Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Sprinting by Little Roundtop

If you only have 4 minutes to learn about the battles of the Civil War, you are so damned lucky I found this.

Thank me later.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Nice knockers. Why sank you, Doctor!

I went this morning to Mass General to get checked out and I got my mammogram. Well, both sides so I'm not sure if that counts for two. At any rate, there's no cancer. Or anything troubling. That's good. And even though this blog is rarely serious, it was sobering sitting in a living room filled with women, some of whom were there to get treatments for the breast cancer they currently had.

The mammogram: Brothers, if you ever have one of these, just know one thing. It hurts more than it does for women. I know you're thinking "But they have bigger breasts, most times!" And this is true. The machine squeezes your breast to get the image and that isn't comfortable. But what's downright painful is the chest hair issue. I don't have to shave my back or anything, but I have chest hair, and apparently hair is the enemy of clean images. So the tech kept moving it out of the way of the glass to perfect the image. This took a little while and she was wearing latex gloves and it felt like she was ripping them out one at a time. But it was done soon enough and I was off to see the doctor.

The consult: The resident came in to see me and told me it was probably gynocomastia, which is apparently the default diagnosis if you don't have anything but can sometimes feel things. This can be caused by a lot of things and isn't bad, unless you get a severe case and then you grow breasts like Bob in Fight Club. Rest assured my devoted audience, I'm not growing breasts. Though the pamphlet the doctor gave me is titled Gynecomastia: When Breasts form in Males, which I thought was probably the funniest title for a health pamphlet I'd ever heard of. You can read that thrilling article here. She also said it could be caused by gonadal injury and asked if in the last year I'd had severe trauma to my testicles. I had to answer no to that one also.

So feel free to e-mail if you have any questions. It turns out most of my female friends hadn't had a mammogram yet either. So I'm really a cross-gender pioneer.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

This life will be a long 15 minutes it seems.

So yesterday, unbeknownst to most of my normal readers, my post about the mammogram was picked up by UniversalHub, which is a Boston site that trolls blogs looking for interesting stuff. They apparently liked my line about bringing a toolbelt to the doctor's office. So I went up on their site. Then Boston.com, the homepage of the Boston Globe picked it up from them and my excerpt was at the bottom right of the homepage.

My hitcount looks like this:
Sunday: 15
Monday: 445
Tuesday: 37

I had a minor heart attack when I saw that there were all these random people reading the blog as I wondered just what I've talked about the last year or two. That's the strange thing about this blog I guess. So for those of you who came back looking for insightful humor, move along. Nothing to see here. I will post an update after my boob gets squished on Friday.

Have a good night party peoples.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

I'm a breast man


So I went to my doctor for the annual/every so often physical We're talking and doing the normal exam, and then she starts touching my chest. I'm used to this from the ladies. She says she feels it feels ropey. I have no idea how I spell that word. I was shocked she didn't say it felt like cottage cheese and peanut butter. I'll take ropey anyday. I should mention that my doctor works in a womens health practice. Which means that there are all women doctors, but there's only 15% male patients. So the waiting room magazines suck.

So she want to refer me to a breast specialist and she tells me that I will be the only guy in that waiting room. I'm thinking of wearing a toolbelt and pretending to fix one of the heat ducts until I'm called. So I got called and on Friday I have a mammogram. I should tell those concerned readers that my doctor is super cautious and I figure if it's only another $15 dollar copay, why not. The stories alone will be worth it. And male breast cancer is really rare. Almost as rare as the Patriots going to the Super Bowl behind Matt Cassel.

So apparently they squeeze your boobs for the x-ray. Dear reader, I am not Michael Phelps, but I'm not like the guy in the photo up top either. There's not a whole lot of boobs to squeeze. I have no idea how they're going to do it. Stay tuned for the updates. My family has been kind enough to give me some awesome stuff, like shelter, food, and a history of cancer, so I have to be a little careful.

Hope everyone had a great weekend. Have I told people not to go to grad school? If not, then don't. At least not part-time.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Lessons for the Kids in the Sticks

So I'm watching TV and there's a commercial for a Pizza Hut product called the P'zone. The website for this awfulness is located here. They also have this video of the P'Zone eating contest. My favorite parts of the video are the announcing by International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE) President Richard Shea who always wears a straw boater, and the moron from Pizza Hut trying to explain what a P'Zone is.


Listen up and listen good. If you're buying this, it means you aren't in a city nor do you live anywhere near a pizza place. If you did, then you would buy a calzone. Not only would you be getting something homemade, but you'd be helping out local business. Never mind the fact that any decent Italian would never be caught dead ordering anything called a P'Zone. Or bringing Momma from the old country to Olive Garden. Or be caught saying that Godfather Part 3 should ever have been made. Don't encourage these people.

Personally I prefer a good stromboli, but that's just me.

Friday, September 12, 2008

All Gave Some. Some Gave Soup.


