I had better explain the oak tree theory. It says that of all the little trees starting out, some do better than others. They get better soil, better water, better light, or they have better genetics. After awhile these trees become larger than the others. and shade them, basically taking more of the sunlight. The others begin to die out, leaving fewer, larger trees.
This is how Random House and Doubleday end up being owned by the same German firm. This is how the US goes from 2500 breweries to 130. This is how Miller, owned by a South African firm, enters into partnerships with Coors, who is already hooked up with Molson.This is how Anheuser-Busch gets bought.
But then these large oak trees drop their acorns further and further from the trunk, and out near the edges, some new acorns can get started and acquire enough resources to become vigorous little trees. Eventually the large old trees may suffer from disease or storm, and their passing leaves their old spaces available (see: Schlitz, Stroh's). And we begin a new round, with many new trees in competition.
This is how we go from 130 breweries to over 900. This is how new publishers, and new media, got going.
It's just the circle of life.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Potpourri
So they found Stanford. How long does it take for the message to sink in: if it sounds too good to be true, it is? It's like the guy doing 90 down the freeway, who doesn't wonder why he's passing everyone else so vigorously and/or doesn't use the speedometer?
Speaking of driving, a longstanding pet peeve area of mine, whatever happened to the complete stop? The evil influence of Boston, where the red eight-sided signs are taken as helpful hints for drivers, has apparently spread to the rest of the nation.
In addition to the initialed diseases I mentioned awhile ago, I suffer from a couple other curious maladies. One indeed bears ititials: CRS (Can't Remember Shit). Another refers to a previous sufferer: Dunlap's Disease (my stomach done lapped over my belt...). I really did have macular pucker, otherwise known as cellophane retinopathy, but it cleared up. This, being inside the eyeball, was for a bit as great a concern as the recent urethral fun became.
And now you need to understand how the universe works, through two theories I have developed and used over the past years and which help clarify things.
First is the Souffle theory, which explains the stock market. In a souffle, there is milk, there are eggs, and there is hot air. Your challenge is to determine how much of each is out there. About eight years ago, I called 7500 as the milk-and-eggs point; that number was tested today. We'll see.
Next is the Oak Tree theory, which covers entire industries and explains contractions and expansions. The examples I have pointed to are the publishing and brewing industries.
Speaking of driving, a longstanding pet peeve area of mine, whatever happened to the complete stop? The evil influence of Boston, where the red eight-sided signs are taken as helpful hints for drivers, has apparently spread to the rest of the nation.
In addition to the initialed diseases I mentioned awhile ago, I suffer from a couple other curious maladies. One indeed bears ititials: CRS (Can't Remember Shit). Another refers to a previous sufferer: Dunlap's Disease (my stomach done lapped over my belt...). I really did have macular pucker, otherwise known as cellophane retinopathy, but it cleared up. This, being inside the eyeball, was for a bit as great a concern as the recent urethral fun became.
And now you need to understand how the universe works, through two theories I have developed and used over the past years and which help clarify things.
First is the Souffle theory, which explains the stock market. In a souffle, there is milk, there are eggs, and there is hot air. Your challenge is to determine how much of each is out there. About eight years ago, I called 7500 as the milk-and-eggs point; that number was tested today. We'll see.
Next is the Oak Tree theory, which covers entire industries and explains contractions and expansions. The examples I have pointed to are the publishing and brewing industries.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Plain Speaking?
The recent medical adventures have got me back onto a couple of things which have bugged me over the past few years. Both are related to medical advertising.
The first is hardly new: the pharmaceutical companies advertise specialized prescription medicines directly to us, the consumers. This asks us to become diagnosticians and figure out what's wrong with us, then go to our doctors and tell them what they ought to prescribe. I thought that one of the reasons to visit a doctor was to ask them to diagnose the problem and prescribe what they think is best.
This is one of the reasons I gave up years ago the reading of "popular psychology" books. I readily identified with the problems described by the authors, but didn't seem to find relief from their suggested therapies; then, on reflection, realized I didn't have the problems, or at least not too severely.
The medical advertisers accomplish somewhat the same thing. Do I have what they're describing? Hey, it kind of feels/acts like that. Maybe I'd better go ask the doctor if old XXX "is right for me." I actually got sucked into that a little bit with medications for "BPH, or enlarged prostate." All those guys, missing the fun because they had to pee. I probably should have seen a urologist much earlier in the process.
And here's our entry to the second thing that irks me. BPH (benign prostatic hypertrophy, or something like that). Maybe my knees hurt from RA (rheumatoid arthritis) as well as from the osteoarthritis that the X-rays show I've got. What about ED (erectile dysfunction)? COPD (who knows, but it means you can't breathe easily)? PAD (peripheral artery disease)? (I don't claim to have all of these.) Pretty soon I'll need a second box of Alpha-Bits to keep up with the D's.
