The Stuff Inside My Head

I’m not going to be doing very many original posts here, if any at all. For those of you interested, this is where you can find me:

http://saintsinner.keepconnectedlive.com/

or

http://saintsinnerrandomthoughts.blogspot.com/

Please feel free to stop by and catch up.

Weather forecast: snow and a lot of it!

We’re expecting a fair amount of snow here over night, anywhere from 4″ to 7″, and then another 3″ to 4″ tomorrow night. Areas to our south are looking at a significant amount of ice.

I’ll gladly take the snow, but you can keep the ice.

We had a small snowfall less than a week ago, just enough to cover the roads and cause a little bit of travel trouble. I had to put the truck into 4 wheel drive to get out of my neighborhood. That was pretty cool. I will say that driving this truck in snow is completely different than the Explorer that I just got rid of.

I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, particularly after how much I complained about it, but I miss the automatic 4 wheel drive that the Explorer had. When it sensed the rear wheels start to spin, the front axle would engage, thus keeping the vehicle going straight and the rear end from sliding out on me.

The F-150 is 4 wheel drive, but it doesn’t automatically engage. Trust me on this when I tell you that the rear end slides out a little too easily. I realize that part of it is operator error, but in my defense, I haven’t driven a full-size truck in snowy conditions before. Also, the back end is quite light, which lets it slide around easier. I think that an auto-engaging front axle would help out quite a bit.

Does it mean you’re older when you no longer want to go sliding around corners in the snow? I’m choosing to think of it as just being a little more careful.

Now for the bull(s).

Yes, it’s the second round and short-go of the PBR Dallas. I’m watching it as we speak. I really hope my PBR fantasy team does well tonight. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my guy Guilherme has a great ride. He needs one, badly. I’m also wishing good luck to JB Mauney, just not quite as good as Marchi. As sad as it is to say, I didn’t pick either one for my team this week.

Next week, though, I’m not sure who I’m gonna pick. I’d like to say I’ll pick Marchi, but I just don’t know. He’s involved in a small little wager, $20,000 to be exact, next week. He’s riding the world champion bull, Bones.

I’ll probably seek out some advice again, as I did this week.

You all have a fine night.

I’ve a bedtime story to go tell.

It’s funny the way time works.

It can be so fluid and flexible, twisting and changing to suit it needs.

Sometimes, it seems to pass very quickly, and that’s usually when you really don’t want it to at all. Like it’s just compressing in on itself and you’re losing some of it somewhere. The minutes and hours just disappear into thin air.

Any number of things can cause this to happen, like a great phone call, a fine book, a good movie, writing in an online journal, chatting, or just about anything that really captures my attention. I mean, who’d have thought that a Sunday afternoon spent talking on the phone could pass so quickly? Time spent in the company of someone you care for always passes too quickly.

A vivid day dream will trigger this fast passage of time as well as anything.

Sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in a day when these things happen. Time, I think, sees that you’re enjoying yourself, so it just accelerates as fast as it can.

I often wake at 3:30 or 4 in the morning and look at the clock and think, “Great! I got an hour and a half or so to just kinda laze here and enjoy the silence.” That time simply evaporates quicker than it has any right to. Maybe it’s trying to tell me I should go on and get up and start my day.

When time really wants to screw with you, it can make entire weeks and months go away in the blink of an eye. For example, I can’t for the life of me tell you where last year went. It was here and gone before I got the chance to introduce myself. Now, we’re more than halfway through January, and it looks like it’s going to pass even faster.

I remember as a kid thinking how long it took from one Christmas to the next. That’s definitely not the case any more. It doesn’t much seem like one’s gone and the stores are bringing out Christmas stuff again. Or am I alone in this? If so, then that’s fine. I kinda march to a slightly different drummer anyway.

Then there’s the opposite side of this whole time thing. The side where it seems to stretch on and on without end.

The best example of this I have is the late afternoons and evenings at the fire department, as well as holidays spent on duty. Time seems to come to a stand still sometimes. If not a stand still, it, at the very least, slows to an imperceptible crawl. I absolutely hate it when that happens, which is quite frequently. As I’ve said before, Saturdays and Sundays are the worst. Then, it’s not just the late afternoon and evenings, it’s the entire day. I swear those shifts must last at least 36 hours if not more.

These are the days, combined with all that I have seen, that I really want to just leave it all behind and do something else. I could walk away and not look back.

