J.P.

Three feet.

When all was said and done with this latest snow storm we received 36″ inches of snow in less than 48 hours. Recovering from surgery, I haven’t been able to help Earl with the clean up and when I tried to help out he let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I was to get my butt back inside and that he would handle it. All I was going to wipe off the Jeep but he was adamant. “No!”


We just got back from taking a drive around the area to see how our neighbors were making out with their snow cleanup efforts. Close to home the folks seem to be doing well. There’s a few houses down by the housing development that still have buried cars in their driveways, which are discernible only by a mailbox at the end of the driveway. Driving in the city of Utica was a different story, where many of the side streets barely had a car-width of snow plowed down through them and it looked like those efforts were achieved by well meaning residents of the street. The sidewalks? They were visible here and there but for the most part they were nowhere to be seen. There was a lot of foot traffic to and from the local markets, even though we were out well after dark.

I had to get out of the house a little bit, even if to drive around a few miles, because recovering from this surgery is making me a little stir crazy. I was honestly frustrated with the fact that I was unable to help Earl with the driveway cleanup. I wanted to shovel the stairs and porch so that we would have an alternate means of escape in the event of a fire or something, but he was having none of it. 

The man is a trouper.

The winds are starting to kick up a bit which could make for some interesting driving conditions for the next couple of days, but with spring just around the corner, I’m certain that we will be basking in the sun just as soon my surgery recovery comes to it’s (hopefully) wonderful conclusion.

15 March 2017 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Sane. Rational. Logical.

Now that the fun meds are about out of my system (aside from one nightly pill for the next two weeks) I feel the need to say this. It’s long, but not too ranty, so be patient.

Whether it comes to the weather, politics or any other hot topic of the day, we should have three expectations: sanity, logic and rationality. Be sane, logical and rational and we can have a discussion. Add some predictability along the way and we can negotiate. Hype things way beyond proportion (for ad ratings, to get noticed, to be demonstrative, to wave your arms, whatever) and the conversation falls apart. No one can negotiate with a raving lunatic. Don’t be a lunatic. Be the calming force in the room.

Look, I’ve had as much fun as the next hacker talking to Kellyanne Conway through her microwave for the past 24 hours. Unfortunately I often got a busy signal. But the fact of the matter is, she knows her microwave isn’t talking to her, we know that her microwave isn’t talking to her and believe it or not I really think the woman is just trying to do her job trying to bring some sort of logic to a whole bunch of lunacy. Honestly, I think she’s doing it wrong as she’s hyping and exacerbating an already irrational and insane situation. I think all of this could work and there could be some decent discussions if people started acting rationally. Ever since the Inauguration the country has been like Walmart on Black Friday before the cops came. Don’t be like that.

It’s like this “Storm of the Century” for the third time this decade. Don’t buy into the hype. Shun the cute names and the constant alerts. Yes, we are going to get some snow. Yes, the wind will blow. The East Coast (unfortunately earning the name the “crisis corridor”) will get a bunch of snow too. Here’s the deal. Be vigilant. Be prepared. Be smart. Don’t depend on others to bail you out unless you get in a hopeless situation. If you see someone that has lost all hope, be a good neighbor. But first and foremost, be the person that takes responsibility for your own actions. If everyone just owned who they are, what they are capable of and stopped blaming everyone else, we could together, regardless of ideology, make the entire world a better place.

That being said, I need to do this one more time before giving it a rest.

14 March 2017 by Why. 1

Winter.

Schools all around us are closing for tomorrow even though there hasn’t been a flake of snow in the air yet. Some models show us starting to see some snow around 0345, so the schools may be making a great decision but back in my day (gosh I sound old), they wouldn’t make that call until 5 o’clock in the morning. Oh well, times change, bars are lowered and time moves on.

I’ve had a weather station in the backyard since we moved into this house in 2003. The original one was struck by lightning but this one has survived for at least a decade and is doing quite well. I put a yard stick on the side of the post that supports the weather station and I marked the level from the ground in six inch increments up to four feet. We’ll see how much snow we really get here. I enjoy following the weather, I enjoy chasing weather and I enjoy reporting weather for the area. However, I refuse to buy into the hype that many love to engage in.

Be prepared, be vigilant, be safe.

13 March 2017 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Scary?

Does anyone think I could easily get on a commercial flight today and not freak out at least one passenger if any of my tubing showed?  

Good thing Steve Austin and Jaime Somers flew before the days of the TSA. 

I have no plans of flying with this apparatus (commercial or as a pilot) but it’d be a kick at airport security. I’d make a “whoo” and “boo” noise just to make the natives nervous. Maybe say a magic word like “Ali Baba”. 

I can be ridiculous. 

12 March 2017 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Winter.

The National Weather Service is predicting one to two feet of snow and 50 MPH winds for our area from Monday until Wednesday. One to two feet of snow in March is not particularly surprising for this time of year, but with the wind kicking up that high it could make for some interesting conditions in the area. We might pick up a few groceries just in case but we don’t intend on wiping out the shelves of every loaf of bread or gallon of milk we can lay our hands on. Water works just as well, and melted snow works well for water.

