Archives 2020

Last night I shot a quick video outlining the simple fix for what I was beginning to think was a complicated problem.  I like to make videos when I have an “aha” moment so I can potentially save someone else from going through the same hassles I encounter from time to time.

I had another PT appointment today.  The shoulder is ok to get about my day but certain movements, especially something involving raising the arm in an extended position is uncomfortable.  When the therapist was massaging and moving my shoulder around he felt some crunching, which I also felt yesterday when I tried to do a few pull ups.  He suspects I could have some sort of labrum tear going on in there but if it is, it’s been around for a long time as shoulder pain has been a thing for me for at least a decade.

He had me do some movements with a 1 pound dumbbell which sounds ridiculously light but it is all that is required for these exercises that target small muscles in the shoulder.  The movements felt very uncomfortable at first but dulled a bit as the reps continued.  My homework is to continue doing these exercises as I can.  It sounds like the therapist wants me to keep coming for a little while while my hope was to go this week and be good to go.  I didn’t expect to be healed and pain free, I just wanted a treatment plan that I can follow myself as I don’t need babysitting.  The ending sooner rather than later hope I had is reinforced by me having to plunk down a $35 copay for every visit.

I went back to the county gym for the first time yesterday.  It reopened it’s doors on Monday.  I wore my buff for the session which isn’t all that much fun.  When I arrived there were two other people but for most of the workout I was solo which is nice.  I did lower body weight training which felt odd after the layoff but good.  I did try a few pull ups but bailed after 8 reps because of a persistent and disturbing crunching sound coming from my right shoulder.

Instead of hopping on the cross trainer for 15 minutes of cardio at the end I instead fast walked up the parking garage.  The gym closure exposed me to some alternative ways to exercise and spend my lunch hours.  I don’t plan to abandon those options entirely.  Instead I would like to add them to the rotation to provide more variety.  The tricky thing is going to be doing upper body weight training that does not exacerbate the shoulder issue.

I neglected to mention in yesterday’s entry that I had another 3 hour marathon stream on Friday night.  The primary reason I started it was because I wanted to test the dual platform streaming capabilities of StreamYard.  I configured it to stream simultaneously to Facebook and YouTube for the first time.  It’s cool through the UI I can see comments from both services roll in and respond in one spot.

I didn’t plan for the broadcast to go that long but then my buddy Jeremy got on.  Jeremy, an ex-vball partner of mine and I communicate all the time via internet messaging.  He has been doing a lot of streaming himself regarding how the Covid 19 situation has been affecting the Boca area.  So I asked him if he wanted to join the stream which he agreed to.  He connected and we started talking as we normally have in the past.  Sometime during the interaction I realized that this was the first time Jeremy and I have actually “talked” as in using our voices to communicate in somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 years.  It was a bit shocking to me that so much time had elapsed since our last voice communication.

I have been to his home and he has been to mine several times but recent years have found both of us very busy with our respective responsibilities.  Via internet messaging both of us have more or less kept current with each other’s lives over the years.  Jeremy was on the stream for probably close to an hour.  Of course EUCs were not a primary topic during that time but it was fun nonetheless.

Later in the stream I was once again joined by Mickey where the stream once again turned EUC-centric.  We chatted for over an hour before I called it quits at 12:30 AM, ridiculously late for me.  I enjoyed the the loose format but I don’t think I can swing streaming on a weekly basis.

So I have still been going through a circus trying to get Miguel to actually do what he says and what I paid for.  He has literally given me at least a half dozen missed dates for the sod to be delivered/installed.  Sometimes there are excuses, sometimes there is just no explanation and no communication.  He blamed his own equipment failures, blamed the sod cutting company, blamed the weather, it’s maddening.  Yesterday he was supposedly taking matters into his own hands. He was going to pick up the sod in his own truck, since the sod company evidently has some sort of issue preventing delivery.

Well of course that didn’t happen either.  Now supposedly he is going to have to cut the sod himself as well.  It’s crazy.  I have been very restrained in my response with Miguel so far with all of these failed promises.  The only reason for that is he is the son of the guy that has done yard maintenance for our neighbor for 20 years.  However this latest miss is piling up my frustration to the brink.  I texted him that I need solid dates for stuff to get done and reminded him this has been promised to happen for not days but weeks.  As is typical, no response came.  The first time around I got response by contacting his dad which I really don’t want to have to do again.  I don’t think I should have to have an adult man be scolded by his father to get shit done that he is being paid to do.

