Fun and Games Dept

I love the Central Time Zone, especially when our little family is together.

Our local casino has a reputation for having some of the “tightest” slot machines in the country. New York State is big on casinos these days, and the local casino was the first one in the state. While I have happy memories of the casino, after all Earl and I were married there and I have hit the big jackpot once or twice on a slot machine, the fact of the matter is that I have given more of our money to the casino than they have given us.

And that’s how casinos stay in business, right?

The thing that frustrates me about this casino and playing slot machines is that they have the exact same machines as every other casino. I can play the same game the same way at two different casinos, one of them being this local one, and I will never, ever hit the “bonus” round or the “bonus feature”. If I play the exact same game the exact same way using the same amount of money at the start, I’ll hit the bonus feature at least once or twice if not more. I still might not win but it makes me feel engaged with the game. Our casino never feels engaging or exciting, it’s more of a drain on the pocket and the psyche.

But, we keep going back.

Earl does well at keeping his head above water when walking out of the casino for the night. Me, on the other hand, I handle the guilt for the both of us.

Sometimes you just have to dance. After all, it’s Friday.

h/t to Mark at Voenix Rising for jogging my memory with this song. It had slipped from my memory, but when I saw this video I did remember that the video version is a little different than all the other versions, in that the lyrics are changed, “my good time radio” instead of “my midnight radio” and “dj’s radio” instead of “midnight radio”.

Here’s Taffy with “I Love My Radio” from 1986.

https://youtu.be/88FJd4xaYuk

Back in the early 2000s Earl and I watched “Queer As Folk”. While the storyline meandered in later seasons, we found the earlier seasons to be quite enjoyable for its time.  While I enjoyed the characters and the earlier storylines and, admittedly the sex scenes, I also enjoyed seeing character Brian Kinney’s loft.

His loft was quite trendy looking with lots of wood and steel and jaunty angles. Even back then I told Earl that if we were to live in a big city I would want to live in something that was lofty, or at the very least, something with a lot of wood and brick.

At one time I lived in an open space in downtown Utica (hardly a thriving metropolis by any means) that was quite lofty, though it was quite rundown. I think I paid $200/month rent back in 1992. The open space was on the second floor of a four floor building. The first floor was closed up retail space used by a local band for practice every Thursday night. The top two floors were a more finished loft owned by the building owner. He had chopped off half the fourth floor to make his living room extra tall with a spiral staircase to the top floor. It was quite trendy and modern for its time.

Meanwhile, my space was wide open with no walls, an abandoned elevator shaft and lots of brick. And lots of drafts. But I liked it and I made it my own.

Since Earl and I are looking to relocate to Chicago, I’ve mentioned that I wouldn’t mind looking at lofts if they’re the right size and in the right location. The thing is, they’re a little out of our price range when it comes to the locations we’re looking for. So then I started day dreaming about Brad and Jane’s condo from the sitcom “Happy Endings”.

There’s some wood, there’s some patio, a little exposed beam, a fireplace and a lofty upstairs with X number of bedrooms and a bathroom or two.

Now that works for me and the best part is, it works for Earl too.

Now, we have no plans on movin’ on up to that deluxe apartment in the sky, but a nice condo that fits within our budget, location and decorating possibilities… totally gonna happen.

I don’t find our aspirations to be that lofty.

So I spent the weekend avoiding Twitter as much as possible. There were two reasons for this, one being that yesterday was April Fools’ Day, one of two holidays that I dislike as much as I dislike clowns. The second being that being on Twitter for extended periods of time starts to feel like this (it’s a short, 38 second video):

I almost forgot that Trump was president for 48 hours. What a wonderful feeling. Remember what it was like when Washington, D.C. wasn’t a complete swamp of chaos? When class, intelligence and dignity was more important than screaming, making money one’s God and focusing on destruction instead of unity and creation?

Maybe this will help.

I feel rested enough to tackle the upcoming week. Maybe I’ll avoid the political side of Twitter for another 24 hours and see if that makes things even better.

