2010

Just a few things to remember from 2010 before jumping into a hopefully great 2011.


-running my first half marathon
-my dad surviving open heart surgery
-getting my purple belt
-having fun on my motorcycle
-going on vacation to europe
-getting the porsche
-learning not to quit, learning how much effort life can take

How odd........

How odd that I really really enjoy watching college football. It started as just appreciating the level of athleticism to play the game. But now I like actually read college football news like twice a week, I actively seek it out on tv. Six months ago I couldn't have told you even the name of a college football team. How odd.....

How odd that taking a shower and then walking upstairs has me almost shaking with fatigue. I'm the guy who earlier this year ran his first half marathon in right at 2 hours with ZERO training, just getting off the couch and going. Now I am completely deconditioned. I know it will only take 8 weeks of serious training to get it back, but I'm still effected now. But now just the simple acts of life make me tired. How odd.....

How odd that one of my goals for 2011 is going to be not getting a hair cut. I normally despise long hair. I also like the diy aspect of just buzzing my hair off every few weeks. I feel leaner and meaner with short hair. More rowdy. So I find myself wanting to grow it long just for the simple fact I feel it is an impossible task for me. Simple vanity and curiosity also wants to know what I would look like with longer hair. I already have a unique hair color naturally, what if people can actually see it? So I am not gonna cut it really for all of 2011. How odd.....

You know you have a good.......

First aid kit when you can take surgical staples out at home. On yourself!

NYE???

Ok help me out with my New Years Eve plans. Please.

Here are the requirements or issues

-I don't drink alcohol at all. I can be around it, but 5 hours in a bar just chillin' would be too much. So something where I can be non alcoholic and have options to drink.

-I want to be out of my house. So I'm not hosting anything.

-I need to be able to sit somewhere comfortable if I need to. And have ready access to someplace to go to the bathroom. This does not preclude doing something outside or natury.

-I can't tuck a shirt it really well right now, so dress code might be a consideration. I can go up or down. Give it a shot..

-It should be in Southern California hopefully.

There ya go. IS there any hope for me to have a NYE celebration this year??

He had a knife, I didn't.

So that means I was the one in the hospital for a week, with all the "fun" that entails.

Enough talk! Pictures. Some of them with 26 little metallic friends of mine who will be leaving tomorrow. I might save a few. Macabre?

How does a 1 3/8th inch hole turn into such a big scar?
NG tube, oxygen, PCA, SCD's to prevent DVT, foley catheter, PICC line, regular iv line and tons of meds, antibiotics, fluids and TPN. Last night I had dreams I could feel all of this stuff still, felt I was still in a hospital bed, still there. It was horrible.
My scar while lying down in the hospital.
I stared at this for 5 freaking days with them never changing it. No wonder I was going crazy!!
My scar standing up at 7pm on Sunday night.

sippy cup

I finally realized how to articulate what I am feeling currently, health wise.

I am an infant basically. I feel as if I am learning to walk again, I can barely make it up and down my stairs at home. My bowels are far from working normally and controlled. I am eating soft food. I can't sleep through the night at all. I need others to care for me.

Basically I am a baby. But I can talk.

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As an aside Super D and I were talking about my memory. Or lack there of. I am not Alzheimer-y but I really am unable to remember much at all of September and October. And my ability to remember something just told to me one to two hours later seems almost non existent.

Honestly, I think it is totally the "use it or loose it" effect. There is nothing I do during the day for the past couple years of my life that requires much of my brain power. I should take like a community college math class or something just to work the mind muscle. 'Cause I hate Sudoku and crosswords.

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Being sick and healing again has given me a new kind of "come to Jesus" moment. I think I will write most of that stuff in my physical pen and paper journal rather than here. But just know it is happening.

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I have 26 staples in two different incisions right now. They come out on Monday tentatively. My surgeon did follow my request to kind of clean up my stomach a bit. My belly button is back to center and not twisted now. Most of the old scarring was cleaned up and removed. Some odd pouching of fat was also corrected.

So I think I will be able to go shirtless again. Eventually. Right now I am pretty swollen and bruised up though. Not a pretty picture hahaha. So guess what? I'm gonna take one and put it up here! HA!

