6-12: Still no computer. Looks like a lost cause now.
I lose.
The iMac is going into the shop. Third hard drive in 4 years. The original Seagate drive lasted 13 months. The Western Digital just over 3 years. I don't think this is very good. I don't know who or what to blame.
Hopefully I'll have the computer back this evening.
Football practice was OK. Foster dogs vet visit went well. Will probably meet some potential adopters this weekend.
My puppy loves me.

Posted by David at 6:24 AM | Permalink

Click images for desktop size: "Keyhole" by Unknown Walking to the doctor's yesterday it was almost comforting to walk past the block of houses that are still full on with their Christmas decorations. Five months past Christmas; since the three homes are in a row I figure they have some secret reason for doing this, something personal that we'll never be privy to. Maybe something even wonderful.
Or maybe they're all just lazy. Maybe waiting for the other guy to go first.
The walk took more out of me than usual. I was really stressing the final half mile. I encouraged myself by thinking that, even though I'm not a huge grunge fan and not an idolizer of Kurt Cobain, I do think he had some genius. It was genius to book Shonen Knife to open for Nirvana on their ultimate tour.
At the doc's it was a complicated affair.
I try and slow my brain down and listen. I get to talking in a monotonous way because I'm trying to stay calm and listen to what they're saying. Trying to absorb it while keeping emotions out of the internal conflict. Try and keep the thoughts out of my head; thoughts like, "You mean I'm not immortal?"
I'm pretty sure most of us have at least a phase where we think we're going to live forever and that life will not leave an imprint on us, we will only affect life, not the other way around. God has blessed us. The proof is that we are still alive.
We go to see movies like "The Last Man on Earth" and "The Plague" and all those zombie flic's because they are tip sheets. When the apocalypse comes there's no doubt that we will be the final survivors.
If that wasn't some sort of primeval instinctive knowledge no one would be silly enough to believe in the Rapture, that the world will end and because we tie our shoes a certain way and don't use zippers or buttons angels will descend and take us away while the rest of you perish in holy white flames.

Click images for desktop size: "Le Bistro" by Edward Hopper Scientology (who I make no bones about believing are pure evil) makes billions of dollars from the fearful and the delusional by preaching that the world will end. Only they updated it to say that our mother planet will send silver space ships to save just us, just the we who payed for the courses and bought the books and the machines. The space ships will save just us while the rest of you perish in white holy flames. I guess the white flames here come from some enemy planet or something. They've never really explained that part or how the spaceships would be able to tell who were the right ones to save.
So I think its fair to say that we, as a race, think we're going to live forever even if we really don't think we deserve to and need to spend most of our lives preparing to be worth living forever.
I've never been conflicted in that. I just knew I was immortal and indestructible. I and all the people I loved were going to live forever and I has seen enough movies to be fully aware of the right way to survive any doomsday scenario: Triffids would melt in sea water, mutants are not to be trusted except the odd one who lives alone and has friendly eyes, if there's only one woman left you let the other guy have her, always shoot zombies in the head, never let anyone within your aikido based "circle of influence" or you'll deserve what you get and, most importantly, always keep a good dog by your side. I have them all memorized. I am prepared.
No matter what happened to prove that I and my little circle were no different than anyone else I still have the rock base belief that I'm going to be the one who survives.
But you can't let those thoughts fill up your brain pan while you're listening to the doc's, otherwise you reduce your chances proportionately.
I tried to listen.
The good news is that the Avpro is doing a good job on my kidneys, no ketones, the other "k" word has lowered and potassium levels have dropped. Why this is good I don't know. I'll take good news
Click images for desktop size: "Around the Water Cooler" by Lavakillu on face value.
Weird thing is that my blood pressure is up above my target. I was greatly worried about this. They use this machine that takes your blood pressure six times and then issues these weird electronic reports.
The test takes about 15 minutes and I get bored. At first I try and guess what the numbers will be by being aware of my pulse. After I nail it the first and second time the game loses interest so I start to poking around. Leaving me alone in a doc's office is rather silly actually, especially if all the cabinets aren't locked. I don't take anything, I just inspect it and read anything.
Since my blood pressure can shoot up ten points just from my sitting with my legs crossed the numbers aren't alarming.
The blood sugar numbers are a greater concern. Basically they don't make a lot of sense. The diabetic nurse insists that the Lantus (insulin) has to be working. Her studying of my "blood sugar diary" says that I have "dawn syndrome".
When she said this I wasn't sure if she said "don" syndrome, as in Don Corrleonni or "dom" syndrome as in Dom Dimaggio (Joe Dimaggio's talented but overshadowed brother) or dom as in dominant. I thought either would be cool and justify me walking around with an attitude or at least do some weird impressions.
So I asked. I was disappointed that she was saying "dawn" as in "always darkest before the dawn". This is proof that I should not be allowed to go to the things by myself, that's the question I had to interrupt her to ask, the thing I thought was important. "Don syndrome" meant I could do authentic Marlon Brando Godfather impersonations. "Dom syndrome" meaning I could use it as proof of my baseball skills or enter a life of S&M practices . . .
"Dawn syndrome" or slightly cooler, "dawn phenomena" mens that my body produces more sugars at night than it can handle. I prefer thinking that my liver and lymph are merely working at peak efficiency and my slaggard pancreas doesn't know how to keep up!
The other issue is that in 95% of diabetics exercise and activity reduce blood sugars. They get burned up. I apparently produce so much adrenaline that the blood sugar benefits of exercise are offset. Being an adrenaline junky I sort of understood that.
The end result of all this is that my blood sugars are too high and I have to go to a specialist group. I've been through similar before: dietitians, lots of quick tests. Its a drag. At the last clinic I frustrated the nurse and doctors so much they ended up prescribing an overdose of metformin. It worked but . . .
If I have to pay for this clinic I'll probably have to pass on it and rely on myself and my own sensitivity to my body. That's not as dangerous or stupid as it might appear.

