Archives November 2011

Yesterday I got the x-rays done on my hand/thumb.  It was a pretty easy process, I didn’t even need an appointment.  I just walked in with the order from our clinic and about 10 minutes later I had my hand up on the x-ray table.  They took 4 x-rays which took all of 5 minutes and I was done.

I am hoping the combination of blood work and x-rays will shine some light on this mystery thumb ailment.   I am on my 2nd to last day of steroids.  The swelling in the thumb has receded but it has gone through this cycle three times before.  And even when the swelling is down, there is still pain deep in the thumb joint if I inadvertently try to bend it too far.

So last night I assisted Ali in a one of those projects that has been on the list forever but for whatever reason never got done, hanging family pics on the wall.  For years we had a number of family pics on the wall by the front door.  When we repainted the area the pics came down, it wasn’t a great spot for them since they took some sun damage.  Well that was something like 2 or 3 years ago.  Since that time those pictures have just been stacked up somewhere.

Hanging the pics in their new spot was a task I gave for Ali to solely complete but she indicated it would be too hard to do by herself since it helps to have one person back checking the orientation of the picture while another holds it in place.  In total we probably hung 15 pictures and we still have others that could go up but they don’t have a matching black frame.  The pictures look nice in their new home.

Getting the pictures on the wall allowed us to also set up Pop Pop’s old Christmas tree on the hope chest.  We didn’t adorn either of our trees with decorations yet.

Driving in our area has recently become much more challenging with the influx of Q-tips from the annual snowbird migration (old people) that are severely lacking in driving skills.  The maneuvers some of these elderly drivers pull off range from amusing, frustrating to downright dangerous.  I can’t tell you how many times I have seen an old person pullout in front of oncoming traffic abruptly either because they can no longer accurately judge speed/distance or they can’t physically turn their head far enough to actually see what is coming, they just throw caution to the wind and jump in.

Some of the Q-tips other famous moves are no look, no signal lane changes, driving 10 mph under the speed limit in any lane of their choosing and unexpected abrupt stops.  Dealing with the swell in numbers of these poor drivers requires extra caution and patience to be sure.  When you factor in r-tards whom are doing things like texting while driving you have a recipe for lots of driving disasters.

My sister posted that their dog Baxter died which made me very sad.  Baxter had a great personality, was very smart and obedient.  He had been part of the family for many years, my brother in law had him before he even met my sister.

I have not heard exactly what caused his demise although he was getting up there in years.  Regardless, he was a good boy and will be missed, RIP buddy.

So I drove home yesterday and walked in the door to a house that was decorated for Christmas, it was awesome. Ali had set up most of our indoor Christmas decorations.  Later in the evening I helped her put up some of the high items.   We also set up our tree although we didn’t hang the decorations on it yet.

I decided this year I would once again set up the old wind up train set that we got from Pop Pop’s house.  It used to be Ali’s dad’s train set when he was a kid.  I love this thing.

I have always had an affinity for old items.  I also loved Pop Pop even though he was not my actual grandfather.  Setting up a 60 year old toy and have it still work is just a very cool thing to me.

I shot a brief video of it in action if you would like to see what a 60 year old, made in America toy looks like.  I highly doubt any toy made in China will still be usable in 2071.

Last night I also made my third attempt at normal mode in this month’s Bar-barian challenge.  This was my first indoor attempt, facilitated by rainy weather and lack of daylight.  Ali was nice enough to be my camera woman.

For the attempt I utilized my Iron Gym and the walker that Randall gave me awhile back for dips.  The walker did not work out real well for fast dips, it almost flipped over at one point.  My overall time was about 15 seconds slower than my best attempt which was a bit of a bummer.  I need to be able to crank out the push ups at a faster clip.

Here is the video.

Today I go for my hand x-ray.  Hopefully between that and the results of my blood tests last week we can figure out what exactly is going on with my thumb.

So our Thanksgiving eve was busier than normal since we were actually timing the huge holiday run the next morning instead of just volunteering.  I set the alarm on Thursday for an ungodly 3:45 am, yes it sucks.  With as much as there was to do, I wanted to get at the race site as early as possible..

So we pulled up about 5 am.  The only other person there was the race director Matt who had a million different things to attend to.  He basically let the registration area in the hands of Ali and I.  We came up with what seemed to be a decent lay out to split up the chip timed versus fun run participants.

It wasn’t long until the first snafu struck.  The power outlet we were using to run the laptops went dead.  Evidently the exterior outlets turn off along with the lights, great.  We just had a race a few week back where I ranted about unconfirmed power sources and now we faced it once again.  In the prior years we had no power requirements for the race.  So now a mad scramble took place to find a working outlet.  We eventually found one but that one as well went dead a little later.  I wound up walking down to the finish line which was a couple hundred yards away and lugging the battery back up unit to the registration area to power the laptops.

By that time the registration area had turned into a human beehive of chaos, bodies were everywhere.  Even though the race had hit it’s capacity and was not taking walk up entries Ali still was kept quite busy. Somebody sitting behind a laptop looks authoritative, hence she became an unintended customer service desk, getting hit with questions constantly.

We had a number of people that did not see any of the online notices that the race was full and they could not sign up, despite having money in hand, an awkward situation to have to deal with.  In addition Ali had to deal with a number of people that signed up online late when only fun run entry was allowed, thinking they were signed up for the chip timed run.  Ali gave these people the option to pay an extra $5 if they wanted to be chip timed which a few of them opted to do.

Before I knew it we were only a few minutes from the start of the race.  I had to haul ass to the start line and get the starting mats up and running.  I quickly got the mats across the road and turned on the timing box.  While I was waiting for stuff to come up the race director, who is a professional musician, started playing the national anthem on his trumpet.  When he finished the box was still not booted up.

Now we had an issue.  I had close to a thousand runners all waiting for the start command that generally should follow the end of the anthem.  Well I wasn’t ready, the box still was not fully booted.  Now in retrospect if we were able to fill in some of the dead time with maybe race instructions or some other happy filler we would have been ok.  But we were now past the official 7:30 start time and we had the fun run scheduled to start at 7:40.  I made the decision to have him just start the race, a chip finish would have to do.

The start command was given and hundreds of people crossed the starting line thinking their time was being registered, it wasn’t.  The box finished booting about 20-30 seconds after the race was started but it did no good at that point.  I was frustrated.

Well as I was cursing internally at not getting start times I realized I had a much, MUCH bigger problem.  In my angst to get the starting line up and running I totally whiffed on doing the other steps necessary to start the race.  When a race typically starts I am at the line with a clipboard and a stopwatch.  When the race starts I click my stopwatch and write down the time on my watch.  The timing system is later synched to the time on my watch.  Well I had no stop watch, no clipboard and hadn’t even glanced at my watch.  My first thought, “Oh boy, I am fcked”

I had 1000 runners out on the course that paid EXTRA to be chip timed and I don’t have a time for them.  I knew I didn’t have time to panic.  Instead my years of experience as problem solver kicked in as I ran through scenarios of how to save this from being a total failure while I fast walked to the finish line.

