Posts in the “personal” category

I love this short video of a primary school principal leading his students in a dance, in an effort to get them exercising and off their computers.

If you’d like to donate some money to a worthy cause, my niece is studying to be a nurse, and she’s helping to raise money for sick and injured children. Here’s a blurb from that page:

“I'm on a mission to help sick and injured kids in my local community and I need your help. My local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital treats thousands of children each year, regardless of their illness, injury, or even their family’s ability to pay. These kids are facing scary stuff like cancer, cystic fibrosis, and injuries they may get from just being a kid.”

Any help is appreciated!

“By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another … has even less worth than if he were a mere thing … makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself.”

~ Immanuel Kant (via Dan Rather)

This fangraphs article also mentions the pitching concept of “tunneling.” I’m sure it’s as old as baseball itself, but it’s a good name for the concept. When Fernando Valenzuela first came up he was brilliant at this. He would throw his fastball and screwball to the low, outside corner of the plate, and presumably the spin on the ball looked the same, so right-handed batters could only guess which pitch was coming (which made him incredibly successful).

In high school I did the same thing the best I could: I threw fastballs high, and then a curveball off of that, with the curve starting on the same trajectory, or with this terminology, “in the same tunnel.”

Once upon a time I was recommended for a college baseball scholarship.

Back in the 90s I was a Unix admin on a NASA project. Rumor was there was going to be a 14% layoff. The next day my boss tells me to go to HR. I’m thinking, “Me???”

I get there, and they tell me they can’t print their Postscript layoff reports in landscape mode, ask if I can help. In the end I got a great Pico de Gallo recipe out of it. :)

“Keep grinding man. If you’ve ever been down, misplaced, overlooked, just keep grinding baby. You’re dreams don’t die until you give up on them. Just continue to keep working.”

~ CJ Anderson, let go by the Broncos, Panthers, Raiders, and now a star in the playoffs with the Rams

When you worry about where your words land or how others digest or perceive them, you are clinging (and not allowing space for more to come through the channel). Continually create, let go, surrender to more. Create, let go, surrender to more. It is a divine dance. Respect your own story. Remain inside the rhythm.

~ Victoria Erickson

I had it in my mind that the worst of the mast cell disease (MCAS) side effects didn’t kick in until later in 2015, but I just saw this memory on Facebook from January 3, 2015:

“The day started off with a bad dream, after which I woke up, threw up, and had the shakes for long time. Fortunately it got much better as the day went on, and I eventually enjoyed a belated Christmas celebration with friends and family.”

I remember the vomiting and shakes started long before this – I learned to keep a trash can by the bedside – so those symptoms would have been well back into 2014.

This image shows symptoms of Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, from this article. I can personally attest to abdominal pain, cramping, bloating, nausea, vomiting, difficulty digesting certain foods, muscle and bone pain, muscle weakness, nerve pain, headache, neuropathy, difficulty concentrating, reduced attention span, brain fog, itching, rashes, hives, inflammation, swelling, flushing, inflammation of the eye or conjunctivitis, trouble focusing eyes, itchy and watery eyes, a burning sensation, ulcers on the tongue or in the mouth, coughing, wheezing, difficulty breathing, runny or stuffy nose, sneezing, sinus pain or pressure, enlarged spleen, elevated liver enzymes, high cholesterol, rapid heart rate, abnormal blood pressures (either too high or too low), fainting, anaphylaxis, chemical and environmental sensitivities (and more).

Meet The Teenage Girl Who Is Allergic to Almost Everything is a good story about the blood disease I have (MCAS, or Mast Cell Activation Syndrome). I’m very fortunate that I didn’t have bad symptoms until the last 7-10 years or so, and removing part of my colon recently has also helped reduced the symptoms. It would major-league suck to have this disease when you’re 15 years old.

I’m still in that time period where the doctor said, “The biopsy of the tissue from your surgery shows that you have cancer, but I don’t think they’re right,” so we’re waiting on the results of a DNA test.

*waiting*

*taps fingers on desk*

La la la la ...

“For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.”

~ Ernest Hemingway

“I didn’t want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you good night — and there’s a lot of difference.”

~ Ernest Hemingway (from Hemingway’s Boat)

Being an older person, I find young people interesting. One night when I was in the hospital last week I was supposed to be asleep, but couldn’t sleep, and I heard a nurse’s assistant who is still in college say, “If I had a bat, I’d rage on this wall.” That’s definitely not a phrase an older person would use.

After my surgery last week I went to see the doctor on Wednesday, and to my surprise he handed me a piece of paper that says that the biopsy on the body stuff he removed shows that I have cancer. But then he quickly added that he thinks it’s a mistake. He did two surgeries that day, me and another person, and he said that he knew going in that the other person had cancer, but the lab test results show that I have cancer and the other person did not test positive. So he hopes the results got reversed somehow.

To get to the truthiness of the matter they took a DNA sample from me and they’re going to compare that to the cancerous material that’s still in the lab. (I didn’t think to ask how long they keep that stuff laying around.) He said it could take ten days before they know the result. I think they’ve made movies about this, but I don’t think I’ll be racking up any huge credit card bills or anything like that. ;)

I’ll be having Surgery #8 on Thursday, so I won’t be adding any updates to this site until sometime next week. But y’all have fun out there. Namaste. :)

(I also disabled comments on the website until I return.)

Why, I ask, do so many men (and women), whether they’re sixty-five or twenty-five, refuse to take responsibility for their actions?

Springsteen sighs. “I would go back to DNA. If you grow up in a household where people are refusing to take responsibility for their lives, chances are you’re gonna refuse. You’re gonna see yourself as a professional victim. And once that’s locked into you, it takes a lotta self-awareness, a lotta work to come out from under it. I’m shocked at the number of people that I know who fall into this category. And it has nothing to do with whether you’re successful or not. It’s just your baggage. So that’s important to communicate to your children: They have to take responsibility for who they are, their actions, what they do. They’ve got to own their lives.”

~ this quote, which reminds me of some people in the Alexander clan, is from this interview with Bruce Springsteen

Belinda Carlisle, who sang songs like Mad About You (my favorite) and Our Lips Are Sealed (with the Go-Go’s), was addicted to cocaine for thirty years. She’s now a Buddhist and living in Thailand. In a rare appearance in the U.S., she’ll be sharing her story in Denver on January 17, 2019.

Places I’m sending money to on Giving Tuesday: The Scala Center, Drupal.org, The Mastocytosis Society, my niece’s non-profit application, and Providence Zen Center.