Archives November 2006

Maybe it was the awful smell from the old guy at the gym that smells like mothballs but my head is clear enough to try this again.  Speaking of the gym, since stopping supplementation with Creatine and Endothil, my strength has fallen off the table.  The 275 bench I was flirting with would pile drive my chest now.  It is amazing the fall off has been so quick.  Oh well I also lost 7 or 8 pounds which should help me with the running and volleyball. 

Ok, Friday I had my follow up appointment with the doctor.  I was thrilled to walk in and see the waiting room was totally empty.  Even so, it took over a half hour until the doctor came in to see me. I guess it doesn’t look good if they wait on you too quickly.  I didn’t have to wear a robe this time, instead she came in and sat down.  She looked over the chart and asked “Was I the one that gave you the initial exam?”  I was a bit taken back by that.  How could she forget giving a hernia exam to me a week ago? How many hernia exams does she give to beet red faced men in the span of 7 days?  She had to be kidding.  I told her about my surgeon visit and how he was certain I did not have a hernia.  She didn’t seem concerned that his opinion contradicted hers.  I asked her if a strain could cause the symptoms I was having.  She said it could. Her treatment plan followed the surgeon’s, take it easy, take some anti-inflammatories and if it doesn’t get better or gets worse let them know.  As a token that she was doing something of worth, she wrote me a prescription for industrial strength Motrin, which I threw out afterwards.  Knock on wood, it has been feeling better.

November’s chore of the month was cleaning the perimeter of the house.  That means cleaning the soffets and gutters which over the past 5 years have become dingy gray and in some spots almost black.  I never have done a thorough job cleaning them since we have lived there.  Once in awhile I hit the front of the house with the pressure cleaner but it never did a great job, especially on the high eves.  After my experience, this chore is right at the top of the “jobs I hate to do” list.  It is side by side with pressure washing the pool cage.

I decided to use a super duper cleaner someone recommended to me called Greased Lightning.  My technique for cleaning went like this.  Prop the ladder against the house, spray a roughly 6 foot section of the gutter and soffet thoroughly with greased lightning, scrub the area thouroughly to remove the dirt and mildew, hit the area with a hose and then wipe quickly with a cloth, move the ladder and repeat.  The greased lightning was strong stuff.  It removed paint if left on too long or scrubbed too hard.

The front of the house was especially grueling.  Cleaning the high eves required me to go high on the ladder and reach.  Greased Lightning and water was dropping all over me.  I had goggles on to protect my eyes but nothing else.  In retrospect that was a mistake.  Anyway, I labored for 2 to 3 hours Saturday and another 2 hours on Sunday .  It f’in sucked.  I was relieved when I finished the last section.  Everything looks much better now although I was bummed that it stripped some of the paint.  If I would have looked at the bottle I would have read the warnings about using it on painted surfaces as well as the warnings about having prolonged contact with your skin!  Prolonged contact, hell I practically took a bath in the stuff!  As a result of my stupidity my skin nows has a shiny glaze to it.  I don’t know if it melted it or what.  Another weird side effect, all I have to do is wet my hands or hair and they become instantly slippery, no soap needed.  Sometimes I really should read directions.

Saturday night we watched Cars.  It was yet another entertaining computer animated flick.  The graphics were amazing but I am so used to seeing amazing computer animation it doesn’t stand out nearly as much.  I enjoyed Over the Hedge a little bit more.  Cars was kinda of targeted for kids of Nascar fans.  It gets a solid B.

I bought a “better” cooler for my CPU.  The Pentium D processor runs hot and I was hoping to drop the temp a few degrees by getting a a copper based heatsink with cooling pipes.  After a lengthy and aggravating install process the damn thing does a worse job than what I already had in place.  It’s very annoying.  So now I plan to drop the bucks and get a heavy duty cooler, the Scythe Ninja.  That should cool just about anything.

After a weekend that was filled with work, I coasted the last part of Sunday, playing WoW for an extended amount of time.  I had a funny episode late Sunday in game. One of the things I like about WoW is it lets me do one of my favorite things, be annoying. My level 28 paladin was in an area of undead zombies.  My quest was to kill 20 of them.  There was also a Warlock in the area, killing the same zombies I needed.  Paladins have a spell that will make undead enemies run for a short period of time.  So I decided to have some fun.  While the warlock was fighting one of the zombies, I walked up and cast this spell on it, making it run away.  While it was running away it “aggro’s” (aggro – to cause a monster to attack a player) 3 or 4 other monsters, causing them all to attack the Warlock, killing him.  He is quite angry about this and sends me a message, warning me to not do it again or I would be sorry. So of course I immediately did it two more times.  He was beyond pissed.

