White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Okay, I was out yesterday due to a hiccup in my usual schedule. I went to the Cardiologist's office and that mid-day grind took it's toll in a most egregious manner. My weary mind and twinkly sparks at the periphery of my vision should have been detected as a blatant harbinger of misery to come. Some time at 0300 hours, I awoke with my old pal, the migraine. When this happens, there is no anodyne potion to salve the grinding pain but the blissful embrace of unconsciousness. That was my ultimate escape; Medicate myself into oblivion till sometime around 1300 hours. And that, my friends, will throw me for the rest of the week.

Technorati Tags:Migraine

Labels: Migraine

I had started this posting earlier, before I was Crushed by the oppressive boot of the universe. I have not a faintest whiff of umbrage that my 'out of scope' activities brought the hammer of the 'Great Economies of Spoon Deficit Spending' down upon my thick skull. I am not extremely parsimonious when it comes to regulating my daily endeavors and this is a long and lowed tale of such an incident.

It had been a fairly dull weekend up till Sunday. There was the usual Swimming/Karate with the Tyrants. The dictate so far is that one would suffer the pain of mortal punishment should we miss Friday Dodgeball at TSD. It was a nice class actually. Jake did as he promised this evening and tried quite hard to be a good little tyrant for daddy. The opportunity to peg his sister with a ball after her harassment in the pool may have been the impetus for that though. Since it was raining all day, I was in no hurry to get home and lounge about. It was laundry day and I had a few loads to take care of. Instead, I cooked 4 fillets of Tilapia and we had a bit of broccoli soup with a side of carrots ... and they finished it up within an hour this time. Gotta love Fish Fridays.

Saturday morning was an early one. Both the Mrs and I had appointments and the Major Medical Complex where I spend way too much time in the emergency room. We both had blood tests but her's was in the Northern most branch of the complex on the 100th floor or something. Mine was in the Lab in the Polar opposite so I hauled the tyrants off, dodging the various organ transport droids and skulking vampires (called Hematologists?) along the way. I had to wait amongst the unwashed masses while the Mrs was fortunate to have her own private sitting room and a bevy of attendants. Harumph. By the time I get called to the blood-letting chamber, the Mrs has finished her procedure and was sitting along with the reset of us in 'stowage class'. Of course, my own fluid divestment went quickly.

With that behind up, we rocketed off to Staten Island for a day-long co-ed baby shower. I'll not deride your sensibilities with the mental torpor inducing details. Long story short, we got home shortly before midnight after much merry-making and child scolding. Sunday morning was the usual with a good measure of lawn-mowing and general yard-work chores tossed in for good measure. I was busily spreading 80lb bags of garden soil about the back-50 to reseed areas exfoliated by the cybernetic hounds and their Agent Orange urine when it hit. That little tingling in the frontal lobe and the small visual disturbances ... like little fairies of light prancing about reality, only visible through a gossamer veil of exhaustion. I had not my wits about me or I would have realized the indicators of my eventual downfall. Flash-forward to the next morning, I was paralyzed with nausea and existence rending storms of grinding suffering. All other ailments were thrust aside as this new fresh brand of hell intruded upon my blissfully perfect life. The next two days were a marathon session of gulping pills and retching till I was finally able to cast off the worst of the symptoms late Tuesday afternoon.

Returning to work, I found myself challenged with piles of work. Added to this was the back-log of personal activities (doctor's visit?) that I needed to deal with. Apropos to the topic, my Talkative and Extraordinarily Friendly Physician had my blood results and noted some anomalies: Cholesterol was just a hair above 200, Triglycerides were through the roof and the HDL/LDL was skewed due to low HDL readings. Peculiar because of my diet and the amount of exercise I get. She referred me to a lipid specialist because of the oddities but we both agreed that since my diet is within standard operating parameters and physical acumen for exercise was above par, no drugs would be useful at this time. Looking down at the site where the last gallon of blood was siphoned off, the buick sized bruise invokes feelings of apprehension should this vaunted expert require yet another sample.

