-_-
Had a shitty day dealing with the splitting headaches and the assholes in the clinic. It seems that if I'm in actual pain (as evidenced by a BP of 147/92) and I start to cry when being told that a doctor can't see me to write me an rx for three vicodin to kill the pain, the next questions are about why I missed my last appointment with my psychiatrist and why I missed that morning's appointment with my therapist. Because, of course, I'm a drug-seeking psych patient and am blowing my pain way out of proportion just to get a few measly pills. BASTARDS.
So, I'm drowning my sorrows in sprite and spaghetti. Sis has agreed to get Mom off my case and to just let me wallow in misery in my room until Wednesday, when she'll take me to the clinic to see Dr Hall (my consolation prize from the nurse). She's also taking me to the hospital on Thursday to see the neurologists and get my MRI. I'm thankful for her.
In completely different news, I loved that NASA decided to garner attention by putting out the "OMG ALIENS!" press invite. While the discovery of bacteria that can live off of substances most living organisms find toxic is incredible, and does definitely expand the implications of where we might find other biological lifeforms in our universe, it's just not as cool as "Oh, you know that whole Roswell thing? Well....." What I found interesting is that I actually have met the several people from Arizona State who were authors on that paper. My ex knew them while doing her Master's there since the astrogeologists (her) and the astrobiologists (them) share the same equipment because their fields overlap quite a bit. I loved what xkcd had about it:
(The caption read, "According to a new paper published in the journal Science, reporters are unable to thrive in an arsenic-rich environment.") I could just hear my ex laughing her ass off at this one.
In bummer news, Discovery's launch has been pushed back AGAIN. It seems that the end date of 2010 was right on for just how long they could last before completely falling apart. Even I'm now on board with them being decommissioned. It's just too much of a risk of something going wrong now. However, I'm intrigued by this report from CNN which indicates that there's been an ongoing mission in the X37, which is very shuttle-like, to test out the platform for classified stuff we're not allowed to know about yet. At least that program's still running... I hadn't heard anything about it in FOREVER.