"You don't have to shovel rain."
--Scott Gerber 

Today I finally got my updated living will / medical power of attorney updated, witnessed, and notarized, and I also officialized my first last will and testament.  My friends asked me if I was planning on leaving.  It's a good question to ask a person who is settling their affairs at my age, but no, in spite of the depressing state of affairs in the world, my life is good enough that I'm planning to stick around and see what happens next.   In my living will today I specified what I want done if I lose my mind (travel to a country where euthanasia is allowed for dementia--Switzerland or Nederlands allow it as of now), and also where I want my brain to go (for research purposes, to the Oregon Brain Bank of OHSU).  I'm excited and glad to have this done.  I've been meaning to do it and rewriting it for a decade now.

The real reason I was motivated to complete these documents at the age of 50 is that I can tell that I am losing cognitive function.  It shows up in many ways, and people routinely fight me on this observation, saying that I'm fine, it's normal aging, blah blah blah.  Let me just say that I used to be very smart, and I'm not any more, and I know the difference.  A minor example is that I make more mistakes in typing, for example I switch "their" for "they're" and vice versa.  This is a mistake that I used to find utterly mystifying, and now I am doing it.

The other day I updated my lifetime river log with the rivers I have run this year.  I've done 20 new rivers around Oregon this year!  But the shocker finding was that one day in July when I went paddling on the Lower Wind, I could not remember what had happened when I logged the day.  All I remembered at the time (a few days after the actual day when I logged it), was that I had planned to go paddling with Todd.  I did not remember where we went or what happened.

What happened that day was that I hit my head, again, and had short term memory loss as a result.  I have had many traumatic brain injuries over the years, from biking, skiing, and kayaking.  This is the reason that I want to donate my brain for research.  I suspect that my brain will prove that recreational sports participants can also suffer from CTE = chronic traumatic encephalopathy.  It's not just for football players anymore.

On that day I flipped over at the top of a rapid known as the Flume, and was battered on my head and shoulders as I floated through the rapid upside down.  I was afraid to try to roll up because getting in position to roll puts you in a more open and vulnerable position, so I "went turtle" which in this case simply means to tuck tightly under the boat and get my elbows in so nothing gets broken.   I rolled up at the bottom of the rapid and was dazed but otherwise OK.  And yes, for you who do not know me, I was wearing a top notch helmet.  There is no helmet that can protect your brain from the knocking it takes when your whole head is getting walloped around.

This was the third time I'd floated through that particular rapid upside down.  It is a steep, fast, shallow and rocky rapid....brutal, really.  One of my three upside down runs I didn't hit a thing.  Twice I've been beaten silly.  I vowed after this day to not run that rapid at low water anymore.  It's much easier at higher flows and that is the only time I will attempt it.  Unfortunately the portage is difficult and dangerous too... so I may not go on the Lower Wind as much anymore.  Too bad because I do love the waterfalls.

Something else happened that day.  I've thought of it many times since my memory of the day returned.  At the end of the Lower Wind run there are four major drops, three falls and one slide, not in that order. We'd run the first 12 foot falls without incident and were running the tallest single waterfall, about 18 feet vertical.  It's so high that you can't see if the person ahead of you made it, so we just wait a few seconds between boats and then go.  Todd went ahead of me and I waited probably eight seconds, then committed to the drop.  When I crested the horizon line and could see my landing zone at the foot of the falls, he was swimming in it.

He had plunged too deep in the hole below the drop, gotten caught and held, and wet exited from his kayak in the hole.  It took him a while to surface and start floating downstream.  When I saw him I was already mid-air and headed straight for him.  I was afraid that the bow of my kayak would plunge into the water and hit him in the abdomen, rupturing his organs and killing him. That didn't happen.  Thankfully I'd hit a good enough boof from the top that my bow skipped off the surface of the water and I went right over his head.  But the trauma of believing that I was about to kill Todd has not left me.  I am going to require a better signalling system for running blind drops from now on.  I need to know that the landing zone is clear.  We have had trouble at this drop before and still we are too casual about it.

SOURCE: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23861354
Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2013 Aug;17(3):248-72. doi: 10.1177/1088868313495593.
Targeting the good target: an integrative review of the characteristics and consequences of being accurately perceived.
Human LJ1, Biesanz JC.
Abstract
A person's judgeability, or the extent to which a person is easy to understand, plays an important role in how accurately a target will be perceived by others. Research on this topic, however, has not been systematic or well-integrated. The current review begins to remedy this by integrating the available research on judgeability from the fields of personality perception, nonverbal communication, and social cognition. Specifically, this review summarizes the characteristics that are likely to promote judgeability and explores its potential consequences. A diverse range of characteristics are identified as predictors of judgeability, all relating to three broader categories: psychological adjustment, social status, and socialization. Furthermore, being judgeable has a variety of potential, largely positive, consequences for the target, leaving good targets poised for greater personal and interpersonal well-being. Nevertheless, many questions on this topic remain and it is crucial for this relatively understudied topic to receive more systematic empirical attention.
KEYWORDS:
accuracy; expressivity; judgeability; person perception; well-being
PMID: 23861354 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Grant me the tenacity to beat the living shit out of a line until it fits
The courage to cut what I cannot fix
And the wisdom to feign indifference.
--Sir Christopher Jelley

What do you think? Have you ever fallen into that pit where you had no "real" life and your entire life existed through a keyboard and screen? Have you found your way back into the land of living and breathing? Have you discovered your body? Are you OK being alone with yourself??

Got me started thinking about this (again):
http://vimeo.com/70534716

I had a housemate once who would become completely obsessed with a new video game and play it continuously until he had completed all the levels. It took a couple months for him to master Grand Theft Auto. He took me for a ride in it. Our virtual reality was shared in living and breathing space, and he was not a lost cause. I don't think. I hope not.

I have a friend who lives a good fraction of her life in second life. She is married in this life and has a significant other in second life. Her 2nd life SO is known to her and her husband. He has a wife and kids. They visit together, eat icecream, break ankles, breathe the same air. Second life has merged with first life.

I have a sister whose occupation is building things for the second world. That is, she obtains or develops images and sounds that she can sell for virtual money. Her reality is beyond my comprehension, except that when she is there beside me she is just as solidly herself as she has ever been, with a sharpened wit.

I have a boyfriend who barely exists on the internet. I told him how many fb friends I have now and he laughed at me. I think he is afraid that I will go where my sister went, or my friend. He likes to exercise and play his guitar and garden and read. Doing all those other things sounds far better than this. I'm outta here.

He was 68 years old. He died in hospice of melanoma, which was discovered last year in his brain. He never recognized the skin lesion. He was one of my original paddling buddies here in Portland, a retired engineer and a budding Buddhist. He loved his wife and their home by the Washougal river, where he could watch osprey and otters. His hospice bed was at home, turned so that he could see the river flowing by. He was headstrong and didn't enjoy dysfunctional group dynamics, hence was apt to simply leave behind river groups he didn't feel like dealing with. He softened after his diagnosis. I wish his wife and family well in this difficult time. Holidays for them will forevermore bring up the memory of he who they lost on this day. His name was Dick Sisson. A candle burns for him here, and his memory is held with love and respect.

Love me
when I least deserve it,
because that’s when
I really need it.
--Swedish proverb

Her name is Jody Powell, and she is brilliant, intuitive, and honest. She's also a serious athlete (rock climber especially). Basalt is a very small town and she says getting started is slow going. I have no doubts that she will attract visitors to their small town.
Here's her site: http://aspennd.com/Site/Welcome.html