absence makes the heart grow fungus....

haven't had much to say. things are way to strange the last while. i find myself surrounded by illness and death.

i'm still struggling to recover from the acute gout attack. my doctor threw a massive prescription at it, and then extended it (and added another) when the swelling hadn't gone down after a week. a second week took care of most of it, however once i tapered off the prednesone, i've had some swelling come back. bad enough i could hardly walk on it yesterday.

on top of that, a good friend of mine is in town visiting one of his best friends who was recently diagnosed with brain cancer and given almost no time. only knew him as an acquaintance, but a nice guy. a good guy. about the same age. holy shit.

the kicker though was the 9am phone call this morning - where i found out my brother in-law's brother passed away yesterday. just turned 30.

stunned. that's all i can say.

i am totally fucking stunned.

down and out....

somehow the fun never seems to stop.

for about a week and a half i've been down with an acute case of gout that flared to fullness on the weekend. hobbled in to see my doctor and am on a new dose of medication, at home with my foot in the air, chained to work by my blackberry.

i will likely post when my thoughts become more than ow, ow, oww, ouch, ow, hobble, hobble, stub, wimper, ouch. owie.


on a side note: the rod stewart concert was pretty damn good. my favorite part was when he cut the second song about 2 lines in, started laughing, looked at the audience and said "sorry, i fucked up". restarted the song and off we went..... not sure if that's confidence, or the knowledge that he had all of our money in his pocket already.

a quick question....

what's better than concert tickets to see rod stewart?

free concert tickets to see rod stewart.

and i'm off to the concert. be thinking of you all. alone at home. reading this.

enough already....

i don't believe in burning bridges, but i'd be lying today if i said i didn't wish that i pissed gasoline and that i could shoot sparks when i snap my fingers.

knowledge is power....

having knowledge of something, does not necessarily give you power over it.

root of all evil....

they say all it takes is money. too bad i don't have any.

truth....

the fear of failing prevents me from beginning.

now, where was i......

i can't begin to tell you what things have been like lately, without sounding like a whiny broken record - especially about work. hence the lack of posts. combined with the lack of time. suffice it to say, i've had some indicators that this has not been my best week:

• like a sign from the devil, as i walked up the stairs toward the office today i found a little white tube sitting on a stair. i picked it up. i fondled it. i smelled it. i held it gently in a caress. i put it between my lips, closed my eyes, and inhaled. i imagined. i thought about lighting that fucker up. it's been 8 years since i last quit. i put it on a shelf above my desk and left it there. (actually, i forgot about it.)
  
• i required (yes, REQUIRED) a quad mocha from starbucks this morning. i actually spent $6 on a cup of coffee. yes, you got it.... four shots of espresso in a mochachino. it lasted less than 20 minutes in the cup. several hours in me :) :) :) :) :\ :\ :( :( :( :p :p :p
• laughing maniacally as i walk down the halls at work. often shortly after speaking to my manager - just as he's leaving the area. often for no real reason.
  
• spending more time with my department director than my family.
• massive projects with random deadlines and no resources (see... told you it would sound like a broken, whining record.....)
  

i've also been revamping another web-site in my spare time, and working on other interests.

however, i will leave you with a few reflections that relate to my last post:

• out of all the exchanges, the nurse got the last (and best shot in). as she was applying the dressing, she made the comment "guess what! you get a free ass wax."
• i felt like part of a sigfried and roy act when the packing came out - you pull, and pull, and pull... and it just kept coming.... all 6 feet of it. like magic.
  
• she was wrong. even after a week of taping dressings to my butt, it never got a full wax. hah! so there!
  