I’m just as anxious as the next guy for spring to be here but the fact of the matter is it’s still early March and early March is very much winter in this part of the country. Watching the snow fall and listening to the wind whip around, coupled with the fact that I’m still recovering my from my recent surgery, will give me the opportunity to study for my next aviation challenge: my written exam for my instrument rating. I’m still a dozen or so flight hours away from being ready for the checkride, but getting the written exam out of the way will be a good step in the right direction.

Mother Nature and my surgery may have conspired to keep me grounded for a while but I can still dream of flight while I study.

11 March 2017 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Advocacy.

As I grow older and the current presidential administration dumpster fire grows stronger, I find that I’m asking myself everyday what I can do to make the world a better place, specifically when it comes to equal rights for all. I need to find sure footing on that path because right now it feels like American society is literally all over the map when it comes to beliefs, rights, religion, health care and honestly, common sense.  This “us versus them” mentality, much like two warring tribes on an episode of “Survivor”, is going to lead our nation further into chaos. Without strong leadership, which we absolutely do not have anywhere in Washington at this time, the chaos is just going to get worse.

What can I do to accentuate the compassion in our people again? Throwing pot loads of money to political parties is futile. The GOP is a bunch of spineless, worthless people. The Democrats are in such disarray that I don’t believe in them nor do I believe they even have a clear path to the bathroom, let alone scoring any sort of hits in 2018.

I want to move us from a bad place to a good place, or at least help the effort in giving the movement a good shove, but I don’t know where to even begin. Rant on Twitter? It’s an echo chamber. Rant on Facebook? Please, people just want to forget the outside world and see pictures of people smiling and posing to convey having a great time. Write on my blog? It’ll get easier once I’m off my surgery recovery meds, but it’s a start. I started writing for the Medium platform a couple of months ago but there’s so many voices screaming on that platform, and so many people joining in the predictable endless crusade of self promotion, I had no idea on how to get my voice heard in there.

I need to find a platform where I can speak my peace and be part of something. My husband says I do a lot just by being me, an openly gay middle-aged man living in a really red area of a blue state. It’s a start.

But I’m ready to go further.

10 March 2017 by Ponderings and Musings 0

DST Again.

We were reminded at work today that Daylight Saving Time starts in the United States this Sunday at 0200. For those that don’t know what Daylight Saving Time is, it is an outdated practice of moving the clocks forward one hour to fool simple minded people into thinking that they’re getting an extra hour of sunlight everyday, thereby reinforcing the outdated thinking that humans should be enslaved to a man made concept of time and should only play when they are told to play and only work when they are told to work. Anyone with an IQ that exceeds a typical Interstate speed limit will tell you that the days of Daylight Saving Time has long outlived its usefulness but the sheep will baa baa baa about farmers loving it (they don’t), the energy savings that results from the change (energy use actually goes up) and that people are happier because they days are longer (who can be happy when we have Trump as President of the United States?).

We used to start Daylight Saving Time in mid April back when people were a bit more sane but then Baby Bush decided that it would be better to start it the second week of March. I don’t know what it’s doing in the rest of the country in the first half of March, and quite frankly, I don’t really care what it’s doing, but there’s a really good chance that the wind chill factor in these parts are going to be below zero and that we will have low visibility due to lake effect snow storms. Since we are suddenly on Daylight Saving Time on Sunday, I want every proponent of this idiotic messing around with the clocks, be it child, parent, grandparent or just plain imbecile, outside at 7:00 PM on Sunday evening enjoying their “extra hour of sunlight”. I don’t care that it’s minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit or that the snow is up to their tits, they want the “extra” sunlight, they better get their asses out there and enjoy it.

Me? I’m going to be in some jet lag induced fog until November when we stop trying to play God and actually rise and set with the actual sun instead of some man made measurement of time that doesn’t correspond with the position of the sun in the sky like we used to do for the past two or three thousand years. I’m going to be inside keeping warm and trying to decide if my Honeycomb cereal is lunch or dinner because God knows what time it will really be. I’ll be late for work on Monday morning and when I do get myself situated to actually work I won’t do much but ponder about the fact that I’m tired, I have no motivation and I really don’t have any interest in associating with someone that is all joyful because their simple mind has been fooled into thinking they have an “extra hour of sunlight” in their day.

If you want an extra hour of sunlight, get up earlier and get out of work earlier. Stop trying to dictate why the rest of the world has to play your stupid game of “easily fooled” just because your intelligence level is that of a mouth breather. I’m so tired of playing this “cater to the common lowest denominator” game. 

And while I’m ranting, if I have to endure one more idiot announce that they’ve set a meeting for “1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time” when it’s in the middle of July, I’m going to take their moronic nomenclature literally and join the meeting at “1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time”, which, for those that are have the attention span of a gnat, is actually “2:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time”.  Throwing in “standard time” to the time zone when you’re scheduling meetings is a futile attempt at trying to sound professional when in fact it makes you look like a big fat goon. I hope you choke on your donut.

