I met with Dr. Kwong again this morning. More x-rays, more poking, yada yada yada. My elbow (technically the head of my right radius) is still broken. This time I could actually see the break on the x-rays.

The doc is concerned at my limited range of motion, so he’s banned me from wearing the sling. That’s a good thing because the sling was a real pain in the butt, but a not so good thing because moving my arm around is an even bigger pain … in the arm!

Probably the biggest benefit of getting me out of the sling is the effect it has on me mentally. I need to stop babying my arm so much. Yes, it’s still broken. Yes, there are limits to what I can do. But with my wing untied, I can quit worrying about it so much and get back to using it.

I will be starting physical therapy this week and that should help a lot. For now, I just need to get over the pain and get the muscles, et al, back to work. Dr. Kwong says I shouldn’t twist (like turning a key or door knob) nor lift anything heavier than half a pound (My arm weighs at least five pounds, so I’m not sure how that works.) but I need to work towards straightening my elbow completely. Right now, it just won’t go.

Thanks to everyone for continued thoughts and prayers.

This week’s WBQotW comes straight from my favorite source of t-shirts and cubicle toys, ThinkGeek.com.

2 + 2 = 5, for extremely large values of 2.

St. Paul City Hall has ordered that a “religious display” of a “cloth Easter bunny” be removed from the building’s lobby. How dare they infringe on my right to worship a comically over sized rabbit and psychedelic chicken embryos. According to the Third Testament of Saint Sponge Bob, we are all required to grovel before the Bunny of the Lord and burn offerings of plastic grass in order to receive our reward of eternal gingivitis.

In the past, St. Paul has banned red poinsettias from the building, because, of course, they symbolize the Holy Order of Red Messianic Shoe Shiners.

According to the article, the city’s Human Rights Director, Tyrone Terrill, demanded that the horrible hare display be removed, although no citizens had complained. Well, this citizen demands the removal of Mr. Terrill. If anything in that City Hall is offensive, it’s him.

Short answer: No.

I remember seeing a picture where some folks tiled their bathroom with those annoying, unsolicited, AOL “Free Trial” CDs. I thought that was funny. But this… This is just sad.

Randypants sent me a link to AOL CD and Tin Collecting. It would be funny if it weren’t true. This guy has a huge wish list, an eBay store, even a book all about collecting “rare” AOL CDs.

This book vividly discusses ways to organize your AOL CD collection and help it grow, the financial worth of rare AOL CDs, codes, packaging and much more. There are over 50 photos that bring to life the allure of these frequently overlooked disks.

“Vividly”?! How can you vividly discuss junk mail? “Financial worth”?!! Dude, seriously. If you pay anyone anything for a junk mail CD, you need to have your bank account taken away. I’d be willing to bet that this guy lives in his mom’s basement.

You’ll notice the price of the book has been “slashed” to $5 (plus $3 S&H). Maybe he’d do better if he sent the book out, free and unsolicited, to everyone in America and then charged them $30 if they read it. It worked for AOL, right?

Do Days of Our Lives and Jerry Springer make you stupid? I always thought so.

Research conducted by Brooklyn College has found a direct correlation between intelligence and day-time TV.

A study of 289 older women without dementia found that those who rated talk shows and soaps as their favorite programs performed more poorly on tests of memory, attention and mental quickness than their peers who cited other types of shows.

The researchers warn that the cause and effect can’t be shown, but that some relationship is certain.

That doesn’t mean that daytime television is a brain drain, they say … it’s not possible to tell whether the programs somehow contribute to cognitive decline or whether women in the early stages of decline gravitate toward those shows

In “day time TV” terms, that means they don’t know if Oprah makes you stupid or if stupid people like Oprah. It’s a thin gray line if you ask me.

Full article.

(Note: It took me about an hour just to type this post. Please read it slowly. *wink*)

I’m slowly learning to type again. If I rest my gimpy arm on the desk, I can use my right hand a little, but not like normal. The worst thing is that I can’t reach the backspace key. I have to reach over with my left hand about every ten key strokes. But this is much better than pecking around with my left hand alone.

Since my last post was dictated through a Vicodin induced haze, I suppose I’ll give it another try.

Last Thursday, I was on my way home from work, commuting on my mountain bike. I was making good time with a slight tail wind and carrying more speed than usual. As I approached the last major intersection before reaching home, I wanted to preserve my momentum. I usually take the sidewalk up to this light, as there is no room between the curb and the cars. But the sidewalk there zigs and zags around some drainage canals and would have killed my speed. And it just happened that the light was green and there was a break in the traffic. So, I zoomed down a driveway and used the asphalt. When I got close to the right-turn lane, I looked over my shoulder to ensure no cars had snuck up that would be turning. While my head was turned, I hit a ridge between the asphalt and the concrete of the turn lane. Before I could blink, my bike shot out from under me. My hands were still on the handle bars when I hit the ground. I estimate I was going about 20 miles per hour when I hit the ground.