The shortening of disease names to their initials has the effect of making these things seem less serious, less threatening. Hey, maybe with the magic medicine I can have a normal life. The initials also make it easy to slap a label on something, rather than find out the individual nature of people's problem and tailor an appropriate treatment.
I once wrote about a page and a half of a fantasy story in which place names, character names, and other elements had as their names the names of advertised drugs, mostly prescription. The brooding castle Imitrex... as I went, I began trying to attach a medicine name to a place or person somehow related to the nature of the medicine or the problem it was supposed to fix. It's been a few years, and there are many new medications - who knows, maybe they'll have a newspaper, the Daily Cialis, with, er, op-ED pieces.
The first is hardly new: the pharmaceutical companies advertise specialized prescription medicines directly to us, the consumers. This asks us to become diagnosticians and figure out what's wrong with us, then go to our doctors and tell them what they ought to prescribe. I thought that one of the reasons to visit a doctor was to ask them to diagnose the problem and prescribe what they think is best.
This is one of the reasons I gave up years ago the reading of "popular psychology" books. I readily identified with the problems described by the authors, but didn't seem to find relief from their suggested therapies; then, on reflection, realized I didn't have the problems, or at least not too severely.
The medical advertisers accomplish somewhat the same thing. Do I have what they're describing? Hey, it kind of feels/acts like that. Maybe I'd better go ask the doctor if old XXX "is right for me." I actually got sucked into that a little bit with medications for "BPH, or enlarged prostate." All those guys, missing the fun because they had to pee. I probably should have seen a urologist much earlier in the process.
And here's our entry to the second thing that irks me. BPH (benign prostatic hypertrophy, or something like that). Maybe my knees hurt from RA (rheumatoid arthritis) as well as from the osteoarthritis that the X-rays show I've got. What about ED (erectile dysfunction)? COPD (who knows, but it means you can't breathe easily)? PAD (peripheral artery disease)? (I don't claim to have all of these.) Pretty soon I'll need a second box of Alpha-Bits to keep up with the D's.
The shortening of disease names to their initials has the effect of making these things seem less serious, less threatening. Hey, maybe with the magic medicine I can have a normal life. The initials also make it easy to slap a label on something, rather than find out the individual nature of people's problem and tailor an appropriate treatment.
I once wrote about a page and a half of a fantasy story in which place names, character names, and other elements had as their names the names of advertised drugs, mostly prescription. The brooding castle Imitrex... as I went, I began trying to attach a medicine name to a place or person somehow related to the nature of the medicine or the problem it was supposed to fix. It's been a few years, and there are many new medications - who knows, maybe they'll have a newspaper, the Daily Cialis, with, er, op-ED pieces.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
What's In a Name?
One of my few readers has complained that during the entries describing my recent medical adventures, I used the word "penis" more often than was wanted.
First off, that was where the problems, both the longstanding one ostensibly under treatment and the various non-helpful bits along the way, presented themselves.
Second, that was the work site. And it was worked on by doctors, nurses, and maybe others (I was anaesthetized three times. And those tiny miners...).
Third, it was the part that should have at least smiled at the attention from all those women, but Noooo... tubes were going to go in and out of it, or were already there, and things were wrong, and it cowered in understandable fear.
But, let's see, maybe there were some other terms available: the male organ, for example, which sounds both prudish and utterly rude all at once, besides which we have a full array of organs, not just the one. Perhaps the member, or male member (what, pray tell, might be the female member? And member of what?).
I could have called it the pee-pee, which might have gotten it confused with the substance it lets out, or the wee-wee, which has the same problem. Or the wiener, which was a popular term in elementary school.
Dick. Prick. Cock. Dong. Schlong. John Thomas. One-eyed trouser snake. Rod. Hose. Tool. Etc. The secret of bodice-ripper novel writing, and some porn, was not in choosing the noun but in dropping at least two adjectives in front of it. Turgid, throbbing, engorged are just a few. Rampant manhood. You get the idea...
Or, as we did in high school, I could have named it. One fellow called his "Sock," because he claimed that's where he had to tuck it in the morning; I thought it was because he stuffed a rolled-up pair in the front of his trousers. Another name was "Charlie Brown," the poor little round-headed bald kid.
Or I could have just used some pronoun, like in the movie, "My Favorite Year." Peter O'Toole, as a washed-up actor, finds himself in the women's room. A woman comes out of the stall, sees him, and complains, "This is for ladies only." O'Toole, partly exposed (or so it's hinted), replies, "So is this, madam, but once in awhile I have to run a little water through it." The obligatory digression: this movie has been a favorite of mine for some time. The leads are O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker (cousin Larry), who is supposed to shepherd the drunken legend O'Toole until he completes an appearance on a 50's TV show. O'Toole also delivers a line which I've stolen: after being thrown out of a New York restaurant for assorted bad behavior on some previous visit, he is greeted by the host with "Wonderful to see you again, Mr. Swan." The reply: "Wonderful to be seen." Some fine little performances, and a couple fine big ones.
