Tales from rehab

So, rehab's not hideous. Three nights a week....here's a typical night:
a. heat pad to the shoulder for 10 minutes
b. 10 minutes on a bike -- no pedaling, but just the back and forth with my arms
c. dangling, pendulum-like motion while holding a dumbbell. (up to 5 pounds at this point!)
d. alternate shoulder rolls and curls (10 pounds in each arm, I assume for symmetry)
e. reverse curls, alternating sides and front (4 pounds)
f. a couple of weight machines....these are like 80 pounds that you have to pull towards yourself
g. thick rubber bands to pull on, stretching the upper shoulder ligaments
h. an overhead pulley to help my shoulder stay yanked over my head
i. manual contortion of the arm by the therapist. (I asked if the positions were stuff even my right arm was normally capable of, and apparently so.)
j. ice pack for 10 minutes and head home.

The place doubles as a workout gym for a few, so the single-digit weights do seem a bit emasculating. So the left arm is getting stronger, while the right arm is just the normal sore you get when you haven't worked out in a while -- tight elbow ligaments, for example.

On the bright side, my wife had similar surgery a few years ago and is familiar with everything I'm doing.

Croquet this weekend....the swinging motion could be good.

It's a labRum, dad....

Apparently Dad thought I had torn something else....even though I do have a left and right labrum. (Hint: replace the R with an I, and you get a girl part!)

Anyways....ya know how they tell you to count back from 100 for anesthesia, and you never get even to 98? Well, I started counting back at 100 a little at a time when I got to the hospital during the 2.5 hours of check-in and prep. By 9 am I was down to about 11. While wheeling me down the hall to the OR, I did 5-4-3-2....they told me to wait, none of that counts yet. So what happens? they knock me out in the operating room without telling me, so I never did get down to 1. Oh well.

Turns out I'm allergic to reglan, an anti-vomiting medicine they tried to give me in my IV so that the anesthesia wouldn't make me puke when I woke up. I got ridiculously itchy and weak-feeling, like my butt cheeks were infested with ants. Not fun.

Other than that, I've been okay. Percocets are the painkiller of choice. Physical therapy starts Friday. Pain has been intermittent. However, it's been a bitch being in a sling for stuff like typing, writing up reports right-handed....and tonight I had the labor of transferring 5 gallons of beer from one vat to a glass carboy.

And no driving until next week. Ho hum....it would be great for the drinkfest planned after work tomorrow, except they say that alcohol and high concentrations of acetaminophen (as in Percocet or Tylenol 3) will practically make your liver dissolve inside your body. So I get to play it dry, if not loopy from the medicine. What better way to celebrate the 30-year anniversary for a woman at work, who's a big Brett Favre fan, than to get doped up on painkillers, right?

Me gusta March Madness

So, I get 15 right out of 16 games the first day...only to find the VP of my department (I don't think of her as my boss, although I suppose she does have that authority) is 16-0.

I looked good for 19 out of 20 until that Western Kentucky 3-pointer at the buzzer fell...but I don't mind....sometimes ya gotta trade a perfect bracket for the excitement of the upset.

My next home brew will start tomorrow. It's my favorite beer -- Hop Devil. Oddly, though, the "clone brew" version that I'll be following the recipe for comes in at 6.3% alcohol instead of 6.7% that the real stuff is listed at.

I went to Dartmouth, and so sometimes I hear stuff, like, "that's a great school". Well, yeah, it is....but that really only means I performed really well in high school....Once you get into the good school, all ya gotta do at that point is graduate, which isn't as hard as it sounds.

I've been pulling dead cedar trees out of the side of our property by the neighbor's property. They were dwarfed by bigger trees, and so it's like dead tree carcasses....then they fall over (cedars have week bases for some reason) and they stand at 70 degree angles until I go in there and pull them down. At some point I've gotta hire a tree guy to run all these things through the woodchipper.

The guy who plowed our driveway this winter pushed a lot of the crushed stone (I sooooo wish we had asphalt so I could play basketball in the driveway) into a pile. But that was actually good, because the crushed stone by where the driveway reaches the garage had worn away -- it's like a 2-3 inch bump up to drive into the garage under our kitchen.....so having a pile of loose stones was convenient for me to take with a big spade and move to flatten out the approach in.