Click images for desktop size: "Attack" by Lavakillu We ended up the diabetic end of the exam by reminding me that I'd be on the insulin needle and the metformin for the rest of my life. Not news I cherish.
We moved on to my shoulder and arms. I rather clinically described the pain, its location, pain, duration and intensity. I also described how it would wake me and prohibit sleep. I haven't slept for more than an hour at a stretch in over a month.
The nurse went on a bit about neuropathic pain and how the next way to address this would be with an anti spasm pill! A pill engineered for epileptics to moderate gran mal seizures!
The pain is so bad I didn't much care about what it was or its side effects I just needed the pain to stop. The pills name was something like Neuron or Neitron, which I thought sounded pretty cool as in I could overdose on it and wake up with the super powers of a Neutron Bomb!
She printed out the scripts for the doc to sign off on and then deposited me in another examination room to see the doc.
When he came in he bought the script for needles and test strips and a FREE blood glucose monitor! I love free stuff even if its stuff I don't like. I need the new monitor for the clinic. Its more sensitive or something and stores the test results for a full month instead of a week. I can get a data cord and download all the info and make cool colorful charts and stuff. I guess they can too.
The doc examined my shoulder. It irked me. He twisted it and made
Click images for desktop size: "Ali MacGraw" me do things that hurt and left it fiery and electric. He then asked me if I experienced any weakness in my hands in the recent past. I told him about how both my thumbs felt like they'd been sprained. They were mostly better now.
Then he asked if this was followed by pain in my elbows. I told him about my left elbow still being fiery and weak. He then left the room so I occupied myself by playing with my new glucose meter. Its really tiny! I figure I'll lose it at least once a week.
He came back into the room with the diabetic nurse and he manipulated my shoulder in front of her. It really hurt this time but not to the point of me seeing black or being forced to my knees in involuntary tears.
He then explained that this was no neuropathic pain. He then dropped the bombshell that there is no treatment for it.
I have a frozen shoulder. I think that's the medical term . . . The phrase "Encapsulated SHoulder" was bandied about for a bit but I guess that's the layman's term.
A frozen shoulder is unique to diabetics. It usually appears in diabetics over 40 and most of the time in women. (See, I do to so have a feminine side.) He asked if one of my chemos was the G word that I always confuse with the video game "Galaxian" or the international drug cartel "Galxo". I told
Click images for desktop size: "Hulk vs Fin Fang Foom" by Marvel Comics him it was my second chemo, one that just made me sick and offered not even a hint of remission.
It appears that virtually all people who'd been on one of the G-word trials experienced frozen shoulder.
Another reason to never remember the name of that chemical hell. It was also the trial chemo that blew out the veins in my left arm.
The bombshell is that there is no treatment for frozen shoulder. I can treat it with heat but that's mainly to sort out the atrophying muscles that surround it. I need to do the physical exercises that I already new to keep the shoulder alive and to keep it from taking over my body. Eventually in a year to 18 months it will cure itself . . . A year . . .
Not much for me there. Eighteen months. I have to figure out how to live with it somehow. Rah . . .
We left with the Clinic would contact me for an appointment, I'd see the diabetic nurse in a month and see the doc in 3 months. That's my schedule for the foreseeable future.
I walked home determined not to be depressed about this. So determined I was depressing myself when I saw a little shelty dog out in the middle of the busy street, I ran out and scooped the old guy up and put him on the side of the street he was heading towards. I set him down after I saw he had on a collar and no tags.
My manhandling him offended his aged dignity and he moved away from me. It was at a pretty glacial pace so I could follow him easily while I thought, "I can't deal with SIX DOGS!" But then I thought, he is really small. There's probably a corner someplace we can fit him.
He noticed I was following him and sped up. His top speed was such that I had to take a step instead of shuffling along behind him. He got exhausted and sat down in a sunny patch on the sidewalk. I checked my mobile and saw my friend had called me. I called her back and blurted out about the found pup! He was en route to home so she'd pick us both up.
The little guy accepted pets from me, even licked my hand. He seemed like he wasn't going anywhere. A bright hair girl walked by and I accosted her, demanding to know if she new the old dog. She didn't. I decided to knock on doors. The second house answered and they knew the guy, he lived next door to them. They were willing to take him in until their neighbors got home.
I started walking back home thinking about the little guy and how old he was. It bugged me that he was left in a yard he could escape from when no one was home. I wondered if I'd done right leaving him.
My friend found me in the midst of my reverie. As we headed home we saw someone throwing away a futon bed. My friend, with her practiced eye knew immediately that the bottom of the frame would make a perfect dog bench!