Quite touching. I hope Montu had nothing to do with this.


Thanks to the Consumerist for this find.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

The cold has arrived

Yes superfans,

I have a cold which means that I am spending waaay too much money at CVS on cold remedies that don't work. My cholesterol test came back and I'm looking good there. This seems like it can't be right. But I'm not going to jinx it.

I took the day sick today thinking I'd rest up and get some grad school work done. But then I slept for 12 hours and shot that plan in the foot. So I should be back to work tomorrow. The terrorists will no doubt have noticed I wasn't at my desk today and feel that we are weak. I will foil them.

And to the people to Boston, I'm sorry for spitting. I know it's filthy, but I can't help it.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Friday, September 05, 2008

Massachusetts is safe once more

So yesterday at 10AM, having gotten 2 hours of sleep, I was woken up and told that we were being pulled back to MA for then Hurricane Hanna. She's since gotten remarried and changed her name. So I got packed and back on a flight. Got into Boston around 9:30PM and went home. Took a long hot shower and then went to bed.

Don't really know if I'm going to be needed this weekend for tropical storm duty. Stay tuned. I'm going to post some photos from my time down in Baton Rouge for people. Give me a sec. I've got laundry and a lot of sleep still on my plate.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Not sure what day it is...

So I'm on my 11th cup of coffee tonight and I'm pretty sure I'm hitting that wall. It's happens around 4AM, no matter what you do. This coffee isn't very good. But it's coffee. These days all seem to blend together, which makes it somewhat easier. It doesn't feel like I've been here that long as I've only been working and sleeping .

The motel room has cable TV which is down except for Channel 2, which comes in fuzzy. Don't ask me how I get one channel on a cable system and not others. I think Channel 2 must have paid extra to Cox Cable to insure they stayed on after a hurricane. Some businesses are slowly opening up. I saw the Jack In the Box open near where I'm working. Might have to stop by there at some point.

I was so looking forward to breakfast yesterday morning. All they had was some undercooked bacon, sausage patties and bananas and strawberries. It was odd, but at least we have food and power so I'm not complaining too much. I need to walk down the hall and get some more coffee shortly.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Rental Cars are not my thing

So some good news:

There doesn't appear to be much loss of life. The power outages and trees down and street flooding are the major issues. Most parishes (Louisiana's version of a county) are allowing people back tomorrow. New Orleans is allowing residents back on Thursday. The power came back on at my motel, which is a good thing. I might even have cable soon, but as long as there is a/c I'm not pushy. I'm hot bunking with my friend Sam who's in from California and working days.

Bad news:

Handed off the keys for the rental to my colleague from MA and he proceeded to hydroplane into a teammate of ours from Delaware, thus rendering the Kia Spectra undriveable. And thus leaving us strapped for a rental. He's fine though which is all that really matters.

Work goes along. I feel out of the loop in this corner of the world, my little EMAC office. I had to hear from a friend that Sarah Palin was the VP candidate for McCain. I hope to be home soon. Maybe the end of the week? Not quite sure. I'm happy to see that midnights are agreeing with me. Nothing to do here during the time off anyway.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

All is well. Remain calm

So the storm blew in and out with a vengance. I've taken some photos but not that many. Mostly because I've been either working or sleeping. And I'm working in a cube which looks a lot like your cube and so it's not that exciting methinks.



So today I parked the car and walked into work, handed the keys to the guy I was relieving and he left an hour later. He came back in to tell me I had to come look at the car. It turns out this thing had been blown from it's parking space into the back of the rental car.

This is a file photo. I hope that some of the photos that my colleague took came out. This is a rollover simulator. Police put a dummy in the seat and then the car spins around with and without a seatbelt to illustrate the dangers of not buckling up. This trailer had pinned my rental car into it's spot while taking some paint off the bumper. I normally would find this very amusing that a trailer promoting driving safety had hit my car, but I remembered this exchange.


Smiley Guy at Enterprise counter: You want insurance on the car, Chief?*
Dumb Yankee: No. I have it on my credit card I think.


The one time. Bastards. I'll call Enterprise today after I get some more sleep. The hotel I'm in is probably still without power. Shaving in the dark can be a little challenging. I'm warning Hanna to back off and stay in the ocean where she belongs.


* For some reason here, a number of guys here have called me "Chief", "Boss", "Captain", and other terms. It's really odd. But not as odd as the habit of people calling women here "Miss" followed by their first name. As in "Oh, you need to talk to Miss Debbie." Strange I tell you.

Monday, September 01, 2008

This is some impressive wind.

So the storm has made landfall and as I arrived back at the motel, the clouds were moving fast. I am going to sleep. Not that I'm not curious, but more I'm really tired. Besides, I'm sure this Days Inn wasn't built by the lowest bidder and can stand the wind speeds of a Cat 3 hurricane.

Maybe I'll sleep under the bed.

In honor of Labor Day, I've decided to work 14 hours straight today.