Following Edge

I've been holding out great hopes for good news from Dr. Lommen for two weeks, and the call came today. I'm afraid it wasn't the good news I was hoping for.

I previously reported on my worrisome diagnosis and the long-term solution to my overwhelming and debilitating fatigue, which involves Testosterone injections, as well as a raft of pills. While the expectation was for an improvement in 6 or 12 or 24 months, I was totally thrilled that my energy significantly returned for about 6 weeks this Summer. I was alarmed when my energy was down again about a month ago. I really hoped that a change in my Testosterone dose would get me back to where I was. Unfortunately, the doctor reports that the levels from my blood tests indicate the doses shouldn't be changed. Curses! Where is my magic pill?!?

Dr. Lommen offered that I could talk to her colleague about heavy metal detoxification, or other naturopathic treatments that I still consider a bit "out there". Maybe I am toxic with heavy metals (probably from the Donettes that I ate this morning), but my feeling is that I'm best to stick with the original plan and wait for things to improve in the original 6 to 12 month timeframe. I should appreciate the unexpected surge of energy early in the treatment instead of letting it cause me to put aside the plan. Easy to say, but it's hard to get over the disappointment.

Oh, and I need to slow down the projects that I started when I was feeling great. You may have noticed that I have been bit grumpy about work lately. When I was feeling better, I should have taken up jogging instead of starting a bunch of new work.

Sorry about the picture joining the pictures of Lauren on her bicycle again, and again, and again, and again (though on a different bike). It's just hard to avoid when she's so cute.

It's been a busy weekend, especially considering my low energy level. Got three tons of wood pellets. Showed the young chickens to a family interested in buying for a 4H project. Loaded Glenn and Genie's truck with composted horse manure (as the start of our "cookies for poo" program, which netted us some of Genie's delicious oatmeal cookies and a nice 1-hour visit with them and their daughter). Then, a party last night with friends from Anne Marie's work.

Today, we started with a bicycle ride, which wound up including Lauren's first ride along and across streets. So far, it's been just on the bike paths. She's definitely improving and developing some speed riding, even though her skill at braking isn't always keeping up. Then groceries and a change of spark plugs and antifreeze for our car. The car runs really nice now. I'm very happy with it now that it's gone over 100,000 miles. Prior to that, it was just embarrassing how much it differed from my old beat-up cars and truck.

While all of this was more work than I probably should have planned to do this weekend, this work felt a lot less overwhelming that my "work" work has in the last week. I suppose it's nice to have some hard (or busy) work to get your mind off of your usual work. I'll get to find out tomorrow whether it's had any positive affect on my feelings about projects at work. Plus, I got my Binary Revolution shirt this weekend and can't wait to show Keith. Ha!

While we most often listed to "Star 102.3" on the radio in the car, which features some modern pop music along with stuff back into the 90s (hey, wasn't that stuff great!), I'm willing to admit we are getting old enough to also listen to "Kool 99.1", the "oldies" station.

Just a few years ago, the "oldies" stations were still playing Elvis and the standards from the rockers and crooners of the 50s, 60s and 70s. However, there's been some significant changes in the last few years. Elvis is gone and the "oldies" now include hits from the 80s.

Mostly, it's not too jarring. I am ready to admit that big Duran Duran hits from 1983 or anything from Hall & Oats in the early 80s is ready to be considered an "oldie".

But, today they played Gloria Estefan (and the Miami Sound Machine)'s big hit "Conga" from 1986. I was never a big fan, but I just had this feeling that THIS CAN'T BE AN OLDIE!

Maybe it's just that your adolescence makes time seem more significant. There's a much bigger number of years in my mind between 1983 and 1986 than there were between 1995 and 1998, for example. In this case, Hall & Oats were definitely "before" and Gloria Estefan was definitely "after".

For all you kids reading this, you'll just have to wait to understand when you first say to yourself "EVERCLEAR CAN'T BE AN OLDIE"! For those of you still remembering Elvis on the radio... I have crossed over to your side.

I worry about progress on my projects at work.