Click images for desktop size: "Immodest" by Leon Frollo We turned around to pick it up. While we were inspecting it the lady who'd thrown it out stuck her head out the door and told us that she'd put all the hardware in the bottom.
We loaded up the bottom half of the frame into the car. It jutted out about 3 feet so we decided I'd just walk home behind the door, not so much to keep it from falling out as to keep the rear door from swinging open and springing. Something that happened to a few cars of mine.
We got it home.
In the house all the dogs had behaved. The two fosters were crated with no stress. They were all overjoyed to see us and needed to tell us so. The new foster is a dolly puppy. He's getting better and better. I can see him being prone to separation anxiety. He wanted to be outside to play but he also wanted to be able to look at both me and my friend. A pretty serious conflict for a puppy mind.
Both dogs have two applications to make them part of their forever homes. I hope at least one apiece would be acceptable parents. I like both dogs quite a bit. Not as much as I love my dogs. I have to say that or else my life could be in serious jeopardy.
I slumped around in dead sleep deprived stupor while my friend tried to do her work and finish up her deadlines.
My friend woke up pretty ill. Not permanent illness, I think, just raggedy. She's sleeping now. Feeling better soon is my hope.
The fosters have to g to the vet this afternoon and then there's more trials for football this evening. A busy day.

Posted by David at 11:38 AM | Permalink

Click images for desktop size: "Irises" by Vincent Van Gogh Woke up in screaming pain from my shoulder. Very bad.
I see the doc's today at 3:30. I hope they have some sort of miracle pill to calm this thing down.
I'm far from impressed with the miracle of Lantus insulin. I thought it was starting to kick in. I got hypoglycemic trembles. Had to eat the glucose tablets to get them to stop, but it appears it was more from me not eating anything for 12 hours than the drugs.
Here's to today.