Last evening we had some torrential rain moving through the area.  When I got home it started pouring which annoyed me because I planned on burying Katie.  I waited until the lightning subsided and then slapped on my raincoat to do the work in a steady light rain.  Cindy came out to join me as I was in the middle of grave digging.  As is normal I got choked up as I said a few final words to Katie before placing her body in the ground and covering it up with both dirt and palm fronds.  I am hoping we can be done with chicken burials for the foreseeable future.

I figured I will get the tear jerker stuff out of the way up front.  Katie has been having physical issues for damn close to two years.  Out of the blue she developed a problem walking that we never determined what from.  She has gimped around ever since.  Last year she had an episode where she seemed on death’s door, she was just sitting alone and hardly eating or drinking anything.  It was amazing that she somehow rebounded and was more or less normal, for her, limp and all.

In the last couple months Katie was having more difficulty walking.  Many days I would be her personal Uber, picking her up and moving her to different spots so she wouldn’t have to walk there.  It was so sweet at night, she would wait for me to come out to give her a lift onto the perch.  I would call her name and she would make the cute little noise she always did in acknowledgement.  I would always try to place her on the perch next to her sister, Kathy.  So for awhile Katie seemed to be on a plateau, not getting any better or worse.  Despite having problems walking she was always fine on the perch at night once I placed her there.

On Saturday Katie seemed a little slower than normal but she livened up once I cut up watermelon and gave it to the hens.  She ate it up happily.  So Saturday night Katie was standing a bit oddly in front of the coop but she was doing that now and then recently.  I scooped her up and placed her on the perch as I have been for so long.  Looking back, when I called her name “Katie Kate” she didn’t chime back with her cute noise, a sign she wasn’t feeling well.  When I placed her on the perch she was unsteady and fell off in a few seconds, that was when I knew something more serious was up. I picked her up off the floor and put her in a nesting box.  Sure it meant I would have to clean the box in the morning but at least I knew she would be safe in the box, or so I thought.

So I opened the door Sunday morning and I see Katie on the floor, wedged between the food bin and the wall, which is on the opposite side of the coop form the nesting boxes.  She must have tried to get out of the box, fell on the floor again and then struggled to get where she was.  She did not look good.  She could no longer stand, and she couldn’t even sit reliably without support.  By this time I have seen enough dying chickens to know Katie was on her way out.  Her bottom was soaked from not being able to stand.  I started to cry as I placed her outside on the ground in a nesting box for support.

She kept her eyes mostly closed as I interacted with her during the day.  She did take a few bites of melon for me and a couple sips of water.  I moved her to various spots around the yard to keep her in the shade and nearby the other birds, just because I thought she would like it, we did a greatest hits tour of her favorite hang out spots.  By the time evening came around she was barely responsive, keeping her eyes mostly closed as she breathed deeply and slowly.  I filled up the nesting box with fresh shavings to give her something soft to sit on.  As rubbed her head I told her she was a good girl and that I loved her.  As I closed the door I was pretty positive that was the last moment I would see Katie alive.  Before I left work I went out to check on her and confirmed my feeling was correct.

She hadn’t moved from where I placed her, hopefully she passed peacefully.  Although I felt emotional about her laying still, part of me was relieved she was no longer in pain and suffering.  As has been the case with some of other hens, they will put up a good face when they are ill right up until the very end but when they have nothing left they succumb quickly.  Tonight I get the unwelcome task of burying Katie in the back of the property, a miserable but necessary duty.

Ok so what less miserable things went down this weekend?  Saturday was a day filled with mini-tasks and chores.  We had Sadie out at the house for the first time in close to two months.  We were both surprised to see that she looked noticeably heavier.  With the weight came a much more difficult time with basic mobility.  We both felt badly and attribute some of the problem with not having her at the house recently where she has a lot more opportunity to exercise in the wide open spaces of the property.

