Following Edge

Today is my first "blogiversary". A year ago today, I made my first entry here. I think it's been a success. Although blogging is at least as hard as I anticipated, requiring sometimes a great deal of effort to take the time to post, I think it's accomplished what I had hoped... giving me a place to record the happenings of my life for posterity, and to keep in touch with my family and co-workers. I've made over 180 entries in the last year, which almost exactly matches my goal to post once every two days.

I would still like to change things a bit. Not in the way that David likes to change things a bit, having gone through a dozen reincarnations and redesigns and software changes of his blog in less than a year. I was thinking more about changing to a mix of very brief entries about things that catch my attention with longer entries once a week. Currently, nearly every entry is an extended essay. It lets me hit the major points, but often smaller things are missed. But, the problem is that I have a lot to say on almost everything, so it's harder than you might imagine for me to write briefly. Maybe I'll work on it and see if I succeeded by looking back again next year.

Thanks sincerely to all of you who drop in to read these entries. Sometimes, in relation to my health trouble and unfortunate events (like my just-ended vacation), it's not always pleasant to read. But, I appreciate that you're following along and I appreciate all of the kind or helpful comments you leave.

Happy Blogiversary!

After a tiresome day flying, we got into Portland just before midnight on Saturday. We spent the night at Judith and Chris's house. Their beautiful home, the nice city neighborhood, a nice meal, and great company made the overnight stop the best part of our trip, ironically. I will admit that our visit with Nolan in Princeton on Tuesday had all the same great features and comes in a close second, since it was just a brief visit.

Now we're back at home and I have an extra helping of the mail and laundry I love so much. Thanks to expert care by my mother and Amy, the farm survived without us for two weeks, except that, sadly, Hazel was captured by raccoons and died.

I've been asked if I'll be returning to Philadelphia when Anne Marie has to return for a week in January. I've decided not to think about it for at least a month. I truely believe that this trip will benefit from perspective, seeming better (or less bad, at least) over time.

I am really, really worn out and feel like I can't imagine how I can return to work tomorrow to face the huge back-load of work and the extremely urgent things that are waiting for me. In fact, it feels like I need a vacation.

We spent the morning today packing and cleaning Xin's apartment in preparation for our flight back to Oregon this afternoon.

So, let me take a few moments to complain about Philadelphia while it's still in my mind. Yesterday, I spent much of the day navigating the streets of Philadelphia trying to find a playground for Lauren to enjoy and trying to find an open recycling center, and ferrying Anne Marie to and from the office. Let me tell you that traffic in this city is madness. There are a few freeways and a small number of wide two-way roads here and there, but most traffic flows on "arterial" roads that are one way roads with two lanes. Good in theory, but most of the roads are barely wide enough for two cars and have no center stripes to mark the lanes. For an example, see the picture to the right of an actual arterial street we drove frequently.

Additionally, every block or two, some kind soul thinking of others has stopped in one of the lanes with their blinkers on to "run in" to some store or house. Hard to believe that people like that exist, but I guess they must exist everywhere. They're just more annoying here.

That's my last complaint about this city, since we're leaving today. We'll be in Portland at 10:30 tonight (1:30am by our body time -- ugh!), then driving back to Eugene tomorrow. That will be a wonderful moment -- to be back on the farm.

After the childrens' museum and much of Sesame Place earlier in the week, and after taking a cool ferry ride to Camden, New Jersey to see the Adventure Aquarium, I had to cry "Uncle".

The aquarium was very good, but I think I've been spoiled by the Oregon Coast Aquarium, much closer to home. The Oregon Coast Aquarium doesn't have the "4D Theater" (whatever that is), but does benefit from being immediately adjacent to a clean ocean shore. The Adventure Aquarium is a bit of a miracle as all of the huge aquariums are inside what appears more like an office building from the outside. Having just crossed the dirty, green Delaware river on a ferry, it's easy to see why they don't emphasize the connection to the aquarium's "natural" surroundings.