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

We have Lauren with us this weekend, so it's all been kid stuff the last 24 hours. The least of our entertainment was seeing this car when we stopped for lunch today. Hello Kitty paint job complete with pink stripes on the sides, Hello Kitty seat covers and trinkets. The full deal of Hello Kitty obsession. Of course, it made me think of Kinsey.

We also managed to take in 2 major kid theatrical events. The first was Franklin the Turtle in Franklin's Class Concert at the Hult Center last night. Now, since this was a very heavily produced touring show and since Anne Marie and I have never seen Franklin's TV show, we had to spend much of the performance rolling our eyes at the condescending kid-cute stuff. However, Lauren loved it since she has seen the show (somewhere, we don't know where) and is immune to analysis of production. We have Cindy to thank for the free tickets to the show. Cindy works with David and has seen Lauren around David's office and here on the blog. It was wonderful that she thought of us when she had tickets to offer.

Today, we saw Nisse's Dream at the Lord Leebrick theater. This play/musical was developed by some local folks over the last couple of years and involved children in both the writing and the stage production, so there was little opportunity for condescending kid stuff. It was a nice show and I would highly recommend seeing it, except that tomorrow is the last showing. I am a real sucker (or fan) for local live theater. I'd rather see a half-bad local stage production than a half-good movie, and this production was definately over hfl-good. The show was about "A boy, his cow, a witch, and the TROLLS". Lauren was worried about the witch and afraid of what might happen. She was very surprised that the witch was a good witch. We always tell her that all the witches we know are good witches, but she finds that hard to believe.

Lauren has a list of things she wants to do tomorrow... have pancakes for breakfast (again), go to a park, walk the dog, do a hot tub rental, go to the toy store to show me some "little cars". Maybe I can accomodate half of those things since Lauren will be at the coast with her Grandma for 4 days following that. We'll see.

Just a chicken update tonight. I'm sorry to say that I continue to be much more tired than I should, even though life has been a bit quieter with Lauren away with Grandma for a few of the recent days. I am sure that it's a health problem. I called Dr. Lommen and she wants to get another blood test to see if we need to re-increase my testosterone injection. Regrettably, my next testosterone shot will not be for 2 weeks, so, that's the soonest I might see some change. But, at least there's a good hope and things are better than they were earlier this year.

David sent this picture from his cell phone of Marco Pollo at the fair. We discovered yesterday that Marco only earned a 2nd Place award, which disappointed Anne Marie a bit. Happily, Rhonda Bacardi (formerly Mystery Chicken) got a 1st Place award. I'm not sure if that was fair, though, since she was the only Cochin being judged.

Overall, the number of chickens and other animals in the fair exhibits seems to be way down this year. It's kind of concerning. Tomorrow, we'll put up little signs at the fair about chickens for sale (including Rhonda). Hopefully, some good chicken-curious local will take an interest, buy some chickens, and go on to breed and show some in the next year or two. It looks like new chicken fanatics are needed.

Thanks again to David for the picture. Hope he and the rest of you have a fine time when you make it to the fair... and that you think about taking some chickens home.

It's that exciting time of the year... time for the County Fair. (Note for the confused: Don't get confused between the Country Fair and the County Fair... they are only 13 miles and 1 month apart, but they are worlds apart.)

Anne Marie spent the morning shampooing, blow-drying, shining, and preening three of our chickens for competition. We then took them to the fairgrounds and arranged them in their designated places for tomorrow's judging. The fair doesn't begin until Tuesday, but the real chicken action happens these two days prior.

We entered our two adult Buff Silkies, Marco Pollo and Paris Hilton, and the young chicken formerly known as Mystery Chicken, who is a feather-legged Buff Cochin with leg-band number 151, resulting in the possibility of the new name "Rhonda Bacardi".

We hope that Marco Pollo will get a prize (since he's so magnificent), but we're just not expecting Paris Hilton to win anything since some gray color on her back keeps her from the Standard of Perfection. Mystery Chicken (Rhonda?) is the wild card. She looks like a very well-assembled and beautiful chicken, but who can know what the judge will see. Regardless of prizes, we'll be happy if we can sell Mystery Chicken and get some leads for selling three of Marco Pollo and Paris Hilton's kids. We already know the fame and glory of the county fair poultry exhibit from our Best of Breed win in 2002 with our Buff Silkie hen, Pamela Anderson, who made the front page of the local newspaper.