Well as if I didn’t have enough problems, I was presented with another one at the finish line.  The power we were tapping there had turned off as well.  I had no time to f around with that so I had Craig desperately find me a live outlet which he thankfully did eventually.  I had to fix this.

The clock at the finish line is normally set to match my stop watch.  Since I had no stop watch I just punched in a number that I thought was in the neighborhood of being right.   I knew people crossing the finish line at first would be like “What the F? That time can’t be right??” and it wasn’t.

My plan hinged on hoping the first place runner was wearing a GPS watch that he started at the start of the race.  When he crossed the finish line I would see what the time was on my watch and then ask the runner what his GPS said.  Then by subtracting the time on his watch from the time on my wrist I would have the race start time.

Luckily the winner, that crossed the line in 21:11 was wearing a GPS and I was able to then figure out a more or less accurate start time.  Spectators were confused when they saw the timing clock over the finish line all of a sudden go back in time almost two minutes to account for the f up.  About 5 minutes after the first guy crossed everything was back in synch and I was collecting times normally.

Wow, that was my biggest save I ever had to make.  Ironically, before the race I was talking to Craig about the process of getting someone else familiar with timing races, which he has expressed interest in doing.  I told him that training someone to time a race is possible, as long as nothing goes wrong.  It’s being able to handle these unexpected issues that makes having someone with a troubleshooting background invaluable in this role.

As the runners continued to stream across the finish line I just sort of sat there behind the timing table in a trance, mentally tired from the events of the morning.  It all worked out.

There were some other glitches in the race outside of my control.  We had one runner come across the finish line LIVID.  He started screaming at Craig about the stupidity of not having cups on the course for water.

This event strives to be as “green” as possible and part of that was having a water stop on the course with no cups.  Before the race runners were advised to bring their hydrapouches that were handed out at last years event or an empty bottle to fill up with.  Well of course hardly anybody did so and as a result many runners did the entire 4 miles without water which is not a good thing.  Saying “but it said in the email and on the website you had to bring your own container” won’t hold much weight if someone passes out on the run from dehydration.

The race also had awards for the top 3 male and female finishers however the award ceremony never happened.  People were just kind of wandering around, wondering if it was over.  Even when the race was not chip timed there was always a post race ceremony that at least thanked everyone for participating.  It was a pretty glaring omission from this year’s event.

To be fair, this race is a monster to organize because of it’s size and Matt tries to take the vast majority of it and plop it squarely on his shoulders.  It is just too much for one person to do efficiently.  In the future a different road map where there are several individuals that have full responsibility for different aspects of the race will probably be implemented to help relieve some of this crushing burden.

Man I was glad to get all of the stuff packed up and out of there.  At least we scored a left over pumpkin pie for our part of the effort. So we piled in the van and headed up to pick up mom after a much needed stop at DD for go juice. When we got back to our house the girls were beyond excited to see mom, especially Nicki.

So there was a lot to do.  Not only did I want to get the post-race stuff done and put away, Ali had a Thanksgiving dinner to prepare.  I flipped on the tv and had the Macy’s Parade on for entertainment although I actually saw none of it.

Our meal included tofurkey, asparagus, mushroom gravy, raspberry/cranberry sauce, potatoes, carrots and wheat rolls, a total vegetarian menu.  I thought that once again the tofurkey was good although it seems that they really cut down on the size of it from years prior.

Mom didn’t seem all that thrilled with the tofurkey.  In the past we have offered to gladly prepare a small turkey breast in addition to the tofurkey which mom has declined so we don’t have to expend the effort.  I think we will just do it anyway next year.

There wasn’t much time that passed between the end of our meal and mom being ready to go home but that was ok since I had 4 days of things I wanted to do.  I took mom home in the SSR with the top down, a wonderful way to travel.  During the drive we had a conversation about mom’s situation and what can be done to make it better.

I have stressed to mom I am always happy to help her as much as I can. However I think the biggest problem is one that I can’t fix which frustrates me.  You always hear the overused saying how you can’t help someone that doesn’t want it.  Mom was unusually honest about how she has felt in the last decade or so.  It’s a hard thing growing older and feeling less and less viable.

I stressed to her that focusing more on what she can do instead of what she can’t is probably much more productive.  I think if she pushes against some of theses boundaries that she thinks are made of concrete she will quickly discover they are actually just cardboard and fall down rather easily.

When I returned home Ali was nestled in bed taking her much anticipated nap.  I forgot to mention that in addition to working the race she also participated, turning in her best 4 mile time ever, a little over 36 minutes.

Surprisingly my energy level was still pretty good so I continued with doing things.  One of those things was hopping on the mower and knocking down the grass for hopefully the last time in 2011.

Ali came out after she woke up and asked what I was doing.  She was in disbelief that I decided to mow grass after everything else that went down today.  I told her I was fine plus it was nice weather for mowing with mild temps and low humidity.

All of my activity during the day had an unwanted side effect, by the time Thanksgiving night rolled around my thumb had swelled back up the the point of being unusable again, damn it.  Again simple things like picking up an object became left hand only motions.  I had my prescription for steroids from the clinic but I was not going to get it filled till Friday.  I just had to take some Advil and deal with it.

So on Thanksgiving we looked at the ads from mom’s paper to see if anything looked interesting.  The only thing I bothered to tear out of thousands of ad pages was a manager’s chair at Target for $49.  It looked like a decent replacement for my increasingly uncomfortable current chair.

Ali and I decided we would actually venture out into the crazy retail world later in the day Friday.  We had to stick around the house early because the cleaning people were showing up for their once every 4-6 weeks cleaning session.  I have been quite annoyed with the service lately.

The last time they were at the house I discovered the next day that in the process of strumming the front blinds harshly with a brush one of the girls broke the blinds.  I contacted the owner of the business via email about the damage.  She never responded.

When Ali responded back to her a few weeks later about the next appointment she again mentioned the blinds.  The owner said she talked to the girls that were at the house and both of them denied causing the damage.  Well now I was pissed.

Accidents happen but if you do cause damage, don’t lie about it.  So I take a picture of the blinds and send it off, ending any doubt that the girls did indeed cause the damage.  Finally the owner agreed that blinds don’t get this way themselves and agreed to reimburse me for replacements.  I am not sure if I am going to actually sock her with the bill or not but I certainly wanted to make sure she accepted responsibility for it.

So while the house was cleaned I was already outside with the pressure washer.  I wanted to pressure wash the pool cage, lanai and the two sheds.  My thumb was still a disaster, unable to grip for shit.  I just decided I would use my left hand to pick up the slack.

