There is some other stuff that I really ought to be doing at this point, so I figured "Why not fire up the Shortale blog?" I had a fine holiday season, with most of the family gathering in. I'm trying to formulate, in the smithy of my soul, the unformed story of the white elephant swap and the subsequent intrigue of the white (and red) ceramic pig Rodrigo. I am going to have to chart that one out.
Speaking of tales of intrigue, as much as I love military hardware stuff, Tom Clancy is just too bad an author to suffer through. I believe I invented the summarization "It was a red and stormy night ... " though my niece says she thinks she heard Christopher Buckley use it also. Fine. I'm not copyrighting anything. Fair play to him.
A good contrast example is LeCarre. You never know whom to trust and all the conversations are indirect in one of the Smiley books. It's almost as if Clancy is writing "for dummies" versions of a spy novel.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Saturday, November 10, 2007
I Lived
It seemed like it was going to be close, though. On the odd chance anybody reads this blog, I just finished the radiation therapy that was the follow up to the surgery.
Here is the big thing about radiation therapy on your throat: even if they tell you you are getting a minor dose, you will probably lose the ability to eat solid food for a good while, especially enough to total over 1000 calories. Once the 4th (of 6) weeks began, I gave up. I went to drinking Ensure Plus (350 cals 13g protein per serving). Toward the end and for the week after the therapy, it was tough to even get that down. The tip off is the phrase "you may have some trouble swallowing". Indeed. They're cooking your throat, it's bound to put things off.
Another problem is that your throat tissues try to heal themselves by cranking out mucus. You spend your waking time spitting, and you don't sleep much because you wake up gagging. There is not much that can be done about this, so get used to it. The situation is made worse by the "trouble swallowing", so the mucus just kind of pools up.
All in all, nothing I'd recommend. I did lose 20 lbs though and am quite svelte at the moment.
Here is the big thing about radiation therapy on your throat: even if they tell you you are getting a minor dose, you will probably lose the ability to eat solid food for a good while, especially enough to total over 1000 calories. Once the 4th (of 6) weeks began, I gave up. I went to drinking Ensure Plus (350 cals 13g protein per serving). Toward the end and for the week after the therapy, it was tough to even get that down. The tip off is the phrase "you may have some trouble swallowing". Indeed. They're cooking your throat, it's bound to put things off.
Another problem is that your throat tissues try to heal themselves by cranking out mucus. You spend your waking time spitting, and you don't sleep much because you wake up gagging. There is not much that can be done about this, so get used to it. The situation is made worse by the "trouble swallowing", so the mucus just kind of pools up.
All in all, nothing I'd recommend. I did lose 20 lbs though and am quite svelte at the moment.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Gratuitous
Date: May 22, 2007
Time: 23:20
Place: Still in this vale of tears.
I realize my course work is over, but the last few days were pretty bad and the grace note was struck today. All the following details are true.
On Friday, I went to the surgeon in Boston. He said the cancer wasn't that bad, he predicted a full recovery. He'd just cut out a chunk of the jaw and replace it with a graft from a tibia, a bone in the leg which he held in low regard as a leg bone, but a wonderful source of grafts. While it was blending in with its new surroundings, I would accomodate it by breathing through an esophageal airway and eating through a tube in my nose for a week or so in order not to disturb it.
I was expecting arthroscopy. I had to ask the guy to shut up because I was about to faint. Apparently, its quite a common phenomena. I always thought that "make sure you're sitting down" stuff was pure sit-com, but it's true, the nurse said particularly so among big guys like me. It's a fight-or-flight thing. I could feel the blood drawing deep into my body away from my skin.
So, anyway, as I'm enjoying my one pleasure these days, my bike ride home, a pigeon craps square on my forehead as I cross the Welfare Island Bridge.
That's gratuitous.
Time: 23:20
Place: Still in this vale of tears.
I realize my course work is over, but the last few days were pretty bad and the grace note was struck today. All the following details are true.
On Friday, I went to the surgeon in Boston. He said the cancer wasn't that bad, he predicted a full recovery. He'd just cut out a chunk of the jaw and replace it with a graft from a tibia, a bone in the leg which he held in low regard as a leg bone, but a wonderful source of grafts. While it was blending in with its new surroundings, I would accomodate it by breathing through an esophageal airway and eating through a tube in my nose for a week or so in order not to disturb it.
I was expecting arthroscopy. I had to ask the guy to shut up because I was about to faint. Apparently, its quite a common phenomena. I always thought that "make sure you're sitting down" stuff was pure sit-com, but it's true, the nurse said particularly so among big guys like me. It's a fight-or-flight thing. I could feel the blood drawing deep into my body away from my skin.
