— पांच हजार छह सौ अस्सी —
I feel much better today. Not quite 100%, but better than I've felt in about three days. I still had my third night in a row of terrible sleep last night, constantly waking up about every two hours. I lay in bed wide awake early this morning, around 3 a.m., thinking about these last-minute issues we had with POS batches and which we are still dealing with today, albeit not to the degree I feared we might. It's all far too complicated to be worth getting into here.
I had my PrEP follow-up appointment with Dr. Means this morning, which only complicated the process of dealing with POS responses to everything going on. I never do this, but I actually checked work email on my phone while out and about, and responded to a couple of them.
I told Dr. Means that I am just getting over a cold. I always wear a mask to my doctor appointments anyway, and thankfully he was too. I still told him I did do a covid test on Monday just to be sure, and it was negative. He said something to the effect of, "I'm not sure we'd do anything differently anyway." Uh . . . okay. If I'd have tested positive for covid, mask or no mask, I'd have rescheduled my appointment (even though I already had to reschedule this from an original date last month due to Dr. Means having a bunch of days he had to reschedule for some reason). A common cold is a bit different though. No one even sits near me in the office most days, and today I'm mostly better.
Anyway, I saw one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen as I walked from Buck Pavilion at Virginia Mason Hospital, down Spring Street toward the bus I was aiming to catch on 3rd. I was crossing the street at 6th Avenue, and a guy was walking toward me to cross in the opposite direction. At first I focused on his face because he was wearing a bandana in a very weird way, so I was trying to figure out what he was doing with it: it wrapped around his head, but only covered his nose and not his mouth.
I got a shock when I walked closely enough to get a good look at him. A large chunk of his face, between his nose and his mouth and part of his cheek on his left, was just . . . gone. Like some monster had taken a bite out of his flesh. It was horrendous, and I felt like I was suddenly in a body-horror movie.
I find myself wondering now what that guy's story is. Is he homeless? He may not have been, who knows. But if he was, the state of his face had little prospect for improvement. And even if he wasn't, the way he had that bandanna tied around his face—for all I know, his nose was gone too; that was covered by the cloth—would suggest no access to good medical treatment. It really gave me the creeps, and now in retrospect, was rather sad.
— पांच हजार छह सौ अस्सी —
— पांच हजार छह सौ अस्सी —
Funny I should mention body horror, because that's exactly what Laney and I saw yesterday. I left work early—barely getting done what needed to be done thus far on the aforementioned POS batching issues—so we could meet for a 4:20 showing of the Demi Moore film
The Substance. We both agreed that it was imperfect but incredibly compelling, far too long at 140 minutes but still worth seeing. I have a feeling Laney may have leaned closer to solid B but I still gave it a B+. It had a lot going for it.
I spent more time than usual on writing the review after I walked home. I skipped riding my bike for two reasons: it was better to take it easy while not feeling 100%, and yesterday in particular was characterized by a moderate but persistent sinus headache; and the fact that I knew I'd be walking Laney as far as Broadway after the movie. I skipped cylcing today too, mostly for the reasons of continuing to take it easy for now. Anyway, when the review was done it had surpassed 1,000 words. I could have written more about it if I'd wanted.
Under normal circumstances I might have watched some TV with Shobhit for the next hour. I decided to get into bed early instead. Fat lot of good it did me, as I could not for the life of me stay asleep for more than a couple hours at a time all night. After three nights in a row of that shit, I'm really longing for a full night of sleep with no waking at all. Maybe tonight it will finally happen.
— पांच हजार छह सौ अस्सी —
[posted 12:32 pm]
