Attention Deficit David

My-Graine

Teaching Aperture with a migraine goes a bit like this....

Now connect your card reader and copy the fish over to the Mobius loop. Adjust the white balance and then print your lambchop on the HP beanpaste 9180.

Is this even possible?

About three months ago I gave blood at NY Blood Center drive. The letter I got back told me not only my blood type (O+) but ominiously also told me my cholesterol was high, and I should have it checked. This was by no means a fasting test, and my last check a few years ago was around 154.

So I was a bit concerned and after a few weeks went to my Dr. who told me to go get a fasting blood test, which I did. The results came back as, ready for this? 374. He immediately put me on statins and told me to wait six weeks and get a recheck.

In the intervening eight weeks I've lost 12 pounds, and been taking the statins regularly. I went back for my new bloods and called today and was told that my cholesterol is now, are you ready, 113.

Wait, what?

The nurse who gave me the results seemed pleased, but this seems odd. That's a 265 point drop in eight weeks. Is that possible? Was there a wrong reading? WTF?

I'm sure my Doctor will order another check to verify, but is it even possible to lose 265 points in eight weeks?

Mousecapades 2: This time it's personal

A few developments recently in the saga of the house mice.

First, Abby was cleaning out her closet and found, inside a shoe box, a pile of our dry cat food stored up from one of our rodent friends. That would certainly explain why they don't always hit the trap when we set it, they're all burrowed up for a mousepocalypse.

I have started calling her closet the condomousiam.

In what will shortly turn out to be oddly related news, my car wasn't working right yesterday. I drove it a few feet, got a low engine pressure light and went back to my driveway. A call to On Star and my dealership and I was told to call for Roadside Assistance to give me a tow, which they did. It was as painless an experience as one could have considering my car had to be towed and repaired.

Today the shop called, they were getting a "failed fuel switch" from the diagnostic computer, so they dropped my fuel tank which is when they found peanuts, raisins and chewed wires.

Here's what I'm pretty sure happened. We let the captured mice out in the garage in the winter so they don't freeze. We leave some food for the mice. Said mice realize my car is much warmer than the garage, they crawl up into the car and start a nice little nest with my fuel sensor wiring as insulation.

I'm not sure if I should laugh or not (I am) but I do feel obligated to call Car Talk.

Next mice we find we're driving up to Albany before we release them.

A brief on shorts

For three years now i've had a pair of shorts that's missing a button. Each time I see this pair of shorts, I think "oh shit, that's missing a button. Better put it back into the drawer, and I'll sew one on later."

It's starting to become clear to me that I'm not likely to sew that button on.

A special person

Today is the anniversary of the death of my friend Wil's mom, Helen Chase.

I really liked Mrs. Chase, I had a lot of good times over at Wil's house with her mom telling stories (and despite that we made fun of the method in which they were imparted, we still loved hearing them.)

She was always nice to me, always glad to see me (or hear me, as the case might be) and often made me laugh. Her gardens were beautiful, her flower arrangements were perfect, despite her very poor vision. It's as if she just had an innate sense of the way that plants should be. When Abby and I got married, she made a spare bouquet because the woman doing our flowers was sort of losing it. Mrs. Chase wanted to make sure that we had something in case the florist couldn't get it together and get the arrangements right. That was very nice.

After I became good friends with Wil, I'd head over there for their Easter celebration, full of cookies and the neighbor kids looking for eggs in the yard. Christmas would see more cookies, more warmth in the kitchen, more friendliness.

It's sad when nice aren't around any more, and the planet's not quite as nice without her around.

Trouble in Capital City

Here's something I've been thinking about, in the wake of the massive drug busts and gang fights in Nyack.

In all the meetings I've ever been to about the future of Nyack, and the current situation of the village, what I usually hear is complaints about parking, high rents, lack of nice sidewalks and few things for the teens to do.

How about this one?: Someone in the 70's put projects in the middle of the village, and thought that would be a great idea.

I know very few people who ever say this: when Nyack is trying to revitalize why is there a project-style housing complex in our village?

I'm all in favor of mixed income dwellings. Shit, put up a few apartments for people that can't afford the six-to-seven-figures that houses in Nyack command and make them sustainable, attractive and connected somehow to the community and I'll help you paint them.

But the idea of concrete-block style "housing projects" is dead, as experts tend to agree that they are great place for crime patterns to develop, despite the efforts and wishes of the hard-working people who make a living there.

Why don't we get a lot of retail in Nyack? Why don't we get a lot of folks with money looking to spend it on our restaurants and our shops? Yes, it's the sidewalks, and the parking and the lights and the trees, but it's also the massive dope dealing on Franklin Street that recently resulted in the arrest of 24 people and seizing of drugs and cash. It's the specter of gang violence that's hung over Nyack's head until it broke this week leaving people stabbed and beaten in the streets and had to be quelled with a flood of cops.