I went to lunch today with the Mrs....oops, I mean the Dr......and they screwed up my order. I wanted fries, I got a mixture of fries and onion rings. I wanted bacon....instead, I got a seared tortilla chip underneath the burger. What the hell? Ewwww! So they took the meal off the bill. I don't claim to be good at yelling at waitresses....so that was a positive accomplishment.

What would happen if....(3/13 edition)

....there was a sci-fi movie with the following premise: You know how they have that "international star registry" where for some amount of money, you can have a star named after someone? What if Earth was invaded by people from that star (or a planet in that star's system)? How would you like to be THAT guy? It's kind of a lame-enough gift to get, oooh, a billion light-years away there's my star....But then all of humanity is in serious trouble, and people are going to blame you! And really, it's not like you can become this "Earth ambassador" -- the natives to that system don't know who you are and aren't about to want to meet someone who thinks THEIR homeworld is named after him....

So now they have Roth 401(k) contributions, kinda like Roth IRAs....I vote to name the more traditional "pre-tax" contributions as "Hagar 401(k)" contributions. Hey, if Sammy wants to be remembered for *anything* 30 years from now, he should play along, too.

At work we have these RSA security tags, that flash a random 6-digit number every 60 seconds that we have to enter when we log on to one of our Internet-based systems. Now I've come up with a poker game for it. At a fixed time, everyone reveals the poker hand formed by their numbers. Best hand wins. Actually, with a six-digit number, you're more likely to have 2 pair, than no pair.

I saw a book on sale called "A Child's First Bible". And the idea of "a child's first...." is common enough. But how about "An old-timer's LAST Bible"? I mentioned this at work and someone suggested highlighting some of the passages that deal with the impending afterlife. (I simply suggested very large print.)

Lance Armstrong kinda looks like Anderson Cooper.

I like to play cribbage with the stated intent being to make the OTHER person end up with more points. Play to 61 instead of 121, since points can be scarce if you try. Nothing like unearthing a 12-point crib when you LAST want it.

Some people don't like to work on an empty stomach. How about working on an empty liver? Keep that flask in your drawer, ha!

Every once in a while, a couple of peanut M&M's are like siamese twins. However, other occasions have it where the candy coating is compromised. Then there's a peanut you can see, like an exposed brain from a bomb going off near a head.

I used to like chewing on muffin and cupcake paper. Get all the stuff off the inside.

Hey NASCAR....try having one race where they go around the track in the opposite direction. What would they have to do? Maybe re-pave the pit area, since you don't wanna have to do a 120-degree turnaround to approach pit row. It's akin to golf having the random match-play or modified Stableford scoring one week.

Lastly, I was asked to verify some personal questions to change a password. I was asked for my "favourite color".
That seems political....one word spelled British-style, the other American-style. So now everyone's pissed off!

Not a rib tickler...

Ugh.

Friday night....pickup hoops, some guy I've never seen before goes jumping into the pile with the score tied 8-8, I catch a knee to the left side of my ribs, and down I go. Apparently he missed the shot, everyone stood around, he put the rebound back in. About 30 seconds later I get up wondering if I can get a foul called for that. First of all, who the hell calls an offensive foul, right? But DAMN, it f-bomb-ing hurt. The next group of guys was on to play anyways....some clown claimed my own guy hit me (bull feces on that one....)

Anyways, they were sore, but I was able to play the rest of the night....and my Sunday league game went fine.

Sunday night, though....achoo!
I musta cracked 'em then. That's when it really really hurt. Like as bad as anything I've felt in a while. Can't cough, can't sneeze....I feared for pain in bowel movements, but that's been painless at least (imagine...HOPING for diarrhea to avoid having to push)

The doctor on Tuesday said an x-ray wasn't worth it to prove they were broken or not, since the treatment is the same....time, and pain medication (tylenol 3 for me -- the stuff mixed with codeine). It's working somewhat okay, but usually if I do have to cough, I brace my side against a wall to push back against the force. A muffin crumb caused an involuntary cough and that freakin' hurt.