As I said, I'm now getting pretty exhausted from the daily activities with Lauren, so even though I had planned to go back to Sesame Place today, I decided we'd just visit a mall instead. Lauren enjoyed it and probably won't realize that I bailed out of a theme park visit (at least she won't realize until she's old enough to read this -- Sorry, Lauren). The mall I chose from a Google search was the Franklin Mills Mall, which has do be twice as big as the biggest malls I've seen so far (in California) and four to six times as big as the malls we usually visit. Two food courts, two movie theater multiplexes, an indoor skateboarding park, indoor mini-golf, etc.

The first week we were here, I was cursing the lack of "variety" or "big box" stores and the lack of strip malls. Trying to find some household item is easy back home, where we just drop by the Freddy's or Wal-Mart if we don't know where else to get it. In central Philadelphia, you just have a ton of little specialty shops... corner grocery, pharmacy, clothing stores, etc... and each one is old, dirty, and overpriced. It was driving me mad. This week, I am happy to know my way around well enough to discover that the Philadelphia suburbs are more as I'm used to, with a variety of variety/big box and quality specialty shops. I wonder if the dogmatic opponents of big-box stores don't know what happens in areas with no big stores and large competition.

Tomorrow? Maybe I'll sleep all day and rest my tired feet! Ha! I'm sure Lauren and I will find something low impact for our last full day in Philadelphia.

No stories of cockroach insurrection or cheap-shoe disasters. Yesterday, we made our jump at getting through the remaining major attractions in this last week of our vacation to Philadelphia.

We visited the Please Touch Museum yesterday, including their great puppet show, with really outrageous puppets and toys from their museum collection of old toys. A good minor activity to start out the week.

We went whole-hog today and got to Sesame Place at opening time today. I originally thought this Sesame Street-themed thing would be small and simple, but I discovered it's a major amusement park, run by Anheuser-Busch. Basically "Anheuser-Busch Sesame Street Theme Park", and the $110 for parking and tickets and locker rental go to show they're not kidding.

The place is very water-park themed. All of humanity in bathing suits and long lines. We made a good effort considering the 100 degree heat today, but Lauren was tired enough to be screaming and having a fit by 2:00 in the afternoon, so we retired to the car without seeing quite all of the park. Since the Summer special lets us get in for two days on our paid admission, we may come back again this week to take in the rest. We'll see... the amusement park lines are kind of hard to endure.

We're off to Princeton to have dinner with my old friend and co-worker Nolan tonight. That should be fun once I get to explain why I smell like a water park drain.

We started the day with a tiny breakfast and headed off to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It's a shockingly large place that you could never see in detail in one day. Unfortunately, by the time we got through only the special exhibition of French drawings from the Prat Collection and the first part of the American collection, I was so sick from from my breakfast (half a cup of yogurt and half a croissant) that I was just stumbling back to the car. I was sad to miss the modern art collection and Anne Marie was (unusually) unable to find anything of interest in the gift store, so we were a bit short-changed.

I was suspicious how I could have descended from improving health to significant pain and nausea in just a few hours, but I could tell that one problem was high blood sugar, even though my level had been fine at breakfast. On a hunch, I had Anne Marie get me some Ketone test strips at the same time she got me new blood sugar test strips. Although I've never had it before, I confirmed from my high blood sugar and "large" Ketone reading that I was in the midst of Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA). I've never had this condition, but I know that diabetics have to watch out for it. All the literature for diabetics tells you that when you see these two high results, you should get to the hospital, or at least to the doctor quickly. In the same way that "90% fat free" should say instead "contains 10% fat", the 90-95% survival rate for DKA is concerning since it could say "5-10% end up dead". I wanted to point that out here so that anyone who finds this page looking for DKA info won't think it's wise to stay away from medical help. I was able to get some information from the Internet that let me (with a nurse on hand) recover, but don't take this as gospel.

I was able to figure out that my connection to my insulin pump had become dislodged (which you can't tell until you remove it or until you have high blood sugar). Normally, this is not a big deal. I notice my blood sugar is up within a few hours, find and fix the pump problem, and get my blood sugar back down. No emergency. Unfortunately, since I've been so sick the last few days and unable to eat much of anything, my body was using fat to feed me, which left my blood full of Ketones (a condition called Ketosis, which is not very serious). The combination of high blood sugar and Ketones, however, can quickly turn your blood acidic and make you sick enough to be unable to keep anything down. That would cause your blood to continue to gain sugar and Ketones, while losing water, potassium, and electrolytes, continuing an acidic spiral.