So, anyway, as I'm enjoying my one pleasure these days, my bike ride home, a pigeon craps square on my forehead as I cross the Welfare Island Bridge.
That's gratuitous.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Sharpton & Hitchens
Date: May 16, 2007 for May 17th
Time: 22:00
Place: Swankadero of the Future
Sharpton made a funny yesterday( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lGi0SS4w6I&NR=1) while debating Chris Hitchens of "God Is Not Great" fame over the place of faith or somesuch crap. Anyway, Hitchens brought up that Mormons (religion of GOP candidate and fan of "Battlefield Earth" Mitt Romney) officially considered black people subhuman until about 1965. In the clip above, Sharpton says words to the effect of "as to the candidate being a Mormon, people who really believe in God will defeat him". The implication is that Mormons don't really believe in God, which is actually a widely held view among many Christians. Smith's revelations are heretical in the eyes of most Christian sects.
Anyway, this is pretty funny. After Sharpton's braying over the Imus affair, the next 3 weeks of O'Reilly, Hannity, and Glenn Beck are going to pretty much write themselves. To me though, the one truly interesting point is this odd couple of Hitchens and Sharpton. Each has lost almost all credibility for insisting on supporting particular causes centered on persons now known to be either extraordinarily deluded or dishonest. They carry the respective albatrosses of Wolfowitz and Brawley.
Time: 22:00
Place: Swankadero of the Future
Sharpton made a funny yesterday( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lGi0SS4w6I&NR=1) while debating Chris Hitchens of "God Is Not Great" fame over the place of faith or somesuch crap. Anyway, Hitchens brought up that Mormons (religion of GOP candidate and fan of "Battlefield Earth" Mitt Romney) officially considered black people subhuman until about 1965. In the clip above, Sharpton says words to the effect of "as to the candidate being a Mormon, people who really believe in God will defeat him". The implication is that Mormons don't really believe in God, which is actually a widely held view among many Christians. Smith's revelations are heretical in the eyes of most Christian sects.
Anyway, this is pretty funny. After Sharpton's braying over the Imus affair, the next 3 weeks of O'Reilly, Hannity, and Glenn Beck are going to pretty much write themselves. To me though, the one truly interesting point is this odd couple of Hitchens and Sharpton. Each has lost almost all credibility for insisting on supporting particular causes centered on persons now known to be either extraordinarily deluded or dishonest. They carry the respective albatrosses of Wolfowitz and Brawley.
Sometimes rain means steady rain
Date: May 16, 2007
Time: 21:43
Place: The Dry-odero
Careful readers of this blog may have caught my post a few days ago in which I rhapsodically described the ability to bicycle 2 flat miles to work on these lovely spring days. True indeed for the most part, but add steady rain into the equation, and the prospects become unpleasing indeed.
Nothing has happened to me recently that would suggest that I was on a "good luck" streak, so why I chose to ride to work this morning fully aware of forecasted "PM showers" is mysterious even to me. Perhaps I suspected they meant intermittent showers but couldn't fit it in the little box with the sun, cloud, and rain drops. It was also a most clement morning, the type which one believes would preclude such an egregiously hideous turn.
I left the buiding around 7:20 PM and it was pouring steadily. I got the bike into the subway, road to Rockefeller Center, transferred, and got to Roosevelt Island, for such is the nexus of the V and F trains. The two mile trip is a 5 mile subway ride. Because of all the construction on Roosevelt Island, the roads are all very badly crowned, so the few hundred feet I road north of the subway to the covered sidewalks was enough to thoroughly drench my pants as I road through one deep puddle after another. Note to self: the middle of the road is the highest point.
Time: 21:43
Place: The Dry-odero
Careful readers of this blog may have caught my post a few days ago in which I rhapsodically described the ability to bicycle 2 flat miles to work on these lovely spring days. True indeed for the most part, but add steady rain into the equation, and the prospects become unpleasing indeed.
Nothing has happened to me recently that would suggest that I was on a "good luck" streak, so why I chose to ride to work this morning fully aware of forecasted "PM showers" is mysterious even to me. Perhaps I suspected they meant intermittent showers but couldn't fit it in the little box with the sun, cloud, and rain drops. It was also a most clement morning, the type which one believes would preclude such an egregiously hideous turn.
