The history of my bad mood today

When the phone started ringing, I didn't recognise it for what it was. A few months ago, it gained the quirky new habit of emitting a loud, intermittent "BOOP BOOP BOOP" in the middle of the night. Well, perhaps during the day, too, but I only noticed it in the middle of the night, when it woke me up from clear across the condo. I have no idea why it does this, but pressing a button on the base is all that it takes to make it stop.

That's what I thought was happening and it wasn't until the answer machine picked up that I realised someone was actually calling me at 3:30 a.m. It was Nuphy. He was complaining of abdominal pressure and saying, "I guess I should call an ambulance, but I really don't want to go back to the hospital." I really, really don't want him to go back either, but the staccato way he was talking--gasping after every word--was far too reminiscent of how he sounded back in June right before he went septic. So I interrogated him and determined that he had no other symptoms--no fever, no funny tastes, etc. "It's probably gas," I said.

But I wasn't convinced and he wasn't either. I suggested he call a nurse and was appalled to find out that neither the hospital or his HMO had given him a number for a 24-hour hotline. Didn't he ask? This is just like that previous time when we had to scramble to find his doctor's number. Usually, he's quasi-neurotic about being prepared, so I can only guess that his sense of denial--"Oh, I won't need to call my doctor in an emergency"--keeps getting the better of him. You can bet I'm going to nag him about this! Then I told him he should call my mother, a former ER nurse, but he didn't want to bother her. Still, I insisted he take down the number and ring her up if he wasn't better in an hour. 45 minutes later, I still wasn't asleep, so I called him back. He claimed to be feeling better, and echoed this two hours later when I spoke to him before leaving for work.

Please, please let it just be the tamale he ate last night!

Separation of Church and State, European style!

It boggles me that Europeans complain about the "theocratic" leadership of the USA and yet tolerate something like this in their own backyard. But I suppose that, as an enforcement arm of the Vatican, the Italian gendarmerie are a lot less terrifying than the Swiss Guards.

Life in the tropics

In honour of caitalainn's recent tribulations, an off-the-cuff translation of an excerpt from the story "Història natural" by Catalan writer Pere Calders.

( Natural History )