Well evidently “you’ll be sorry” meant he was going to have his level 55 horde rogue buddy come and harass me. Since I am only level 28, killing me should be child’s play for the rogue.  The rogue comes and jumps me, almost killing me but I start running away with about 10% of my health.  I have an ability that makes me run slightly faster than normal.  This ability makes me slowly pull away from the rogue, making him unable to finish his dirty work.  I start laughing and pointing at him (in game) as I am running for my life.  He realizes he can’t catch me on foot so he hops on his horse.  He gets up to me and dismounts and just as he does I change direction suddenly, quickly putting distance between him and I, once again making it impossible for him to catch me.  This sequenece is repeated forever as he chased me around the graveyard for a good 10 minutes with me laughing at him the entire time, surely infuriating him.

I eventually ran into a different zone and didn’t see him anymore so I finally stopped.  His thirst for revenge was deep and he evidently continued to follow me as he finally got to kill me.  I resurrected my player 3 more times and he killed me each time.  However I didn’t run, I just sat there and laughed at his incompetence as he hacked and slashed away.  After the fourth death I thought it was time for revenge.  I didn’t resurrect my paladin right away.  Instead I popped open another window of WoW and logged on my 60 druid.  I flew him to the zone where my paladin was and went stealth.  I resurrected the paladin, ran him to a hill out in the open, away from other stuff and started him dancing and laughing.  He was bait.  I was hoping the obvious taunting would draw the rogue in for another kill. It worked like a charm.

With my druid standing near by, invisible, I see the rogue sneak in.  Then in a blink of an eye my druid jumps him.  He is obviously surprised and doesn’t respond right away.  By the time he figures out he was set up it was way too late.  I dropped him easily.  I repeated this scenario 5 more times, moving the paladin and laughing and dancing all the way, only to have the rogue’s plans to drop him thwarted by my druid waiting in the wings.  I was ridiculouly patient, sometimes waiting over 10 minutes for the rogue to work up the stupidity to try again.  Finally after dying yet again he finally left the area.  It always is good to have the last laugh.  These random in game soap operas that can pop up at anytime are a part of the experience I find very enjoyable. 

I spent a decent amount of time recanting my weekend only to have it lost when I hit the “post” button because my web provider decided to do unannounced maintenance, causing me to lose it all….. I don’t think I have the patience to recreate it all again.  Annoying as hell. It was a quality entry…

Cliff notes version:

Doc said take two aspirin and don’t strain yourself regarding the hernia/ab strain.  Great advice doc.

Cleaned the soffet and gutters of the house using Greased Lightning.  Greased Lightning melted my skin making it shiny and slippery.  Hated the chore.

Saw Cars, liked it, didn’t love it.

Installed a new heatsink in my computer that did a worse job than the original.

Tormented some players in WoW and enjoyed it.

The End

We have been watching Survivor since the get go and once again tuned in for this season.  The show’s producers tried to create buzz by floating out how the tribes would be separated by race.  However, they only kept the tribes split that way for 3 days so it was really just a stunt.  Well this season has been a bit of a bore.

I don’t know if it is just because the personalities involved aren’t compelling or just because we have seen it all before, it just hasn’t been very interesting.  On top of that it seems like every week they insist on showing animals being hunted and killed.  This season they have showed tons of fish being speared, octupus struggling for their lives, and the contestants knocking a baby bird out of it’s nest,  among other things.  Ali is very sensitive to this stuff nowadays considering the reasons behind her vegetarian diet.  She had said for the past few weeks how sick she was of them showing animal after animal being killed on the show.  Although my sensitivity is less than hers, I also don’t need to see that shit.  Yea I  understand they are struggling to survive but showing them turning out the lights on living creatures adds nothing to the show.

