goption Brian's blog

Word of the day: Fremdschamen

Fremdschamen - external shame you feel when someone you care about is embarrassed. (German)

Pneumonia follow-up

I've been feeling better in general the last week or so, but I'm still having some lingering symptoms from my recent bout with pneumonia - coughing fits, coughing up some unpleasant-looking gunk, and discomfort in my upper trachea.  It seemed like a good idea to go see the doctor to see what's what.

I saw Dr. Andrew (Liao) this afternoon, and he agreed that after my multiple-courses of antibiotics, steroids, inhalers, and serious cough medicine, I should be better after this much time.  He referred me to a pulmonologist, and I made an appointment for next Thursday - their first available date.

Satisfaction…

There is something very satisfying when you're snaking a drain and the standing water rushes down because you cleared the clog.

Over the last couple of days, I've been fighting some back-ups in the plumbing system at my house.  It's almost certain that I caused the problem myself - I put some leftover mashed potatoes, cooked carrots, and cooked green beans down the garbage disposal.  Right afterward while I was hand-washing some dishes (with the water running), Carole came in to report that the bathtub drain was backing up - which is never a good sign.

I grabbed my trusty 25 foot 1/4" hand snake, and started working it down the main clean-out.  I spooled out all 25 feet, but the water was still sitting there, so I got in the car to drive to Home Depot to buy a 40' snake.  (In my mind, if 40' doesn't do it, you need to call a plumber...)

On the way, Carole called to tell me that the drain was flowing, so I turned around and came home.  When I got there, the kitchen and bathtub drains were flowing well, but the front bathroom sink was totally stopped up.

My regular snake doesn't fit into the bathroom sink drain, so the next day Carole looked for one of those 3 foot Turbo Snakes at Target, with no luck.  Yesterday, I stopped at OSH and got a Turbo Snake and an 8' 1/4" auger snake, which has an end piece that fits into the bathroom sink drain.

The Turbo Snake did nothing - it's good for minor hair clogs, but not for anything serious.  I fed the 8' auger snake all the way in, and the water began draining, but very, very slowly.  I headed back to OSH and got a new 25' 1/4" snake - the kind with the orange plastic case that holds the snake.  When I got home, I cut down the head so it was small enough to fit into the bathroom sink drain.

All 25' went in, and the drain went from very, very slowly to just very slowly.  I talked it over with Carole, and we decided to let it drain until there was no standing water in the sink, and then use Liquid Plumr.  When I poured it in, the sink had stopped draining completely, so the chemicals just sat there in the sink.

Just before she went to bed for the night, Carole filled up the sink with hot water to the level of the vent, to dilute the chemicals.  This morning, we found that the sink had drained a little - it was about 2" below the level of the vent.

With nothing to lose but a little bit of time and effort, we decided to re-snake the drain. If it didn't work - and I didn't really expect it to - we would call a plumber out on Monday to fix it, expecting to pay upwards of $300 for the service.

I got about 10' in when I got that very satisfying sound of standing water rushing down the drain.  I kept going for another 3'-4' just to be sure, and then left the snake in place while I ran the hot water on full for about 10 minutes - both to make sure the drain was really open, and to help wash down any left-over debris.  I pulled the snake out, and kept the water running for another 5 minutes or so, with no backup.  Yay!

Snaking a drain is a messy business, so I had to clean the sink, the counter top, and the faucet really well.  I reinstalled the drain stopper, and it's now all back to normal.

All this before noon - it has already been a productive day - and now there's no need to further complicate an already difficult Monday by calling a plumber, waiting for him to arrive, hovering around while he works, and writing a big check.

Now that's satisfaction.

Pneumonia…

I've been feeling poorly for a few weeks, and I was finally able to get through to my general practitioner for an appointment. (Since the 3-day power outage in early December, her medical building has had continuing power problems with a distribution panel, which took out all the phones in the building as well.)

My early symptoms were mostly just a cough, that would get better or worse day to day, but seemed to be manageable with Robitussin. Early last week, though, things were getting worse, and on Tuesday I could barely breath comfortably after the smallest of efforts - one flight of stairs, or walking to my car in the parking lot at work. All along I had never had a fever. I got through to my doctor on Tuesday afternoon, and made an appointment for Thursday morning.

