I am reading Justine Larbalestier's Magic novels. They are Young Adult fantasy (magic and all) so out of the usual hard science fiction group that I usually go for. But they are good stories well told and have been fun reads.
The Science Fiction Book Club has the trilogy combined in a hardcover edition. This is where I snagged my copy during one of the many sales events.
Thanks to a heads up from his blog, I learned that John Scalzi's Agent to the Stars
I almost bought Agent from McMillan, but then checked at Amazon and saw that I could get it and Zoe's Tale
So, Mary will scold me for buying more books while Mr. Scalzi is thanking me. And I have more on my stack to read.
We took the motorcycle in for it 4K check up this weekend. While we where in the shop Mary bought me a new pair of pants. The weather has started to turn a little cool and the bike has been parked in the garage for eight out of the past ten days. I think she was worried that I was starting to cave on the deal we made when she let me get the bike. The deal was that getting the bike meant riding the bike. I have to average riding it at least half the days of the year to justify having it and not replacing the aging Jeep now instead of letting it limp along until it dies.
So now I have these nifty black pants with a removable quilted liner, a removable rain liner, removable outer covers that expose mesh panels for hot weather.
And no excuses not to ride until the weather turns really cold.
Sweet.
This gallery has a pictures of what Ike did this past weekend to the town where I graduated from high school. Image 33 shows the main street, Texas Avenue. (I would drop in an image, but that site doesn't seem to want to share them that way and I don't fell like pushing the issue.) The first 75 or so pictures in the gallery are in Bridge City and the rest are in Orange, the next town over.
There are a few people who live there that I am concerned for. Aunt Bert lives somewhat south of that road that is a river toward the lake and has likely lost her house, but I am pretty sure she got out of town early. The other aunts and cousins live a bit farther inland by distances varying from just barely enough to well out of the way. My wife's parents (who did not leave their home) and one sister (who did the smart thing) live in the just barely enough range of about 30 miles north of these pictures and were spared much damage though they saw plenty of high winds and rain. They are all still without electricity today (Monday) except for my aunt who lives in Dallas (300 miles to the safe side) and Mary's sister who lives in Corpus, and who is only safe by luck of the spin because Ike slipped north instead of south.
What a mess. Be safe.
Update from my Aunt Sybil:
Bridge City has been 90% destroyed. I went with Roberta Thurs to check on their trailer. As we drove down the streets, every house has a pile of wet, sodden “stuff” piled in the front yard. Everything was ruined. On the news last night they said that out of 3500 homes in Bridge City, 14 were habitable. Roberta’s trailer not only is fine, but she had electricity and water. We don’t understand it. The house on both sides of her and across the street were flooded. The yards are covered in black slimy mud from the marsh and Sabine lake. There were no fatalities as far as we know.
The girls went to Vegas and the boys stayed home.
Caitlin left last week for a few days in California with half the gang before meeting up with Mary and the other half this week. None of the girls is a gambler, and are underage anyway except for Mary and Leah, they just are using Sin City as the the center of tourist adventures because its the only place you can fly into near the Grand Canyon, Four Corners, and the Big Dam. Plus it has it own set of non-gambling somewhat reasonably priced entertainment suitable for 16 to 18 year-old young women. The older girls (Mary and Leah) will have their hands full trying to herd the cats (tame cats though they might be).
Nelson and I counted the vacation as starting on Saturday, but there were some chores that had to be done before the fun could start. After excavating his room out and knocking down the jungle that is the back yard, we were ready to get our week off under way.
Nelson and I planned to stay close to home fishing and riding the motorcycle around. Our week almost got canceled before it started when the old fart of the pair missed a step and nearly broke his ankle. Luckily it just knocked a bunch of profanity out of me, gave me a headache, and left the ankle swollen for a couple of days without seeming to be broken or too badly sprained. That happened on Saturday before Mary left on Monday.
Sunday was spent sleeping late, drugging and icing the ankle, helping Mary pack, getting rid of three beds that we did not need to folks most glad to have them (one we found in the excavation of Nelson's room, one from Caitlin's room a year ago, and one from Nelson's room in the old house six years ago -- we are pack rats), and finishing the yard work that did not get finished Saturday.