Oh, gasoline ... yes. It's at $3.77USD/g right now. I'm considering the alternatives.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Weekend | Karate | Children | NYC | Migraine

Labels: Children, Gas, Migraine, NYC, Tang So Doo, Weekend

Been out sick for the last few days ... will post shortly.

Technorati Tags:Illness | Migaine

Labels: Illness, Migraine

Well, yesterday went from morose to a livid nightmare. Later in the afternoon, I was feeling a bit off. The odd stuff that should have tipped me off was the cold/numb fingertips and the peculiar feeling that all was not right within my skin. Fortunately, I made the command decision early on to bad TSD and swimming with the Tyrants. It was 'Book Sale' day at the Day Care/ReEducation Facility so I begged out of the usual activities by giving them an option of receiving a book as a consolation prize. They never pass on the opportunity to expand their personal libraries. So, with that, we headed home and practiced our forms on the mile long driveway for a bit so that they would not be too rusty when we returned on Tuesday night. That is, provided that my growing migraine subsides by then. I had to work with Jake a bit to get him to stop twisting his ankle when he does a inside-outside block in fighting stance. I told him to close his eyes, move into position and fix his foot without looking at it. It is going to be wrong so looking at a foot that you KNOW is in the wrong position is just silly. He closed his eyes, did the Pyon-Cho Don form and on the last 4 positions he closed his eyes and moved his foot to the place it's supposed to be and VOLIA! It was straight as an arrow. On the last move, I asked him to open his eyes and he damn near split his head in half with the smile that rocketed over his cherub face. He just might be able to get it right for the test. Maybe I need to spend a bit more time with them. I'm thinking about letting the swim club membership lapse, there is just too much to do during the summer months and there might be a 1700 class starting at our TSD school ... that would work out nicely actually. We'll have to have a family meeting and go over the pros and cons.

After I was done grilling the Tyrants, I set about to digging about in the 100 meter tall pile of mulch on the mile long drive. Of course, by then, the migraine was in full effect and all sorts of H.P. Lovecraftian netherworld daemons were clawing their way out through my eyes. It was the bad eye so I did not mind as much. It's always the left eye, wouldn't you know. I managed to get one of the islands of greenery in the front pastoral expanse covered before I gave up and wandered back into the manor. Of course, I took a fist-full of various pharmaceuticals to buttress my sanity against the crashing breakers of pain ... but what was needed was the strongest medicine I could find ... sweet, DEEP sleep. The problem with that is should I indulge my desire to avoid the pain, I would certainly pay the price of staring at the ceiling for hours after midnight when I should be sleeping. So be it. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

While languishing in my tomb of anguish, I tried to distract myself with plans for the future. Mostly, parenting. We need to set up a task/reward board for the little ones so they start to understand how to plan and what to expect when it comes to 'consequences'. I'm thinking of stuff like; put out trash, tended to cybernetic hound programming (feed, water, wash - I'll deal with the poo), set table, bus dishes, irrigate the Haupertonian Agricultural Sector, finish Homework before asked, good grades, laundry, earn belt promotion, conquer continent, and other simple tasks. Rewards will be tricky but I'm going with a point system so they could bank up the points to earn bigger rewards. Perhaps 1pt = 15 min of television, 15 min of computer time or (for future activities, Wii Time), a snack, 10pt for a small toy, play time outside is free as is story time and other developmental activities. Of course, much like greater rewards require greater quantities of points, they'll receive greater points for harder tasks. Any suggestions?