So with Earl out of town this weekend, the weather not being conducive to flying and it being April Fools’ Day, I decided to go for a road trip in the Jeep.  I am currently stopped at a Starbucks in Worcester, Mass. on my way home, after making my way on the “back roads” to get from Central New York to suburban Boston.

The sign above is from the intersection where one would turn to go to an apartment I lived in back in 1989 and 1990. From memory, without GPS and without any paper map, I was able to drive to all four locations that I lived at between 1988 and 1990 when I worked for Digital, then the second largest computer company in the world. Many of the old Digital (or commonly called “DEC” by non-employees, DEC standing for Digital Equipment Corporation) buildings are still for lease. Digital was purchased by Compaq in the late 1990s, which in turn was purchased by Hewlett-Packard. Had I stayed with Digital, I could be a VP at HP by now, but that was not meant to be my destiny.

I have lost contacts with all but one friend in this area and outside of Facebook I had no way to get a hold of her. I can see Earl and I coming back for a visit on another road trip and then I’ll give Donna (my friend) proper notice so we can get together for lunch or something. The OCD in me likes to plan these things out.

The direction of road trip was inspired by a dream that I had last night. Actually, the dream was right before I jumped out of bed for the day. It was a frustration dream about working for Digital but with modern technology and not knowing how to log into the network with this new equipment. When I worked for Digital, the computer at my desk was a Digital Rainbow 100+. That was supplanted by a Digital DECstation 386 running Windows/386, as we were testing Windows connectivity to our “DECnet” network products. I was a pioneer of Windows testing back in 1988. Some dialog boxes haven’t changed since then.

I had one personal demon that I needed to address while I was in Clinton, Mass.   Since I feel like a rejuvenated man after this recent surgery, I’m trying to get rid of my old baggage. I don’t have many bags to get rid of, but this one has been lurking in the back of my brain since 1990. Some things are not meant to be shared in public, and the details of this one thing fits that category, but I’ve made my peace with nature and universe, standing in the rain under the cover of the dark of night in Clinton, Mass.  No worries, no one got hurt and I got some stuff off my chest.

Other than seeing where I could navigate without electronic or paper aid, I had no plans for this trip. I ended up stopping at the Burlington Mall in Burlington, Mass. and visiting “The Art of Shaving” store, where I pampered myself with a Royal Shave from the very capable barber named Jamal. An hour of pure bliss. I’m probably more vain than I should be, but I believe that this vessel that carries my soul should be treated as nicely as possible, and spending an hour getting my face shaved, buffed, shined, cleansed, buffed, steamed and massaged is one way of enjoying my life.

Life should always be enjoyed. I’ve made it thus far, and I’m not even halfway through my lifetime journey. There’s so much more to see.

Sleet is pelting against our windows. The wind is whipping. The creek in the backyard is barely holding its own within the confines of its banks. 

Ah, the joy of spring in Central New York. 

My kindergarten teacher, a woman by the name of Mrs. Mosher, once told us how March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. I never really understood what that was suppose to mean since we’d often have snow on the ground and how in the world were lambs suppose to do their spring like thing if there’s snow on the ground? Of course, Mrs. Mosher also told my parents that I was probably mentally retarded and wouldn’t amount to much. My mother resisted the urge to show her my consistently top notch report card for the first few years of my primary years. I didn’t color in the lines. I didn’t really want people around me that much, I tended to play alone and in my own little world, I burped in appropriately and one time I was spied drinking out of the sink in the bathroom because I was thirsty and asking for a drink of water and I was told that it wasn’t time to drink water. Oh, one more lingering nugget of kindergarten fun, I would never stay on my rug during nap time. Do children still take naps in kindergarten?  I was always thankful we didn’t have bomb raid drills during nap time, though looking back it would have made sense because in our school you were to get under your group table and put your nap rug over the back of your head. I can remember it like it was yesterday. They called them bomb raid drills but I think we were doing nuke drills, because there was a fairly new nuclear plant not too far away at the time.  In first grade we just sat under our desk during these drills. I was so thankful that the desk was going to save me from a bomb.

As the spring time sleet and wind pelted the house last night I dreamed of a high school classmate (actually she was a year behind me) that I knew only casually. No idea why I dreamed about her but I stalked her on Facebook to see if she is still alive and she is. She hasn’t changed much in 30 years, either! Good for her.  She was just there in the dream. Nothing of real significance.

