It was kittenspeaks  who took this quiz and got me curious, even though I am not in any way dating...

Your dating personality profile: Practical - You are a down-to-earth individual who is not impressed with material excess. You care about the stuff of like that really matters. Intellectual - You consider your mind amongst your assets. Learning is not a chore but a constant search after wisdom and knowledge. You value education and rationality. Shy - You are often timid around others, though you will open up when the right person comes along.

Your Top Ten Traits 1. Practical 2. Intellectual 3. Shy 4. Sensual 5. Adventurous 6. Conservative 7. Big-Hearted 8. Stylish 9. Funny 10. Traditional

Your date match profile: Intellectual - You seek out intelligence. Idle chit-chat is not what you are after. You prefer your date who can stimulate your mind. Practical - You are drawn to people who are sensible and smart. Flashy, materialistic people turn you off. You appreciate the simpler side of living. Shy - You are put off by people who are open books. You are drawn to someone who is a bit more mysterious. You want to draw her out of her shell and get to know what she is all about.

Your Top Ten Match Traits 1. Intellectual 2. Practical 3. Shy 4. Funny 5. Adventurous 6. Conservative 7. Sensual 8. Traditional 9. Wealthy/Ambitious 10. Big-Hearted

Take the Dating Profile Quiz at Would I Date You

Yes, my lovely, hardworking, genius wife has today achieved her goal. We have just returned from Athens, GA, where President Adams conferred upon her the degree of Specialist in Education. This should eliminate much of the uncertainty regarding her qualifications to have the job she's been doing for the last four years.

Oh, yeah, there were a few other people there today who received various degrees of the BA, MA, EdS, and PhD variety, but who cares about them?

Maybe more later, as I get the pictures uploaded...


LATER: See the set at Flickr.

Your Thinking is Concrete and Random

You are naturally inquisitive and curious. You're excited by new ideas, and you are a true independent thinker. You are interested in what is possible. You like the process of discovery. You are often experimenting, challenging old ideas, and inventing new concepts. Rules, restrictions, and limit don't really work for you. You have to do things your own way, and you can't be bothered to explain yourself.

Hm. But wait, that's not what my horoscope said...

I must share this with you, one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. I can't embed it, you'll have to actually go to YouTube to see it (I know, so much trouble), but it's worth the trip. Nanci Griffith's "Love at the Five and Dime."

The accompanying photo is, as you see, a screen capture from WXIA-TV that someone posted to flickr, enabling me to blog it from there. Photographer credit is Shane Durrance.

Meanwhile, from Atlanta Metblogs, I found a Google Map of the path of the tornado's touchdown through downtown Atlanta. Those of you who know where I live can see that the closest approach was about a half-mile. The old Fulton Cotton Bag Mill (now Stax Lofts) got most of the initial press, but a quick flickr search for "atlanta tornado cabbage town" will show you what they're dealing with there.

This news, fortunately, had nothing to do with me personally. Although there is a connection: One of my wife's coworkers lived at Stax. She's OK, but she got out with little more than her pajamas and a mismatched pair of flip flops.

I haven't talked much about the mental effects of my various life traumas (heart attack, brain hemorrhage, fibrillation episodes, defibrillator episodes...), because, well, I'm a shy person. Some have said that theater, even radio theater, is a funny hobby for someone who suffers stage fright to have, and I won't argue the point. I do it largely to force myself to do it.

I've just taken a bold step (for me) in this process: I'm now seeing a psychiatrist.

Some might say "what for?", while others say "it's about time."

UPDATE: What do you mean, a tornado? We don't get tornadoes in downtown Atlanta, we never have, get seri--*


Holy crap.

(Picture from a reader of the AJC.)

First, the spoiler: Everybody's fine, no damage done here.

Herewith is a little more information that most of you haven't seen.

Went to the Butlers' "Hair Day" on Saturday. Lots of "Hello, Sparky" (thanks, Ben) "Are you grounded?" (Yes, Mel) greetings, in between genuine inquiries after my condition.

Well, the humor didn't STAY at grade school level. :)

And after everything I said about myself on my blog, I really didn't have room to object if I'd wanted to, which I didn't.

Although apparently, folks talked about me and what I'd written before I arrived, making Sheri (the hair stylist) legitimately upset. "Why are you all laughing at this? It isn't funny."

I don't think she fully forgave them and accepted it until I arrived and she saw for herself that I was perfectly all right -- and just as, er, disrespectful of my traumatic experience as anyone else had been. She's usually pretty tolerant and accepting of the various forms of madness one encounters in this group, but apparently there's a limit.

What the hell. Everything ended OK. No damage done, problem is resolved and won't happen again. I can acknowledge that the situation wasn't funny at the time, but parts of it are funny now. I think I was laughing at the time, briefly, when the toilet lid shattered under me.

(I mentioned that previously, but to recap: I had just experienced one jolt and was sitting on the closed lid, dazed. I had mostly reassembled my wits when I felt another jolt, and the next thing I remember I was sitting *in* the toilet on pieces of shattered plastic.)