We were seriously thinking of heading straight over to the nearby hospital, but we decided that, since I could still hold down liquids, I would get down a lot of water and electrolyte solution, in addition to higher doses of insulin. I monitored my glucose and Ketone levels carefully for a few hours, while we watched some great old Jack Lemmon movies on TV (which Lauren thought were hilarious). Within a few hours, my levels were back to normal and my pain and nausea was gone as suddenly as it had appeared. Anne Marie was really wonderful. What a treasure she is to Lauren and I.

We missed visiting the second museum we had planned to visit, but we did have a nice dinner out at Cosi in the tourist-trap part of historic Philly. However, service was incredibly bad since they were missing some wait staff. Overall, this was something that normally would have been very annoying, but benefited from comparison to the rest of the day.

Then, to finish of the day, Anne Marie did a Pelvic Exam on me to practice before she does one on a fellow student in school tomorrow. For you guys that don't know what a Pelvic Exam is, I can tell you that, although I do have a pelvis, I had to pretend, since I don't have the right equipment for getting a Pelvic Exam (which is really a nice way to say "Hoo-Hoo Exam", which is just a nice was to say... oh, never mind... you get the picture). (Women, did you realize that most men need this explanation of what it is?) As worried as Anne Marie is about doing her first PE tomorrow, I know she'll be far ahead of the other first-timers in her class, having more to do with her careful studying and preparation that my usefulness as a test subject.

Since every time I've expressed optimistic hope about the future of our vacation, something has gone wrong beyond my imagining, I'm not going to do that today. In fact, I'll venture a prediction that tomorrow we'll be locked out of our apartment by cockroaches barricading the door, find our rental car has erupted into flames, get mugged for our tennis shoes, be spit on because our shoes are so cheap, and develop some blood infection, just before the temperature reaches 98 degrees. Maybe pessimism will have to become the new optimism.

Things were definately improved today, although I was still weak and my meals were all just a few bites of simple foods. David suggested in response to my last entry that Anne Marie getting sick may be an inevitable "third bad thing" and I have to agree that it will be amazing if she can avoid it, but Anne Marie claims that her school program here with endless lectures is already the third bad thing. Let's hope so, since there's no allowance for her to take sick days in the coming week.

Anyhow, since she had a bit more free time today, we stopped by Rittenhouse Square, which is a major Philadelphia attraction as one of the original handful of public blocks laid out by the city's founder, William Penn. Despite that, I found it to be a nice little park. The plants and benches and occasional art seemed like features of familiar parts back home, but it didn't seem to rise to the level of remarkable for me. Maybe it's just remarkable compared to the bleak city surrounding it.

We then walked to the Mütter Museum at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Although there are a number of medical schools in Philadelphia, this college is not a college in that sense, but more of the other kind of college (a body of persons having a common purpose or shared duties). The Mütter Museum was right up Anne Marie's alley and both Lauren and I also found things of interest. Bizarre collections of skulls, and ear canals, and preserved or reproductions of deformed or diseased organs, and much, much more. You can see what I mean with a Google Images search for the museum.

Hopefully, tomorrow, we'll hit a couple more cultural attractions and I'll be ready for some more adventurous food.

Evidently, when I speculated on Monday that things could not get worse, I was extremely naive. Anne Marie sometimes says that bad things come in threes, so she's always happy, when something bad happens, to identify two other bad things, hoping that this indicated that good things ahead. This week, I have to note that the problem with that theory is that three bad things either indicate good things ahead, or three (or six or nine) more bad things coming your way. It's certainly been that way this week.