I am anxious for real spring-like weather to get here. I went flying last night and it felt a little spring like, though the delay in spring weather is probably good for my last two weeks of recovery from my surgery.

But I’ll be happy when I can go outside and enjoy the warmth of the sun on my face.

I just made my first flight video using Final Cut Pro X. It looks good on my computer but it’s in the process of doing some “sharing” voodoo in the background so I don’t know how it’ll look once my ISP scans it for ad revenue opportunities, then Google and Facebook look at it for ad revenue opportunities and then I start getting Amazon suggestions to buy an airplane.

Isn’t the Internet grand? Especially when the U.S. Government is involved? A group of people that have absolutely no idea how any of this works. They just want the donations from the big companies. The world runs on green. Correction, the U.S. runs on green.

Thank goodness Facebook has added random colors to posts.

I think I’m tired. Be good to one another.

<i>This could be considered a TMI blog entry. I share this information for others that have a similar issue, as I found reading the experiences of others to be beneficial to keep my spirits up during my experience. I won’t be offended if you move on without reading.</i>.

So today I visited the very capable urologist that performed the repair surgery to my urinary system at the beginning of this month. The official procedure is called a urethroplasty. Six centimeters of tissue was taken from the inside of my mouth and used to reconstruct a damaged, scarred area of my urethra. The scarring has been there since 1980 or so. I’ve had two catheters since the surgery on the 3rd of March. A Supra-pubic catheter was inserted through my abdomen on the 28th of January (and was replaced during the second surgery). Originally placed to allow my natural parts to calm down and stop the scarring process, the Supra-pubic catheter acted as a backup in case the second catheter, a regular indwelling Foley catheter that makes most people cringe, was installed during the March surgery. That has been my means of urination for 25 days. 

The urologist took some X-rays with contrasting fluid in my catheter, around my catheter and in my bladder. And then before I knew it, the catheter was removed and the doctor had a huge smile. “The graft site is not leaking and looks wonderful. Look at that.” He showed me a picture of a normal looking urethra, something I haven’t had in 35 to 40 years. “You have no strictures”.

I was then expected to urinate using my own parts while laying on a bed under an X-ray machine with four onlookers of the process. I couldn’t do it. Nope. So they filled my bladder with saline solution to the point of where I thought I was going to explode, he saw enough on the X-ray machine to confirm everything was good and then I peed into a special toilet that measured volume, velocity and the like.

Honestly, I broke all previous records in the doctor’s office. Ever. The last record was a man that could pee 40 ml/sec. I went off the chart at 55 ml/sec. I emptied nearly 700 ml of fluid from my bladder in just over 10 seconds. 

I passed the test.

The Supra-pubic catheter will remain in place for another week. For the next seven days I urinate like a normal guy, and then I unplug this little tube hanging below my belly button to confirm that I am emptying my bladder. If I’m not emptying my bladder, there’s a problem. So far, I’ve had 14 drops of urine fall from the catheter tube after going the bathroom. Not even negligible residual urine.

The doctor is confident that things are good to go. There was a worry of incontinence, since my scarring was so close to my bladder, but I can easily keep everything under control. Since my bladder hasn’t had to store anything since January, it’s a little weird having that feeling in my gut again, but I’m getting used to it. The doctor says my bladder will lose some of its muscle tone, as I used to have to push REALLY hard to urinate before this operation. As long as I can keep things at 18 ml/sec or higher, I’m good. And he thinks that’s not going to be a problem.

The Supra-pubic catheter comes out next Tuesday. I then have follow up appointments in July, November and then next March, just to make sure everything holds in place.

I cried with happiness, even though I’m still on healing restrictions, including absolutely no sexual activity for three more weeks. No heavy lifting. Keep your precious cargo supported with good underwear. No straddling anything for at least three weeks, longer if possible. I’ve made the decision that I’m going to replace my long-distance cycling with swimming this summer. And as soon as I have the all clear, I’ll be lifting some weights again.

I feel like a Superman. It’s time to start acting like one again.