cough to vegas!

It occurred to me after I wrote my last blog entry that I forgot to mention that we're going to Vegas tomorrow, August 8^th through Wednesday, August 11^th. Six of us are staying in two suites at the Encore, a newer hotel by Wynn. We don't have anything really planned, except to get drunk, gamble, and have fun. I'll take some pictures to share with you all when I get back, but probably not too many. You know what they say about Vegas...

What's going to put a slight damper on this trip is that my cough is still problematic. I was hoping that I would be over it by today, but sadly I am not. I went to the walk-in center at the Austin Diagnostic Clinic (which I recommend for quick, unplanned trips), and the doctor gave me a prescription for a respiratory infection. Luckily for everyone else, it isn't contagious; luckily for me, the prescription does not clash with alcohol. When I arrive in Vegas tomorrow, I will be armed with a trifecta of doctor-recommended drugs: Claritin, Sudafed, and Zithromax. Hopefully between the three of them, my trip to Vegas will be relatively cough-free.

See you guys in a few days!

Recent pedometer counts:
8/5: 9173
8/6: 6328

the pedo is back

Wait, what? No, not a pedophile. I'm using my pedometer again to count how many steps I walk in a day.  I will be updating you periodically on my daily totals, and I encourage you guys to participate even though none of you have pedometers.

Yesterday, having taken the day off, my step count was a meager 3433. Today included our last kickball game and was a whopping 12784.

Oh, you're curious about kickball? Well, we only had 7 players and we lost 9-3. Not a great kickball season.

cough cough

The highlight of the past week has been an incessant cough that just doesn't seem to go away. I haven't really felt sick, nor have I had any symptoms aside from drainage into my throat (yummy!). I've been told mold has been high, and that is an allergen I'm fairly certain I'm allergic to, so I believe it's only allergies causing this cough. Nevertheless, even today I am still suffering from the cough, although it seems to finally be calming down (knock on wood).

In reality, there have been several highlights in the past week. The main one was our house party last Friday night, in celebration of Justin's 24^th birthday. We had quite a few people at the house, and overall I had a fun time. I was up until 3 AM, whereas people more hardcore than me were up until around 5 AM. I was surprised I lasted as long as I did, considering my bedtime is typically 11 PM nowadays.

The other highlight has been my motorcycle maintenance. As of writing this, I have completed the following tasks:

• Disassemble and replace forks
• Remove wheels, take to shop and get new tires put on
• Tighten kickstand bolt
• Replace sprockets and drive chain
• Flush coolant lines, replace antifreeze
• Replace oil and oil filter
• Replace and lube clutch cable

I still have the following tasks to take care of, but as of right now my motorcycle is finally ridable again:

• New brake pads/brake fluid
• Adjust valve clearance
• Replace spark plugs
• Clean air suction valves
• Carburetor sync

The fun part is that I don't know anything about a couple of those! Don't worry, though, I have a service manual that details every step.

Unfortunately, I don't have anything else to add (or more appropriately, I don't feel like thinking about what else to add), despite not having blogged in a week. Most of my free time in the last week has been spent doing the above, so really there hasn't been all that much. Remember when I jammed my thumb? My thumb is still not fully healed, but it's mostly better. I can't put full pressure on it, and there are some things I still can't quite do. I wonder how long it'll be until it's 100%?

Oh, and I've been going a bit crazy with the links to the left, adding links almost daily. Even if my blog isn't updated daily, you still might want to check daily for new links and tidbits.  You never know when it might help you with Qrank!

...and now for something completely different (fast-forward to the middle of the video)

here, have some pictures and videos

Oh, and don't forget to periodically check the links to the left. If you have something you want to share, let me know and I will add it!

(source)

(source)

the kickball blues

Another kickball game last night, another loss. It wasn't a terrible loss, at 3-6. The other team just had some powerful kickers. A typical strategy is to keep them low to the ground, to prevent them from getting caught. It's unbelievably easy to get out in kickball if you kick the ball up in the air, because it's so big and slow. This team said "screw you!" to that strategy. Their guys demolished the ball almost every time, getting it up in the air into the outfield. They either got lucky, or placed them well, because they generally went in between our people so that they couldn't get caught.

At one point, a ball was kicked up and fast toward me, like a line drive. I had a pretty good chance of catching it, but it got up just high enough to be in front of the field lights. The field lights are right behind the kicker, meaning anytime the ball goes up, you are being blinded by them. So, on its trajectory toward me, I lost track of the ball and barely missed catching it as it slipped awkwardly out of my hands. Even worse, the ball drove into the knuckle of my thumb, which immediately hurt. I was fairly certain it was jammed then, and this morning I am all but positive. My thumb is swollen, and I can't really use it much because applying any pressure to the joint causes sharp pain.

This comes as bad news for several reasons. First, you really don't appreciate how much you use your opposable thumb on your dominant hand until you have to avoid using it. Since it's only jammed and not completely incapacitated, I can still use it for some things. Overall, though, I have to avoid using it. Second, jammed fingers can heal as quickly as a week, or as long as a month if you're really unlucky. Hopefully I'm lucky. Third, we have a softball game tonight which I'm not confident I can play in anymore. Gripping a bat involves placing it in between your index finger and your thumb, and that is the location of my inflamed joint. I'm pretty sure that batting would hurt. Then I thought that I could skip batting and only go out in the field. However, I realized that throwing a softball involves gripping it in your hand and also using your thumb. So I might not be able to play after all. Finally, if my thumb continues to hurt for the next week or so, that will really put a damper on my motorcycle maintenance. For obvious reasons, I'm going to need to use both my hands fully. I might just have to sit on that one for a little while longer. [Update: This just in! As if my hand-writing wasn't bad enough, it is now worse!]