• the skin removed from the dressings was infinitely more painful than the incision. imagine a slightly painful x shaped incision surrounded by a square of scabbing skin and you'll know the good times you missed.
• life is funny. just as the back end starts to heal - i come down with a massive head cold.
  

yah, i know... time to spray lysol on your brain and scrub. take comfort in the fact that i will not be posting photos.

more later when i've recovered from the last two weeks of hell.

madcap recap....

oh yeah... happy anniversary - it's been a year. the post you've really been waiting for follows this one below.

flashback. madcap recap:

the start:

• intention: reflection and personal growth. that was part of the reason for starting this blog. (well, that and providing technical support to someone else who had just started blogging - since i had never seen it, i needed to sign up.)
• reality: that kind of shit takes time, and space, and quiet - and frankly between home with a 3 year old, hours of driving in traffic, and a job that... well, leaves no time for anything other than panic - it hasn't happened. it needs to, it just hasn't happened. besides, it's work.

personal:

• meh. had a good vacation :) [click here to read about it - but it is long]
• personal growth: nah - mostly covered that.
• survived another year of work - barely. since the major benefit of my medical plan is that it covers the two drugs i need to control my stress induced hypertension..... well.... you get the picture. (you can lookup the labels suckage, job, interviews, and anger management - they'll probably cover mostly work.) edit: i take that back - suckage turned out to mostly be me just whining about my personal life.
  

medical (you know... the fun stuff):

• july 2006 - vasectomy. i spend the morning with an old polish doctor with ice cold hands cupping my testicles. am pronounced sterile 6 months later.... 6 months. The average is supposed to be 30 days, or you can "assist" by spanking the monkey around 20 times to clean the system out. apparently i was "quite fertile" according to the doc', because i slapped that little furry bastard around almost daily for those 6 months. i almost cried from relief when the test finally came back clear.
• september 2006 - dislocated shoulder. let's just go with fuck that hurt. and was of course two weeks before my vacation. thankfully i was out of the sling and able to drive.
• october-december 2006. colds. flus. various illnesses. some we seem to have brought back from the states. others i traded at work. everyone in the house sick at the same time. various times. culminating in a bout of hacking so bad i almost barfed up a lung on my manager. luckily i got to skip a bunch of budget meetings because i was contagious.
• december 2006 - minor chemical burn in the left eye. i don't think blogged about this one... but in going to prep my mom's christmas gift, i had an issue where i went to mix some old primer that had skinned over. the skin popped and i was splashed with oil based chemical goo from tip to tail. after running the eye under water for an hour while waiting on the phone to speak with medical assistance, i was told to head to the emergency room. where i wound up with my eye under running water for another hour and a half, until someone had a chance to drop by and see me. minor chemical burn - put these eye drops in for the next 3 days, and try to be less stupid next time. yes, paraphrased, but not by much.

which leads us to this episode......

an ode to my ass....

this may be somewhat rude and offensive - in more ways than one. i'll let you decide if i opted to go for "blood & gore" or funny..... hell, once the percodan wears off, i likely won't remember just what the hell happened here anyway.

oh, most beautiful, and under appreciated appendage. no wait... it's not really an appendage, is it? oh, most beautiful, and under appreciated anatomy.....
my ass, which feels like raw fucking hamburger.
x marks the spot where they did plunder.
where the fucks my drugs.
ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.....

do you really want to hear more? onward then......

to digress, someone i worked with once asked me where all the pretty nurses are. i'll explain that so it makes more sense. i work at a school, that offers nursing as one of it's undergraduate degrees. most of them aren't too hard on the eyes. yet experience has shown that there are many a nurse out in the field that have sucked lemons for a long, long time.

i think of it like part of the speech my wife's grandfather gave at our wedding.... "i've been to many weddings. and at every one, there's always been a toast to the beautiful bride....." (here he paused for dramatic effect, as you could see many women almost in tears at this point) ".... it makes me wonder where all the ugly housewives come from." ah grandpa.... the tears sure disappeared pretty fast.

but i digress....

i seem to have located the cute nurses. they were all gathered around my fat, hairy ass on tuesday. thankfully, i couldn't see anyone's expression, as i was lying face down on the bed whilst the doctor carved a large 'X' into my ass.