Football last night. It was good for me. It wasn't good in general but it was far from the worst session I've ever been involved in. The organizers' hearts are in the right place they just don't have the skills to pull it off.
The Equipment Manager and the Team Manager are stellar.
Saw 118 kids yesterday. No stud athletes. That's no big deal. They were kids. Some showed potential. Potential is all that they need right now. In general the kids seemed eager to learn, eager to play they just have no clue as to how.
I ran the agility section with the 6 inch agility hurdles. This is one of my and a lot of other coaches favorite sets of drills. We used to run these drills with "step over bags" which were about the same height as the hurdles and about six inches broad. One of the evolutions in sports science is how even this small thing has changed.
Originally the step over bags were about 12 inches high. The point then was getting the players to get their knees high, like stepping over arm tackles and flying bodies. Gradually it dawned on us that getting the knees high slowed the player down, it was not efficient use of kinetic energy. The step over bags got shorter and shorter. Virginia Tech was then using one inch plywood, eight inches wide and five feet long, as step over bags, getting the placement of the player's feet and legs while letting their knees and feet stay low and
Click images for desktop size: "Indomitable" by Unknown flowing to the motion instead of chopping against the motion. And now we accomplish the same thing with little plastic hurdles.
Part of me resists the change over. There are certain elements I think need the five foot long bags to properly implement. Since they don't have any step over bags and as raw as these kids are my normal concerns about finding a replacement drill aren't needed here.
I started with the "Bunny Hop". Six hurdles, 1 yard apart. The kids are supposed to keep their feet together and hop over each hurdle, one hop per hurdle. I had intended this as just a warm up and not part of the evaluation. Two thirds of the kids could not keep their feet together at all. One third could not clear each hurdle with one hop per hurdle. About 10% faded out and couldn't complete the drill.
They wanted to grade three drills. The single step, where the kids run through the hurdles taking one step to clear each one, come to the end, turn left, explode forward five yards turn left again and run through a second set of hurtles.
Then there was the side step, same drill basically.
The final drill were the in and outs. Just a weave going forward, side step, then backwards. What I look for are eyes, good football stance and good arm motion.
In West Texas and California high school ball 95% of the kids would have been given a 1. I gave most of them 3's. I only graded three kids as 1's and 4 kids as 4's. No 5's. I figured I should use a bell curve and not a rigid standard.

Click images for desktop size: "Gloria Swanson" Even the experienced kids kept their eyes on the ground trying to watch their feet, had no arm movement and no sense of precision. I tried to give them visualizations of what they were doing and why. They liked that. I gave the 4's more based on effort than skill. I like effort.
My friend ended up not working with me. She had to start and do the 10 yard time on the 40's. During a water break I glanced at her sheet. I was impressed I saw a few 5's and several 4's! Kids hitting 4 seconds in the 40's make my heart glow. Until I realized I was looking at the wrong column and the 4's and 5's were the 20 yard times!
Watching a few of them run it was apparent they all needed just some fundamental work. With times like that I can get some massive miraculous seeming improvement. I think the kids will work hard enough to accomplish that.
Since most of you know that my coaching technique involves trotting along the athlete and encouraging and exhorting I realized I trotted about two miles yesterday! I was pretty shattered
Click images for desktop size: "Hug Me Forever" by Jana Jelovac after practice. But it felt good.
We have to go again on Thursday. I'm going to push to take over my friends job and run the 40's. The kids clearly need some coaching there. That was my biggest surprise. I didn't hear any coaching, just instructions.
Oh, after practice we stopped and bought whistles! Just regular whistles. I still like loopy ones but that could terrify the parents.
That was the oddest part of the day for me, the 200 or so parents who just sat in lawn chairs on the side lines. I still don't quite know what to make of that.