By the time we were ready to leave to go shopping I had the pool cage and lanai done.  It was a pretty miserable process trying to do it with a gimped hand, there were plenty of “ow, that hurts” moments.

So late morning we headed out in the SSR to dive into the sea of shopping humanity.  After dropping off my prescription at CVS we first hit Target, hoping to snag one of those office chairs.  I was bummed and a bit annoyed when not only did I walk in to see none located where the sign was but also that there didn’t appear to be space for more than one to be on the shelf.  I hate when a store blasts a special and backs it up with very limited inventory.

Just to make sure I asked a worker if they possibly had any more in the back.  She said they didn’t but a truck was coming that night which may or may not have more.  She said it also looked like the other Naples store had some still but she couldn’t be sure.  Ali and I made loose plans to maybe try the other location if time allowed.

So our next stop was to go to the Miromar Outlets.  Ali and I said we were surprised that Target didn’t seem all that busy, not significantly busier than normal.  Well Miromar was a whole other story. It was stuffed.

The outlets have a HUGE parking lot that almost circles the facility more or less.  There were no spots to be found.  If a pair of back up lights were spotted it was instantly mongered by one of the dozens of vehicles endlessly circling the lot.  There were multiple vehicles that parked up on the various grass islands for cripes sake.

Well there was no way in hell I was wedging the SSR among all of these other vehicles.  When it comes to avoiding unwanted door dings I subscribe to the assumption that most people are careless assholes and would have no issue introducing their edge of the door to the paint of my vehicle.

I told Ali it was a nice day for a walk.  We wound up parking in the adjacent stadium lot.  I am sure our walk to the outlets was well over a 1/4 mile but it was worth it to give the SSR a better shot at escaping door dingers.

To be honest I was skeptical about just how good the deals would be at the outlets.  Well after leaving a couple hours later with a bag stuffed with deals I was not.

We scored significant deals at various places, my favorite of which was the Under Armour outlet.

I had blogged about how I was shocked by paying $50 for the UA long sleeve “cold gear” shirt at Sports Authority for the Mudder.  I like the shirt a lot but paying that much for one doesn’t sit well with me.  Well at the outlet I picked up 4 items for the same money, scoring two pairs of shorts, training pants and a sleeveless t-shirt.  Ali found a good deal on Under Armour sneakers which she took advantage of despite having enough pairs of sneakers at home to adorn a small village.

There were legitimate deals all over the place.  A lot of the stores had these pile on discounts where stuff was marked down 40%, then 30% on top of that plus another 10-15% on top of that.  They had convenient charts posted so you knew exactly how much the final price would be.

Of course the best deal of all were to be found if you stumbled across something on the clearance racks you actually liked which I did a few times. I scored two polo shirts for $8-$9, some Adidas shorts for $12 and a couple other outlandish deals.

Like I mentioned we spent a little over two hours there, by the end of which I was ready to go.  Well something weird happened along those two hours, Ali didn’t buy anything else.  I had exhibited some commendable patience if you ask me, dealing with the waves of people while allowing Ali to peruse.  Only at the very end of the session did I indicate I had enough.

Ali was feeling somewhat cheated that I bought various clothing items while all she did was get sneakers.  I told her that she looked at a million things but didn’t indicate strongly she liked anything.  Plus I pointed out that she probably conservatively has quadruple the amount of clothing I have, she needs very little.

Well this turned into a walking argument as we looked for a place to grab some quick food before leaving.  Ali tried to shift blame onto me, saying I wasn’t helpful enough in pointing out things I thought she should get.  She didn’t indicate this was supposed to be my role until the very end.  Silly me assumed that the way it would work is she picks something out and then asks my opinion on it.

So we had a pretty silent lunch as we each knocked down a piece of pizza, not the way I would have preferred what was a surprisingly pleasant shopping trip up to that point would wind up.   Ali actually would have stayed longer to shop more.  I told her that we still had to get groceries on the way home and I already told her before we left that I wanted to get the rest of my pressure washing chore over and done with it before daylight expired.

Later in the evening I suggested to Ali that perhaps on Saturday we could stop at Kohl’s for her to look around some more to satiate her unmet shopping desire.

So Saturday morning we had another early wake up call, we decided to go participate in a club group run.  We were going to take the SSR.  We headed out to the garage and hit the garage door button.  The door went up a few inches and no further.  The opener strained against the weight.  We hit the button a couple more times until I took a closer look.  I saw the right spring that provides upward lifting power had snapped, a common failure with garage doors.  Ali mentioned that she thought she heard a bang from the garage the night before.  Now we knew what the bang was.

Well the Camry and SSR were trapped in the garage so we piled into the Tacoma.  On the drive I worried about the logistics and cost of getting someone out to fix the door on a Saturday.  I told Ali I would try to call someone after the run.

This run was not of any set distance, you could go as far or as short as you wanted.  Ali and Michelle had talked of doing somewhere around 10 miles which I had no intention of doing.  Since I injured my knee during the NYC/Ireland trip the most I have run is the 5K on Veteran’s day.  Jumping the distance up to 10 miles would be stupid, especially since the Mudder was a week away.

I told Ali I would just run with Michelle and her for awhile and turn around when I hit the halfway mark of whatever I felt like running.  Well I never turned back.

The girls were running a pace around a 10 minute mile and I felt comfortable enough to just keep going.  I ran the entire 10 miles.  The last couple miles Michelle and I pulled away on our own and Ali who was feeling pooped, walked.  Michelle had to get back home so she was ok with picking up the pace at the end which we did in sub 9 minute mile pace.

After we finished I double backed to meet up with Ali.  She was walking with another guy from her triathlon training group so at least she had company.

After enjoying a post run bagel we got ready to head out. Before we left I got a hold of a pleasant garage door guy who said they would be able to come out to fix the door later in the afternoon. The total cost would be just under $300 which felt a little steep to me but when I factored in it was Saturday I felt more ok with the number.

So we decided we would go to Kohl’s right from the run.  We both had brought a change of clothes so we wouldn’t be walking around stinking and sweaty.  At first Ali said we didn’t need to bother going since she realizes she doesn’t really need anything.  Well despite my knowing this was true, I still encouraged her that we stop, saying I never saw the store before so this way I could see it. (I didn’t care if saw it)

It just so happened that the route to Kohl’s went right past that other Target that we were told might have that office chair.  Despite being pretty sure that any remaining stock had been snapped up, Ali and I decided to take a quick look.  I was quite surprised that one box was actually on the shelf.  I was so sure that one would not be there I hadn’t even grabbed a cart. Instead I just grabbed the box and lugged it to the front register caveman style.

So we arrived at Kohl’s.  Of course now I have heard of Kohl’s before but I never stepped foot inside of one.  I quickly realized it is just another department store basically albeit it with decent pricing.  The women’s clothing was right by the entrance so Ali could dig right in.