Technorati Tags:Parenting | Swimming | Karate | Children | Chores | Fatigue | Migraine

Labels: Chores, Fatigue, Migraine, Parenting, Swimming, Tang So Doo

So, it got cold last night, really cold. I mean it was so cold that my nipples got hard enough to cut concrete! I really should sleep with some sort of clothing on. Now that I've damaged your fragile psyche with that atrocious visual (everyone thinks in pictures, right?), let me tell you why a simple dip into the 40's makes a difference to a molasses blooded northern'r like myself. You see, the Mrs is a Manhattan girl and the Tyrants are half-n-half. A bit of cream and a bit of lutefisk. So, as it turns out, my son looks mostly like me and got a bit of the Mrs's genetics with his eye shape. I'm finding out that he did not get his tolerance of cold from me. Last night, I sacked out fairly early and actually fell asleep. Of course, sometime in the wee hours of the morning (he had to go wee, thus the phrase?) he got up and tunneled into the Mile Wide Bed. He starts out by snuggling with the Mrs and engaging in his most affectionate act so as to get her to let him stay. She is the gate-keeper ... the bouncer. After he has ingratiated himself with her, he will slowly work his way over to my thin slice of acreage and start siphoning off as much heat as possible from my overactive metabolism. Of course, he will stir a bit and reflexively beat the bejeepers out of my internal organs. Must be some sort of hex the Mrs cast on him so that I can share her experience of carrying him (and sis) for 9+ months. So, my hopes of a solid night's sleep was rended asunder. This series of events has had two distinct impacts on me ... one is that I have become more interested in getting the heat distribution fans installed/fixed for the wood burning stove. Priority on now that the ambient temperature in the Manor is now akin to a cryogenic preservation tube. The other epiphany, is that I am sick. The Murphy Factor hit me hard regarding the Flu Shot Fiasco this past Monday. A few days later and I'll be getting my shot ... I have a TSD test this Saturday ... OF COURSE I'll catch some nasty little genetically engineered virus from the Tyrants. Of course, since my body chemistry is out of whack, I'm trying to plow through a class 2 migraine as well. OF COURSE, that calls for brain-chemistry altering medication ... and we all know what that means ... 'DA FOG'. Present in body, but not quite all the way in mind.

Certainly, everything was trucking along fine but that butter-fly wing batting on Monday is now winding up it's Saffir-Simpson Scale 5 hurricane power. In the good-news column (as lengthy as it is) his morning, when I stepped on the scale, I found that I'm holding steady at 185 lb. Not too bad, considering that I threw myself on the candy-bucket to save the kids from the evil sugar monster. Now, all I have to do is survive the holiday season (Grams is an exclellent cookie/peanut brittle source, Gramps is going to possibly make that date roll I eat too much of) and perhaps avoid another round of mutated virus ... tall order, eh?

Technorati Tags:Bed | Sleep |Illness |Flu Shot |Home Improvements | Karate | Children | Migraine | Winter | Weight

Labels: Bed, Children, Flu Shot, Home Improvements, Illness, Karate, Migraine, Sleep, Tang So Doo, TGIF, Weight, Winter

So, not much to talk about today ... sliding into third base Thursday here. I made it to the Adult TSD class last night, in spite of my massively bruised 'chopping hand'. As I gaze down upon the mutilated appendage dancing over the keyboard, I marvel at the fact that it does not hurt more. Red, white and blue ... well, purple-ish blue. Hopefully, my dedication to not doing what I did to it in the first place will ameliorate the situation before the test on Saturday. Of course, I'm an unabashed recidivist when it comes to matters of personal safety. I'll have to redress that matter before it catches me in the shorts.

Speaking of shorts, last night SUCKED for sleep. I laid awake till nearly 2am ... just unable to nod off. Not sure why, but I am certainly tired enough now. It's been going on all week. I'm going to have to ask the Mrs for a 'night off' where I can just come home and go to bed ... or something like that. This nonsense will certainly impede any progress I hope to make this weekend with various chores and activities about the Manor. And no, I will REFUSE to take medication for this. Perhaps a supplement, but I do not need another raft of pills in my life.

Technorati Tags:Karate | Sleep | Children

Labels: Back Pain, Bed, Children, Injury, Karate, Migraine, Sleep, Tang So Doo

Sorry to leave y'all in a lurch like that. The last few weeks have been a tad interesting. A brief and entirely uninteresting synopsis:








1) TSD:The intrepid wonder twins; Attila and Ghengis, got their Sparring Gear ... much pummeling ensued. Not to be undone by her beating at her brother's hands, Attila proceeds to 'Beat the tar out of him' when doing one-steps with Josh. I was treated to my own tar-release program in the adult class.

2) ENTERTAINMENT; CHILD:Last wet-day at Sesame Place included rides on the 'big boy (and girl)' rides that required a 42' stature. The lack of lines after Labor Day proved absurdly enjoyable and well worth the price of admission.

3) ENTERTAINMENT; ADULT:Between periods of work and migraines, I attended a few social events. Mostly mundane and rather brief. I owe one of my former co-workers about 20$ for beer and munchies due to an inoperable ATM. I'll send it to him in his Christmas Update Letter (Encyclopedia Sized).

4) EMPLOYMENT:Work, as busy and all consuming as it is, consisted of training, managing, monitoring, self testing and the omni-present and highly fungible level 4 support rotation. Never have I prayed so much outside of work as I did on this rotation.

5) HAUPERTONIAN MANOR:At the manor: Tilled the garden under except for the 10,000 pumpkins, bazillion carrots and bushels of green tomatoes. I actually got the Monster Tiller repaired at a local small-engine repair shop. Well worth the $100 repair bill; started on the first pull. Also got to deal with a clogged main-line sewer blockage. Somehow, a t-shirt label had come loose and wedged itself in the pipes about 25 feet down the way. Took a bit of gumption and a few fixes (small hole in 30 year old pipe) to get everything online. Now it drains like a champ. Of course, in the process of re-assembling the utility-tub drain, I cracked myself on the bridge of the nose with a plumbers wrench. My God ... it's full of stars ... and little tweeting birdies. Thought for sure I broke my nose but the blood loss was minimal and little bruising/swelling proved me wrong. Resigned myself to planting mums and bulbs in the garden after recovering from a monster headache the next day. Gee, I wonder why my head hurt.

6) FAMILY; MRS:The expected busy period for the Mrs got nixed when the recreant and ignoble miscreants from a remote location proved that their flippant behavior was not to be tolerated. They are in the midsts of covering up misdeeds and her requests exposed their roguish cozenages. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth will soon commence.

7) FAMILY; CHILDREN: Children are loving Kindergarten. Almost as much as the Mrs and I as we sit down to go over homework assignments, practice writing letters and going over spelling lists. As God as my witness, I shall make sure they write their first epic novel before they get to 1st grade. Or at least, a story that has all 20 words that they need to learn in it.

And there you are. I still live and soldier forth with few symptoms. Granted, most of my impediments are self inflicted. I shall endeavor to update you with the salient matters (read: blatantly mundane and mostly fabricated) as the occur. HUZZAH!


Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Plumbing

Labels: Banalities, Bar, Beer, Children, Family, Lawn, Migraine, Parenting, Summer, Swimming, Water, Weekend

Well, let's see here. What to talk about first. Friday was fairly anti-climatic. Let sleeping dogs lay was the theme for the day. I stuck around the Home Office all day in case I needed to be called on to 'testify' for the TL9000 audit of our division. Silly stuff, so I bounced about and helped out some of my co-workers where I could. Standard end of the week agitprop greasing the slide into 5 O'Clock slackerdom. Friday is an exercise in pushing items off your plate and trying to temporize any requests that may come your way. Any meeting you come away with fewer action items than you went in with is a success. Even better, avoiding meetings where you might get something which would demolish your weekend is even better. But, you know, that's not really the team spirit, is it?

