Rocky Ridge tumble, ‘The Aristrocrats’, Stress Test with Ultrasound, cable box install, ‘Eastern Promises’, 'Interview', ‘Flip A Coin’, ‘The Legend of Ron Jeremy’
(posted from home)
(this post covers 28 December 2007 to 5 January 2008)
-------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 5 January-
Today I worked on the web, now starting to plan the winter trip in earnest. I also helped Labashi fix yet another door which hadn’t been installed properly in original construction back in 1977. Labashi is on a general door-fixing tear these days. She does most of the work; I just help out where an extra hand is needed. I’m also in charge of the cuss-words.
That evening we watched part of ‘Flip a Coin’ but abandoned it. This movie reminds me a lot of early-Sixties British teen movies in the way it’s plotted, shot and edited but we just found it terminally boring. The producers may have saved a few bucks by not sub-titling the film but lost us because of the fast, accented language and relatively poor sound recording—we just grew frustrated and didn’t care anymore. We then switched to ‘The Legend of Ron Jeremy’, a documentary about the life of a male porn star and his search for a career as a legitimate actor. But he has a problem: he has absolutely no acting talent or social skills and he’s ugly. I can’t really recommend it. Blockbuster needs to get some new movies in stock --- we’re running out!
--------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 4 January –
My cold is finally starting to wane but I’m still not 100 per cent. I was thinking I’d go down to the range today but decided I’d stay close another day yet. I helped Labashi with two doors that needed work. They hadn’t been hung properly when the house was built so we took the time today to square up the frames and to bed the hinges and door-strikes properly and voila--- MUCH better!
That evening we watched 'Interview' with Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller. We liked this one but did realize we had to look at it as a filmed play. In other words, it seems theatrical. The plotline situation wouldn't REALLY play that way but we're watching two interesting actors at work.
--------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 3 January-
Today we had our new digital cable-TV-box installation. You may remember I had mentioned earlier that I had gone in to my local cable provider (Blue Ridge Cable) when my two-year trade-in deal expired and my bill had gone up $12.50 a month. I happened to hit at the right time—a new combination offer recovered $11.33 of that difference while at the same time adding a bunch of channels and doubling my broadband speed. Everything went well with the installation but it did cause a problem. Our old VCR was the keystone of the previous installation and would occasionally hiccup--- shutting down unexpectedly. After today’s installation, the VCR started shutting down almost every time I’d change the channel. But since I no longer needed the VCR as my channel-changer, I simply rewired and eliminated it entirely.
That afternoon I fired up the Concours (with some difficulty in the 26-degree cold) and rode into town on a DVDs-and-coffee run. Back home I finally got around to installing the new extractor, extractor spring, and buttonhead screw on one of my pistols and then did a thorough cleaning and oiling.
That evening we watched ‘Eastern Promises’ with Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts. We have to respect the acting job Viggo and Naomi did but I felt the film had some gratuitous violence for the sake of ‘buzz’ and the plot had some truckable holes. I see RT gives it an 88 per cent and IMDB a 7.9/10 but I think I’d fall in the 60 per cent range on this one.
--------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 2 January-
It may have been a mistake to walk yesterday. My cold continues even stronger so I did paperwork all day. I had quite a backlog of motorcycle and medical insurance forms, license applications, magazine renewals, tax forms, and other minor things to take care of today. The weather today is very windy and cold so I’m happy to take a day off from walking.
--------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 1 January-
Happy New Year! We stayed up last night until the fireworks (and gunfire) subsided but otherwise it was a quiet evening for us. Labashi’s cold is pretty much over today but mine is gaining strength. I got up late (around 0930) but two hours later went back to bed for an hour’s nap. I felt pretty good later in the day and did manage to take my walk but that did me in for the day.
That evening we watched two episode’s of ‘Big Love’.
---------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 31 December-
I slept very poorly last night. I suppose that was due partly to my cold (I didn’t want to take anything for fear of it skewing test results) and partly to thinking about today’s test. We had an inch or so of snow from the mixed precip overnight and Cherry Larry’s door was frozen shut when I prepared to leave for the test. I thought I might have a problem but it finally came open on the third good tug.
At the stress test I was surprised to learn that my test today wouldn’t be repeating the nuclear portion of the last one. That test said I had two ‘dark’ areas on my heart, ‘dark’ in this case meaning areas of abnormally-low blood flow. And one of them was characterized as moderate. I found this difficult to believe given that just a few days before that test I had been backpacking on the Appalachian Trail for three days and 24 miles. I had done the trip (including steep uphills at Cove Mountain and Peter’s Mountain) carrying a 40-pound pack and had nary a hint of a problem. My heart specialist had given me a choice of a catheterization or another stress test, this time with ultrasound. I chose the latter.