I finally figured out what was wrong with one of my 3D printers during the day.  I was considering doing a pretty extensive tear down on the unit to fix a chronic under-extrusion issue.  Just when I was about to look at ordering some parts I discovered the problem was stupidly simple.  The brass hot end nozzle somehow worked it’s way loose.  A couple turns with my nozzle installation tool and it was printing perfectly again.  The printer had been down for over a month and the fix was so damn easy.

Deb came over again Saturday night to hang out, a near weekly tradition at this point.  I once again grabbed food from Lil Apetito for us, despite the problem the week before where I waited 45 minutes longer than told on the phone to get our meals.  This time the wait was reasonable and we got extra garlic knots thrown in because Deb complained about the lack of salads and slow service the week prior.

Sunday I didn’t get out for a ride.  I had other things on my plate and we were babysitting DJ for several hours.  I can’t quite explain how endearing it is to have the little guy come crawling over to me, get on his knees, and look up at me with his arms stretched overhead in “pick me up” form.  I love the little guy.  Based on my interactions with him I am pretty sure that if I would have been put into the role of fatherhood as a younger man I would have done ok.

Cindy and I spent the last several days binge watching the third season of West World.  It is an HBO show, which I no longer pay for.  However Xfinity was doing one of their promos where all of their premium services are free for a week or two.  Yesterday was the last day of the promo so we had to jam in the final three episodes in one sitting.  It’s a crazy and deep series.  I thought the story had come to close after season two.  I once again think the story has ended but there was a crack left in the door for them to continue further if they desire.

After my PT appointment this morning I grabbed coffee at DD.  When I went to pull the cup out of my cup holder in the Tesla, the lid which was not evidently securely attached flew off.  The end result was at least 1/4 of the extra large dumping straight into my lap.  I was furious and cursed the drive through worker as I sprung out of the car, looking for something to help curb the mess.  The best I could do was my gym towel and some hand sanitizer.

As I walked into the office I hoped that no pedestrians took the time to focus on my crotch area that clearly looked like I just had explosive diarrhea in my pants. Happy Monday.

Last night I printed my first “production” charger sidecar for my stands.  It has some additional heat venting openings, bump outs so you can see the charger LED light and mounting holes which fit both types of stands I sell.  I plan to throw them on the store this weekend as $9.99 option.  It will be interesting to see what sort of activity I get on it.

I had my second PT appointment today.  It started with 15 minutes on the electrostim machine which is not the most pleasurable sensation.  Something about having your muscles contract involuntarily is unsettling to me.  Afterwards I got stretched and manipulated for almost a half hour which felt good.  At this point I honestly would probably be just fine without PT but I will follow through in the hope that it will help the lower grade pain I have gotten for years in my shoulder doing pressing movements.

My plan is to run the Parking Garage 5K for the third week in a row over my lunch hour.  It is a tough but rewarding challenge.  Supposedly sod is being delivered today although that promise has been unkempt for the past week so hopefully it finally happens.  I have a number of smaller chores/tasks that are spinning around in my head on the to do list but I don’t expect anything earth shattering to go down.

Yesterday I had my first physical therapy session for my right shoulder.  The therapist was a nice guy who gave me a thorough explanation of the physical breakdown of the shoulder and what happens to those structures as we get older.  When I told him the pain started the night after a 200 push up lunch time work out he had much the same reaction as the orthopedist, don’t do that.  He said high rep load bearing exercises are a fast track to premature joint failures as we get into my age range, which is not news to me.

I have for the most part been listening much more to the feedback my body has been giving me the last 5 years.  However I think upping my push up numbers exclusively by a factor of five or six without doing opposing muscle group exercise is the key reason I ran into this wall of pain.  For the first session he did electro-stim on the shoulder and a lot of manual manipulation.  I have every other day sessions starting tomorrow although I don’t think more than a week will be necessary.  Once I get the framework of exercises to do I am good to go, I don’t need someone to motivate me to do them.

There are a bunch of brush fires burning in our area all of a sudden.  I saw huge clouds of smoke on the drive home last night.  This morning it wasn’t bad by our house but as I approached the office it became one big huge smoke screen.  The smoke smell has penetrated everything, there is no escape.