Monday was spent getting Mary out the door to the airport and then some prep for the rest of the week. It was another late start to the day, because we are a lazy bunch on vacation. After seeing Mary off, we went shopping. We bought some fishing gear, some odds and ends for the motorcycle rides, and some groceries. Nelson got a new Oscar for his fish tank. Nelson has cheer practice on Monday so not much else was in plans. By the time we got all the stuff back to the house and got something to eat it was time to get him to the gym.
The plan for Tuesday was a ride motorcycle through the swervy roads of North Georgia. We got mostly packed Monday night then settled in to watch the movie Stardust. We stayed up a bit too late watching it though. It turned out to be better than we were expecting. Funny ghosts, Robert De Niro had an especially nice part, and Claire Danes, but it kept us up later than we planned.
So we went to sleep looking forward to a two day motorcycle trip to start on Tuesday.
While packing up from a sort of late work day and talking to my mother on the phone, I read a tweet from from MarsPhoenix reporting that Water Ice had just been found on the surface of Mars. So I passed the news right on to Mama as, "Hey, they just found water ice on Mars. I just got a text message from the robot they sent up there." And I give the quick run down of the lander and how I come to get a text message from it.
"Just imagine how far we've gone. In 1900, your Pappa wasn't even alive, there weren't many cars, and no airplanes. And now we've sent robots to Mars that are making ice water and sending you messages about it."
Yeah, kinda cool.
We have outgrown our office and are moving to a new building. My team got a tour yesterday of the very nice new space. The conference rooms are all named after games. We are very pleased to confirm that the 'Wii Room' does actually have a Wii system and is meant for use as a stress relief room. We were greatly disappointed that the much larger, sound proofed, curved-walled, black-painted, very cool looking 'Halo Room' had nothing to do with playing the game. Instead it is some kind of wacky high tech conference room. Something about saving travel expenses to Europe or something.
Now we need to convince the naming committee that names like 'Candy Land' and a couple of others just do not work for a tech company.
Ummm...Smith, Hayek, Friedman, ... but not Waters,
Falling Demand
``Refiners are managing the crude supply they have on hand because they are worried about weak product demand,'' said Tim Evans, an energy analyst for Citi Futures Perspective in New York. ``Both gasoline and distillate demand over the last four weeks are down from a year ago.''
Fuel consumption averaged 20.4 million barrels a day in the four weeks ended June 6, down 1.3 percent from a year earlier, the department said.
U.S. gasoline demand increases during the summer, when Americans take to the highways for vacations. The peak- consumption period lasts from the Memorial Day weekend in late May to Labor Day in early September.
I read a few comics, but not many. I get them by subscription from Heavy Ink. Another case where shopping online costs less and keeps me from having to talk to people.
About the Self Assembling Robot that Takes over the World?
The answers I wish I had thought of:
Q:
Wow. Homeschooling. I could never do it with my kids.A:
I know. God, I couldn’t homeschool your kids either.
Why is a door knob designed such that if the deadbolt is retracted when you try to install it the mechanism binds but installed with the deadbolt extended it work smoothly? And why do the instructions not make this more clear? Just saying. Because it could have been thirty minutes instead of two hours had the doc been just a bit clearer on that point.
Not to mention that Nelson and I would not have to suffer the rest of the weekend of Mary letting us know just how much we need her as a supervisor since it was her idea to try it with the bolt out instead of in.
Then she fixed Nelson and me some lunch and we celebrated having new front door hardware and not having our keys getting stuck in the lock every other day. All in all worth the two hours and the lousy instructions in the end.
quote from a quote from a quote
You can eliminate a lot of conflict in your life by realizing that there are basically two categories of people you’ll run into - those who get paid to make decisions, and those who get punished for making decisions…
Today was a lovely sunny 60 degree Spring day. Tomorrow will be a lovely sunny 60 degree Spring day.
Tonight we have freeze warnings.
Wacky, wacky weather.
Kirk Mellish says La Nina is the most likely cause:
Our latest taste of winter was first mentioned in my blog March 26th with changes made on the 2nd and April 8th. Reluctant springs are a comon feature of La Nina. After the cold snap a 10-15 day warm spell will ensue. Last year The Masters had record cold on the final day. We know what kind of Summer followed. This year the cold wave is just a few days later. Record lows are occuring in April in Georgia the last 30 years about 3 times the normal pace of the last 125 years. Average would be one record low every 4 years. So in the last 3 decades that would mean about 8 records, instead Augusta has seen 20 record lows in April. There is a consensus that the current La Nina, though weakening, will last the Summer and maybe even into next winter.