New foster dog has decided he likes us. He spent much less time humping foster dog and more time hanging out with me and my friend. Yesterday he had no accidents in the house.
He was crated for about 4 hours while we were at practice. I hung out outside for 10 minutes before we left. There was no evidence of the bad behavior his previous fosters experienced.
New foster is a good little dog. He wants to be loved. Boy, does he not know anything! I think as he gets a bit calmer, he'll learn.
Foster dog has two more applications! No word on whether they are acceptable. Foster dog is pretty special. He's struggling to learn, struggling to find out how to fit in. He's a pretty great guy.
I took the Original Trio, gentle dog, my puppy and giant dog, on a walk with just the three of us. They needed the reassurance. My puppy not so much. She;s been through all these fostering things before. She stays steady. Gentle dog needed reassurance that he's still special the most, even more than giant dog who is is very insecure and jealous.
My friend bought me a new hard drive! A 500 gig Western Digital.
I'm not looking forward to installing it. The iMac case is NOT user friendly. There's so much tape and putty etc that it can get pretty overwhelming. Too many tight gentle windings to break, too many glues to distort.

Click images for desktop size: "Ella Fitzgerald" by Bernardine I did it before. I'm going to check around and see if I can get someone to instal the drive for 50 bucks or so. I figure 50 is about how much my fear is worth.
I feel oddly reluctant to let the computer out of my hands.
No issues from the "lost" files. I'm hoping it was just cache files or something.
I'm worried that I've loaded all these responsibilities on my friend, football practice, vets and doctors when she got hit with some ridiculous deadlines at work yesterday. I have to think of something reasonable so she can get her business and recreation done while I handle myself better.
I mowed half the yard yesterday. Not much of a contribution to her ease of mind.

Posted by David at 4:38 AM | Permalink

Click images for desktop size: "Her Blue Eyes" by Unknown Pain in my shoulder woke me at 4, again. Last night I updated some of the Apple software. The QuickTime update required a reboot. I hate rebooting. Now I can hate it with even more purpose.
The restart began and then the computer turned itself off. Did that twice more.
I rebooted in single user mode (command line stuff) and ran a disk repair (fsck). The disk was unrepairable. The binary tree catalog had become corrupt. That's the entire file system . . .
I'd gotten lazy and hadn't done a full back up since Sunday. I was able to boot from my back up. 2 and 1/2 hours later DiskWarrior was able to repair the problem. At least for now.
I guess I'm going to have to start doing twice daily back-ups until I can find a replacement drive I can afford. DiskWarrior reported that I've lost 36 folders and 18 files . . . I don't know what they were. A quick visual scan doesn't show anything terrible. Maybe I got lucky and it was some cache files or something.
I replaced the drive in the iMac almost 3 years ago. A Seagate Barracuda. It was a terrible job. One I'm not looking forward to attempting again. What choice do I have? Last time I broke the DVD drive. Maybe I can fix that or replace it.
Working on the iMac is worse than working on a notebook.
If I suddenly cyber-vanish, well, you know why.
I remain grateful for IMAP. No fear of losing any emails, at least. Even when I don't answer them I like to have them.

Yesterday was strangely busy. Five dogs had a lot to do with that. Five dogs and thunderstorms.
My friend got to come home early, she got to work from home. Her MacBook running Parallels is doing studly duty, I think.

Click images for desktop size: "Modern Woman" by Unknown We had a good discussion about the football tryouts this evening. I was just pulling out of my zombie state, where I'm resisting passing out. I hate naps.
My friend sometimes resists discussions. I think she sees them as arguments and with my propensity for going ballistic I worry that I engendered that. She was at one of the meetings about the tryouts.
At the meeting I heard, "The coaches won't do anything but observe and evaluate the players."
She heard, "The coaches will be assigned drills to run so best come prepared to work."
Pretty contrary.
Somewhere in there she said, "You don't approve of any coaches except the ones you trained." I could immediately think of at least a half dozen coaches I worked for who I liked and also thought were pretty good, better than me in most ways.
The end result of the conversation was positive for me. It reminded me of a truism that I have always held but in the middle of the volunteer coaches I know it is easy to forget.
The main point of sport at this age and this level is to help the athletes to be better people not just on the field but in society, in their neighborhoods.
No person is really capable of teaching that sort of skill. But it can be taught. A coaches job is to train the athlete to be the best that he can be. The real beauty of football is that its teaches more than
Click images for desktop size: "Doris Day" I ever could.
My aphorism has always been, "I teach them how to play the game. The game teaches them about life."
All men are, by instinct, competitive. For me to be successful as a coach, and I think I have been successful, it is important I rise above my animal instincts and not get sucked into who's better, best.
Working with pros I never had an issue knowing that. Amateurs, volunteers who are giving freely and deserve love and respect for their efforts made me forget that, if only just a little bit.
Remembering that changes my attitude greatly. Remembering my place in the great scheme of my goals is important. Even though I made my friend uncomfortable the conversation was important to me for that and several other reasons.