In fact, the only time I ever hear the projects get mentioned at all in Village meetings is when Irv stands up and says that we can't build a parking garage next to them, as it will give the residents a bad view.

I bet if you ask the hard working parents who live there if they'd rather have a parking garage or, say no more crack dealing going on in their courtyard they'd probably go for the lack of crack. I would.

I suppose the lack of public discourse is because saying you're opposed to a major public-works housing project being located directly adjacent to the retail hub of the village makes one sound like a bigot—it sounds like you're saying you're not in favor of the people who live there.

Personally, I'm not in favor of the criminals that live there, just as I'm not in favor of criminals that live anywhere else. But really I'm not in favor of is a social-political development that fosters the continued dependance on the broken unemployment and social assistance programs in our country. I'm not in favor of any development that makes people of any income class live in small, squalid housing with little to no job training and no connection to the community.

I'm not in favor of treating people like lesser citizens because they make less money on average than most. I'm not in favor of ugly subsidized public housing that ends up fostering crime.

Maybe instead of talking about parking meters and who is going to run the marina and to what end, we should talk about how to develop sustainable housing in Nyack for ALL income classes, without making any look or feel like they are second class citizens, and without creating further blight in Nyack.

Die Hard with a Tulip

You'd think after the exemplary care I got from Herr Doctor Preggnantsthein yesterday that I'd have been a bit more forceful about not going back to the clinic. Really, a $150 office visit to get no treatment? I can do better just laying on the cold floor of the bathroom.

But doctors orders are doctor's orders, and the good doctor told us that I should come back to the clinic if I were to get a fever.

I got a fever.

A mild one, mind you. Just 38.7, but still, Abby got me a cab, and took me over there. This...was a mistake.

We'd figured that the quality of care could not possibly get worse during the day, perhaps the odd semi-treatment I'd received was just because they were closing and the Hippocratic oath machine was empty for the day. But no, it seems the standard of care remains the same—lousy.

We entered the clinic to be told to sit in the waiting room. So we wandered over to the big area with lots of comfortable looking chairs near reception. This is not the waiting room we were told by a nice Dutch EMT who told us to follow the signs to the waiting room. All very well and good except we don't speak Dutch.

Finally finding

the cramped icky space, we took a seat and very soon were seen by Doctor Casual, dressed in a nice turtleneck and jacket—not at all like, you know, a Doctor.

In the exam room he looked up my records from the night before and made some faces when he read the description of my condition. I see here you were very sick, he said. I'll skip over the conversation here about my bowels and vomiting and get to the point where we tell him the Doctor the night before said to come back if I got a fever. He asks what my temperature is, and then says he wants to feel my pulse. Oh, yes, you have a fever he says while touching my arm.

Uh, is that how "pulse" is supposed to work?

Then he says he'll check my abdomen again to make sure it's still not appendicitis (still not) and tells me that they don't give out antibiotics even for bacterial issues. So, no antibiotics.

He also tells us that it's not possible to get food poisoning from a good restaurant or a hotel. This is of course in a country with Mad Cow and e Colli outbreaks on occasion, so I sort of had hoped he'd have had some idea of how cross-contamination works—hell the desk staff at my hotel had a better grasp.

Did I mention that he didn't wash his hands either? But that's okay, because you can't get sick from the feces I was smart enough to cover my fingers with before entering the clinic. That'll show him.

After telling me that there's nothing he can do for me, he says either "be patient" or "be a patient." We're not sure which he said, but the general gist was "well, suck it up." Which is fine and all, and was my plan except we were told to come back here under these circumstances, and really if I were going to spend another 80 Euro I'd rather have done it with a nice meal or a prostitute over in the red light district.

We went back to the not-waiting room, where they were unable to use the printer (saying the Dutch version of "PC Load Letter?!? What the fuck is PC Load Letter" while putting paper in entirely the wrong part of the printer. There are monks sequestered in cloisters in Outer Mongolia who are more capable at putting paper in the printer.

Then she couldn't use the credit card machine, putting our card into the slot where the Dutch SmartCards go, but credit cards do NOT. So we paid cash.

While walking away it occurred to Abby and I that this could not really be a medical clinic, that the real doctors and staff must be tied up in the basement, while an international gang of criminals pretend to staff the center as they drill through the bank vault next door via the ancient bomb-cellar at canal level. They only didn't expect John McClain to come through the door with food poisoning and save the day.

Yippie Kay Ey Mother Fucker.

Bicycles, Canals and Food Poisoning

Well, what an interesting 10-hours or so it's been here in Amsterdam. Started with an upset stomach at around 7pm local time and then escalated into full-blown food poisoning. Worst I've ever had too, and that includes a bout with it in San Francisco that left me in the care of the hotel doctor, full of antibiotics and meds.

