The Elysian Fields

Out sick yesterday and today. Rachel passed the bug to Deb and me. Today's round was brought to you, in part, by Pennsylvania Power & Light, or, more accurately, the lack of five or so hours of both Power and Light for no apparent reason whatsoever. But don't worry, we anticipate the problem will be resolved in three hours, so sayeth their My-Power-Is-Out line. My bedroom was dropping below 45 degrees Fahrenheit when the heat came on. When the power finally came on, I had to go around turning off everything that us boys had on (Deb and Rachel were at karate at the outset) and everything everybody turned on after by habit (or, in some cases, in an effort to turn it off). That gave me a chance to set up the CPAP, set the heat for the humidifier on high, and clear up all the crud that showed up prior to that.

Justin starts college today - the class for this semester is a college freshman English. He still has the rest of his sophomore high school course load to go through as well. That'll keep him busy. =)

Okay, so that's where my focus is. Guess it really isn't that funny, but hey, these are the jokes.

I'm pretty sure we're dealing with a sprain here: that is to say, a stretching or tearing of a ligament. Symptom checklist: pain worsens with movement & decreased range of motion; a pop or tear at the time of injury. Often the result of a sudden twist.

There was a sudden twist as I attempted to keep sixty-five pounds of Subaru engine, frame, and pump from crashing the last few feet to the floor or swinging into my son and taking out his knee caps or toes. There were two distinct pops or snaps - no crackles. Not sure if Justin could hear them or not - but he knew pretty quick it wasn't good.

Back Strains and Sprains and Taking Care of Your Back have some good info.

Good: Rachel is a television star again - she demonstrated one of her forms for a Dreams Come True telethon.

Yesterday, I posted my short story Her Tears Tasted of the River Acheron, accompanied by some photographs of locations in the story. Give it a read, and let me know what you think about it!

Deb looked really beautiful on Saturday night - she wore her new black dress and some boots; both technically anniversary presents that I gave her early for the party.

Bad: Holiday party on Saturday night - food was terrible. If it wasn't overdone it was old. The rolls were probably the best part of the meal, and they were fresh at some point a week ago or more. Tomato soup tasted like Spaghetti-O's. Salad (i.e. lettuce, croutons, pine nuts, & Ceaser dressing) was probably one of the better parts, but there wasn't much of it. There were pine nuts included, so that was a plus.

I suppose the snow peas and pearl onions weren't bad, although the other veggie dish - green beans with some crushed tomato - was unremarkable. The potatoes were more lump and skin than mashed; despite that they were more than flakes, Deb still had them marked as artificial by taste and the remaining structure. I skipped the pasta stuff - didn't look appetizing in the least - and moved on to the pork (75% fat, 25% overcooked) and the stuffed flounder (50% leather, too tough for a metal knife to cut; Deb's was loaded with bones). I didn't have the roast beef - ran out of room on the plate - but the best I can say about it is to relate what Deb said "it didn't taste the way I expected it to."

The desserts - which we didn't have - were reported to be lackluster. Specifically, the small little cake things - just a bit too large to be eaten with one bite - were resistant to cutting. The creme puffs were of the grocery store frozen aisle variety.

Ugly: Deb got so sick after the meal that I had to drive her home immediately, and then return to the area to pick up the kids at her cousin's house. I wasn't feeling too good, so I didn't take my decision lightly.

Deb spent most of Sunday wiped out, and she's still not quite up to par. I worked from home yesterday because I was feeling it a bit worse, and I'm still not 100%.

Yeah, 90% of my focus is on my left heel.

It's in a sock for the first time since, what, Sunday? Saturday?

Nice cushiony-thick sock - only benefit to this whole thing is I've got 13 new cushiony socks, one more so than the dozen - and as I slipped it on this morning my toes were rejoicing, singing the Hallelujah chorus, and going, "What, you mean you weren't intending on leaving us bare naked, frozen cold, and frostbit for the rest of our prematurely shortened lives?" (Toes can be be overdramatic. Just a bit.)

I rolled it carefully and gently around the non-stick pad (which sticks great on its own, given the two adhesive strips on it) and paper-taped heart shaped bit o' raw meat. And it didn't hurt all that much.

Then I decided to wear my work shoes - kind of a cross between Western boots and engineers boots. Leather, though. No soft cushy padding. And a razor sharp knife's edge poised to slice right through the spot the blister was at.

Of course, with the nice cushiony socks, I noticed these boots are now a bit tight.

So I was in pain, and couldn't get the damn things off.