The five dogs . . . oh boy. New foster and foster dog are tight buddies. Even if it involves a lot of humping. They are both doing better and better each day. New foster still gets too nervous but he's starting to laugh and smile. When my friend or I upset him he now goes to look for one of us to protect him from the other!
He's not housebroken and had another accident, urinating in the exact same spot! I need to buy a
Click images for desktop size: "Geisha Dream" by TitusBoy newspaper so I can cover that spot.
We had another small incident. Giant dog is incredibly jealous, He attacked, not viciously, the new foster. The little guy ran and hid under a chair but let my friend coax him out. Just too many dogs and giant dog doesn't like us talking so much to the new guys.
Foster dog has had some intrest from forever homes. One was rejected out right. They'd adopted and returned two animals previously. The other two are lets wait and see right now. The new foster has a woman willing to wait for him until we can see how he really is.
My friend points out that with 5 dogs we cannot do a proper assessment as to how he'd do on his own with just him and a person.

I watched a terrible movie yesterday. A BBC documentary. In this country we have a strange idea of the BBC. I've disliked them and continue you do so. The doc was "The Rock and Roll Singer."
It claimed to be an impressionistic view of a rock & roll tour from 1969. It was impressionistic becasue it had no point of view, no story to tell, and no skill in resolving it.
Still the 45 minute film was fantastic becasue the rock & roll singer was Gene Vincent. It was his tour with The Wild Angels" as his back up band.
Even inept filmmaking couldn't conceal the man's genius, his talent as a musicain as he rehearsed with the band. His insanity and his charm.
Although he was 34 at the time of the tour he looked well over fifty. He'd be dead in two years, dead from excess. There are five live numbers in the film, shot with a static single camera. That;s all he needed. When Vincent sang he collapsed the world in on itself.
The only effective filmmaking was a couple of pointless moments of Vincent walking around London, dragging his crippled leg around his corpulent body looking sadly at the world. Then there were the
Click images for desktop size: "Advocation" by Unknown moments after the show where he had to fret over getting paid. He was worried about himself but there was also the worry about getting the band paid that seemed pre-emminent.
Even when they attempted to provoke and in each spontaneous moment there was no scandal, nothing to uglify, all there was is a drunken, sad man who still held close to the idea of being a Southern Gentleman in all things.
Gene Vincent. Even talentless hacks can make art when you have a demi-god to point your camera at, a demi-god who was also so very mortal and so little different from you or me.

Posted by David at 8:16 AM | Permalink

Click images for desktop size: "Experiments Gone Wild" by Unknown Five dogs is too many dogs!
At least it seems that way today. Chances are that after a week or so it might very well change.
The new foster is a pathetic story. His story bears constant repeating. He's three years old; has no training whatsoever, not even housebroken. His front teeth have been knocked out. I've no concept of why or the method used. He has worms and it appears to be long term and never treated previously.
He lived with another dog. The owner of the pair went to court and was told to get rid of the dogs or face jail time. (We're not allowed to know what he was arrested and tried for. I understand that even scum must be protected even when it frustrates me.) He took the dogs to the pound and gave them instructions to kill them. They
Click images for desktop size: "Keith Richards" were on 24 hour death watch when they were rescued.
The new foster was with another experienced foster family and for some reason he was destructive there. They couldn't cope with him. So he ended up here.
At first he was pretty crazy.
He's been recently neutered but still tried to hump every dog in the place. Our three told him off pretty quickly, since he's about half the size of the smallest here the new foster had enough sense to back off. Except that foster dog, also recently neutered, doesn't seem at all concerned. New foster humps him constantly. Foster dog just goes about his business with this little dog humping whatever part of him he can latch on to.
Its a bit annoying but oddly seems to have calmed both fosters down immeasurably! Strangely my memories from adolescence don't consider dry humping as much of a relief . . . It works for them.
New foster has had two "accidents" in the house. I think they weren't accidents. I think he did it on purpose. He defecated within the first 20 minutes in the house. Last night he urinated by the book case.