There is a very slight chance that it's a fracture instead of a jammed joint, but I highly doubt it. Nevertheless, I took this as an opportunity to finally schedule a doctor's appointment. I haven't been in about 3 or 4 years, so I figured it'd be a good idea to get a checkup/physical. I'll have him take a look at my thumb, too, but I don't anticipate it being fractured, nor do I believe he'll be able to help much since it just needs time to heal.

Oh well, shit happens.

hurray for reading

Many, many months ago I started the book "The Hunt for Red October", a classic by Tom Clancy. I read only a small amount, and put the book down. A few weeks back I picked it up again, and tonight I finally finished it. The ending was so gripping that I had no idea that I was past my normal bedtime. Whoops!

About two years ago, I bought 3 books: Terminal Man, The Hunt for Red October, and Kiterunner. The first two were suggestions from Justin, and the latter was one from Andrea. Two years later, I have sadly only knocked off two out of the three. It's not that I don't enjoy books, I generally like all the books I've read. Instead, the problem has been that I'd rather be doing many other things, such as playing video games or bass, watching TV shows, or hanging out with people. Reading has always been so far down in my priorities that it never came up. I decided I wanted that to change, and so far I've succeeded.

Once I finish Kiterunner, I am open to your suggestions, my fellow readers. When I say I am open to your suggestions, I'm being quite literal. I don't have a favorite genre, and I will give both non-fiction and fiction an equal shot. As long as it's engaging, I don't care, but I don't know why you would recommend a book that isn't engaging. If it's not engaging then it's not a good book, right?

So post up one or two of your favorites, and I will give them a look-see. In the off chance that I've already read it, I'll let you know so you can give me another.

first day, first aid

I'm not going to bother recapping the weekend because I'm lazy. So there! Average weekend, nothing out of the ordinary. I did some hanging, some downtowning, and some lunching.  Instead, let's start with the first day of the workweek.

Today was a special day at work; I was in training all day to become first aid certified. The first half of the day was spent on medical, injury, and environmental emergencies, and knowing how to handle such situations. They're all very basic, since we're obviously not trained medical professionals. It just allows us to do something at work for the few minutes before paramedics arrive, or to look for warning signs for things such as heart attacks and strokes.

The second half of the day was centered around administering CPR and properly using AEDs. A common misconception, and one that I actually held before the course, is that CPR is used to actually bring people back into consciousness. That is incorrect, and usually CPR doesn't "resuscitate" people as the name might suggest. We were told that typically, adults whose hearts stop beating are due to underlying reasons which simply pumping won't correct - they will need hospital intervention to get their heart jump-started. Instead, CPR is used to maintain blood flow to the vital organs - the heart and brain, especially - to keep them oxygenated. By using compressions on their chest, you act as their heart and circulate their blood for them, giving them the extra minutes needed before the EMT arrives with better equipment. Ventilation (through breathing into their mouth) isn't entirely necessary these days, although it does help to provide additional oxygen, especially when CPR is being administered over several minutes. However, they recommend that if we ever have to give CPR to a stranger we don't know, to do compression-only CPR and not risk mouth-to-mouth contact. They say that giving compressions is better than not doing anything at all, which is understandable. Now, there are instances where CPR can actually bring people back around, but those cases are rare, such as children who were drowning. In a case such as that, the heart was perfectly fine and only stopped beating because of lack of oxygen.  By giving CPR, you are re-establishing oxygen to the heart and it will return beating as normal.

AEDs on the other hand are used to send electrical shocks to the heart, to correct very specific heart conditions. They are almost completely automated, and are virtually dummy-proof. You turn it on, and it will tell you audibly to place the pads on their chest and to plug in the pads. Then it will analyze their heart, and determine if a shock is needed. If so, it will recommend a shock and charge itself. Once everyone is cleared, you push a button and it sends the shock. You administer CPR as normal and it will analyze and shock if necessary every 2 minutes.

CPR is intended to be given until trained professionals arrive. Since patients don't typically revive, you can be giving CPR continuously for upwards of 10-15 minutes until the paramedics are ready to take over. I was pretty tired after just 2-3 minutes of CPR. Tough stuff.

In completely unrelated news, many months ago Taylor and I completed a little mashup for fun. In case you're too lazy to click the link and read about mashups, I will briefly explain it for you. A mashup is a song that is made up of segments and snippets of a ton of different songs. Basically, we took vocals from some songs, and put it on top of music from other songs, and put them all together for about 5 minutes. In case you're interested, here it is (it's a bit soft so you might have to turn up your speakers). As a warning, you should know that there are rap songs in this mashup and thus the language is not safe for work or prudes. I think we're going to work on a new one soon.

Okay, I just hyped you up to listen to that mashup, right? Well it wasn't as easy as I was hoping to post it, so I will work on it and put it on a future entry. I didn't want to delete everything I wrote above, so instead I just teased you. I apologize.

Finally, a lot of my time the past week has been spent practicing piano and reading, neither of which I regularly do. I'm proud of myself for working on both of those. However it has come at a cost, because I haven't played much bass in the last few weeks. That's okay though, it will always be there for me when I'm ready.