For today’s test, the technician first collected ultrasound images of my heart at rest and then we waited for the doctor to come in for the stress portion. I walked, then jogged for a total of eleven minutes on the treadmill, achieving a peak heart rate of 157 beats per minute, just under my theoretical max heart rate of 163 bpm. I then quickly went to the exam table where they did another ultrasound of my heart, by this time at about 138 beats per minute. After a few minutes of examining images the doctor and tech said they couldn’t find any indication that my heart had anything like the problems described on the report from last month’s nuclear stress test. The doc went so far as to say ‘Your heart isn’t the one in the report!’, gave me a warm handshake and wished me a happy new year as he left. The tech said I was apparently one of the people for whom a nuclear stress test doesn’t work and in any future stress tests I should opt for the ultrasound version rather than the nuclear version. What a relief!
On the way home I stopped at Starbucks for a coffee-and-Times and then once home I took my four-miler.
That evening we watched a documentary called ‘The Aristrocrats’. It’s a film with an odd premise. It tells the story of an old insider vaudeville joke and that joke is then retold by 100 comedians, each with his or her own twist. Because the joke is a ribald, disgusting one, we can’t recommend this film to anyone but it did have its moments. We also watched two episodes of ‘Big Love’.
---------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 30 December-
Boy, my cold really came on strong today. I didn’t feel like doing anything so spent the day on the web. I’m a little frustrated about the timing of my cold. Tomorrow’s stress test is important and I don’t want something like a cold possibly skewing results.
---------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 29 December-
Labashi has a strong cold today and I can feel one coming on. I spent most of the day on the web and doing some financial planning chores. I have my repeat stress test coming up Monday. I want my muscles to fully recover from my jog yesterday so I didn’t take my normal walk today and won’t tomorrow. I’m surprised to find my knee is just a little sore after the jolt I gave it yesterday. Also, I can bend my jammed finger. I can’t bend it all the way into a fist but that should clear up in a couple of days.
---------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 28 December-
I spent the morning updating the blog. It’s amazing how fast the days go by now between updates. I feel like I’m keeping up only to realize it’s been a week to ten days since my last update. While on the road I have some downtime in the evenings for blogging and you’d think I have even more time now for it here at home. But one of the factors is whether I do or do not have access to the Internet. When you have the world-wide-web open to you, it’s tempting to spend your time exploring the world rather than writing about your own tiny little piece of it.
That afternoon the sun was out a bit so I decided to do my walk at a park rather than here at home. With today’s relatively nice temperatures (mid-Forties) I thought I’d exercise the motorcycle and rode it down to Rocky Ridge Park for a jog. I jogged my end-to-end course in 1:27, including a loss of about two minutes dealing with unexpected stuff. About three-quarters of the way through I came upon a family walking their overly-friendly yellow Lab. As I passed by the dog paced me and jumped up on me several times, wanting to play. I stopped to settle it down and waited for the family to catch up but they couldn’t catch the dog—it just ran around us in circles. After a bit I thought its attention had now turned to the family and I started jogging again but the dog followed. After thirty yards I realized the dog was just going to keep pacing me as I jogged away from the family (all shouting ‘here, boy’, ’here, boy’ to no effect) so I turned back toward the family and the dog followed. Once back to the family I grabbed its collar so Mom could put the leash on for me to make my getaway. I don’t tend to be much of a dog person but I did like having that one jog along with me—it was just so healthy and playful that you had to enjoy it.
The second incident happened just before the end. It’s amazing to me how this could happen but after tens of millions of years lying inert on the ground, one of the billions of rocks making up ROCKY Ridge Park jumped up just enough to trip me. I don’t know what kind of sensor system these rocks have to detect my approach but I’ve found this to be a fairly common occurrence here. Generally I’m able to regain my feet but this time I went down, banging a knee and jamming a finger as I landed and rolled. I banged my knee hard but the adrenaline helped me get up and limp the remaining fifty-or-so yards to the finish line. By the time I got back to the bike I had pretty much walked off the knee problem but my jammed finger was stiffening. I took three ibuprofen and forced that stiffening finger wrap around the motorcycle grip for the trip home. Damn tricky rocks anyway.
That evening we watched two episodes of ‘Lost-3’. The writers are getting desperate—they are now writing in characters which weren’t in the original plane crash and giving them stories to resolve by the end of the episode. It’s Twilight Zone deja-vu-all-over-again. We get the same lingering-looks-all-around, same overly-ominous music, same twist-the-end writing. Bahhhd. Bahhhd.