I think the complaining reader would have preferred to hear much less mention of the "private part" altogether. But it's like Voldemort in the Harry Potter books: if that's what the problem is, you need to call it by name.
First off, that was where the problems, both the longstanding one ostensibly under treatment and the various non-helpful bits along the way, presented themselves.
Second, that was the work site. And it was worked on by doctors, nurses, and maybe others (I was anaesthetized three times. And those tiny miners...).
Third, it was the part that should have at least smiled at the attention from all those women, but Noooo... tubes were going to go in and out of it, or were already there, and things were wrong, and it cowered in understandable fear.
But, let's see, maybe there were some other terms available: the male organ, for example, which sounds both prudish and utterly rude all at once, besides which we have a full array of organs, not just the one. Perhaps the member, or male member (what, pray tell, might be the female member? And member of what?).
I could have called it the pee-pee, which might have gotten it confused with the substance it lets out, or the wee-wee, which has the same problem. Or the wiener, which was a popular term in elementary school.
Dick. Prick. Cock. Dong. Schlong. John Thomas. One-eyed trouser snake. Rod. Hose. Tool. Etc. The secret of bodice-ripper novel writing, and some porn, was not in choosing the noun but in dropping at least two adjectives in front of it. Turgid, throbbing, engorged are just a few. Rampant manhood. You get the idea...
Or, as we did in high school, I could have named it. One fellow called his "Sock," because he claimed that's where he had to tuck it in the morning; I thought it was because he stuffed a rolled-up pair in the front of his trousers. Another name was "Charlie Brown," the poor little round-headed bald kid.
Or I could have just used some pronoun, like in the movie, "My Favorite Year." Peter O'Toole, as a washed-up actor, finds himself in the women's room. A woman comes out of the stall, sees him, and complains, "This is for ladies only." O'Toole, partly exposed (or so it's hinted), replies, "So is this, madam, but once in awhile I have to run a little water through it." The obligatory digression: this movie has been a favorite of mine for some time. The leads are O'Toole and Mark Linn-Baker (cousin Larry), who is supposed to shepherd the drunken legend O'Toole until he completes an appearance on a 50's TV show. O'Toole also delivers a line which I've stolen: after being thrown out of a New York restaurant for assorted bad behavior on some previous visit, he is greeted by the host with "Wonderful to see you again, Mr. Swan." The reply: "Wonderful to be seen." Some fine little performances, and a couple fine big ones.
I think the complaining reader would have preferred to hear much less mention of the "private part" altogether. But it's like Voldemort in the Harry Potter books: if that's what the problem is, you need to call it by name.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
All Prudent Speed
Well, the house needs some help with the roof. Believe it or not, the roof was a key part of the whole house project, until the basement got out of control and we decided that we didn't want our (miserable lying SOB) contractor on top of our house. Yesterday was the first day both warm enough and with the sun high enough to do a little melting on the roof of our one-story back room, which of course is on the north side of the two-story house. We have had ice dam problems in the past, years ago, which caused water to back up and find its way into the roofing and eventually into our back room, dripping through the suspended ceiling. We understood that the suspended ceiling was to hide a number of sins in the plaster ceiling and the space between the roof and the ceiling. We last roofed 20 years ago; that, plus the use of heat coils on the edge of the lower roof, seemed to put a halt to the problem.
This winter has been unpleasant. Not horribly snowy: although it snowed about 15 times in December and a few in January, only one snow exceeded two inches and most were under one inch. But December and especially January were well below average in temperature - where's the global warming when you need it?!? -and we ended up with a considerable snow-and-ice pack on that back roof. Melting up near the house couldn't make it to the edge where the coils had made passageways, so when hearing the surprising and dismaying drip drip drip onto the floor of our back room, I grabbed a wastebasket and got a bucket. I took off the lovely glass lampshade from the ceiling fixture, which was only half-full of water that had trickled down the fixture... and taped the switch into the off position.
Then I went into Laura's old room upstairs and removed the inner windows, then the outer storm/screen. Thank goodness this is easy. I went out onto the back roof with a snow shovel and a little hand axe - for gentle tapping - and cleared snow away from the suspected leak site. Wendy stood inside and watched me, cajoling me to come back in. She had the phone in hand, the better to dial 911 in case my natural klutziness won out.
This was all made harder as Laura and Ross were home, and we were all dressing to attend the wedding of one of Laura's good friends. But all went well: I got the window reinstalled, and we all got ready in time. I repeated the exercise today, to make a better water pathway as rain is expected Monday and Tuesday. I have a ladder that used to be high enough to get me onto the back room roof, but after the house project, we sit about 18" higher than before and, with my fear and hatred of ladders, I can't make that work. Add a new, taller ladder to the house project expense.