X marks the spot. here there be treasure? treasure is also known as booty. a large X carved in my booty. is cosmic karma fucking with me? argh....

where was i? oh yes, digressing.

i was suffering from a pilonidal cyst. this one was particularly bad. after a couple days of it slowly getting worse, i hit the walk-in medical clinic for some antibiotics - which have minimal effect. they seemed just as happy i knew what it was, and would be following up with my doctor. no one even bothered to look at it. they handed me some antibiotics, and shooed me out the door.

it kept getting worse, so i followed up with my doctor. what can i say... the man gets the bad end of it in all of our visits. his assessment was it needed to be lanced. they phoned the emergency room, and sent me off.

now, if you can imagine sitting on an infected abscess the size of a plum, buried just off centre by your tail bone, oozing bloody pus - you can imagine the irony of diving yourself to emergency, and paying to park while you will now spend hours sitting in a waiting room. it's also wildly exciting to be expected when you walk in to emergency because your doctor was kind enough to call ahead. thankfully - this part was short. after an hour, i was in a bed in the minor treatment area.

of course, the short line in the waiting area was an anomoly that was made up for in the treatment area.

cute little nurse shows me to a bed. hands me a gown. and then says she'll be back after i've changed. 'everything?' i asked, knowing it was likely to be a bit of a wait. 'yes' she answered, followed by 'the opening goes in the back' as she walked away. sigh. i didn't see anyone for almost 2 hours after that. dear god... there really are people that put them on wrong, aren't there.

i left my socks on. i also donated a couple bucks on the way out so they can afford some heat. i paced. i wandered to the bathroom every half hour to break up the monotony. i read the only book i had around at work.... dale carnegie's how to enjoy your life and your job.

at around the two hour mark lying on my side in the hospital bed, a second nurse (also cute) rolled up a tray with a bunch of surgical tools and mumbled something about it not being long. i assumed at the time, she meant the wait. but it was cold, and those gowns are thin, and she might have been referring to something else. i don't know. i didn't care.

funny, there's no mention of spending 5 hours being ignores and freezing in emergency at the hospital in a drafty gown. i finished the book and checked in the index. no hospital entries.

3 1/2 hours into the bed wait (4 1/2 hours total now) i managed to flag the original nurse down as she walked by... and bless her little heart... she realized i'd been forgotten about. up went the end of the bed and out came a blanket. to be honest, i just wanted to know if i could slip down to the cafeteria for some lunch if the wait was going to be much longer. nope.... as luck would have it, i was up next.

which was good, because after staring at the surgical tray for the last hour, i was starting to think i had accidentally ordered the do-it-yourself kit. but was bad, because they were going to freeze and cut when i hadn't eaten in 9 hours and was getting shaky.

finally the doctor shows up. i warn him about my not taking freezing very well.... i think he was humouring me, but he doubled up the freezing. and he even went out for more..... accidentally leaving the curtains wide open with my heine out enjoying the cool evening breeze, and on display for anyone walking through the ward.

"this isn't going to be fun" he says, proceeding to shove a needle full of local anesthetic into my backside in a dozen random locations. and it wasn't. although.... oddly, it was better than many days at work.

i'll admit, i was thankful that the freezing took. he seemed to spend a fair amount of time cutting, and i was somewhat startled when i heard him say "finally, there it is...." large, deep, hard to find pocket. and then began the fun. spray of water. and the doctor using his weight to get leverage and squeeze. and squeeze. and squeeze. and dig. and squeeze.

queue the cute nurses at this point. one of whom notices the curtain partly open to the public, and opts to close it so that only paid medical staff have to suffer cornea damage and scarring. at this point it is 'clean' and drained, and so that it heals properly they are going to stuff it full of packing material so it starts to heal from the inside out.

what i hear is "more. no, more. no, i'm going to need more." when i turn my head what i see is the nurse pulling packing out of a container an arm's length at a time. it's like a woven gauze, about 1/2 an inch in width, and green. the doc then proceeds to stuff this into the open wound - fitting 6 feet. as the freezing begins to come out. joy.