C'mon, doesn't that sound like something that would happen to Wile E Coyote after accidentally swallowing some thunderstorm pills?

Jake was surprised that I couldn't compare the experience to licking a 9-volt battery, because I've never done that. He thinks I may be the only male on the planet who has access to 9-volt batteries who hasn't tried it. Thanks to billritch  (who knew the power conversions necessary to calculate it), I now know it would take over a hundred batteries to match the initial 5-joule charge. Probably more than that, since Bill's calculations assume you'd maintain contact with the battery for a full second, and that doesn't seem likely.

I did talk to the doctor about whether my own reactions (I actually think the ICD is kinda cool) were unusual, and apparently they are. A lot of patients are low-level anxious about the thing all the time (hence the support groups they keep trying to get me to join). As they see it, there's this gadget in your chest that could give you a jolt at ANY TIME, you'll get no warning, and there's absolutely NOTHING you can do about it. There's no off switch. Well, there's no switch the patient can reach.

Me, I'm just tickled that this level of care is available. Nobody has yet suffered any lasting damage from an "inappropriate discharge." (I mean, really, how can you not laugh at that? It's been years since I've had an "inappropriate discharge," and now in one afternoon I've had nine of them.)

This technology is advancing so quickly that it's still somewhat experimental, and (like so many things) different for each individual. Like any other computer, it works pretty well out of the box, but it works even better when it's been configured for the particular user and environment. That's why they bring me in for a diagnostic every three months. That's why they sent me this spiffy modem (dial-up, how primitive) so they can call my ICD at will and monitor me. Or, conversely, my ICD cal call them if it feels the need.

Maybe a lifetime spent reading science fiction has prepared me for this stuff.

When I left I told everybody I was going to go jump-start the car.

Probably just as well this was after Cheri left.

At some point I'll go to Dr Liberman''s / Dr Delurgio's office (cardiology) for a follow-up EKG and blood pressure tests. (Note: Did this today, Monday.) They still want to know why my pulse was so high in the first place.

Oh, yes, I haven't mentioned that. The reason John couldn't find my pulse is the same reason the ICD mistook my rapid heartbeat for the ventricular fibrillation it was looking for. When the EMT took my pulse, he wasn't sure the machine was right at first, because I wasn't displaying any other signs traditionally associated with a pulse "at rest" in excess of 150 beats per minute. Even when they got it slowed down, it was still pathetically erratic.

Best guess at the moment is that it was due to (a) the toprol doses I'd missed, (b) the severe potassium deficiency I was experiencing (probably due to the diuretics I was taking and not compensating for), and (c) having just been hit with eight 5-joule jolts and one 35-joule whopper, which is enough to rattle your marbles pretty damn good, let me tell you.

Anyway, I'm sorry I have no pictures of myself naked, stunned and helpless to liven up this journal. (Hey, some people pay good money for that kind of thing.) I'm sure it would have been interesting to see the little van de Graaf arcs between my eyes.

Hey, halfass_johnny? Do you have a Mildly Exciting electric-powered hero yet? I've got just the concept. Dress him in a monk's robe and call him... Frere Shocker!

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

Not new, but I never get tired of it.

What does this mean? I don't even belong in a group of poorly socialized geeks?



Hm. Guess that explains it.

I am home and recovering from my recent surgery. It is exactly the same surgery I had four months ago, save that this time they are taking out the existing lead and putting in a different model. The defibrillator remains. You may have read the Reuters / New York Times story about Medtronic pulling the lead off the market. That's the one I had.

The difference is, this time, I was coming out of the anaesthesia just as they test-fired the unit. If you want to know what that feels like, have a friend kick you in the chest. Better yet, have someone who hates your guts do it. They won't be tempted to be gentle. That should be just about right.

As before, I am prohibited from driving until... Well, until I'm not. Until I've seen the doctor again and he's satisfied that I'm recovering properly. This is inconvenient.

But now you know I'm all right.

edicalTowards the end of September, I went in for my three-month defibrillator checkup. They discovered a bit of extraneous noise in the line, what the rest of us might call "static". It wasn't enough to cause the ICD to malfunction, but still it's less than perfect, so they want to go back in and fix it.

This is an attitude with which I wholeheartedly (so to speak) agree.

The ICD was expected to be replaced in five or six years, when the battery gets weak, but the wire was supposed to be there to stay. Ah, well. As Thomas said in "Can You Hear Me", "You got wonky wires." "Wonky wires?" "They all got wires, and sooner or later they all get wonky."

So this is why I may not be present for the Oct 17 rehearsal. This procedure is scheduled for Oct 16. I'll be kept overnight for observation, and released on the 17th.

"Check on your dialect and see if you might have crossed over to the "other side"! Simply click on the correct answer. As you go, the quiz will automatically interpret each answer to show you what your answer implies about you. When you are done, press Compute My Score. Your score will be calculated as a percentage: 0% is pure Yankee and 100% is pure Dixie."

http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/yankee_dixie_quiz.html

Me?
"88% (Dixie). Did you have any Confederate ancestors?"