1. How many songs are there that prominently mention a particular musical instrument, but do not actually use that instrument in the song? Two that come to mind are:

"Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" - has a verse devoted to the didgeridoo, but actually uses a "wobble board" for the odd sound effect.

"Mr. Tambourine Man" - doesn't seem to include a tambourine, at least not when Bob Dylan sang it.

Any others that spring to mind?

And,

2. How many movies that feature a rope bridge, don't end up with the bridge ropes breaking or getting cut before the end? The only one I can think of is the one in "Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail", which just has people hurled off of it.

So yesterday, I was listening to the radio while NPR had a long eulogy about the huge impact of Steve Jobs, including a bit about Apple's kind of secretive efforts to "institutionalize his management style" (which almost sounded like they are trying to simulate him in software).

And then they went immediately to President Obama's efforts to sell his "jobs bill", with frequent statements that "We need to create more Jobs".

And I couldn't help picturing this approach to Jobs Creation: Apple manufacturing swarms of Steve Jobs androids, and creating hundreds of thousands of Jobs to take over management duties at companies all across the US . . .

"We bought an iJobs to manage our company, and our profits increased 30%!"

So here I am in my office, when I happen to notice a small movement on the floor. I look down, and there's a chipmunk. Who notices me looking at him, and then dashes back out the door and down the hall. I think he's currently in the powder compaction lab next door.

Maybe I should bring in our live-catch trap tomorrow. This is no place for a chipmunk. He's not likely to find his way out on his own, all the building entrances are either one floor up from me, or five floors down.

Update: I had to try twice. The live-catch trap we use at home for squirrels turned out to be too big, he could squeeze through the wire grid sides. I had to get a smaller trap, and caught him on Friday night. Sandy went in to the lab and released him outside on Saturday morning, very angry but apparently no worse for the experience.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
They toil not, neither do they spin.”
“Hey!” cry the lilies of the field,
“Hold on a minute. What’s with this
‘Toil Not’ crap? Here we are,
Juggling Nuclear Fire from the Heavens
and wresting our sustenance from the very
Air and Soil, so that you Animals
can sustain your parasitic lives by drinking
our nectar and eating our bodies,
and you have the gall to claim
we ‘toil not’? Where do you get off, anyway?”

- something that occurred to me over the last few days while looking at the flowers gamely struggling up from underground and blooming, after a long, hard winter.

Is it really strictly necessary for every clock, including those integrated into other pieces of electronics, to have an audible alarm function? Even a weather station?

And, if such is really necessary, is it also crucial that they not have a way to turn off the alarm so that, say, a 2-year-old child cannot go around the house turning on all of the alarms[1]?

And, if there is really some absolute necessity for an alarm that is not child-resistant, is there really, really an excruciatingly overpowering need for the default alarm setting to be either midnight or 2 AM? Rather than, oh, say, 8 AM, or maybe even noon?

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[1]Rosie's score in the last week has been one weather station clock, one bedroom alarm clock, and one small desk clock. All of which went off in the middle of the night. Luckily, she can't reach the timers on the radios, the stove, or the microwave oven.

Well, as I threatened promised, here they are: pictures of my appendix:



Basically, he inflated my abdomen with carbon dioxide, stuck a camera through my navel, put in a couple more manipulators through two other incisions, grabbed the appendix, sealed it off, and then snipped it and fished it out with what looks like a tiny little butterfly net.

All I want for Christmas is an appendectomy,
An appendectomy,
Done by laparoscopy!
All I want for Christmas is an appendectomy,
So I won't die of peritonitis![1]

Well, Ok, maybe it wasn't what I wanted, particularly, but it's what I got (and evidently just what I needed). I'd had kind of an odd, persistent bloating pain down in the lower right-hand corner of my abdomen for a couple of weeks, and so I made an appointment on Thursday for our doctor to check me out. He listens to my story, pokes at my abdomen for a while, and ponders. "That's funny" he said, "From the duration, I thought it would be a gall bladder attack, but it sure is in the right place for it to be your appendix. I've never seen an appendix attack last this long, though." So he makes an appointment for me to get an abdominal CAT scan at the hospital the next morning, and sends me home with two big bottles of barium sulfate contrast agent with instructions to not eat anything, and to slug both of them down at one-hour intervals in the two hours before the scan.

They were orange-flavored, and kind of revolting.