The other day I saw someone in one of the FB EUC groups talking about a 3D printed EUC stand he bought on Ebay.  The design was much bigger and bulkier than mine but it did have something that interested me, an included side compartment for the charger brick.

This compartment isn’t something everyone one would want or need but it would make a nice option.  In the course of an hour or so after taking a few measurements of one of my EUC chargers I had a prototype modeled out.  I started the print last night and woke up to the physical object this morning.  I was thrilled that not only does it fit the charger perfectly, the pass through holes for the bolts lines up perfectly as well.

I plan to do a few more tweaks to it like adding some punch outs to the side to provide additional ventilation for the charging brick but to be quite honest it is pretty damn good as is.   It will be interesting to see how many people show interest in the add on.

So HBO is doing a limited time free access deal which ends on the 17th.  I had HBO for a number of years but dropped it when I reworked my plan to save a few bucks.  I am hoping to take advantage of the gratis time period to binge watch season 3 of West World.  We watched the first episode last night and it seems pretty damn interesting to me.

Yesterday I may have been a bit too aggressive with my exercise recovery.  After work I tried doing a few pull ups.  I stopped after 6 as the hanging motion just did not feel very accommodating to my shoulder.  I guess I will give my upper body another week of light activity.  I have my first PT therapy session scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.  I expect the exercises to be similar to what I was taught over 30 years ago when I went to therapy for my bad left pitching shoulder.  Once I have access to a regular gym it will be easier to more equally exercise both the front and back parts of the shoulder.  I think my doing exclusively pushing exercises for the last 6 weeks fostered an imbalance in the joint that contributed to the problem.

So the big news here over the weekend was the city of Naples shutting down beach access after a week because of people absolutely ignoring any and all social distancing recommendations.  Naples police put a drone up and said they couldn’t even see the sand because people were packed in so tight.  In addition beach goers evidently ignored parking restrictions and threw their vehicles pretty much wherever they could find space.

The Naples city council had an emergency meeting yesterday to come up with a revised beach plan.  There was a lot of disagreement and took four votes until a version of reopening was passed.  Weekday access is pretty much the same although they are stepping up parking fines and enforcement, including vigorous towing. They also are banning coolers and tents.  On weekends is when things get really weird.  They are only allowing beach access from 7AM till 11AM.  The beach is then closed until 5PM where it reopens until sunset.  How in the F is that supposed to work?

Are cops going to shoo people away at 11AM?  It sounds like a logistical nightmare.  I’m glad it isn’t my headache.  Of course this could all have been avoided if people exercised common sense and personal responsibility.  I know expecting that from the masses is not realistic, if it was we wouldn’t have the dolt sitting in the White House that we do.

Miguel told me that the sod was going to be delivered either Saturday or Sunday.  Of course I should have known that meant neither day.  When I contacted him yesterday asking for an ETA he said it was raining at the sod field so they had to wait for it to stop to cut it.  Well evidently it must have rained there a lot more than it did at our place as we only had some off and on light rain.  I am awaiting the next delivery ETA that will be missed.

I once again got my run in over my lunch hour on Friday, running the parking garage for the second week in a row.  It’s a nice challenge, forcing my body to deal with elevation is a good way to shake things up.  Even once gyms reopen I may include this as a Friday thing occasionally.

On Friday night Cindy was exhausted from working hard outside during the day.  She went to bed early.  I had been messing around with a new streaming platform called StreamYard during the day.  I decided I wanted to give it a try.  The solution is entirely browser based, you don’t install any software on your machine.  The UI is intuitive, simple but surprisingly powerful.  I also love that it makes streaming with other people incredibly easy, something I struggled mightily with when Marty and I were streaming together. I polished off the remainder of my Smirnoff Ice’s during the record long three and a half hour stream.  I also had not one but two guests later in the stream, Mickey and Marty.  Even though the session went until after midnight it was a lot of fun as you can see for yourself if you have half a day to kill.

Saturday I kept quite busy with various tasks.  One of those tasks involved lifting a very heavy rock that was part of the fill into the back of the Tacoma. Katie said she would like it for her landscape.  Cindy offered to help me lift it but I did not want her to risk hurting herself.  I had lifted a heavy rock last year that was buried in the front yard and it went pretty well.  Of course back then I wasn’t nursing a bum shoulder.