So now that I knew my role was to be more of a fashion consultant I did my best to point out various items that I thought Ali would look good in.  Ali is not very good at this.  If left to her on her own she would just buy a solid, muted color of something.

I did my best to point out various items and kept a good attitude while doing so until a point.  By that time I was carrying at least a half dozen items that we picked out for her, a good haul, I was ready to pay and go.  Ali though went into her “wander mode”.  She likes to just wander about the store, looking at things, endless things and being indecisive of her want/need of things.  It can be quite frustrating if you are not shopping yourself and instead are just being towed behind the process.  Finally I was able to steer Ali towards the cash register.

Our checkout clerk was bizarre looking.  She was a lady who was probably in her mid to late 40’s.  She had scare hair and crazy, gaudy eye make up.  She literally looked like she was dressed up for a Halloween party.  Despite her odd appearance she was nice enough.

Kohl’s had good deals as well.  In addition to the heavy discounts, Kohl’s adds back end to the deal.  Based on what you spend, you get “Kohl’s bucks” you can spend at a future visit.  I left the store feeling that Ali now felt on more even ground on her weekend shopping haul.

Looking back I find it funny that except for a few items, everything we bought was for ourselves instead of gifts for others.  Merry Christmas to me.  Our Christmas shopping nowadays is so heavily gift card/online shopping weighted that actual shopping in buildings just doesn’t happen much.

So on Saturday I started my steroid pack for my thumb.  Roids are one way to aggressively treat swelling.  I found it interesting the way the dosage is doled out.  You start out with a high dosage, 6 pills the first day and then scale back the number of pills each subsequent day.  You take the pills throughout the day around meals and before bed.

Since I started the treatment my thumb has reverted back to just the mildly painful, an improvement from balloon-like and immobile. In this condition I can at least pinch items with my thumb but trying to bend it at the joint too far still will result in pain.  I am having an x-ray tomorrow to hopefully further clarify exactly what is wrong in addition to the blood work I had done.

Saturday afternoon after Ali napped I had her come out to help me with the third major project of the weekend, the exterior Christmas lights.  I decided I wanted to exclusively use the expensive LED sets I bought at Sam’s last year.

I had enough lights to outline the front roof line of the house, part of the fence on either side and the two front palm trees.  My chainsaw work on the tallest palm a couple weeks ago allowed Ali and I to run the lights to the very top of the tall tree, looking extra cool in my opinion.

While we were working on the lights, the garage repair dude came, his name was Gary. Gary seemed like a likeable, hard working guy.  I did immediately notice he was missing a few teeth.  Gary wasted no time telling us how shitty his day was.  He said every single call he had that day were all broken springs which I guess are generally a pain in the ass to replace. Gary also made the first of many inferences of how he is not making much money, a point he drove home at least a half dozen times during his visit.

The first order of business was getting the garage door open.  Little did I know that it could be done with a little human assist.  While Ali hit the opener button, Gary and I lifted, serving the same purpose as the broken spring.  The door went up with little issue.  After that he said he didn’t need any more help so we resumed our light hanging process.

It didn’t take all that long for Gary to make the repair, he said of the five he replaced that day ours was the easiest.   As he cleaned up and prepared our bill more references to money were made.  He even told us he supplements this job with a nightly paper delivery route.  He relayed the nightmare of the job on Thanksgiving day.  He estimated he delivered more than four tons of paper that night.

Anyway, all of the money mentions made it pretty obvious to me the guy would appreciate a tip and I would have happily obliged but there was one problem.  I had exactly one dollar in my wallet.  Now short of emptying out my change basket, I had no other cash in the house.  Unfortunately Gary had to make do with a handshake and our thanks, Happy Holidays.

Gary did fill me in that ideally a spring should be shot with some lubricant once every three months to extend it’s life.  Our original spring was lubricated exactly zero times in 10 + years.

Ali and I finished up the lights and headed inside.  Once it got dark out we went back out to admire our efforts.  We liked the final outcome although Ali was slightly annoyed that some of the LED strings were bright white while others had a pale yellow hue.  It didn’t bother me.

Sunday morning we met Christy for another bike riding session.  We covered a little more than 20 miles on the ride.  At this point Ali hasn’t been very concerned on what pace she is riding, concentrating more on just physically being on a bike for a period of 90 minutes consistently.  That is starting to get easier for her so hopefully soon we can push the pace a bit.  I would estimate for much of Sunday’s ride we were going at a leisurely 12-13 mph pace.

The Eagles didn’t play till 4:15 so that left me with some more time to do stuff around the house.  One of the first things I did was replace the ash tray door assembly on the SSR.

You may recall my posting of what the old owner did as a “fix” for the ash tray latch breaking.  He inserted a small screw where the latch was supposed to be and then slammed it up into the upper receptacle.  It was pretty lame. Well after seeing what I paid for the parts to replace it I got a better understanding of why he opted to rig it.

So anyway I had the parts for a few days so I was ready to get the job done.  I quick survey of the latch revealed there were two screws at the rear base of it that needed to come out.  The hinge of the door is right above the center cowl, I had very little room to get a tool in there.  Even the stubby screw drivers I have which are no longer than 4 inches long, were too big.  Hmmm.

I used my McGyver instincts and made a modified right angle screw driver by using a 1/4″ socket on a ratchet and inserting a phillips head bit in it.  Reaching the screws required me to wedge my body into the small foot well on my back while reaching over head.  I also had a flash light pointed at the area to provide some lighting.

After some trial and error I was able to get enough torque and upward pressure to get the screws loose.  Once I did the tray dropped right out.

Now I simply had to pop the old cigarette lighter out of the old assembly and into the new one.  Doing so was easier said than done.  the tabs that held the lighter in place didn’t seem to have the give in them that they should have.  I used brute force to pop it out, to be honest I am surprised it didn’t break.

When I dropped the drawer out I saw something slide around back up in the dash.  A quick grab with my hands pulled out a Bic lighter.  It confirmed what I suspected, one of the prior owners was a smoker.  When I first got the car it had an odd smell which I remember from my car salesman days.  It is the smell of a car that has been smoked in but then later treated with the stuff that is supposed to kill the stink.

The car has had a lot of time to air out since I have owned it, in fact most of the time when it is in the garage the top has been down.   The smell seems to be mostly gone but at some point I will probably give the carpet an additional shampooing.

So after moving the cigarette lighter across to the new door the rest of the reassembly process went smoothly.  My new door and latch assembly worked as they should, clicking nicely into place.  That was the last of the glaring interior issues I had to address.

Next up on the SSR project list is to get a Pioneer in-dash navigation system up and running.  Originally I was hoping I could use the funds from this onslaught of races I have been timing to pay for the system, but after our spending onslaught this weekend I thought it made more fiscal sense to direct that money towards offsetting that spending bulge.  I can wait till after Christmas to put the radio in.

