Life and NDEs *

I had a rather eventful (by my standards anyway) evening yesterday. To put things in perspective, I was a bit unnerved by what we’ll call “events” that transpired earlier during the day. If you’re wondering, “events” is a generic placeholder for anything from being flustered that I couldn’t solve an “obvious” differential equation, to being rattled by the reality angel attempting to puncture my happy-happy bubble with her extremely fast action nail gun.

First, let’s start with the more fun things. Being computerless, I was at one of these common computers last evening trying to print some stuff out. Like all other normal people on generic machines, I used IE to attempt to print out some stuff I needed for this homework. (Yes, I still be a kid. I do things like homework and so on.) Anyway, I wasn’t paying too much attention to what it was that I was doing, and I failed to notice that this machine had one of those ad popup trojans installed, which was busy popping up ads for *cough*, stuff. So here I am pressing some obscure keystroke to print, not actually looking at what pages are being sent to the printer. I go to pick it up, and I have to bear the totally pseudo wrath of a couple of people standing next to the printer as my few pages of softcore porn interspersed with geek stuff rolls out. How exciting!

(Before I go on, I must make an obligatory reference to Calvin‘s dad because I think of this each time I am slowly making my way through the bitter cold and feet of snow. He’d always say something like [insert generic misery here] builds character.

Some random Calvin and Hobbes strip.

That is one awesome comic.)

Moving along, it is no secret that I like relatively static routines. Sure, I am not the most happening of people as a result, but I am comfortable with it. I see patterns and form routines. Now this pattern seeing thing is not always good, as I realized last evening. I have this (rather adaptive) traffic light sequence I usually cross on my way home. Like most geeks, I know its sequence by heart, and know how it adapts to how crowded the lanes are, and correct for it in my predicting its actions. What I am trying to say is, I don’t really watch it turn, I see its state, look around, and respond assuming I know how it will behave. Yesterday was one of those cold and many feet of snow (exaggerating of course, but for good reason) on the road days, and I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to make sane decisions. And yet I, the hero, attempt to cross without really paying too much attention to the actual state of affairs relating to reduced braking ability induced by the aforementioned feet of snow. Needless to say, thank god for people driving slow(er)ly because it was such horrid weather. I now got what it meant to be really shaken.

Yes, all of that talk of patterns and things was just to glorify my carelessness.

But today has been totally different as a result. Everything looks cheery. As if on cue, the sun is out and shining. All past pending home cleaning/improvement jobs have been completed in a day. It’s like I really want everything around me to look as good as I now see it.

Everything just feels a lot cooler. Everything looks a lot prettier. I feel good. I feel not dead.

* NDEs – Near death experiences