I. M.

It is a rainy Sunday morning. Took the dog for a walk in the rain; since we put down sod, we now have to walk the dog every morning so he doesn’t kill the grass by peeing on it. Dog kept me up a lot last night. My neck hurts. I’m in a shitty mood… kind of. My dearest darling wife wants to do a “Meditation”… I mean a COUPLES MEDITATION. Just in case you didn’t guess, I’m not all to hip on meditation, and even less hip on couples meditation. She wants to meditate while hugging each other. “No.” was my response. I rethought it quickly, and added “I’m not comfortable with physical contact. The wife then offered up “TALKING” as another option. Ha-ha… no, she was actually serious. I gave her a glancing stare as I walked out of the kitchen and offered a grunt.

Rounding the corner and entering the living room, it dawned on me! “Baby, I think we need to stay in separate areas of the house, meditating in tandem while we communicate via Instant Messenger”. That’s it, “Instant Meditator”! This could be what I have been trying to figure out for years; a way to do things with my wife that makes her happy, while actually not having to participate. Different areas of the house… I can be surfing the net for performance information on my truck, checking water levels for kayaking, reading Nicks new blog.

Oh boy, it is a good morning!

All I want to do is take a shower

“Honey, what’s in the tub?” I yell down stairs
“I don’t know” she replies back in a distant holler
“Honey, what’s in the tub?” I yell down stairs
“I don’t know” she replies back in a distant holler
“Honey, what’s in the tub?” I yell down stairs
“Oh, I took a bath with FLOWERS”.

Who in the world takes a bath with flowers?? No, I’m not making this shit up! I come home from kayaking and the water was about 2 degrees Celsius. I cold my feet are totally numb, and I want to get into the shower to warm up and wash the Potomac water off of me. I look down into the tub, and it is covered in what looks like cat puke. Of course I want to know what’s in the shower… if the cat puke all over it, I’m not getting in until someone else cleans it… it’s not my cat.

Hospital Roommate

I have come to like my roommate over the past few days. We have not spoken a word to each other directly, but we smiled at each other once, a smile of compassion and understanding.

I only know a few things about my roommate, who for now I will call Charles, even though I do not know his real name. Charles is older then I perhaps double my age or more. Charles has a daughter, who I believe is older then I am as well. Charles speaks Russian, and I do not. He knows quite a few words of English, but he is going deaf and it makes it very hard for him to understand the nurses and doctors who ask him questions. Some of Charles favorite things to say in English are “No!” “I throw it out!” and “I no take any more!” The more that I hear him telling everyone what he won’t do; the more I seem to like him.

Charles has a very wrinkly ass, and he likes to not wear his hospital gown, but instead an old tee-shirt which seems now more grey then white. He has black slippers, and usually has on a diaper when I see him moving from his bed to the bathroom. He moves slowly, and forgets to bring his IV drip with him; until the IV tube reaches its full length and gives him a tug back. He fitfully inches his feet in effort to turn back around and retrieve his IV. Once Chuck is in the bathroom, there is no telling how long it will take him to get out. The first time Charles went into the bathroom he used the shower as the toilet. I had asked the staff to have someone clean it up, which they did, but 3 days later the bathroom still has a lingering odor that makes me just a touch nauseous. Charles wandered out of the bathroom on his second day in his grey tee-shirt and black slippers. He was wearing his diaper, but it was down midway between his ankle and knees, somehow hovering around his calves. This did not impede Charles progress at all, as Charles doesn’t move his feet much in walking. He shuffles one foot a couple inches, then shuffles the other foot an approximate distance and repeats as necessary to get to his destination. Unfortunately for Charles, he seems to forget an item or a task at least once during every trip, which forces him to shuffle off a 180 degree pirouette of sorts, and reverse course. I do feel bad for Chuck during these occasions, but I can tell that he is a proud and stubborn man who seems to detest help.

I have hit my nurses call button quite a number of times during my stay, but half of my calls have been for Charles. More often then not, Charles has made a bit of a mess on the floor and then drops his diaper on the largest area of mess and continues to shuffle on his way. On these occasions I ring up the nurse and request a cleaning crew. After a couple days of this, the cleaning people now come completely prepared for the calls to room 7B08.

I like it when we get a new nurse. They are very brave and typically enthusiastic with Charles. They yell loud so that Charles can hear them, but speaking at a loud level does not help Charles understand English. I have compiled a list of words and phrases that Charles does not understand: abdomen, nauseous, level of pain, lavatory, bowel movement….