While Amsterdam has a lot of great things, one thing they are sorely lacking is a good 911 system. When one calls it, after having passed out from low blood pressure, they find you a nearby doctor to go to. That is NOT what I want. Taking a cab to a clinic when I can't stand up? Priceless.

But off to the clinic I went, where they didn't give me antibiotics, didn't have any anti-nausea drugs on hand, didn't give me fluids and mentioned that it was 11pm, and they were closing so... you don't have to vomit and poop at home, but you can't do it here.

Another cab ride back to the hotel, more moaning and laying on the cold tile floor of the bathroom. Abby's a frigging saint, running around to get me stuff, dress me, undress me, put me in bed, help me off the floor, and so on. We exchanged a few "this clinic sucks" looks as I lay under my coat on the exam table with my teeth chattering, while I was told I didn't have a fever, and that it was impossible for someone of my build to have been dehydrated enough to pass out.

Course I was, and I did.

The pregnant doctor was nice enough to shake my hand and say "good luck" while I left (not nice enough to have washed her hands anywhere). Now my body clock is off from so many hours being in a semi-conscious state, so I'm writing in the bathroom, trying not to wake up Abby.

Not exactly how I expected the vacation to go. Now I'm starving and thirsty and trying to hold out till sunrise to go get some crackers or something somewhere.

The sort-of great Mojo bar taste test

Jenni is fucking nuts. No really, I know she's nuts, because she and I have been in a friend-induced Mojo Bar taste test, and she likes things I don't like. Clearly since I'm much better than her in all regards, her tastes are broken.

Well truth be told she and I had similar reactions, but I know she reads this blog so I thought it would be good to rile her up first. Also for fair disclosure, Abby threw out some of the wrappers, figuring that a pile of ripped paper wrapper in the kitchen were junk, not science. So I'm not 100% sure of what I ate.

Due to voluminous amounts of travel and reduced amounts of bike riding, I tested just a sub set of these bars, provided by Daniel, based on this thread: http://turnings.phrasewise.com/2008/02/18/the-great-mojo-bar-taste-test/

So here's the deal— I got both dipped and non-dipped bars. I've been eating Clif Mojo bars for a while, all the non-dipped bars taste just about the same, so I started with the dipped.

The Peanut Butter and Jelly bar started off being awesome, what with the dipping in chocolate and all, but I soon found it cloying. Something about the "jelly" stuck to the roof of my mouth. It's not jelly. Its a jelly-ish paste of fruit. It's like fruit cement. And after a bit, it became too much for me.

I also had a chocolate dipped flavor that was not peanut butter and jelly, but was some other fruit, and that I liked. In fact I liked it so much I, as Jenni did, went right to the Vanilla dipped ones, figuring "hey, Vanilla is good." Vanilla, in this context is NOT good. It's bad. Very bad. It's like eating mucus, hard thick mucus, with a slight vanilla tang. It's like a sinus infection of confection.

I then went for the non-dipped bar with pretzels. I LOVE pretzels in things, I mix them with peanuts, chocolate, lamb, asparagus, rice, ice cream, coffee, and orange juice. (I am lying about some of the mix items.) I do NOT it seems like them in this bar. Or perhaps I don't like the bar that surrounded the pretzel. I can't tell because it was a mouthful that went right in the trash. This bar has called my mother a whore, and I shall never speak of it again.

I also liked the honey nut ones, they're fine. The rest are still in my kitchen waiting for a nice long ride.

Oh yeah, unlike Jenni I'm also not really impressed the product are 70% organic. If your label reads "70% non-carcinogenic" it's not such a bonus. 30% is a lot of volume in a bar. E for nice effort, T for nice try.

Mouseflot goes awry

So our attempt to relocate the mice has had a bit of a tragic setback. After successfully moving a number of mice to the garage (or the same few over and over) we left the humane traps out for a few days while on vacation with what the Internet assured us would be a good amount of food.

However (you knew there had to be a however, right) we came home and I found one dead mouse in the trap, and the completely eaten carcass of another alongside him. It was like a very small horror movie. I've taken to calling the traps Moushwitz.

I was actually really upset last night when I found them, I did a lot of cursing. If I had wanted to kill a mouse, I'd have left out an inhumane trap. I can't imagine however much more inhumane death than, you know, being snacked upon by your brother.

Abby and I were trying to find something funny in all this tonight as I re-set the trap, putting some more peanut butter into it. Abby mentioned the cartoons where two people are trapped somewhere, and one of them turns into a big turkey in their mind.

Flashing back though to the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup ads of old I said "you got your mouse in my peanut butter" then added "and you got your peanut butter in OH MY GOD YOU'RE EATING ME!"