The discreet bad things have been the smallest problem: Got a parking ticket. My insulin pump stopped working. It was onerous to get insulin syringes since they require a prescription here and my doctor's office doesn't have any sensitivity to urgent problems and sends everyone into voicemail. Happily, the great pharmacist at the nearby CVS could tell that keeping a diabetic from getting insulin was not a good idea, and got me the syringes before getting the prescription. Then, carrying around insulin with me, I dropped one of my two vials on a historic stone floor at historic Penn Square (a very historic place for something bad to happen, don't you think). Thankfully, I think I'll be able to get enough out of the second vial to reach the end of our trip. The Internet went down at home, so my site has been offline. Yesterday, the elevator in our building stopped working, so we have to walk up and down the stairs from the third floor. That normally wouldn't be a big issue, but it's magnified by the really big problem this week...

Either Lauren or I have been horribly sick all week. As previously reported, Lauren couldn't hold anything in on either end. After that passed, she was so weak and sore that I spent all day Tuesday minding her while she slept and complained. By Wednesday, Lauren was feeling too well to tolerate staying inside as much, so we headed out a bit Wednesday and Thursday, despite my increasing soreness and weakness.

On Wednesday, we learned to use the Philadelphia (SEPTA) subway, visited the Reading Terminal Market (which was a great place to take a break and shop for cookies and cheese -- Thanks, Erika, for the recommendation), and visited Benjamin Franklin court (which both Lauren and I found very interesting). By the time we did those couple of things I had to walk right by the buildings for the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, since I was so weak and tired.

On Thursday, I could tell things were getting worse, so I planned to head out only briefly. After breakfast, a little shopping and an hour and a half at the Philadelphia Zoo (where I spent most of my time sitting down while Lauren ran around), I was feeling totally disabled with fatigue, soreness and nausea. I've been in bed for almost all of the 24 hours since we got back from the zoo.

I've been almost too weak to even stand up and, despite eating nothing for 24 hours, my blood sugar has been outrageously high, as if I'm eating a full meal every 2 hours (which makes me wonder that my body is feeding itself from fat, or something, but there's nothing I can find online about it), and I've "had a temperature" of 101.8. Perhaps surprisingly for those of you outside of medicine, this is not a fever, since a fever starts at 102.0. But it's still really miserable.

I'm starting to feel a bit better now. My temperature is now below 100 and I have eaten half a piece of toast with no obvious problem so far. And, I have enough energy to tell you about it, which may be the most positive indication, compared to the last few days.

Also on a positive note, Lauren was really amazing today. She tolerated staying in a studio apartment for 9 hours today, while I rested, without having a meltdown. Drawing pictures, tracing her feet, playing "Go Fish" with me. It's more than you can expect from a toddler, I think.

Once I recover completely, I'll fill you in on what's wrong with Philadelphia. I've seen enough so far to find only a few glimmers of positiveness among the overwhelming wrongness of this place. Or, maybe I'll have a more forgiving and positive impression after the misery has passed.

Update: My half a piece of toast stayed down, but made me nauseated for an hour. When the hunger pangs started exceeding the nausea, I also ate a half can of soup and a quarter slice of toast. It made me miserable for 4 hours and caused my temperature to shoot back up to 101.8. Maybe hoping for good health tomorrow is a bit optimistic. However, the elevator has been repaired and my mom was able to help get the site back up. Some things may be looking up.

Now, this is what I call a vacation. Sweltering, drippy heat is only the start. Lauren has been incredibly sick since we arrived (as I mentioned obliquely yesterday). By 2:00 in the afternoon, she had 6 episodes of vomiting and 3 episodes of uncontrollable diarrhea. Given that I was driving around in the car with her for most of that, I'm feeling a bit sick myself with the nausea and diarrhea already making firm headway.

I'm optimistic (and nearly certain) that thinks can only improve from here.

The good news is that during our trip in the "bio-waste-mobile", we got the air conditioner and did some grocery shopping. After hauling a huge air conditioner, a sick child, and 5 bags of groceries into the 3rd floor apartment, I've reached the best part of the day, with Lauren getting some rest in bed and with the air conditioner giving us a tolerable temperature and humidity. I'm thinking about eating my first meal of the day now (before I start more laundry), but want to choose something good looking, since I will probably be seeing it again later.