So as soon as I fully supported the weight of the rock I could tell it was significantly heavier than what I lifted before.  As I strained to get upright it wasn’t my shoulder but my lower back that felt a jolt of pain shoot through it.  I half fell into the bed of the Tacoma with the rock, man it felt heavy.  The good news was my right shoulder seemed unimpacted at least.

I got on the tractor and did a half ass speed mowing run around the property, knocking down the areas that looked shaggy and leaving the rest alone.  It was good enough to buy me another couple weeks until I need to do a full yard trimming session.

Sunday was mostly overcast with off and on rain most of the day which is ok since our area has been arid dry for quite awhile.  It was Mother’s Day so my primary goal was to make sure Cindy had a good day with minimal work.  She headed out to Katie’s house mid-morning to hang with her for awhile.  I took Elsa with me to Home Depot to get a couple things for my new workbench in the hobby room.

I bought a small piece of wire shelving that I mounted to the bottom of the bench.  I then used velcro to attach the chargers for the various EUCS to the shelf to make for a much cleaner set up, similar to what I did on the other wall.  I’m really happy with the way the new arrangement has turned out.  I have my small Prusa printer on the side of the bench and the rest of the surface is a great work area where I can easily assemble the parts to the 3D stands.  There is still some more organizing and throwing out I can do in that room but overall I am quite happy with the current layout.

Deb came over to visit late in the afternoon.  I told the girls I would be happy to go pick up dinner as I didn’t want Cindy to have to cook on Mother’s Day.  In normal times I would take her out to dinner.  So for the second week in a row we ordered from Lil Apetitio, a small italian place a few miles away.  Cindy called in the order, they said 40-45 minutes until it was ready.

So I headed out to go get the food, arriving at their door almost exactly 45 minutes after the order was placed.  Last week we did the same thing, you arrive, call again to tell them you are there, give payment info and they bring your food out a couple minutes later.  Well I did the same thing yesterday except that last part instead of taking a couple minutes took almost another 45 MINUTES.  It was frustrating as hell.  After I saw a few people arrive 10-15 minutes after me getting their food brought out before me I was annoyed.  I rolled down the window and asked the young girl if they had our order in there.  She was annoyed by my question and said yes they are just waiting on the food.  WTF, wasn’t that the point of telling us to wait 45 minutes before coming to get it?

When the food was finally brought out she told me the salads that were supposed to be included were not there because they ran out of lettuce.  I said fine, whatever.  Cindy was really annoyed that I had to wait so long and she thought I should have asked for a credit for the food we paid for but did not receive.  I told her by that point I just wanted to get the hell out of there.  It wasn’t worth beating up on the young girl over a couple bucks to me.  At least the food tasted good.

On Sunday my new upper body armor arrived.  Because it is Asian sizing I had to order the 3XL size, the largest they have.  Even so I was worried it would not fit my long arms.  Luckily it actually fit well and should provide me with some pretty serious protection in high speed riding situations.  It will be interesting to see how bearable it is in the brutal Florida heat and humidity.  The hard body panels are attached to a mesh-like fabric so hopefully it breathes well.

This morning I had my appointment with the orthopedist for my shoulder.  Ever since I made my appointment last Monday the shoulder has been improving slowly, so much so that I considered cancelling the appointment.  Since I have had a long term pain issue in there I figured it was still worth my time to have him take a look.

They took some x-rays which revealed nothing abnormal.  The physical exam  went ok outside of a few movements that caused some mild pain.  When I told him my recent workout routines which have been including 200 push ups in a session he said it seems clear it is an overuse scenario.  He cautioned at my age I may want to consider adjusting my routine.  I threw out there that I suspect it may be also because since there is no gym, I am not working both the back and front of the shoulder more equally, it’s been all push and little pull.  He said that is an issue as well.  He didn’t think any serious tear was in there else I would not have been able to do some of the things I could in the exam.  He recommended I try a month of physical therapy and see how I feel from there.  I can do that.