so for 36 hours i had to have that packing in place. they threw a dressing on, and told me to change it thursday when i removed the packing, unless it soaked through before then.

and then they offered additional dressing, percocet, and a sheet on after care for the wound. i sat forgotten again, until one of them noticed me out of the corner of their eye. handing me the percocet they told me i was free. i guess out of those last 3 items, i got the right one. free. free!

i hobbled out of emergency, and through the hospital to the car. collapsed in the car and laughed bitterly when as i shelled out the 10 bucks for parking. i headed home.

i crawled in the door and collapsed. feeling odd, i decided to check the dressing - and realized i had blood soaking through the dressing, 4 layers of clothing, and into the car upholstery.

so much for thursday.

abcess makes the heart grow fonder.....

excuse my absence for the last couple days... it's been a looooooong weekend, culminating in a five hour wait at the emergency room today.

i was going to blog about the movie and pre-movie entertainment i experienced friday, but now that may be postponed in deference to a blog involving local anesthetics, my butt, and a scalpel.

since tomorrow is my one year (holy crap, this is all your fault okami!) anniversary blog-iversary, i'll let you vote :)

blood and gore, or amusement beyond belief?

it's in your hands.

violated.....

victimized. my truck was ransacked last night. i parked it in the alley while i unloaded something into the garage through the side door, and then got sidetracked for a bit. when i went back out to move the truck, something seemed odd......

i didn't leave the glove box open. shit.

the seat was covered in detritus. slowly i started pawing through the mess to put stuff away.... afraid of what i would find, or wouldn't.

wait a minute - check the visor - insurance and registration are gone. shit. no... wait... there it is in the pile on the seat.

garage door opener? still there. tape converter for mp3 player? no? yup there it is. 8 year old street maps - check. 10 year old beat up tape measure - check. sunglasses - check. 15 cents change in the ashtray - check. flashlight with dead batteries - still here. led windup flashlight because the other one has dead batteries? there it is. screwdriver - check. band saw blades - check. damage? none i can find. small favours. booster cables - check. socket set - no..... shit. no, wait... i needed them in the house when i had to replace the furnace motor.

wtf? what were they looking for? ipod? blackberry? cd's? money? in a rusted out '91 junker? in a japanese car whose locks are so worn you can use a popsicle stick to open the door?

i'm not sure what i'm more embarrassed about - the fact that i didn't lock the door, and so invited this to happen, the fact that i only noticed because it was marginally cleaner than before they rifled the contents, or the fact that i don't have anything worth stealing. (and i'll argue that you shouldn't have to lock your doors - most people would have respected that, or may have busted the window if it was locked.)

it took about an hour, but i finally figured out what was missing - they stole some cheap kc pro multi-tool knockoff from home depot that wasn't even mine. worth less than most of what they did take.

if you want crime to pay, i think you have to be smarter than this idiot - or pick your targets better.

so now i have a clean truck (they pulled out all the garbage that had collected under the seats), and had an enjoyable night to boot.

----
image from: plig.org/things/pictures/tn/Cape%20Town.jpg.html

a little ditty....

la-tee-da-da-da-da
la-tee-da-da-da-da
la-tee-daaaaaaa-daaaaaaaaa dear messiah........
la-tee-da-da-da-da


ah, fuck it.
it's just another day.

public service announcement....

to all of you that are afraid to use your credit cards, or anything other than cash - because the government, the "man" is out to get you, listen very closely....

unless you are a terrorist, or really are doing something highly illegal and unethical.....

you are fucking deluded. you are not that interesting. get over it.

we now return you to your regular program.

vacation.... part 4our (the final installment)

the long drive home..... 3 months late.

short version: got in the car, drove. went through customs. drove. stopped overnight. drove more. got home, so i stopped driving.