I actually didn't know that the local hospital even *had* a CAT scanner, but there it was, large as life. So the technician tells me exactly what he's going to do, injects me with yet another contrast agent for my blood, runs the scan, says the pictures look good, and sends me on my way with a vague statement that my doctor would get a report within 48 hours unless they saw something serious, in which case I'd probably hear back earlier.

So, I go in to work, stop off in the lab and discuss some experiments with some graduate students, get to my office, see that there are two messages on my voicemail, listen to the first one (which was work-related), and then listen to the second one.

Which was Sandy, saying "Where are you? The hospital called. They said you have appendicitis, and you NEED TO GET TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM RIGHT AWAY!"

So, I went straight home, Sandy drove me to the hospital while a friend watched the kids, and within about an hour I was on the operating table while Dr. Tim the surgeon and Dr Tim the emergency room doctor took out my appendix[2]

They actually gave us pictures of my inflamed appendix as taken by their laparoscopy camera, which I should put up, but I'll need to scan them in first.

So, anyway, the operation went off without a hitch, and after one night and part of the next day getting fluids and antibiotics flushed through me, I got to go home. So now I just need to recover, not lift heavy things, and keep a couple of little girls from jumping on my stomach the way they normally do. Since they did it with laparoscopy instead of by the traditional cut-'em-open-and-stick-their-hands-in method, I'm recovering a lot faster than my mother and brother did when *they* had their appendices out years ago. Plus I'll end up with three tiny scars instead of one big one.

So, that's what's up with me. What's new with you?

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[1] Yes, yes, I know "an appendectomy" and "my two front teeth" don't have the same number of syllables. Neither do "peritonitis" and "Merry Christmas" But its the thought that counts.

[2] Dr. Tim the surgeon was the one that noticed that there were three Tims in the room. And I noted that my mother named me that because she thought it was an uncommon name. Which turned out not to be the case.

Tags: surgery

So. Did you know that if you have a piece of titanium sheet, and you want to drill a hole in it, and the drill you choose is a bit on the dull side, and you don't use any lubricant because hey, it's only 1/16 inch thick so how hard can it be, and you put it in the drill press and keep bearing down on it figuring that it will have to go through *sometime*, eventually the titanium will get so hot that it *catches fire, and burns a hole right through the titanium sheet?!?*

Well, now you do. It was actually a pretty neat hole, aside from the fact that the edges were a bit melted and the metal right around the hole was a bit distorted from the heat.

OK, that is all.

OK, so it's Groundhog Day. I always hear "If the groundhog sees his shadow, there will be 6 more weeks of winter", but the prediction stops there. What if he doesn't see his shadow? Does that mean winter will only last for another month and a half? [1] Having lived in Michigan all my life, I was never quite sure whether 6 more weeks of winter was good or bad - it seemed like getting the snow all melted off by April 1 would be an improvement over normal.

And, today is also Candlemas, which as near as I can tell was a time when people would go to a church and light every candle they could lay hands on. This sounds to me like a desperate attempt to get enough light to compensate for not having seen the sun for a couple of months, and keep from going mad from the continual darkness. So, maybe an appropriate celebration on Feb. 2 would be to, say, light a big bonfire out in the back yard. Pity I didn't think to protect a supply of burnables from getting buried in the snow last fall, but maybe we can just go out and torch a couple of cardboard boxes and paper bags.


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[1] "The common cold will, untreated, usually make you sick for seven days. With appropriate treatment, this can be reduced to only a week."

Hardly any kids come trick-or-treating at our house, but the ones who make it to us get pretty good stuff - usually full-size chocolate bars. So, when I took Sam out on Friday, we ran down Old Mill Hill Road and into Atlantic Mine, and I was looking to see if it was typical for rural houses to have better candy.

It was. The further we were from town, and the fewer kids were out, the better the candy was (and the happier the people were to see us). They had full-size candy bars, or juice boxes, or the really BIG tootsie pops, and would coo over how cute she was in her dinosaur suit, and insist, "No, no, one piece isn't enough. Take another. Don't you want some of these?". In most cases, Sam would actually say, "I think I have enough" before they were done giving her candy.

As we got into town, the candy got smaller and less attractive (halloween pretzels? are you joking?), the people handing it out were progressively more harried-looking, and they were much more sparing about doling it out.

All in all, I think she got about 80% of her candy from the six widely-spread houses we hit along our road, and only a fraction as much from the five houses we hit in Atlantic Mine proper. I think in the future, we will probably stick more with the rural folks.