http://www.ComputerBob.com/journal_archive/2005/04.php .
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Today, I decided to trim all of the hedges and bushes in my yard. I got out my Black and Decker electric
Hedgehog,
which is a fine little trimmer, and got to work. About ten minutes into the job, I realized that the Hedgehog
works great for cutting branches up to the thickness of my little finger, but it can't cut through the majority of my hedges and
bushes, whose branches are much thicker than my thumb. So, I got out my manual loppers, and began switching back and forth between
the Hedgehog and the loppers every few minutes. Once, I had to stop for about 20 minutes, to repair my 100-foot electrical
extension cord after I had nipped it with the Hedgehog. I also stopped every hour or so for a drink of cold water. Five hours
later, the Hedgehog felt like it weighed about 60 pounds, but I had finally finished trimming 1-2 feet off of both the height
and depth of almost everything in the front, back, and side yards. By that time, I was so
exhausted and sore that all I could do was sit, so I took some Advil and sat for about an hour, until my wife noticed something
out our front window. There was our next-door neighbor, Mike, in our front yard
with his rake and his large waste bin, raking up all of our branches. I walked out and asked him what he was doing, and he said
that he had seen me cut the branches, but he hadn't seen me go out to pick them up, so he figured that I must be tired, and since
he was "in the mood" to do it, he just decided to do it for me. What a sweet guy. So, I joined him in picking up the last few
branches
in the front yard and we had a great visit, catching up on everything that has happened in our lives since we last saw each other.
As I've said before, having our dream house is wonderful, but it wouldn't be much of a dream house if we had lousy neighbors,
so we're really happy to have been blessed with
really great neighbors. Anyway, after visiting with Mike, I went back in the house and tried to lay down for awhile, but I
couldn't, because something happened that has never happened before: both of my hands and both of my feet kept cramping up
painfully. I figured that I must have lost all of my electrolytes, so I made an emergency run to the store to get some Gatorade
-- I bought 2 gallons of it so I can keep it on hand (no pun intended) from now on -- and the cramping stopped. Since I already
have plans for both tomorrow and Monday, I'll probably have to wait until Tuesday to pick up all of the branches in the back and
side yards. And that would be just fine with me.
On March 4th, I added a text link to the bottom of all of this site's pages, to
utilize the free anti-spam service provided by
Spam Poison. Last night, I removed that obtrusive
text link and replaced it with a small transparent image under the Terms of Use
in the navigation column, linked to the Spam Poison site. See if you can find that transparent image.
Today is the first day of TV-Turnoff Week, during which time the
TV Turnoff Network especially
urges you to Turn off TV, Turn on Life. I'm not going to take the TTN's advice, but they sure have a lot of
compelling evidence for why I should.
According to an AP article, in the next 25 years, the state of Florida will add 11 million more people to its current population of 17 million, making it the third most populous state in the nation. That will definitely increase the value of my property, along with making the Sunshine State a very powerful political force. During that same time, global warming might cause ocean levels to rise, which could cause the whole state to shrink in size. My dream house is currently about 3 miles from the beautiful gulf coast, up on high ground. It looks to me like my heirs might eventually inherit a very valuable piece of beachfront property.
Thirteen days ago, I thought I was almost over the flu, but it turned out I was wrong. It has taken more than 3 weeks, but
today, I'm finally almost totally well. All that's left is the occasional non-productive cough, and some minor digestive problems,
which seem to be mostly vestigial symptoms of my lungs and stomach having been irritated for so long.
As the cardinals in Rome's Sistine Chapel begin the second day of their papal conclave, I am reminded that,
during the week-long, 24-hour news coverage of Pope John Paul II's death watch, one cable news reporter described the
dying pontiff as "a devout Catholic." As the world waits for white smoke to emerge from the chapel's stovepipe,
let's all hope and pray that the conclave chooses a man who meets that same standard.
It's been more than 2 weeks since I first noticed the tiny cough that took about 4 days to turn into the flu from hell. During the past 2 weeks, I had 4-8 fevers each day; slept for up to 20 out of every 24 hours; coughed so hard and so often that I had to buy an asthma inhaler for the first time in my life, just to be able to breathe fairly normally; drank about 1 1/2 gallons of cold water and various combinations of orange juice, grape juice, and diet generic lemon lime soda each day; ate nothing at all for several days, and ate only 2 tablespoons of peanut butter another day; used a couple hundred Kleenex; and had some pretty weird, medicinally induced dreams -- a couple of which I documented here. Yesterday, I thought I was strong enough to mow the lawn, but afterward, I had a very high fever for about an hour. I'm hoping that that fever might have actually helped burn up some of the last remaining germs in my body. And I'm feeling stronger today, hoping that my lungs will finally clear up completely in the next day or two. So, if one of your coworkers tells you that they're experiencing any of these symptoms, but they're at work anyway, stay far away from them. Trust me -- you don't want to catch this.
Looking back at my life so far, I can't help but think that it has been filled with the stuff of classic novels. I've
experienced far more than my
share of love and hatred, loyalty and betrayal, joy and mourning, miracles and victimizations, passion and indifference, faith
and despair, and heartwarming poignance and heartbreaking tragedy. And I also just can't help think that there has to be a
reason and purpose for all of it, beyond just how it has shaped me. I think that maybe, some day, I may write a book about my
life, and maybe that book will somehow change the world... But today, I have to get the air conditioner fixed in my wife's
car.
