. I must say I feel better today than I felt yesterday, and expect to feel better tomorrow than today, but today was not exactly a picnic. I'm tired. Maybe I'll go read or something and go to sleep.
Cheers...
P.S. In a grand show of solidarity, Sasha had a bad day today, too.
I planted myself in front of the television and watched the unwatchable: the Shuttle Challenger blowing up 73 seconds after liftoff, killing everyone aboard. Acting true to form, the media - having nothing much to say, but impelled to say something, anything - kept playing the footage over and over again.
I left for my appointment with the doctor, but was forced to wait to see him. To kill time in the waiting room, I leafed through a copy of National Geographic, which featured photographs from the first submersibles to visit the Titanic on the bottom of the North Atlantic.
Have I ever mentioned my vivid imagination? As I turned the pages, I could easily imagine people in the glossy pictures, blissfully unaware of the tragedy that was about to strike. When the nurse called my name, I put the magazine down and went in to see the doctor. By this point, I was well and truly feverish.
Once home and suitably drugged down, I lay down to sleep and proceeded to dream a most troubling dream.
It was not exactly a nightmare, at least not in the sense that I understand a nightmare. There was no clearly defined sequence of anything, but I felt as if I was aboard the Challenger and the Titanic, blowing up and sinking, all at the same time, over and over again.
It was, to say the least, not a very restful sleep.
Similar kinds of dreams have occurred in the years since. They all occur when I'm sick and they involve concepts that - for better or worse - have either intruded on my consciousness or been the subject of an "abnormal" focus just as I was getting sick. Although I know I've had similar dreams since Challenger exploded, I do not remember them.
I do remember the one I had last night, though. A classic, though not as intense. Again, there was no clearly defined sequence of activity - no "plot," if you will - and this time it had to do with packages, and styrofoam peanuts, and people wanting to send boxes of cash through the mail.
A few years ago - I think it was January 2000 - I was part of a NASA group in Moscow. Our subgroup was visiting the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center when I suddenly started to feel feverish. Upon returning to the "prophy," I managed to stick close to the astronaut leading our group as he hunted down a "flight surgeon," for he, too, was starting to feel bad. (Prophy is short for "prophylactorium," which is the transliterated name of the building allocated to the Americans for office space, dormitory facilities, etc. by the Russians.)
I forget what our respective temperatures were, but mine was 0.2°F higher than the astronaut's (I won! I won!), and we were both feverish. The doctor prescribed various tablets for us both, and cautioned us not to take these red pills unless we were mentally at peace with the world. If something was bothering us, or if we were agitated about something, she said, we'd be better off not taking the red pills.
That, and my memory of Challenger, got my attention real quick. I was fading fast, but in the course of a brief exchange with the doc, it turns out that taking the red pills while bummed about something could result in the kind of dreams I had experienced. In my case, though, I need no red pills.
There are two other files in the assignment, and if memory serves (it better, as I do not plan to open any more files today), they are each one page long, with a lot of white space. :^) I will do them tomorrow.
Boy, am I glad I talked them into free overnight shipping.
In other computer news, I ordered a BIOS upgrade a couple of days ago. It cost $60 and will allow me to install the 120-MB drive on the machine that formerly lived at the store.
That's about all the news from this end of the world. I must say I feel better today than I felt yesterday, and expect to feel better tomorrow than today, but today was not exactly a picnic. I'm tired. Maybe I'll go read or something and go to sleep.
Cheers...
P.S. In a grand show of solidarity, Sasha had a bad day today, too.