Oh, and add about $1300 for our trusted occasional project contractor Eldon to go into the basement and augment the shoddy and insufficient green board and sill that the original schmuck installed, then insulate the boundary. Our new basement got down to 43 degrees F, when the outside temperature was -10, and we ended up using a fan to blow upstairs air into the basement to restore a few degrees to our floor.
And the roof still needs doing, and Laura and Ross will be married this fall... good thing I LIKE oatmeal 3 times a day and am learning to deal with cheap wine.
Eldon Hilson is a local handyman, carpenter and contractor whom we have hired from time to time to handle small projects around the house. He's the ultimate Norwegian bachelor farmer, who lived with his parents well into his adulthood and may still do so (he's my age or beyond). He has been known to delay jobs while he worked with 4-H kids on their projects. Wendy once hired him for work on our porch, and he showed up with a bill for a job he'd done 3 years previously. On a couple of our jobs, he'd finish up except for one or two last trim pieces, which we still hold onto and call "Eldonboards," and hope to get him to nail down someday. But he's honest as the day is long, and a skilled carpenter, and a good source of local gossip, so we feed him coffee and doughnuts and continue to bring him in at need.
Except that we wanted the basement done in one year, we probably should have hired him in the first place.
This winter has been unpleasant. Not horribly snowy: although it snowed about 15 times in December and a few in January, only one snow exceeded two inches and most were under one inch. But December and especially January were well below average in temperature - where's the global warming when you need it?!? -and we ended up with a considerable snow-and-ice pack on that back roof. Melting up near the house couldn't make it to the edge where the coils had made passageways, so when hearing the surprising and dismaying drip drip drip onto the floor of our back room, I grabbed a wastebasket and got a bucket. I took off the lovely glass lampshade from the ceiling fixture, which was only half-full of water that had trickled down the fixture... and taped the switch into the off position.
Then I went into Laura's old room upstairs and removed the inner windows, then the outer storm/screen. Thank goodness this is easy. I went out onto the back roof with a snow shovel and a little hand axe - for gentle tapping - and cleared snow away from the suspected leak site. Wendy stood inside and watched me, cajoling me to come back in. She had the phone in hand, the better to dial 911 in case my natural klutziness won out.
This was all made harder as Laura and Ross were home, and we were all dressing to attend the wedding of one of Laura's good friends. But all went well: I got the window reinstalled, and we all got ready in time. I repeated the exercise today, to make a better water pathway as rain is expected Monday and Tuesday. I have a ladder that used to be high enough to get me onto the back room roof, but after the house project, we sit about 18" higher than before and, with my fear and hatred of ladders, I can't make that work. Add a new, taller ladder to the house project expense.
Oh, and add about $1300 for our trusted occasional project contractor Eldon to go into the basement and augment the shoddy and insufficient green board and sill that the original schmuck installed, then insulate the boundary. Our new basement got down to 43 degrees F, when the outside temperature was -10, and we ended up using a fan to blow upstairs air into the basement to restore a few degrees to our floor.
And the roof still needs doing, and Laura and Ross will be married this fall... good thing I LIKE oatmeal 3 times a day and am learning to deal with cheap wine.
Eldon Hilson is a local handyman, carpenter and contractor whom we have hired from time to time to handle small projects around the house. He's the ultimate Norwegian bachelor farmer, who lived with his parents well into his adulthood and may still do so (he's my age or beyond). He has been known to delay jobs while he worked with 4-H kids on their projects. Wendy once hired him for work on our porch, and he showed up with a bill for a job he'd done 3 years previously. On a couple of our jobs, he'd finish up except for one or two last trim pieces, which we still hold onto and call "Eldonboards," and hope to get him to nail down someday. But he's honest as the day is long, and a skilled carpenter, and a good source of local gossip, so we feed him coffee and doughnuts and continue to bring him in at need.
Except that we wanted the basement done in one year, we probably should have hired him in the first place.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
But Life is Pretty Good, After All...
OK. Lousy contractor, bladder surgery, etc. Economy in the shitter. But hey, where's the actual pain? As of this writing, I'm employed, my wife is well employed, we have health insurance and some retirement benefits, and vacation and sick leave. Our retirement funds have lost much of their value, but they have some years ahead in which to recover somewhat. Even our discretionary investment isn't quite gone yet. The car is OK. The house...well, that's another entry, coming soon.
And, as I start toting it up, life has brought much joy and much of interest. What follows is kind of a life list, in part to remind me and in part to say, hey, cool!
I have heard President Kennedy speak, at the Air Force Academy graduation of my cousin. I've shaken hands with Jimmy Carter and Al Gore. I've heard, live, presentations by Gore, Carter and Norman Schwartzkopf. I was patted on the head by WI Governor Warren Knowles at a Packers preseason game.
