Month: August 2011

I had a dream that the monster from Frankenstein was hovering over my bed, watching me mutely with his ghoulish but knowing eyes. It was a nightmare actually. It coincided with my finishing the book by Mary Shelley, the first time I had read a book entirely in digital format, on my phone and on a computer at work. The fully text is very accessible because it is a public domain book and a classic.

My nightmare was the same horrible scene Shelley said she envisioned when she conceived of the book. She was trying to think of a ghost story to share with her friends while they were on vacation. She imagined a scientist who created a hideous being from dead bodies and other unholy means and materials. Horrified by what he had done, he aborted his work and went to sleep, hoping to put the whole thing behind him. But sure enough, as he slept, the creature made its way from the laboratory to his bedroom and sought answers from its creator, being, as it was, devoid of memory or belonging.

The description of the monster in the book is much scarier than the monster portrayed by Boris Karloff in the classic movie or by Robert DeNiro in the Kenneth Branaugh version. He was described as having long black hair, yellowish skin pulled taut over his muscles, and he was said to be very fast and was a very quick learner.

That was only a nightmare. Two days later I was awoken by an actual creature in my room. A bat was hopping around on the floor and squeaking. Those things can make a lot of noise. I threw a shirt on it and put it in a box, then let it out outside. It crawled up the side of the building. I think it may have injured itself on a wire in the window it entered through, where the squirrels have been chewing.

My lunchtime peace, destroyed!
Mon 8 Aug 2011

I stepped out for half an hour for lunch on a deck at my hospital, which overlooks the Minnehaha Creek and a broad marshy area. Birds flew in the hundreds overhead looking to roost as the sun set. The cattails bent and swayed. This little part of the earth prepared imperceptibly for September.

But the peacefulness of the scene was shattered by a group of three Tibetan men shouting, not conversing, in their native language. When Tibetans came under persecution by the Han Chinese, they fled that country and got jobs in the housekeeping department of my hospital. All of them. Presently they shouted about something they apparently felt very passionate about. The loudest of them (I will call him General Tenzin) gesticulated so wildly that his chair shifted and scraped, adding to the commotion.

There was a woman there trying to read a book but I suspected she was not taking much of it in because of the general uproar. This went on for the full half hour of my break, and I realized the exchange was not an argument at all but rather just the normal volume of speech for all three of them. There was something about General Tenzin’s voice that made it especially piercing.

I missed out on contemplating that scene today, but I don’t mind because I will have plenty of time outside when I go camping at Lake Maria State Park the next two nights.

Night shift
3 Aug 2011

In late August I will begin working the night dispatching shift. I will come in at 11 pm and leave at 6:30 or 7 in the morning. This will afford me maximal flexibility during the day, when I will need to cram in as many classes as I can, some of which have afternoon labs that go until three or four. I will have to sleep from 2 pm to 10pm when I can, and go with fewer than my cherished eight hours of sleep on some days. But I will only be doing that shift for three nights a week, so it should be manageable. I will have to pick up shifts here and there when my class schedule permits.

I am looking forward to the change in lifestyle, since I have continually failed to make the most of my current schedule of evening shifts. In my case it mostly lends itself to sleeping in too late and drinking too much. I think this shift will be healthier for me and allow to get studying done during what are, in my case, my most productive hours: night and early morning. In addition I will have certain times of the day and night to myself.

Take today for instance. I set out on bike at 6:30 pm and visited Theodore Wirth Park, where I hiked about with a pair of binoculars and lots of bug spray. I had the place to myself. I saw a hummingbird and some brightly colored beetles and stopped awhile to contemplate the suddenly clear skies. Then I biked further along the beautiful Greenway to Starbucks and had a depth charge while reading the Star Tribune (more bad news). Then I biked to the hospital and perfected my class schedule for the upcoming semester. And then it was time to begin my shift. When I get out of here in five hours I will head to the lake for a nap and a swim before coming back here for a 1 pm shift. This kind of thing is only possible in the summer. But if I can keep up the biking, and bring myself to study during the moments of downtime here and there, the night shift may benefit my health and productivity over the next school year.