I hate Nature - or - why is Gia trying to kill me?

About two weeks ago i developed a small zit like blemish on my right hand. i know that doesn't sound very exciting and well it isn't. I show my wife thinking nothing of it and proceed to try and pop it.

no luck, oh well.

later in the week i notice the small blemish is turning into a larger blemish.

OK, may be easier to pop now. no still no dice.

put a band-aid on it and try and ignore it.

it's now Saturday and i decide to go to the home show and see if there is anything fun to do there. not really. look around at the dozen or so HVAC contractors, spa peddlers, plumbers and door/window manufacturers. nothing to exciting.

I notice that i have a mild itching coming from the general vicinity of my right pointer finger. having not put on a band-aid today because i didn't think it was needed i examine the now even larger blemish.

this is odd, looks like a bite of some form. when i get home i confirm the suspicion with my wife. yep that looks like a spider bite, and call poison control just for some advise. they tell me to soak in Epsom salts for 5-10 minutes every 4 hours to speed the healing along but everything looked right on track for it being OK. just watch out for read tracking.

apparently bright red veins are a BAD thing.

well stupid spider. wish I'd seen it bite me or at least been able to squish it

About the same time i have a sore throat and developed body aches and chills. not putting 2 and 2 together i start taking DayQuil with little effect. after a few days i catch on to the wonders of prescription strength Ibuprofen and miraculously my throat feels better and everything else seems to be better too. my hand is still swollen and tender but seems to be holding up.

so about a week after the initial bite I'm feeling good enough to get a little work done so i decide to install my mother-in-law's arbor in her front yard. I dig, i measure, i level, i buy and move 240 pounds of concrete, (twice). by the end of the day my fingers are yellow from the sweat and the unlined yellow gloves I've been working with all day. taking the right one off was quite a chore since the band-aid covered would is still there. feeling OK otherwise.

later back at the homestead it's bed time for kiddos and i notice red streaks running from my wrist to half way down my forearm.

uh-oh.

no pain from that though.

Pulling off the band-aid showed an interesting little addition. instead of a small zit like blemish was a black necrotic looking swollen mass of bleck.

uhm what did poison control say again.

Dammit don't remember.

call again.

Spider bite - yeah
red lines -yeah

ER! - crap.

call Mom to let her know we're dropping the kids over for the night and going to have a romantic getaway at the local hospital.

Joy.

we get to the hospital and the lines are now to my elbow fun. I also cannot even touch the area with my jacket without unreasonable amounts of pain. we finally get seen by a triage nurse take vital signs blood pressure's a little high - really? my hand is swelling, i have God-only-knows what toxins running up my arm and I've been waiting for 2 hours. i may be under a little stress ya think?

but hey on the bright side i did finally get to watch Armageddon.

another hour later i finally get to the inner sanctum, a private room with a bed and everything. more time passes and the doctor or nurse practitioner or shaman or witchdoctor or someone finally came in and checked on me.

that looks like it hurts, here let's squeeze it and see if we can get goo to shoot out. no little ooze? OK we'll use that and make a culture.

By this time the red lime has passed my elbow and is half way up my upper arm - that's bad right? Also my hand is very swollen and rather gross looking.

OK time for IV drugs and immobilization of the hand.

finally.

so i get a bag of antibiotics, a shot of some non-narcotic pain killer and a tetanus shot, just for giggles.

while this is going on the nurse proceeds to try and fit my right hand into a left-handed brace. when i point this out the nurse looks quizzically at the brace like it's the first time she's seen one and proceeds to look at her own hands to verify that the thing was in fact for the wrong hand.

15minutes later the nurse returns with the correct arm brace and proceeds to wrap my hand now we just have to wait for the antibiotics to finish dripping.

