Meanwhile, Ms. Giffords, who was shot in the head, has begun speaking, telling hospital personnel on Monday, for instance, that she wanted toast for breakfast.
What a relief it was, then, to reach the end, if only because the voice in my head had begun to sound like my own mother.
Either way, heads have begun to roll.
Our concerns about what technology is doing to our heads have begun to reach a critical mass: Every day, it seems, new afflictions -- e-mail apnea, Internet addiction disorder, nomophobia (the fear of being out of mobile phone contact) -- are reported, and books on silence, on attention and on digital overload have started to proliferate.
As they've clocked the online antics of the likes of Eats Everything and Artwork, stumbled across Kerri Chandler on their way to the toilet midway through a festival, or caught Midland on the same bill as Duke Dumont, the house lad and the conventional house-head have begun to share the same pool.
VA Secretary Eric Shinseki declared he is "mad as hell" about the situation, the President is even madder, and heads have begun to roll - though if heads can slither away, that may be a more accurate description.
In seven years since our last visit, our two favorite restaurants, not always the household names they are today, had been lauded in the press with considerable hyperbole; intimations that praise had turned their heads had begun to circulate.
It was only after he had left them and their heads had begun to clear that they were able to remember that he looked quite a lot like Charlie Chaplin — or, to be more precise, like Charlie Chaplin posing as a millionaire, an admiral, an Army officer, a physician, the State Department Naval Liaison Officer, or whatever.
With deep reflection about where my life was headed, I have begun the process of redemption, and decided that before I go to prison, I want to speak to young people about responsibility as a lifestyle.
In recent weeks, several heads of government have begun to muse, after the years of belt-tightening needed to qualify for the euro, about reducing their high unemployment by increased public spending.