More updates later.

We have safely arrived in Philadelphia and settled ourselves into the studio apartment. The trip was avoided any major disasters, but the last 36 hours has involved only 2 hours of sleep, vomit, diarrhea (thankfully not mine), laundry for moldy pillows, thunder, lightning, pouring rain, and serious cleansing of a very dirty bathroom here (thank you, Anne Marie).

Philadelphia is insanely humid and uncomfortable. It's like a bathroom (this is a metaphor, but our driving tour of Philly also makes me believe this may be more accurate than just metaphor)... Anyhow, it's like the whole city is a bathroom where every shower has been running for hours and where no one has turned on the fan. I was going to look for swimming pools for Lauren and myself to visit, but, honestly, the humidity makes it feel like swimming in a pool while you're just standing on the street corner (or in our apartment, unfortunately).

The good news is that Alan was wrong about about the air conditioning in the rental car. It's the only place we can really sit down and enjoy a break from the heat and humidity. The other good news is that, thanks to my good planning, I'll be picking up a window air conditioner tomorrow, which should make the apartment more livable.

We've got to catch up on our sleep tonight. Anne Marie starts her classes tomorrow. It's good to remember that we're here for Anne Marie's school, because anyone who would want to willingly submit themselves to this humidity for recreation would have to be crazy.

We're just about on our way for the most arduous part of our "vacation" to Philadelphia. Anne Marie and I woke up this morning already feeling tired and as if we'd been run over, and Lauren woke up ready to either ignore or question everything we have to say to her. It's hard to imagine what condition we will be in 24 hours from now with almost no additional sleep and after 3,600 miles of travel. But, as naive as it sounds, I'm feeling optimistic.

We do have quite the adventure in front of us. First, we'll go to Palmer's birthday party. He's a friend of Lauren from school, and I've come to like his parents quite a bit. Then, we'll drive 2 hours to Portland, meet up with my mother (who is the angel who will take us to the airport), and have dinner with Barry, a blogger, cartoonist, and artist from Portland who I'm excited to have working on some artwork for this blog. It should be neat to meet him. Then, we'll have a brief break before we head to the airport and catch our 11:45PM flight to Dallas/Ft. Worth. Then, after breakfast, on another flight to Philadelphia. By that time, I expect we'll have just enough energy to drag ourselves to the rental car, stop at the Greyhound to pick up a box of bedding and personal stuff (that I shipped to myself on Tuesday), pick up a key from Juntian Xu, and collapse at Xin Fu's apartment for some serious sleep.

I'll update you after we arrive about how it went. If you're up late tonight, you can track our flight (American 320) from Portland to Dallas/Ft. Worth, which currently is showing that the last flight was 90 minutes delayed. And, tomorrow morning, you can track our flight (American 1776, isn't that cute) to Philadelphia. Happily, that one was only 9 minutes late today. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

I enjoyed working a lot towards a project at work as well as helping with a suggestion for company policies.

(This post has been briefly summarized for you due to possibly sensitive content.)

Because blogging is egotistical, I often look at statistics to see how many people are visiting this blog and how people are arriving here. Often, I see the most curious search terms (such as "evil butter dish" or "giant captured crocodiles"), but, recently, I saw people coming from the My Lingerie Pink Panties page, where this site is listed as the top recommended site. If I was going to recommend a site to visit about pink panties, this would not be it, so I'm betting that they must be using some site ranking like Google to automatically pick their "recommended" sites. So, I've got credibility in the pink panty world just because Google notices I say it a lot .

On a related topic, Keith is wondering if he can become a top source for information about Danny Way's Great Wall Jump. I support that effort, since what he has to say about Danny (and himself) is pretty darned funny.

(Click to see larger version)

Living in Elmira, just a number of blocks from the Oregon Country Fair (which is in Elmira, even though they say they're in Veneta), there's a lot to endure around the time of the fair. The traffic becomes impossible for 3 days, with traffic backed up a mile coming into town. The stores become overrun with fair visitors. We could really complain if it wasn't so great to go to the fair.