Yesterday at lunch I decided to do another PEV ride but to a new destination, the beach.  Originally I thought it would take a lot longer than it actually did.  I was concerned I would barely be able to get to the beach and back in an hour.  It turned out my concern was unmerited as I was walking in sand in less than 15 minutes.  I chilled at the beach for 10-15 minutes and still had time to do some riding on Gulfshore and Gordon Drive.  Now that I know I can cover that distance with time to spare I will try to make it part of my normal rotation of lunch destinations, at least until normal gym access is restored.

Speaking of gym access, it seems the lack of resistance training is affecting the scale but not in the way you might think.  My weight is going down, not up.  I assume I am losing some muscle from the lack of weight training.  Some good news physically is I am on my fourth day of my shoulder feeling better.  I have pretty solid range of motion back.  I am tempted to cancel the appointment with the orthopedist but I figure I should still go to get a better idea of what is going on.  I have had pain in that shoulder forever, just not the debilitating type I dealt with the last two weeks plus.

This weekend the sod is supposed to be delivered.  Counting on what Miguel tells me has not been a reliable course of action so far but hopefully this weekend it bucks that trend.  This weekend is also Mothers Day which has become a sad day for me since my Mom passed away in 2014.  I sometimes think about what my mom would think of my life at this juncture.  I have spent most of my adult life working towards goals, learning new skills, accomplishing new projects, and supporting my loved ones.  I have plenty of flaws for sure but at my core I think mom did a good job instilling core morals and work ethic into me, without religion being necessary to provide them.

I think about how my Mom was a little younger than I am now when she swore off relationships, something we always tried to get her to reconsider but she steadfastly refused.  She insisted she enjoyed being alone although I never believed her.  She just tired of being burned again and again by the process to the point where being alone and unhappy was better than being unhappy with someone else.  I still wish Mom was around to talk to about life. Of course I love my dad and do talk to him about life’s up and downs, but I am definitely more cut from mom’s mold as we thought and dealt with things in similar ways.

Last night I watched a portion of a new documentary that is scheduled to come out this summer called Plandemic.  It is in a word, troubling, very troubling.  In the 25 minute clip I saw a respected woman immunologist who was arrested and prohibited from speaking publicly for a period of 5 years detail some pretty shocking history of the global health leadership.  The most shocking of all were the allegations she made against Tony Fauci, who has been seen as a guiding light since Covid 19 became a household word.  She talks about the dirty and corrupt business of big medicine and how leaders in the community, including Fauci have played a game for over 30 years where they only release medical discoveries once they hold the patent to profit from it.  This practice dates back to the early days of HIV/Aids.

The woman at the center of the video seems as believable and sincere as one can be.  The video talked about how hospitals are financially incentivized to declare patients as Covid 19 admissions.  Supposedly declaring a patient as having Covid 19 is an instant 13k payout from Medicare.  If you throw that person on a ventilator, which in many cases can cause permanent lung damage, you get another 39k bonus, which sounds like insanity.

The official web site for the movie is plandemicmovie.com  but the video is no longer available on the site, apparently shut down by the powers that be.  Luckily enough people saw it that it now has been reuploaded to YouTube many times, staying ahead of the censor-bots that appear intent on making it disappear.  I encourage you to take 25 minutes and watch the video yourself to draw your own conclusions.  My conclusion is it is another example of deception being the norm at very high levels of our global leadership.  911 was the first time my eyes got opened to some of it, Covid 19 won’t be the last example.

After watching the documentary I started thinking about the roughly year and a half problem I had with random fatigue which luckily has subsided over the last 6 months or so.  I underwent a battery of testing, none of which revealed anything significant until I requested a heavy metal screening, which revealed a high level of thalium in my blood.  So I knew I had a tetanus shot a couple years back but I did not recall the exact date.

This morning I reviewed my office visit history and found that my tetanus shot occurred at the end of April of 2018.  I started complaining of the fatigue a couple months later.  This timeline was an eye opener for me.  Is it possible all of these mysterious issues were tied to getting the tetanus shot?  It’s a definite and disturbing possibility.

I got the quote for the rest of the fill/sod work yesterday.  If I add in what I already spent in the chicken yard I will have dropped almost 3k on raising the ground level around the property.  It is a big investment but one I think I will look back upon favorably in coming years when I am walking on dry ground in the middle of summer.

My right shoulder has been continuing a slow improvement.  I am doing my best to not retard that trend.