I landed hard on my right hip, shoulder, and elbow. The next thing I remember was the dazzling numbness in my right hand (like the worst funny bone hit ever) and the sound of my helmet sliding across the concrete.

I got up quickly, worried about the traffic, and threw my bike into the grass. I couldn’t breathe for a few seconds. I took stock of all of my fingers, and my left wrist, elbow and shoulder worked fine. My right arm was unresponsive. I figured it had just been numbed by the impact. Using me left hand, I worked my right wrist around and rotated my right shoulder. I tried to move my right elbow back and forth. It was not rigid, but was too painful to move more than a little bit.

I unslung my back pack and found the outer pockets had shredded. My cell phone was banged up pretty bad, but it powered back up fine. I called Tammy to come get me then sat down to take a closer look at things. I had to use my camera phone to get a good look at the road rash on my right elbow, since I couldn’t turn my arm enough to see it. My helmet was “warrantied”. (Trek offers to replace a crashed helmet if you send it in to them with an explanation of the crash*.) Other than some scrapes and an out-of-place chain, my bike was fine.

While waiting in the ER (arrived at 7:00, departed at mid-night), I was not in much pain, but started having muscle spasms. My right arm would jolt followed by blinding pain. I think they moved me up the list to avoid having a grown man in the waiting room screaming like a little girl every few minutes.

They gave me some Vicodin and a bed. About an hour later, I headed for radiology. Manipulating my arm for the x-rays produced a lot more girlish screams. Another hour later, the doctor came in, poked it a couple of times, signed a prescription and left. After a tetanus shot, I was on my way home. I was told I’d cracked the head of my radius bone. In layman’s terms, I broke my elbow.

Friday was spent on the couch in a stupor, which was interrupted every hour or so by another wrenching spasm. Not my best Saint Patrick’s day. Saturday, I was still pretty drunk and had to miss Katie’s birthday party. (I was bummed about that. They did a photo scavenger hunt at the mall.) Sunday, I got tired of living like a zombie, so I quit taking the Vicodin. I missed church, but mustered the strength to go to a rehearsal for the Spring musical. Monday I was back to work (although in a much reduced capacity).

This morning, I went to see Dr. Kwong (who rebuilt Tammy’s ankle). He poked around a little and asked me to straighten my arm. Har har. Then he administered some kind of pain killer directly into my elbow joint with a sharpened McDonald’s straw. (No kidding! You could easily slurped a McFlurry through that thing.) It did the job though, and I was able to straighten my arm for the x-rays. My shoulder is fine. Maybe a little sprained. My radius is cracked, although I couldn’t really see it on the films. I’m to keep it “mostly immobile” in the sling for a week. Then more x-rays. He also prescribed some less potent pain meds. So hopefully I can be pain free without being brain free.

That’s about as detailed as I can get without getting fired for taking a three hour lunch.

*Some limits apply.

(Special thanks to my ghostwriter Tammy. I love you!)

If you have ever been hurt before you know how tired you get from telling the same story over and over. “What happen to you?”, “How did you get hurt?”.

So to avoid that I am going to post here what happened to me and how I did that. If you see me you will notice my right arm is in a sling. And you might notice some road rash here and there. Well you see I was riding in the Tour de France and I was just about to pass Lance Armstrong when that little Austin cheat knocked me over…What?! You don’t believe me..Ok. Ok. There was this alligator…No? Ok. I was flying an airplane and…

All right I’ll be honest I fell off my bicycle (and it had nothing to do with Lance Armstrong). I was on my way home from work and I fell over. There! Are you happy now?

After hours at the ER and lot of girlish screaming we found out I have cracked the head of my radius bone in my right forearm. Everything else is fine. Thanks for your concern and prayers. You can send flowers or cash donations to… Whoa… Hold on… My medicine is starting to… Wheeee!!

P.S. (From Tammy) You think my husband is weird? You should see him on muscle relaxers.

I love science. I’m the kind of guy who takes comfort in certainty. Two plus two is always four. (Well, unless you’re using a number system that doesn’t include four. Or you’re trying to add incompatible objects. Or you have overloaded the plus operator. Or… oh never mind.)

But it irritates me to no end when scientist tromp all over the beauty of the scientific method with statements that we are supposed to accept as fact, but are based on ridiculous assumptions. Just because you get paid to be a scientist doesn’t make you immune from the scientific method!

We’ve seen this behavior from archeologists, geologists, biologists, ecologists and about ever other “ologist” you can think of. It defies reason that so many of our worlds “smartest” people can be so blind to their own bias and pride that they have become completely unreliable. Can you really trust anything a scientist tells you anymore? I don’t.

The easiest example is “global warming”. We’ve been indoctrinated for over two decades that man’s abuse of technology is going to bring about the end of the world by gradually raising the Earth’s temperature until the sky falls. Okay, not exactly, but something along those lines. I dare say it would be hard to watch 24 hours of news without hearing some nut job mentioning global warming.