Charles is very sure to ask the nurses there names and try to guess where any non-white women is from. So far all of his guesses are Mexico, but I think that is because his first nurse was born in Mexico. Since then we have had primarily black nurses, of which Charles has concluded that all must be from Mexico. Charles is sure to say “thank you” for all services provided to him during the day and night, regardless if he has voluntarily accepted those services or refused them. My favorite was when my buddy Chuck had to take some liquid medicine. I’m not sure what it was, buy I know that Charles did not like it. He told the nurse “I will not drink!” The nurse told him that he had to, as it was required for his surgery the next day. Chuck replied “I throw it out”. After only a few minutes of arguing the nurse went for the doctor. The doctor explained that if he was to have his surgery tomorrow, he would need to finish his medicine. “No, I throw it out” was Chucks reply.

One night the hospital staff was trying to get some information from Charles, but he did not understand the question. After failing to get anywhere with their line of questioning, they asked him if he knew his daughters phone number, so they could call her and user her as a translator. At first Charles did not understand the question, even though it was asked at an incredibly high volume and with each word annunciated slowly. But after repeating the question only a few more times, Charles shot back “I KNOW MY DAUGHTERS PHONE NUMBER!” Everyone seemed very excited, Charles knows his daughters phone number, progress was about to be made. “What is your daughters’ phone number?” the nurse asked. “I KNOW MY DAUGHTERS’ PHONE NUMBER!” Charles responded. They certainly seemed to have underestimated him; Chuck had them asking that question at least 9 times in all arrangements, different volumes and speeds. Chucks response did not waver in the least.

Chuck had his surgery today and is now back in the room. He must be a little drugged up because he is not so codgery today. I was definitely feeling sorry for Chuck, it was as if they had broken his spirit with the drugs. Chuck acquiesced to taking his medicine, wearing his hospital gown and generally being on good behavior. In a way it was okay, because I was feeling better and spending less time in the room. I did not have to witness the full effects of his breaking.

Around 11:00 AM the next day they came to give Chuck a sponge bath. I figured that it would be an uneventful affair with Chuck cooperating with the nurses. I was elated the first time I heard that Russian accented “NO!” Chuck was back and refusing his sponge bath. I’m sure he probably really needed one as he could no longer stand up and walk to the bathroom on his own, but that seemed to make no difference to Chuck. Chuck was back to his favorite past time, the act rebellion. Chuck in his skinny wrinkled body, unable to stand, not a hair on his head, was back and ready to fight. He ended up getting his sponge bath, but it was no easy matter for the staff involved, Chuck was defiant right up to the last patch of sponged skin.

Chuck is now fast asleep, snoring away, resting up for his next fight. The doctor is trying to wake him but he refuses… his snores of defiance resonate through the room.

Boo Ideology

So my xGF has found a new hobby. She has taken to using photo-shopping the face of the dog (cat) onto gods. Firs there was Krishna Boo. It was kind of cute, and Boo looked good with the Krishna head band. Next came Jesus Boo… that’s right, not just a cat that thinks he’s a dog, but the Christian god’s son. Now even though I though Jesus Boo was looking good with his long flowing locks, it really was nothing compared to Buda Boo, my personal favorite. The only real problem, is that we all know that fat Buda is the best Buda, but xGF like skinny Buda better… which is bull shit, no skinny-assed Buda is cool like the portly Buda! Any way, Buda Boo rocks all other Boo idols! Next came Boo on some of Michael Angelo’s most famous works. There is Boo reaching out to touch the hand of, well the hand of Christian/Jewish God (Yes, they are the same). I’m not really sure what started this whole thing, but I kind of like it. A cat that wants to be a dog, and who is posing as gods and gargoyles.

Merry eff'n Christmas

Okay, not christmas, the christians just ripped off another perfectly good pagan holiday! but, I digress.

It is December 21st, and I am sitting on the couch in DC drinking coffee, and writing. It may seem somewhat normal, but it’s not. I’m supposed to be at the airport waiting to get on a flight to Colorado; for the holidays and some skiing. Oh yeah, 33 inches of fresh, and I’m kicking back in DC with the damn cat that thinks he is a dog. The little eff’r barked this morning… I SWEAR!

So, now I really don’t know what to do. I’m not going to work, as it is our release night, which typically means working from 9:00 AM until midnight of later. Sometimes much later!

Last night I was on hold for 2.5 hours with united airlines until I finally got one of their service reps on the line. At which point, they explained that they could not get me to Colorado until late on Christmas day. I went out to my car this morning, and the battery is dead!

