brugdor

Pretty much the same old stuff. I've been waiting now for almost two months for my surgeries to get approved by the insurance company. I call the doctor's office every Monday to see if they've heard anything. I'm afraid to call the insurance company because quite frankly it seems more like general incompetence that's holding things up and not a purposeful effort to stall things. I could be wrong there but for right now I feel a call from me is just going to confuse them even more and might result in a longer delay.

I've been walking 2-3 times a week to try and get a bit stronger to make my recovery go quicker. I walk the cemetery that's basically my backyard and I've been thinking of taking my camera along on a walk or two to get some nice pics of it. The old section has civil war era tombstones. It's surrounded by trees on every side and is a really pretty place with a lot of history in it.

Went for my sleep study for the ENT on Saturday night. Slept almost not at all as the study was done without CPAP/BiPAP. Every time I started to drift off I'd immediately wake myself with a loud snore. The good news is that that's what the ENT wanted to see to determine how severe my apnea was. So now I wait a couple of weeks for the results to get back and go see him again to talk about surgeries.

Dwarf is tired and grumpy. Dwarven pet is grumpy because I left him locked in his office last night so he wouldn't drive the neighbors crazy yowling for me (remember he's part Siamese).

One bit of good news is that I weighed myself at the sleep center this morning. Previously I had weighed myself there in the last few weeks and had strangely gained 20 pounds over what my home scale was telling me. So I panicked and started to really watch what I was eating. According to my home scale I lost about five pounds but I had no idea what that might mean if it was twenty off to begin with. Anyway, when I weighed myself this morning it was obvious that the goober PA that worked the scale on my previous visit had no idea what he was doing. He had it in the wrong notch (slide scale) and thus it came up much closer to my home scale weight this time. So while I panicked for nothing, I still lost a little weight.

And just because it's been a while since I posted a pic of the little bugger, here is the Dwarven pet. "I can haz daddy's towel?"

and don't have much to report yet. He wants a new sleep study without my BiPap to determine exactly how bad my apnea is at this point before he decides on which surgeries are necessary. This means that next Saturday (the 13th) I'll be going in and getting that done. It's going to be really bad because A) I haven't fallen asleep without my mask in about 6 years so I need it to even feel like I can sleep and B) it's already a very uncomfortable setup with these tests.

I've asked them to put me out with some drugs and it seems like they are open to that. Hopefully that's the case. It just means that I'll blackout part of the night as they'll likely give me Ambien to do it.

lol

Let's do the big news first. June 2nd I go to see a new ENT. He is at Emory like my sleep doctor and according to my sleep doctor this ENT likes to do a bunch of surgeries at once. I could end up getting a UPPP, turbinate surgery, deviated septum, hyoid Suspension and genio-glossus advancement all done at the same time. I guess if you are going to go through some pain you may as well knock it all out at once. I will of course be updating if any of this gets planned. If you wish to gross yourself out you can read about all of those procedures here.

Tony had dental surgery to remove an abscessed tooth. While it helped his drooling he's still licking and scratching too much. I honestly don't know what to do at this point. I could keep having him get the steroid shot that seems to calm him down but it's a bit expensive to do every month and a half or so. The other option is an allergist and that's pretty expensive as well. Sigh.

Over the last two quarters of pottery I've gotten little done. I've made some plates and some of them turned out nicely but I'm just not motivated right now for some reason. I haven't even added them to my gallery. I did see some people doing some really cool hand built leaf platters. I might take a crack at some of those.

My sister is about 5 weeks away from her due date so I'm going to be an uncle soon. I'm looking forward to that.

Playing mostly City of Villains atm. Some TF2 mixed in as well now that the Spy update is out. I'm in Champions beta but that's all I can say atm with the NDA. When it's lifted I'll share what I've thought of it so far.

So in the long line of odd things going on with my cat, I've found out he has tested positive for Bartonella. If you are like me and have no idea what that is, read this.

The bit of fun that made this post worthy is that my vet's front office was thrown into a state of complete confusion over it. Apparently the vet who sees Tony is out of town until next week. He had tested Tony for Bartonella a few weeks ago and said he had to send the blood off to get the results. I never heard back and asked about it yesterday when I went in to pick up Tony's food (he is diabetic so he gets special food). The vet's notes said he had called me but I never got a message.

Then the girls in the front office took about 10 minutes to try and figure out what on earth the doctor's notes said he had done and came back out to tell me he wrote something about "VPOA" but they didn't know what that was. So they are asking the techs in back. They finally figure out that this stands for Veterinary Pharmacies of America. So they give me the number for VPOA and tell me to call them because my vet has apparently called in the antibiotic for Tony there.

I called them today and they said they had no record of anything for Tony since October of last year. Apparently my vet has used them before for Tony. However they asked me for the name of my vet's office which I gave them. They said that they had ordered something on the 6th that had Tony's name on it and that it was delivered and signed for at my vet's office on the 10th. So my vet had it the whole time.

0.o

I swear, if they weren't so good with my pets *shakefist*

ROFL

Very punny :)

It's bleeped just fyi.

The best young comedian out there IMO. I hadn't caught this bit before and it had me in tears laughing. There's some NSFW language fyi.

http://www.peta.org/sea_kittens/about.asp

People for Eating Tasty Animals is now trying to get everyone to start referring to fish as "sea kittens" because they presumably will be harder to eat if you think of them as kittens. Which brings up several questions. Will Jessica Simpson now think tuna is made of kittens? Will dogfish be filled with self loathing? Will catfish gain enough confidence to stop being bottom feeders? What kind of litter is best to use in a fish tank?