When I was heading back to the Manor after skirting responsibility all day, I was about to load up the POS SuperSaturn with my wheel barrow of work related paraphernalia when I discovered that I had neglected a complete a critical task that morning. You see, the squirrels have been destroying my crocus bulbs in their quest to dig up the emerging 7/21 year cicclids. So, they happen on my bulbs and think: MMMMM, this might be tasty. Argh. Go eat the damn bird seed you tree rats! In any event, I've been trapping them with live traps and relocating them on the other side of the turnpike. No chance that they will find their way back. Now I'm not trying to eradicate the population, I know better. Won't happen. I'm just trying to remove the sub-class that seems to have the gumption to dig up my flower beds in spite of the defensive perimeter claymore mines and the cybernetic hell-hounds leaving their acrid scent everywhere. So, I caught on this past morning and dropped the chattering little bastard into the trunk of the SS, cage and all. And there he sat, all day. Gitmo could have learned something from me. It was a relatively cloudy and cool day so he did not end up roasting to death, and when discovered ... was still filled with piss and vinegar about being trapped. I let him loose and he bounded off towards the near-by military base. Probably to pick up some plastic explosives and assault weaponry to get back at me. He disregarded the contract I had him sign saying that he would denounce his former 'anti crocus' ways. Damn tree rats.

Tyrants behaved as they usually do. All uppity in the pool and such. Don't want to go swimming, want to go to karate till it's time to get out of the pool. Then they want to swim and not go to karate till I remind them that it's dodge-ball Friday. Fickle little turds. Jake is still a bit under the weather and had a mini-meltdown in class. We cut that short! His 'tantrum' is usually him clenching his fists and screwing his face up into a whiny scowl and emitting a high-pitch screech ... like a wind-up to a major explosion or something. Usually I just have to bark out his name and he cuts it short. I've only seen him do it twice, but I let him know that it's not a behavior that I'll let go unchallenged. He is starting to learn that he will not get his way all the time and there are more ... proactive ways of resolving conflicts. This one will not work.

Saturday: do nothing but sleep in with a cruddy migraine and slum around all day. Pick some veggies, clean up the Master Suite a bit. Hang with the kids. Since the lawn is a perfect beige color now, mowing is not required. I'll certainly make sure that the sprinklers are turned on next year, the lawn looks like hell after this summer. The garden isn't much better off, but we do have about a dozen pumpkins that are looking quite spectacular now. A basket of very intense tomatoes too. Very flavorful due to the limited rainfall.

Sunday: more of Saturday's activity. We were planning on going to Sesame Place again, but forecasts of mid-day thunderstorms and a general malaise with the Tyrants but the kibosh on that. Genghis and Attila took turns napping on the Iron Maiden (New non-Hydraulic Master Mile Wide Bed), desperately trying to shake whatever NEW virus they managed to pick up. That, or the old virus mutated in both of them and they gave each-other a new bag-o-crap ... which I'm now coming down with. Nice. Indeed, each had a bit of a fever and the hacking cough prevalent in the Haupertonain TB Ward. The phlegm and snot runneth deep here, mind your step.

Technorati Tags:Weekend | Swimming | Karate | Children | Illness | Gardening | Lawn | Summer

Labels: Banalities Work, Bed, Children, Gardening, Illness, Karate, Lawn, Migraine, Summer, Swimming, Water

Work, sleep, eat ... not much new outside of getting a week off from Karate since the Master is on vacation. Sure, we go swimming every day and the Mrs is breaking in the new bed ... but there is nothing of great consequence to those loaded ideas. I'm still acting as a remote sentry in the guest room in case the Tyrants wander in during the early morning hours. Tonight, I'll be setting up the mattresses and box springs w/o the bed frames ... just so they can get a taste of sleeping in a more comfortable bed (which is not the one that the Mrs and I are trying to sleep in).

Then there is this. I'll tell you what, if my migraines could be eliminated this way ... wow.

UPDATE: Fixed Link ...

Technorati Tags:Beds | Swimming | Children | Migraine

Labels: Bed, Children, Karate, Migraine, Swimming