As I turned left to go to the pizza place, a white stretch limousine coming from the opposite way, turned right onto the same
road, swinging into 2 of the 3 lanes, and threatening to take my left lane as well. I drove next to it for a few seconds, as we
both started
to accelerate to normal speed. All of its windows were closed and blacked out, except for the driver's window, which was down,
revealing a very large black man with short hair and a black moustache. I wasn't impressed. It's been many years since I
was impressed with seeing a limo. I just figure it's probably 10 or 12 high school kids sharing the cost of an expensive joyride
in order to impress some of their other friends. In a few seconds, the driver's window closed and the urban status submarine was
completely
sealed. I left the slow-moving limo behind and forgot about it. A minute later, I had reached
the next main intersection, where the light was red. As I waited for the light to turn, I heard several cars honking their horns
behind me for more than 10 seconds. Finally, I turned and looked over my right shoulder to see what was causing all
the fuss. Apparently, everyone was honking at the limo, which was one lane to my right, and two cars behind me. After a few
seconds, the limo's driver's-side passenger window rolled down halfway, and a long white arm reached out and waved to the
surrounding cars. A few seconds later, a thick white female arm appeared above the roofline of the passenger-side window and
started waving in all directions. A couple of seconds later, a chunky man in his early 30s, with strings of long blonde 80s hair,
got out of his truck about 4 cars back, and ran up to the driver's side of the limo, where he manically grabbed at the hands of
the man in the limo, who rolled his window down all the way and leaned toward his excited fan. The man in the limo appeared to
be a tall white man wearing a baseball cap, but I couldn't see his face. The fan ran back to his truck, the light turned green,
and I accelerated slowly, hoping that the limo would pass me on the right so I could get a better look at who was in it. A few
seconds later, it slowly slid by, just as the last open slit of its blackened passenger window disappeared. I know it sounds like
the latest of my fever and cold medicine-induced psychodelic dreams, but it really happened to me yesterday afternoon. Thinking
back, I wish I had gotten out of my car, run back to the limo, grabbed the guy's hands, and asked him, "Who are you?" That
probably would have been therapeutic for both of us.
I'm finally well on my way to being well, but the fun hasn't stopped yet. It's 2:00 AM, and I just woke up from being the
wacky clown-host of a colorful live children's TV program,
sponsored by an eyeglasses company called "Really Thick!" During the show, I interviewed a 15-year-old boy who was at least 2
feet taller than me, and only about 2 inches shorter than the ceiling of the TV studio. Then, I introduced some cartoons; forgot
to turn on my wireless microphone after a commercial break; starred in a quiz-show skit in which the 15-year-old had to guess the
correct answer (ginger ale), after I had whispered it out loud to the live studio audience of children; and closed the show
from the driver's side window of some kind of circus vehicle, with my friend, the president of the "Really Thick!"
eyeglasses company.
About 8:00 this morning, a married couple in their 60's, both doctors, took me downtown in their van. He's a little overweight
and bald on top with gray hair around the sides, and she is petite with short, dark red hair. We parked in a gas
station that's at the base of a skyscraper, and I watched as they hooked up some framework and harnesses to cables that were
suspended from the top corner of the skyscraper. Then, she and I stepped into harnesses and he made sure they were secure. He
pushed a few buttons on a control box and I felt a rush as she and I were quickly lifted several hundred feet into the air,
though she was
standing up vertically and I was lying face down on some sort of cushion, a couple of feet away. Over the top of the cushion, and
through the
metal framework that held it, I was able to see a few glimpses of the countryside in the distance. After a minute or so, she
reached over and did something to the framework that was holding me, and I suddenly snapped to a vertical position, which scared
me and took my breath away, but the harness around my legs held tight and I was safe. The cushion that had been beneath me
was now in front of me, and it slipped down a foot or so, giving me a clear view of the entire city. Just a few seconds later,
she reached over and pushed my harness, causing me to start spinning. I looked up and saw deep blue sky, puffy white clouds, and
the corner of the skyscraper that my cable was connected to, spinning around and around. When I stopped spinning, I looked down
at an angle and saw the roofs of thousands of tiny houses, and off
into the distance, I noticed that some huge, grayish-silver oil storage drums several miles away looked like the old fashioned
flour and sugar containers that my Grandmother had when I was little. A minute later, I felt my feet touch the ground again. Then
I woke up. I really like the new cold medicine that I'm taking.
I was out of town again for a few days, and just got home the night before last. I don't remember the last time I was really
sick, but I felt a cold coming on the whole time I was gone, and it really hit me as soon as I got home. The coughing, fevers,
chills, and weakness have been so bad that I've slept for 31 of the past 36 hours, during which time I've had some really
creative, full-color dreams, complete with intricate theme music. I'm awake now. I think.
As you peruse the Web today, keep that in mind that it's
April Fools Day, because
some of the
phony news stories that you read today will look very real. Back when I taught
college courses, I played April Fools jokes on my students in
1999 and in 2000.