At your ripe old age of going on three, you won’t be reading this, and even if it were read to you it doesn’t have the pizazz of The Cat In The Hat.  But, I’ve been thinking of this for some time now and it is time I made the commitment.

When I began this blog, one of my primary reasons was to chronicle my military career.  If others might be interested in reading it, so be it, but if not, that was OK, too.  The latter came to be the case, based on the lack of comments, but the number of search engine hits for those posts has been interesting to watch and the specific search terms that garnered the hits have been even more interesting.

Bayou Renaissance Man has posted an excellent article about the Chicago situation, taking Mayor Daly to task for his numskull approach to governance, this being the weekend following their 32-shootings and 2 stabbings weekend.

In that article he relates a telling episode in the time following hurricane Katrina.  I’ve quoted that part below, but you really should read his full article, here.

Crystal recently had a garage/yard sale.  She has posted twice about it, once pre-sale and once post-sale.   They are both interesting, and the second is a hoot.

If you have ever had a garage sale, have had thoughts of doing so, or know of anyone contemplating same, these are each a short must-read.

Pre-sale here.

Post-sale here.

And sorry, Crystal, not even for 5 bucks.  I already have one.  In fact, I just shrink wrapped it for the attic again until next time.  I’ll put it up there when I can go up a ladder again, in about 6 months.

OK, up front, I’m telling you there is quite a bit of reading to be done here.  Well, not really here, but at the places I’m going to suggest to you.

See two articles below.

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Finally!  The for-everyone (or is it no one?) pill is now available.

You really need to read the patient information sheet to see if it’s right for you and that information is available here.  You do always read the patient information completely about any medication you take, don’t you?  I must admit the EFTS side effect has me a bit concerned, but…

Contractor oversight by the the Army Corps of Engineers seems to be lacking, but their doubletalk is going just fine.

4 Investigates: Floodwalls stuffed with newspaper?

11:54 PM CDT on Thursday, April 24, 2008

 

Lee Zurik / WWL-TV News Anchor

 

 

“It blows my mind.”

Those are the words St. Bernard parish president Craig Taffaro used to watch videotape Eyewitness News showed him, of floodwalls built to protect his parish.

“That should be criminal,” Taffaro continues.

Ahem.  It is an Orthofix Spinal-Stim Bone Growth Stimulator,  Model 2212.

As I said, gizmo.

I took the back brace off, as I am allowed to do while sitting, because my T-shirt was soaking wet, even in the air-conditioned house.  Wearing a wicking (Cool-Max – I love ‘em) T-shirt under that brace does no good for wicking purposes, but it is smoother and softer than a regular T, so it feels a little better.

Interesting what a little research will turn up…

To the insurance web site.  Check claims, authorizations, and approvals.

Hmm.  There’s one, approved April 10th,  for a company in McKinney, Texas with no name, but it has an address.

Plug address into Google. 

Chamber of Comerce listing for McKinney.

Orthofix.

Go to the Orthofix site, spine products, Spine-Stim.

There it is, apparently the one I will be using.

My brace looks similar but larger, so I’m going to guess the scale and angle of those photos makes it all look smaller, a.k.a. less cumbersome, a.k.a. more user friendly, a.k.a. more acceptable to the idiot who believes the propaganda.

A few days ago I finished reading yet another book, nonfiction, as is my norm, that REALLY got to me.  It was oh-dark-thirty as I neared the end of the book and I just needed to, well, I don’t know.  But there was an inbound  message on the left-side monitor as I bumped the keyboard tray and it was from a good sounding board, especially at that time of night.

Though I can’t say I remember the details of it all, I remember the feeling, the emotions, of the moment.

The meds worked nicely this morning, thankfully.  [Well, it’s past midnight now, so make that yesterday morning.]

HOWEVER, despite the fact that a sleep period for me is usually 3 to 4 hours, I didn’t wake up until after 1530 and at that I slept through at least one phone call, because there was a message on the answering machine.  I also slept through two Skype alerts on the computer because my son called me twice.

So by 1600 I was alert, awake, had listened to the answering machine, reading a stack of emails, sent a few, and by 1800 I was, without any meds, headed back to bed, head fogging up again.  I got up just a few minutes ago, about 2300.

Yesterday was my first day out since surgery, other than walks down the sidewalk and back.  Well, except for a the ride from hell I had to take early on, prematurely actually, all the way, far,  to the neurosurgeon’s office to take care of some stitches that weren’t reacting favorably with my body, or the other way around.

In any case, yesterday my erstwhile spouse and nurse nurse drove me to the family practitioner so we could discuss a medication change and I could update her on some of the goings-on during my hospital stay.  I ended up getting a bit more attention in the hospital than I expected and for reasons not directly related to the reason for the surgery and I wanted her to know what had happened.

It was a very dark night, not a cloud in the sky, yet there were no stars and no moon.  I remember it like it was last night, but it was actually the night of March 26th, just a few weeks ago.  I remember every detail.

We were hurriedly walking, almost running, across and in front of the open space on our left between two houses separated by an empty lot.  We were on the edge of the dark street.

Yet another senseless and preventable accident that will haunt a family forever. 

One might ask what clothing the adult decided they should or should not wear, or about knowing where your hunting partners are.  One might also remind of the 4 rules of shooting, specifically the one about identifying your target.  All BASIC stuff.  I suspect the father is going to be thinking of those things for a very long time to come.  Too late for that family, but will it make any difference for others?  Only if they think about it.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351877,00.html

A caveat:  I seem to be regressing some in my surgical recovery (Translation: Due to increasing pain I’m hitting the muscle relaxers and pain pills a bit harder again, hopefully just one of those valleys in the peaks and valleys of recovery), so I hope this makes sense.  I KNOW I won’t get it done in one sitting, too, so if it all fits together and flows it will be an absolute miracle.

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I’m considering blogging my overall experience with four spine surgeries, two cervical and two lumbar, all with fusion, in order to possibly make the experience easier for others.  I do believe I have some helpful suggestions to make surgical recovery easier for those facing such operations in the future.

However, my blog gets few visitors, so the only way it would be worth all the work is to see how search engines react to the key words.

So, here they are: