Problems Continued

I've been off work since Tuesday. I've had dizzyness and a heavy chest and numbness and neck pain and all sorts of problems. I finally browbeat the Cardio doctor into seeing me. It looks like that, while you're enjoying the election returns showing Kerry winning, I get to go to the hospital and have another Cardiac Cath.

Hopefully, if everything is clear, I can go back to work next Thursday. If they do a stint it will be a few weeks until I can go back.

The Red Sox won. Yippee. I don't believe in curses anyway. It's gonna be amazing. A Super Bowl champ, a World Series champ and a President from the same city in the same year.

I'll let you know stuff when I know stuff.

cya

Believe

Red Sox go to the World Series. Greatest come from behind in baseball history. All of that is sweet, but they did it against the Yankees, which makes it even sweeter. Right, Cat? :)

I'm off work again today...go into the Dr. on Saturday to try to get this straightened out. I will start up the exercise next week. One way or another. Weight has been pretty static since the hospital. I need to start losing some more to stay on the time table.

On Tuesday the electrician came to put in our new panels. The wiring looks 1000 percent better. He said that some of the wires were actually loose in the breakers. We could have had a fire at any time. Nice. I have some more insulation to remove and to move a few pieces and he will be back to start wiring some of the basement so we can move stuff.

Not much else to write. I'll be back atcha later.

2 days in a row

We had an interesting day. One drain in the sink was working and another wasn't. And, the dishwasher overflowed. I messed with it a little, but I'm no plumber, so we called my father-in-law. He came out and messed with it a little, but we finally decided to call Sears and have a tech come out. Turns out we've had the damn thing for 12 years. I didn't think it was that old.

We ripped out more ceiling slats downstairs and pulled out more insulation. Wrapped that up around 7 and headed up to Giant for some supplies. Deb and the kids are going up to the PA Grand Canyon tomorrow. I get to go to work.

The kids went up to Massachusetts to pick up a car that a friend bought. Turns out that it didn't have a radiator. They had to scramble and find one, then put it in and drive back. They're gonna be back later.

So I'm hangin' out watchin' The Screen Savers, and typin' to you.

cya

Update

Sorry I've haven't posted for awhile.

Last Wednesday at work I had some problems. It was pretty much all the symptoms of a heart attack. I managed to make it home and felt pretty weak. Got up the next morning and felt ok, but as soon as I started moving around I felt weak again.

I went to the Dr's office and they sent me to the emergency room. I stayed in the hospital overnite for observation and they gave me a stress test on Friday. It was a nuclear thing and they gave me a drug that artificially stressed me. I came home Friday, but they didn't let me go back to work till Tuesday. I had to go back in Monday for a resting test. The same radioisotope, but no treadmill or chemical.

We went to the PSU vs. Perdue game on Saturday. I had to walk nice and easy, but other than that I was fine. It was a pretty good game. 108,000 people were there, and they were very noisy.

There was some stupidity at work that I'm not gonna get into here. I don't think it was a factor, but it might have been. The doctor released me for the same type of work. I've been having trouble the last few days keeping up. I don't think I can keep doing it, but it may be something like a muscle pull or something. I go see the general practicioner on Monday.

We've been ripping out insulation today. We'll be doing that tomorrow too. The electrical guy will be here Tuesday to fix the meter and put in the new box.

I won't be posting as much as I had been, but I will pick it back up again at some point. I will try to do several a week tho, so keep checking in.

VP Debate

I thought it was pretty close. I think pretty close favors Edwards.

Two reasons. Edwards has been kind of hidden since accepting the VP role. This showed that he could hold his own. I heard the phrase "looks presidential" more than once too.

Also, and this may sound convoluted but I think it's valid, a strong performance by Cheney could hurt them. It gives creedence to the "Svengali theory". That Cheney really is the guy running the country. He actually blows Bush away when it comes to getting his point across.

It looks like we can use campaign paraphenalia at work. I saw a woman with a "Kerry/Edwards" T-shirt. The Bushies were extremely pissed. But they'll start wearing they're stuff too. And the game is on. :)

I had to sit on HPB and another person who will go nameless. Our section of the machine, when we set up, has the most stuff to do. The most containers to get, etc. HPB and the other have half of what we do and usually stand around and gab when we're finishing up our stuff. No problem with that, but.... They have one sack to get that's different.....they use maybe two a night. They come down and take the ones that we get for ourselves. Not today. I told both of them to go get they're own. I've been wanting to do it for awhile and didn't feel justified. Today, I went to get them, so I did. And I did.

