And the Most Likely to Fall off a Cliff Award goes to...

I don’t know whether this is good for my brain or not.

Having exhausted my tolerance for the tedious portions of Epic Mickey (despite a continued impulsive inclination to be making Mickey jump gaps and pop spores,) I’m trying to move on. Arguably, I don’t have time to play video games. Equally arguably, I don’t care during my present life interlude. Escapism has its place.

So, based on a recommendation from someone named Nick, whom I don’t know, I’m trying The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. We had it anyway. No waste.

With Epic Mickey, I had a little something on Gabe, since I was partway through my third play-through by the time his semester ended and he got home from Connecticut. That he pretty much lapped me from that point notwithstanding, I could still point out a thing or two, such as—where you can find robo-Goofy’s body parts, or whether it’s a bad idea to smash the pipe organ.

Zelda is a different story altogether. I’ve made it through the so-called Prologue on dumb luck and uncoordinated random shaking of the wii-mote and nunchuk, and arrived at a point where which button you push when begins to make a difference in whether you can proceed through the various battles or not.

Gabe likes to watch, if he catches me playing the game. I was stuck, knowing that I needed to retrieve an explosive spider-pod and heave it at a carnivorous plant, but failing utterly to execute the task. Here’s what could be overheard:

Turn around! Where? There! Over the gap! There’s a gap? Yes! That’s a gap! (at this point I make Link fall into the gap and lose health points.) No! Block that with your shield! You mean the Z button? Yes, lock on! Like this? No! That’s “item of interest”...don’t do that, just lock on! Don’t let it bite you!

Etc. You get the idea. By the time he’d coached me through saving the remaining two captive monkeys, he said “this is really strenuous...for me.”

I could see that it was, and pointed out the parallel that popped naturally into my head. “Okay,” I said. “NOW you know what it was like, teaching you to drive.” Because it was. Just like that. He laughed.

Then I was at the part where I had to knock a baboon off a perch and give it a good spanking while snapping, toothy, venus-fly heads lunged periodically. Perhaps I will begin to grasp the various 24 or so different buttons one can deploy on a set of wii controls. Perhaps not. At any rate, I broke the cardinal rule of gaming, handed the remote to Gabe, and said “here, you do it.” He did it. So, I got the boomerang I was supposed to snag next, and will move on from there with a hopelessly inadequate skill set.

I got the hang of Mickey, more or less, but this Link kid I’m operating in Zelda just has a few too many modi operandi for me to suppose that the hand-eye skills of someone who can’t even play whack-a-mole are going to get me through. And I still don’t know whether it’s good for my brain.

Say "cheese," brain.

We have a bad habit of coming to NIH and having things gum up. A couple weeks ago, on our last visit, an MRI was scheduled. Jeff has had at least four MRIs over the course of being diagnosed and serving as a vaccine study participant. Maybe five. But when I let slip that he got a bit of sterling silver installed in his ear 40 years ago for otosclerosis damage repair, and it turned out that NIH machines exude at least twice the magnetism of Georgetown machines, and after A called B, and B called C, and C called D, before D finally got back to A, our MRI was scratched in favor of a low-magnetism version next month. Instead that day, our major accomplishment was a second round of “convince the social work people we’re willing participants,” and sign some stuff. Which in itself is no small step.

Today, our final two PET scans were on the books. Yay, I was thinking. We’ll get all the scanny stuff, and all the related IV sticks out of the way in just one day, so we can finish up in June, wireless and drip-lineless.

No dice. All set, all stabbed, all peed and ready to go for scan one, it came to pass that the wizards who brew up radioactive injectable #1 had produced an inadequate quantity, thus tanking phase one of today’s 2 phase ordeal. So we are dozing in a chair, awaiting the passage of enough time that we can undergo what was to be scan #2 with a suitably empty stomach. Apparently injectable #2 is ready and waiting, and we’ll have accomplished ½ of what we were scheduled for.

Now the missing MRI and the missing scan are to be caboosed to days #1 and #2 of the neuropsych testing in June, and those, therefore, will be more exhausting days than we’d wished. Still, science ho! I presume our contribution will proceed as rescheduled, and we can officially retire from clinical research.

Because, frankly, I perceive our interest level and understanding of what we’re up to to be flagging like an untrained XC runner on the home stretch, so I’d counted on the easiest of final visits. It’s okay. I can be the Little Engine that Could, and get our circus train over that hill in June. It’s just that I’m starting to feel a little bit like a blue meanie, herding a volunteer who has no volition himself, but simply trusts me.

p.s. Scan #1, which was meant to be scan #2, is happening as I type. I sit here, watch the timer, and hope Jeff remembers to hold still so we don’t add any monkey wrenches to the tool clutter. Next: food.

beds.

Assembling a bed should not wear me out. I blame my energy-depleted state on the nuisance of disassembling the old bed. Leave old iron brackets and 100 year old wood parts in place for a few years, and they just aren’t interested in budging without the persuasion of a rubber mallet.

But see—I did it. There’s the place where the bed used to be, now looking refreshingly blank, but not too cozy as a bedtime destination.

I’ve got a bit of trim to patch up on the antique full-size bed before it takes up its new home in Becca’s room.

My new queen-size bed is one I’ve admired for maybe 20 years, ever since I saw Bradford Woodworking’s booth at the American Craft Council show in Baltimore. It arrived in 5 hefty boxes, all of which were long and skinny except the one containing the headboard. Here are the first four pieces I put together. They’re joined by some rather hefty bronze bolts and barrel nuts, and I’m pretty comfortable that nothing will budge.

At a certain point in the instruction sheet, a helper is said to be required. I normally skip ferreting out a helper unless I’m truly desperate, finding that objects such as laundry baskets often serve nicely to hold parts in place while you fasten the various connecting hardware.

Still, I did not completely forego conscripting other people. To haul the mattress and box spring out of the hall and onto the frame I dragged Gabe and his friend Matt away from Portal 2 (on PS3) to do some lifting. Here’s the whole thing, all done.

I had already moved the wall sconce over a few inches (as far as I could without getting into things like junction boxes which are out of my comfort zone.) If you are a sharp observer you might notice that I also switched the two bedside tables, to gain a bit of space between the table and the bathroom door. Oh yes...there’s the rubber mallet too. A useful friend on many occasions.

So now I’ve made a report. Mundane? Ok, no argument. But just posting something will, I hope, free my mind to write my next Fisher blog.