Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

So following up on the cutie “skullified” piggie that I carved out of a copy of one of Nefarious’s Littlest Pet Shop figurines, and also the Monster High / Barbie mod amulets I guess, I’ve done a bit more carving. I actually did some of this while I was in the hospital — I’m always nervous pulling out a knife in places where people don’t expect it but so far it’s gone smoothly. Maybe whittling is a better word than carving, and I think it matches the sort of zen relaxation element of what’s going on better. It keeps my mind off the pain, a nice mix of focused and sharply aware with calm nothingness.

In any case, these two characters are a monkey toy that I’ve done a half x-ray mod on, and then since I figured I do too many skulls and zombie and such, the other one, a hamster that I’ve half peeled back the skin of to reveal its true robot form. Maybe a terminator sent back in time to kill the leader of the hamster resistance.

And electrode boy, well, he is not whittled, but the whittler. On these most recent tests they totally wired me up with various electrodes recording my brainwaves (sleep states primarily), muscle tension in my neck and shoulders, motion in my legs, a temperature sensor that measured the air temperature around my nose to decode my breathing along with stretch-sensors around my chest and abdomen. I probably forgot some but as you can see in this wiring interface box picture, there was a good chunk of data being recorded, and all this went along with video and audio (at least in theory — I don’t know for sure if this is included in what the doctor who requisitioned the study gets).

Like I said before, I don’t anticipate these test showing anything bad. Hopefully everything is fine because I need to “do well” on this test to get my pain treatment moved up to the next (pharmacologically dangerous) level.