After the car work I finally got around to finishing up the chicken wire fencing around the garden project.  I started it last week but never finished it because of my aching thumb.  The fencing was installed to prevent the obvious rabbit damage we have seen in the garden.  They definitely will not be able to squeeze through the tiny holes in the chicken wire.  Ali was nice enough to help me with the final part of the process which was twisting some wire around the chicken fence up high to keep it snugly against the existing fencing. All that twisting would have been a recipe for instant thumb swelling.

So it was time for the Eagles game.  I went into the broadcast already predisposed to thinking the team was going to get slaughtered.  After all the Patriots were coming to town, one of the most powerful offenses in the league and the Eagles defense for the vast majority of the season has proven to be nothing but a joke.  Well for about the first 8 or 9 minutes of the game I thought my negativity was actually unjustified.

The Birds came out and scored a quick touchdown followed by a field goal.  On defense they were harassing Brady and caused the Patriots to punt a couple times. Wow maybe the Eagles actually CAN still play.  Maybe the win against the Giants wasn’t a fluke?  Well guess what, it was.

The Patriots, unlike the Eagles are generally very good at making mid-game adjustments.  Adjust they did, plowing through the defense for the rest of the game, embarrassing the Eagles 38-20.  It was laughable how easy the Patriots made it look.  The secondary which prior to the season on paper looked unbeatable, gave out points like candy it was just as awful as it gets.

Desean Jackson continued his self destruction, dropping 3 catch-able balls, including two that would have been touchdowns.  One was especially egregious where he obviously short armed a catch to avoid contact.  The Eagles fans let Desean and Andy know how they felt.  The chants of “Fire Andy” rained down from the stands with regularity.  I was pleased to hear that after I turned the game off in disgust at the beginning of the 4th quarter, Reid actually plopped Jackson’s ass on the bench and kept him there.

With as much talent as Jackson has, he just isn’t worth it to me.  His play is dramatically inconsistent and his pompous, showboat attitude just is never going to fly here.  I don’t need assholes on the team. Desean Jackson is a gaping asshole.

So now the Eagles are a dreadful 4-7 with no realistic shot of making the playoffs.  Their next game comes up in a hurry on Thursday night against the Seahawks.  This is one of those stupid NFL Network only games that means if I want to see it I will need to rig it through the laptop while streaming the broadcast from a shady website.  I honestly don’t know if I will bother making the effort.  I just don’t care about this team right now.

 

So I went to our med clinic to get my thumb examined.  It turned into an odd encounter.

When I got there I was greeted by the receptionist.  She was a cute young girl that for some reason looked like she was dressed up to go to the Blue Martini.  She had an an ultra-short dress with cleavage spilling out all over the place.  I thought it was an odd choice of fashion for a clinic.

After a short wait I am escorted back to the exam room.  When I saw who my examiner was I shuddered, it was mumbly Justin Beiber.  I have had this kid before, he isn’t the PA, he does the pre-exam stuff like get your weight, temperature, blood pressure and ask you what is wrong.

I really have no idea why he would pick a job where he has to speak to other human beings, he appears to be clinically shy.  He whispers and mumbles at you.  It is impossible to get through a few sentences with the guy without asking him to repeat himself several times.  It is just bizarre, awkward and uncomfortable, the three adjectives you would rather not use when describing your medical visit.

So after Justin leaves the PA comes in.  The woman that gave me my surprise DRE when I was 39 was no longer there.  This new PA is younger and lighter so it was ok.  I explained to her the sequence of events that started back on Veteran’s Day, telling her at first I thought it was simply a sprain but then later suspected it could be gout.  She said that is a strong possibility.

She felt up both hands, my feet and knees as well to rule out rheumatoid arthritis.  She asked if my family had any history of gout which they don’t, as far as I know.  My thumb actually has decent mobility right now but if I would try to bend it beyond a certain point the pain comes streaming back in.

She said I would need a blood draw to test for gout and she also set up for me to have an x-ray done on my hand.  I also have a prescription for a steroid to hopefully knock out the swelling.  Maybe it will help my bench press numbers too.

So the PA says they can do the blood draw right there.  Great, I thought, until I saw who was drawing the blood, Justin Beiber…..

So he mumbles and tells me to put my left hand out so he can prep me.  I have a thing about getting blood drawn, I absolutely can not watch the process and I involuntarily will break out in a cold sweat regardless of how hard I try to just relax.  Well having this guy do the draw certainly didn’t help matters.

So he sticks my left arm and starts the draw.  I then hear him mumbling to himself.  I can’t understand a word he is saying but I get the gist, he isn’t getting good blood flow.  I heard “thought vein was good” “maybe collapsed”  So I say, “So you want to try the other arm?”,  just wanting to get the f out of there.  My shirt was now soaked through.

So JB sticks me in the right arm after more mumbling. Thank goodness the flow evidently was better from the right side.  After he was done I was just sitting there, waiting for the normal “Ok you are all done” signal from Justin Beiber, but he just sat there.  I say “Um ok, am I done?”  Justin said I was.  Ok great.

I set my next appointment with the receptionist/hoochy momma and got the hell out of there.  Weird place.

Jeremy recently had a run in with what is wrong with the governments efforts to bail out banks.  He closed on a condo that was purchased from a “distressed” seller.  However in the process of the closing he got some numbers that made my stomach turn.

The seller originally bought the condo for around 100k prior to the real estate boom.  At the height of the boom she thought she would take advantage of her sky high property appraisal and refinanced the condo for 300K!!!!!!  She basically wanted free money, thinking whenever she sold the condo for 300K plus she would be fine.

Well we all know what happened, her condo value plummeted and she was left holding a 300K tab for her property that was now worth less than third of that.  Well of course like many people today, the former owner did not want to take responsibility for her ill advised money grab.  She instead stopped paying on the property.

So not only did she stiff the bank on her loan, she was actually rewarded for her behavior at closing, receiving a $20K payout from that same bank for selling the property.  This is so wrong on so many levels.

The government basically is rewarding the dead beet owner for ridiculously over financing the property and the bank for being stupid enough to do it.  Who gets to pay the bill for that irresponsibility?  You and I do of course.

The question is what do you do about it?  Every single government program is riddled with scum bags that are just working the system, regardless of their true need for the benefit.  If you reward bad behavior, you encourage it.  However there are also the millions that legitimately need the assistance and whom are not looking to defraud anyone.  You can’t ignore their needs either.

Hell I am pretty sure the exact same situation occurred next door with our old neighbor.  I know he made no payments on his home for at least a year before it was eventually short sold.  I would not be surprised if he got a little bonus check from the bank as well.

 

I have an appointment today to go to our employee med clinic to have my thumb looked at.  It will be interesting to see what sort of diagnosis I come out of there with.

