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Prosethesis, Trivia

I’ve Got It!!!!!

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I got my prosthetic a week ago Wednesday.

I walked the parallel bars the first time I wore it.  I could take a few steps without touching the bars.  They discouraged me from walking without help(cruthces, cane, walking stick) for six weeks.  Using the scooter paid off because I was used to standing up and my right leg was very strong.  It felt and still feels a little heavy.

I have been building up the time I get to wear it.  The first day I wore it for an hour and a half.  Today I get to wear it seven and a half hours thanks to building a half hour a day.

Today I moved the bath stool into the shower without Brooke’s help.  I’m using the walking stick mostly.  I’ve finally gone out in public with the walking stick and wearing my shorts.  I have only one pair of pants that can accomodate the leg.  We are calling it Lefty.

Tonight we are going to the local sports bar to play trivia.  The main problem tonight is getting to and from the bathroom in the alloted time.  I CANNOT go fast on this thing yet.

We won second place on the second round of the Six trivia contest so we will be getting swag for the bar.  Brooke won a $25 Amex card for playing all four weeks of the Season in September.

 

Prosethesis

Friday’s the day

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I got a call from the Amputee center Friday that the PO had come from DARS.  It expires at the end of the month.

I called back and made a measuring appointment for Monday and a fitting appointment on Friday.

Those are the facts.

Genora sent me an e-mail Friday telling me about the PO and then another one on Monday making sure I made the appointment.  By the time I got her message on Monday I was back from the measurement.

The measuring hardware was VERY cool.  He put a rubber sock on my stump and used a laser like you see in grocery store checkout lines to create a three-dimensional imaged in a computer.  A carver will take the numbers and make my prosthetic.

We left the match to the shoe I’ve been wearing so they know how big to make the foot part.

Supposedly I’ll only get to wear the thing an hour a day at first.  An hour is all I need to add water to the car , cook something, or carry the laptop around the house.

Software

My first link in the blogroll

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Crummy.com is my favorite blog. Not only for the subject matter but the look and usability.

Subject Matter
The writer has written 3 books on Ruby, a web programming platform. He writes science (or speculative) fiction, cooks with his wife, and plays obscure board and computer games. When all that gets boring he creates amazing trivial tables garnered from Amazon and Imdb.

 

Look
He uses only one font. Right now there are only 3 images. These are links to his books on Amazon. He has random cool sayings in title tag and under the title. He started this site over 12 years ago and has never seen the need to change the layout.

I found this page many years ago through and I keep coming back because the content is great. I like to think he’s like me if I had a LOT more energy.

 

Usability
There are six areas and they always fit on the first screen. The top line are his categories, then a line for links to his friends. Below the title section is an archive link, his book image links, and links to past posts on that day. The posts are below that.

That’s it. It’s like great cooking, take great ingredients and leave them alone.

Prosethesis

New TAC visit

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Genora finally got in touch with me. She quizzed me on some stuff she already had and then got on me about not having a social security card. She did this the first time we met but this time she went to her supervisor about it. She also gave me grief about having something to prove I was a resident of Texas. I gave her my voter registration card. Her supervisor must have OK’d my proof of identity because the next call was from the amputee center (TAC)

They have to start their end over again because it has been so long between visits. At first I agreed to 10 AM the next day. I called back and rescheduled for 11 so Brooke and I could get lunch afterward. She likes to combine outings.

So hopefully my next prosthesis post will be me bitching about physical therapy.

Uncategorized

Towels

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Yesterday I bought my first bath towel.

This not to say Ive gone 51 years without a towel. I was on Amazon buying test strips and I wanted another towel in the house. They had a set of six for under $20 so added it to my cart.

I started thinking about how I got the towels I had. When I was single I lived in a one-bedroom condo with two bath towels that were gifts. They lasted me over 20 years.

Now I’m married and my wife keeps what towels we have in the linen closet on the other side of the house. I need more towels so I can keep them in sight.

Music

Not All That Jazz

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I like a lot of jazz.

All I need is to be able to pick out the melody and I’ll give the piece a decent chance. A good example is Thelonius Monk.

I don’t like pieces where it sounds like they went back and found a book of etudes that they hated and decide to do a 10 minute riff on a piece of music that wasn’t meant for the public in the first place. Creators and purveyors of smooth or light jazz should have earbuds surgically implanted with an endless loop of Jimi Hendrix guitar solos. I’m looking at you Kenny G.

Kenny G almost made the saxophone the clarinet of 90s. I spit on the ground every time I have to mention or hear his name. I also do that with Phil Collins. If I want to hear a soprano sax I put on John Coltrane.

Prosethesis

Hitting the right address

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I’ve finally heard from Dars!

For the last few weeks I’ve been trying to get a progress status on my prosthetic. For a while I was sending a request a little over once a week. Then I started a regular campaign of twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays.

I started with just the counselor. Then I added a cc to her secretary. Today I added the general inquiries address and she finally responded. She’s supposed to contact me tomorrow morning.

Uncategorized

Easy Decisions

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The easiest decisions are the ones with the least choices.

I was invited to a rush party the summer before I started college. It was held at a Coors distributorship. I had to pick Coors or Coors Light.

When my foot was black with infection the choice was death or amputation. The jury is still out if I  chose wisely.

I don’t remember having a say whether I would learn a musical instrument. But I did take piano and violin lessons. I ended up choosing the alto saxophone because it was lighter than a tenor.

When I buy a car I usually have such a small budget that the car lot only has one in my price range.

Since I can’t drive again yet I only get to decide on a destination. The route is out of my hands.

I am a bit portly so the regular clothes stores have very few choices if they have my size. The fun part about this is I’m on the skinny side for the big and tall stores. So they have a few more but not much.

Writing

My first flash fiction

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I used to want to be a writer. Real life got in the way and I found I enjoyed cable and air conditioning.

I kept my hand in by typing away on whatever word processing program I had at the time; on the Commodore 64 it was Omniwriter.  I used the cheap office program that came with the first Windows PCs.

Now I have Word 2003 and 2007 along with OpenOffice on my Linux side.

I don’t have a lot of major ideas but I like to see how far I can go on a seed idea.  It used to be song titles.  I once wrote a story about a knight with a big bag of marbles that could see after hearing a song called ‘The Night Has a Thousand Eyes’.

I found this website that lists an idea a day.  When writing came up on my random task picker the idea for that day was a day in the life of a wedding dress.

My wife used to create flash fiction so I thought I’d give it a try because I’m lazy.