Anticipation is something else that can cause time to slow way down. You know, when you’re really looking forward to something, wishing that day would get here. Time just pulls that nasty trick and says, “Well, if you’re that anxious, then I’m gonna drag my feet and make you wait that much longer.”

Time really can be a pain in the butt like that, don’t you think? Or maybe I’m alone in this, too.

I have found one thing that really likes to play both sides of the fence with time. This thing is sleep. When I can sleep, and I mean really sleep well, the time passes quickly. It’s like my eyes are opening before they even get completely closed, and it’s time to get up. Those are good kinds of sleep.

Then there’s the times, which are more frequent, when I can’t get to sleep, or if I do, it’s a very fitful, almost wakeful, sleep, where you’re not quite awake, but not fully asleep either. Just the act of turning over can cause your eyes to open, and they are inevitably drawn to the clock.

I’m thinking that surely several hours have passed, but sadly, only 45 minutes or an hour have grudgingly gone by. My eyes close and then pop back open, turn back to the clock, and surprise, it’s the same situation. Time has only let another hour go by.

There’s been many nights where I’ve seen each hour of the night displayed on my clock. Those are very long nights, and they are the worst. I swear that I think I can hear time chuckling at me on those nights. Actually, I think it’s more of an evil cackle on those occasions.

There’s more to say about the subject of time, but for now, this well has gone dry. My thoughts have moved on to something else that I would like to get written down.

For now, I hope you’ve enjoyed these thoughts of mine.

Yes, that’s me in this picture. About all I can tell you is that it was taken at WKU’s L.T. Smith Stadium in Bowling Green, KY somewhere between 1990 and 1992. I have no idea who I’m talking to, or who the people behind me are. I guess I’m getting forgetful in my old age.

Anyway, enjoy the picture and feel free to laugh loud enough to wake the neighbors. Or disturb the livestock. Whichever.

Have a wonderful night!

After lunch, my son and I decide to go to the Little Hurricane boat ramp and see about getting the truck a little dirty, or at least take it off road for a little bit. Do any of you remember the picture of a completely muddy Chevy pickup truck that I used in an entry over at the old JS? It was at Little Hurricane that we got it so dirty.

I was looking forward to this excursion, as was my son. We took the back way to the boat ramp, driving along some one lane chip and seal roads. My son asked me several times if I knew where I was going. I just looked at him, smiled and answered, “I’ve driven these roads more times than you can shake a stick at. Don’t worry.”

Surprisingly, he listened to me and just enjoyed the scenery. The only other comments I heard were things, “Wow!” and “Cool!” and “I didn’t know this was back here.”

On a quick side note, I saw a lot of nice photo ops; an old barn, a run down oil well, the Ohio River. I’m thinking that maybe either tomorrow afternoon or next Saturday afternoon, I’m going to go back and take a few pictures.

Anyway, we get there, and to our dismay, all the trails are gone. The access to where they were is gone. We were really disappointed at not being able to put the truck into four wheel drive. I don’t know when this happened, but from the looks of it, it’s been a while. C’est la vie.

What I’m thinking now is this. My parents have something like 32 acres in Ohio county. The access back to the property just about requires a four wheel drive. Once again, either tomorrow afternoon or next Saturday afternoon, get directions from mom and pop as to how to get there, and then take a drive. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find the place and then will be able to put the truck into 4×4 and see what happens. The camera will be going along for the ride to. You never know when a good photo op will present itself.

Now, on to the first PBR event of the day, the Table Mountain Casino Invitational. There were some great rides, but sadly, my guy Guilherme Marchi didn’t even make the championship round. Yes, JB Mauney did make it. However, he got bucked off on his ride in the short-go.
The winner of this event was Kody Lostroh, and man, he looked fantastic, as did the bull he rode to the win, Troubador. He scored a fine 94.5 points.

Renato Nunes placed second, Matt Bohon was third, and Shane Proctor was 4th. JB came in 11th overall.

The PBR Sacramento Classic first round is on Versus tonight, live at 8pm cst. I really hope Marchi has a better showing this time out. I suppose it’d be okay if Mauney did a little better too. Having Marchi not make the finals in the Table Mountain Invitational really hurt my standing in the PBR Fantasy Road to Vegas challenge. Now that I think about it, I do need Mauney to have a great ride tonight. He was one of my picks for this event.