First day at the gym. It went pretty good.

I gotta get some sleep people.

cya

Hey...

I've been really busy the past 5 days or so.

I've got about 80 percent of the basement ripped apart. Our furnace is in, the house is very comfy. We've got our fireplace, but they have to order some replacement logs. One of ours is cracked.

I went back to work today. I listened to the debates and thought that Kerry did everything he had to do. I didn't SEE them, but they're saying that George didn't come across well. This was supposed to be in his lap. I'm hearing that it wasn't.

I've got pics from everything and I'll try to post some at some point.

cya

Just my luck...

This will be very quick.

We worked in the basement all day. I managed to listen to Penn State lose while we were doing it. We were almost ready to stop and our power got weird. Long story short, we had an electrician and PP&L come out to get things back.

We're finally running and all getting showers...it's after 2.

I'll talk to you later.

Ivan...the Terrible (Pt 2)

Saturday we were up around 9. It was a long night and we had to get ready for the game. We had worked out with Toby last night that we’d pick him up where he works in Lewistown. We took a look at the damage, packed our stuff and headed out.

Less than a mile from the house they came across the radio saying that traffic was being let through the Lewistown narrows 20 cars at a time. This was due to partial flooding and mudslides. They also said that they were probably going to close the narrows later because of the rising waters. Deb and I decided that going to the game wasn’t the best thing to do.

We went into town and headed to the Weis store for some essentials. I managed, in a round about way, to contact Toby. When I explained the situation to him, he said “Christ, I better get my ass home!”

We headed back home by way of the inlaws place. They were still pumping out the basement with that coveted gas powered sump pump. We came back toward the house and made it about a mile from our place. There was a tree still across the road. Later on we found out that it split a pole in two and left the transformer on the ground. No wonder we didn’t have power.

We took the long way around, surveying the damage all over the place, and finally made it home. Mike was here, so we took to removing the two limbs from the oak tree. That took several hours. Chrissy was at a baby shower for her stepsister, she got home around 6 or so and her and Mike played on the tree. I took pictures.

We finished up toward dark and decided to wash up. Deb heated water on the grill and we mixed it with cold water in the bowl to take a bowl bath. I thought it would suck, but I felt pretty good afterward. It was very interesting rinsing off in the tub with a gallon jug of cold water. Lots of fun! Remember, yesterday was all the mucking around in the basement and I hadn’t cleaned up afterward.

We went into the local chinese restaurant and pigged out. We were all pretty goofy and it was after 9 when we sat down to eat. I called Cat and we tried to one up each other on the damage. They got hit pretty hard up her way too.

We came home and lit the candles and hung out for a bit listening to the radio, then everybody crashed. Pretty early too. We had a little sleepover in the living room, since the waterbeds were too cold (but not for the cat).

Tomorrow we clean.

I’ll continue this later. Heading out to the BOC/UFO show.

cya

Quick Update

Today was rehab. As soon as I walked in they told me that Louise called from Harrisburg. I'm not supposed to let my heart rate go over 100. I rode the bike yesterday and made a game out of NOT letting my heart rate drop below 100. So everything went back a notch today. I don't like it, but she'll explain it to me when she gets back from the conference.

This week has been relatively cool at work. EGCW is on light duty, so there is a lot less of his stress induction.

I go to see Blue Oyster Cult and UFO tomorrow near Phila. I'm going to be taking pics, so they will be going up after the Ivan pics do. During the day the furnace guys will be here. Probably won't post again till late Friday.

I'll get part 2 of the Ivan story up too.

cya

Ivan...the Terrible (Pt 1)

Friday was a rehab day for me. It was raining lightly. I was supposed to meet with the nutritionist after my workout. She was there and said to page her when I was done. They did, but they couldn’t locate her. Finally they found her and we rescheduled for Monday. I had managed to go down another pound.

I went home and started on the basement. I got a lot more done. A lot of things went into containers, which was a very good thing as it turned out. We took a break for dinner and did some more. The rain was picking up a bit.

We kept checking the Weather Channel because of the game Saturday. It looked like Ivan was moving really fast and would blow out of here by kickoff. Amy wasn’t able to go, she was going to Trish’s (Chrissy’s Stepsister’s) baby shower. But Toby was looking for someone to fill in. He wouldn’t know for sure until later in the evening.

Back to work in the basement for awhile. I got nice and dusty moving stuff. We knocked off with a feeling that we were on track for the furnace guys to come in. I went up and figured I’d get a shower in a bit. Deb went to bed. Chrissy was playing Baldur’s Gate and I was on the computer. The rain was picking up. Very hard at times.