I try to think back to my recovery from other surgeries and I don't think I can make any comparisons. This time I had to deal with 3 of them in as many months, as old as I've ever been, complications and maybe a little weaker mentally. Right this very second I feel the best I have and I am super thankful for it!

I can see why my Dr wanted me to stay a day or so longer in the hospital. But I just could not have taken it. I did jokingly threaten them I would just leave and walk home, known as going "AMA" in the biz. I'd rather suffer at home, then get better at home to. No duh, but home is just always 1,000,000 times better than the hospital.

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I opened xmas presents early today. Hey, I deserved it. And I hope you have a great time as well too!
AMC gift cards (True Grit tomorrow!!)
Check for $
Amazon gift card
Arte Suave and 2010 Mundials dvds
two very attractive sweaters, argyle
a custom Shoyoroll gi that will be here in like 3 months

Home

I am home now. Which is amazingly nice. I could cry.

But I am far from healed or normal. This is the hardest part of my life ever.

Having faith, hope, strength and others support are the only ways I will make it through this.

Outtie like Rowdy

Surgery is tomorrow early AM, so don't expect any blogging for a week or so. Thanks for reading and see you later!

If you wanna visit, I'll be in Kaiser on Zion.

Merry Christmas.

Scar Tummy VII

"Say goodbye to my little friend!!!"
In the ileostomy world they like to call your stoma a "flower" or "rose bud". I like to call it "part of my guts hanging out of my body that is disgusting."


In ostomy parlance they also like to call your "bag" and "appliance". I like to call it "that bag of crap that I 'poop' into hanging off my stomach I hate."

But surgery tomorrow is going to change that! So say goodbye to my little friend. It won't be missed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and I'm not even talking about my PICC line and dealing with 18 hour feedings and two different pumps. those go away too!!!!)

i may be wrong, you may be right, i may be crazy

It has been my habit to do something I won't get to do for a while before I have surgery. In 2005 it was going for a motorcycle ride along Redwood Road on the GSXR. That was in July and it was beautiful out.

Since I can't roll or train I thought I would go for a motorcycle ride today too, to enjoy something before laying in a hospital bed for a week.

Well then the rain came. Then my butt hurt from not being used to the seat. Then I was cold and sore. Then I missed lunch.

Now I am finally home, had some pizza and hot chocolate. Tired.

Waiting waiting waiting.

die harder minivan die harder 2

So I watched a guy get out of his little sport cute suv in PB today to seriously road rage on someone.

A guy in a truck talking on his cell cut him off and then stopped in the middle of the lanes at the light. Once it turned greed the cell talking, cutting off, lane hogging driver didn't move.

Mr almost a minivan then gets out of his car. At this stage I'm looking for a gun in his hand and my escape route as guess who was parked right next to idiot driver? Me!

Mr dumb driver won't look at Mr rage and keeps talking on his phone. Mr rage is pounding on his window hard and screaming at him. He finally tires of trying to re-educate the hopeless and gets back in his car. (with the pink kitty stickers in the back window. tough guy)

Which means I of course try to sneak a cell phone pic!!!

Gotta love so-cal.........

Die minivan die!!

My truck really needs anti-minivan missiles. That target and launch automatically, leading to complete destruction of any minivan in front of me.

If this offends you, don't worry they only will work for ones in front of me. So if you want to live, drive your wretched minivan behind me.

spending it

Well this is the last week, surgery is on Friday. I still don't know what time yet though, just that my surgeon has blocked out 4 hours of time for it.

Sunday, tonight, is a work xmas party that I want to go to, but right at this second I'm not feeling it.

Monday I am going to OTC to get some lab work and my PICC dressing changed. Then while the house keeper is cleaning up I will probably go buy one final xmas present and go paint with my watercolors.

Tuesday I am getting my mohawk turned into some other sort of haircut. And then begins the year long quest to grow it out.

Wednesday is promotion night so I will go to be part of the pictures and wear my gi.

Thursday I have to go with Killer to his hand surgeon appointment. And then just make sure everything is ready at the house for my absence.

Friday, just hurry up and wait.

So a little something planned each day and enough free time for me to goof off and enjoy it as well to. And I use the term enjoy loosely.

only

I meet people who have lived in one town their whole life, as did much of their family. They grew up knowing their cousins and extended family. The went through school with mostly the same people year after year. They have been friends for over 10, 20 years. That just astounds me.