Well last night was the final straw for Ali.  The one guy comes walking up to camp holding a live bird. It was white and about the size of a large seagull. He is holding it by it’s sides with it’s feet up as it was trying to squirm free.  He said he saw it in the bushes sleeping.  He calls over the oriental guy since he must be adept at killing animals.  Off camera he snaps it’s neck and we they cut to a shot of him walking away with the now limp body of the bird.  Ali said that was it, she wasn’t watching it anymore.  She went back to take her shower.  She said if I wanted to watch the show I could but she was done with it. 

Well I watched maybe 10 more minutes more of it and then turned it off.  I was thinking if the show changed or just that we have.  When I think back, Survivor has always had this sort of crap in it.  They used to do stunts where they would eat live insects, drink cow blood and I remember the infamous scene where the guy killed the pig.  None of those things which probably were worse than anything they have showed this season, made us stop watching.  I think we both just are more sensitive to animals since we got the dog.  Ali is deeply into enviromental stuff, animal rights and the sort, so by proxy, some of that rubs off on me for sure. I dunno I just saw that scene, imagined the poor bird just sleeping there to only be scooped up and have it’s neck snapped.  It just makes me sad.

I don’t know if I will stop watching the show altogether.  It sounds like Ali has no plans to watch it all anymore and the show isn’t a big enough deal to me to carve out time to watch it alone.

 The weekend is going to be busy.  I have a lot of things spinning in my head to get done.  It’s tough because I have been trying to not write them down because for whatever reason Ali gets all bent out of shape when she sees a list on the counter.    The Eagles are off this weekend so it frees up my Sunday afternoon.

I have a followup appointment with the original doctor this afternoon.  For whatever reason the pain seems less for the past day or so.  So I really don’t know what she will be able to tell me.  Maybe it will just fade away.  I don’t know if I should be anticipating more groping.

Well I got a call back from my doctor’s office.  I didn’t get to talk to the doctor that examined me, she was off.  However she did look at my chart and wanted me to come back in for a followup visit.  So tomorrow afternoon I go back in again.  To be honest today it doesn’t feel very bad at all.  There is something awry but I am not quite sure what it is.

Last night the van buyers came out to give me a 500 deposit to hold the van till they got the rest of the money.  I’m happy to hold it and I am happy they gave me cash as a sign of good faith, however I am taking nothing for granted until the keys are in their hands.  It’s just my luck that the deal would fall apart somehow.

Ali took a cute picture of me sleeping with Nicki.  A few minutes earlier , Nicki had her paw on my hand.

Well yesterday was my surgeon appointment.  It may go down as my most annoying doctor visit ever.  Ali was off yesterday so I was fortunate that she was there to field a call from the doctor office saying the surgeon was delayed in surgery so they asked if I could push back my appointment a half hour to 1:30.  Ok sure no problem, I’d rather not show up there and sit a half hour if I don’t have to.  So I show up right on time at 1:30.

As I walked towards the office door there was a small crowd of 5 or 6 people in front of me who went to the same office, just in front of me.  The office was empty before we all entered so I figured the wait won’t be bad.  I gave my name and they handed me these forms I had to fill out.  They also asked for my insurance card AND my driver’s license.  If I was in a cantankerous mood I would have stopped and asked them why they needed my driver’s license for a doctor appointment.  After all it is personal information and I didn’t really appreciate giving it out unnecessarily.  But I didn’t and instead started working on the ridiculously long forms.  They asked things like personal hobbies which I was thought was dumb, wtf do they care what my hobbies are.

As I was filling it out, more people came in, most early for their appointment.  I heard the girl behind the desk telling them they may have to wait awhile because the doctor still was not back from surgery.  Odd they didn’t say that to me but maybe they figure I wouldn’t have to wait that long. I was patient for a loooong time.  I read magazines, lots of magazines.  I even thumbed through a spanish version of Sports Illustrated and looked at the pictures.  It was uncomfortably warm in there, probably largely in part to the growing number of disgruntled people waiting for the still missing doctor.  I closed my eyes and half dozed off in my chair for awhile.

Finally around 2:45 or 3 I reached the end of my patience and asked the receptionist in an obviously annoyed tone if they had any idea when the doctor was coming back.  She said no and said if I liked she could take my cell number and call me when my turn was getting close.  I accidentally left my cell phone at work so that was not an option.  She asked if I wanted to reschedule.  If I wan’t so anxious to get the whole ordeal over with, I would gladly do so but I told her I would wait a little while yet. 

