Runester

OK, so I made it to the gym yesterday but not today. Why? Well there are some excuses but no valid reasons. Excuse 1, it was my game night and I didn’t get home until after 10:30 PM. Excuse 2, I stayed up to watch Medium (which had been TiVo’ed) and didn’t get to bed until after midnight. Excuse 3, I woke up too late and too tired to prep and go. The truth is, I could have made myself get up around 8:00 AM and go to the gym. I would have been running late all day (which I ended up, anyway!) but at least I would have gotten in.

Anyway, nothing special going on tonight which means I shouldn’t have any challenges to doing my night-before prep, which will make tomorrow morning easy (again). I’ll build this habit one day at a time, whether it kills me or not. Stay tuned.

Well, I finally went to the gym today. I’m surprised the roof didn’t fall in on me! I’ve been paying for a membership there for three (3) or four (4) years and this is the first time I’ve set foot in the place in the last two (2)!

What made the difference? Well, besides the motivational stuff it was mostly planning the night before. Making sure I had my work clothes packed, my gym clothes layed out, and my routine written down didn’t leave any room for fiddling about or delaying. As it turned out, the plan went off as expected and I got in my first workout and arrived at work at the usual time.

Anyway, since it’d been so long I was as week as a kitten and my muscles are so pumped that I had a hard time shampooing my hair (couldn’t get my arms up that high)! The pump will wear off in a little while and as I make this a habit, it’ll get easier.

Being back from Michigan is a little weird. I find it frighteningly easy to slip back into my routine, which doesn’t help when I’ve carefully thought out better goals and behaviors that will move me to where I need to be. So, part of the (initial) struggle is just fighting inertia and climbing out of those ruts.

So, here I am in a spare bedroom of my brothers house; back in Michigan again. Already today, I’ve seen my Mother, Father, Brother, and his Fiance’ - plus some friends. It always surprises me how quick it is to catch-up with family. I may have two weeks here, but most of the visiting and seeing their faces was done today.

I still have a very strong desire to move back here and be part of their lives, again. As well as participate (in my own small way) in the excitement that my brother brings to his life with business ventures and solid accomplishments. Massachusetts has become much too comfortable for me - and I could easily see myself maintaining status quo indefinitely there. The problem with that, is that I am 37 and status quo isn’t nearly good enough. If I end up 47 or 57 in the same situation? Well, life only hands you so many do-overs and second chances.

The downside is the economy here. To say it sucks would be over-hyping it. Detroit leads the nation in job losses, unemployment, and mortgage foreclosures. To live here, I need to be able to support both myself and my (one day soon) family. This may be a serious challenge under the current conditions.
I can’t wait until my gf arrives so I can make all of thoverhypingtions - she still has never met my brother or any of his friends, even forclosuresf these years. Further, I am hoping that a measure of the excitement and possibilities I feel here will rub off on her.

Finally, though in a previous comment abogf the fire at Izzy’s … I stated my desire for a thorough investigation of the cause … the current theory (as forwarded by the investigators) is faulty wiring in the attic. Ironically, even though that is currently being reported, the insurance company has yet to pay on the policy and still insists on investigating everyone involved. This may sound like prudence - except my brother is still on the hook for the mortgage payment every month, only now with no business to pay it with. Anyway, he’ll get through this like he gets through everything else.

So I have not posted in a very long time. Bad me. That doesn’t mean that nothing has been happening - on the contrary! Here is a brief summary.

Bad News - A good friend of mine was diagnosed with a cancerous growth in the bone on his leg. This was a very scary thing to hear, for both his family and for all of us that know and love him. It’s terrifying to realize that in my twenties I kept hearing about different friends getting married or having kids … and now in my mid thirties the news is about illness, divorce and death.

Good News - The cancerous growth was removed and the prognosis is excellent! The expert opinion is that he is going to be A-OK and with some monitoring and follow-up, will live a good long time.

Great News - My brother has proposed to his new girlfriend and given her a beautiful engagement ring!

Weird News - my gf and I went to see Body Worlds 2, at the Boston Museum of Science. It’s a display of real human bodies and body parts that have been ‘plastinated’ and put on display. It was interesting to walk around and see human skeletons, bones, brains, hearts, lungs, livers, and much else besides. It was more then worth it!

Etcetera - A co-worker / associate of mine wanted to point out that his latest blog entry contained some clever ‘atheist’ quotes from famous historical people. The quotes are thought provoking, and the page is low-key and non-pushy.

What annoys me about this and most other efforts by atheists is the interestingly filtered view of history they tend to display. While very few Christians are or have ever been rabid, violent, or offensive - that is ‘Christianity’ itself is displayed. While the Crusades and the Inquisition are often mentioned, I rarely ever see a reference to the Abolitionists, Women’s Suffrage, the Red Cross, or the modern Civil Rights Movement. These were all organized by Christians and supported by Christian values and advocated from Church pulpits.

Do you know what else I rarely see a reference to in all of this ‘xtians just leave us poor little atheists alone’ material? I rarely see references to Mao, Pol Pot, or Stalin. These were Communist atheists who attempted to create new ‘perfected’ states and killed millions of their own citizens. The combined (estimated) body count? 34 million people. So, ‘godless’ governments killed more people and in significantly fewer years then all of the Crusades and the hundreds of years of the Inquisition - combined. Funny, how this rarely comes up.

So, on the one hand not all Christians (or religious folk in general, regardless of faith) are the intolerant devils poisoning our culture and retarding the liberalizing progress of our society; and on the other hand not all atheists are the thoughtful, progressive, tolerant vanguard trying to pull society up and out of the tar pits of superstition and violence.

Snow Update

All of her staples (all 25 of them) were removed last Monday. Her scar has healed up nicely, and she seems to be doing fine. I did feel a lump near the top of her scar and took her back to the vet, but he suspects it’s just scar tissue from the surgery.

I also asked what would happen if the cancer does come back and spread, and his sobering answer was: it would invade her lungs and make her breathing very labored.

Anyway, I’ve got an appointment for two weeks and will be taking her back every two weeks to make sure she is thoroughly checked out.

RPG Update

My Wednesday night game of The Puddle (using a customized Everway setting) is going swimmingly. I’m being mentored by a friend and very experienced GM in Michigan. Meanwhile, the players seem as motivated to play and as involved in the world as I could ever have hoped for. I certainly have made mistakes, and trying to introduce a new character (a replacement for a player who’s first character died) - I handled the situation ham-fisted. I hope to do a little repair tonight.

On the other hand, the players have begun to question their character’s motivation for the direction I’m leaning the story. So, under some mentorship, I’ve come up with an excellent way to reinvigorate them and show them that handling the plot as presented is fully inline with their character’s motivations as well as their own self-interest.

The gf and I spent today walking around Province Town, MA. We took the high-speed ferry from Boston, about a 90 minute ride. Then we walked our asses off, seeing shops and galleries and such. We took a 40 minute trolley tour around the whole thing, and learned a lot about the history. Such as: the regular population is only 4400 which swells in the summertime to 50,000 and on holiday’s like the upcoming July 4th … 100,000!

A lot of people ‘warned’ me that P’Town has a very high concentration of homosexuals. I guess they didn’t want me to be shocked or something if I were to see two men holding hands or two women kissing or something. Little ol’ me has been around the block a few times, and I wouldn’t have been bothered by this. In fact, while there were many homo’s about, the behavior was far from outragious and the whole place had an extremely welcoming and friendly feel to it. At least what I could perceive for the ~ 6 hours we spent there. I wouldn’t mind coming back, especially if we could secure a room at one of the inn’s (everything was sold-out for this holiday).

Of course, I’ve also been told that the behavior is a great deal more risque` after sun-down, when most of the tourists return to Boston. So, who knows.

The only annoyance, and slight at that, was the emphasis on homosexuality in weird places. It’s not a book store, it’s a “Gay and Lesbian Studies” book store. It’s not an art gallery, it’s a “Gay and Lesbian Experience” art gallery. Etc. Etc. Etc. Why did this bother me? Because it’s like I walked around with a T-Shirt that proclaimed loudly and to everyone I met, “Uncircumcised Male, and Proud!” and then only went to stores that catered to the uncircumsized always tried to hang-out with other’s in the ‘uncircumcized’ movement (whatever the hell that is).

At some point, it’s a private matter and sometimes I just want to buy a book at a bookstore or a CD at a music store … and not really have to stop and wonder about the state of the authors / singers / store proprietor’s sexual preference / foreskin / dietary needs / whatever.
Well, whatever floats your boat - or high speed ferry back to Boston!

[PS: I took hundreds of pictures, hoping to find a handful of good ones. I'll try to get them posted by the end of the week.]

First: Snow is doing fine, she’s showed a great deal of energy recently and her newly trimmed and stapled scar is healing very nicely. She’s due back at the vet’s next Friday night … maybe they’ll even remove the staples then - who knows.

I’ve been wondering lately if I shouldn’t change my blog software from Blogger.com to WordPress. I’d hav to host it myself, no big deal, and then import all of my current content (now possible with an ATOM module for Perl I’ve experimented with). The main selling point is all the extra features that WordPress offeres including TackBack and BlogRolls. Blogger.com only allows you to integrate these features as 3rd-party websites and you have to manually edit your template.

I’ll have to do some local testing / staging first. I’m not messing everything up just on a whim … my last template change has already dropped the links to all of my static content and I want all of that stuff back, too!

So, after taking her in Monday evening to have some of the stitches / staples removed - I had to take her right back Tuesday morning because the surgical seem opened in two small (0.5 cm) gaps. There was no blood or puss or anything, but I was concerned. She had to stay overnight, twice. But, this morning I was able to bring her home!

They didn’t just add a couple of stitches, which is what I thought. They actually opened the whole seem, trimmed the dead skin from the edges, and then rejoined it with a whole row of surgical staples. It looks much neater and the row of staples takes almost all of the stress of moving and pulling off of the seem. I also recieved another bottle of antibiotic droplets for her and have to keep cleaning the seem with hydrogen pyroxide and applying the ‘AniMax’ antibacterial ointment. Hopefully she’ll heal up real nicely and we’ll be able to get those staples out and return things back to normal.

Snow has been in the vet’s care for one and one-half days. They needed to wash our her scar and today they were going to add two stitches for two small areas that had opened Monday night. She is in good hands and should be able to come home tomorrow morning.

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On a totally different topic, here is my addition to pop-culture. It’s rude but witty, and totally ripped off of someone else, I’m sure.

Well, last night I noticed that where two of the stitches had been removed, the scar opened leaving a 0.5 cm gap. So, I waited until this morning and called the vet back and requested that they re-stitch those spots. The vet does not normally see appointments today, so someone had to paged … anyway, I dropped Snow off this morning and she’ll get stitched. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick her up tonight.

In other, worrisome news, the chance of survival for a cat after being diagnosed with Fibrosarcoma is not so good - especially if it recurs. When I asked the receptionist about what she’s seen, she reports that the two cats who were diagnosed (via excision and biopsy) died within weeks. On the other hand, they were diagnosed with “severe malignancy” and Snow was only diagnosed with “moderate malignancy” - so perhaps there is more hope.

In any case, I’m praying for her. She is a good companion and deserves as much life as she can get.