summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2013-06-19 08:45 pm
summercomfort) wrote2013-06-19 08:45 pm
Moved, sorta
Last Sunday we moved to Oakland. Except that we only brought the bare essentials -- futon, folding table and chairs, laptop, kitchen and bathroom stuff. Turns out moving is easy when we don't have to move books or bookshelves! So most of our stuff is still back in our old place.
This move to Oakland is summer-only. We got a 3-month lease, and we like the apartment thus far. There were some sketchy people who lived in it previously, so all we have to do is not be that sketchy.
It's 2 bedrooms for $2100, which isn't bad! It's 10-15 minute walk from: big grocery store and BART station, and 15-20 minute walk to Chris' place and Chinatown. So things are pretty good.
Except for 2 things:
1) Sunday, during the move, I got a concussion
2) Tuesday, Jono officially started his new job, which is about 2 train stations from our old place.
So, briefly, about my concussion:
- General symptoms are sensitivity to light, inability to focus, and migrating headaches.
- Inability to focus really sucks! Reading words is hard. Focusing at a specific point for long periods of time is hard. Multitasking is hard. Higher order thinking is hard. I basically want to close my eyes all the time. (I have my eyes closed right now.) Just to give you an example of multitasking that I would do all the time that is now super-hard: watching a movie with subtitles: that's multitasking because I'm listening, watching pictures, and reading at the same time. Now I can only listen. If I'm doing a task, having to hold a conversation at the same time is hard! Another key example: Driving -- looking at the street, handling the mechanics of driving, and figuring out what I should do next. Today I drove from Palo Alto to Oakland and it was painful. I basically can't be 100% "on" for more than half an hour, or 70% "on" for more than 2 hours. Half-hour naps help.
- The only way to get better is to rest. Not "rest" while listening to tv, but just lie there in absolute silence. So I'm at a stage where I can fake competence (40-60% operational) in short bursts, but in order to actually get better, I need to actually go down to 0% -- completely shut down for a few days. When I go from 40% to 0%, say when I go for a nap, what happens first is that the headache gets worse. Then the pain kind of dissipates across my brain, and then I start to actually feel like I'm improving the baseline. I kind of imagine that my brain is like a castle defense thing, and right now one of my 4 towers has been destroyed, and so the manpower from another tower is trying to do their job and help repair the destroyed tower at the same time. When I'm doing stuff, all the manpower is dedicated to keeping the towers mildly operational, and it isn't until I'm fully resting that the little dudes can turn around and survey the damage.
Thus far, I've been at:
Sunday evening: 30%
Monday: 20%
Tuesday: I had a day of work, so 70%
Wednesday morning/afternoon: 40%
Anyway, I hope that if I spend tonight resting, the rest of the week can look like:
Wednesday night: 10%
Thursday: I have another day of work, so 60%
Friday: 10%
And I'll re-assess on Friday.
Anyway, I'm going to go rest now, and hopefully Jono will blog about his work / commute some time.
This move to Oakland is summer-only. We got a 3-month lease, and we like the apartment thus far. There were some sketchy people who lived in it previously, so all we have to do is not be that sketchy.
It's 2 bedrooms for $2100, which isn't bad! It's 10-15 minute walk from: big grocery store and BART station, and 15-20 minute walk to Chris' place and Chinatown. So things are pretty good.
Except for 2 things:
1) Sunday, during the move, I got a concussion
2) Tuesday, Jono officially started his new job, which is about 2 train stations from our old place.
So, briefly, about my concussion:
- General symptoms are sensitivity to light, inability to focus, and migrating headaches.
- Inability to focus really sucks! Reading words is hard. Focusing at a specific point for long periods of time is hard. Multitasking is hard. Higher order thinking is hard. I basically want to close my eyes all the time. (I have my eyes closed right now.) Just to give you an example of multitasking that I would do all the time that is now super-hard: watching a movie with subtitles: that's multitasking because I'm listening, watching pictures, and reading at the same time. Now I can only listen. If I'm doing a task, having to hold a conversation at the same time is hard! Another key example: Driving -- looking at the street, handling the mechanics of driving, and figuring out what I should do next. Today I drove from Palo Alto to Oakland and it was painful. I basically can't be 100% "on" for more than half an hour, or 70% "on" for more than 2 hours. Half-hour naps help.
- The only way to get better is to rest. Not "rest" while listening to tv, but just lie there in absolute silence. So I'm at a stage where I can fake competence (40-60% operational) in short bursts, but in order to actually get better, I need to actually go down to 0% -- completely shut down for a few days. When I go from 40% to 0%, say when I go for a nap, what happens first is that the headache gets worse. Then the pain kind of dissipates across my brain, and then I start to actually feel like I'm improving the baseline. I kind of imagine that my brain is like a castle defense thing, and right now one of my 4 towers has been destroyed, and so the manpower from another tower is trying to do their job and help repair the destroyed tower at the same time. When I'm doing stuff, all the manpower is dedicated to keeping the towers mildly operational, and it isn't until I'm fully resting that the little dudes can turn around and survey the damage.
Thus far, I've been at:
Sunday evening: 30%
Monday: 20%
Tuesday: I had a day of work, so 70%
Wednesday morning/afternoon: 40%
Anyway, I hope that if I spend tonight resting, the rest of the week can look like:
Wednesday night: 10%
Thursday: I have another day of work, so 60%
Friday: 10%
And I'll re-assess on Friday.
Anyway, I'm going to go rest now, and hopefully Jono will blog about his work / commute some time.
no subject
I hope when you feel better we can do Star Trek (TWOK).