Whatever

Settling In

I seem to have settled in at an every other pace. Well, that means tonight I should post something and I pretty much have zero to write about, so it’s junk time.

The FRS are playing pretty good baseball right now and have managed to get a couple games above .500. They are still in last place in their division, but everybody is all bunched up and they are only 2-1/2 games behind the leaders. This is all pending the outcome of tonight’s game and things are not looking too good.

I’m watching the game on MLB.tv using the Roku box. Every day so far they have had a Free Game of the Day and this is the first time the Sox have been on for free. I think it helped that there are only three big league games in total going tonight and the FRS game is the only one in the eastern time zone. As strange as this seems the worse part of watching the game on MLB.tv is the lack of commercials. The deafening silence for 2 – 3 minutes while staring at the logo is UN-nerving.

The CNC machine I sort of learned to program and then just recently sort of learned how to operate is in the building. Our maintenance is hooking up power to it and when they are done the fine folks of Ellison Technologies will come in and put it in complete working order. Then the fun really begins.

My taste buds are still slightly whack after 5 days of being off the antibiotics….

Unintentional Phallic Symbol?

Or is it just me?

I love some Diet Dr. Pepper and I have graduated from my one 12oz. can a day to one 16.9 ouncer. In between I would buy an occasional 20oz bottle out of the machine, but sometimes I wouldn’t even finish the whole bottle. At a $1.25 it was kind of a waste.

Today after I had poured the last of the half litter bottle into my mug and I placed the bottle back down on my desk it just looked a little “dirty.” Maybe because the diameter of the bottle is smaller than the 20oz and then again slightly taller as well, giving it a decidedly male profile.

P.S. The 24oz bottles are even worse.

Patient Zero of the Zombie Apocalypse

Yesterday I had a colonoscopy, and I got cheated and then I got more than I bargained for.

The last time I had one of these puppies, the 4 to 5 hours of trippy liquidness post procedure almost made up for the crappy (figuratively and literally) preparation. But this time they had a new way of putting you to sleep, it is very fast acting and very fast in clearing your system. When I woke up in the recovery room I was as alert as I was when sitting in the waiting room beforehand. What a let down.

We went home I had lunch and then I got in bed to catch a nap. I never did get any shut-eye, about 45 minutes of tossing and turning I started to get cold, real cold. I started shaking and couldn’t get warm. Donna took my temperature and it read 96.9. She filled the bathtub with hot water, no cold used at all, and I bet that the water temperature was about 110°. It took almost 3/4 of an hour in the tub before the shaking stopped. I stayed in the water about fifteen minutes more and when I exited the bath I looked like a cooked lobster. After that my temperature was now reading 103.

I stayed feeling warm the rest of the afternoon and when I still didn’t feel right about 6:00PM we took my temp again and it still read one hundred and three! I took an extra strength Tylenol, drank a cold soda, ate some cold jello and after an hour my temperature had “dropped” down to 102.6°

Next stop was the emergency room. They took my temperature and of course it read 99.1°. Debated going home, but opted to stay and get checked out more thoroughly. The ER doctor ordered chest and abdominal x-rays, looking for clues. He had several vials of blood drawn for lab work along with a urine sample. He also had the nurse fill 3 bottles about the size of something from a mini bar with blood that were for culturing. While we waited for lab results I got a litter of saline in my IV.

The hot bath, the ER visit, the staying at the ER and the ER doc’s testing were all done with consultation with the doctor who did my scope.

No one was sure exactly what was going on with me as these we atypical of what to expect after this procedure. I was in no pain, I just got the chills real bad and then went into the overheat range. The X-rays were fine, no bowel perforations and no fluid in my lungs. Urine was fine. My blood work did show that my white blood count was at 18k, with 10-12 being normal. I obviously had infection of some kind, but no one knew what kind. I either had a simple bug picked up from somewhere and it was unrelated to the procedure or it was related and could get much worse, plus they wouldn’t know about the blood cultures until 12 hours or so later, they wanted to keep me overnight.

We balked at this, I was feeling fine. The ER doc called my primary care physician and after a few minutes the poor schmoe who was on call came in and examined me, he finally agreed to let me go home if I let him administer the first doses of two different antibiotics right there (plus give me prescriptions for filling later.) One was a pill, but the other one took 90 minutes to drip into me via IV. We finally left the ER at 1:30AM this morning.

I have to give a blood sample tomorrow, then see the PCP on Friday and see if my white blood cell count comes down. Of course we are still waiting to see if one of those blood cultures goes mutant, and I become Patient Zero of the Zombie Apocalypse.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1139

My Cookies Have Names

I get some cookies for a morning snack. The quantity varies depending on how many total are in the package and dividing that number by five and I try and mix it up by getting something different each week. Nutter Butter, Oreos* (regular and reverse), Fig Newtons and several Keebler varieties (Deluxe Grahams, Fudge Sticks or Fudge Stripes.) This week, a Keebler cookie I hadn’t tried, E.L Fudge(R) Originals, were on sale for $2, so I picked up a pack.

