MDA Muscle Walk 2016

April 3, 2016 at 12:05pm marked the start of #MusclewalkSTL 2016. Team Steve met its donation goal this year. We even got a MDA Bringing Strength To Life T-shirt.

The turnout was impressive. It took over 5 minutes for all the walkers to cross the starting line.

It was a lovely day to get out for sun, fresh air and a walk. Team Steve finished the course in 22 minutes. I led the cheer squad. I didn’t walk. Hey, it took me almost 22 minutes to make it to the toilet and back ;-)>>>

I watched the walkers. I like people watching but all the women in Spandex pants made it very enjoyable. I know I’m a Dirty Ol Man. I wear the badge proudly.

There were also lots of friendly dogs around, including a peanut eating bulldog.

p_002751

Team Steve

  • Back Row: Allie; Mike; Ed; JD
  • Front Row: MB; Steve; Jude; Colleen

p_002761

Wenches

I Don’t Like Mondays

This week I didn’t shoot the whole day down, but I came pretty close.

Mondays don’t mean as much when you can’t work any more. My dislike of Monday is just a tradition now. Not working does sometimes lead to confusion about what day it is, like this week.

Two days ago I got up. The grounds crew were cutting grass. That told me it was a Monday. Still, somehow I fast forwarded and got the idea it was Tuesday. I got ready to visit Dr. Detroit for an adjustment. I left a little early because of construction. I didn’t mean to leave a whole day early.

It wasn’t till I was laying on the table I realized it wasn’t Tuesday. Dr. Detroit asked what I was doing out & about on Monday. After a few moments of confusion, I realized why he was asking the question. I was a day early. So my Monday didn’t start until after 2 PM this week.

Enhanced Interrogation

6 August was wiggle your toes day. I don’t, actually can’t, celebrate. I can’t wiggle my toes any more.

I had an appointment with my Neuroquack?. He wanted me to wiggle my toes for him. I had a good laugh over that.

It was more like an enhanced interrogation day for me, complete with electric shocks and painful needles. Like the government they have innocuous sounding names for their torture methods. They call them Electromyogram & Nerve Conduction Study.

I had these done a couple of years ago but I don’t recall the pain levels being as high. The last nerve conduction study had a couple of severe shocks. This time they kept turning up the voltage until my body jerked strongly. That was followed by the EMG where they stick a needle in you. The neuroquack? seemed a bit sadistic in his needle application.

But I didn’t talk. Well, except for a “FUCK THIS SHIT!”, near the end of the test.

The tests were at De Paul. The worst pain was getting to and from the appointment. It took me 20 freakin minutes to gimp in from the closest gimp parking spot I could find. It took as long to gimp back to my car after. Fuck De Paul, never going near there again.

I was pissed when I was told during enhanced interrogation that they had free valet parking for the disabled. I saw the valet parking sign with a prominent price tag. No signs saying it was  free if you had a gimp tag or plates. You’re supposed to mead minds to find out about it.  I guess they think gimps grow a psychic sense as compensation for mobility loss.

Sporks

I’ve been spending more time than usual in bed. I’ve been saving up sporks for a busy week. Since, I only have cable in the living room now, and since there’s nothing new on, I’ve been watching vintage TV, Emergency on Netflix.

I got my tumbleweed fix. One rescue had an old man and woman in the desert called because the house was surrounded by tumbleweeds. They scared the old lady.

 

Tumbleweeds ain’t scary. Now horny toads I could see getting scared of. Hundreds of them staring at you with their devil’s horns could get frightening.

A couple of episodes later I got a real nostalgia flashback, 1970s IT. Anonymous caller tells hospital that she took pills and turned gas on. They only are able to trace call to a rough area. And they find she’d been at hospital recently.

The billing computer can only search by name or account #, the head computer geek declares. ‘We’ll have to go through the punch cards!’ Ah, yes, 1970s technology. They start feeding cards through an IBM card sorting machine. It works but you can only sort a column at a time. sometimes it was faster to flip through the cards. A big goof is when the Doc asks for patients between 8/24 & 9/4 and the machine does it in one pass.

I don’t miss those freakin IBM cards. I was in heaven when I went to work and had a video terminal with  a backspace key. With the cards, fat finger and you start the card over.

 

<a href=”http://youtu.be/j7xUqTHGkw8″>Tumbling Tumbleweeds</a>

One armed man

In a fucking nasty mood tonight. I tried to get a roll of paper towels out of a cabinet and got an avalanche of crap that some helpful[sic] arsehole piled on top of the rolls.

You have to think of me as the one armed man. I have two and they work somewhat well. But effectively I only have one because the other is always holding on to something to keep me from falling.

I don’t have a free hand to lift crap off of what I need to get. If I need to use both hands I have to lean against a wall or something. Or in the case of lifting the trash bag out of the can, use my head against the refrigerator for support.

I’ve told people to think of me as a one armed man and not do those things. But, they keep insisting on piling shit on top of  other shit.

Well, anything in my kitchen on top of what I need to get to will be flung as far as my weak muscles can throw them. Usually in the direction of the dining room. And I’m not fucking picking that shit up.

