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  • Thank God for Bluetooth

    I’m in the car right now. Dad’s driving and we’re speeding up 84 to Boston, and I’m bored. At this point I’m just ready for this to all be over and done with. So I figured I’d see if I could get my computer set up to use my cell phone for connectivity and it’s working just dandy. Pretty damn slick.

    So the next step in all of this lung stuff is to get to the ER at Brigham & Women’s Hospital (where I’ll be having the surgery and recovering). Once there they’ll take some blood, stick an IV in me and we wait for the lung to be ready. Beyond that we’ll see. My guess is I’ll be fully offline for at least the first few days. Though I’m sure they’ll have me up and shuffling along at least a little even by tomorrow.

    As far as visitors I don’t think I get to have any right at first. My immune system will be fairly suppressed at first and they want to eliminate any chance of infection. Check back here for more details.

    I still can’t believe it has only been a week since I was last called. And they called during the day! That was the last thing I expected!

  • What is it about Wednesdays

    Hopefully this one won’t be a false alarm. I just got a call to go to the emergency room for a lung. I’ll try and do an update from the road. Wish me luck!

  • Home Alone, Part XXI

    So once again my parents are going away for a week and I’ll have the house to myself the weekend of the 22nd. I’m still trying to figure out what to do. I’m not sure that it will be warm enough to BBQ, but I’m thinking of having some kind of gathering. Maybe a movie/anime festival of some kind I can talk a few folks into coming down to visit. At least something to keep me from going stir crazy in his big house.

  • We Close Our Eyes

    And the world has turned around again.

  • QOTD 04/11/2005

    Friedrich Nietzsche
    “In heaven all the interesting people are missing.” [via Quotes of the Day]

  • QOTD 04/09/2005

    Tom Stoppard
    “Eternity’s a terrible thought. I mean, where’s it all going to end?” [via Quotes of the Day]

  • Truth is Stranger than Fiction?

    A few years ago I remember a story going around about someone trying to use a $2 bill at a Taco Hell. Snopes doesn’t have any indication as to if it is true or false, but it seems that there are some people out there who still aren’t familiar with $2 bills.

    Best Buy Has Customer Arrested For Using $2 Bills

    A Baltimore man tried to pay for a Best Buy car stereo installation with $2 bills—and was arrested. Apparently the man was already upset with the Best Buy’s service, so thought he’d stage a minor protest by using the uncommon currency:

    “I’m just here to pay the bill,” Bolesta says he told a cashier. “She looked at the $2 bills and told me, ‘I don’t have to take these if I don’t want to.’ I said, ‘If you don’t, I’m leaving. I’ve tried to pay my bill twice. You don’t want these bills, you can sue me.’ So she took the money. Like she’s doing me a favor.”

    He remembers the cashier marking each bill with a pen. Then other store personnel began to gather, a few of them asking, “Are these real?”

    (Thanks, C0bra!)

    More proof that Best Buy is actually “Worst Buy”: Man arrested for paying in $2 bills [Anandtech]

    [via Gizmodo]

  • Gloomy Bears, What Every Kid Wants

    I’ve seen Gloomy Bear comics, but never an actual one. I want one!

    Gloomy bears
    It’s a little mean, don’t you think, to give little kids cute stuffed bears to hug while they sleep, dreaming of the day when they will befriend a real bear, not yet knowing that it will never ever happen. I am still not over it. Gloomy bears, designed by Mori Chak are adorable and pink, but the blood stained claws will let your children know that bears are wild animals, not to be hugged if encountered in the woods.

    Images Gloomybears-1

    Gloomy bears are $20-$40 at unica. [via Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women]

  • On Breathing

    I’ve been meaning to do a lung update for ages. Since everyone keeps asking how things are going. For those of you just joining us, I have something called Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). The Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation has a pretty decent web site on it if you want more details. But in general it means this:

    Pulmonary Fibrosis involves scarring of the lung. Gradually, the air sacs of the lungs become replaced by fibrotic tissue. When the scar forms, the tissue becomes thicker causing an irreversible loss of the tissue’s ability to transfer oxygen into the bloodstream.

    I’m not sure how I got it or even when exactly I started feeling the effects of it. In hindsight it was quite a bit before I saw a doctor about it. To put it bluntly, it sucks. I’m the kind of person who used to walk everywhere, go out dancing till the wee hours of the morning, and just be active all the time. These days I take things much more slowly.

    I’ve tried various treatments and none of them seem to have done much, except maybe stabilize my condition. I haven’t gotten any better or worse in a few years. So, the current step is waiting for a new lung. So, not much has changed. I’m definitely towards the ‘top of the list’, but that is all due to change when some new regulations go into effect that will make them order the list by ‘need’ in another month. Bah.

    So I’m now opening this up for any questions you may have about it all. Ask away, I’ll do my best to answer.

  • It Always Comes In The Middle of the Night (pt. 2)

    Well, the one thing they were waiting to hear back on came back with a result that made the lung not a good one. So no late night trips for Gregory tonight. Of course after that I’m not going to be able to sleep at all the rest of the night. I’m already feeling myself start to come down off that little adrenalin rush I got.

    I’ve been meaning to post a bit about how things have been going with this for a while, but just haven’t had a chance. I guess I should do that later today.