Oh, yeah, I was at the Ice Bowl. December 31, 1967. 13 below at kickoff. Packers defeated Cowboys to go on to the second Super Bowl.
Musically I've done fairly well. I have heard concerts by Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles. I've been at performances by Jimmy Buffett, Willie Nelson and Peter, Paul and Mary, The Association, Tom Rush, The Mothers of Invention (three times, twice in Appleton, WI), Peter Nero, The Manhattan Boys' Choir, and several others. And I played string bass behind Doc Severinson. I've seen two performances by Mickey Hart (he was one of the drummers for the Grateful Dead) and his world percussion tours; the concert finales left their venues and closed (1) the Las Vegas Strip (all right, one lane) and (2) part of Times Square.
I've seen live comedy from George Carlin, David Brenner, George Kirby, and David Steinberg. I've met authors Paul Harvey, Isabel Allende, Jeremy Rifkin, John Ciardi and a very drunk Hunter S. Thompson. And Neil Gaiman, who's on a bit of a roll lately.
My great-uncle Chester Colgrove was written up in the Saturday Evening Post in 1949, just before he lost all the oil money. If you go back eleven generations in the Porter family, you'll find folks who fought the injustice of the Salem witch trials. My daughter is the fifth generation of my relatives to attend the University of Minnesota.
I've been to some wonderful places: Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis. My house. Washington, D.C., several times and I want to go again. Cincinnati, with Mount Adams. San Antonio, especially the Riverwalk. Boston, New York. The rockbound coast of Maine. The North Shore of Lake Superior, which some say looks more like the rockbound coast of Maine than the rockbound coast of Maine. Toronto. Montreal. The moonscape of Sudbury (seriously, astronauts trained on the nickel mine tailings). Amethyst mining in Ontario. The POW camp.
The Grand Canyon. Arizona also has Mingus Mountain, Arcosanti, the Sonoran Desert Museum,, the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, Sedona and the Red Rocks region, Oak Creek Canyon, and some stuff by the Colorado River. Not to say Phoenix, Tempe, Monte's Steakhouse, etc., etc.
Las Vegas. Los Angeles. San Diego. Tijuana. Laguna Beach. Capitola. San Francisco. Alcatraz. The redwoods. Yosemite. Highway 101 in Oregon. California 1, for much of its length at one time or another.
Mount Rainier and Olympic national Parks in Washington, both about two hours from our apartment in Tacoma. Seattle, and Pike Place Market. The Roy Rodeo, local but great fun.
Tom and Roseanne's Big Food Diner in Eldon, Iowa. Hot Springs, Arkansas. Nauvoo, Illinois.
The Mormon Tabernacle. Lake Coeur d'Alene in Idaho, in perhaps the finest view location anywhere. Yellowstone, the Black Hills, the Badlands, Wall Drug.
And some of the places on the way: Columbus, Indiana, with its architecture; Hannibal, MO; Blanchard Caverns in Arkansas; Branson; Portsmouth, NH; Baltimore; a good deal of Florida; Mammoth Cave; and the homes and chosen restaurants of friends and relations in many great places.
England and Scotland. Paris. Germany, Austria, Switzerland. Turkey. The Dominican Republic.
Just listing these places wakes many memories - and hey, thank goodness for that - and may lead to some storytelling in future entries.
I've been to the top of the Eiffel Tower, the Space Needle, the Empire State Building. the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Building in Chicago. I've set foot in the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Caribbean, the mediterranean, and the Aegean, and Lakes Michigan and Superior. I walked across the headwaters of the Mississippi at Lake Itasca. I visited Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame.
What's most exciting about all of this is that there's so much more to do.
And, as I start toting it up, life has brought much joy and much of interest. What follows is kind of a life list, in part to remind me and in part to say, hey, cool!
I have heard President Kennedy speak, at the Air Force Academy graduation of my cousin. I've shaken hands with Jimmy Carter and Al Gore. I've heard, live, presentations by Gore, Carter and Norman Schwartzkopf. I was patted on the head by WI Governor Warren Knowles at a Packers preseason game.
Oh, yeah, I was at the Ice Bowl. December 31, 1967. 13 below at kickoff. Packers defeated Cowboys to go on to the second Super Bowl.
Musically I've done fairly well. I have heard concerts by Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles. I've been at performances by Jimmy Buffett, Willie Nelson and Peter, Paul and Mary, The Association, Tom Rush, The Mothers of Invention (three times, twice in Appleton, WI), Peter Nero, The Manhattan Boys' Choir, and several others. And I played string bass behind Doc Severinson. I've seen two performances by Mickey Hart (he was one of the drummers for the Grateful Dead) and his world percussion tours; the concert finales left their venues and closed (1) the Las Vegas Strip (all right, one lane) and (2) part of Times Square.