Finally did manage, and I don't think I readjusted the padding too badly.

So I'm wearing last year's winter boots, which are 1) not waterproof, what with all the holes in the toes; 2) ugly because the right cuff is shredded and falling apart; 3) aren't up to spec as far as proper working attire goes; and 4) beautiful because the left cuff is nice and soft and comfortable.

Of course, it would be better without the boot, but I gave it a quick attempt to remove it, and after my heel yelped in pain a bit, I gave up.

Saturday, I broke in a new pair of boots by hiking for two hours over loose stone, somewhat rocky terrain, and nice flat stuff. Got a blister *and* managed to rip it open so all the raw stuff was exposed. Sunday, I think it had a minor infection, getting steadily worse all day. Had to soak it for too long to get the gauze to release from it. Treated it with some Neosporin - would have done that earlier, but for some reason it had evaded me on my AM search. Think that worked. Early this AM I couldn't put any weight on it, a few hours later I could walk normally after a short "break-in" time. Trying to keep weight off it for as long as possible today, so hopefully it will be OK for tonight.

Tonight: Provided I can get a shoe on, I'll be heading up to Williamsport to hear yuki_onna read, s00j play, and shadesong roadie. Or something like that. =)

I had posted some of these updatia type things over the weekend - a time when some people allegedly don't read up on LJ.

So, for a limited time only¹, you can see the collected updatia of this past weekend, right here, with a handy, summarized group of links. Some of these entries are friends-only for various reasons, but the summaries are rated mostly safe for all ages (with a disclaimer regarding humor or lack thereof).

I took a serious beating over the weekend, although much of it might be termed "enjoyable." First, as I was recovering from a mental beating at the hands of incompetent vendors carrying out the bidding of the state legislature here in PA, I had my head stuffed into a 3XL helmet, my body wedged into a slightly smaller space than it would prefer, and I then proceeded to pilot my scrunched body around a series of acute angles at 45mph. My arms were nearly ripped from my body by the attempts to aim myself in the right direction, and I probably lost a few pounds in sweat. This was good, because I think the weight loss improved my best lap time by about 10 seconds for each of the three heats, to come in solidly dead last most of the time. See here for detail, more or less.

I spouted poetry later on Friday night, and It Was Good. No - Great. Greatest Hits, more like it. Been too busy to write new material, so in with Ye Olde. Had fun anyway. Woke up cold and getting colder, as power was dropped for at least 5 hours on Saturday morning. Only way to judge is that it did get colder as time went on, so it might only have dropped shortly before our 5am reference point. More on that, plus Rachel & Soccer and Justin & Music.

Sunday, Justin and I started to disassemble a tree thats about 80' tall, although we were only dissecting bits that were about 60' off the ground, for the most part. Some limbs are starting to rot through - some have already fallen all around my car, and I'm not about to let the poor, dead thing have any more time to practice its aim. Anywho, we took down a small portion of it, and more will have to wait for the weekend and a little daylight. We joked that when we're done, we'll be Olympic-level athletes, but, realistically, we'd probably need to take down another two or three trees to get to that level. All that stretching and pulling and tugging on ropes has definitely compensated for the scrunching and bending and folding on Friday, so I definitely feel like a Norse god - yep, I'm Thor. Play-by-play here.


¹: This Omnibus Edition of Weekend Updatia will expire when it's deleted, LJ croaks, the infrastructure in the country is destroyed via thermonuclear war leaving a few survivors in a post-apocalyptic condition similar to that made popular in so many 80's stories, or until entropy wins and the universe kicks back and chills for a while, which every may apply first. Some conditions and restrictions may apply, please see your dealer for details.

Saturday, Deb walked in the Race for the Cure - I'm really glad she did that on quite a few levels. She harps on the fact that an 82 year old woman out-competitive-walked her; however Deb far out-competed everyone else in the entire world who sat on their butt and flipped channels during that time span.

That latter group, by the way, included the four of us - during those moments in time. We made up for it later. Rachel chased after Mr. B while Justin and I searched for limbs to try out some new Japanese pruning saws. We made short work of a few dead trees & limbs that my existing saws would have suffered through for longer than it took Deb to do the walk. We also pruned a few live limbs - some suckers that would weaken and endanger the tree if allowed to grow. Quick and clean, they performed very nice and did not rip and tear and make a mess out things like some other saws I've been acquainted with.