Two vanilla cookies with a layer of fudge in the middle, but they’re not as tasty to me as the other Keebler offerings or the reverse Oreos. They are shaped like the little elves that live in that hollow tree and even have names, Ernie, Elwood, Buckets & Fast Eddie. They are a little disconcerting to eat, espscecially because I usually start by bitting off their heads.**

*Did you know that along with the Titanic and Fenway Park***, Oreos are also celebrating their 100th Anniversry?

**Does it make me a zombie because I eat the brains first? Or am just being zombie safe by killing the brain?

***There is definitely a joke in that pairing somewhere.

May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor

Donna, I and 20 of our closest strangers saw The Hunger Games this morning. Went for a bike ride to DD for breakfast and when we got home there was enough time to shower, change and drive to Augusta to catch the 10:30 showing in some stadium seating.

Neither one of us has read any of the books, we both had a sketchy idea of the plot from media immersion, but the real reason we went to see it was that it was filmed mostly in our favorite part of the country, western North Carolina. Not a bad little movie. I enjoyed it more than Donna, but neither of us will be waiting with breathless anticipation for the second installment.

After doing all the prep work the last couple weeks, re-watching Iron Man 2, watching Thor, watching Captain America, and seeing the trailer in the theater today, I can now say, “I think I’ll be waiting for the DVD of The Avengers.” I almost hate to admit it, but I buy a dystopian future where teenagers battle to the death on television before I swallow the premise of an Asgardian villain attacking Earth and to the rescue come this group of “superheroes.”

The next movie I see in a movie theater will be sometime after June 8th:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UEv03g51kU&start=8

If baseball success and fan satisfaction were measured in innings played, this weekend’s three game set with Baltimore Orioles, totaling 39 innings (more than 4 complete games worth) would mean great things. Unfortunately they don’t, winning does.

The odds certainly are not in the favor of the Red Sox.

A little less than a month into the 2012 season the FRS are 11 and 16 leaving them in last place, 7-1/2 games out of the division lead. After today’s loss they are on pace for a 66 win, 96 loss season. Maybe if they try a little less harder they can get an even 100 losses to honor this 100th year anniversary of Fenway Park.

Well That Explains That

For lack of anything worth watching on the tube this evening, I had the first Iron Man movie on. It was playing on FX, so it was chock block full of commercials, but it was better than Entertainment Tonight, Wheel of Fortune or the 38th viewing of a Two And A Half Men repeat episode. One of the best sequences of the movie is Tony busting out of that cave with his cobbled together original Iron Man suit. Just after crashing into a sand dune in the middle of the desert, miles from who knows where, we go to some commercials.

What comes next in the movie I saw in the theaters 4 years ago, and what is on the DVD I got for Christmas later in 2008, is we see Mr. Stark walking around in the sand and then within a couple minutes Colonel Rhodes shows up with some helicopters to rescue him. I always thought this a little odd because, how did they get to the middle east and the scene of hundreds of Stark Industries exploding in flames so fast.

What came next on TV was a scene of a bunch of soldiers loading into some big helicopters. Tony’s friend “Rhodey” Rhodes is there and gets stopped by some General who teasingly chides him that heading off to find Stark is a fools errand as no one has any way of knowing where he might be. This explains away that quick find.

Pretty coincidental timing on the search mission and Tony completing his escape in the newly finished Iron Man suit. Then again it is a “comic book” movie, so you really can’t dig too deep on anything going on without finding incongruities.

It’s Going To Be A Beautiful Day!

Is it possible to have a pleasant flashback to an acid trip that was never taken?

We watched Sunday’s episode of Mad Men last night, and in it, Roger Sterling and his young, former secretary of a wife Jane, take LSD with some other Manhattanites under the “supervision” of her psychiatrist. We get to watch Roger’s slightly humorous and hallucinogenic evening that ends with he and Jane lying on the floor of their apartment discussing their mutual feelings that their short marriage is over.

Whether it is was the idea of this upcoming smooth and amicable separation or a residual acid high that causes Roger to proclaim brightly to Don at the office the next morning, “I have an announcement to make: It’s going to be a beautiful day!“, I’m not sure, but it had a strange effect on my day.

For no apparent reason, everything seemed brighter and shiner today. All things went smoother and easier too. On the way to work I either made it through all the traffic signals with only brief slowdowns or passed through unhindered. And even though this week I’m working 9-hour days for that free Friday afternoon off, today at the Valve Store(R) just flew right by.

So, is it possible for me to have a happy flashback to an acid trip that I never took or was it just the high dose of sugar from the DD Coffee Cake Muffin I had for breakfast?