Ever wonder what I do on a Saturday night? We were supposed to go to a couples evening and plans fell through. It was a lazy Saturday and somehow I played 3 hours of Super Mario Galaxy collecting 9 stars. I don't think I have played a video game that long straight since college and it was likely Super Mario Brothers 3 or Tetris (what is so addictive about Mario and Tetris). I played Princesses with Sirah for 2 hours. We played with Ariel, Cinderella, Jasmine and their princes and the horse and carriage. They met the princes, went to balls, made clothes, painted and eventually got married. Somehow I managed to sit on the floor with her for 2 hours playing dolls. I can't remember the last time that happened either. Today was a day filled with unusual things. Tonight I worked on a big project I am working on for about 5 hours - yes if you are adding that is 10 hours of my day dedicated to certain activities. I am blogging now at 1:30am and I still can't fall asleep because of the pain, so I am trying to be productive, making lemonade out of my lemons. After working on that project I decided to check some news to relax (odd I know but it is relaxing to me) and ended up reading about the above photo. Anyone? Anyone? I'll tell you the name and it probably won't help 98% of you without the assistance of Google or the link I will give you. The image you see is a simulation of Higgs boson. Again I ask Anyone? Anyone? I would not have been able to answer that question myself a few minutes ago. Now my brain is full of swarming thoughts about particle physics and how that relates to "the grid" at CERN. CERN may ring a bell for some thanks to Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web.
That last link is an archive of the first web page created for WWW by Berners-Lee back in April 1992. Berners-Lee announced the creation of www in an altnews group (anyone else remember those) in 1991 but it was in April of 1992 that it was released as free for the public. I remember sitting in the computer lab at my college talking with friends about how exciting it was, so many others having no idea what we were excited about though at the time we were usinggopher and MUD's. How many of you are geek enough to have seen that page then? How many of you recall the first time you went on the World Wide Web? Thanks Dad for making me a computer geek who likes video games from the time I was what 8 or so?
Disney Princesses, Particle Physics, MUD's, Super Mario Galaxy, Pink Floyd, Writing, Tim Berners-Lee, Mae, CERN, sock knitting, blogging, dishes, baseball tryouts, Higgs Boson, Drudge Report, vomit, The Absent Minded Professor, spy gear, Black Liberation Theology, Irish cheddar, melting snow and cold pizza. What do they have in common? They were all a part of my day in thought or action today. Anyone else want to do a random collection of words from their Saturday?
I titled the post "My brain still works but it hurts" because I am happy to say that I can still follow along with the articles and concepts I was reading about even though it definitely takes me more effort. Sometimes I need to reread sentences more and let my brain really think on them to get it. I usually still see the connections between other concepts but deeper science and philosophy take my brain longer to get around now than in grad school. Of course listening to Dark Side of the Moon probably doesn't help that much. Also my mind swirls with Dr Suess books memorized, what's for dinner, how can I teach long division better, when will the pain stop, is the snow ever going to melt, how many times will they vomit tonight and will the dog hair ever come out of my carpet during shedding season for our Aussies. Maybe that is why it takes me longer to understand concepts and my brain feels sore afterwards. Maybe I need to go play some more rounds of Lumosity. I suppose now I just need to admit I need to be in bed despite how I feel as it is now nearing 3am!