So anyway, the doctor said if I needed it for a legal issue....hmmm, could I sue the town for not enforcing the "residents only" rule at the school where we played? probably not...of course, this past Monday there were rumors (I wasn't there -- I'm on the shelf for a couple of months, I suspect) that the park and rec lady was going to actually check IDs....wonder how that turned out. Maybe instead of 35 playing, we'd have only 15. that's what happens when a new high school opens with a shiny gym -- people from out of town show up.

As long as the ribs don't interfere with my left torn labrum surgery in a month, I can have them both heal together, I suppose.

What would happen if....(2/29 edition)

...you were late getting home from work but you lived at the South Pole? Could you argue to your wife that you had to "run around ALL DAY"? Geez, it's worth a shot.

I saw a headline on Yahoo! that said "Bobby Brown agrees to community service for cocaine". I'm sure he figured that's a pretty good deal, no? I'm sure lots of people would do a day of Habitat for Humanity in exchange for a dimebag of weed, too....

One phrase that seemed popular in college that I never hear any more is the "hot beef injection". Google only had 23,900 hits for it. I wrote the "HBI Song" with a buddy in college...typical E5 chords no-skill riff rock.

When a company changes its fiscal year, it will often have a "short plan year" -- say, from July 1 to December 1 if they want to change their tax filing from June 30 to December 31. This comes up with a company's 401(k) plan, too -- same idea. The IRS prohibits what I'd like to see -- a "long plan year". You can't go 18 months with only 1 return to the IRS, apparently.

Now that my new job comes with its own office for me, I've begun debating how this affects me should I have some smelly farts. For instance, by being alone in my office, I have the privacy and confidentiality that nobody will know what I've done. However, if someone were to walk IN my office soon after, well then I'm busted. Nobody to blame it on, unlike a scenario where there's a room full of cubicles.

As someone with Type 1 diabetes (the "real" diabetes, as I like to put it -- the kind you can't help getting), I sometimes wonder when I'll end up retiring, or how long I can escape death. So I wonder how much I should be saving for retirement. Will I get the typical 25-30 year long retirement? Or would I have to retire at 40 to pull that one off? If I work until I'm 65, I could have lots put away, only to die within 2 years if I'm lucky, on the other hand.

Kinda weird, I don't picture myself ever being retired....and I remember getting yelled at by my dad because it took me two weeks after I turned 16 before I got my first job....back when you had to be 16 to work. Then they changed the work age to 15 and my little brother got a job like a month later.

This being 2/29, it's obviously another 4 years before this day rolls around. I remember when my long time dentist's son died in his 40s....the obituary happened to show that he was 44, and listed his birthday as Feb. 29th of whatever year it was. And immediately, I thought...wow, only 11. Well, 11 birthdays, although the 44 years would be accurate.

I have an episode guide to the Simpsons....from 1997. Kinda incomplete at this point. Anyways, the Futurama movie Bender's Big Score that just came out was pretty good -- a little too "let's make sure we include every minor character in this somehow" to be great, but still a good deal. I believe there are 3 more movies in the pipeline, so that's encouraging.

The Red Sox start in an hour....I'll be off playing basketball, so I can come back and watch around the 8th inning -- when absolutely nobody in the game will be familiar. If they're losing, I blame the post-White House visit hangover. And who hasn't had that before, right?

mild pet peeve

Hey, the numbers on an adding machine....or numeric keypad part of a computer keyboard:

They are not in the same order as one would find them on a phone. The 1-3 and 7-9 switch places.

In the words of TV's Cliff, "what's up with that?"

so much for that idea...

Ugh, what a crappy football game. Close, but not exactly well played.

And then the spice of the ribs combined with the...um....cheapness of the Red Dog to do a number on my intestines, too.

I enjoy a good Sunday crossword. I do the Boston Globe one, as I get the Sunday paper only delivered to the house. It's amusing that most of the sports scores from the night before are too late for the obviously early edition that gets sent out to Connecticut. So I get relatively good info from the notes sections, but nothing too up-to-date on last night's games.