Speaking of ripping and tearing, Justin and I practiced our lasso technique, and used it to throw a weighted line over some limbs about 20-30' feet up in the air. The line was divided in the middle by a chainsaw and we took down (and hauled away) maybe a thousand or so pounds of dead wood. The first was certainly for practice - when that tree falls (and there's still 2-3 times as much left above the height of the limb we took down), it won't endanger the house or cars. The second has a lot more that could fall on our house or cars, and is a twin tree, with its equally dead sibling aiming at the neighbor's house and cars. I might be able to get some longer lines - and something to help boost the throwing weight over higher limbs with more accuracy - but I will probably end up calling in an arborist to deal with it.

Sunday, I took the kids to the PA Ren Faire, which you may already have realized if you read the previous Brandonisms post. I picked up a couple pieces of art, but everything else was all about music. Rachel selected a wooden ocarina, Justin a horn (a "blowing horn", to use their technical term), and I picked up a gourd with twin flute-like pipes.

When we sat down waiting for the joust, we noticed another kid with one of the horns, and I tried to get Justin to go to him and tell him how to get a note out of it, but he didn't (I had Mr. B sitting on my lap, so my movement was limited). Just to let any non-horn players in on the secret: you don't just blow air through it like you would a flute or whistle; you need to put your lips together and essentially blow raspberries into it to get it to sound.

When Justin tried them out, the guys running the stand were surprised he hit such clear notes first time out. We teased him a bit about getting multiple notes out of it, especially after we had made fun of the horn players and their definutely-not period-accurate valved instruments ("Valvses? Valvses? We don't need no steeenking valvses!") On the ride home, while we were stuck in I78 Hell, Justin figured out how to use his hand like a French horn player and to change his embouchure to get four other notes out of it, each about a half-step apart. With that, he managed to play parts from The Kraken, several nursery rhymes, and a few other bits and pieces.

Rachel's ocarina is fitted with a cord to wear around her neck ("bling on a string," as per the guy running the stand) so she had it in hand while we were waiting for a table at supper. They were playing old-time country music over the PA, and suddenly she started playing along with the vocal line - and nailing it, with the exception of a few extra notes for ornamentation.

In comparison, on the gourd-thing? We think it will play at least two octaves. The vendor was able to play some nice low notes, and I seemed to hit them in places, but for me it jumps up to a much higher tone. Much practice will be needed. The instrument sounds a bit like a shawm, or maybe a bagpipe chanter, although we're pretty sure there's no reed involved - just the body of the gourd itself, and then the pipes.

Went to the new doctor on Friday.

The nurse and the doctor both did double takes when they saw one of the meds on the list - "That will definitely make you drowsy. I was on that and had to switch because it left me too tired." "That will cause fatigue. I'm don't want to say he was doing a bad job, but I'm not sure why he used that medication. It's usually only used for much older people."

So the only one of the old med cocktail I still retain is the rescue inhaler.

I started another med for the high blood pressure, and, surprisingly enough, with only four days of taking it, I can see the numbers looking nicer already.

Received a tetanus shot, and had blood drawn for some tests. Also, scheduled a sleep study.

... or lack thereof, in this case.

Yeah, this cold is annoying. I'm so muddle-headed I just had a conversation with Justin. And then I was interrupted by the voice-mail lady, asking if I wanted to save or delete the message.

Thunk.

Aiii... some of you might remember how, shortly after getting this batch of contacts, one of the left lenses ripped. If you don't remember that story, well, that previous sentence should have recapped most of it.

A bit o' past history: about eight years ago, a really annoying optometrist handed me both pairs of the non-disposable lenses, as has happened since I first started wearing contacts. The thing is, he opened all four sealed vats o' lens, popped them in cheap plastic cases, and covered them with saline. In other words, if I wore one pair to death - as I always had - I'd have to clean and change saline on the other pair even when I wasn't wearing them. To make life bearable, I came up with a solution that actually extended the life of the lenses - I alternated them, wearing each pair every other day. They were cleaned regularly, and they had an extra day to relax before they were back on duty. Instead of wasting one set of lenses or gallons of cleaning solution and saline, I actually had a better scheme.

Other important bit of back history: my right eye is bad, enough to be considered legally blind without glasses; the left eye is about half as good as the left.

So today, sitting on the front porch, after having my eye screaming and yelling and going dry all day, I popped the lens out. It had a nice rip into it. And, I discovered a bit later, the outside edge wasn't fully round - a tiny bit of the edge curved the wrong way, a sliver of lens missing.

So now I have two right lenses and no left lenses. And crap glasses.

Oy.