Responsible behaviour

This blog is filled to the brim with such behaviour! But more is always possible. Evil tongues might claim that on Tuesday evenings my behaviour might often be suboptimally responsible. Nothing irresponsible about prancing around in abandoned underground structures, of course, but strange folks might think otherwise. This Tuesday there was a tempting trip planned, to a far-away cave. It looked cool, but I had had the entire weekend off, manuscripts needed to be finished, my car had to get MOT-tested, and there were more caving activities planned for the week. On Wednesday there would be cave rescue first aid training, or cas care as it tends to be called (cas being short for casualty, evidently), and there would be an AGM of the Cornish bunch of Thursday. Help! Too much!

My car, as I have reported, was back from the garage in time. But Dorthe was popping up in a window on my screen. She wanted that manuscript that I had been working on between christmas and academic year 2011. And she wanted it soon! So basically, I could not do two nights of non-working in a row. So muddy far-away caving, or civilised cas care training? I did the calvinistic thing and prioritised usefulness over fun. It should be mentioned, though, that the cas care thing is closer to Plymouth, and does not involve such amounts of mud, so one has a good chance of ending up in bed at a reasonable time; something I didn't really see happening with the caving trip. And I have to stay fresh for more 14C dating and the likes. So without any reason as pressing as health issues or being abroad I didn't go caving! Too bad; it looked marvellous. And there was quite some traversing in it. I could imagine people will think that's the real reason I didn't go. But either way; I stayed in Plymouth, worked hard on the manuscript, sent it off to Norway, and hope that means it will soon be sent to where it should end up: Amsterdam! And while Norway has another look at the manuscript I might learn to save lives...



ps Time will tell if I will ever save a life, but that night clearly made such an event more likely! We went through all sorts of checks one can do on a casualty, and all sorts of theory behind it. Pulse, breathing, pupil reactions, blood pressure, blood sugar level... the latter, by the way, gave rise to some amusement from my side; when I donate blood I always get my blood pressure measured, and I always have the textbook value for a healthy adult: 120/80. So I assumed I was just the textbook case healthy adult in general. So when they told us that the textbook value of glucose in the blood is between 4 and 8, I stated mine would probably be 6. And lo and behold: 6.1! I am the most normal person there is. Just so you all know.