Anyways, with the Globe one I always get fewer than 10 letters wrong, but almost NEVER a perfect score. This week's was amusing, and also seemed to follow to this odd theory. The harder it *seems* at the start, the better I do. (For instance, one letter wrong this week....the Q in "Chatauqua" in New York, which combined with Qui, the Italian word for here. I put a G, not knowing either word.) I didn't seem to be working at too briskly a pace, and yet...only the one wrong. Other weeks I fly along, and end up with 6-8 spots (usually in the same area of the puzzle) empty (or actually, mis-guessed at).

Spring training starts next week! Yee-hah! And March Madness is just around the corner.

Super Bowl's a-comin...

Okay....

I hate the phrase "The Big Game". I realize that "Super Bowl" is trademarked and may not be used commercially. ESPN's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column mentions how the NFL thought about trying to trademark The Big Game. Why is it that NOBODY just refers to it as the NFL championship game?

I gave in to one of my guilty pleasures tonight. I bought a 30-pack of Red Dog. This stuff is pissy American beer, and only $11.99 for the 30-pack, too. And yet, when I need to buy cheap beer, it's what I get every time. Even if that's only once or twice a year, as I switch gears from the "good beer" I tend to purchase.

I'll be making ribs. I often do chicken wings, but I want to stay away from too much stuff fried. Leaves more room for Red Dog. (ha....)

I predict 41-13 for the final score, Patriots over Giants. This will mean NOTHING unless I'm right. But if I am successful in pulling these numbers out of my butt, then hey, it's here in print before the game.

Lost is back on tonight. I like the idea of watching that! And hey, if the writers' strike limits them to only 8 episodes this year, then that means the last 40 episodes will be more compactly aired in just a 2-year window in future seasons, right?

Of course, as much as I like Lost, it's really only my second-favorite show titled Lost, ever. Back before 9/11, NBC started showing a reality show where three pairs of people got blindfolded and flown somewhere. First ones back to New York win. They could walkie-talkie with the producers with fancy phones, and if they guessed where they were, they'd get some cash that was in a safe in their backpacks. They were in Mongolia, of all places. The best was the team that called up and guessed they were in Czechoslovakia. Um, not a country any more, guys....try again. Anyways, the show was getting really good, when 9/11 hit, and all shows were pre-empted for like 3 weeks of news coverage, and so they edited the last 4-5 shows down to 2 hours and it wasn't as good and eventually faded from memory.

Nut ranking

almonds
pistachios
peanuts
macadamia nuts
pecans
cashews
filberts (hazelnuts)
walnuts
brazil nuts

and please, no testicle jokes...

IPA in a can?

That seems weird. It was made by the New England Brewing Company of Woodbridge, CT. Usually beer in cans is mass-produced piss. This stuff wasn't the best India Pale Ale ever, but highly amusing, nonetheless.

I like Venus Williams better than Serena. Maybe it's the "older sibling" thing in me. She beat a rather hot Polish woman in the 4th round today. I found that woman's website, and the server was overloaded, my access was denied because others were using up her allowable bandwidth. Ha!

Couldn't they play the Super Bowl somewhere halfway between Foxboro, MA, and East Rutherford, NJ? Like, Southington, CT? Somewhere close? Oh screw it, the Patriots play better in warmer weather like Arizona. They could easily put up 50 with no wind or cold. Of course, the Giants might put up 30 or so of their own.

Two of my favorite comments from Futurama: The "third and third and third" as something to add to coffee in the year 3000....plus "Admiral Crunch" cereal.

Peanut butter is good with various fruits. I enjoyed a peanut butter and banana sandwich for lunch. What's also good is peanut butter and raisins. Of course, you need to spread the peanut butter on both slices of bread, to keep the raisins from falling out.

Ever go to make grilled sausage links, and realize you don't have any oblong rolls? I had bratwurst this weekend, and without the right roll, I had to cut open the casings, and pack the meat into a patty like a cheeseburger.

ESPN2 has UConn-North Carolina women's basketball on. Occasionally they'll talk about how the UConn home crowd stands until the first basket is made. The women's fans stole this from the men's fans. (Of course, it's really the same businesspeople attending these games.) Anyway, the MEN's fans stole it from Syracuse. They were doing it first and UConn stole it from them, after which the UConn women stole it further.