The water level in Lake Lanier, the main reservoir for metro Atlanta, has risen six feet since January of this year. The lake is still 10 feet lower than this time last year. Frequent rains this year have helped the lake rise steadily, which is a good thing.
The same rains promise to make it difficult for me keep the grass cut in the jungle that has become my back yard. I am not really complaining...much.
We finally get to the Lovenox shots in the belly story. I did remarkably well with it given my history. The other stories are much more dramatic, but this one has me giving myself injections in the skin on my stomach. I get a bit dizzy just typing that sentence.
Mary gave me a couple of shots, but I was laying in bed for those so no drama at all. For all of the others I did it myself because the time for the shots fell when she was at work or was sleeping off a night of caring for someones twins.
I would go into the bathroom so I would not disturb Mary and because there is plenty of bright light. I have a problem with small details close up and these needles are very small. I figured it was better that I could see what I was doing than just stabbing blindly in the general area around my belly button. These are subcutaneous shots so just under the skin, not deep in the muscle. I did really will with all except two of the shots. On those two I got the angle of the needle wrong somehow and ended up too shallow. Instead of just a slightly stingy shot, I got a large knot of fluid close to the surface much like a really huge bee sting. I fuzzed out both times and was glad I was already on the floor.
The reaction to being stuck is not all a physiological effect. There is a strong psychological component as well. I lay this partly on the workings of my very vivid imagination, but mostly just the way some high stress situations affect my blood pressure. Now when I get pissed off it goes through the roof, but some other times it bottoms out. Like being stuck with a needle or some other things. Of course, when you combine it with actually draining some blood it makes it worse. It does not take a needle to get the affect, though.
When our son was three he was having frequent bladder infections. After a few trips to the pediatrician and some trips to the urologist, there came a day when we went for a test for reflux from his bladder into his kidneys. This meant having a catheter inserted, his bladder filled with an isotope-laden fluid, and pictures taken to see how much it made his kidneys glow. Yeah. At three years old.
Our daughter had been through the same thing a few years before when she was also three. The routine then had been that the parents were banned from the imaging lab. The idea was that it was better for the child to hate the doctors than the parents. We hated that, but the choice was do the test their way or not do the test. By the time my son was put through the ordeal the plan had changed so that the parents were encouraged to be with the child to help calm him. Much better for the child and the parents in my mind.
Mary was sitting at the end of machine stoking Nelson's head, talking to him and trying to keep him calm. I was squatting at the side of the machine holding his hand doing the same. We had given him the basic run down of what was going to happen so there it was no surprise when the doctor started up with the catheter business. He was not a bit happy about that though. He did not cry or squirm away or anything. He just looked at me and said in a kind of tight voice, "Daddy that's bothering me." Over and over.
The doctor and his assistant were having some trouble getting things just they way they wanted. Then the doctor said something like, "Oh well no wonder it won't go into the bladder. The problem is that this catheter is too large. You have to take that one out, get a smaller one and we will start over."
About that time a medical student that was assisting asked me if I was OK. Mary asked if I was alright, too. I told them I was a little light headed, but would be fine. It was just thinking to hard about tubes being pulled out and then shoved back in while my three year old son was telling me over and over, "Daddy that's bothering me" but otherwise not putting up any fight.
They finally got the right tube in, filled his bladder with radioactive juice, took pictures of it going unnaturally far up into his kidneys proving that the little valves did not work worth a damn. Somewhere in there the med student suggested I should sit down before I fell over. I declined saying I was staying where I was until the procedure was done and Nelson was calm. Which I did, fuzzy headed and woozy as I was. As soon as they had finished taking pictures and draining his bladder back out, I told him I was going to go sit in a chair for while and he said that was OK.
I stumbled over cords and cables, around a nurse and my wife who both helped me plop into a chair that was nearby. Nelson tracked all of this by swiveling his head around to watch as I made my way. As soon as my butt hit the chair I was out. The rest of the tale comes to me from Mary.