 

Quack Dammit

I’m feeling somewhat better today. I ate for the 1st time in 3 days last night, a little fruit.

I’ll feel even better once I’ve fired my primary quack. That’s right quack, not quack?. He proved he didn’t deserve the courtesy of the ‘?’. He’s the 4th one to lose the ‘?’, but the others lost theirs in promotion from Quack? to Dr.

It’s fairly easy to earn promotion, all you have to do is be an at least semi-competent physician or at least be man enough to admit you don’t know. My 1st neurologist earned his promotion for not wimping out and calling my problem idiopathic. Idiopathic is just Latin for I dunno. He admitted in English he didn’t know and referred me to another who did diagnose the problem.

I attempted to discuss these rare bilious attacks I’ve been having. Even though I had told him I was not taking Ibuprofen, he insisted that ibuprofen was causing the problem, take tylenol. When he first came in, he made it obvious he hadn’t reviewed my medical history. When he asked if my entire colon had been removed, I should have bailed then.

I hate it when people don’t listen to what I’m saying, particularly when I’m paying for the privilege. If you want to tell me I’m full of crap when I’m done, that’s fine. But listen to me first!

Women bitch about men not listening. There may be something to that. I’m going to try a female primary quack? this time.

Fifty-Fifty

Fugitive

Dr. Kimball’s quest was for the one-armed man.

What friends fail to realize is I’m a one armed man.  Oh, I have two arms and they work fairly well. But I am almost always using one hand to hold on to something to keep from falling.

It may seem efficient to stack shit on top of other shit. But when the one armed man is trying to get what’s on the bottom it is a major pain.

And like today when I tried to extract a paper towel roll and a fucking bag of baggies falls out, I might trash it or may just fling the offending item somewhere out of my way.

That’s why there are baggies all over my dining room. They can fucking stay there.

Highest Life Form?

As an agnostic, I’m unsure of the existence of a Supreme Being turning the crank. But if there is one, he’s got to be fucking Japanese.

There are 50 Trillion cells in your body. Most have a nucleus containing a folded strand of your DNA. Straighten out that single strand and it’s 6 feet long.

So the Supreme Being has to one Origami folding mother fucker to fold 6 feet into one cell and 55+ Million miles of DNA into your body. Has to be Japanese.

All that DNA is organized into pairs of chromosomes.  Fruit flies have 4 pairs, a banana 11, a Rhesus monkey 21, and finally humans with 23 pairs of chromosomes.

Y’all jes might assume from that, the more chromosomes, the higher the life form.

Lets continue and see what the highest life form is. Chimpanzees have 24 pairs (WTF!?!) Cows have 30 (WTFF!?!) and chickens  have 39 pairs (WTFFFFFFF!?!).

Does this mean Foghorn Leghorn is the planet’s highest life form?

▶ Climbing the North Face of the Apartment Hall

▶ Monty Python – Climbing the North Face of the Uxbridge Road – YouTube.

This is much how I feel getting around my apartment. I’m a mountaineer, finding every possible handhold to assault route to the toilet.

Like a mountaineer, I use a three point (or more) system. I make sure I’m solid with three appendages before moving a fourth.

It’s just a security blanket thing most of the time but there are times when a leg does something other than I intended and every hold helps.

I annoy other people walking in halls. I walk on the left, against then normal traffic flow. Sorry, but I like having that wall on my left, you can go around. Get over it.

Another technique I copied from mountaineers is climbing a vertical rock chute. I use it after falls to climb up a corner, or doorway to my feet again. But rarely now. I follow the 3+ points rule always. I even sometimes do the hallway without a cane. Such a daredevil.

‘Crat Aggravating

It’s no secret that ‘crats get lazy, just sucking away at your pay cheque. Sometimes you just need to stir them up and make them run around to keep them from sticking to their chairs.

You don’t want a jab a stick in the hornets nest stirring up. You might get stung. No, what you want ants running around a disturbed nest effect. The perfect thing is to ask for something the law requires them to have and provide to you upon request. Then watch the fun as they try to attempt to comply.

I use the ADA to stir up ‘crats. ADA Title II 35.107 says: Any public entity with more than 50 employees from school up to state level (Feds don’t do ADA of course) is required to have ADA Compliance officer(s). And to provide to any interested party (you don’t have to be a gimp for this one) the: name(s); office address(es); telephone(s) of their ADA Compliance officer(s).

You can call but you’ll miss the excitement when they put you on hold and they run around crazy. If you like talking to people, it’s guaranteed you’ll get shuffled from ‘crat to ‘crat.

But the best is to walk or gimp in with a smile and ask, “May I speak to the ADA Compliance officer for …?”

When the receptionist doesn’t know what you’re talking about, point out they are required by law to have one and provide you their name. Take a seat and watch the fun begin. They may have had one in 1990 but you can bet that’s been forgotten. They may have to create one on the spot for you. If you see the ADA Compliance guy emerge from a hurried conference, he just got drafted.

See all kinds of fun with a simple, polite, and legal request. I had fun with my alder-critters when getting the ‘No Disabled’ sign removed. I got a lot of “uh, uh, … I’ll get back to you.”