full version:
day 10en: we spent the morning at pike place market, a fabulous market. if you've never been, and have the chance, i highly recommend it. at then end of it all, we bought a bag of hot, fresh roasted, salted cashew and hit the road toward home.

we picked up the i5 and drove down to the 250, from the 250 to the 252, and then onward until we met up with the 2. (if you have no clue what the hell i'm talking about, that's fine - because neither do i. damn highways proliferate like a pot of wet noodles flung across the floor. you'll have to grab a map and figure it out.) at last, after hours and hours and hours of driving (at least an hour) we came to beautiful downtown wenatchee, where we threw ourselves upon the mercy of the local super 8 motel.

thankfully they accept visa. problem solved. however it turned out we were somewhere in washington... damn. guess i didn't drive far enough. oh well. there's always tomorrow.

what's there to do in wenatchee? well.... here's what they have to say about the beautiful city of wenatchee: "wenatchee is world famous for our apples but it has so much else to offer.... one of the most digitally connected places in the country..."

after a night of sleep, it was another day.

day 11even: holy shit - the highway never ends. just keeps rolling. kilometre upon kilom... sorry, miles upon miles of blacktop. i keep forgetting the kilometres of blacktop are still across the border. Kept on driving that number 2 highway....

eventually we came to the border. rolled up, passports at the ready - it's always been easier to cross with passports, even before they became mandatory. roll up to the custom's officer and...

where you headed? home.
how long you been down in the states? about 4 days.
anything to declare? 32 tins of altoid ginger mints.
pardon? 32 tins of altoid ginger mints.

keep in mind, this whole time, i've had my hand sticking out the window of the car, waving our passports at this guy. he studiously ignored them. it didn't seem to matter how hard i waved them - he couldn't have cared less.

have a nice drive home. please drive on.

still waving the passports... he won't take them. fer fuck sakes buddy - after the cost and hassle of getting these damn things - look at them. thankfully, my inside voice stayed inside where it belonged, and i slowly accelerated forward. still waving the passports of course.

welcome to osoyoos, home of canada's only desert. that's right... just across the river, by one of canada's warmest lakes year round, is canada's only desert. things of interest: model t truck, fully restored coming back from a car show down in wenatchee (almost ironic) and a sculpture apparently demonstrating the dangers of drowning in our desert region.

as nice as the weather looks, the owners were
bundled up in full winter gear, as the truck has the
original heating system - none.

Back in the car and onto the number 3 highway eastbound. we stopped in beautiful downtown castlegar, where we had an incredible view from our room's window.
and yes, it was fun. staff stopped to watch, as laying fully flat on my back i picked up enough speed and momentum to shoot 25 feet out into the pool and make a hell of a splash. i did it until my not too healed, previously dislocated shoulder started to complain. (then i did it a couple more times to teach it who was boss.)

morning dawned to find us seeking yet another complimentary continental breakfast. although this one was a nice surprise - as they had waffle machines, hard boiled eggs, and a couple other additions to the spread that were a welcome change.

we took off as early as possible to get home at a decent hour, and headed up the 93/95 through radium and invemere to meet up with the trans-canada highway (no 1). one of the fun things about this area was the continental divide - the point where water stop flowing to the west, and starts flowing to the east.


and an area that had previously been devastated by forest fire, and was beginning to grow back. stopping to read the information was quite sobering - as i had mistaken how recent the fire was. by a lot.



and finally to home. where much to my dismay, i finally discovered the cause of the shredded engine belt that we had discovered shortly out of seattle. someone at the factory that had refurbished my nice shiny alternator i put in mere days before leaving, had put the wrong pulley on. thankfully the guy at the parts area just shook his head and handed me a new belt and alternator. warranty - you are a good thing.

note how the belt doesn't actually fit when
seated properly on the side. the car had been serviced
by mechanics who replaced the water pump after i changed
out the alternator.... since the belt has to come off
you think they might have noticed.

of course, at this point - arriving home - i decided i needed a vacation to recover from my vacation.

dear scott adams......

out of the entire world.... how did you mange to find me?


edit: duh... that should have been "find me" originally, not "fine me"....

holy shit....

there is no way, that i can begin to accurately express, just how much vomit a sick 2 year old is capable of producing. and just how widespread the mess. we won't even mention the stench.

