• Socks: innocent undergarment or covert killer?

    The scene of the crime

    The scene of the crime

    Freaking socks! Who knew?

    Well, apparently you knew.

    Dammit man! Why was I the last one to know THAT useful nugget ‘o wisdom?

    Actually, socks are a handy suspect right now. The alternatives – and there are a lot of them, especially if you have an anxiety disorder – are not so easily fixed. Socks? Heck, you take ‘em off or you put something else on over ‘em. Problem solved. But the alternatives….

    I’m careless on stairs. Well, we can throw that one out right away. That’s something a careless person would do. My mommy always said I was perfect, so that can’t be true.

    It was a fluke. I like this one. It means I didn’t do anything wrong. However, this was the second time I’ve failed to stick the landing since we’ve lived here. You know… fallen, taken a bad trip, used unconventional means of descending, suffered from deceleration sickness, failed to yield to gravity, or yielded when I should have stood my ground. Yeah, left that important piece of information out of the last post, didn’t I? I might have even implied or outright lied about it being a rare occurrence. In my defense, it was rare, if you count the other forty-odd years of my life. But, twice in a few months (possibly even weeks) sounds a bit more like a pattern. Finally, we all know chance is everyone’s favorite patsy, and… DANG GUMMIT, IT WASN’T A FREAKIN’ FLUKE! (Like I said, I liked that one.)

    I’m not as physically gifted as I thought. I don’t like to brag, but I tend to be better than average at a number of things (sports, etc). I’m not great, or even particularly good, mind you. But if you plucked folks at random off the street and picked a sport out of a hat, there’s a good chance I’d at least hold my own… or not embarrass myself. How’s that for a humble brag?

    We interrupt this post for a little bit of bragging

    One area I tend to excel: anything involving endurance. My lungs can move a lot of air. One of my primary care doctors, years ago, wouldn’t take my complaints about wheezing seriously because I’d blow the needle all the way to top of his peek flow meter (the furthest a plastic arrow would travel in a slotted track), and hard enough that it would make a little clicking sound. Two doctors later I learned a couple things: 1) a single measurement of peek flow doesn’t mean much, and 2) even when my lung capacity (as measured by a more complicated device) is down 1/4 to 1/3 when I’m having an allergic reaction to something, it’s still WAY above average. There’s a lot more to endurance than how much air your lungs can take in and out (your body has to be able to do something useful with that air), but by most indications it hasn’t hurt me.

    We now resume this post, already in progress

    Wow, this is beginning to sound like I’m rationalizing. Maybe I am just clumsy. Coordination is something that gets worse with age, but I don’t think it’s something that goes quickly. That brings me to the last item on my list…

    There’s something else wrong with me. I’m not sure I really want to talk about this one. My mind goes here naturally, all on it’s own. I’ve noticed more falls lately, but I don’t know if I’ve actually been falling more, or I just notice them because of the pain in my neck/back/head.

    For the time being, I’m going blame perception – and socks.

    That said, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment coming up (several, actually). This topic will come up. I’m not really worried. I don’t know why. This is exactly the kind of thing I normally worry about. Maybe the therapy I’ve done was more useful than I thought – that or my mix of meds hit a sweet spot.

  • Our twentieth year online!

    Alright.

    Okay.

    Alright.

    Let’s try this again. I hope this will be everything it would have been yesterday.

    I’ve got some big, site related news! As of December 1st, 2016, our site has been in it’s twentieth year of operation! No, we’re not twenty yet. That doesn’t happen until December of this year, but by then I’d only get one magical month were the copyright notice said: 1997 – 2017… AND I got to hang that big 20 up for everyone to see on the homepage.

    Don’t get me started on counting. I’m a self-starter, I can do it myself. NOTE: if you’re not up for a digression/rant on how we count years, skip to the end of the rant. You’ll know it when you see it.

