Wanted: Sympathy, Comic Books

If my 40s are anything like my 30s, I'll be dead before my 50s.

Let me explain what happened to me today. I had a nice lunch at Panera Bread and got a large coffee and lemon poppyseed mini-bundt cake to take with me to work. The guys in charge of such things did a remarkable job of clearing the snow out of the parking lot. Considering the slippery state of the roads in general, this was one clear parking lot.

I was thinking this as I walked to the building. I got to the sidewalk and noticed that they weren't quite so clear — mostly just snow that had blown across from beside the sidewalk. It was a little slippery, but a little slip doesn't didn't scare me. I got to the little dip in the sidewalk for wheelchair access — a little slope down to the lot — and I remember thinking that, if I were going to fall, it would be here on this little incline. But I made it across fine. But then,

The first step I took after the handicap ramp was a disaster. Most of my body slipped down to my right to the sidewalk. My right foot decided not to follow suit.

I hobbled into the building, inconvenienced about a dozen people going to and from lunch, nearly passed out, nearly vomited, and answered a bunch of questions from the woman in charge of the facilities. Then the ambulance showed up.

If you've ever been to the emergency room with non-life-threatening injuries, you know what I mean when I say that it's really just an expensive waiting room. I think I waited for over an hour before I could get my leg x-rayed. The IV they gave me in the ambulance emptied itself into my arm and hung there useless for maybe two hours.

In the end, I learned that I had cracked the bottom of, I believe, my fibula. Not a complete break, but a (painful) fracture all the same. They gave me a temporary cast, some pain meds, and the number of an orthopedist.

Now I'm finally home, laying on the couch. My ankle is throbbing. I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to work out the rest of the weekend, and the remainder of the month. I can't drive (it's my drivin' foot). I suppose I could try to drive with my left foot, but that might not be such a good idea. Especially in this snowy weather.

I am thankful, though, that I bought the WiFi router, so I don't have to sit in front of my desktop to do stuff.

When my brother was laid up in the hospital for a few weeks at the beginning of the sixth grade, people brought him all sorts of comic books to read while he was there. I still remember being jealous. One of them was Peter Porker as Spiderham. Since then, I've always equated hospital stays or general medic down-times with comic books.

But I don't have any comic books. :( Maybe I'll go online and read the Heroes comix.

Conspiracy Theory Alert

Two things happened yesterday:

• A plane flying out of NYC was forced to land in the Hudson River in, as newscasts put it, "the shadow of ground zero."
  
• Dubya gave his farewell address.
  

I suspect a large number of anthropophobic, obsessive-compulsive conspiracy theorists are at this very instant penning their belief that these occurrences are not coincidental. The beginning if Dubya's presidency was marked with a terrible incident involving a commercial jet running into something that it shouldn't. And now, the end of his presidency is marked with another commercial airline incident — and in the same general location as the first!

I'm sure the stories will differ. Some may believe that this incident was designed to show people that, even though things can happen, airlines are still safer than they were on Sept. 11, 2001. Others may believe that this is a failed attempt (by either Bush or his enemies) to crash another plane in the same general area.

Who could be involved? Dubya and Cheney, of course. Barack Obama, likely. Big oil? Commercial airline bigwigs? Osama bin Laden? Rudy Giuliani? Al Frankton? The Illuminati? Martha Stewart?

Regardless of what their stories turn out to be, I'd wager that they will all miss the mark. The downing of flight 1549 reveals a new threat that I'm sure all the usual conspiracy theorists will miss, that will go unspoken even in the most paranoid circles. The threat is, of course, suicide Canada geese.

Of course, these are only the pawns in a global war against homo sapiens. The real ringleaders are the squirrels, the most intelligent animal on Earth apart from humans. (Have you ever been to a college or university — hubs of learning and cutting-edge technology — that wasn't jam-packed with eager squirrels?)

[Hat tip to Tim Bedore]

Who Could Hang a Name on You?

Why does every day seem like Tuesday?

Well, yes, today is Tuesday. But that was a surprise this morning; I was sure we had had a Tuesday yesterday. Tomorrow will be horrid — such a long week, and it's only Tuesday.

Wii-in 2

113 213 lbs. I count that as a 2-pound loss.