(put another check mark in the "yup, just one kid" column please. on second thought, make that 2 check marks.)

happy new year.....

ah yes, i rolled over this morning, and realized it was the dawn of a new year. welcome 2007. goodbye 2006. it seemed 'so new', 'so fresh', so.... i rolled over again and went back to sleep.

on a lighter note, whilst cleaning up e-mail, i ran across something i had sent to a friend that made me laugh. so i thought being a new year and all, it might be fitting....

I learned fast that "promotion" is an ancient latin term, meaning "double the responsibility for an additional pittance". I also soon learned that "double" is originally a greek term meaning "four times as much" and "pittance" is an anglo-saxon word meaning "boy did you get screwed".

i am off this week, trying to burn off some of the overtime i accrued and couldn't fit in before the end of the year. at the end of this month i will get paid out for almost 3 weeks of holidays that i couldn't fit in either. i tried - but realized when i filled out my time sheet, i had only used accumulated overtime and hadn't started on holidays yet. who knew?

ah well. we're working on that being different this year. and no... not a new years resolution. just a resolution.

unfair....

life is unfair. karma is bullshit. i don't say this to complain, it's just a friendly reminder. let me give you an example, say.... my life yesterday.

my brother: calls to discuss my mom's birthday present 2 days before her birthday. and is somewhat shocked to hear we already have something, and aren't interested in going together on his last minute gift certificate idea. goes out, buys his gift certificate, returns home, realizes he doesn't have his shiny new blackberry. figures it's the last place he used it - the office - and goes to pick it up before heading out to banff. gets to the office, and there it is on his desk.

me: wakes up to a cold house, and a noise that sounds like an angry garage door opener trying to kill a cat. waited until the entire house was up a couple hours later, and then went downstairs to find out what was happening. ayup - the furnace motor for the blower is dead.

phone my local plumbing and heating shop that is a dealer for my furnace brand... closed until the new year. phone choice number two, whew, they're open today. good thing too, because they're closed for the next 3 due to the long weekend new year holiday. rip the dead motor out and haul it with me. drive down, pick up the new one, drive back.

phone rings... it's some guy who found a brand new blackberry on the street. he checked the last call made, and dialed it hoping to find out who owns it. chat for a bit, turns out he's right outside my brother's office - and he offers to drop it off since he knows where it is. great. phone the office and check that he really did - yup. guy at the office says "weird, couple minutes after marc left, someone came in and dropped off his cell phone."

kill the gas. kill the breaker. disassemble the furnace as much as possible for cleaning, remove the blower. rewire the new motor, reassemble the furnace. realize the gas valve that i had trouble moving with a wrench is easily moved by finger pressure. crap. all testing indicates no leak, so what the hell - i've spent 5 hours on the cold concrete floor or outside in freezing weather - fuck it, time to fire this thing up.

nothing explodes. good. heat? yes. blower motor? nada. wait. nada. wait. nada. kicks in. whew. clean up and head upstairs.

get a phone call from my brother - he got back to the office to pick up his blackberry he forgot there, and picked up the voice mail i left telling him he had lost it. he didn't' even realize it had been lost. what!?!? not even a little stress? argh! horseshoes up your ass. lucky fucker for no good reason.

the moral: there is no moral. i used to believe in karma... that those who did good would have good returned, that those who were assholes would get theirs. but it never seems to happen. so i've lost faith in it.

life happens.

my theory is that those who are capable, wind up with responsibility. those who can't really deal with life, get to float through without having to. what. the. fuck.

figures, don't it.

well, happy new year everyone.

(just wait till you hear my thoughts about new year's resolutions....)

way too funny.....

ok. i don't count this as a real post, but this was funny.....
ok go

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