I've seen live comedy from George Carlin, David Brenner, George Kirby, and David Steinberg. I've met authors Paul Harvey, Isabel Allende, Jeremy Rifkin, John Ciardi and a very drunk Hunter S. Thompson. And Neil Gaiman, who's on a bit of a roll lately.
My great-uncle Chester Colgrove was written up in the Saturday Evening Post in 1949, just before he lost all the oil money. If you go back eleven generations in the Porter family, you'll find folks who fought the injustice of the Salem witch trials. My daughter is the fifth generation of my relatives to attend the University of Minnesota.
I've been to some wonderful places: Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis. My house. Washington, D.C., several times and I want to go again. Cincinnati, with Mount Adams. San Antonio, especially the Riverwalk. Boston, New York. The rockbound coast of Maine. The North Shore of Lake Superior, which some say looks more like the rockbound coast of Maine than the rockbound coast of Maine. Toronto. Montreal. The moonscape of Sudbury (seriously, astronauts trained on the nickel mine tailings). Amethyst mining in Ontario. The POW camp.
The Grand Canyon. Arizona also has Mingus Mountain, Arcosanti, the Sonoran Desert Museum,, the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, Sedona and the Red Rocks region, Oak Creek Canyon, and some stuff by the Colorado River. Not to say Phoenix, Tempe, Monte's Steakhouse, etc., etc.
Las Vegas. Los Angeles. San Diego. Tijuana. Laguna Beach. Capitola. San Francisco. Alcatraz. The redwoods. Yosemite. Highway 101 in Oregon. California 1, for much of its length at one time or another.
Mount Rainier and Olympic national Parks in Washington, both about two hours from our apartment in Tacoma. Seattle, and Pike Place Market. The Roy Rodeo, local but great fun.
Tom and Roseanne's Big Food Diner in Eldon, Iowa. Hot Springs, Arkansas. Nauvoo, Illinois.
The Mormon Tabernacle. Lake Coeur d'Alene in Idaho, in perhaps the finest view location anywhere. Yellowstone, the Black Hills, the Badlands, Wall Drug.
And some of the places on the way: Columbus, Indiana, with its architecture; Hannibal, MO; Blanchard Caverns in Arkansas; Branson; Portsmouth, NH; Baltimore; a good deal of Florida; Mammoth Cave; and the homes and chosen restaurants of friends and relations in many great places.
England and Scotland. Paris. Germany, Austria, Switzerland. Turkey. The Dominican Republic.
Just listing these places wakes many memories - and hey, thank goodness for that - and may lead to some storytelling in future entries.
I've been to the top of the Eiffel Tower, the Space Needle, the Empire State Building. the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Building in Chicago. I've set foot in the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Caribbean, the mediterranean, and the Aegean, and Lakes Michigan and Superior. I walked across the headwaters of the Mississippi at Lake Itasca. I visited Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame.
What's most exciting about all of this is that there's so much more to do.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Peeing, Part 7
It's two weeks since the last invasion of my penis. I am going peepee in the potty like a big boy. I'm having only a few small bits pass in my urine. Sometimes those bits can re-direct the stream, so I have to pay attention. Like it says in the tavern restroom: "We aim to please. You aim, too, please." I have not had bloody urine since early the day after the last surgery. My stream is generally much better that it was before the treatment began; this means that my bladder empties more completely and faster, so I finish in the can in two minutes rather than five. And it seems that the dreaded post-pee dribble is reduced.
I had a visit today with the urologist. He says that I should notice continuing improvement as time goes by. I am still on reduced lifting for the rest of February, but not as severe as before. He says I shouldn't snowmobile or ride ATVs (I've never done either one). I should stay off the exercise bike for a couple more weeks. I am not taking either of the prescription prostate medicines I had been on, Flomax or Avodart, as they did little and their target is now about half its former size. The parts that are gone were the parts that squeezed the urethra and the parts that crowned up into my bladder, causing difficult access to the outlet. I showed him a shape about the size of a small lemon, and he said that was a good estimate of the bladder stone he removed. He had sent the bit of tissue he removed for lab work, and he told me it was not cancerous. He said my urine sample was free of bacteria, so no infection had set up shop. He gave me the OK to begin imagining using my penis for things other than peeing. And, barring any setbacks, I will see him again this summer.
Based on that last round of problems, I have a bit of lurking paranoia. But I think that I may end up winning this one. To celebrate, I think I'll have another beer.
I had a visit today with the urologist. He says that I should notice continuing improvement as time goes by. I am still on reduced lifting for the rest of February, but not as severe as before. He says I shouldn't snowmobile or ride ATVs (I've never done either one). I should stay off the exercise bike for a couple more weeks. I am not taking either of the prescription prostate medicines I had been on, Flomax or Avodart, as they did little and their target is now about half its former size. The parts that are gone were the parts that squeezed the urethra and the parts that crowned up into my bladder, causing difficult access to the outlet. I showed him a shape about the size of a small lemon, and he said that was a good estimate of the bladder stone he removed. He had sent the bit of tissue he removed for lab work, and he told me it was not cancerous. He said my urine sample was free of bacteria, so no infection had set up shop. He gave me the OK to begin imagining using my penis for things other than peeing. And, barring any setbacks, I will see him again this summer.
