Sometime in the middle of last night, I woke up feeling the strangest sensation:  I was cold… like, really cold.  I have a strong preference for open windows as opposed to air conditioning when it comes to summer cooling options… after all, it saves some cash on cooling costs and besides, I kinda like the heat.  Last night’s weather, however, just got out of hand.  The temperature “only” dropped down into the 50’s, but being acclimated to DC’s summer heat, I had to get up and fetch the comforter that I had put away for the summer.  Just before I dozed off again, the thermostat temperature dropped low enough for the heater to kick into action.  Yikes.

Just ten days ago, DC was suffering its annual week of oppressive summer heat: highs in the mid-to-upper 90’s, humidity that made the air feel like soup… summer in DC.  Now, I’m pulling out the warm clothes as the weather takes a quick turn for the cooler.

What’s more, this all coincides with the whole back-to-school rush.  Working down by GW last week, I couldn’t help but notice the kids coming back to the campus area.  As I skimmed over Gizmodo’s back-to-school gadget list, I couldn’t help but think that kids nowadays don’t know how lucky they have it, what with their fancy music players and their ubiquitous high-speed Internet.  Why in my day, we were still using walkmen and I had to make do with dial-up Internet access from my dorm room!  Harrumph!  In fact, it kinda makes me wish I could go back to school again… but then on the other hand, back in my day, when we graduated we actually had a chance to get a job!  So there!

Anyway, I’m not sure what happened to this summer.  It just kinda slipped by while I was working 55+ hour weeks (June), being lazy and lethargic (July) and recovering from surgery (August).  And now all the college kids are making me feel old… now get off my lawn!

thanks, XKCD!

I have an unusual hatred for (and difficulty with) the practice of filling out forms.  Seriously, I’ll dwell on the one or two bits of almost any form that could be interpreted in an ambiguous manner for an inordinate amount of time.  When I’m done, I usually half-expect to be yelled at or misinterpreted for screwing it all up.  Whether it’s a rental application form, a DMV form, or a form at my doctor’s office, I’ll always find something that doesn’t quite seem to work right.

On an unrelated note, I also have no desire to serve on a jury.  For the four-plus years that I’ve lived in DC, I’ve been fortunate to only be summoned for service on a grand jury in Federal court.  In those two cases, I was able to successfully (and legitimately) petition the court for a waiver of service.  DC Superior Court, however, does not allow you to avoid service.  Consequently, in late September, I have to show up for jury duty.

In order to be fully registered, however, guess what I have to do?  That’s right!  I have to fill out a form!  Now typically, my problems with forms are somewhat esoteric…  maybe a field doesn’t apply to me, maybe I have more answers than a form has space… whatever.  But in DC’s case, the questionable part of the form is right there on its face: it asks for my email address… twice.  Twice, DC?  Really?  I mean, I looked over the form… the fields for entering your email address show up in two different places… maybe one is somebody else’s email address?  Doesn’t seem that way.

But who would be so silly… who would lack the proofreading skill… who would be so gratuitously wasteful as to ask for the same information twice?  Ah, that’s right… that’s DC!  I don’t know what the city is up to here, but I’m entering my email address twice… just in case.

I am a genius.  No, really… The (unconfirmed) story is that back when I was young, I scored (at least) 150 on an IQ test.  That score certainly would make me eligible to join Mensa and – by at least one technical definition – would make me, officially, a genius.

With the highest recorded score on an IQ test, Marilyn vos Savant is famous for being a genius.  This Financial Times article about her and intelligence measurement in general resonated with me because it highlighted some of the difficulties faced by highly intelligent people:

“High cognitive ability is very often a mixed blessing,” Patrick O’Shea, the president of one [high IQ] society, the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry (ISPE), told me. Too wide a deviation from the mean IQ of 100 brings with it an inherent isolation. “If you have an IQ of 160 or higher,” O’Shea explained, “you’re probably able to connect well with less than 1 per cent of the population.” Among the 600 or so members of the ISPE, whose IQs are all around 150 or higher, O’Shea described a “common experience of being socially marginalised” and the challenge of finding suitable outlets for their gifts. “It’s good to be smart, it’s good to get ahead, but past a certain threshold, you can’t be trusted: you’re a nerd, you’re a geek,” he said. “You have somehow a tremendous social deficit.”

…

According to John Rust, at Cambridge, to produce an extraordinary IQ score a mind must have two unusual qualities. The first is “mechanical facility” – useful but sometimes harmful in extreme cases, hence the preponderance of people with Asperger’s syndrome who have high IQs. And you must also excel at a wide variety of tasks. Intelligence tests measure a range of mental abilities, whereas most people naturally, and happily, concentrate on just a few. Abnormally high IQ scores, by their nature, often speak of a brain too general to be of much use. “Effectively,” said Rust, “you are mastering far too many things.”

