Sunday, December 5, 2004

Web research serendipity More than one friend has asked why I haven't been blogging recently... Part of the reason is the end-of-semester workload, as I wrap up grading and comments for more than 70 newswriting students. The other part, which I can blame for some of the grading backlog too, is a condition that I'll finally have time to get checked out by a doctor between semesters. I don't think it's serious, since it's just a "light" version of migraine auras I used to get when I was in high school and college. I finally checked out my self-diagnosis online, and found a couple of fancy names for the "scintillating scotoma" and "acephalgic migraine," along with a precise and better description than any I've come up with myself: "These visual symptoms often involve a scintillating blind spot in the visual field. It typically begins as a small C shaped, luminous zig-zag near the center of the vision and then slowly expands and drifts toward the side vision involving one-half of the visual field." Having a sparkly neon blind spot expand across your field of vision from the size of a word on a page to the size of a living room chair is scary ("where'd that chair go?"), even when the whole process takes less than an hour and goes away on its own, so it was very reassuring to find that description. I look forward to talking to a good doctor about it later this month, as well as upgrading my astigmatism prescription... once those final grades are in and I can risk the break-in period for new glasses. The other Web serendipity of the month was when a someone I'd lost track of in 1970 tracked me down online after reading an alumni magazine mention of my job at UT. That kind of reconnecting is always nice, but it's only half the story this time: On Thanksgiving I'd been talking to some old-guitar fans about an Epiphone I used to own, but sold to Steve 36 years ago. A day or two later, his e-mail arrived -- our first contact since undergraduate days. And the first sentence of his e-mail was about that same old guitar! Sometimes it feels like the Internet taps into the Psychic Friends Network. 1:58:48 PM    comment []

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