They have friends with history. Friends through time and trials. I don't have that. When I say "remember when" to a friend, it can only go back a year to two at most. I have zero friend continuity. I've spent more time living away from my parents than with them. Truly in my life the only person who has seen a majority of my life is me. I'm the only one who's been there for more than half of it.

I am the oldest of my siblings and third amongst cousins. That there puts me ahead of them. I only did half a year kindergarten. Then we moved to a different state. Two years in Montana with only two friends there whose first names I remember and nothing else. They could live one house from me and I wouldn't know it was them. Then off to Washington state. The first town saw me in two different elementary schools and then a middle school for one year. I can think of two people I'd like to meet from that time, but can't even remember how to spell their names correctly. "I'll write you", the notes soo often said at leaving. They must have been lost along the way.

Guess what? Time to move again. Into a new town and now junior high. Time to move houses in this town and now into high school. 5 years of being able to hang out with the same people. But we were the wrong people to hang out with eventually. As time wore on we did nothing to help each other grow as adults. Or be real friends. I left in cowardice the year after graduating from high school.

Then back to Oregon. Work and college. It was a small town. I was a townie or local in comparison to most students there. Family, immediate and other had already started to spread. My college friends graduated a year before I did and moved away. I moved to Arizona, knowing not a soul. Two years there then I move to California. Spending 6 months at a time, moving through the whole state job to job. Girl to girl.

I've been told my definition of friend isn't a good one. I think it is due to my experience though. I don't base the strength of my friendship of its length of time. Just as they say love is a verb, and action word, so is friendship. To me. If you want to be friends we have to DO THINGS together.

And that must be why I can make friends in new places. Because I can always find people to do stuff with. But as I haven't been doing much, it feels like my friends and I are shifting. A change.

I can;t wait to be Rowdy again.

Beauty

The Secret of Kells is a beautiful movie.

So I was on the OB pier today and the waves were soo high they were scraping the bottom of the pier on the largest sets. Some of them were really short in interval and the pier could be felt to rock and a booming noise through the pilings. Awesome. Of course my camera phone pics aren't, but if you weren't there then you don't really know any different!

Naughty

I rode my motorcycle today. Against doctor's wishes. This is a picture of the first night I rode this motorcycle home. One look says it all and if you could have looked at me after this ride I'm sure my eyes would tell a similar story

I ate a whole big plastic gallon sized jar of fortune cookies and these were my best fortunes. And if you play the "in bed" game with them my fortune/future is gonna be awesome. (I'm talking to you Super D)

Did you know?

They are increasing the level of fluoridation in San Diego's drinking water?? I know what one person would have to say about this....

What did Thumper say?

If you can't write something nice, write it in code?

It has been my experience that if you are too incompetent to work at DMV in California you go to work in some sort of administrative function in the public school system.

The pharmacy at my HMO must have customer, or member, service no where on its list of things to do each day.

See where I am going in this rant against clueless, incompetent, uncaring, low level, functionary drones? ARGH!

Why is soo much of life aimed at the lowest common denominator?

o mrrf dp,r ,ptr sfbrmyitr/ o s, yotrf pg nromh movr smf hppf lomfs/ o esmy yp grr; dp,ryjomh mre/ ;ogr od ypp nptomh tohjy mpe@

o s, s;dp [oddrf ,u gs,o;u fofmAy fpmsyr smu % yp fosmrAd tim@

impossible is nothing

if you've known me in the past 15 years, you would know i have given myself most of my haircuts over that time. normally just buzzing it short. super short. a few mohawks here and there and sometimes a little style to it. i think in 15 years maybe 6 people other than myself have cut my hair....

needless to say, DIY short haircuts have been my thing for a long time.

due to this some would say it is well, impossible, for me to grow my hair out.

so i think that is why i have now decided to do it!

from jan 1st till december 31st of 2011 i am allowing myself just 6 trims, meaning less than 1/2 inch taken off.

hair grows .5 to 1 inch a month right? so i could have like 6 inches to a foot of hair at the end of the year? wow!!?!?!

how will this effect jiu jitsu? mnt biking? i dont know......

but i know i am hoping that i learn to tolerate it over time and that i end up with something like this at the end of it all, but i really have no idea....but of course not the beard
too asian? i think i could do it though...
yeah, i know who this is, but i think this is how my hair will naturally grow out and would be an easy transfer to this cut.

