Something I forgot to write about yesterday's flip-over from the Three-Legged Dog: It required a bit of faith to execute. At least two students gasped when Lisa demonstrated the move, thinking she'd fallen by accident. Then there was some nervous laughter when Lisa informed us that we were going to do the move. Jason, to my right, jokingly predicted that our row was going to tumble like dominoes. But, like I wrote, it was a lot easier than it sounded.

(A year ago, I couldn't have predicted that I'd be writing about a flip-over from the Three-Legged Dog.)

I dropped our Prius off at Toyota of Seattle at 8:30 this morning for the car's 24 month/30,000 mile scheduled service. We will have had the Prius for two years on January 31. At 8:30 this morning, there were 10,385 miles on the odometer.

The service department is also going to do the Hybrid Vehicle (HV) Battery modification today, which I'd forgotten about. (That's twice I've written "forgot" in this entry.)

The letter we received a couple of months ago says, in part: "On certain 2001 through mid-2003 Model Year Prius vehicles, there is a possibility that a very small amount of electrolyte may seep from the HV Battery around one or more of the positive HV battery terminals. If this should occur under high humidity conditions, the HV Battery Computer will detect a drop in the resistance and illuminate the Master Warning Light and Hybrid System Malfunction Warning Light." (The capitalization is theirs.) It's nothing like the 20th century, when a rotor needed replacing because the contacts wear down, is it?

We did a surprisingly relaxing asana (pose) in yoga class this evening. Lisa called it "Three-Legged Dog." You're going to have to visualize this, because I can't find a picture of it online - or, in fact, any asana called "Three-Legged Dog." It started out as the Downward-Facing Dog, but then we lifted one leg and extended it over the other leg. (For instance, lift the left leg and point it to the right.)

Then we took it further - into an "easier than it sounds" move. We shifted our weight toward the direction that the lifted leg was facing, and kept shifting it until we flipped over into a sort of face-up Plank Pose.

This is the best name for a blog I have seen: Apropos of Nothing. (It's an entertaining blog, too.)

Today, I was given both the access and the permission to create documents for patients' medical records. I'll be documenting things like: "Patient did not show up for today's clinic appointment," and "Patient is refusing medical treatment." I have become even more of an active and visible part of patient care.

I'd still be happier if I were back up in the clinic, but I admit that in the office, I am learning valuable skills that I didn't have in the four years at my previous clinic. I am being treated as more of a valued team member than I was at my previous clinic.

There is a light that never goes out.

It's been raining heavily for most of the day today, and I left for work without a hat. (I don't carry an umbrella.) So I rode the 9 home this afternoon, instead of walking. After I exited the bus on Broadway, I stopped into Grüv (used CDs, DVDs, and video tapes) on impulse. (When I walk home, I'm usually on the opposite side of Broadway.) I found what I've been looking for: the DVD of White. My "Three Colors" collection is complete. It started as a treat for myself when I started my present job last July. I decided to buy the "Three Colors" DVDs, but I wanted to buy them used. It's one thing to buy a DVD I like, but a lot more fun to find a DVD I like.

I found "Red" first - at Grüv. Then I started looked for the others whenever I happened to be by a used DVD store, keeping it in mind, but not making special trips to find them. I found "Blue" next, also at Grüv. Now I've found "White."

I watched "White" this evening, and couldn't find the hidden "blue/white/red" scene that each one of the three films feature. I had thought it was the toothbrushes and toothpaste in Karol's brother's house, but now that I've seen it again, I realize that that's "red/blue/white."

The song stuck in my head this morning was "Man Gave Names To All Of The Animals," by Bob Dylan. Then I started thinking about opossums, and wondering how they came to be the only marsupial in North America, and the song stopped playing in my head.

I am a huge fan of the works of M. Night Shyamalan. I enjoyed The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village (which we rented this weekend). I haven't yet seen his pre-Sixth Sense films: Wide Awake and Praying With Anger.

I think that M. Night Shyamalan gets negative critical reviews that he doesn't deserve. (Even Roger Ebert, whose opinion I normally value, gave The Village one star out of five.) M. Night Shyamalan makes films, not movies. Films are smaller stories, often more personal stories, with less universal themes than movies. Movies are made to appeal to huge audiences - films are made to appeal to fans. M. Night Shyamalan's problem, I think, was The Sixth Sense. It was so hugely popular that it became a movie. It was a very successful movie that entered the popular culture. ("I see dead people.") Every one of M. Night Shyamalan's films that came afterwards have been compared to The Sixth Sense. Critics judge them as movies - which they're not. Critics focus so much on the famous "twist ending" that each film has featured that they miss the subtlety and craft of the storytelling. The Village is an allegory. It's a study of how people live with constant fear, and of ways that fear can be used as a tool to protect people from danger.

I found it interesting that the "next generation" of the village was represented by a fellow who cared about nothing except his personal appearance, a woman who saw people's true colors but didn't see the truth, a man who seemed to suspect the truth but never said what was on his mind, and a fellow who thought the danger was a big joke and brought the very thing the elders feared into the village. It's an allegory.

I, Robot is a movie. We rented it this weekend. It was not as bad as I was expecting it to be. Part of that opinion may be that I barely remember the Asimov books that it was very loosely based on. ("Suggested by Isaac Asimov's book" was how the credits put it.) Don, at yesterday's Writers' Group, had to remind me that Dr. Calvin was a major character in the books - that's how long it's been since I read them.

Action movies, on the whole, have never been faithful to the laws of physics. Theses days, The Matrix and the proliferation of computer-generated special effects have made the situation worse. We now have movies like I, Robot in which the hero launches a speeding motorcycle into the air, jumps off of the motorcycle in midair, fires several perfectly aimed bullets into the bad guys, the motorcycle somehow zooms ahead of the hero, which allows the hero to fall straight down onto the roof of a parked car and tumble onto the ground unhurt.