If you think Daylight Saving Time is a great idea, you’re an idiot. You’re part of the problem. You have no solution and quite frankly you’re taking up too much space.

9 March 2017 by Everyone's A Critic. 1

Healing.

The most painful part of this recovery from my surgery is my mouth. The site where they took the skin for the graft is about 6 cm by 2 cm and it’s along the left side of my jaw. I’m happy that it’s only 6 cm long; the doctor told of patients that had 20 or more centimeters of skin harvested from the inside of their mouth. I can’t image what that pain must have been like. 

The site is healing quickly, I can feel changes in every couple of hours, but it just hurts while it is doing so. My urologist said that the hardest days would be days four and five of the recovery and that’s where I am right now.

I was given a prescription for “Radiation Rinse”. I had no idea what that was when they first gave it to me in the hospital; I asked a nurse if that meant I was going to glow and she said yes. She was giving me the rinse at one in the morning and she didn’t seem to have a huge sense of humor. It was the only time I saw this particular nurse, the rest of that evening I was covered by the nurse Melissa. Melissa and I had a very nice chat; she had been working in the One-Day Surgery ward for over a year after 20 years elsewhere in the hospital. She always wanted to work with the patients undergoing surgeries similar to mine because she knew my doctor to be top in his field and she wanted to make sure that his patients were off and running on a good start for recovery. She was the nurse that told me that patients from all over the country sought out my urologist for repairs in that delicate region. She was also the nurse that told me about all of the gender reassignment surgeries that he had performed in the past couple of years. She wanted to be there for those patients as well, to make sure that they were off to a good start.

It turns out that there’s nothing radioactive about my “Radiation Rinse”, it’s actually a mixture of Maalox, Benadryl and Lidocane. It’s called a “Radiation Rinse” because cancer patients that have burned mouths from their chemotherapy treatments use this same mixture to alleviate the sores in their mouths. My graft site in my mouth is of a similar nature so I get to use the same stuff.

As I make my way through this recovery I can’t help but think about how fortunate I am to be going through to fairly well. I find strength from the strength one of my best friends has exhibited through his cancer treatments. I think of the soldiers that come home with missing limbs and other “modifications” to their body from war. Comparatively the healing from my procedure is a walk in the park.

I’m a lucky man. I never lose sight of that.

8 March 2017 by Ponderings and Musings 1

Motivation.

Whenever I need a bit of motivation in the morning I always enjoy this music and video, “Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself” by Jess Glynne.

YouTube was kind enough to suggest a video interview with Jess from 2015 this morning and I watched it after enjoying the music video. We need more people like Jess Glynne in the world, especially her attitude toward love and sexuality. The interview is very interesting, in particular starting around 3:22.

7 March 2017 by DJ 0

Recovery.


So I’m in the third day of recovery from my recent surgery and things are coming along. My jaw is still a little swollen and numb from where the doctors took skin from the inside of my mouth to be used for the graft. It’s healing well, it’s just going to take some time.

After the first surgery on January 28th I was told that I could take sponge baths and an infrequent shower, but only if I wrapped myself in Saran Wrap and didn’t let water hit any of the surgical area. When I was discharged from the hospital on Saturday I was told that I could resume regular showers again after 48 hours, so tonight I took my first real shower in over a month. I even took time to shave my head again and that did wonders for starting to feel normal. With the jaw being a little tender still I decided to have some scruff on the face for a few more days. I’m sure there won’t be complaints.

The doctor’s office called to follow up on my progress and to schedule my follow-up appointment, which is for the last week of March. I can go three weeks with having a tube coming out of my parts if in the end things are going to work like it should so I’m not complaining. I’m still on a bunch of meds until then, so driving is a no-no and I’m definitely not in any shape to fly an airplane. I knew this would be the case and that’s why the timing is planned as it is. I’ll be ready to be airborne when the nice weather hits for the year (right now Mother Nature is a little erratic).

Earl is doing a bang-up job as my nurse. I think he’s enjoying cooking bland meals for me to eat (no salty or spicy food while the donor site in my mouth heals) and he’s keeping all these meds on the appropriate schedule. He also tells me to stop running my tongue over the healing area in my mouth on a routine basis. It’s amazing how quickly the skin in your mouth heals. Right now it’s basically like having a 6 cm x 2 cm canker sore in there. I have a little numbness in my lip but that has slowly been subsiding.

This is one of the many occasions where working from home is a wonderful thing. I spent most of the day writing code and I think most of it made sense. It’s rare that I can write a script that works on the first try without any bugs but I was surprised when something worked as planned on the first draft this afternoon. Perhaps I should work under the influence of prescription meds all the time.

The name of the game is relaxation and healing and that’s what I intend on doing. I’m still following the news and catching up on television, but I’ve found myself unplugging from the world and just enjoying quiet and contemplation from time to time. When I was in the hospital they offered me the television on several occasions but I never turned it on, just listening to the world happen around me was enough.

Sometimes it’s the simple things that lend themselves to the best medicine.

6 March 2017 by Ponderings and Musings 0

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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