Parmesan Goldfish crackers....extremely good, but they do not hold even a candle to the best of the goldfish -- Xplosive Pizza....

My wife and I were thinking of doing one of those open mike nights...we'd be like the Eurhythmics or something. This was going to be our set list -- me on guitar but NOT singing...

Love Song by Sara Bareilles
Love will keep us together by Captain & Tenille
Look What you've done by Jet
Zombie by the Cranberries

The hardest part was learning Love Song, and then trying to convert the piano-heavy song to guitar as sole accompaniment. (It's like re-learning it, actually.)

steak-umm

The pride of Pomfret, CT. That one surprised me. There's not much between the UConn campus and Providence.

Of course, they're not real good meat. But ya know, a little american cheese, and you got a ridiculously easy sandwich in 2 minutes. and somehow it works.....

And to wash it down. Hop Devil. The greatest beer ever.

ESPN just showed the 20th anniversary of Jerome Lane shattering a backboard on one of the first ever Big Monday games. I regret, I had the game on in my bedroom and wasn't looking up when it happened. Stupid homework.

here's something weird...

NFL Network is advertising with scenes from "Joe's Diner", where a couple of dopes argue football at the counter of a diner staffed by Joe Montana.

The stupid thing is, they show a list of "homemade pies" available....and the last one on the list is EGG NOG.

What the hell is egg nog pie? Anyone?

Good vanity plate

My wife's just gotten a vanity plate in coordination with her new job. The best vanity plate I think I ever saw was

BQQBIE

because the Qs look like nipply boobies.

Yes, I feel about 14 years old saying that.

Another beer review

This one is called "cold hop" from Boulder Colorado. Makes me think Coors. But it says "Boulder Beer Co." Anyway, it's what they call a British-style ale. I like it, though. Very IPA-ish. I also got a beer called Raison d'etre....sounds French, huh? It's by DogFish, they of the 60, 90, and 120-minute IPAs. This one was funny, because they said it's brewed with golden raisins....which made me think the name of the beer was spelled wrong. Anyway....the two things in this world that give me gas more than anything are:

1. Raisins
2. Beer

So why WOULDN'T I buy beer brewed from raisins, huh?

Anyway, some gas...not the exponentially-ridiculous amount one might expect.

But here are the grades:
cold hop: A-
Raison d'etre: B-

This is kinda gettin' ridiculous..

Let's see....MTV shows soap operas
Now VH1 doesn't show music either
ESPN shows poker
TV Land shows movies
American Movie Classics shows an original TV show
Cartoon Network had something live-action the other day
ABC Family shows the 700 club

Can a network be sued for false advertising? That would be amusing, if unrealistic.

it's just like grape juice

Happy new year to everyone using the popular solar calendar.

So last night I had some shiraz, a full-bodied red wine. My dad used to tell me that wine was just like grape juice that had gone bad. This became noticeable this morning....grape juice used to sometimes have a green coloring effect on stuff (hint hint if ya know what I mean...), and let's just say the wine had the same effect.

Hey, they're playing hockey outside while I type! Sweet deal in Buffalo, an NHL game in the snow!

nope, not dead

hellllloooooo everybod-eeeee!
(sorta like Christopher Mad Dog Russo on the radio...)

anyways, what the hell have I been doing in neglect of the old blog.

Let's see. Beer Review: Sam Adams 12-pack for Christmas. Let's just say this about the cranberry lambic. I love beer and hate cranberries. My wife loves cranberries and hates beer. We BOTH hated this one. Luckily, their idea of a 12-pack is only two bottles each of 6 different kinds. Unfortunately, what we'll call "plain" Sam Adams shouldn't count as one, but it does. Not that Sam is bad, but if I wanted plain Sam, I coulda bought a 6 or 12 of that by itself. The best in the bunch was "Old Fezziwig Ale", a medium-dark offering.