    Why does “I’m twenty” have to mean I’ve finished 20 years? Why do we have a quick shorthand for every age EXCEPT the year between the day we were born and the first anniversary of our birth?

    “Weren’t you two back when that happened?”

    Oh no. I was… let me see. What’s the best mathematical equation to represent my age? X < 1, where X = my age in completed years? I have no idea how many months it was. I think mom said I was crawling around that time, so maybe somewhere between 7 and 11 months? Infant doesn’t seem right, but toddler seems too old. Eff me! I give up.

    “Umm, ok. Let me see if Cheryl needs any help in the kitchen.”

    But we’re at a bar. What would Cheryl be doing in the kitchen here? She’s at home.

    “Yeah, I know.”

    See! You don’t need that kind of awkwardness in your life. I know I sure don’t. Why isn’t the day of your birth the first birthday? It’s only the reason you’re here, so I guess it’s ok not to count that one… AT ALL! Further, I think it’s high time we changed the language of age. Talking about how many years old you are stopped being cool at twenty-five. I don’t know about you, but I’d be willing to give up a year if I could say: “it’s my 46th year,” rather than saying “I’m 45 years old.” Is it any wonder so many folks don’t want to talk about their age, when most of the time they’re asked the word “old” comes up, either in the question or in the answer?

    HERE ENDETH THE RANT.

    So, twenty. Right?!? It’s been cool, even if I haven’t done much posting on the blog the last few years. If I ever find my old back-ups (I have three spindles of CDs – somewhere) I may share the original site I created with Adobe PageMill, BBEdit, and Graphic Converter (on one of the original Bondi-Blue iMacs no less), which appeared on AOL’s servers for a time. The absolute best was when I hosted it from a server running at home, geeking out on home networks/security, Movable Type, and managing a few different flavors of databases. Running much of my current site from a hosting service with WordPress almost feels like cheating.

    Before Facebook there was blogging, and many (if not most) of my Facebook/Twitter friends are holdovers from blogging, or folks I met through blogging. This site gave me an outlet, introduced me to people with backgrounds I never would have crossed paths without it, broadened my world-view, and made me a better person.

    Because of this site, and one post in particular, I often win google. I’m purposely not naming it again – I already get too many hits from those search terms, but if you drop the “beware of” and do a search for the remaining words in that title, I’m almost always top five in a google search. I joke with friends that I’m the world’s fourth-foremost expert on the subject. Though, results of your searches may vary, due to location. Further, I don’t expect most of you to be impressed. Even with this lofty achievement (for a guy like me), I bet most of you would blow me away.

    Anyhoo, I’d like to thank both of you for sticking around through the lean times.

  • Neither shaken, stirred, nor concussed!

    All right!

    So, I was on my way downstairs to write you a post. I’d been upstairs thinking on this one for almost an hour now. You know, that time on the weekend when you don’t have anything you have to do, you’ve slept-in like a teenager, and you’re awake but you don’t feel like getting out of bed… so you don’t.

    Sorry, I know I’m mostly speaking to adults here. I don’t mean to brag.

    Well, it was that kind of morning. I spent some quality time thinking up a great post, filled with some old-school nonsense and JK style humor. I was walking down the stairs with a little bit of hop to my giddy-up, and now I’m writing this post instead.

    I did something I haven’t done much in my life, mostly due to a lack of opportunity. I really should have guessed by now. Stairs are not your friend. They should always be treated with respect. NEVER take them lightly, especially when you’ve got a little hop to your giddy-up.

    I fell down the f…ing stairs. F…! Effing Ess! Frack me and the %&#@ing slippery socks I walked in on!

    I’m mostly all right. No broken bones or torn ligaments. No brains were concussed, overly shaken, or stirred. Cheryl was kind of wound up though. This wasn’t the kind of mishap that happens on stair 8 of 10, where the potential energy is rapidly diminishing. This started at the top, man! A tumble may have been involved.

    We’re eagerly waiting to see how my neck and back will fare in the hours to come.