December 2003 Archives

So Jeff pulled up his skirt for me last night and showed me various dime-sized bruises covering his upper thighs.

"Lymphoma?" I asked.

"Knitting injury," he replied.

"From jamming the needles into your legs to steady them as you knit?"

"Yep."

Which honestly, while as a health-care professional made me want to take care of him, didn't make me feel so bad about my final diagnosis on my shoulder which has been consistantly troubling since I first picked up knitting a few months ago: partially torn rotator cuff injury. The orthopod I finally went to see last week couldn't believe I'd torn my cuff just from knitting but since I honestly haven't done a lick of anything physical that could be suspected, he couldn't discount the repetative nature of the act and put me on some soothing Bextra for six weeks to see if it relieves the symptoms. Then he wants me to go in for an MRI...all from knitting.

So FUCK YOU, Michael Jackson and your imaginary disslocated shoulders from the imaginary police brutality suffered upon you in that feces-covered bathroom. Real men get real shoulder injurys from knitting, dickwad.

For anyone coming here looking for "penis warmer" (and my site stats show that more than one person has), I'm currently knitting a short, wide scarf for myself. The whole penis warmer project is going to start up this summer in hopes of having them done as gifts for Christmas 2004 as soon as I can find the appropriate yarn that won't brillo the skin of your wiener.

Even though we put up a tree, our Christmas this year was, as most have been in the past, overtly Jewish in that since we had no plans to do anything nor any desire to cook nor much of anything food-wise in the cupboards. So we loaded up and found in the 100-mile radius around our back-woodsy, redneck part of Sullivan county, the one open all you can eat Chinese buffet (in which we were the only people there) and debated over the rapidly congealing Pecan Chicken and General Tso's. Inevitably, since we'd driven all that way, we went ahead and ate the stuff that appeared to be warmish/hot but stayed away from the sushi and then just had time to make a movie playing at the Cineplex next door. All in all, it was very much less like a Hallmark holiday card but because we were pretty much still in our pajama's sans underwear, it was divinely comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that we stayed in our underwear-less pajama state for pretty much the whole four days we were off. Now I beg anyone to argue with that.

Of course being home with nothing going on meant hours and hours knitting in front of the TV. I started a new, wide scarf for myself in hopes of finishing it before the season is out this year and with nothing on network TV, we literally watched anything on any satellite channel that just happened to be on, including 10 hours of the History Channel's religious specials spanning 'Heaven and Hell', 'The Bible Code', 'Banned From the Bible', 'Who Wrote The Bible', and 'Nostradamus: 500 Years Later'.

World Idol was on Christmas night and if we thought we weren’t pathetic enough to watch it, then someone was smoking crack. While I was going in full of Kelly Clarkson, it soon became apparent that Canada, Australia, and Norway had it going on in spades while Kelly's endless trilling had Mariah Carrey Eventual Breakdown written all over it.

In preparation for endless days spent on the couch not wearing underwear, I'd gone to Borders prior to leaving the city before holiday and stocked up on books including two tomes of gay short stories, one, Death Comes Easy, dealt with homos and murder which, after reading several of the shorts, prompted me to recommend it via e-mail to Max at lonebraincell.com. Needless to say I've only ever emailed him once before to ask for the passwords to read his erotica on his site yet felt compelled to send him the current books recommendation because, "I'd gotten the feeling from your writing that you have a certain interest in violence and forced submission." This isn't exactly something I'd even offer to mention to my best friend but then again, since I don't particularly have a best friend currently, why not offer it up to a complete stranger? The other book, The Music of Your Life, was somehow linked to another anthology of gay shorts I was looking for and which Borders happend to have on hand. Delightfully stereotypical in an inoffensive way, I thought and wished I had someone specific to recommend it to except no one I know is a flamboyant theater queen or wacko show-tunes lover (and while Bill is THE theater/show-tunes man of men, he's neither flamboyant nor wacko) so I just feel the need to recommend it to anyone who likes gay short stories set in either North Carolina and/or New York City.

And because it's Christmas time, I decided to cast off any of those nagging doubts about buying gifts for oneself and bought the first five items on my Amazon wish list. My new rule for the new year is keeping the list below 120 items which I violated last week thus prompting the purchases.

