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.

That 3rd Thing Not To Do

1. Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
2. Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
3. Never try a piggy back ride with a flying mount in the parking lot at Village Inn.

Thank you

First and most importantly, I'd just love to say congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Matt & Vivian Johnson. Yes, I cried, what a big softie.

I was the emcee for the reception, an honor that I hope I did well with ... my main focus was to take the jitters and worries from the bride and groom, and help them to enjoy themselves. This is the kind of thing I love to do. Several people assisted me in this process, and that is what this note is about.

Merinda & Jenny for help in developing a schedule. Venche for fashion advice.

Micah for co-writing a song with me. Micah and Epp for singing it with me, recording it, and to the ever talented Erin for producing. Thanks to Mark for lending equipment, and being the roadie & sound guy, and to Omaha Jitterbugs and Nate for lending equipment. Also thanks to the forty or so people who knew about the song and kept it a secret from the bride and groom.

Thanks to Robin for running my camera. Thanks to Lisa for volunteering to run Matt's video camera, and to the many who took pictures with Matt's camera & the ones left on the table.

Thank you to Sarah Meade for tending to the injured so well and efficiently that the bride and groom probably don't know who got hurt.

To Keith and Micah for getting me a plate of food.

Special thanks to the best man, Nathan, and the maid of honor, Jenny who made things easy for me and helped move everything along ... and with them the entire wedding party.

I know everyone thinks their group of friends is the best around, but seriously, there were 15-20 who stayed until the end and helped clean up, no one had to ask, they self organized and pitched in. Too many to mention. *sigh* I love you all.

Thanks also to Troy, although it would be difficult to put exactly into words what he did/does, but his expectations are so high, it makes me do everything better.

The Good Old Days

When I was growing up, I (literally) had to listen to stories from my father, mother, aunts, uncles, and grandparents about how everything was cheaper in the past, how they could get a hamburger for a dime, a gallon of gas for fifteen cents, and a pair of shoes for a buck. The point of every one of these assaults on my pre-consumer-price-index-understanding brain was to illustrate just how spoiled myself, brothers, and cousins were.

Today, I went in to Best Buy and picked up a 2G SD card for my new camera, $22. I thought back and remembered that the very first time I bought computer memory in 1993, I spent over $100 for 256k, at those prices, 2G of RAM would have been in the $800,000 range. (I saved over 3/4 million dollars just by waiting 15 years).

This is what I realized, we will tell the opposite stories to our kids than the old folks told us. Our stories will about how much everything cost us, and how spoiled they are that they get so much more for so little.

Can't wait to be the crotchety old man ... "you kids and your 256 bit wide terraflop multiprocessors. When I was your age had 64k RAM and a 5 1/4 inch floppy drives and we were happy!"

Bonus (probably) unanswerable question: when I was born in 1964, was there 2G worth of volatile memory on the whole planet?