One man, my very own brother, alone, on a raft, surrounded by vicious dolphins1 with nothing but a waterproof camera and, inexplicably, a screwdriver.
Justin Vs. the Dolphins
10.7MB, flash video (flv), 3 min. 29 sec.
1 Well, they might have been. You don’t know.
I came across this NPR blog entry where they cited a study that said 8.2% of Americans do not believe in God, or any other higher power or cosmic force, which struck me because I had always heard it was closer to 3-4% or so.
I skimmed through the study but couldn’t find the reference for that number. Percent with no official religious affiliation (though not necessarily atheist) is 10.8%. Of that group, 37.1% don’t believe in a higher power, making that number around 4% of the total. Later, they give the atheist percent at 5.2%. How is that? Because some people with an affiliation with a religion are atheists! 8.3% of Jewish people and 1.3% of catholics are atheists. Also, only 38.7% of atheists never pray.
There are all sorts of interesting correlations.
People are interesting.
1 So, apparently, Mars doesn’t need women. Or, possibly, they got them, leaving the men behind to report it.
So, I went to a second eye doctor appointment after work today and apparently I have a disease, or a condition, or disorder, or whatever you want to call it.
Keratoconus, or KC. A “thinning disorder of the cornea in which the normally round, spherical shape of the cornea is distorted and a cone-like bulge develops, resulting in significant visual impairment.”
Ew.
They don’t know what causes it, it could stop at any time, or not. At this stage, it is mostly correctable with glasses or contacts, but in 10 years… maybe not so much. Thankfully, I only have it in my right eye.
I might need to go to contacts to get better correction (eyeglasses haven’t been able to totally do the job up until now), but I would have to get two different kinds of contacts, one for each eye. The left, fairly normal soft contacts for a slight astigmatism, the right, a complex (and expensive) hybrid lens. The total was something like $400/year.
One of my favorite things about going to a new eye doctor is I can tell when they notice my disimilar pupil sizes. They usually pause in mid-sentence, their eyes dart back and forth between my eyes, and they sort of nervously ask with tangible hope, “Did the technician put drops in one of your eyes?” I then get to be the reassuring voice, and tell them it’s okay, I was born that way, it’s not brain damage or anything.
But, somewhat ironically, the same eye with the abnormally dilating pupil also has this cornea disorder. But the two things are likely unrelated, or so says the experts. My guess is something went wrong with the right eye recipe when I was being percolated in-utero.
So… something to look forward to: the possible enventual uselessness of my right eye, possibly leading to a corneal transplant or something. Hopefully, the left will hang in there. I might start learning braille in the meantime, just in case.
I walked into the front room of the house. WeeRocket was on Stacey’s cellphone.
Ro: Yeah, so I just went poopy… so that’s good… Okay… g’bye!
He slapped the phone shut like a pro, and dropped it on the couch. He walked past me headed to the kitchen saying, “That was Jay’s mom. She’s still sick.”
I guess three year olds gotta talk about something.
—
Stacey and I watched the first episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm last night. Yawn. We’ll be sending it back on Monday with the remaining three episodes unwatched.
The pipes appear to be in order, as of last night.
Total cost: ~$300 (including $100 Sawsall)
Total time: 23 hours
Trips to Lowes: 5
I can now return to my regular, less-stinky life, complete with fewer nervous-system-destroying cements.
If anyone needs help replacing cast iron pipes, well, um… good luck with that.
If I want, I can click a little button on a remote control to bring up a Picture-in-Picture of the QVC shopping channel in the corner of my computer monitor here at work.
It only took me 20 seconds to get bored with that fact.
Between the Lions is on PBS right now, in case anyone cares.
Confessions of a Recovering Slut : And Other Love Stories by Hollis Gillespie
For non-locals, Hollis is a column writer for the local alternative weekly, Creative Loafing. She is buddies with one of the improvisors at Dad’s Garage, Lucky Yates, who has a couple mentions in this autobiographical work, essentially the second collection of her columns.
I believe I’ve read her column a couple times, I saw her once on the now-defunct The Lucky Yates Show, where she was a guest along with my nephew. My nephew was there because it was his birthday, she was there because her first book was coming out. There was also a psychic.
I also saw her in the Inman Park parade one year, riding in a car with a sign that said “Hollis Gillespie is a BITCH”.
So, that’s the extent of what I knew of her. But she seemed charming on the show, so I picked up her book before vacation on an impulse.
I’m awful glad I did. It’s a very entertaining and wittily written collection of essays. She lives a life hellbent on not being normal, and surrounds herself with people with the same objective.
I enjoyed it for the same reason I enjoy listening to the Keith and the Girl or The Dawn and Drew Show podcasts… glimpses into lives almost entirely unlike my own. I don’t long to live those lives, but I do like to hear about them.
We arrived home from our vacation at the beach to discover that another section of the cast iron drain pipes had rusted away, depositing only water on the basement floor this time (as opposed to the ground up food mixture from the last pipe adventure).
My dad hadn’t yet left for home when we discovered it, and reiterated that it is a simple thing to get a Sawsall, cut out the iron piping and replace it with PVC. “It’ll take about an hour,” he said. Coupling that with
So, the game plan: I knew it would take more than the hour my dad estimates, because he is always, always wrong in his time estimations. So, multiply by a factor of 8. I can work on it through Sunday, and if I need to do some touch up, I have Monday.
So far I have logged 17 hours, $250 in tools and materials, 4 trips to Lowes, and two close calls with out-of-control iron pipes. I estimate I’m about 75-85% done.
The act of sawing out pieces of cast iron caused leaks to spring up in other points along the line, so I couldn’t just do one or two manageable sections. It became a case of project-scope-creep.
Another thing is that the cast iron piping that is there is wrong. The pipe/house/Earth has settled over the years (or possibly, was always screwed up) in such a way that water had to run uphill in spots, which caused pooling, which caused the eventual rusting through I am currently combating. So, if I want it to be right (and less prone to clogs), it’s all or nothing. Or, at least, most or nothing.
On the plus side, I’ve gotten to listen to a lot of podcasts.
When I was buying these pants I’m wearing for the New Job, the salesman kept going on and on about how they were fluid resistant.
“It just beads up! Rolls right off!”
I nodded and smiled and tried to look impressed, but all the time I thought, okay already, just ring me up. I honestly don’t care about the pants advanced features. I resent having to wear them, because they are not jeans. But the new job is not jeans-friendly, so here I am.
But you know… it really does bead up. There should be a fairly substantial fluid stain in my lap area right now from this Coke I’ve just spilled, but it’s as dry as a bone. Wiped right off.
Huh. How do I get my jeans to do that?
Okay parents and other interested parties…
Storing cord blood for the stem cells. What I have learned:
$2000 for initial collection, plus $125/year, for a total cost at age 21 of around $4600 (assuming the yearly fee remains fixed).
Estimated 1 in 2,700 chance of being useful to the child in the treatment of some illness, 1 in 1,400 chance of being useful to a family member. Even if it were useful, it is not assured that there wouldn’t be other treatments available that are just as effective. American Academy of Pediatrics cites these statistics, and says it can’t recommend storing cord blood.
Embryonic stem cells are more versatile in their use, but cord blood stem cells are less likely to be rejected by the host.
There’s a long list of diseases that are currently treatable with cord blood stem cells, though I don’t know that our family has a history of any of them.
Discuss.