Carpe Diem ... aka The Anti-Rant

Saturday was a complete struggle for me, I ended up knowing I was just being so high maintenance that I stayed home, alone, and ignored calls coming in. I was in bed early, and must have worn myself out, at least emotionally, because I slept twelve hours. I woke up Sunday to more of the same self doubts and questionings. It was about 1015, and I started the usual Sunday negotiation with myself, when am I going to church? 1100? No, I gotta rush to get ready. 1230? No, I'll miss Lindy in the Park ... wait it's cold. Football is on today, can I go to church at 1700? I laid in bed for 20 minutes or so with every combination of church, dancing, and football I could come up with running through my head. Usually what ends up happening is no church at all, and with the bad attitude, that's where I was headed.

Then something happened the ring did not expect, it fell into the most unlikely hands imaginable, a hobbit, from the Shire, Bil... no wait that's a different story all together.

I made a decision to go to church now. I got up, got ready, and went. Church was good, I left thinking about how I can give up so easily on somethings, and then have such incredible patience with other things, perhaps there might be something in the middle? You think? I headed over to the gas station and filled up, got some Jimmy John's and headed home for a day of watching football.

Ben was home, and I talked to him for a bit then asked him if he was going to go to Lindy in the Park? When he said yes, I told him I was riding with him. We got downtown a little on the late side and parked on the far side of the lagoon. The first really fun thing happened. I walked down the ramps, been took a short cut over the grass ... we made brief eye contact, and the race was on. He shot down the grass and towards the lagoon crossing, I went as quick as I could around the rails and caught him near the turn at the corner of the lagoon ... we both won because neither of us got hurt.

Check it out, people showed up in 60F weather to dance, it must be a great product!


After years of avoiding dips like the plague, who has their feet up in the air like that?


Dancing is a serious business, no shenanigans are allowed ... Catnip's face pretty much says it all.

At the end of Lindy in the Park, we were having some decision making issues of the "...I don't know, what do you want to do..." variety. So we appointed Sarah to be the leader for the rest of September. At the end of September, Sarah will appoint another leader, at the end of October, that leader will appoint someone new, but it can't be Sarah. Agreed! So after hearing some suggestions, Sarah decided we were headed over to Ted & Wally's for some ice cream. Side note to Ted & Wally's: feel free to mix in a few chips with your mint chip ice cream. While we were there, Ben busts out a deck of cards, and we sat and played four or five different games until it was obvious we were the only ones in the store.

"Let's go bowling." "How about darts." "Play games." "Play some pool." Do this, do that, how will we decide? Sarah? We lost Jillian & Mark, and ended up at a pool hall in Council Bluffs, it was different in three ways from every other pool hall I'd ever been to ... it was clean, no smoking, and no TV. Greg, it turns out is a very good pool player.

The next thing I remember is waking up on the cold floor with a bump on my head.


Ben thinks he can't get through to hit the 8-ball, he was right.


Lisa is modeling the very latest in attractive NFL t-shirts.


My wrist is not quite up to being able to handle this game yet.

After a couple hours of pool and foosball, we were done with that fun, so now what?

Go to Village Inn! Go to Harrahs! Go to Ameristar! Go home (who said that?)! Go get fast food! Do this, do that, how will we decide? Sarah? So it's off to the Ameristar Buffet, where evidently we all decided to take the words "All you can eat" as a command instead of a suggestion. I had three plates, mostly emptied, and dessert. I think the key to "all you can eat" is to make sure you get some "roughage", aka salad, so things actually, shall we say, move along?

As far as days in my life go, this one was near the top. Everything worked, dancing, games, food, conversation, jokes, fun, and most importantly friends. I continue to be so impressed, and humbled, by the people who surround me. I am so lucky. Lisa, Greg, Ben, Sarah, and Ben, thanks for a day to remember, I can't wait to seize the next one.

Physics Rant

The Large Hadron Collider went on line today in Geneva, Switzerland. For those of you who don't pay attention to such things, the LHC is a particle accelerator capable of creating the environment that existed within the first microseconds of the creation of the universe. The energies involved with the collisions may be able create matter dense enough that it becomes a black hole. Yes, a black hole. On earth. Switzerland isn't far enough away.

I like science, I keep up on science, I understand that even if a black hole were created in the lab, it would be so small that, theoretically, it would evaporate before it could pull any other object into it. Objects like, oh, I don't know: The Earth. The people who are conducting the experiments are also the ones verifying it's safety, not exactly an impartial group. Of course I am being a bit of an alarmist, so you can check out this article from Science Daily about the safety of the experiments If The Large Hadron Collider Produced A Microscopic Black Hole, It Probably Wouldn't Matter. I'm sorry, does that say "probably"?

Frankly, I don't think the risks that are being taken are worth the possible scientific gain. These types of experiments should take place far away in space. Enough whining about what could go wrong, let's get to the real purpose of the LHC: To provide cushy, high paying jobs to physicists, but hey, at least they aren't out there creating weaponry.

In all likelihood when the machine begins to produce high energy collisions, everything will go according to plan, and we will all be just fine, but if it doesn't, and we are all dead, at least I will quit wondering how many starving people could be fed for a year with the $15 billion it cost to build the thing.

Somehow, I've turned into *THAT* person

I had an interesting moment of self discovery last week. I am *THAT* guy. You know, the one with the camera, the paparazzi that you know. Always annoying everyone in sight, and with the zoom feature, some who are not quite in sight. I took 155 pictures this weekend, well more like 225, just 155 I thought were in focus and worth keeping.

