The Blog Less Traveled

I did something sort of unique last Saturday without even realizing it. It was a beautiful and sunny Fall morning and I decided to go out for a run. I was planning on doing a medium length run of 10-15 miles. I haven’t been doing much running or biking since the Boston Marathon. Prior to the marathon, I would usually get a half-marathon run in every week or so. Without any marathon to train for, I’ve been slacking off. I decided to try for a little longer run. I ended up running 10 miles. I didn’t really think anything of the distance until I plugged my GPS watch into the computer to upload the data. There it was. I had run 10 miles on 10/10/10. I started the run at 9:49AM. Therefore, I also happened to be running at 10:10:10AM on 10/10/10. The picture below is a screen capture from the Garmin program that shows the data from that run. Pretty cool, eh?

That little bit of trivia is pretty small potatoes compared to what happened to a local couple from the Grand Rapids, MI area on that day. They had a baby born on 10/10/10. Of course, you’re probably thinking that a lot of other couples had babies born on that day, too. However, the Soper family’s story is even more unique. They also had a baby born on 8/8/8 and one on 9/9/9. Can you believe that? I don’t know for sure, but I would imagine that they’re probably the only ones that can claim that. It sure makes it easy for them to remember their kid’s birthdays!

Here’s a link to the story that was carried by the local news station.

As you know from an earlier post on this blog, I had hand surgery done on my left hand back in July. The graphics on the left are the before and after pictures. As you can see, the recovery is pretty much complete. There’s still a bit of a scar showing, but with time it should be less noticeable. The day after I had the stitches pulled, I was in my backyard raking the beach. I probably should have waited a few more days before doing anything because I slightly reopened the top portion of the incision. As you can see from the photo, the top portion isn’t quite as cleanly healed as the rest of it.

The surgery itself was pretty interesting. I didn’t have them put me under. I avoid general anesthesia whenever possible. Instead, I had them perform what is called an arm block. They basically just deaden the arm muscle. You essentially have no real feeling in your arm and it seems like a dead weight if you try to move it. I was fully awake in the operating room and talking to the doctors and nurses. I could feel the surgeon as he cut into my hand and started to cut out the extra tissue. The surgeon let me look at my hand while he had it cut open. The inside of your hand is a very amazing piece of work. The blood flow to my hand was cut off so you could clearly see the blood vessels, muscles, tendons and bones. He had me move my finger, and as I did, you could see the tendon sliding back and forth on the back side of the finger. It was really cool. It’s times like these that I wish I had gone to medical school and become a surgeon. I think it would have been a great and rewarding career.

All-in-all, I’m pretty happy with the final results. My hand is back to normal and I’m pretty much doing everything I was before the surgery.

Sometimes, I don’t really feel like being politically correct. This is one of those times. I got the following “plan” in an e-mail from a friend. The e-mail attributed the plan to Robin Williams. However, I was able to discover from snopes.com that only the 11th item can be attributed to him. The rest appear to have come from an old listing on a Harley forum in 2003. Anyhow, although it may not fully describe my sentiments with 100% accuracy, it’s close enough. I have a feeling that a lot of other Americans agree with it, too.

The Great Plan

I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I have not heard of one plan for peace. “Books, not Bombs” won’t work. The head mullahs won’t let anyone read them. If they do, they poke their eyes out.

Here’s the plan:

1. The US will apologize to the world for our “interference” in their affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini and the rest of them ‘good old boys’. We will never “interfere” again.

2. We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with Germany, South Korea and the Philippines. They don’t want us there. We would station troops at our borders. No more sneaking through holes in the fence.

3. All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave. We’ll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of who or where they are. France would welcome them.

4. All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days unless given a special permit. No one from a terrorist nation would be allowed in. If you don’t like it there, change it yourself, don’t hide here. Asylum would never be available to anyone. We don’t need any more cab drivers.

5. No “students” over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they don’t attend classes, they get a “D” and it’s back home baby.

6. The US will make a strong effort to become self-sufficient, energy wise. This will include developing non-polluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while.

7. Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don’t like it, we go someplace else.

8. If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we will not “interfere”. They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds, rain, cement or whatever they need. Besides, most of what we give them is stolen or given to the army. The people who need it most get very little, if any, anyway.

9. Ship the UN Headquarters to an island some place. We don’t need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, it would make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.

10. All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way, no one can call us “Ugly Americans” any longer.

11. And lastly, “The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying ‘Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.’ She’s got a baseball bat and she’s yelling, ‘You want a piece of me?'”

Now, ain’t that a winner of a plan??

Have you ever been in the situation of only being able to do things with one hand? I recently had some surgery done on my left hand to deal with a problem called Dupuytren’s Contracture. It’s a condition that primarily affects people with a Scandinavian heritage. My grandfather on my mother’s side was Norwegian. Certain sections of the palmar fascia, which is the tissue just below the skin in your palm, begins to grow, thicken and contract. This pulls on your fingers, primarily the ring finger, and causes it to start curling inward. It can get to the point where you can no longer straighten out your finger. I had this surgery done on my right hand in California about 12 years ago. I waited until the finger was curling in about halfway before I had the surgery done. The picture above was taken soon after the California surgery. This time, I didn’t wait as long. I had the surgery done just as the finger was starting to curl. The incision was a lot shorter and the recovery should be quicker.

It’s amazing how difficult it is to do the simple, everyday things with only one hand. If you’ve never been in this situation, try putting your underwear on, zipping up your pants and closing your belt buckle with a single hand. It’s a challenge. Washing, brushing your teeth and other hygiene activities really test your patience. Being left-handed made the situation even more challenging. I just had the surgery done on Wednesday afternoon. Hopefully, the recovery will go smoothly and I’ll be back to being two-handed in no time.