I left the buiding around 7:20 PM and it was pouring steadily. I got the bike into the subway, road to Rockefeller Center, transferred, and got to Roosevelt Island, for such is the nexus of the V and F trains. The two mile trip is a 5 mile subway ride. Because of all the construction on Roosevelt Island, the roads are all very badly crowned, so the few hundred feet I road north of the subway to the covered sidewalks was enough to thoroughly drench my pants as I road through one deep puddle after another. Note to self: the middle of the road is the highest point.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
I guess the rapture's here
Date: May 15, 2007
Time: 15:00
Place: The RI 'dero
Yep, whoop it up all you gays, secularists, and other causes of G*d's wrath the world over. Just call him Jerry "Farewell". It must have been a pretty narrow rapture, since I was driving around this afternoon and discerned no effects of suddenly vacated driver's seats. Maybe it's just that there is nobody worth saving in New York. I've often thought that, particularly while driving around. All this talk of Armageddon does remind me of a great Wodehouse line where Bertie has a hangover and describes his aunt's loud voice as giving him the impression that "Armageddon had set in with unusual severity".
Anyway, I just returned from getting a P.E.T. scan to make sure there was no cancer elsewhere in the old corpus. P.E.T. stands for "Positronic Emission Tomography". Positrons are technically anti-matter, positively charged analogs of the electron, so if you see someone who looks like me with a goatee, look out. It's probably my evil twin from an alternate dimension. I don't know what Tomography is, maybe painting with tomatoes or the history of people named Tom. I don't see what is has to do with positrons, though.
Time: 15:00
Place: The RI 'dero
Yep, whoop it up all you gays, secularists, and other causes of G*d's wrath the world over. Just call him Jerry "Farewell". It must have been a pretty narrow rapture, since I was driving around this afternoon and discerned no effects of suddenly vacated driver's seats. Maybe it's just that there is nobody worth saving in New York. I've often thought that, particularly while driving around. All this talk of Armageddon does remind me of a great Wodehouse line where Bertie has a hangover and describes his aunt's loud voice as giving him the impression that "Armageddon had set in with unusual severity".
Anyway, I just returned from getting a P.E.T. scan to make sure there was no cancer elsewhere in the old corpus. P.E.T. stands for "Positronic Emission Tomography". Positrons are technically anti-matter, positively charged analogs of the electron, so if you see someone who looks like me with a goatee, look out. It's probably my evil twin from an alternate dimension. I don't know what Tomography is, maybe painting with tomatoes or the history of people named Tom. I don't see what is has to do with positrons, though.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Back in the Saddle Again
Date: May 14, 2007
Time: 22:00
Place: Top-o-the-40
I felt the old left shoulder was finally limber enough to steer the bike, so this Saturday I took a trial commute to the office. It's only two miles away through pretty flat territory, especially when one takes the elevator to the Welfare Island Bridge. These beautiful spring days are the best time of year to ride, warm enough to not need a jacket yet cool enough to not work up a sweat. This morning was my first real commute by bike since the shoulder surgery.
It is actually faster to get to work by bike than car, since by the time one negotiates the various parking structures and stop lights, any velocity advantage is lost. I'm on the bike as soon as I'm out the door of my apartment building, and I chain it up right next to the door of the office building. It takes less than 15 minutes door-to-desk, whereas driving takes a little over 20.
I also feel like I'm getting away with something, in addition to all the environmental and exercise benefits. The car is convenient, but the lot costs over 10 bucks. The bus is only 4 bucks, but they usually conspire to leave me standing around for at least a half an hour. As long as it doesn't rain, the bike is the way to go.
Time: 22:00
Place: Top-o-the-40
I felt the old left shoulder was finally limber enough to steer the bike, so this Saturday I took a trial commute to the office. It's only two miles away through pretty flat territory, especially when one takes the elevator to the Welfare Island Bridge. These beautiful spring days are the best time of year to ride, warm enough to not need a jacket yet cool enough to not work up a sweat. This morning was my first real commute by bike since the shoulder surgery.
It is actually faster to get to work by bike than car, since by the time one negotiates the various parking structures and stop lights, any velocity advantage is lost. I'm on the bike as soon as I'm out the door of my apartment building, and I chain it up right next to the door of the office building. It takes less than 15 minutes door-to-desk, whereas driving takes a little over 20.
I also feel like I'm getting away with something, in addition to all the environmental and exercise benefits. The car is convenient, but the lot costs over 10 bucks. The bus is only 4 bucks, but they usually conspire to leave me standing around for at least a half an hour. As long as it doesn't rain, the bike is the way to go.
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