To sum up, going shower-less and without underwear for four days while doing nothing more strenuous than knitting, getting up to go to the bathroom, or turning a page is the best present to one's self you could possibly give.

All I wanted to do was set up a little wireless network at home so I could watch TV downstairs on the big screen and surf bear porn on the laptop at the same time. "Is that too much to ask," I asked the D-Link tech support guy last night after throwing a hissy because my system was about 300% slower once I got the new wireless router in place and the laptop never connected at all. Apparently so since D-Link doesn't support the whacky PPPoA format of my superduper fast DSL instead of the standard PPPoE that everyone else seems have available to them. Fuckers.

As everyone is evacuating like there's a Home Land Security High Alert in effect...um, well...nevermind. While people are all putting there "Out to Lunch" signs on their blogs and whatnot to head to their respective, symbolic grandma's house for the holidays, I thought I'd chime in for the Woo's up at Bashert.

Since HanahkahHaHa started this week, we pulled out the ol' Menorah and got it all fired up as usual. Being more Jewish by Injection than ever, I was allowed to say the blessing on Monday night and it went a little something like this:

"flibbidy flobbidy floo,
a mitzva on your poo,
Baruch Yeshem, Baruch Yeshem,
Flibbidy flobbidy floo."

It seemed to work out just fine, regardless of the translation though I think I'm probably done as the prayer guy at the house from now on. As for the birth of Christ, we put up a tree and now I'm reading a book that only confirms my growing suspicion in the validity of the Bible...and someone in Christ's employment actually gave it to me! God does work in mysterious ways. I think we're actually going to try to do a movie and chinese food on Thursday as cooking a Christmas goose for two just seems a bit over the top. Other than that, it's going to be knitting, playing UruLive, and soaking up the wet, balmy weather of a southern-feed low pressure system hanging over the Mid-Atlantic States.

Holy crap! This was my fortune from yesterday's General Tso's and Cold Seseme Noodle lunch:

"Your love of gardening will take on new meaning in your life [in bed*]"

What does it mean, what does it mean?

*As per some eternal unwritten rule, you must alwasy add "in bed" to the end of any chinese cookie fortune

Many different people like many different aspects of The Lord of the Rings but one that I don't hear mentioned very often, sadly enough, is the GREAT music. Perhaps it's missed during the movie because so much more is going on and the music is so perfect it blends into the total atmosphere of what's happening on screen and overlooked.

That's what they make soundtracks for.

It would be no surprise to anyone coming to comb my CD racks that I favor soundtracks over almost everything else. I love being manipulated by really great, over-rough, thematic sound and bit for byte, dollar for euro, it's all about the soundtrack. My favorite album of all time/all catagories is, unsurprisingly, Vangelis' original motion picture score from Ridley Scott's 1981 classic, Bladerunner. LOTR: Return of the King original motion picture soundtrack is every bit as good as both Fellowship and Two Towers. Sure there are a lot of filler pieces to get the group from there and back again, but there are also some really great stand-alone pieces in all three motion picture scores, especially Annie Lenox's Into the West used at the credits for Return of the King. I can seriously understand why people are using the music for weddings and whatnot. Just to be clear, I'm writing in my will that upon my demise, I'm to be carried to my final resting place set to the choral piece of "The Breaking of the Fellowship" and planted in the ground at exactly 4:45 into "The Bridge of Khazad Dum", both from Fellowship , while it plays wistfully over the cornfields. A once and future drama queen.