====== end of post ===================
(posted from home)
(this post covers 28 December 2007 to 5 January 2008)
-------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 5 January-
Today I worked on the web, now starting to plan the winter trip in earnest. I also helped Labashi fix yet another door which hadn’t been installed properly in original construction back in 1977. Labashi is on a general door-fixing tear these days. She does most of the work; I just help out where an extra hand is needed. I’m also in charge of the cuss-words.
That evening we watched part of ‘Flip a Coin’ but abandoned it. This movie reminds me a lot of early-Sixties British teen movies in the way it’s plotted, shot and edited but we just found it terminally boring. The producers may have saved a few bucks by not sub-titling the film but lost us because of the fast, accented language and relatively poor sound recording—we just grew frustrated and didn’t care anymore. We then switched to ‘The Legend of Ron Jeremy’, a documentary about the life of a male porn star and his search for a career as a legitimate actor. But he has a problem: he has absolutely no acting talent or social skills and he’s ugly. I can’t really recommend it. Blockbuster needs to get some new movies in stock --- we’re running out!
--------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 4 January –
My cold is finally starting to wane but I’m still not 100 per cent. I was thinking I’d go down to the range today but decided I’d stay close another day yet. I helped Labashi with two doors that needed work. They hadn’t been hung properly when the house was built so we took the time today to square up the frames and to bed the hinges and door-strikes properly and voila--- MUCH better!
That evening we watched 'Interview' with Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller. We liked this one but did realize we had to look at it as a filmed play. In other words, it seems theatrical. The plotline situation wouldn't REALLY play that way but we're watching two interesting actors at work.
--------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 3 January-
Today we had our new digital cable-TV-box installation. You may remember I had mentioned earlier that I had gone in to my local cable provider (Blue Ridge Cable) when my two-year trade-in deal expired and my bill had gone up $12.50 a month. I happened to hit at the right time—a new combination offer recovered $11.33 of that difference while at the same time adding a bunch of channels and doubling my broadband speed. Everything went well with the installation but it did cause a problem. Our old VCR was the keystone of the previous installation and would occasionally hiccup--- shutting down unexpectedly. After today’s installation, the VCR started shutting down almost every time I’d change the channel. But since I no longer needed the VCR as my channel-changer, I simply rewired and eliminated it entirely.
That afternoon I fired up the Concours (with some difficulty in the 26-degree cold) and rode into town on a DVDs-and-coffee run. Back home I finally got around to installing the new extractor, extractor spring, and buttonhead screw on one of my pistols and then did a thorough cleaning and oiling.
That evening we watched ‘Eastern Promises’ with Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts. We have to respect the acting job Viggo and Naomi did but I felt the film had some gratuitous violence for the sake of ‘buzz’ and the plot had some truckable holes. I see RT gives it an 88 per cent and IMDB a 7.9/10 but I think I’d fall in the 60 per cent range on this one.
--------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 2 January-
It may have been a mistake to walk yesterday. My cold continues even stronger so I did paperwork all day. I had quite a backlog of motorcycle and medical insurance forms, license applications, magazine renewals, tax forms, and other minor things to take care of today. The weather today is very windy and cold so I’m happy to take a day off from walking.
--------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 1 January-
Happy New Year! We stayed up last night until the fireworks (and gunfire) subsided but otherwise it was a quiet evening for us. Labashi’s cold is pretty much over today but mine is gaining strength. I got up late (around 0930) but two hours later went back to bed for an hour’s nap. I felt pretty good later in the day and did manage to take my walk but that did me in for the day.
That evening we watched two episode’s of ‘Big Love’.
---------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 31 December-
I slept very poorly last night. I suppose that was due partly to my cold (I didn’t want to take anything for fear of it skewing test results) and partly to thinking about today’s test. We had an inch or so of snow from the mixed precip overnight and Cherry Larry’s door was frozen shut when I prepared to leave for the test. I thought I might have a problem but it finally came open on the third good tug.
At the stress test I was surprised to learn that my test today wouldn’t be repeating the nuclear portion of the last one. That test said I had two ‘dark’ areas on my heart, ‘dark’ in this case meaning areas of abnormally-low blood flow. And one of them was characterized as moderate. I found this difficult to believe given that just a few days before that test I had been backpacking on the Appalachian Trail for three days and 24 miles. I had done the trip (including steep uphills at Cove Mountain and Peter’s Mountain) carrying a 40-pound pack and had nary a hint of a problem. My heart specialist had given me a choice of a catheterization or another stress test, this time with ultrasound. I chose the latter.