Finally at 1am we get to leave the hospital with samples of wonderful vicodin and a prescription for not 1 but 2 powerful antibiotics and 1 prescription for the aforementioned vicodin.

i slept well that night.

so slowly but surely the swelling has gone down and the red lines have disappeared. the black has been replaced by white and that then replaced by loose skin which dried out and peeled of during a bandage change.

my doctor decided to keep me on 1 of the antibiotics for an extra week, of course it's the one in a gelcap.

you can still see the spot where the infection is still hanging on, it is greenish yellow and about the size of a pencil eraser but getting smaller. I now have pretty much full motion of my hand again still a little hard to open my pills but that's why i got married ;-)

now as to why nature sucks.

i am just getting over a major infection (cause by nature) only to have nature attack my sinuses in an completely unprovoked pollen attack. i have spent the day sneezing and blowing my nose.

I hate nature.

completely unrelated: my hand is starting to hurt. i think I'll take a vicodin and go to bed.

Changed my mind.

As many of you know my dad is a teacher. OK, many may be stretching it a little, since I think only my wife reads this (and then only after much whining and crying by me.) Any way dad = teacher. He works for a college in Washington state and as such has access to academic versions of software. I have been running Windows 7 on my machine since before it was released as beta and now I actually own a version of Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit. Yay! academic discount.

I actually like the final version of 7. very responsive and loads fast on my rapidly aging P4 platform. (see prior post) I had to dump Vista earlier last year due to the fact that when i tried to sync my Blackberry or Zodiac or headset or something with my bluetooth radio the system mysteriously and permanently de-activated it's self. No background, limited Internet coverage, much suckage.

So back to XP for me.

Everything is happy in XP land but there was a stirring deep within, a certain ..... "I'm bored let's see if we can multi boot this bad boy."

Wow, that was remarkably specific.

Now i have a copy of partition magic, i just can't find the key, and since we have moved i have kind of given up on ever seeing a lot of things for the foreseeable future. so off to google i go. and to my joy i find:

Easeus Partition Master Home Edition

maybe I'm overstating the importance of this, but i was able to split my main drive into two partitions and

1) not completely destroy my Windows XP setup

-and-

2) make enough room for Win7.

I had a Beta version of 7, or maybe it was a release candidate but anyway I installed it and everything is running OK. for the most part i was just running on XP since i was working and was not sure if the software was win7 compatible.

anyway back to the academic software since i had a final release hologram imprinted genuine happy version i installed it on top of the pre-release software. all happy.The only problem i have right now is the Sound Blaster 5.1 Platinum keeps throwing an error since it is not supported in anything higher than XP and I'm too lazy right now to open my case to pull out the card. I just ordered a new DVD burner so i guess I'll fix it when that arrives.

I actually have pretty much migrated to Win7 permanently but i had something on my XP partition that i needed, so booting to XP it took forever to run. I think I'll stick to Win7. but will keep my XP installed at least until i have to reinstall when i upgrade my motherboard. I'm thinking I'll go with an AMD platform this time.

Wave for me.

We have for the longest time had a couple of options in our house when it came to venting our kitchen: we either used a stand fan or a floor fan. As this new house has limited vents. first missing vent: dryer, had to cut a hole in the wall to install that. The next vent, while not technically a vent but just as annoying, the drain for the washing machine was installed but the breakout for the pipe was neither broken nor out. had to use a hammer, a screwdriver and a very sharp knife to unplug it so we could wash our clothes. Finally there is no vent in the kitchen so anytime pasta falls unnoticed under a burner and catches fire or something spills in the oven the smoke detector will ring. my wife teases me that I use the alarm as a timer, which never gets old by the way. :-)

So anyway back to my point.

my wife is an avid Craigslist reader. So one day she sends me a link showing a over stove microwave/light/vent.

Yay! vent.... wait there's no ductwork in the kitchen for that. other than that looks easy enough to install. first we do an in-depth search for just the right installation manual. found it yay! the first couple of pages do not make me happy as it gives the instructions on how to install the duct. I am not going to cut holes all the way to the roof to get this thing installed. reading it again I see one saving grace: ventless. buried in the instructions for wall-vent and roof-vent is the option to vent to the kitchen. seeing this as the best option for the least amount of cutting I follow these directions and flp the fan so it blows out the front.

the laundry list of required equipment was a little scary, framing square? 4 different drill bits, a pencil! like I said scary.

Since this was a Craigslist purchase, we only got about half the required screw, no toggles, though we did get extra lag-bolts for some reason.

Quick trip to Lowe's later and I'm ready to install this puppy.

holding up the mounting bracket I mark the holes so I can drill pilot holes and bore out for the toggles to fit. now I screw the plate securely to the wall.

the next measurements I made were especially painful as I was trying to fit the dimensions of the microwave under a cabinet with 3/4 inch overhang,upside down. after successfully drilling holes in the cupboard above the stove.

By the way did I mention this thing is heavy?

I lift the microwave into place and it is not sitting flush on the left side.

lug the beast back off the wall and notice the mount is bent. okay, plier time.

After straightening out the tab the microwave is now flush, but still being supported by me. As I can't see this as a viable long term solution I guide the 2 inch mounting bolts through the washers into the afore mentioned holes and …..

they don't fit. :-(

Luckily I have extra 3 inch bolts that came with the toggles.

Success.

looks like I knew what I was doing huh?













during clean up I could not get the Dirt-Devil away from my little flower helper. at least she's willing to be a big helper. After all the dust has settled and the insides have been cleaned we test it with microwave popcorn. works perfectly. thankfully I won't have to move this thing anytime soon. :-)

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Back it on up....

I have nothing better to do on my lunch hour apparently, just saying.

I was at Costco today, i know big surprise i work across the street and have a membership, might as well abuse the free samples ;-)

any way

I saw something that i would like to not live with out.

what is this magical something?

I'll tell you.

i saw a solar power generator.

this would be perfect for my Man Cave. put that puppy on the roof and run my system 24/7 without pulling from the power grid at all. i hope. it would be nice to be able to test this before buying.

i think maybe it would be better to save my pennies for a higher version.

i don't know how much power my system pulls right now so i might need more than one of the lower models.

projects projects.....

I really need to be more diligent with these posts.

i say that a lot don't I?

since really no one reads this i guess it's just for my own personal complainitude (is that a word?)

My wife and i just bought a house. Yay! no more trailer living for us :-)

on this property there are 3 buildings.

1: Main house
2: carport
3: garden shed

my main point of interest is the carport, which also happens to have an enclosed "shop". mostly finished with drywall and such, but a plain concrete floor. we descided early that this would be mine. My "Man Cave". again Yay!

I have my computer set up in there and running adequately on Wi-Fi at about 24kbs which i can live with as it's probably 50 feet to the router through empty air, an exterior wall, a window and an interior wall. it actully looks like it is running better than my all interior run at the trailer.

I am happy with my "Man Cave" as far as it is a location to keep my pc protected from the elements ;-) unfortunately since we are still in the process of moving it also doubles as storage for things that don't belong anyware specific or have yet to be sorted. So i have my corner and eventually i will be able to store my tools in some sort of organized fashion, this would be a first, actaully knowing where the screwdriver i need actaully is.

i am using my wife's old desk right now and a folding chair. i wonder if i could convince someone to donate me a new chair.

I actually am running my computer on an extention cord (yes extention cord, orange.) since there are no plugs on the wall i am using.

project 1: install new powerpoints to eliminate the tripping hazard.

project 2: attach my 5.1 speakers to thge ceiling to get thiose cords off the floor.

my wife is a transcriptionist and does some pretty fast typing i'm thinking about joining her because she set's her own schedule and makes pretty descent money. that being said i will need a new chair, maybe need to set up an ac unit to keep me alive when it gets hot outside :)

Harley Geek.

I am admittedly a geek.
can't you tell?

But my brother-in-law and wife convinced me to buy a motorcycle to save gas. Well , that was a year ago. I have had a bitchin' blue 2004 Harley Davidson Sportster 1200 custom for most of that time. My wife bought me a Team Oregon motorcycle class for my birthday, which would have been a great surprise if my mother-in-law's boyfriend hadn't let the cat out of the bag

:-(

oh well.

so any way missed the written part of the class by like 2 points :-(

rescheduled that and decided to just take the test again.


As of Thursday 04/30/09 I am a licenced Motorcycle owner.

yeah me!

I have rode to work every day since so far and it has been threatening to rain, but who cares. I have a Harley and by God I'm gonna use it :)