I’ll be back later to update with the first round results.

This basketball team of my son’s is driving me batty.

They can’t seem to put together a complete game. It seems that they either play a great defensive game and a poor offensive game, or vice versa. I don’t get it.

Today, it was a fantastic offensive game. They passed the ball well and took good shots for the most part. They also got in there and fought for more rebounds this week too.

The defense was sadly lacking though. I will say that the effort on defense in the second half was better than the first, but overall, I just wasn’t pleased. Maybe I’m expecting too much out of a group of 10 & 11 year olds, but I don’t think so.

Our turnovers were better this week, only 9 or 10, as opposed to over 15 last week. All the work on dribbling last practice seems to have done some good. I think there will be some more this week.

I’m also happy to report that my son did not take any shots from outside. Instead, he drove to the basket, took shots and drew fouls. That’s what I’m looking for. Of course, he committed his fair share of fouls too.

Final score: 34 to 24.

Interruptions seemed to be the order of the day today, and it got quite aggravating.

While some of you might choose to refer to these interruptions as “emergency calls” or “just doing your job”, it just seemed that they came at all the wrong times today. I was about ready to pull my hair out.

So, it all starts this morning. I’m not too far into a nice phone conversation, and my captain pokes his head into the room where I’m at and announces that it’s time for training.

Yeah. This is interruption #1.

It’s another power point presentation on patient evaluation, and one that I’ve seen before more times than I care to remember. At least I have a return call to look forward to.

I guess interruption number 2 wasn’t so much an interruption as it was unfortunate circumstances. See, we were out on a call for a roof collapse at One Park Place here in town. Turns out a sprinkler pipe on the top floor burst and dumped enough water to ruin all three floors in that wing. We’re talking extensive water damage here.

We were getting close to being down here when the return call comes in. In fact, I had already taken my gear off and put all the tools back on Rescue 1. Chris and I were actually heading to the truck. Anyway, we get to talk for a little bit. Then the chief shows up, as well as Emergency Management. Then someone decides that we need to go through all the rooms individually and shut off all the breaker boxes.

So, instead of being done and able to talk, I have to end the conversation and go walking back through the bottom floor, turning off the breakers. It really wasn’t too bad until I realized that my feet were getting soaked. Let me tell you, wet feet and 16 degree weather don’t go well together. There was also the small problem of water in some of the breaker boxes. We end up spending another hour or so there.

By the time we got back to the station, it was well past noon. We had time for a quick lunch before the next call came in, an accident with injuries. We respond to that, and before we even ended that call, Rescue 1 had to leave to go to another accident with injuries on the opposite side of town.

We hadn’t much more than arrived, when, guess what? The phone rings. I hand my phone to Richard, tell him who it is, and he takes the call for a little bit while I help out with getting the patient out of the car and loaded into the ambulance. On a side note, this was one of the ugliest knee injuries I have ever seen.

Anyway, we get her squared away, and I’m able to take my phone back from Richard and finally have a conversation. Chris drives Rescue 1 back to the station, and I find a place to sit and talk. It was a fine conversation!

Dinner time rolls around, and so does another alarm as the roast comes out of the oven. A ruptured sprinkler pipe at Home Depot. A call for a ruptured sprinkler pipe comes in at the Hampton Inn before we even get to
Home Depot. As you can tell, it’s a pretty common call this time of year.

Finally, as I sat down to write this, yet another alarm came in. Would you believe another ruptured pipe? Do these people not insulate their pipes enough or what?

Anyway, that’s been my day so far, and it really hasn’t been a bad day at all. Just annoying with all these interruptions. That’s okay though. I guess that’s the nature of this business. I did enjoy the short conversations too!

Tomorrow…no calls to interrupt calls. Sweet!

And for those inquiring minds that would like to know, my blood pressure reading this evening is 115/58.

After some more encouragement and suggestions, I actually cooked a decent meal for a change tonight instead of just throwing something together. It was a very nice change of pace.

Here was the menu. I baked 4 filets of orange roughy, two seasoned with lemon pepper and two seasoned with garlic, red pepper, black pepper, and just a little bit of oregano. They were quite tasty!

To go along with the fish, I made some whole grain pasta and drizzled a mixture of olive oil, garlic, oregano, basil and a touch of parsley over it. Again, it was quite good.

