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small green square A couple complaints:

  • Got this funny ache just below my spinal column, ie my butt hurts, just like somebody kicked my ass! Yet I've had no trauma to that area recently. <1>
  • My office-mate is getting on my nerves - he's making more noises and rhetorical comments while working. This was okay in our old space, where we had over twenty feet between us, but now that this distance has been reduced to six feet, I can hear him. And I'd rather not. Also he's having troubles with his live-in girlfriend, highlights of which he's compelled to share each morning - I'd rather not hear those, either.
And a sigh of relief - the pulmonologist's office called, he's adding another inhaler-drug (Serevent) to my asthma-combat regimen, but my chest X-ray is normal in all aspects.

small red square Had a dream involving a very specific object - a fat rubber band from Peets. By fat I mean extra wide, like over an inch (in its dormant state) and inked onto it is "Peets" and some of their trademark primitive imagery, like they print on their paper coffee cups. Once they had a bowl of these rubber bands on the counter and I took one and it's been floating around my space being useful ever since. (Its days are numbered, however - examining it just now I notice a small, longitudinal slit - eventually the cut will grow.) Anyway, in my dream I remember handing this jumbo rubber band to somebody. That is all.

small yellow square Y2K Spotlight

Joel Achebbach, Washington Post columnist and author of Why Things Are, holds forth about Y2K in a front-page article in that paper. He repeats this factoid, a bit of reassuring happy news I've heard before which doesn't quite makes sense to me:
"The Federal Reserve has already taken steps to put an extra $50 billion into the banking system in anticipation of people withdrawing cash from their accounts."
Remember George Bailey explaining why he can't refund everybody's money in "It's A Wonderful Life"? When your bank pays out what cash they have on hand, what isn't invested elsewhere; and their store of cash is then exhausted, so what if the Treasury is printing extra money? <2> Unless this "putting into" of $50 billion is going to be gifts to the banks. (Hah!) When I consider any post-whatever scenario that's major disruption, I hear O's petulant exclamation of "It doesn't sound like fun!" (He said this as I extrapolated the details of a possibly bleak future once.) Personally I'm overwhelmed and in denial - an assessment/reaction of Y2K prep I read somewhere was something to the effect of "if you didn't start preparing for this thing during the Reagan administration then you're already screwed."

 
Glossary:
Y2K - Year 2 Kilo
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<1> Did on Memorial Day weekend in 1974, however. Just over the hill from the abandoned quarry whereout we hung, a rope dangled from a tall tree over a creek, the ground sloping away beneath it, down to water level. This rope was used strictly for swinging - this was no swimming hole, rather a shallow babbling brook with big pools and many large rocks. The rope was slippery (sweaty people had been handling it all day, thanks for telling me...) no matter what excuse, I did not arc out, and then back but instead sailed tangentially off the end of the rope, parallel to the slope and landing in knee-deep water. Although I didn't hit any of the rocks, I think my butt did impact one, underwater (right where it hurts now). I just sat there, immersed & helpless until T located my glasses in the waters nearby. It hurt afterwards, but not much nor for long - I was just twenty years old, when one needs only minimal rebound time from that sort of thing. Perhaps this current pain is a result of that ancient injury?
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<2> Although isn't this what inflation's all about, Mr. Greenspan?
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