My family does a Yankee swap every year, and we're required to home-make the gifts. If I'd been smart, I'd have saved a 12-pack of my own award winning beer and just put a bow on it. Instead, I went for a ginger-flavored cheesecake with a crust made from gingerbread cookies. Not too bad, but because I wanted a disposable container for it, I bought a cheap foil pan at the store, and the cheesecake cracked. So I put an "IOU" with the gift of 12 of my NEXT beer. Which I tried to cover up the fact that it doesn't exist yet. Anyway, mom ended up with the cheesecake and served it after dinner Christmas Eve. I have amused my daughter into suggesting we call it a "Red Sox Swap" instead.

Mom gave me a gift card for Dick's Sporting Goods, to get a new backboard and rim for the yard. We were going to have our driveway paved, but didn't have any funds available for the project. So it may wait, unless I want to play on crushed stone. Might not be so bad, especially since when I was 8 I shot at a rim bolted onto an oak tree....no backboard at all. (That was actually rectified only a few weeks later.) Anyway, the lesson here, is that Dick's website address is the FULL www.dickssportinggoods.com, for reasons that may or may not be obvious unless you try to guess, um, something different.

Work is pretty good. My new job has already had 2 Christmas parties (one luncheon, and then drinks after work the next night), and I got a couple of presents from the establishment there. Follow that up with two straight three-day workweeks. Of course, the obvious lack of bonus that comes with switching jobs in December sucks.

My wife's cat pees as I type. At least it sounds like pee. This morning I got to hear the diarrhea squirting out of her ass in the litterbox. Yup, it's pee this time.

The Patriots are 15-0. I fear they shall lose in the playoffs, however. They're definitely not a cold weather offense. Oh, and lest I forget to thank Mr. Brady for the clunker that got me eliminated from my fantasy football playoffs. Never mind finishing 13-3 when nobody else was more than 11-5. I lost the wrong week.

We have an electric pump to drain water that settles on our pool cover through a garden hose. However, it's currently submerged in ice. Oops. We need one of those three-day stretches of temperatures around 50 or something. The cover's starting to get pretty weighed down.

Tomorrow I see the doctor for the results of my MRI. I hope I don't have to become right-handed for a couple of years to let my shoulder heal or whatever....

Beer Review

Here's a good use of the blog....

Roxy Rolles. Made by Magic Hat in Vermont. I normally hate Magic Hat....especially their signature "Number 9" beer. But this one is actually pretty good. Full bodied "foretaste"....oh yeah, a couple of times I've had a 365 beers calendar, and they'd have such flowery descriptions using goofy descriptions like that. So then the hops take over at "midbottle" and I'm left with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

My grade: B

Women and Children First!!!

I could have also called this post, Led Zeppelin III.

Namely, two relatively lousy albums by two really good groups. My point being, a band forms, they've got about 20 songs that they're good at, and they all go on the first two albums. Then it's like, uh oh, we gotta come up with something now from scratch. Obviously both bands recovered just fine -- Zep's 4th and Fair Warning are both awesome.

So that brings me back to this. Most of my snarky comments on the universe in general have been used up. I don't really wanna re-post "cash is like a gift certificate, redeemable ANYWHERE", although it's appropriate at Christmas time, I suppose. And turning this into a diary certainly doesn't appeal to me, either. Like, Oooh, I was invited to play "Talisman" this weekend for the first time. I actually think it's good to use a diary format to launch into decent discussions, but really, the last few weeks -- I got nothin'.

Yeah, my new job starts Monday. Posts will be less frequent -- I'll actually have co-workers to discuss things with -- as the blogosphere tended to be the equivalent of a water cooler at times for me. (Comment on the interesting ones, but get back to work in a couple of minutes.)

Here's a story. One that my daughter was able to re-tell at school in their unit on family traditions/backgrounds, etc. When I was two I was up in Maine, crawling on the kitchen table and noticed a plastic salt shaker. I proceeded to drink the salt straight out of the shaker. Then I threw up all over the place. My mom had to clean it all up. Like she needed another reason to dislike going up to her in-laws' cabin in the middle of nowhere, huh? It's especially enjoyable in that whenever I'm back up there, such as this past summer, the same salt shaker is still in use, I believe.

Anyone ever have almond butter? I bought a jar before realizing it was like $11. Certainly it takes a back seat to peanut butter, but it was still pretty good on Ritz crackers. The company also makes a cashew butter, but I'm not the world's biggest cashew fan.