In recognition of this effort, I'm going to order some blackened kitten fillet for dinner. I hope it doesn't have any bones in it. I hate when that happens.

Kenny Stabler and Ray Guy are the two remaining Raiders from their era that belong in the Hall of Fame and still haven't made it in. People against Stabler's placement in the HoF use his interception numbers to claim he doesn't belong. Ken Stabler's interception to passes thrown percentage is 5.9%. Joe Namath, who is in the HoF, had a percentage of 5.8% Stabler beats Namath in TD percentage 5.1% to 4.6%. He also beats some HoF players named Moon, Marino and Montana in that same category. At 59.8% pass completion he has the highest rate of completions of anyone that played in his time. All the others higher on the list played in the era of the West Coast Offense. Roger Staubach, in the HoF, had a 57% completion percentage. At 27,938 career passing yards Stabler has more than HoFers named Starr, Griese, and Van Brocklin. He's also virtually tied in that same category with some guy named Bradshaw who had only 51 yards more than his total.

As for Ray Guy, the only reason he's not in the HoF already is because he was a punter. It's sad that there's that kind of stupidity in voting people into the HoF. No one who is sane argues against Guy's numbers being the best of his time. He dominated his position during his time. No one was even close.

Linky


Enjoy :)

As a gift to each of you, I've asked this drunk band of Dwarves to visit your homes today. If they break anything I'm not paying for it either. ;)

Figured I was due for a general update so here goes -

Book I'm reading - Band of Brothers by Ambrose. Had the show on DVD for a while now and got the book by Dick Winters that he wrote about his experiences with Easy Company but I never read the original.

Books in my queue - I was reading through Robert Aspirin's Myth series again when I got some new books including Band of Brothers. I got another book by Homer Hickam (Rocket Boys aka October Sky) called Torpedo Junction. It's about the U-boat attacks off the East coast of the US during WWII. Lastly I got a Feist Riftwar series book. It's one of the ones someone else wrote that goes back to the actual riftwar with a side story and Feist just rubber stamped his name on it. I've read two of the three like that and they've been good thus far.

Movies I've seen lately -

Mystery Men - Watched the first 30 minutes desperately wanting something to happen to keep me interested. I ended up fast forwarding through about half of it and gave up. It's a shame too since I like Paul Reubens and William H. Macy.

Fargo - Somehow I sat through this piece of junk. Why this got two Oscars and was nominated for several more, I have no idea. I guess the big hook for Hollywood was that everyone talked like mid-westerners? I usually like Coen brothers movies but this was just a boring movie IMO. My parents watched it on their own and weren't that thrilled with it either so at least I know it's not just me.

The Right Stuff - I hadn't ever seen this and it was a good one. If nothing else it would be interesting for many of you to see just because it has so many people in it that are big names now. One kind of funny thing is that Lance Henriksen (Bishop the android from the movie Aliens) is one of the astronauts and I'm not sure if he even has five lines in the whole movie.

Transformers - I was over at my parent's and this came on HBO so I watched it. I think had I not been the right age to have kind of grown up with the cartoons it wouldn't have been that good. As it is, I am that age and was entertained. I love that they had the same voice for Optimus. Oh and I guess I finally got to see what all the fuss over Megan Fox was about. :P

I Am Legend - This also was on HBO when I was over at my parents place. I had never read the book it was based off of so I didn't have any bias and found it entertaining as well. There could have been less setup and more zombies towards the beginning but perhaps that's too much L4D (see below) talking. I liked the non-Western ending.

Movies in the queue -

Thunderheart - recorded this tonight. I saw it many years ago with my college friends. It's a good movie if I recall so I'm looking forward to it.

It's a Wonderful Life - Had this on DVR for a few days and just haven't gotten to it yet. It's another old movie that I've somehow gone through all these years without catching it.

Games -

Left4Dead - great zombie killin FPS. Versus mode allows you to alternate playing zombies and survivors against people online and is great fun. Even Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation reviews) liked it.

COD4 - more FPS action

TF2 - rarely these days but the Scout update is coming soon so I'm sure I'll be playing then

Medieval Total War 2 - I love the battles in the Total War series.


That's it for me. What's everyone else been up to?

http://www.playauditorium.com/

Fun game that will cause you to waste half of your work day. You've been warned. :P

Owch! :D

Just watched Hotel Rwanda for the first time as they showed it on TV. I've avoided seeing Schindler's List as I'm well aware of what went on in Nazi Germany and didn't feel the need to see it depicted on screen. I couldn't say the same about what happened in Rwanda. I mean I knew but not nearly in so much detail.

I don't know whether to be glad such men as Paul Rusesabagina and Oskar Schindler somehow appear during such terrible times or to be sad that they are ever needed or both.

:(

Ah the joys of giving a cat a pill. George and I have it down to a science since she's been getting them twice a day for years now. I can get one down her usually in about 5 seconds. Tony is new to it and I'm having to give him a pill for allergies. He's a strong little booger and even when I wrap him up in a towel so he can't fight his way out of my grip he still manages to make it quite challenging.

Today his front paws got free and the results...well they weren't pretty. :(