hey, that was good

I’ve mentioned before that I always have a strange pessimism about the medical sciences, even though I am of course well aware that these are highly trained people who have seen and studied thousands of cases, and also that they have surveyed the full interior of my anatomy with state-of-the-art equipment and tests, and hence are perfectly aware that it’s a minor and addressable case of sitting and bending over a laptop computer too much. Despite knowing all of that, for some reason I have an unshakable pessimism about their profession and always assume they won’t help anything.

Here again, they are happily refuting my prejudice. Even one session on all those machines, which look a great deal like medieval torture instruments, already has helped, and I have 25-30 more of the sessions coming (it’s going to be almost a lifestyle this year).

And then the carpenter came and ingeniously raised my desk about 25 cm. I admire carpenters a great deal; their practical cleverness is one I cannot approach when it comes to manual and mechanical things. It’s skilled crafts like this one that remind me of the benefits of living in a society, since now I don’t have to worry about my ineptitude at things like raising desks with crafty wooden supplements.

Also, you could tell that this guy took great pleasure in getting it right on the first try, and additional pleasure in my own pleasure in how brilliantly he had designed it. It was a nice moment of bonding with someone whom, at the time of my birth, I probably had a one-in-a-billion chance of ever meeting.

So, I’m now peeking at my computer over a desk that makes me look like a little kid. (That’s a slight exaggeration– the desk is now lower-chest level for me, but the change from before is really drastic; I was practically sprawled over the computer from above until the change was made today.)

Must also be my lucky day… Those mean stray dogs were not in the vacant lot. In fact, I looked a bit more closely and it’s really a construction site, not a vacant lot (same difference, as far as stray dogs go). An old man in a galabiya (sort of a gown/robe for men, worn by the rural classes here) seems to live in the building that’s under construction, since he has a lamb tied up on the 2nd floor. No dogs to be seen, however.