It's the crap, crappiest time of the year...With lots of cash blowing....And too much mall going

Christmas is my least favorite holiday. There alright, I said it. I'm too tired to write anything coherent so just let me babble out stuff in a stream of consciousness and maybe I'll come back later and edit this to something worthwhile.

-It's a fake holiday. Jesus wasn't born on December 25th people. And nothing we traditionally do celebrates his birth. Even Easter has ruined the idea of celebrating his resurrection. It is supposedly some Christian thing but really it is as pagan as Halloween or any other thing like that. If it matters to you. Which is why I like to type it as "xmas" in my family and personal correspondence. 'Cause it has nothing to do with Christ.

-It is a lot of work! Lights, decorations, the whole tree thing, buying and shipping and wrapping presents. And unless you live here, dealing with horrible weather on top of it.

-If you want to give me a gift, do it on my birthday, or just for the heck of it. May is a much more amenable month for doing something fun than December any year.

-Christmas has got to be the most high pressure emotional holiday of them all. Who really likes that? Not me.

Now, I do have happy childhood memories of xmas. I almost always got what I wanted. But as time went on I was just less and less enamored with the whole thing. And then a few years being very sick on xmas day hasn't helped either. I just don't like it. Xmas doesn't make me feel as good inside as 4th of July, Thanksgiving or my birthday. Which by the way are my 3 favorite holidays.

I'm actually happy I get to be in the hospital the week before xmas and maybe on THE day as well. No tree, no lights, no staring at people opening gifts to detect a faint flicker of them feigning excitement at a gift I bought but they don't really like. That sort of thing. And so finding a movie where Santa is basically the bad guy and it is from the land of my ethnicity, Scandinavia, actually did give me something to feel good about this xmas season.

Watch at your own risk:

just driving along the 8 at night, taking cell phone pics

doctor appointment in december 2010, magazine from 1999...what?!?!?!
winning at dave and busters
it was mine, all mine!
I don't feel this way, but I can see the humor in it
now that's a trail sign i like to see!

1-i'm not happy about not being able to do jiu jitsu for 4 months now. everyone is getting better than me. i haven't even been able to do minimal exercise so it's not like i'm even fit and not rolling.

2-i've missed out and not gotten like 3 jobs in a row now.

3-middle of the night ostomy bag leaks and dealing with my prolapsed stoma are really starting to drag.

4-it seems like the women in my family have an issue with having brain tumors.

5-i've been having a hard time focusing on the positive things. it just seems like somethings are pointless. and that makes me want to give up.

BUT I AM NOT GOING TO

Hyperalimentation

Hyperalimentation, just a fancy way for saying you are stuffing your cake hole in a way that would make Sarah Lee and Little Debbie proud. Oh, and your eventual lap-band or bypass surgeon as well.

Me, I am getting 100% of my nutritional needs being met with my TPN aaaand I'm eating food by mouth.

Hyperalimentation.

I now weigh about 134 pounds consistently every morning and have for the past 4 days.

Don't hate. Be happy.

mohawk 6 yes, 3 no.

So guess what, you voted for it and I did it!! Here ya go, from all angles. Glory in the red haired awesomeness of my fiery 'hawk!!





So, what should the next 'rowdy' poll be???????

typical rowdy Rowdy awesomeness

a text i recently received. recently like 30 minutes ago....

"can you guys bounce out of the lot and way out of the area!!!! our crooks think ur cops!!!!! we r trying to catch these guys....."

So I requested information today for an online program that would result in a Masters of Diplomacy focused on International Terrorism.

It can be completed in 18-24 months. Hmmm.......

In other news I am having a considerable number of appointments in the next two weeks in preparation of my surgery.

And I've almost finished my whole big container of fortune cookies!!

tis the season....

April through October is beach season in SD while November through March is desert season. Not being able to ride my motorcycle right now I settled on a hike.

Killer and Maximum were sleeping so it was just me and Monkey. She liked me sliding the truck around and was great conversation for the drive. She takes pretty great pictures as well.

The memorial placards are from an overlook off of the Sunrise Highway looking into the Anza Borego Desert. It looks to be a popular spot for hang gliding. And spreading ashes.

PHOTOS!! The full set of them can be seen on my FB page if you want to see all the awesome shots.