She gave me a good once over, and decided I had pneumonia, which matched Carole's diagnosis. To make sure, she sent me down for a blood count and a chest x-ray. She gave me a prescription for ten days of antibiotics and a rescue inhaler, along with the test orders.

The blood draw took about 5 minutes, but I had to sit in the waiting room for an hour and ten minutes for my chest x-ray. My son Jeremy works in the radiologist's IT department, but he wasn't able to pull any strings to get me served faster. I teased him about it the rest of the day.

I got a call from Dr. Liao late Tuesday afternoon - the chest x-ray showed bilateral basal interstitial opacity, which is the radiology way of saying pneumonia. She called again a little later once the blood work was ready - my white count was elevated

I started the meds right away. The inhaler instructions say to exhale fully, then breathe deeply while plunging down the inhaler body, and then hold your breath for 10 seconds. With my trachea and bronchi so inflamed, all of that was pretty difficult, but I did my best. Over the last few days each time gets better.

I'm still on bed rest, and will not be able to join my family for the trip to Big Bear Lake for the McConnell Christmas celebration. Dr. Liao said the combination of high altitude, low outside temperatures, and overheated inside temps would be very bad for my condition.

I'm still very tired still, and even minor effort will make me short of breath, but I can tell I'm getting better. Hopefully by New Years Day I'll be almost as good as new.

How to Parallel Park…Like a Man!

Picture this scenario.

It’s Friday night and Mr. Suburbia is driving downtown to the big city with Judy on a first date to catch a 7PM off-Broadway performance of Guys and Dolls. He’s running a bit late.

“I hope I can find a parking spot near the theater or else we’ll miss the start of the show,” he thinks to himself.

He drives by the performing arts center desperately scanning for an empty parking space. He spots one next to the curb right in front of the theater. But to Mr. Suburbia’s dismay, it’s nestled between two other cars.

“Oh, sweet baby Frank Sinatra on a stick…I’ll have to parallel park,” Mr. Suburbia thinks.

His palms get sweaty. Mr. Suburbia knows he stinks at parallel parking. It just isn’t something he has to do out in the suburbs with its vast expanses of near-empty parking lots.

Mr. Suburbia has a choice. Attempt to parallel park and risk being the guy that holds up traffic for 20 minutes while trying over and over again to back into the spot, consequently embarrassing Judy, or drive around a few more blocks hoping to find a spot that he can handle pulling into. Either way, he and Judy will be late for the show.

Mr. Suburbia keeps driving.

more at How to Parallel Park…Like a Man! | The Art of Manliness.

House is now on the market

Carole and I have been working our butts off to prep the house to get it ready to put back on the market, and last night the new listing went up on the MLS.  Yay!

Follow-up on Bold shaving oil

Last week, I mixed up a batch of shaving oil with a base of jojoba and vitamin E oil and a "bold" combination of essential oils.  After a week, I think we have to call this a qualified failure.

The mix of essential oils is good - but it could maybe use some more tea tree to give it some extra bite.  The problem appears to be the vitamin E oil.  In a pre-shave oil, vitamin E would work well, because it gets absorbed into the skin, but for a pure shaving oil with no added shaving cream, the vitamin E just doesn't work - so much of it gets absorbed into the skin that the razor doesn't get enough lubrication to give you a comfortable shave.  Adding more drops of oil did not help.

So, I'm going to dump this batch and re-do it without any vitamin E oil, and with some extra tea tree oil.  I may even change the base to pure grapeseed oil, which has worked well for me in the past.

Live and learn...

Vitamins

New battery in the Escape

On Monday, I had to jump the Escape to get it started in the driveway, and again at Dad's hospital parking lot. I figured that maybe the dome light got left always-on or something. I drove it to work, and that afternoon it started up with no problems.

It also started on Tuesday morning - in the driveway and at the hospital. When I left work on Tuesday, it also started right up - no problem.

To reduce my overall stress levels, I've been skipping the frustrating trek up Brand to the 134 by heading east on Wilson to the on-ramp at Harvey. About 1/2 mile away from the on-ramp, the radio burbled and then turned off - no sound, no clock, no nothing. I was annoyed, but since the engine was running and I needed to get to the hospital with Carol's dinner, I decided to keep going.