As Jeff and I's pact to not tell his parents lasted all of two days, I can now publically discuss our first (and God-willing last) winter accident of the season last week. While it was raining last Tuesday down in the city, we crossed that imaginary northern territories line somewhere in Harriman and by the time we were almost home Tuesday night, all roads leading to our house were covered with a fine, powdery snow that had yet to be salted or scrapped. As we were just harassing the overtly, neurotic cautiousness of Jeff's in-absenta mother who'd prefer we just stay home as to drive in anything less than a 80-degree sunny day, we hit that inevitable patch of slickness that sent us first fish-tailing then ultimately into a spin off the road, slamming us into what seemed like a very old, very huge, heavy tree but which turned out to be nothing more then an out of the way scrub sapling. Unfortunately, it still caved in the passenger-side door and back panel of our Explorer. Thankfully, neither of us were hurt (mostly because we went off into the ditch and woods on the right-hand side rather than to the left through on-coming traffic and over the very long, deep ravine beside the river) and I think it warrants mentioning as we were fish-tailing and spinning, my thoughts didn't turn to all the things I hadn't done yet nor mimicking Max's EXACT thoughts about getting killed before seeing Return of the King, bur rather a calm inquisitiveness and curiousness about what was going to happen next. I'd like to think this how I'm going to approach whatever end may be in store for me rather than some desperate, whimpering squeal of a little girl. Regardless, since both of us are fine the point is moot. So our truck is out of commission for a while getting repaired and we have a rental truck that doesn't have XM satellite radio in it but it is going to alleviate the 3000 miles we would have put on our vehicles this month so it's a small trade-off for the next month, I suppose.

Though his blog presence has winked out and the likelihood of his return is doubtful, some of us still try to keep up with the deviant duck himself, Encorswish. Instead of homoerotic sports pics and obsessing over the weirdness of Jacko, Mr. Swish has been working on his MBA for the past few years and has just finished with it, much to the delight of himself and every other person who has missed him sorely. So we here at the Woo send out a huge "MMMMWAH!" to Mr. Swishy, our favorite smoking hottie who is the only person, I can admit, ever got us to pose naked with a rubber duck theme. That's classy.

Angels of Death would be a little bit more accepted if they didn't all look like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy's illicit, homosexualized love child. A hair cut and a smile goes a long way. On the other hand, good for him for not wasting the courts and tax-payers time by trying to get out of it. Just plead guilty to all the charges of murder and take the punishment. If you're going to do something as ridiculous as order mega-doses of digoxin and then cancel the order after it's delivered to cover your tracks, then stand up and sing out, Louise.

Got the Hannuka bush up this weekend, our first in seven years. At last count, I've broken two ornaments, Jeff has broken none, and the cats were circling the tree this morning like they were going to have a long day of amused destruction. I've felt less bad about the horrible rash of dutch-ovening that's been happening in our family bed now that it's cold in the house and the cats nestle around our legs under the covers at night.

"Um... excuse me. I'm Student Nurse McFarland. If there are any men in the bar that need breast exams, I'll be right over there. MEN! Men."
Jack from "Will and Grace"

Say what you will about W&G and really, about the only two people on earth who find all the student nurse gags funny are probably me and Hottie Homoesque Thomas, but Jack as Student Nurse McFarland just cracks my shit up. Not because it's so awfully funny but BECAUSE as a nursing student and nurse, you're bred to BELIEVE you have the power and authority as a nurse and encouraged to wield that mighty unpowerful sword unabashedly. Needless to say, it's EXACTLY like Jack walking up to the maîtred’ last night expecting to get his table because he identified himself as a student nurse only to find his declaration a bit underwhelming.

On the drive in this morning with my thoughts meandering in they way they tend to do on the commute, I suddenly came to realize that this week is my 10th anniversary of graduating from college with my Bachelor's in Nursing. I've been a fucking nurse for 10 YEARS! It's been a most interesting road to hoe, starting in inner-city St. Louis as an ER/Trauma nurse which gave way to what was suppose to be my Great Adventure as a traveling nurse but which landed me squarely in Jeff's bed the day I moved East and was an even greater adventure than I planned on. As the whole Jeff Thing worked out marvelously for me, I moved from the ER to the Angioplasty Lab to cardiac research to administration of research to whatever it is I do now which I'm not exactly sure has a name but it has a lot to do with building infrastructure and evaluating research systems for the University. And I'm still a nurse which is totally weird.

I whole-heartedly encourage anyone who's interested in taking it up as a profession. We're always going to have jobs and be in demand and make an amazing salary and have an endless supply of stories that start out with,
"Have you ever seen a wound full of maggots?" which can be a really good ice-breaker in the right company. Yah, RN's!

This is the 14-pounder we made for our Thanksgiving last week. The official word from my mother-in-law was that it was the moistest turkey she's ever eaten.