There’s no significant reason to think I have Asperger’s syndrome, but otherwise, I can relate to all of these problems.  To an outsider, I can imagine that this might sound like Scrooge McDuck complaining that his pit of gold coins is too deep, but then again most situations come with problems that are less sympathetic to a third party… the grass is always greener on the other side.  I wouldn’t want to give up my smarts (the grass isn’t any greener over there!), but this aptitude, like many others, comes with a tradeoff.

Many people may dread Mondays (The Carpenters, Bangles and Boomtown Rats included), but I have next Monday circled on my calendar with gold stars and about 36 additional pieces of flair.  For it is a week from today when I get a bunch of stitches removed from my face.

You see, two Thursdays ago, I had gingival graft surgery in order to fix a receeding gumline caused by an irregular bite pattern (not by poor oral hygiene, thankyouverymuch).  The procedure itself is rather simple:  the periodontist peels your gums off the front of your teeth, cuts a chunk of skin off the roof of your mouth, sticks it back under the gums and sews it all back up.  Naturally, you’re shot up with local anesthetics first.  Nevertheless, it is a little spine-tingling to hear the sound of your gums being scraped off your teeth channeled up the bones into your ears and to feel your head being pulled ever so slightly to the side by the force of the skin being ripped from your palate… but I digress.

Since this was actually the second time I’ve had the procedure done in the last six months (once on each side), I had a pretty fair idea of what to expect going in.  And while the procedure itself involves the complete five-sensory assault of any significant dental procedure, I think the hard part may actually be the wait between surgery and the first post-operative visit.

In order to protect the surgical site, wax bandages are affixed to the inside of your mouth.  These bandages are to remain in place until the follow-up, usually two weeks later.  While they didn’t prevent me from waking up with the taste of blood in my mouth the morning or two after both procedures, the bandages do prevent you from doing things like eating on the impacted side of your mouth, eating “hard” foods such as chips or pretzels that might puncture or damage the bandage, and perhaps most of all:  brushing the teeth around the surgical site.  Oh, and this is all before mentioning the exercise restrictions, course of antibiotics and need to keep your head elevated during the recovery period.  While the surgery comes and goes, the effects linger for weeks… and in my case, an extra four days since the periodontist is on vacation this week.

That said, there is some good news on the horizon for future gingival graft patients.  Procedures in testing are using a platelet concentrate gel to eliminate the need to take graft tissue from the palate.  And if you’re the ironic sort like myself, you can listen to your iPod during the procedure complete with a synchronized playlist that includes tracks like Beck’s “Novocaine,” TMBG’s “Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head” and (at the end of the list), Three Dog Night’s “Joy To The World.”

As for me, I have one week left of wax bandages, stitches and trying to not accidentally brush the wrong teeth.  Are we there yet?!?

In that week I just went without posting, I meant to post a few items… either I would start writing something up and not finish or (more frequently) get distracted by shiny objects… so to sum up what you missed last week, here’s the quick rundown:

• The train operator in the recent Metro accident was speculated to have been distracted by her cellphone at the wheel.  WMATA eventually laid this hypothesis to rest by stating that the operator’s phone was found in her bag.  (unlike a different Metro operator who was caught texting while driving today!)  Nevertheless, the breath of the unfounded rumors reflect pretty strongly on attitudes of the public towards cellphone use while driving.
• Jeff Goldblum was also the subject of some rumors lately, only in his case they were put to rest when he demonstrated that he was, in fact, alive.  While Joe Biden may also be alive, I hear that stories are now circulating about him…
• Michael Jackson is no longer with us, however.  I had a lot of random things to say about this, but I’ll boil it all down to two links:  the sad and the happy.
• Finally, one other thing died a happy death recently:  my car loan!  After five years, my lean mean drivin’ machine is paid off in full and I’ve got the title to prove it… yay!

The cameras are on my neighborhood this weekend as several projects are shooting in this area.  Across the street, filming of The Real World DC kicks off this weekend.  I’m verrrry skeptical that this will go well, but the folks at the Anti-Real World DC might be even more hostile to the show than I am… and that’s saying something!  Nevertheless, it’s certainly a site I’ll be watching for the next several months.

James L. Brooks has also been shooting a not-yet-titled film in the District lately, and today they were shooting a block down the street.  I managed to get a few pictures of Jack Nicholson and Paul Rudd filming a scene.