If you're going to the Lane County Fair, make sure to drop in and see our chickens. This year, due to a decline in the number of chickens shown at the fair, they are all near to the front door of the poultry exhibit and you can't miss their unique Buff (golden) color.

I've been spending a lot of time with Lauren recently since school is still out until after Labor Day and Anne Marie is working 3-4 days a week in clinicals. I've been wondering why I'm so tired, but I suppose caring for Lauren and working full time does add up to almost every hour in the day.

The sketch of Lauren on the right is from Barry's first sketch of the graphics for this site. Isn't it wonderful. I hope he doesn't mind me posting this little bit of this early work. I just find it wonderful. Right away, I have to get back to him with more input so he can continue with his sketch work and get the final graphics ready for the site.

Lauren is certainly advancing through some developmental milestones. Some pleasant, like taking on more independence and providing useful input into family matters. Some not so pleasant, like developing an awareness that when you choose one option, you often forsake others, hence "Milk. I changed my mind. I really want soda instead," and the exact inverse if she should ask for soda.

But, some of her observations and concerns are so unique that I really need to share them before they slip my mind:

Lauren as restaurant guide: Lauren was recently visiting the University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art with her grandmother. Grandma decided that Laughing Planet would be a good place to eat and said, "Let's get back to the car so we can go to Laughing Planet, then head back here in time for the next activity". Lauren didn't miss a beat and suggested, "Actually, I know a place we can walk to near to here. We don't have to take the car. I'll show you where it is". She then led everyone the block or two to Sakura, a Japanese restaurant near the University, and even suggested the chicken yakisoba noodles. I guess everyone enjoyed their meal and avoided a car ride, thanks to Lauren.

Lauren as racial anthropologist: After we returned from Philadelphia, Lauren was playing with Mr. Potato Head and, in reference to his house, said "He lives in Philadelphia". When asked why he would live in Philadelphia, she observed "That's where the brown people live". She has much less complex observations of race than we do. It certainly is true that we live in an area that has a striking lack of racial diversity. In Philadelphia, I recall that we were in a restaurant and Lauren commented that we were the only "blonde" people (that's her term for "white" people, since she doesn't think they are really white). Sure enough, of the 30 patrons and employees, were were the striking minority. I have enough experience with diversity not to have noticed, but you have to admit it must make an impact on a girl from Elmira, Oregon on her first long trip.

Lauren as protector of the innocent: This week, Lauren and I sat in a courtroom and saw a man plead guilty and receive a six-year sentence for domestic abuse. It brought together both a lot of answers and a lot of new questions for Lauren about being good to others, the sad choices involved in dealing with bad people, and (especially good in this case, I think) that there should be consequences when women are hurt or threatened by men. Lauren was most struck, however, by how sad it was that the woman was hurt and that the man had to go to jail. It seemed to her that it was a sad story all around and I tried to explain that that's why it's so hard for a judge or jury to decide how to make the best choice among sad options. The interesting part happened when we went to see Lauren's grandma and Lauren said, "Let's not tell Grandma we went to the courtroom. I don't want her to be sad about the man and the woman. Let's just tell her we went to a building". Of course, Grandma wasn't duped and asked what kind of building it was. I thought it was a curious indicator of Lauren's sensitivity that she didn't want Grandma to have to know about a sad event.

Lauren will be spending extra days with Grandma in the coming weeks and will be going to a Nearby Nature summer camp a few hours each day this week. That should be a nice break for me and a lot of fun for her.

Either due to requiring a lot of time to recover from our horrible vacation or because I just don't feel like a Eugene Weblogger Get-together would be as familiar and comfortable without Tvindy, there will be no Get-together in August.

So, with two cancelled Get-togethers, the September 28th event should be a not-no-miss reunion with lots of juicy news from everyone's summer and plans for the coming year. I'll look forward to seeing all of you local bloggers then.