I have had some issues lately, no doubt, not a great month. First some mother eff’r stole some of my kayaking gear off of the back porch. Probably a total of $700 max replacement cost. I found most of the stuff on sale, so I’ll be out approx $350. Then some dumb ass tried to beat me up on my way to block buster last Friday night. He didn’t accomplish his task, but he made my night. I was sick at the time with a really bad cold, and still took him. I don’t even know why! I was just walking up the road to return videos… perhaps he wanted one?

The evening before, my clutch went out at about 1:30 in the morning, on my way home from work. I spent almost the entire day on Saturday getting car parts and working on the car. I’m looking at a seriously shitty end to 2006! I hope that this is not a precursor to 2007… hopefully I’m getting rid of the bad juju in 06 so I can have a good 07? Okay, enough of my depressing shit. Just to sum it up, people who steal shit from me suck, people who try to beat me up for no reason at all suck, dead batteries suck, Denver airport under 2+ feet of snow sucks! But the eff’n dog (cat) barked this morning… crazy shit!

Eff’n MACs

Now the GF and I get along pretty well, but there are a few things that seem to be a continuing source of [friction, agrivation, discontent, annoyance…]. Well before I jump right in, I’ll give a little background. My GF, as with a lot of women, seem to think that it is there significant others job (by default) to take care of certain things… the car for instance. Anything that happens to GF’s car is now my problem. Now don’t get me wrong, I understand this. If I can not find something in the house, it is now GF’s problem (only because she moved it some place).

In addition to the car, there is the COMPUTER. GF had 2 computers, a windows OS laptop, and a mac desktop. Anytime something happened to the laptop, it was my job to fix it. First there was a ongoing disk problem. I bought GF an external hard drive, cleaned up the bad disk as best I could, and had GF back up all her files. I “suggested” that she back up her files everyday, in case the disk decided to have any further issues.

About one month later the disk goes again, and she can no longer boot the machine. GF is very upset! She needs to get the files off the machine ASAP, and it will not start up. “Baby, use my computer, and uses the files from the external hard drive” I say. Now you may think that I just solved her problem, but if you did, you would be wrong. GF has not used the EHD to back up anything since the first issue, so now she has about 1 month of work potentially lost. I ask her why she has not been backing up the files (ok, I should have know better)…. “I can’t back up my files every day!” says GF. “Okay, how about once a week?”. Well this just escalates, and it is not getting us anywhere.

Not to cut this short, but it is not really what I wanted to write about. After a new hard drive and a lot of work to salvage all of GF’s files, her laptop crapped out a couple of months later. This event coincided with her mac crapping out. So GF now has 2 machines, and neither of which is working. I try, but can not fix the laptop, and she has a friend working on the MAC w/o success (b/c I don’t know shit about macs). So after a very emotional week or so, GF decides to buy a new machine… a mac laptop.

GF is thrilled w/the new mac. She walks around the house with it, like it is a new born. She asks me if I like her new mac umpteen times a day. She tells me how fast it is, and smiles as she cradles it in her arms. This is all good! GF has a mac and I don’t work on macs. I’m finally off the hook!!! NO MORE COMPUTER MAINTENANCE!

My state-full bliss has not lasted long (insert sad face here). It turns out, that if GF turns her computer on and gets a wireless connection before I do, I’m blocked out! Yeah, the eff’n mac is keeping me off the wireless router! So, every day, I have to ask GF to disconnect from wireless, and then power cycle the cable and wireless routers. This really is enough of a pain, but to add insult to injury, GF is now excited that her mac is smarter then my pc. She GLOWS with pride every time I have to ask her to disconnect. In over 2 & ½ years, I have never been able to make her as happy as her new baby mac has! Which is absurd! I cost less, can work on a car, (okay, I’m having problems think of other attributes I have the her mac does not). Anyway macs suck, even if they do have a built in camera and microphone so you can skype with your friens.

Howard Doyle Dies

I met Howie pretty late in his climbing career. He was probably 50 when we met, and was still cranking off Seneca 5.11s. We climbed together at Seneca, Gunks, Nelson, the New, and some other smaller crags. Howard always astonished me with his ability to climb hard scary gear routes. Howard’s list of first assents at Seneca Rocks, WV is both long and prestigious! Some are still considered test pieces to this day, and many are timeless classics.

The trips I did with Howard, Jay Zim, and Adam Erlich will remain some of my fondest memories. The yearly ski trip to Utah where Howard would take us down through the trees at Snow Bird, Solitude and Powder Mountain were always an adventure and a pleasure.

I have a picture in my head… it is early morning at Seneca, and Howard had brewed up his coffee on the back of his truck, and was sitting there in the cold morning air, legs crossed, drinking his coffee, looking up at Seneca.

I will miss you Howard!