[Oops!]

The First Wii-In

Thanks to a freelance copy editing check, I bought a Wii today. Tomorrow, I'll sell my PS2 and games to cover some of the cost.

I decided recently that a Wii was for me after I did some boxing and tennis on someone else's Wii Sport (the game that comes with the console). My heart rate was up, and I was sweating...a decent cardio workout. And a helluva lot more fun than a stationary bike.

So I bought the Wii for health purposes. Really! I'll try to play on the Wii for 45 minutes to an hour each day (the sacrifices we make) as my exercise. I'll track my weight, and in mid-January I have to see my doctor again anyway, so I can see if the exercise is helping my cholesterol and triglycerides at all. In the meantime, I'll just have some fun.

So at tonight's Wii-in, I come in at an embarassing 215 lbs. Gotta start Wii-in' it off!

Boxing Day Cleanup

This Christmas is proof positive that it really does pay to post your wish list on your blog!

Dear Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, et al.,
Christmas may be over, but don't feel that a late gift will be unappreciated. I didn't get that house in Lawrence Township that I was hoping to find under the tree, so feel free to help me cross that off my wish list anytime during 2009.

4ndyman

My Christmas Wish

Our company holiday party was yesterday. In the past, they have been pretty lame because they try to do too much (like hiring a magician instead of just letting people socialize). But, still, it's hard to pass up free food these days. And there were door prizes.

But in the end, I'm really glad I went. I made the acquaintance of two women I didn't previously know, though I would see them around often enough. One in particular, the (ahem) single one, seems quite intelligent, has a quick wit, seems to share my sense of humor, knows a lot of obscure trivia (like me), and . . . well . . . is single.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to screw my courage to the sticking place and ask her out. I'll be happy if I can get through the conversation without having an anxiety attack, even if she shoots me down.

[Update: I was red as a beet, but I made it through. We're going to a little chamber concert tomorrow night.]

My First Christmas Present 08

I was surprised this afternoon at work by the delivery of a package. I hadn't ordered anything, wasn't expecting anything. I don't get packages at home, much less at work.

The return address revealed that it was from the production company that put together the new videos we put on Dummies.com (more about this below). Somehow I had become the "math guy" — my degree in music certainly made me qualified, eh? — and I had helped the people at this company decipher what we had given them to use as scripts for some videos about Calculus. (I took Algebra 2 my sophomore year of high school, and didn't take a math class again until my junior year of college, and that was business math.)

Anyway, inside the package I found a little gift bag from a place in Michigan. Inside the bag was a really cool travel mug (bearing the production company's logo) and four little bags of specialty coffees.

This gift, my first Christmas gift this year, brought a bright ray of caffeinated joy to an otherwise somnambulant day.

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Dummies.com was relaunched recently, and there are a mess of videos and new free content to see there. If you haven't stopped in to check it out, you oughta. Here's a fun little video about adding and subtracting fractions. Much of the rest of my daily labors will go to creating more content to put on this site. There's a lot of stuff there already, but we've left plenty of room to grow.

Fruit of the Womb

So my best friend found out today that the bean in her belly is female. Let the baby-naming fun begin!

The mother had some horrible heart problems when she was born, so this pregnancy is officially somewhat risky. As such, she has been getting ultrasounds more often than normal, with special attention paid to the baby's heart. The bean's heart looked healthy in today's ultrasound.

With that in mind, I thought they ought to name the bean something that meant "good heart" or "strong heart." Unfortunately, I couldn't find a name online that meant exactly this that was actually a decent name. I don't think they would go for Creuddylad or Azami (though, considering the bean is one-quarter Japanese, perhaps Azami would make a great middle name?).

I did, though, land on Cordelia, which might (might!) come from the Latin "cor," heart. Plus, there's the Shakespeare reference, which is almost always good.

So there. That's my official (and perhaps only serious) suggestion for a name to replace "Cletus the Fetus."

I've Run Out of Context

Statements actually made over Thanksgiving vacation:

Phrases you hear only from the mouths of young children (let's hope): "Nobody wants to hear about your penis!"

Things only your grandmother can say: "You're getting fat!" I considered correcting her: I'm not getting fat, I am fat. But I made some statement about joining the Y instead.