Don't forget to check out the Eugene Weblog List in the meantime. There are ten new entries in the last month. Check out what the local blogs are dishing out!

Update: I've gone back in time and changed the 21st to the 28th in this post. Hopefully, no one will notice.

I came across this photo that I'd taken near Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia and thought I should share it before too much time went by. "Gayer Hairpieces" -- Hilarious! And yes, this is a real business and not a joke. It just seems that, for social or historical reasons, all sorts of double-meanings like this seem to exist in Philadelphia with no one really noticing that they've become funny.

In fact, Philadelphia seems to be pretty sheltered in some ways that are very unusual to us left-coasters. As an example, Anne Marie's Nurse Practitioner program, based in Philadelphia, wants her to record tatoos and piercings in the history and exam notes for each woman she writes about in her clinicals. Evidently, tatoos and piercings are unusual and noteworthy back there, so I suspect that they'll think Anne Marie is treating biker gangs, or something. Anne Marie is the first student from Oregon in this program. All you Oregon residents will know that numerous tatoos aren't rare here. And, evidently, it doesn't take more than one day, or even more than one patient, to see nipple piercings, belly button piercings, and a hood piercing.

I wonder if Anne Marie will get extra credit for the additional documentation she has to do. Or maybe they'll revise what they want to see in her reports.

Hope you liked this photo. I can't look at it without imagining who may be looking for Gayer Hairpieces.

I know Keith will by jealous. I tried to help him boost the Google rating for his entry on Danny Way (of skateboard jumping the great wall fame). Evidently, his best efforts got him to 7th place in a Google search (and an engagement to a wonderful woman, by the way).

Now, I've discovered, through looking at the search terms that people use to find this site, that I'm the first hit for the phrase "Panty Obsession". And this is a crowded field, with 80,000 results to the search... and I am (currently) the top site.

That's cool. You may not have noticed (over on the right under my Google ads) that I'm providing a link exchange with P & T Poultry of Shropshire Countryside in the UK. I think they contacted me because my Google ranking seemed to be high enough that a link between us would increase their ranking in searches for incubators. However, I wonder if the link exchange helped my Google rankings more than theirs, since they're not at the top.

Now, I'm going to have to talk more about panties to keep my new readers happy.

I should tell you that our house has become a pheasant production line. I had mentioned that we got our pair of pheasants, Lady and Mr. Amhearst, back in February. I had mentioned that our first baby pheasants arrived as "birthday pheasants" in June. I even mentioned that, by July, the young pheasants had to go outside. But, I haven't mentioned all the other ensuing steps from the production line that once was our quiet house.

You see, until the baby pheasants are old enough to be truly impossible, they live in our dining room, where they can stay warm, well protected from raccoons, and monitored for health problems. They begin (for 24 days) as eggs in the incubator, then move to a fish tank we use as a brooder. The picture here is of two of the three week-old pheasants currently in the brooder. They're intolerably cute, aren't they. And, happily, they only peep quietly and a few hours a day.

After a week or two, they move into a 100-gallon stock tank, which we use as a "relatively easily to clean pheasant schoolyard". By the time they're 4 or 5 weeks old, they've become far less cute... stinking up the house, peeping loudly most hours of the day, and occasionally managing to fly out of the netting of the tank and running around the house scaring the cat.

Regretably, aside from the general lesson that you shouldn't take raising pheasants lightly, I should also mention that we learned an important lesson after putting the first batch of pheasants outside... First, both the mother and the father will attempt to kill their children. How do these things survive in the wild!? Second, do not use standard chicken wire to house 5-week-old pheasants. After a couple of days in their new outdoor cage, they decided to learn how to squeeze their fat bodies through the little holes and were gone. So, either we helped broaden the species of exotic pheasants in Elmira, or we treated the raccoons to six tasty hors-de-oeuvres.

For the second batch, that we moved outside after returning from our vacation, we installed some three-eighth-inch netting to try and keep them around a bit longer. So far, it's worked.