For today’s test, the technician first collected ultrasound images of my heart at rest and then we waited for the doctor to come in for the stress portion. I walked, then jogged for a total of eleven minutes on the treadmill, achieving a peak heart rate of 157 beats per minute, just under my theoretical max heart rate of 163 bpm. I then quickly went to the exam table where they did another ultrasound of my heart, by this time at about 138 beats per minute. After a few minutes of examining images the doctor and tech said they couldn’t find any indication that my heart had anything like the problems described on the report from last month’s nuclear stress test. The doc went so far as to say ‘Your heart isn’t the one in the report!’, gave me a warm handshake and wished me a happy new year as he left. The tech said I was apparently one of the people for whom a nuclear stress test doesn’t work and in any future stress tests I should opt for the ultrasound version rather than the nuclear version. What a relief!
On the way home I stopped at Starbucks for a coffee-and-Times and then once home I took my four-miler.
That evening we watched a documentary called ‘The Aristrocrats’. It’s a film with an odd premise. It tells the story of an old insider vaudeville joke and that joke is then retold by 100 comedians, each with his or her own twist. Because the joke is a ribald, disgusting one, we can’t recommend this film to anyone but it did have its moments. We also watched two episodes of ‘Big Love’.
---------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 30 December-
Boy, my cold really came on strong today. I didn’t feel like doing anything so spent the day on the web. I’m a little frustrated about the timing of my cold. Tomorrow’s stress test is important and I don’t want something like a cold possibly skewing results.
---------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 29 December-
Labashi has a strong cold today and I can feel one coming on. I spent most of the day on the web and doing some financial planning chores. I have my repeat stress test coming up Monday. I want my muscles to fully recover from my jog yesterday so I didn’t take my normal walk today and won’t tomorrow. I’m surprised to find my knee is just a little sore after the jolt I gave it yesterday. Also, I can bend my jammed finger. I can’t bend it all the way into a fist but that should clear up in a couple of days.
---------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 28 December-
I spent the morning updating the blog. It’s amazing how fast the days go by now between updates. I feel like I’m keeping up only to realize it’s been a week to ten days since my last update. While on the road I have some downtime in the evenings for blogging and you’d think I have even more time now for it here at home. But one of the factors is whether I do or do not have access to the Internet. When you have the world-wide-web open to you, it’s tempting to spend your time exploring the world rather than writing about your own tiny little piece of it.
That afternoon the sun was out a bit so I decided to do my walk at a park rather than here at home. With today’s relatively nice temperatures (mid-Forties) I thought I’d exercise the motorcycle and rode it down to Rocky Ridge Park for a jog. I jogged my end-to-end course in 1:27, including a loss of about two minutes dealing with unexpected stuff. About three-quarters of the way through I came upon a family walking their overly-friendly yellow Lab. As I passed by the dog paced me and jumped up on me several times, wanting to play. I stopped to settle it down and waited for the family to catch up but they couldn’t catch the dog—it just ran around us in circles. After a bit I thought its attention had now turned to the family and I started jogging again but the dog followed. After thirty yards I realized the dog was just going to keep pacing me as I jogged away from the family (all shouting ‘here, boy’, ’here, boy’ to no effect) so I turned back toward the family and the dog followed. Once back to the family I grabbed its collar so Mom could put the leash on for me to make my getaway. I don’t tend to be much of a dog person but I did like having that one jog along with me—it was just so healthy and playful that you had to enjoy it.
The second incident happened just before the end. It’s amazing to me how this could happen but after tens of millions of years lying inert on the ground, one of the billions of rocks making up ROCKY Ridge Park jumped up just enough to trip me. I don’t know what kind of sensor system these rocks have to detect my approach but I’ve found this to be a fairly common occurrence here. Generally I’m able to regain my feet but this time I went down, banging a knee and jamming a finger as I landed and rolled. I banged my knee hard but the adrenaline helped me get up and limp the remaining fifty-or-so yards to the finish line. By the time I got back to the bike I had pretty much walked off the knee problem but my jammed finger was stiffening. I took three ibuprofen and forced that stiffening finger wrap around the motorcycle grip for the trip home. Damn tricky rocks anyway.
That evening we watched two episodes of ‘Lost-3’. The writers are getting desperate—they are now writing in characters which weren’t in the original plane crash and giving them stories to resolve by the end of the episode. It’s Twilight Zone deja-vu-all-over-again. We get the same lingering-looks-all-around, same overly-ominous music, same twist-the-end writing. Bahhhd. Bahhhd.
====== end of post ===================
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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