The headlines have been filled with stories about all of these retailers crossing over to the formerly taboo practice of being open on Thanksgiving.  This practice was initiated by K-Mart somewhere around 15 years ago.  I distinctly remembering my grandmother, who used to be a manager there, being disgusted when they started doing it.

It seems like a lemming mentality has strongly taken hold.  Places that really have no real point to be open early are open early.  Hell the lady at Dunkin Donuts told me they are opening at 1AM so early morning shoppers have coffee available.  It really is pretty stupid.

I like how the ads I see from retailers say they are open on THURSDAY, deliberately omitting THANKSGIVING from the text, somehow making it sound less offensive.

You can bet that this practice will only expand in the future.  Once the door to such practices is opened, it is blown off the hinges and will never be closed again.

Tomorrow we will be involved in the huge Thanksgiving 4 mile race in a big way.  Most years we have either run, helped with the pre-race registration or both.  We have never chip timed this event because of the huge amount of people that participate, last year that number was somewhere around 2300.

Well this year the race director and I agreed we would try to chip time the race but not the entire race field.  Instead when people registered they had an option to sign up for either a competitive chip timed race or an untimed (clock at the finish line) fun run.  The chip event will start 10 minutes before the fun run.

We have almost 1000 people that opted to pay an extra $5 to be chip timed.  1000 is still a big number.  In order to expedite body movement the race director bought custom timing chips for the race.  This accomplishes two things.

The timing chip can be given to the runner ahead of time if they do an early packet pick up.  If they do an early pickup they can totally avoid standing in ANY lines on the day of the race which is ideal.  They also are able to exit the finish chute without waiting for someone to remove the chip from their sneaker.  The timing chip also becomes their little tidy souvenir from the race.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the real world race conditions.

After the race we are picking up mom for our small Thanksgiving celebration.  Tofurkey once again will be center stage on the menu.  It really tastes quite good believe it or not.  At this point I really don’t mind at all a meat free feast.

In the past Mom sometimes would stay over a night around Thanksgiving but she has no interest in doing that this year because she has to work at 10am on Friday.

I want to bring mom’s Thanksgiving newspaper with to our place so I can scan the ads.  If there are any deals that I find sufficiently interesting Ali and I may venture out together early Friday to scope out some deals, in the SSR.

I have plenty of potential to do’s for the long 4 day weekend.  In addition to maybe hanging some Christmas lights, I would love to get the bi-annual pressure washing done for the holidays. The pool cage and sheds are an non-festive shade of green right now.  However right now, wrapping my right thumb around a pressure washer trigger is impossible.  I would either need to awkwardly use my left hand for the process or use the trigger lock out which keeps the flow going continuously.  Maybe I will ask Ali if she would like to get broken into the wonderful, wet world of pressure washing.

The weather this weekend is supposed to be FANTASTIC. Cool nights and mild daytime temps with low humidity make me smile.

 

 

So the last couple days the news headlines have been about the deficit “SUPER COMMITTEE” failing to come up with an agreement on how to move forward with deficit reduction plans.  I am so surprised a consensus couldn’t be reached, not.

It looks like the main sticking point is the Republican absolute, over my dead body, refusal to let the Bush tax breaks for the rich expire ($200k or more income) as they were scheduled to years ago.  Their mega wealthy puppeteers simply will not allow it.   As long as the right continues with this plan of unilateral negotiation where they demand cuts without giving anything in return, we can expect next to nothing productive to be accomplished.

An individual that finds himself in severe debt has a pretty established plan, reduce expenses and increase income.  Well this common man mentality does not compute to rich politicians, they only want to go half way.

This is just the latest in an unending series of fails ever since the tea party loonies got a foothold in congress.  I don’t suspect it to stop until congress is completely under one party.  It is beyond obvious that bi-partisan simply does not exist anymore.  It’s all about special interests and the dollars that support them.

On SSRFanatics I hooked up with a guy that was selling the complete GM service manual for SSR’s on dvd.  Well it is actually for SSR’s and every other GM vehicle made from 2003-2009.  It’s two full dvd’s of information.  I figured it will come in handy sooner or later and for $20 I can’t go wrong.

My thumb is still f’d up. Although I am not back at the “can’t hold a toothbrush stage” I can not bend at the thumb knuckle very far at all without staggering pain.  Last night Ali handed me our bug trap that had a spider in it.  I took it outside and flicked my wrist as I instinctively slid open the trad door with my right thumb.  That simple movement bent me over in pain.  I am going to see if I can get over to our employee clinic today for a look at it.  Going through the Mudder with my thumb like this would suck.

So Saturday morning was another timing gig, this time at a new venue in Marco Island.  The race was to commemorate the opening of a new bridge that was paid for by stimulus money.  I was quite concerned going into this race since it was new which almost always equates to problematic.  Well there were problems but not as many as there could have been.

Our first issue was finding the registration location.  We had an address but in total darkness, did not see anything.  After stopping at a near by 711 and being told there was “some park” around the corner we found where we were supposed to go.

Our normal club volunteer coordinator was not at this race so Ali and I became the ring leaders, telling people where things went and what needed to be done.  Ali dealt primarily with the registration area, I dealt more with the finish line logistics.

The geography of the race was less than ideal.  The registration area was in the park but the start/finish line was a couple hundred yards away out on the main road in Marco.  I had to scurry back and forth between the two locations several times.

The lines being out on the main road was also a problem.  The police were supposed to have the road closed around an hour before the the 7:30 start time.  Instead cars will still flowing by well after 7am.  We were setting up our finish line as traffic drove by a few feet away, not a good thing.

Once I had the finish line set up I ran back across to the registration area to help Ali.   As I sat down I encountered another misstep.  They had contracted a local radio station DJ to provide “entertainment” pre-race.  He was set up about 50 feet from the registration tent with both speakers pointed directly at us.

We couldn’t hear a thing over the guy’s maddening non-stop routine.  In the span of 5 minutes I was wishing physical harm upon this guy, he was driving me nuts.

We also had a big issue with phantom registrations.  No less than a dozen times we had people come up telling us they were registered for the race yet their names were not on the list.  There were all sorts of alibi’s, “so and so was supposed to sign me up” “I sent it in the mail” “I signed up online but my son didn’t show up on the list”  Unfortunately in the heat of battle we just do not have the time to give each case a full inquisition so we wind up putting these people in the race, taking their word for what they tell us.  If this turns into an annual event we will need to fix this.

When such a mixup occurs we have to enter these people into the race with a new number.  After one such mix up I went to the day of registration table and grabbed the next available bib number to assign.  As I was entering the info I had the one volunteer  spin around and start bitching at me because I took a number.  She said she had already assigned that number to somebody.  She said I(me) CAN”T DO THAT.  I had to stop myself from laughing in her face.

I told her the number was still in the stack of unused numbers, if she needed it she should pull it.  I told her all she had to do was simply write the next available number on the entry form.  She was pissed at me but I didn’t give a shit, there were too many other things to worry about.

About 5 minutes before the start of the race I ran back over to the finish line.  I had to quickly get the starting mats up and running.  It takes a couple minutes for the timing box to initialize so I delayed the start of the race by a couple minutes, oh well.

Ali and Christy were running the race.  The addition of a steep bridge to the course added a big challenge.  Hills just are uncommon in Florida running events.  Ali did well, finishing in under 28:30.  She was shocked and excited when I told her she got second in her age group. Ali had only placed in her age group once before and that was years ago.  She accepted her second place trophy with pride at the awards ceremony.

All in all things went well, despite the problems I outlined earlier.  The group of volunteers they had were very enthusiastic and followed direction well which is what you want.  If this turns into an annual event there will be some minor fine tuning to be done but nothing major.

After unpacking the car, doing the post race duties and eating lunch Ali said she was retiring for her nap.  I told her I had several projects to work on.  I am trying to get out of the habit of doing as much housework as I am accustomed to since Ali has been pulling 2 day work weeks for the past month or so.  She should be able to knock out items I would normally take care of with that schedule. I still ran the vacuum in the house even though Ali pledged she would do it on Sunday.

So I embarked on various small projects.  They involved things like weeding the garden, installing more hooks in the small shed for bike storage, cleaning the tractor, installing chicken wire along the base of the garden (keep out rabbits), replacing two defective yard sprinklers and finally washing the Camry.

My thumb, which had remained painful but functional all week, was worked hard during the projects.  I paid for it later.

Mom had told me earlier in the week that she wanted to try out Sweet Tomatoes for her birthday dinner instead of a more traditional sit down venue, an odd request but I was happy to go again.  We picked her up a little after 5.  She had just finished her Saturday 6 hour shift at work.

We heard a lot of updates about mom’s new job and unfortunately they aren’t as shiny as a week prior.  The boutique mom is working at is very small and is just maintained by the owner and mom.  The owner seems to enjoy standing all day, even though there is a single chair there.  Well mom is not used to standing on her feet for that long, and it has not been much fun, her feet are killing her.  Even though mom could certainly sit down if she wanted to, she almost feels obligated to stand since the owner always is.  I am sure all that standing is not fun, the last time I had an on your feet all day job was in the late 80’s when I was a meat cutter.

Evidently it also is quite warm in the store.  Mom said she literally has sweat rolling down her face during certain points of the day.  There are a couple fans in the store but mom said they don’t help much or maybe she again doesn’t want to look bad by standing in front of them constantly.

Plus if there isn’t much floor traffic the job can be incredibly boring.  Boring jobs make time pass very slowly.  I have first hand experience with this.

So anyway, the less than stellar job report reflected in mom’s mood, it was pretty obvious she wasn’t all that into going out to eat.  When I suggested that perhaps after dinner we could go look for some more comfortable shoes mom acted like I just had an alien pop out of my chest, saying she HAD to get home so she could soak her feet.  She said she now goes to bed at 8pm. Um, ok.

Mom reacted in a similar way when I suggested that she drive her Rav 4 out to our place on Thanksgiving Day so I could give it the thorough cleaning it sorely needs. I also noticed while I was driving her car that the brakes pulsate, I could replace her front rotors and pads and eradicate that problem for her as well.  Again, this was viewed as unreasonable. It sounded like she now has determined that doing anything extra on a day that precedes a day she has to work is just impossible to accommodate.

We gave mom a Publix gift card for her birthday.  Not the most extravagant gift but a very useful one, free groceries are always a good thing.

Mom said she liked ST but I think it still was not a great choice for a birthday dinner.  It would have been better to go to Watermark like I originally suggested.  We told mom we would see her on Thursday and dropped her off.

As Saturday night drug on my thumb was getting incredibly painful again, it actually reached the same levels of pain as the week prior.  A couple times I bumped it against something and went through the roof, it hurt that bad.  I again iced it and took some Advil while I watched Robin Hood.

I fell asleep during part of the movie but what I did see was not what I expected.  I am by no means a Robin Hood expert but I thought it was basically he was the guy that was good with arrows that stole from the rich to give to the poor.  Well the movie wasn’t about that at all, I guess you would call it a pre-quel.

Instead it cast Russel Crowe as Robin Hood,t he big psuedo-general dude, leading England against a French invasion.   It’s only after the french are repelled does he become the character we all know.  The movie was ok I guess.  I’d give it a who cares B.

Sunday morning I was glad to wake up to a slightly less painful thumb, at least I could use it somewhat.  We made plans to meet up with Christy to go biking mid-morning,  We put in a total of almost 19 miles.  The highlight of the ride was saving two turtles that got them stuck out in the middle of a road with high curbs.

Mid-afternoon my thumb still was hurting but I determined I could at least still hang on a bar.  I wanted to go out and do a hard mode attempt for this month’s bar-barian forums challenge.  I had told a couple guys on the forum I would.

Hard mode ups the stakes with 3 muscle ups, 30 dips, 15 pull ups, 30 push ups and 3 more muscle ups, completed in as little time as possible.  I physically felt pretty low between my hurting thumb and overall lack of energy. I still wanted to try it.

I ran into an unexpected road block early, missing on one of my early muscle ups, it kind of set the tone for the attempt.  The 30 dips really burned me out.  I dropped off the parallel bars at 22 reps and then had to hop back on them for the last 8 reps.  The pull ups were broken apart as well into a set of 10 followed shortly by a set of 5.  For the push ups I managed to stay in position for the entire 30, trudging through the last 10-12 at a slow pace.

Despite my struggles, I was right around the 5 minute mark with just 3 muscle ups to go.  I grabbed the bar and tried to get over it and failed miserably.  I just had no pop left in my upward movement.  This lead to a very frustrating few minutes.  In total it took me 3 minutes to get those last three muscle ups.  After a couple more failures I knew I had no choice but to let my body rest longer so I could get them done.  Taking additional rest time during a timed event doesn’t work out well.

I wound up with a disappointing time of 8:05.  I am confident I can do much better if try again feeling more upbeat and without an aching thumb.  I hope to give it another go before month’s end.  You can see the attempt here.

So the Eagles played in prime time last night against the division leading Giants in New York.  A bleak Eagle forecast was made bleaker by the news that Mike Vick and the number one receiver, Jeremy Maclin were both out with injuries.  A loss seemed to be in the  picture for sure.

Of course with as crazy as the NFL is anymore,  this resulted in a win.  Vince Young threw three interceptions but drove the Eagles down the field in a ridiculously long 19 play drive to score the go ahead TD.  The defense, which had played well all game looked like they were going right into collapse mode, allowing Eli Manning to pick up a quick 50 yards on a couple plays with time running out.  I was like “here we go again”

Well for one of the few times this year the defense actually came up big, making a play when they had to, forcing Eli to fumble the ball which the Birds recovered, game over.  It was a very improbable win.  I still have no illusions of this team going anywhere in the big picture but hey, it’s a win.