Around midnight the power went out for about 5 seconds. Whew…dodged a bullet that time. At about 12:15 the power dropped again. You know the vroom it makes when it comes back up, right. It was “Bam….vroom…Bam…vroom…Bam…vroom…Bam…vroom….Bam…vroom…BAM”

After the fourth drop, I said out loud “This is not good”. And it wasn’t. There we were, no power. So Chris went for some candles and I went in to shut down Deb’s machine and turn off her power supply. We did that and I told Chris to come down with me so I could cut my machines off.

I sat down at the machine and did my thing and moved my foot about two inches to the right. (Me) “Fuck….FUCK…” (Chrissy) “What’s wrong?” (Me) “The damn basement’s flooding.”

I immediately go into panic mode and figure that I have to get the sump pump running. So I go out and WADE into the garage. Probably about 2 inches of water there. I find the power inverter and go get the car. BTW, I forgot to mention that we couldn’t burn all of the trash that we generated during the day. So we stacked it up in the garage. So I had to maneuver around that while doing all this stuff too. I get the inverter hooked up to the van and plug the pump in and it runs.

We start moving boxes off the floor. We had a lot of plastic containers, so we were pretty good on some stuff. We had extra plastic boxes and stacked stuff on top of them.

The pump didn’t sound right, so I took a look at it. It turns out that the inverter is quite powerful enough to run the pump. So we were fucked. The second time I opened the garage door, one of the containers in the back of the garage blew over from the change in air pressure. It was really blowing outside.

So, at this point, I naturally decide that I’m going to Wal-Mart to get an inverter. The river had been rising up that way, but I didn’t think it was too bad.

I’m starting to shake at this point, so the diet goes out the window. I eat a bunch of snack bars and head up the road. This begins to unfold as a bad TV movie. I head down toward the highway, 3.2 miles away. There is a tree branch hanging from a tree just down the road from the house. Of course, I don’t get the omen thing.

I keep going and have to weave around a tree covering half the road. I keep going and trees are down everywhere. At one point I see a power line on the road. I go a little further and there is a tree completely across the road that has been cut to allow one lane of traffic thru. A little further down there is a huge tree down. Past that there is a tree down on a house. I finally get to the highway and there are emergency vehicles all over the place. I tell a guy flagging that I want to go to Lewistown. He says, you’re not going anywhere. They’re closing down 22/322 and not letting anyone on the highway.

So I turn around and head back home. I have a guy in front of me that’s going pretty slow and I know he doesn’t know where all the debris is, so I pass him. He’s got a Bush bumper sticker on, so I know he’s pissed when he sees my Kerry sticker. I get ahead of him and stop at the trees that are down till he catches up. So he can see what’s going on.

I get to the point where the tree was down on my way in, and there is a borough truck there. The guy gets out and puts up a “Road Closed” sign. He comes back and says I can’t get thru. I tell him I was just through there 5 minutes ago. I take a look and another tree has fallen, and this one does the job completely.

So we turn around and head back. There is a little dirt road that I thought I’d be cute and take. I get back it about 100 yards and there’s a dead tree across the road. I think I can pivot it and move it out of the way. Since it’s old and dead. Well, it is pivoted on the road in such a way that I can’t get any leverage. This is a very narrow road and I had a hell of a time turning around. Mr Bush was at the end of the road and I followed him back to the highway. We got on the road that was the detour until recently. All along that road there are trees down partially blocking the road.

We head up toward the rendering plant, so far so good. I get about a mile from my house and there’s another tree across the road. The road is completely covered, but there is a vehicle width between a fence and the tree. Mr. Bush goes for it and makes it. I think about it a second and think, screw it, and I go. I slid a little, but I did make it around. I finally made it home. Resigned to a wet basement.

The wind is whipping a lot. We’re sitting in the living room and Deb is spooked a few times by “cracks” outside. A little after two, she calls me out and says, “Does that sound like a freight train?” It did, but I didn’t want to panic anybody, so I said don’t worry about it.

We sat up and fretted a bit, then finally went to bed.

I’ll continue this later.

cya

Aaaand....we're back!

This will be brief, I'll go into detail in a day or so.

We got spanked by Ivan. Basement flooded and trees down. Power was out from 12:10 am Saturday till about 6:15 Monday. We're slowly getting back to normal.

I've been getting systems up and running here. We're still sleeping in the living room tonight because the waterbeds aren't warm enough yet.