Honestly, I'm not sure what all of this effort is for. Anne Marie wanted to try it, which, of course, is good enough for me. I think we're planning to sell them on EggBid. Hopefully, the market for Lady Amhearst pheasants is strong.

By the way, would you like to buy a pheasant?

After almost a week back to work, I'm still only about halfway through the backlog of work. The good news is that I've gotten the most critical work completed... four bulk emails (which are always time-critical) sent in the last week... and a significant new web application completed only 4 weeks after I had planned to complete it.

I developed the new web application (a tiny bit pictured to the right) using the new development system that Keith and I developed earlier this year. Although I was integrally involved in developing the system and although I wrote some of the most convoluted code in the system, I haven't actually used the system to develop any applications yet. Keith has all the expertise in how things actually work (since he's developed the hugely complex application that started the project). So, it's really put the pressure on me to finish this new applicaiton without his expertise while he's been out this week recovering from a wrist injury and work overload. Overall, it was a great oportunity for me to learn practical side of the system myself.

Even with my head-scratching while learning the new system, developing the simple-but-slick new application required only six to eight hours of my time in the last three days. Almost any useful application requires that much effort, and our development system helps to assure that the end result works well and is easy to change and expand instead of being a mess. I continue to be happy with the system.

The bad news is that the manager who is working with the big, complex application Keith has developed wants to talk about "concerns". I've got to call him tomorrow and I'm sure I'll have to tell him there's not going to be a solution to the most persistent of his concerns, the 2-3 second delay in some of the application's operations. The trick is that, with finite (limited) resources, you can never make a perfect system. A few seconds of delay in some operations had to be sacrificed in order to get the application ready in time and to satisfy the long list of requirements for how the system operates. Anne Marie, who has had to use a system with 30-90 second delays points out that the users of our application could have a lot more to complain about.

Given that the other thing he wanted to talk to me about is the schedule for getting more staff using the new system, I think his "concerns" about the system are not as great as his desire to use it. That's the real question, I think... not whether the system is perfect, but whether it's good enough to encourage you to use it. Hopefully, I'm not wrong about how my talk with him will go. It concerns me.

Thanks to all of you who have recently commented recently. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Who is this stylish and exotic fellow? More on that in a moment.

As previously mentioned, Anne Marie has recently finished her second Master's Degree, and our recent visit to Philadelphia was the beginning of her clinicals and additional specialty training to be licensed as a Nurse Practitioner next year.

All of you who know Anne Marie well know that she's both smart and dedicated. But, she also has a deficit of self esteem and is already worrying about whether she'll be able to make it through the upcoming training and clinicals. Of course, logic tells me that there's no question that she'll do well since she has already gotten years of experience by volunteering at one of her clinical sites, she is a very good student, and she's nearly twice as smart as some of the students, all of which the program intends to get to pass. I think the biggest issue will be for Anne Marie to remember that she doesn't have to kill herself to succeed -- she is brilliant enough to coast and still speed past everyone's expectations. I'll be trying to send her confidence vibes every chance I get (since I have a few too many, as you might have noticed).

Anne Marie also received her diploma in the mail this week from the University of Wyoming. It's kind of strange to graduate from a school you've never visited in a state you are only connected to by once driving through it as a child. The powers of the Internet. As strange as the concept is, the diploma was just as strange. First, it says simply "Master of Science". Although I wouldn't know from personal experience, since I've never received a diploma of any sort... Evidently, most diplomas go on to be more specific, as "Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology" (her other Master's degree) or "Master of Science in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering" (a rocket scientist, I presume). Anne Marie thought her degree should say "Master of Science in Nursing" (since she claims not to be a "master of science"), but by error or by design, that's not the way the University of Wyoming did it.

The even more curious thing about the diploma was the stamp of the Seal of the Great State of Wyoming. The fellow pictured to the right is one of three very strange figures on the seal (which you can see in full, if you like). This character in particular seems a bit too relaxed and stylish to find a place on an official state seal. Maybe that's just the way they are in Wyoming. It just made me laugh to see this fellow slouching on Anne Marie's diploma.

Congratulations and good luck to my master of arts and master of science.