Based on that last round of problems, I have a bit of lurking paranoia. But I think that I may end up winning this one. To celebrate, I think I'll have another beer.
Peeing, Part 6
Let's see, continuous irrigation... ah, yes, that's where they hang a gallon bottle of sterile water on a pole - actually two, so the top one might empty out before they get back but the bottom one probably won't - and run it into the input of a three-way catheter. Then they hang the largest night bag low on the chair or bed, and hook that up to the output (the third valve is the one they use to waterfill the balloon that holds the thing in the bladder). Then they set the drip feed to high, and come back every 45 minutes to dump the night bag and throw on another gallon.
This insured that I'd have people checking on me on a regular basis, and that three shifts of nursing staff would be messing with my privates, especially when the catheter output clogged up with a few stray clots a few times. Very nice ladies, all, and to no avail versus blood and tubing. I found that I could sleep through bag changes but not clog-ups. I started out in a chair, thinking I would sleep there as it was kind of a hospital recliner, but moved to the bed when I realized that it was way adjustable.
A hospital gown trying to cover tubes hanging from one's penis is not the most elegant way to receive visitors, but my wife's friend had given her a ride to Eau Claire Tuesday evening so she (Wendy) could check on me and recover the car for her need the next day, and Susan came up along with Wendy. No, she didn't get to attend to my parts, but it took some careful blanket work to avoid frightening all three of us.
Wednesday morning, I woke up, agreed with the chaplain that a little prayer would be a good thing, and was hauled off to surgery. As they began prepping me, someone from the medical staff told me that, yes, the thing I had been unable to pass was some kind of tissue and yes, it looked like "fish bait." So my thought that it looked like a grub was close enough. After I faded out, the surgeon went in, took a look around, and removed some blood clots and the rest of the loose chunk of prostate, along with a few more stone fragments. It was brief enough: I remember seeing 7:30 before the procedure and 8:45 after. I returned to my room, got a small late breakfast, slept a bit, then they came and removed the catheter. Just before noon I was brave enough to try a whiz on my own, and was more or less successful. I had lunch, and called Wendy's friend Beth's friend Del, who had volunteered to take me home as Wendy was attending a class at the U of Minnesota. He arrived in Eau Claire, and I was allowed to walk out to his vehicle. I was home by about 1:30 p.m.
The rest of Wednesday I snoozed, drank water, and peed. Thursday morning I took Lucy the dog for her walk, and gave a surprise to Beth as we met her at the end of her dog walking. I took Thursday off, it being a day following surgery performed through my penis, and found I was doing reasonably well.
I had booked a four-day weekend to attend Trivia in Appleton, but I had been badly unnerved by the tissue obstruction in my poor penis, and Friday I postponed the decision to go or not. As it turned out, we had a visit from our dear friends Terry and Ed, formerly and still occasionally from Madison but now also from Rhinelander, who were on their way home from a visit to one of their daughters. Then the weekend was miserably cold, and I just plain wimped out. My work holiday party was Sunday night in Eau Claire, and I didn't even go to that. Now, I had been nipping at the wine bottle during the day and driving wasn't wise, and I was on a ten-pound weight limit and the party was a bowling event, so I felt doubly justified on that one.
I feel bad about missing Trivia: my health concerns weren't much of an issue through the weekend. But when you can't pee, and when you've seen blood clots and white fibrous material failing to get through your peeing parts, it can color your attitude for awhile.
During all of this, I had very little actual pain, except for those times I felt a serious need to pee and couldn't; these times were what sent me to get re-catheterized, or to the clinic, or to call the nurses to suction out the catheter. I took Vicodin for a couple days following the first surgery, for less than one day after the second, and not at all after the last one. As I may have mentioned, Vicodin is nasty in its tendency to cause constipation, and the hassle of clearing that, which took a couple days after I stopped it following the first event, influenced my choice.
Then there's the informative nature of pain. I don't like pain, and don't seek it out. I don't get S&M, or people who are into domination. I have long-term pain issues with my knees, and I try to ameliorate that. But at a certain level, pain is a meter. It lets me know how I'm doing, how things are progressing. Am I healing? Can I move the leg, or arm, or shoulder further that I could yesterday? Less far? Is the sore throat responding to the medicine? Do I know where this headache came from (hangover, maybe)? It's a bit like snow, and like sticking a ruler into it to see how much you got before firing up the snowblower. You want to get rid of it, but you want to know about it. I'm going to have to do some exercises to work out a new knee problem; I will probably do the work first, to sense how things are, then take pain relievers to get through the day.