My head flopped forward, I slumped in the chair, and the medical student caught me before I fell out of it. I was not breathing or was breathing very raggedly. She was getting a bit panicked by this. She asked the doctor if she should call for some more help. The doctor was all calm about it and told to her to just hold my head up so I could breathe. She did, I did, and then I came around.
All of this kept Nelson distracted while the doctor de-tubed him and cleaned up. By the time I was conscious again he was ready to be up. He sat in my lap and we comforted each other for a while.
Mary and I had been married for a few years when I had an episode during a physical at a Kaiser office. This time I probably had a hand at training a young nurse in the art of listening to the patient. The setup is the typical blood draw for a physical. The nurse has taken my basic history and in the course of that let me know that this was her first job out of school. I let her know about my special issues with needles and she immediately got very nervous. This was great. I'm nervous about the whole needle thing and the likely aftermath and now she's nervous about it.
She promised to be gentle and take care of me, yada yada yada, but I was still sitting in a chair. She stuck me not too badly, took a couple of tubes of blood and the bandaid went over the little hole. I woke up on a gurney. The best I could tell is I passed out and fell out of the chair and it took the two or three nurses to get me on the gurney. I was looking up at the young nurse crying and telling an older nurse that the next time somebody said they would pass out she would really believe them.
I'm thinking this is about the time the training started to change where nurses actually listen to patients, but it took a while for it to make its way through all the schools in the nation.
When I was in the Air Force stationed at the Defense Language School in Monterey, California, we had a day where the base commander gave us the option to "volunteer" to donate blood to the base Red Cross chapter in exchange for a day off of classes. Should we not want to "volunteer" we could spend the day policing the grounds of the base and the surrounds for trash and doing other unpleasant tasks selected to encourage us to "volunteer". It should be no surprise that there was nearly 100% participation in the blood drive that day. Not 100% because there are always some who take a stand not matter what, but that is another story.
The bunch of us that hung out together including my roommate had a good breakfast in the chow hall and then headed across the base to be drained. My roommate, Richard G. Wood from Boston (should he ever search his name and find it), knew about my tendency to pile up after being stuck. He had been around me during boot camp when I had been shot with the pneumatic guns and had keeled over. That was either three or four shots in each arm at a time a couple of days apart. I was lucky to wake up at all. Dick backed me up as I told the Red Cross nurses that I was not just being a wuss, but they were still trained in the old-school style and basically told me to just suck it up. Dick and I were put on gurneys next to each other, stuck at the same time, and filled our pints in about the same speed. Dick walked away laughing his Boston-accented laugh. The senior nurse would not let me off the gurney because I was too pale.
Cold wet towels were applied, legs were elevated, much attention was given. A corpsman was assigned to stand at my gurney to call the senior nurse every time I completely passed out, which was several. After about 45 minutes I was allowed to sit up and then had to lay right back down. This went on for another 30 minutes or so until I could sit without getting dizzy. Then the corpsman lead me over to the table with juice and cookies. I sipped some juice and ate a cookie. Another friend, Mark A. Webb (also hoping he will ping his name), sat across from me having just breezed through giving his pint. We chatted for a few seconds and then he laughed said, "Oh man, your freckles are turning white!"
When I woke up I was on a cot across the room with a small cut on my forehead where it had bounced off the table. I could hear the senior nurse chewing out the corpsman for leaving me alone. A notation was added to my records and I was not allowed to donate blood to the base Red Cross during the rest of my time at the Presidio.
When I was about 10 years old my mother hauled my sister, brother, and me to the county clinic to get a set of vaccinations before starting the school year. After herding us through the line for an hour or so, we got to meet the young nurse enjoying her duties at her very first job. As the eldest child, I went first to set a good example for my siblings. I sat in the chair and took the shots well. I remember it being quick and easy. I got up and my sister sat in the chair ready to follow my lead.
I fell over on the floor out like a light white as a ghost. My mother and the nurse got me back awake with my feet propped up and cold paper towels on my face. My sister was upset and crying about me piling up, but otherwise took her shots without a problem. My little brother got in the chair next for his shots. He did fine until the needle hit his arm and then he reached up fast as lightning, snatched the whole hypo out of the nurse's hand and took that thing out of his arm. That pretty much ruined her day.
Of course, I know all of this story after the midway point by the retelling over the years and not from actual memory because I was out on the floor at the time.