However…

A recent study found that less of the sun’s energy is making to the Earth in the last five years (not more), and yet, miraculously, the world’s temperature has remained the roughly unchanged. According to this study, the Earth should be getting colder. How do scientists sum up this article?

“No doubt greenhouse gases are increasing … No doubt that will cause a warming. The question is, ‘Are there other things going on?'”

GAH!! He just finished saying that they can not explain what they’ve observed, but somehow he remains certain that the sky is still falling.

Okay, okay. So, let’s just say the sky is falling. Record hurricanes, droughts, blah blah blah. So the Earth is getting hotter. That would explain why it’s been so hot in Africa this year, right? Oh wait. It’s not hotter in Africa this year?!

No! In fact, for the second year in a row, there has been record snow in the Sahara! SNOW!! IN THE SAHARA!!

So, how is it that scientists are so wrong? Allow me to explain. In the last half century of so, scientist in every field have gotten into the habit of extrapolating. That is to say that they observe an event and then extend that event infinitely into the past or future and make assumptions based on the math.

For instance, scientists have noticed some major earth quakes on the Horn of Africa in the last few years. There are large fissures opening up in the ground. So, a scientist says, “Look! The ground has opened up 100 meters in only a few months. At this rate, Africa will be split in half in only a few thousand years!” WHAT? It would be funny if it weren’t true.

That is equivalent to someone observing a house fly traveling three feet through the air. “Look! That house fly flew three feet in only half a second. That means that in the last year, that same fly has flown 36,000 miles! He must be tired!”

As stupid as that sounds, it is exactly what we are being taught. Global warming, evolution, archeological dating, and pretty much our entire understanding of astronomy are all based on these kinds of retarded extrapolation. And you and I are expected to swallow it with a smile. Well, excuse me, but I don’t have much of a stomach for poo. Do you?

Some of you may know that my wife, Tammy, has been looking for a new job for several months. She worked for a company that imported, warehoused, and wholesaled clothing accessories (socks, hats, belts, etc.) to big name retailers like JC Penny and Wal-Mart. It was a neat job, but it was stressful, much too far from our new apartment, and the hours were awful. (Tammy had to leave the house before 6AM.)

As usual, God not only had the right job waiting, He revealed it at the perfect time. After a performance of our Christmas musical at the church, Tammy and I saw some old friends in the audience. We went down to talk to them and the conversation turned to Tammy’s job search. Tammy, being the persistent optimist that she is, asked the, “Wanna give me a job?” (She said this of everyone who asked about her job situation for months.) This time, the answer was not a chuckle and “I wish I could.” Instead, the response was a thoughtful look and silence. *perk*

Stan Preece and his wife Karen have been friends for about three years. Stan is a pediatric dentist and Karen manages his office. They were, at Christmas time, finalizing plans to build a new office and move out of their current digs which were shared with other doctors and very over crowded. “Let me talk to Stan about that,” sounded like the “Halleluiah Chorus” in my ears.

Three months later, things are coming to pass. There have been three rounds of layoffs at Tammy’s old job. The only reason she survived is because she had already given notice that she was leaving. (God-Thang #1) The new dental office is just a few weeks from opening, and Tammy has been training at the “old office” for a couple of weeks now. Originally, she was slated to work the front desk, taking appointments and handling records. Not as glamorous as her previous job, but closer, better hours, and a much better environment. Plus her pay rate would be about the same. (God-Thang #2) Within a week of training, she was coming home with stories of taking X-rays and soldering crowns; not the kind of thing a desk jockey would need to learn. We got formal notice this morning that Tammy “picked up on things so quick” that they decided to make her a dental assistant! How many people do you know who get a promotion after a week on the job? (God-Thang #3)

I can’t tell you how proud I am of my bride. (Bride-Pride?) Way to go, Tammy! I love you.

As if to cleanse my pallet of the 2006 remake of the Pink Panther, I rented the 1976 film, The Pink Panther Strikes Again. As I said before, Tammy is not a big fan of slap-stick comedy. She surprised me (and maybe herself) by sitting through this whole show and actually laughing at most of it. I, on the other hand, howled. I love Peter Sellers as Jacques Clouseau.

It seems like each of these movies has a scene that has become a Pink Panther cliche. In “Strikes Again” we have the classic, “Zat iz not my dog,” scene between Clouseau and the old German inn keeper. Oh, it makes me chuckle just to think about it.

I’m not sure what all I can say about this film to praise it. If you’ve never scene the old Pink Panther series, you simply MUST. If you have, then you have already made up your mind and you either think Sellers was a genius or you think it was stupid. In that case, I can’t do much to change your mind.

I will caution that if you are looking for some good Clouseau, don’t go back to the first “Pink Panther”, released in 1963. That one was a weird mix of James Bond, cloak and dagger, with Sellers’ slap-stick thrown in for comic relief. Also avoid the Panthers made after Sellers died (in 1980).

I give this film four out of five grins. By my ranking system, that means that I’d be willing to buy this one. (Which is convenient since they now have a Pink Panther box set. Hint hint!)