I have had to pay a little more attention to my fluid intake. Since the first surgery, it has been valuable to run fluids through my bladder, to help flush little remnants and reduce clotting. Water is generally the best for this, but anything that makes me pee has been OK. Yes, beer is pretty good at that, and some wine, George Dickel No. 12 Tennessee Sippin' Whisky, or ouzo/raki alternated with water have helped the days go by. Coffee, juice, soda, Simply Limeade - they all serve.
This insured that I'd have people checking on me on a regular basis, and that three shifts of nursing staff would be messing with my privates, especially when the catheter output clogged up with a few stray clots a few times. Very nice ladies, all, and to no avail versus blood and tubing. I found that I could sleep through bag changes but not clog-ups. I started out in a chair, thinking I would sleep there as it was kind of a hospital recliner, but moved to the bed when I realized that it was way adjustable.
A hospital gown trying to cover tubes hanging from one's penis is not the most elegant way to receive visitors, but my wife's friend had given her a ride to Eau Claire Tuesday evening so she (Wendy) could check on me and recover the car for her need the next day, and Susan came up along with Wendy. No, she didn't get to attend to my parts, but it took some careful blanket work to avoid frightening all three of us.
Wednesday morning, I woke up, agreed with the chaplain that a little prayer would be a good thing, and was hauled off to surgery. As they began prepping me, someone from the medical staff told me that, yes, the thing I had been unable to pass was some kind of tissue and yes, it looked like "fish bait." So my thought that it looked like a grub was close enough. After I faded out, the surgeon went in, took a look around, and removed some blood clots and the rest of the loose chunk of prostate, along with a few more stone fragments. It was brief enough: I remember seeing 7:30 before the procedure and 8:45 after. I returned to my room, got a small late breakfast, slept a bit, then they came and removed the catheter. Just before noon I was brave enough to try a whiz on my own, and was more or less successful. I had lunch, and called Wendy's friend Beth's friend Del, who had volunteered to take me home as Wendy was attending a class at the U of Minnesota. He arrived in Eau Claire, and I was allowed to walk out to his vehicle. I was home by about 1:30 p.m.
The rest of Wednesday I snoozed, drank water, and peed. Thursday morning I took Lucy the dog for her walk, and gave a surprise to Beth as we met her at the end of her dog walking. I took Thursday off, it being a day following surgery performed through my penis, and found I was doing reasonably well.
I had booked a four-day weekend to attend Trivia in Appleton, but I had been badly unnerved by the tissue obstruction in my poor penis, and Friday I postponed the decision to go or not. As it turned out, we had a visit from our dear friends Terry and Ed, formerly and still occasionally from Madison but now also from Rhinelander, who were on their way home from a visit to one of their daughters. Then the weekend was miserably cold, and I just plain wimped out. My work holiday party was Sunday night in Eau Claire, and I didn't even go to that. Now, I had been nipping at the wine bottle during the day and driving wasn't wise, and I was on a ten-pound weight limit and the party was a bowling event, so I felt doubly justified on that one.
I feel bad about missing Trivia: my health concerns weren't much of an issue through the weekend. But when you can't pee, and when you've seen blood clots and white fibrous material failing to get through your peeing parts, it can color your attitude for awhile.
During all of this, I had very little actual pain, except for those times I felt a serious need to pee and couldn't; these times were what sent me to get re-catheterized, or to the clinic, or to call the nurses to suction out the catheter. I took Vicodin for a couple days following the first surgery, for less than one day after the second, and not at all after the last one. As I may have mentioned, Vicodin is nasty in its tendency to cause constipation, and the hassle of clearing that, which took a couple days after I stopped it following the first event, influenced my choice.
Then there's the informative nature of pain. I don't like pain, and don't seek it out. I don't get S&M, or people who are into domination. I have long-term pain issues with my knees, and I try to ameliorate that. But at a certain level, pain is a meter. It lets me know how I'm doing, how things are progressing. Am I healing? Can I move the leg, or arm, or shoulder further that I could yesterday? Less far? Is the sore throat responding to the medicine? Do I know where this headache came from (hangover, maybe)? It's a bit like snow, and like sticking a ruler into it to see how much you got before firing up the snowblower. You want to get rid of it, but you want to know about it. I'm going to have to do some exercises to work out a new knee problem; I will probably do the work first, to sense how things are, then take pain relievers to get through the day.
I have had to pay a little more attention to my fluid intake. Since the first surgery, it has been valuable to run fluids through my bladder, to help flush little remnants and reduce clotting. Water is generally the best for this, but anything that makes me pee has been OK. Yes, beer is pretty good at that, and some wine, George Dickel No. 12 Tennessee Sippin' Whisky, or ouzo/raki alternated with water have helped the days go by. Coffee, juice, soda, Simply Limeade - they all serve.
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