Click images for desktop size: "Elements-Fire" by LawnElf He's been very good other than that. He's accepted being crated at night. My friend thinks he's a Pariah dog mixed with Basenji. There's no reason to dispute this, although I think the breed name is unfortunate. He certainly vocalizes like a Basenji, no barking but lots of odd little vocalizations.
He won't let his picture be taken. Dog myth about his soul being stolen? He eats more than the giant dog!
Today is going to be stormy. Beau coup thunder and lightening. We'll see how it goes.
He's a cute dog ad incredibly good natured. Stubborn about his dislikes but no real problems.
Today I have to schedule an appointment with the vet for both foster dogs. Foster dog for booster vaccines and heart worm meds. The new foster for worming (fecal sample!! yuk . . . )
They both need baths. I'm not sure if I have the strength for that.
My arms are killing me. I find it monotonous. On Saturday I was making the bed and flipped the duvet. It locked my arm up. I couldn't move it for twenty minutes.
A couple of years ago I accepted the new pains and took some pride in being able to survive and assimilate them. But now the hurt just makes me weary. My doctor appointment is on Weds. I'm hoping that there is some sort of reasonably quick treatment available.
I'm getting better at suddenly becoming left handed but if I lose my concentration and use my right hand for almost anything I pay too severe a price.
I have other fears about the doctor this trip. I don't think the Lantus (insulin) is working. I think that they're going to try me on a different type of insulin.
Two hours after eating a kiwi my blood sugars were 15.8! I had nothing else to eat after that and my blood sugars were down to 9.1. This is not good.
This morning they were at 8.3. They should be around 4. I was getting very similar results with just the pills. I'm up to 27 units of insulin. Starting to push the envelope. When they started me on metformin I had to get up to the maximum allowable dosage before I started to see results.
I've finally adjusted to the side effects of the Lantus. The trembling in the morning is gone, as is
Click images for desktop size: "Fallout 3" by Unknown most of the nausea and the extra hand cramping. Its a bit discouraging to have to imagine going to another type of insulin and additional side effects.
For some reason, maybe medical, I had it in my head that player tryouts were on Saturday. They're tomorrow and Thursday. Over 350 kids to look at and evaluate. At least I'm primarily an observer and won't have to run any of the drills or do much instructing. I have to get together the pad so my assistant (actually my friend) will know what I want and need recorded. I'll probably keep my little scraps of paper going to insure that I get all the data I can.
A lot of the drills will be worthless, I'm certain. For some reason my fellow coaches want to make sure that there are "fun" drills in the package. I think they underestimate the young athletes. The fun they'll have is in testing their limits, comparing themselves to their teammates, not doing "fun" drills that accomplish little for them or in terms of evaluation.
From what I've seen I expect that some of the drills will be run incorrectly which will also make them rubbish. I worry about being judgmental but then I remember that six of the coaches I trained went on to coach professionally. One in the Div III championship game. I think I've paid the price to believe I have a glimmer of what things should be done.
I don't want to be judgmental. These guys aren't professional coaches. I suspect I'm the only one with a degree in physical education. For some of their swagger its also obvious that I've had more experience and success than the rest of the coaches combined. I admire that they're willing to work with the kids, that they have the drive and willingness to do the job. I know the rewards that come from coaching. They're huge. But they are not the sort of rewards that appeal to just anyone.
They deserve respect and have earned the right to be proud of what they're doing. I'll remember that even if I think they're being dumb.
Most of you know that I am capable of a dumbness greater and more profound that it is reserved only for the well meaning and the oblivious.
I'm going to wrap my shoulder and arm, maybe even wear some sort of sling. I don't think me rolling on the ground cursing in unintelligible grunts and groans will do much for my image with the kids.

Posted by David at 7:23 AM | Permalink