I'll get ya all caught up by the weekend.

cya

Vote for Kerry

I can't say it enough.

Deb was home today. I got up and Deb walked with me for a little. Then I finished up and did the weights.

I headed down to the burg and picked up a memory card at Best Buy. I'm running really tight on time, and the guy says he'll help me and goes to the computer. Then the phone rings and he spends 4 minutes with the person on the phone. That is wrong. I was still ok on time, so I didn't push it, but that really pisses me off.

Then I go up to pay. I use the credit card. Now, Deb and I messed up when we got them and signed each other's card. So this girl at the register is the first one to call me on it. Perfectly within her rights, but just bad timing. So I have to run out to the car, get the drivers license and then show it to her. I made it to work on time, but just barely.

We were a person short, so they brought down TQOTPS. This is one of those guys that has a problem with everything, the whole worlds out to get him, and he's gonna fuck 'em before they fuck him.

During our 1st rotation, he stays down for almost 50 minutes. It's supposed to be 30 minutes, maybe 40 at the outside. The next rotation he tries it again. I didn't let it happen. At 30 minutes I gave him 5 more. Then I went down and started clearing the machine. He wouldn't go up. He stayed down for 10 minutes. I didn't really care. He went up and got all full of himself and told Paulette that "I'm not coming down till 10". Problem is, we go to break at 5 of.

She tells me this when we switch. TQOTPS is talking to HPB the whole time, instead of coding. Then, when Paulette and I are talking, she stands near us trying to hear what we're saying. So I moved so I was facing away from her. Lots of fun at the PO.

I finished up the evening and headed home. I had to stop and get gas, then I had to stop at the store for some stuff. I finally got home and started writing this.

cya

Ignorance Is...?

God, what day is it. I had rehab today. It actually showed me up one pound. Which I don't understand, but I'm sure it's just temporary.

I had to go out to Wally World and pick up some stuff. Then I headed down to work.

When I'm punching in, there is this mail handler talking to another mail handler. He's saying "Yeah....Kerry's guilty of treason. He should be in jail. But for some reason, they didn't want to put him in."

I think it's amazing that people take a work of fiction that's been completely debunked and use it as their primary argument. I wondered to a friend of mine if it's actually painful to be that ignorant, or if there is really something to the "bliss" theory.

The rest of the day was ok. At the end, Evelyn, who was in my rotation, asked me if we had any overweight mail on my side of the machine. I said no. Five minutes later EGCW asks me the same thing, he's not in my rotation. I ignored him. It felt...right. :)

Came home and rebooted my xp machine from blue screen of death. I looks like SP2 installed ok. So far, so good.

Came upstairs and turned on The Weather Channel. Ivan is raising hell with the gulf coast. It's gonna be very interesting what the morning brings. And Jeanne is projected to hit the Atlantic Coast of Florida. What a mess.

Cat sent me an email saying that the bass player for Blue Oyster Cult has bolted and left them high and dry. Buck seems to be ok with it, except for the fact of little notice. I tried to send Buck a message for permission to use my camera at Keswick, but his mailbox was full. I'll try to resend tomorrow.

We're looking at heavy rain for the game in Happy Valley on Saturday. That should be fun.

Gotta go to bed.

cya

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday (Tuesday Edition)

I wanted to get up early today and go to a clients place to work on her machine. It turns out my back pain delays two days until it kicks in. So I got up and got a pill and went back to bed.

I finally got up and did my walk and exercise. I went down and checked my machine and found out I could get XP service pack 2. So I put it in and started installing it, then I went to work.

Work was relatively ok today. We had some mail sent down from upstairs and it all decided to drop into 2 sacks in the area I was working in. It was very annoying and bothered my back a little, so I took a pain pill. BLFH tried to give me a little shit when I was getting my pill, but I ignored her. We didn't get done completely, so that's kinda cool too.

I headed home.

Mike was here. He bought some chinese food for us, so I had some chicken and rice. We discussed the day, then I came in and watched "Unscrewed". Then I started typing this.

talk to ya later

These are you Children, see what you have done...

Got up and went to rehab. Lost another pound too. They're so proud of me up there. Two more guys started today. One of 'em is around my age. Louise went over some of the exercises with me at the end of my workout.

Headed home, got some lunch and headed to work. Work has been pretty benign lately, so we know that some shit is right around the corner.

We had a meeting today. At the end of the meeting, one of the gun nut assholes says "I want to say that today is a historic day. We're getting rid of the oppression of the Clinton administration..." And that's where I turned off. But the Pointy Headed Boss engaged the guy. So we had a political discussion on the workfloor, which is a BIG no-no. Nice to know that the gun nut postal workers can all go out and buy assault weapons now, huh?