People magazine offered me $1,000,000 for an exclusive picture of swing dancers.

So I guess that I am chronicling the lives of my friends ... some day when they are rich and famous, the world will appreciate my hard work behind the camera.

Eric, v4.51

I went to the doctor several months ago, the beginning of April, to talk about getting older, allergies, and depression. It was an interesting conversation, and it didn't go anything like I thought it might. It turned out that I had begun to get some low level hypertension, and this meant that there needed to be a change in my treatment medications that I have been on for years, in particular my anti-depressants and my allergy meds (and we'll just leave the allergy medicine discussion for another time).

I went on anti-depressants in November of 1996, shortly after my divorce, the reasons should be fairly obvious, and after some initial fooling around with the dosage, and one 45 day period I quit, I was on the same medication and dosage for 11 years. My doctor and I discussed on at least a couple of occasions changing dosage or getting off of it, but she had very sound, scientifically backed, reasons for wanting me to stay where I was.

This time there would have to be a change, because the medicine I was taking was not, according to my doctor, as hypertension friendly as another ... she put it in different words, but you get the idea. So she prescribed for me a different anti-depressant. Which I dutifully began taking.

I didn't like the results, which amongst other issues, I almost immediately put on fifteen pounds (weight gain is a common side effect of this medication). So the patient, me, decided that he knew best for himself, and took himself off all his meds. It's been about 15 weeks now, and I am going to stick with this decision.

This is not, and has not been an easy transition for me, the first three weeks were brutal, and the following weeks and months have also been filled with uncomfortable emotional experiences. Once the physical part of quitting my medicine was done with, I noticed that there were some feelings that I hadn't been having over the last ten years. I have really been struggling with anger and intolerance, preferably combined evidently.

Basically what this means to me is I am struggling much more with things that are unjust, mean, and social lies. Since I have been aware that all of a sudden I am angry and intolerant, and not wanting to make an donkey of myself, and wanting to preserve my friendships, and not wanting a repeat of last years Lindy in the Park incident, I have decided to go quiet route, and keep my mouth shut. Of course this has been only a partially effective strategy... I process best when I can talk and write things out, but I didn't want to do so for not wanting to stupidly say anything that would be difficult to unsay. Sometimes keeping quiet also just didn't work, for those of you who have been on the wrong end of a not well thought through tirade, I apologize.

Okay, so that's the negative part of this change, but it has for the most part been overwhelmingly positive. Venche and I were discussing this a couple weeks back and she said "you are more like you." That is precisely how I feel, like I was living my life under a veil, and everything was restrained and muted. Now I feel more active, more appreciative, more responsible, more outgoing, more empowered, and able to handle things better than I have in the last decade. I am planning, I am doing, whereas I have spent the last decade having a job, I want a career now. I feel great! I am discovering things I used to like, but haven't bothered with, like art, and roast beef.

The turning point in this change came just a little over a week ago, when I noticed a bug in the v4.5 Eric ... all of my lamenting about the unfairness of the world carried with it one thing that didn't need to be there ... me. I am getting out of my own head, and into the service of others, which has always been the key to my happiness.

I think I will look back on this (if not already) as a life changing moment and decision, much more so than losing my house earlier this year. So let me introduce to you Eric v4.51, with new features, more efficient ... an upgrade.

War Wound

First of all, roller skating was a blast, and I'd consider doing it again, just not anytime soon. I was skating just fine on rollerblades, but I didn't like the way they fit, so I decided to try quads, a.k.a. traditional roller skates.

It didn't go so well. I got about 30 feet, Mark saw me, gave me a tip on how to push off, and I fell shortly thereafter, rolling up on my wrist (the same way i broke it in 1992), and chipped off a piece of bone (circled below). Of course, I'm too stupid to know it's broke, so I finished my circle around the rink, fell again, and changed back to blades, and skated for about 45 more minutes.

It's just that little shadow there in the circle.


Purple was the best choice out of my doctors lame color choice.

It started to tighten up as the evening wore on, but even though I said right away that I broke it, I thought it was just a bad sprain. I went home slept fitfully for a few hours and went into work.

That was a bad idea, but I eventually went to the doctor at 1000. I was all casted up by noon, and back to work. It hurts right now because of the swelling and my fatigue.

No one is to blame, so don't beat yourself up.

It will be four weeks for the cast. Balboa anyone?

edit below-------------------------------------

Not so cast my friend

So the cast lasted a little over 12 hours.

Yesterday as time wore on the cast was less and less comfortable, and I began to get nauseous from the pain. I got home from work, stayed busy most of night, but then when I went to sleep, the troubles escalated. The pain and uncomfortablness got worse and worse. I thought I was losing my mind and wanted to cut my cast off ... now! I talked Venche and she calmed me down, then Jessie convinced me I wasn't crazy, and that my hand was swelling in the cast and cutting off circulation to my fingers.

So I hatched a plan, I went up to Walgreen's and got a wrap, then came home and cut off the cast myself using a dull hacksaw and some firecrackers. The majority of the pain went away as soon as the cast came off. I called into work, and finally got some sleep.

In the morning I got hold of my doctor, arranged for an appointment, and Micah came and carted me around. I ended up with a removable cast that leaves me with less of an ability to type than the solid one, but can be adjusted for swelling.

Hopefully this is the end of the drama.