Then there was some basic wild rice. No special seasoning or anything there.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. There was also a small salad with spinach leaves, with the dressing on the side, not poured over it.

Anyone want to join me?

All in all, it was a rather good dinner. And my son even tried some of it too! There was, of course, lots of whining and complaining, but he survived.

Here’s the thing. I really, really do enjoy cooking like that. I just don’t do it very often for a couple of reasons.

One is that, honestly, I just don’t take the time to do it very often.

The other is that it’s hard to cook for just two people, one of whom is rather picky. It gets old cooking something nice for just him and me. It’s alot easier cooking for four people, or even more.

On something completely different, today was the first day of taking my new b/p medication. I did seem to be a little dizzy or lightheaded or something today. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what I did feel like.

As per the doctors instructions, I’m going to check my b/p here in about 10 minutes. (insert music of your choice here)

Okay, 10 minutes have passed. Just so you’ll have something to compare to, my reading yesterday was 148/100.

So, now for today. My blood pressure reading was 123/61, with a heart rate of 66. Rather big change, I’d say. It’ll be interesting to see what tomorrow’s reading is.

Hope you have a fine night!

Today’s appointment with the doctor could have been alot better, but it could have been alot worse too. At any rate, I think I’m gonna live.

Here’s how it went. I get there and only have to wait about 20 minutes or so before being called back. I follow the nurse back and she takes my temperature, blood pressure and weighs me. She confirms my current medications, and then, as a final question, she asks me if I have ever had a colonoscopy.

I think, “Great, that’s what I want to do”, followed by, “What the heck does that have to do with my blood pressure anyway, except make it go up even more.”

Anyway, she takes me back to the exam room, and just a few minutes later, Dr. A walks in. I really like my doctor. He has a very dry sense of humor, but once you get used to that, he’s really quite entertaining.

We talk for a while about why I’m visiting him today, and I tell him. Here’s the really surprising part though. I didn’t hold anything back. I told him everything, from the sounds in my ear, to the results of the stress test from my hazmat physical a year ago this month, to the current stresses and uncertainties.

He gets down to business and takes my blood pressure. He gets a reading of, if I remember correctly, 137/96. A little too high, particularly on the bottom number.

He has me take my shirt off, and listens to my heart sounds while I’m sitting up. He tells me to lay down, and he listens all over again. He listens to the sounds in my neck. He was quite thorough.

I sit up and put my shirt back on, and he says to follow him.

We go to a different room, and I get hooked up to an ekg machine, and he looks at it and makes notations and such. Then, I get to go get on the treadmill for a stress test. Yeah! I’m sad to report that I didn’t go for very long before my blood pressure spiked and he called it quits.

Anyway, he gave me a prescription for another blood pressure medication. This one is called Lisinopril. It’s an ace inhibitor. I’m not sure if I spelled that correctly, but that’s what it sounded like anyway. It is supposed to make the veins relax so that the heart doesn’t have to pump so hard. I have to take this along with my other b/p medication.

I really hope it works. I have to keep track of my blood pressure for the next 6 weeks until I go back for a check up. If my b/p isn’t down to at least 120/80, then he told me we’ll have to “pursue other possibilities.”

Joy.

So there ya go. Overall, I guess things could have turned out worse.

Tomorrow is the big day. I go to see my doctor tomorrow about my blood pressure…again.

When I first went to see him in October of 2007, my b/p was about 160 over 110. Yes, I know that’s ridiculously high. He drew some blood, ran some tests, and started me on blood pressure medication that I have been on ever since. It didn’t take too long, and my b/p was back down in the low 120’s over around 70. Much better!

Here in the past month or so, I’ve noticed that it has started to creep back up. I don’t know why for certain, but I have a few ideas. I mean, I’ve been running, weightlifting, eating a little better, and completely cut out the 4 or 5 Mountain Dews I used to have a day. I’ve dropped over 25 pounds now. You would think that would do nothing but help my blood pressure, wouldn’t you?

It’s the roaring sound in my ear, as well as being able to hear and feel my pulse in my head that really bothers me though.

I’m also not very fond of the headaches it seems to cause either.

So, with my family history in consideration, and a fair amount of encouragement, I’m going back to see the doctor in the morning. Keep your fingers crossed.

I’ll report back tomorrow on the results of the visit.

Right now, I’m off to watch some UK basketball.