Now as you can tell by the blog entry title, the win was pretty much secondary to me anyway.  I was too busy hating Desean Jackson.

Desean has been a malcontent this season.  He is pissed off that the Eagles refused to renegotiate his deal before the season.  Well I assume there have been some undocumented locker room ramifications of his discontent which was put on center stage by Andy deactivating him for last weeks embarrassing loss to the Cardinals for missing a mandatory meeting.

A reasonable person would think Desean would be back on the field with something to prove. Well he did, he proved his a first class asshole.

The first time Desean touched the ball was during a punt return where he performed one of his familiar , run backwards 15 yards before going forward moves, resulting in a loss.  He does this all the time.  NBC flashed a stat that since the Giants game in 2010 Jackson’s punt return average has been less than THREE YARDS per attempt .  That is awful.

So in the 2nd quarter the Eagles found themselves backed up to their own goal line after a good Giants punt.  Vince Young launched a ball down the sidelines that Jackson caught.  He ran past midfield before he was pushed out of bounds on the Giants sideline, it was close to a 60 yard gain.

My mouth fell open as Jackson flips the ball at the Giants defensive coordinator, hitting him in the chest.  He followed up with more theatrics, letting the Giants know how bad ass he was.  Well this of course drew a penalty., wiping out the huge gain  The incident instantly shook me out of the sleepy haze I was in.  I was incensed.

It’s not like this is the first time Jackson has exhibited this behavior, he does it all the time.  The only difference is this season he has made so few big plays we haven’t seen it as often.  Ali was in the office paying bills but she heard what was going on and came out to see.  She couldn’t believe it either.

I immediately grabbed my phone and updated my FB status with “Desean Jackson is a fcking asshole. I could care less if he ever plays for the Eagles again. He is just a punk.”  Even after Jackson ran back a big punt later in the game I could have cared less.  I don’t want a guy like that on the team, period.

Late in the game he once again proved he hadn’t learned a damn thing, taunting the fans after making a first down catch.  Hey Desean, you fcking idiot, the Eagles have been TERRIBLE this year and your lack of production is a nice big chunk of that problem.  SHUT THE F UP AND MAKE PLAYS.

I sincerely hope the Eagles just let the asshole walk at the end of the year.  Let him go play on a team like the Raiders, they love pompous asshats.

Now I see ESPN running things like “Is Vince Young a better option than Michael Vick???”  I had to laugh.  Yes Young at least drove the Eagles down for a winning score late in the game, something Vick hasn’t been able to do with much consistency at all.  But to anoint him as the answer after one game, a game where he also happened to throw 3 interceptions, is a bit ludicrous.  Of course the Eagles do have a track record of doing just that.  After all that is how Vick got his job and subsequent overpaid contract.

Whatever, this team is going nowhere fast.

 

Last night I wanted to take another shot at the normal mode of this month’s Bar-barian challenge.  On my first attempt I went over the top with being slow and controlled, turning in a very slow time of 4:50.  I wanted to try to go much faster this time without throwing form out the window.

Prior to the attempt I had a couple pinches on my ankles that I disregarded.  After the third pinch I realized that my right sneaker was covered in fire ants.  I took my sneakers off and smacked them together to propel the fire ants off of them.  I decided to just do the attempt in my socks so I wouldn’t get bitten mid-set.

I pulled in a good time, 2:53, a huge improvement.  I was also pleased that my form didn’t suffer much with the faster pace.  My time got me out of the cellar in the standings.

I still have been waking up in the middle of the night, last night was a little different though, I woke up between 1 and 2am.

My thumb is pretty functional at this point.  The swelling that more or less immobilized the thumb for a couple days is better but the thumb still hurts.  The pain has shifted into the thumb joint.  It just feels sore, almost what I imagine arthritis feels like.  I am hoping it continues to heal.

This weekend we have a race at a new venue to time which is always dangerous.  The first year of a race is the toughest since a lot of bugs are normally flushed out.  This race is back and forth over the bridge that connects Marco Island.  It will be a tough run for the participants, that bridge is steep and long.

We are taking mom out for a belated birthday dinner on Saturday night as well.  Other than that we will just be doing what we do.

 

So I finally got to finish up Burzynski last night.  The remaining portion of the movie finished painting the picture of unbelievable conspiracy by various arms of the government to steal Burzynski’s discovery of antineoplastons out from under him.  It basically went like this.

While the FDA spent over a half decade trying to prosecute Burzynski there was a quiet effort to patent antineoplastons by a big pharm company Burzynski worked with years prior in coordination with the US government.  He had already patented his discovery years prior.  Any degree of due diligence in the patent office would have revealed these repatenting efforts were invalid and should have been denied.  Instead the patent office approved 11 patents for antineoplastons by the US government, shared with the pharmaceutical company.

In a nutshell the plan was to get Burzynski thrown in jail so he would be unable to dispute the patent infringement.  This was a joint and coordinated effort between the FDA, the National Cancer Institute and the patent office.  It is truly sickening.

Another doctor in the film made a good comparison.  In the late 1600’s there was a doctor that pointed out that the simple act of doctors washing their hands would stop the spread of a deadly disease that was thought to be isolated to pregnant women.

A woman would die from this fever and a doctor would perform an autopsy.  In many cases this same doctor would go right from the autopsy back into the delivery room without washing his hands, inadvertently transferring the disease to another pregnant woman.

When this doctor suggested doctors simply start washing their hands he was scorned and ejected from the medical community for expressing something outside of the current established medical practices.  He was later sent to an insane asylum.

Sounds pretty ridiculous huh?  Well how ridiculous is it that the accepted way to treat cancer is with radiation and toxic chemicals that have tons of horrible debilitating side effects, including causing additional cancer??

Burzynski’s methods are not toxic, not radioactive and have been successfully CURING cancer in individuals that were told they had no hope for upwards of 30 years.

It’s almost the modern day version of the scientist simply telling doctors to wash their fcking hands!  The major difference is his discovery threatens a trillion dollar a year industry built on the back of treating cancer the same way.  That money wants to squash innovation, not nurture it.

The fact that Dr Burzynski believes so much in what he is doing that he has fought off repeated attacks by the US government is pretty damn amazing to me.  A much lesser man would have just been quietly bought off and this technology would have been hidden away from the world.

Dr Burzynski’s treatments are finally in the third and final stage of FDA trials certification.  For some reason the FDA makes this stage ridiculously expensive, costing somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 MILLION dollars.  No wonder the only entities that can normally push new drugs/treatments are the callous big pharm monsters that much prefer treating conditions than curing them.

As I said to Ali last night, it is just another of the countless examples of how this world is nothing but corruption as far as the eye can see. We are all just resources that are being harvested.