An uneventful day. Came home and did this. I have a client to see tomorrow, so I'm wrappin' up.

cya

Not a Pelican Brief

It was a speedy day. Slept late and went into work. We got split up onto 2 machines. The whiners were on the other machine and we had a nice peaceful start to work. A bunch of daylight people stayed and they're pretty pleasant too.

Not much to report after that. I came home and watched a very good "Six Feet Under". Lots of story movement tonight.

Here's a website for y'all. Did you ever wonder what the condemned man's last meal was? Take a look here.

And I started typing this to all you good people.

Maybe I'll have more of a life later...till then...

cya

A Day of Rememberance

I didn’t get up till almost noon today. Chrissy went down to New Bloomfield for a memorial for her friend who died the other week. Deb and I started in on the basement.

We got a good chunk done. I can actually walk in my office now. We got most of the stuff in the middle area cleaned. Deb ripped out about half of the ceiling.

It’s a lot of fun to go over the old stuff. Found a couple of old pics that I wanna scan and put up.

I did my walk. Then I came in and started weights. We had a pizza delivered, so I took a break and ate. Then I did the rest of my exercises during the first half of the Penn State / Boston College game.

Penn State managed to lose 21 to 7. It’s still early in the season, so I’m not too worried. They seemed to have more gas left at the end of the game, but they just couldn’t get it done. I hope that they don’t let it affect them, We’re taking Toby and Amy up to the UCF game next week.

Chrissy told me that the thing she went to today was covered in the Harrisburg paper. Because they had a party instead of a funeral. You can try this link, if not, go to Pennlive.com and search “wilt”.

I’m watching a CNN thing on 911 and typing this to all you special people

cya

Runaround

Got up this morning and went into Two Sisters to do some photography for their website. I maintain their website as well. When I feel up to it, I'll add it to the link section. Paula and Betsy are a lot of fun. We always have a great time. I shot for about an hour and headed up to rehab. I got to do my full routine.

Then I headed back home. I was having trouble with some, well, a lot of the pics coming out too dark. So I adjusted what I had and burned them off and headed back into the shop. I figured out what the problem was reshot most of what we did, but it was worth it. I'll let you know when I post them.

I went into the store and got some salad and dressing, then I came home. My butt was really draggin', so I tried to take a little nap. Deb came home, then the 3 of us headed into Stop 35 for dinner. Picked up a lottery ticket and headed home.

I helped Deb fill out her food diary and then went online. Chrissy and I watched a movie called "Boondock Saints". It was pretty cool, a real shoot em up with religous overtones. I got to have a long chat with Cat while I was watching it. Even though she said it would be a short one.

Then I surfed for awhile and started this.

Talk to you later.

The Completion Backwards Principle

So....the two posts below are backwards. Sorry about that. That's what happens when you try to do stuff quick. Am I right people??

I went in and fixed a clients computer today. I got everything working except the damn Outlook Express. It works ok on their one machine, so I installed Eudora on the other machine. Go get Eudora. I've used it since the BBS days and never had ANY problems with it.

Came home and wanted to walk, but it was raining. I took a look out, and precisely at 12:30 the rain quit. Well, slowed down to a manageable trickle. I went out hoping to get an hour in. At 45 minutes, when I was in front of my house, the rain picked up again. I took it as a sign.

I went in and started my resistance training. I've decided to do everything on one day, 3 days a week. It went pretty good.

I threw the bike in the car and headed down to the Burg. I went in and picked some stuff out and picked out a seat and some tires. It should be done next week.

I went into work. Work was ok. Nothing major to report.

Headed home and got on my downstairs machine. Looks like the restore worked, but I'm having driver issues again. I guess I'm gonna have to do a wipe of the drive and start from scratch. I'm gonna procrastinate as much as possible tho.

Client to see tomorrow too. So I gotta go.

cya

Get it Up...

Got up and did an hour walking. I'm a little concerned that I can't get my heart rate up over 90. Ill be taking the bike down to get fixed tomorrow, maybe I can get the heart rate up over 90.

I went to work. Work was pretty benign, but I managed to make it through. I found out that there was a blow up between two guys on friday, but I didn't get the full skinny on it. I have some more in a day or 2.

I've been listening to DBF tapes from May 99. Sound pretty clunky, but pretty good in spots.

I got a client to see tomorrow, so that's about it.

You kids have fun.

cya