Weekend Thus Far
May. 3rd, 2008 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterSo here I am in the medical study center, typing this entry in the optimistic hope that my Internet connection will still be up when I finish writing it.
Friday evening I checked into the medical study clinic, and found that this weekend was the weekend I would be blessed with an IV shunt poked into my arm. I wasn't thrilled about that, though I had known there was a 1 out of 1 chance this would be my weekend (just as last week it was 1 out of 3, and it would have been certain next week if not this week).
Happily, I found it was not quite as bad as I had expected. The needle was used only for poking it in, and was retracted afterward, leaving a flexible tube behind it. And I only had to have it in for about 12 hours, and 7 of those were sleeping. I was somewhat sore in the hand this morning, but the soreness dissipated altogether within a couple of hours after the shunt was pulled out.
As with the prior two weeks, I was restricted to sitting in one place for four hours (with the exception of a bathroom break), around a U-shaped table formation along which phlebotomists circled, drawing blood samples to a strict timer. I passed the time in reading The Android's Dream by John Scalzi, and later finished it up this evening while the Internet was out. (The Internet here in the study clinic has been markedly erratic over the last few weekends. I think they need to replace their router, but I have low hopes of getting that done in the bureaucratic mess that the clinic is.)
After lunch, I continued what I had started the night before—going through the extras on the Avatar: The Last Airbender boxed sets I received the other day. These consisted of some short video documentary segments on styles of kung-fu, voice acting, and so on, and some longer segments interviewing the Korean animators in great detail (with subtitles), some full-length episode animatics (which I largely skipped), and commentary tracks. A whole bunch of commentary tracks, in fact. I could wish there were more, but they covered some of the more important episodes. And it was fun to see them again in DVD quality.
In the afternoon, when a lot of people were busily sleeping off being woken up early this morning, I commandeered one of the two high-def TVs and, after an abortive experiment showing Dragons Forever (in which I found that there was no way to make the TV show 4:3 movies in their proper aspect ratio or zoomed in), I put in the Jackie Chan movies Gorgeous and Drunken Master. Actually managed to get a few people watching with me by the time Drunken Master finished.
Then I went back to more Avatar commentary tracks.
I took a shower about an hour ago, and came back to find the Internet back up for long enough to write this. They've just served the evening snack (peanut butter and crackers and milk). As soon as I post this (assuming the Internet is still up), I'll probably brush my teeth, then head into the bunkroom and try to doze for an hour or so until they want to take the last blood sample of the evening.
I've about used up all the Avatar extra content I have, sigh. I'm going to have to try to find something else to do tomorrow—especially if the Internet keeps up its intermittent behavior. Oh well, at least I can twitter what I'm doing if I can't get online any other way.
(And just as I get ready to post this, poof! the net goes down again. Grrr.)
Friday evening I checked into the medical study clinic, and found that this weekend was the weekend I would be blessed with an IV shunt poked into my arm. I wasn't thrilled about that, though I had known there was a 1 out of 1 chance this would be my weekend (just as last week it was 1 out of 3, and it would have been certain next week if not this week).
Happily, I found it was not quite as bad as I had expected. The needle was used only for poking it in, and was retracted afterward, leaving a flexible tube behind it. And I only had to have it in for about 12 hours, and 7 of those were sleeping. I was somewhat sore in the hand this morning, but the soreness dissipated altogether within a couple of hours after the shunt was pulled out.
As with the prior two weeks, I was restricted to sitting in one place for four hours (with the exception of a bathroom break), around a U-shaped table formation along which phlebotomists circled, drawing blood samples to a strict timer. I passed the time in reading The Android's Dream by John Scalzi, and later finished it up this evening while the Internet was out. (The Internet here in the study clinic has been markedly erratic over the last few weekends. I think they need to replace their router, but I have low hopes of getting that done in the bureaucratic mess that the clinic is.)
After lunch, I continued what I had started the night before—going through the extras on the Avatar: The Last Airbender boxed sets I received the other day. These consisted of some short video documentary segments on styles of kung-fu, voice acting, and so on, and some longer segments interviewing the Korean animators in great detail (with subtitles), some full-length episode animatics (which I largely skipped), and commentary tracks. A whole bunch of commentary tracks, in fact. I could wish there were more, but they covered some of the more important episodes. And it was fun to see them again in DVD quality.
In the afternoon, when a lot of people were busily sleeping off being woken up early this morning, I commandeered one of the two high-def TVs and, after an abortive experiment showing Dragons Forever (in which I found that there was no way to make the TV show 4:3 movies in their proper aspect ratio or zoomed in), I put in the Jackie Chan movies Gorgeous and Drunken Master. Actually managed to get a few people watching with me by the time Drunken Master finished.
Then I went back to more Avatar commentary tracks.
I took a shower about an hour ago, and came back to find the Internet back up for long enough to write this. They've just served the evening snack (peanut butter and crackers and milk). As soon as I post this (assuming the Internet is still up), I'll probably brush my teeth, then head into the bunkroom and try to doze for an hour or so until they want to take the last blood sample of the evening.
I've about used up all the Avatar extra content I have, sigh. I'm going to have to try to find something else to do tomorrow—especially if the Internet keeps up its intermittent behavior. Oh well, at least I can twitter what I'm doing if I can't get online any other way.
(And just as I get ready to post this, poof! the net goes down again. Grrr.)