I was the first car into the intersection to make the left onto Harvey, and had crept out to wait for on-coming traffic to clear when the car just died. Luckily, this section of Wilson has some downhill slope to it, so I put it in neutral and coasted forward. Again, luckily, there was no on-coming traffic, so I kept going into the west-bound left turn lane, and was able to coast a block down the road into the parking area of a Chevron station at Broadway and Eagle Dale. (Wilson becomes Broadway at the Harvey intersection.)

I called Carole at work to see if she could get Carol and Sheehan dinner (she did!), and fiddled with the car for a bit. The belts looked good, and there was no idiot light for the charging system. I pulled out my Auto Club card and my Dinc, made the call, and they arrived within 10 minutes. Juan was great - he attached a tester to the battery, used his portable booster pack to jump start the car, and he ran a bunch of tests. The tests showed the battery was toast - it was at 7.0 volts, and the cranking amps were about 1/10th the expected value.

AAA will happily swap your battery for a new one in these situations. The price they quoted wasn't bad. I knew I could probably save $10 going somewhere else, but that was a small price to pay to avoid all the hassles - getting Juan to tow me somewhere, buying the new battery, hoping the install/disposal fees didn't eat up my supposed savings, etc. I told Juan to do it, and he called it in. His colleague delivered the battery about 15 minutes later, and Juan installed it right there and then.

He re-ran his tests, and everything came out as expected. The warranty is better than usual, and if it fails in the next 36 months the Auto Club will come out to replace it free of charge, with another 36 months of pro-rated warranty. All-in-all, I was very satisfied with the deal - and nothing could have been simpler or quicker.

On the way over to see my dad, I found out that a bunch of things in the car weren't working - the radio, the interior lights, and the auto door locks (and key fob) were down.  When I got back home I Google'd for a fix, and it came down to two options - either the fuse had blown with the battery change, or the GER had burned out. The first was a five minute, zero-cost job, but the second was a dealer visit costing a minimum of $400.

This morning, I pulled the fuse, and was most thankful to see it burned out. I have a bunch of various fuses in the glove box, including the 10A needed here, and once I put the new one in everything started working again. I'll still have to re-program all the radio stations (or get Justin to do it), but it's a small price to pay.

Carole needs the car today to take Patty to a doctor's appointment, so I'm glad everything is in ship-shape so I don't have to worry about her having problems today in the heat.

I changed F2-27, at the bottom-center

An interesting commute…

When I'm in the car, my normal route to work is to go up Muscatel, make a left on Longden, a right on Vista, left onto Huntington, and right on San Gabriel Blvd. up to the 210.

I left right around 8:00am this morning, which meant the crossing guard was managing the intersection at Muscatel and Longden.  As I pulled up as the fourth or fifth car at the stop sign, I noticed a big something slide off a car that had made the right turn from Longden onto southbound Muscatel.  When I got closer to it, I saw it was a big set of keys, with a fob and keys for a couple of cars - the kind of set that would cost a fortune to replace.  I turned on my flashers, jumped out during a break in traffic, and grabbed them off the street before they got run over.

After I turned on Vista, about half-way between Longden and Duarte, a Civic had stopped in the middle of the road because a cute little white dog was walking around in the roadway.  I pulled over to the right and hopped out to see if I could help.  The dog let me pick her up, and I found a name tag and a separate id tag with her address on it, across the street and up a couple of houses.  I carried her - the tag said she was Sally - up to the door, and a nice older woman thanked me and said she'd check the back gate to make sure Sally couldn't get out any more.

When I got to the office, I checked out the keys.  The only identifying info is an LA Fitness key card.  I called the Pasadena location and explained the situation, asking if I could leave my name and number with them to pass on to their customer.  The guy I spoke with was very professional and friendly, and he took down my information and said he'd contact the customer.

The rest of the drive was uneventful...

Truths for mature humans

I'm particularly fond of 5, 11, 18, and those close to me will nod knowingly at #20.  There's a reason, although not one that I'm necessarily proud off, why the steering wheel cover in the Escape is split...

via openfreak