So just how much did a month of sticking needles in my belly thrill me? Not a bit. To be sure, I did not know it was going to be a full month of it going in. My doctor is a sly former Naval officer and currently is a mother of one or two young children. She has plenty of experience getting the marginally-willing to do what we need to do. In this case it was the old "Just a few more days," and "Just a few more days," and "Your blood work is not quite where we want it so Just a few more days" trick. While this worked to ease me into the month of needle sticks with a bit less stress, I would have chosen them over being in the hospital for a month hands down since those were my only options.
I have never been really squeamish about blood, guts and gore, but stick me with a needle and I will usually fall over a few minutes later. Not right away, but later. A delayed dive. This adds to the excitement. Even better has been that, until about ten years ago, almost no one would believe me when I warned them ahead of time that this was going to happen. When I turned 40 for some reason they switched from saying things like, "Oh, come on. A big strong fellow like you passing out from a little ole needle?" to "Thanks for letting me know. Why don't you go ahead and lay down now so I don't have to pick you up later." I don't know whether nurses' training changed so they believed me more or I just sounded more sincere, but I was happy to start laying down instead of waking up to say 'I told you so.'
Here are some stories from days gone by to illustrate just how wonderful my relationship with needles has been over the years. These are the best ones. There have been many others, but they were not nearly so much fun to talk about.
I started this as a single post, but it got too long. I chopped it up into several fun needle stoy posts.
Woot! had a woot-off the past couple of days. I gots some pretty good deals.
| Description | Quantity | Cost | Shipping | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nike Sport Kit Carrying Case for MP3 Players 2 Pack Condition: New | 3 | 0.99 | 5.00 | 7.97 |
| Nike AC1126 Sport Armband for iPod Nano Condition: New | 3 | 0.01 | 5.00 | 5.03 |
| 1 Dane-Elec 2 Gigabyte Secure Digital Memory Card Condition: New | 3 | 5.99 | 5.00 | 22.97 |
| Screaming Monkey with Pink or Blue Woot Cape Condition: Screaming | 3 | 1.99 | 5.00 | 10.97 |
| Total | 26.94 | 20.00 | 46.94 |
Do I buy it from this site or from this other site for 68 times more. Hmmm, let me think.
Anyone buying one of these from either source deserves to pay exactly what the seller can get out of them.
Hat Tip: Depleted Cranium.
I change my mind. The scum using Tesla's name and loads of jargon to scam the untrained and weak-minded should be tarred and feathered after they are prosecuted for fraud and theft (after so they courtroom does not get all messy).
Rachel Lucas has declared 23 March a New Holiday. Hang in there girl. There are lots of good people over there who all watch out for each other.
My doctor tells me a DVT is really, really bad. I just know it hurts like a bitch and all the bad things that she tells me about it that can happen should little bits plugging the vein tear loose scares the crap out of me.
I had been having occasional pains in my left calf for a couple of months that I had written off as age and being out of shape. Since the herniated disc in my neck forced me to stop taekwondo workouts last year, I have not been doing much in the way of physical exertion. I figured the aches and pains in the leg were cramps telling me it was about time to get off my butt and get back in shape. The fact that a stretch or short walk usually made the pains go away was my key data point that it was nothing serious.
The pain gradually came more frequently and then was joined by some swelling. One weekend the pain because constant and intense. The following Tuesday I went to my doctor1. I was mostly still expecting this to be something straightforward that could be treated with high strength NSAIDs. However I also knew it had the chance of being something more since I had a somewhat similar though greatly less severe episode 12 years earlier.
She spent about 2 minutes looking at my leg and sent me to the hospital to get an ultrasound to look for blood clots. I was in her office just long enough for her to tell me that if the ultrasound showed any blockage they would be checking me into a room today and I would probably be there for a week or more. The ultrasound showed a big ole clot in the poplitean vein in my calf behind my knee. Off I went to the ER to get things started.
The next several hours I spent just laying about taking up an ER bed while they ran some blood work and the ER doctor and my doctor decided whether I needed to be admitted or could deal with this at home. It came down to whether my kidneys were up to handling a newer medicine and whether Mary and I were up to giving me daily injections. Oh, joy. Needles. In my skin. Twice daily. The other choice was to be stuck in the hospital for a week or two and maybe more. Yeah! Needles! In my skin! Twice Daily! That decided it. I went to my doctor on 19 Feb and was out of work until 13 March.