Finally, I went to move my car the other day only to find myself blocked in by folks shooting a webisode of Orange Juice in Bishop’s Garden.  I had never heard of the show before and I still haven’t gotten around to checking it out, but they were nice enough and they fit the filming theme, so I’ll give ‘em a plug…

If yesterday’s observation that my increased hours at work made the timing of my return to blogging ironic, then that goes double for the timing of a “quick hits” post penned the prior weekend to salvage the free time afforded during a 60 hour work week. You see, the ironic part about posting the quick hits yesterday was that the post was already unnecessary because only hours prior to the post going up, I was fired.

Getting cut from a project is certainly a hazard of being a contract attorney and it can happen for any number of reasons. Occasionally, people will ask me how long a project will last. The short answer is always, “I don’t know…” Sometimes, projects last longer than expected (“3 to 4 months” turning into “over a year”) and sometimes they end very suddenly and surprisingly. That’s just the way it is.

Even though it never feels good to be fired* or rejected – see the reaction of Penguins fans to Marian Hossa’s departure – sometimes, it really is for the best. With Hossa, the Penguins may not have been in position win the Stanley Cup… and without the job I just lost, I won’t be chained to document review for 60 hours a week for the remainder of the summer… the fit just wasn’t quite right for me. so that certainly tempers whatever disappointment I may have had quite a bit…

* I guess… I’d never actually been fired before…

It’s ironic that I’d get back to the blog right after my job demands ramp up to 60 hours a week for the foreseeable future. If I couldn’t find time to post before, what will I do now?!? The answer? A sampling of quick hits!

• Another Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie appears to be in the pipeline, only the project will not involve Joss Whedon, the creative force behind the successful television series. Instead, the film will be brought to us by Kuzui Enterprises – the folks who did the original Buffy movie. As a fan of the TV series who thought the movie was terrible (so much so that I’ve only gotten around to the series in the last year), I can’t see much good coming out of this…
• WTMD out of Towson, Maryland is doing a countdown of the 897 greatest musical artists of all time… and when they say “all time,” well… it leads to some interesting choices… for instance: ranking Widespread Panic (275) ahead of Beethoven (304) and Bach (289). Yes, the whole thing is a bit silly, but there are lots of silly bits to be found (#814 even making the list!) [h/t: Jesse Walker]
• Meet Desmond Hatchett. If Desmond has 99 problems then his babymamas and children are… oh, about a third of ‘em. You see, during a recent child support hearing, it came out that the 29 year old Mr. Hatchett has what is believed to be a U.S. record of 21 children by 11 different women. For his part, Desmond says that he’s all done and he won’t have any more kids. Magnificent!
• If only Desmond weren’t judgment proof (fancy lawyerspeak for “broke”), he might have reason to secure the services of Frank Ahearn, who makes a living by helping people disappear. It’s a little cloak and dagger, but that’s what makes it a cool line of work. [h/t : Tyler Cowen]

This summer, MTV will be filming a season of the most vapid and pointless of all reality television shows, “The Real World” in DC. Ever since the news hit the streets, speculation has abounded as to where in DC the cast would live. Would they be in Georgetown? Adams Morgan? Columbia Heights? Over the weekend, the question was apparently answered… and much to my chagrin, they’ll be directly across the street from my apartment.  Anyone up for a two month road trip?

That’s me! I’m terrible… I’ve already abandoned two other blogs and after two and a half months without posting, any longtime readers might figure the third time wasn’t quite the charm for me. Time will tell if that turns out to be true, but CA isn’t done ticking just yet. Nosiree… I’m sure I’ll manage at least one more post before it bites the dust…

As it is, things kinda snowballed on me starting in Mid-December. First, I came down with the Worst Cold Ever, then it was the holidays and all the traveling and obligations they entail, then I got an Xbox360 AND Netflix… and then all of my free time magically disappeared.

Whenever I might have sat down to write a post, I would simply get distracted by TV shows that I try to keep up with on Hulu, Netflix rentals, Xbox games, or the 70 or so RSS feeds that I try to follow… Many years ago when I was still in college, one of my bosses made the observation that I never got much done because I tried to do too many things. I can’t help but think about that assessment now as I see the way it keeps me from getting particular things done.

It’s really just another manifestation of my old nemesis: procrastination. I’ve had stuff to write about for the last few months, but I’ve always had some reason to push it off ’til later… Heck, I’ve been meaning to write this post for upwards of a month!

None of this is to apologize for going AWOL or not posting. I warned you that it might happen and I suggested following CA using your news reader of choice so that you wouldn’t be missing anything (and I thank the two of you who follow on Google Reader). The point here is simply to acknowledge and chronicle all these little things that I’d like to do better (and hopefully, the resultant improvement… in this case, that would be more frequent posting!)…