Tuesday, March 13, 2012

forward.

I was sleeping in my own bed (it doesn't feel like my bed) and managed to get blood, sweat, AND tears on the pillowcase. Pretty gross. I bought a nasal spray for the sinus pain I've been feeling off and on for days now. I'm working on the combination of blankets that will keep me warm but not overheat me the minute the sun comes over the mountains in the distance.
As for the tears, I'm working on it.


This quote got me today, thinking about my past and letting go and keeping up friendships:
“You wake up one morning, those years are gone. There’s a comfort in this fact perhaps. I want to think that there must be comfort in all facts we can’t alter. ”
― Joyce Carol Oates, I Am No One You Know
Now that I think about it, I haven't read anything by Joyce Carol Oates, nothing that I can remember.


I'm currently reading The Devil's Flu by Pete Davies, about influenza and progress in the field. This came out just after the H5N1 virus was scaring the crap out of all of us, but it's a little dated. Still, it's a good read, it feels like a novel sometimes, and it makes me want to look up some things to see how they have progressed since the book was published. Pete Davies himself kind of annoys me at times. At first, his physical descriptions of the people he met helped to keep them apart and make them a little more human, not just a name. He meets a lot of people, too- but I often lose track of who was who and who they were with. I also start to wonder how Pete Davies would craft a short description for himself. They don't feel biased, but as if he's trying to bias you as the reader- the wiry doctor, the defensive wife, the young woman full of energy and determination who ultimately does not succeed. He feels kind of pompous in some areas, such as when he's observing an exhumation in Norway. He glosses over the fact that he's part of the media when he talks about the reporters hungry for stories. He doesn't mention that he's a self-serving reporter looking for information not to bring to the world, but to write a book that he, singularly, will profit from.


I just finished Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam, which was entirely a novel but centered around a handful of people as they went through medical school and became doctors. I finished it in a day; the story really got me and it was interesting to tell it in sections focusing on different characters- even in different narrative modes (grammatical person). I was about to write that it was a bit like a hospital drama, so if you like watching ER or Grey's Anatomy you'll probably like this soap opera set in an intelligent but demanding field. Then I found out that it actually was made in to a TV serial in Canada. Well done! I'd watch it.



In Big News, I finally got a full out, super official, holographic fantastic supermagic, systematic, hydromatic:
driver's license! I'm a full Nevadan. Or Nevadian. Or I will be when I get a job? Anyways, I actually only have a piece of paper and a hole punched learner's permit, and will get my card in the mail.
I thought I could transfer my PA learner's permit, but that didn't work. Since I was already there, my mother told me to take the learner's knowledge test if I could. I got a manual, read it while I was in line (I couldn't find it online, though I have found it since- NV's website just isn't as easy as PA's , I guess), and passed the test on my first go. It has fifty questions! Some are pretty obvious though. I remember Maryland's being really tricky.

My mother's friend, Na Bo (Na is a title, like Mr or San- his name is Bo, but he has a super long last name so it evens out), helped to teach me and I used his car for the test. He can be kind of preachy but ultimately I was grateful for the help. He also said that out of all the people he's taught, here and in California, it's been probably a hundred or more people and I'm the first one to pass on the first try.
Well, that might be saying more about him than me...

Anyways, I guess I can put this in to the "growing up" file, though I don't think getting a license, or a car, makes you any more of an "adult" than graduating college or getting hired. Sticking to a job, maybe, because that shows you're trustworthy and useful. College shows that you committed to something, studied, saw it through, excelled. A car means you committed to a short test and a drive. 

Well, as I said, I'm working on it.

1 comment:

  1. 1. Those books sound super interesting, I wanna read more now!
    2. Good insight as to what it means to grow up, but don't forget you can still act like a kid!

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