The next three weeks were pretty dull. I lay about in bed keeping the leg propped up, watched crap on TV or whatever movies were about, took drugs, dreaded noon and midnight when I got to poke needles in my belly. The leg hurt quite a bit and I had to take some chemicals to dull that to be able to sleep for a few nights that week first week. After that it was just dull and worrisome waiting for the doctors to decide what the problem was and how to deal with it. I was told basically to do nothing that involved moving my leg off horizontal or put any pressure on it until the swelling went away unless it was absolutely necessary. That left TV, books, and keeping up with work email and blogs reading on the Treo. Using the laptop while laying flat on my back in bed doesn't work for me. That and being kind of stressed of it all is why I have been silent for a month.
The doctors' plan was first to get my blood clotting factors down so that my body could devour the clots that exist without having more clots forming on top of those. They started feeding me coumadin daily and checking blood every week to see went it got to an effective the level. Since coumadin is a slow starter they decided to use a a drug called Lovenox as a bridge to speed the anti-clotting affect. Lovenonx is the twice-a-day injection I mentioned before. This drug is fast acting and has a short life in the body. It is also, from what I can tell by the doctor's comments and some reading around the web, a fairly expensive drug. One report I read put the cost of each injection at about $100. Pretty pricey, but less expensive than me having to stay in the hospital for the other treatments, certainly more pleasant, and probably safer overall even counting the problems I have sticking myself with a needle.
The next part of the plan was to find out what caused the clot in the first place. I visited a hematologist / oncologist, gave him a bucket of blood to test and a CT scan to study. After sweating for a week we went back a to go over the results2. The CT scan came back clear of anything scary that could be cause. The blood test showed a couple of things that are likely causes. The main one is a genetic anomaly called MTHFR mutation. This causes an enzyme to be out of whack which can lead to, among many other things, blood clots. The good news in that the preventative treatment is really easy: I just have to take a regular dose of folic acid (Eat your spinach and collards!). More than 10% of the population have this mutation, so you can just stop thinking that it was my time around the nuclear reactor or that visit to the alien mothership that did it. For the next six months I will be taking the anti-clotting drugs and the doctor will be monitoring blood levels closely to make sure that I am taking enough. After that I will stop taking the blood thinners there will be some tests to check my liver function for some minor issues and side affects of the drugs.
The biggest concerns over the next few months is that the main clots that had formed and caused the big problem are dissolved slowly without a chunk snapping off and ending up in my lung or brain. Next is that no new clots are forming. Both of these are handled with the drugs that suppress the clotting behavior of the blood. The main negative of this treatment is that my blood won't clot as well as it should if I get a cut or other bleeding injury. So no juggling chain saws for a while.
There are no further tests to confirm that the clots have been removed. The doctors judge the likelihood of that based on the physical appearance of my leg. If he symptoms I had go away then the clots are probably gone, otherwise they are not. If the swelling and pain return the clots are back. Since they confirmed them once with the ultrasound there is no reason to do it again. Surgery to remove the clots is not really an option unless life gets really ugly with lots of really big bad clots. Surgery leads to conditions that actually cause more clots (slicing and dicing followed by lots of laying about) so that's a last resort kind of thing.
My leg is better than it was a month ago. It only swells a bit in the evenings. I still get really tired late in the day, but that seems to be getting somewhat better each day. This sucks but it's getting better. It could have been something super scary, but it is only something really scary. We are moving forward.
A note to all my relatives, especially siblings and cousins: 10% or of the population has this genetic anomaly and that's a pretty high rate, but it is an inherited trait. It is not clear from the studies I have read whether it is more likely passed from the maternal or fraternal side of the line. Certainly my siblings and children have a very high likelihood of having this same trait. My close cousins should be aware of the nature of effects of this thing. I don't think it is something that you stress and worry over, just something to watch a little closer for should you have pains in your legs. It would also probably be worth the extra look on your next annual physical to have the add the check for MTHFR to the blood work. It is common test now so should not be a big deal to add to the other blood work sent out to the labs. Again not something you should do special, but it would be worth adding in the next time you get a physical.
Or you can just eat your greens like you're supposed to, just in case (and more than just on New Years Day3).