As usual, we went to the fair on Sunday, which is the best day for families and old folks like us. This year, we went with my mother and Lauren got to lead the way through the various avenues of the fair. If you've never been, it is exactly what you've heard about, but less scary than you might fear and more wonderful than you might imagine.

Lauren led us straight to the belly dancer performance. She even tried some belly dancing herself. It was great that she could take charge this year. So far as I am concerned, the belly dancers, the topless and scantily dressed women, and the the general atmosphere of the fair were much more distracting to my testosterone addled mind than usual.

Way groovy! And tomorrow, the traffic will be more back to normal, which makes it even better.

One week from today, we'll be on our way to Philadelphia for 2 weeks. In case I start to miss farm life while we're away, I will, hopefully, remember to look back at this entry.

We've had 6 adolescent pheasants in the house keeping us up late at night with their peeping and making a big mess for Anne Marie to clean every day. Pheasants are particularly annoying since they become adolescents in just 4 to 6 weeks, so you hardly get a break between the terrible 2s, surly teenage indifference, and teaching them to drive. In any case, having been born June 13th, they are way past ready to go outside.

You can see (in the top picture), the pheasant love shack we built when we got Lady and Mr. Amherst. I think it was a very good design, using an old run-down greenhouse frame, chicken wire and a sliding window from the Bring Recycling Warehouse. It must have been very comfortable for the couple since they have been very busy making baby pheasants.

The problem is that, like me, Mr. Amherst will not leave his partner alone and will intolerably pester his children. So, a separate space was needed in order to get the adolescent pheasants outside.

So, in addition to our other chores, I devised a plan for a pheasant bachelor pad and we picked up two more windows from Bring Recycling and built on the new room (which you can see in the bottom picture). So, both Anne Marie and I were tired and sore when we finally got into bed late. But, at least the 6 adolescent pheasants are outside...

and there are only 5 baby pheasants left inside. Doesn't our house sound like a wildlife refuge? Happily, when these babies are old enough to be annoying (and needing their driver's training), we'll be in Philadelphia remembering why we shouldn't long for the simple life back home.

In other good news, the doctor did not increase my testosterone dose, but instead decreased it. For some reason that has to do with slow absorption, this may not decrease my testosterone level, but, at least, will stop its increase. That's good, because, after learning how to build a separate room for Mr. Amherst, I don't want Anne Marie to start building a separate room for me.

I'm excited about progress with Keith at work to get a big project in the hands of users.

(This post has been briefly summarized for you due to possibly sensitive content.)

I love mail, so holidays that fall on a Monday (such as yesterday) are a real double-whammy as I wait two days with no mail at all. Now, it's important to understand that I don't love the mail because I expect nice cards, funny or intelligent magazines, or shipments of panties or toys. Those may arrive, but, rather, I love mail for the same reason I love laundry... making order out of disorder. Mail that requires some action is the best: Bills are good, bills with errors are even better.

You see, with mail and laundry, everything starts in a disorganized chaos that needs some action and then is sorted, opened, cleaned, read, dried, paid, folded, filed, and put away, ending with everything completed and well organized. Obviously, loving this is an obsession of a sick mind.

Well, after the holiday, today's mail did not fall short! First, a bill! Then, two letters from SunTrust bank saying that they've taken over the two mortgages on the little house. It turns out that SunTrust got my name wrong on both mortgage accounts and got Anne Marie's name wrong in two different ways! I'm sure that SunTrust is a very careful and accurate mortgage company, so I'll have to give them a call to let them know about their crooked-fingered, inebriated monkey's data-entry error.

Finally, I got my new Barnes and Noble membership card. I've had a heck of a time getting the card renewed this year. So far, I've gone through two months, a handful of phone calls, and three different member card account numbers. So, I was happy to get the card, and, actually, even happier to discover that it had no number stamped on it.

I don't know what kind of curse is following my Barnes and Noble membership, but you can see on their web site that an account number is a normal feature of their card. Mine (actual scan above) has none, making it hard to use (online, at least). Needless to say, time for another call, another card, and another month of waiting for another piece of mail from them. I love it.