From a recent comment over at Neil Gaiman's blog, I invite you to play Free Rice. I've somehow made it through "spillikin" and "ilex" but the pressure is getting too much and I plan to stop. Any minute now. Just one more word. ... ... ...
And "depone" has been my undoing. It doesn't mean "unveil." Damn my assumptions!
I came home from work; we decompressed; we decided not to go to the pie social in the clubhouse (same as last year); we made a brisk run up to Red Rock for 2-fer buffet, and I can highly recommend the pear mousse cake. Also the scalloped potatoes. Extra creamy on both counts.
I then managed to stay up another 30 minutes before conking out around 6:45, a library copy of Realityland thudding to the floor.
I thought Mike fell asleep with me, but then I remember him coming to bed in the middle of the night. "Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's," he said. "Oh no," I replied, "but shhhhhhhh - I have to SLEEP."
My insensitivity was worth it, and I slept until 4 am. Now it's 5 and I'm well rested and ready to bring my A-game to school. Unfortunately, today is one of those unruly catchup days where people will waste a lot of time talking instead of using the extra time to get their academic houses in better order.
(Mike just came out, rough from bed, squinting against the light. We just stared at each other. Me: "You can still sleep. You have another hour." Him: "I thought you just came in and woke me. I guess it was a dream." And now he's back to bed.)
Anyway, terrible about Terry. Intriguing, though, in light of my mom. He discovered in August that he has a rare form of early Alzheimer's, and that it caused a phantom stroke earlier.
What is a phantom stroke? We thought my mom was having strokes, but then apparently she wasn't, but then she did end up with Alzheimer's in her early fifties, but even the current neurologist (so much better than the previous neurologist, omg) says her case is weird and he's not completely convinced it's "classic Alz." (Then there was the day when we all latched on to the hope that it was a folic acid deficiency gone terribly, terribly wrong.) We'll find out more, or we won't, after her appointment today.
In any case, there is too much Alzheimer's in the world. But we knew that. Coincidentally, I just picked up Pratchett's latest a couple of days ago. I always want to give him another shot, but the last three or four times I tried that, the books just stayed in a pile, waiting to accumulate library late fees. It's still puzzling, the way I loved Good Omens but can never quite embrace Pratchett or Gaiman's solo work with such adoration. (Well, it's easy to admire anything those two write, but not as easy to lose myself in the race to read the next page, if that makes sense.)
And Snorre just submitted to a great amount of petting and pecking without a single bite. What is the world coming to?
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