Been having that coming-down-with-a-cold feeling for a couple of days now...
...and then, rather early yesterday evening, my metabolism just shut down. Body temperature down a couple of degrees, headache, disorientation, nothing for it but to stumble off to bed at 7:00.
And then, the dreams... honest, folks, I hadn't been smoking anything....
During the first part of the night I had a bizarre dream in which several people, including at least one relative, had been kidnapped by terrorists and were being held for ransom; my mother had arranged payment of the ransom, but for some reason I had to go over the paperwork with the terrorists' lawyers. There was also something about the hostages being held in a slotted pipe nested within another pipe, the outer pipe having water in it, and I was trying to figure out how to gimmick the setup so that (a) they wouldn't drown, and (b) they could be rescued. This was a matter of considerable puzzlement, as the inner pipe was apparently only about four inches in diameter, and it's not clear how eight or so hostages could be packed into it in the first place.
Then there was the lying-awake time. Hey, ya go to bed at 7, ya don't expect to sleep until dawn, right?
Then, around time to wake up, I dozed off again, and dreamed that I woke up, walked into the bathroom, and found the sink full of leaves. Eh? Not leaves from my yard, either; these were liquidambar leaves. This rang a bell; apparently I'd been expecting some manner of nocturnal prankery. Out to the front of the house to see what else was amiss.
Head for dining-area light switch; trip over chair. That chair wasn't where I'd left it; must have been pulled out by intruders. Turn on light; scan kitchen and living room. Aha! The home theater projector was, after the manner of Schrödinger's cat, both there and not there. On observation, its state resolved to there, but not in its accustomed place. It had been removed from its ceiling mount, and relocated two feet left, two feet down, and two feet forward, and had attached to it some exotic optical instruments. The projector and its new fittings had obviously been set up to measure Planck's constant.
Aha! Now I saw the purpose! I was being set up for a classic prank phone call - the one that starts out, "You know Planck's constant?"
Trouble is, I couldn't remember the punch line! It would be so embarrassing to have the phone ring, and to have to play straight man to an old one like that! I was so distracted, I couldn't even remember the value of Planck's constant, beyond 6.mumbleE-34 J/Hz (hey, at least I could remember the first significant figure, the exponent, and the units).
At that point, I woke up. Then dozed off yet again, and dreamed about writing a blog post about the whole thing.
Eventually, I really did wake up, at least enough to make it to a couple of important meetings and not make a total fool of myself.
My metabolism still isn't operating normally, though. Now, how do I attach jumper cables to my mitochondria?
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