Finally the doctor arrived shortly after 3 and they took a few people back so they could wait more in the exam rooms.  The first person they took back was a 1pm appointment so since my original appointment was 1:15  I figured I should be called back in short order.  I sat and watched while another half dozen people went in ahead of me. I held out for another hour before my anger lifted me from my seat once again. I again approach the receptionist, again I have an angry look to me for sure and she does nothing to disarm me, she is basically a bitch.  I said “Why is it that the first person taken in was a 1 o’clock appointment, mine was at 1:15, yet all these people are being seen ahead of me?”  The woman says that those people were all post-op people that normally don’t take long to see.  They normally schedule them all tightly.  “So all these people were scheduled in the 15 minute block between 1 and 1:15?”  Yes, she replies.  I shake my head and sit back down.  I was f’ing annoyed.  When I finally got called to the exam room it was 4:15.  The same bitchy woman was the one who beckoned me, I gave her a blank look and said nothing as she directed me to the room.

So again I wait, I see the doctor scurrying back and forth by the door attending to the various people.  A couple times he blurted out he would be right with me and apologized for the delay, at least he acknowledged the wait unlike his staff.

Finally he comes in with an intern dude and glances at the chart and starts asking me questions.  He said ‘So you have a bulge,  this, that, the other thing…”  All of which I said no to, but I have pain.  I started to explain the background hurriedly as the doc was obviously being pulled a dozen ways at once.  In the middle of the explanation he stops me and has to step out to take a call and then returns.

His quick pace set me off into one of my uncommunicative funks where I allow situations to dictate what I say as opposed to making sure I thoroughly explain myself.  I get out how the pain randomly radiates into the family jewels and how I can even feel some pulling on the right side as well at times.  “uh huh, uh huh” he spits out quickly, clearly indicating that he wasn’t really listening to me.

Well it was time for another groping.  I had to drop my pants again, this time in front of the doc and his intern.  I am really getting sick of this.  Again I could feel the heat on my face and again my embarrassment from the situation further retards my ability to speak what is on mind.  He feels around, a bit more thoroughly than the woman doctor did.  He tests both sides (the woman only did the left side) Then he is pulling and feeling the 2 buddies which was somewhat painful which I indicated to him.  He authoritatively says “You do not have a hernia on either side”  Huh?  I was a bit flabbergasted by the seemingly rock solid tone he used while delivering the news.

I asked if it wasn’t a hernia what is it?  He pulled out a pamphlet while I happily pulled my pants back up.  He showed me a what a hernia was and what he was feeling for.  He said he felt nothing that would indicate a hernia.  He said I probably have a strain in that area.  I asked why that would cause pain down below and he said because of where it is, the swelling associated with a strain could be causing irritation on the thing your nuts are suspended by. Just thinking about it makes me ill.  His suggestion, take some ibuprofen to reduce any inflammation and lay off the ab exercises.  I was not very satisfied with what felt like a bang bang diagnosis.  The entire process was rushed and although the prospect of not having a hernia was good, my symptoms made me feel like he was missing something.  He shakes my hand which I didn’t realize was sweat covered until he shook it, surely a side effect of the situation.  Even though I felt like the diagnosis was done very quickly and the treatment plan almost seemed flippant, I let him off the hook as he whisked away to his next piece of meat.  I grumpily pay 25 dollars for the pleasure of rotting in their waiting room for 3 hours, followed by a quick groping and diagnosis session.  I walk out of the office incredibly angry at the entire process, including my lack of action in calling out the long wait as inconsiderate and the quick exam as inadequate. 

So on the way home I placed a call with the original doctor’s office, asking for the doctor to call me so I could discuss what this guy told me. I would like to get some feedback.  As far as actions go, I am going to take ibubrofen and pay extra care to avoid things that are painful down there.  I’ll give it a week or so.  If I see no improvement I will probably begin the process over again with a different doctor.  I hate the medical system.

 We left the light on at home for trick or treaters but we had no expectation of receiving any.  We haven’t had any for the last 2 years.  Imagine our surprise when the doorbell rang and we saw three kids by the door.  We gave them a good stash of candy and thanked them for stopping.  I wonder if my gawdy illuminated pumpkins over the door were too inviting to resist?