November 2008 Archives

It's been a pretty long and tiring weekend here at the Miles casa. I ended up going to the emergency room late Friday night with a kidney stone which I finally passed earlier this afternoon. It's amazing how much pain something so mall can bring you. Getting the damned thing out was almost anti-climactic after the weekend. Due to the pain pills that the doctor gave me I slept pretty much 20 hours yesterday, thus the lack of posting here or anywhere else for that matter. Yesterday was the first time I've had to call in sick to work in about six years.

Can you give me a good goddamn?

So long about seven yesterday evening I started feeling like I had a really bad case of gas. Uncomfortable but somewhat bearable. By the time ten or so rolled around it was getting pretty ugly. I had tried to go to the bathroom probably twenty times hoping that each successive time would prove to be the one that passed whatever the fuck it was that I had eaten. I started thinking food poisoning or maybe kidney infection. Ten thirty and I was back out in the living room asking the wife if there was something I could take. I was in god-awful pain and didn't know what the hell to do about it. We called the 24-hour nurse call and they were real helpful.

'Seek medical attention and if the pain gets worse in the next hour call 911'

crap.

We decided that a trip to the emergency room was going to be unavoidable. I couldn't sit or lie down, I was pacing and each successive step just made me feel worse. Add in to all this the fact that I was up on the phone until 11pm Thursday evening with work and got back up at 3:30 yesterday morning. I felt like dogshit. Hammered dogshit as Acidman used to say.

Where you sign in at the emergency room in Villa Rica there's a screen that shows the wait times. Mine showed four hours. Four fucking hours? I asked the nurse at reception about it and she nodded. Off I went pacing around the emergency room probably looking like some ice-head in need of his next fix and obviously in pain. Less than five minutes later she calls me back, checks my blood pressure and tells me to pee in a cup.

Nothing like a little blood in your urine to get you moved to the front of the fucking line! We were back in the rooms pretty quickly after that. As usual they had a bit of trouble sticking me and getting blood and then gave me some kind of pain killer/anti-inflammatory. The doctor came in and said that what I had described was pretty classic signs of a kidney stone but they just wanted to know how big it was so off I went for a CT scan and x-rays. By the time I got back to the room, probably an hour later, I was in pain again and it was starting to get pretty uncomfortable.

The nurse hits me with four mm of morphine at that point. I don't guess I have ever had morphine before. Even with all of the hell raising I did as a juvenile delinquent morphine just wasn't on my list of things I had done. That took care of the pain for a couple of hours anyway.

We got back home around 3am. In pain. The pharmacist told me I needed to wait at least three hours before taking any of the narcotics prescribed to me because of the morphine. I ended up finally being able to fall asleep on the couch and just now woke up needing a pain pill. I guess that's the only reason I'm up now. Waiting on the drugs to kick in.

I'm not a pussy when it comes to pain. Except for my eyes and nuts I consider myself pretty pain tolerant. This shit makes me want to start blubbering like a baby. Except for when I got sheet metal flakes in my eye, which was pretty localized pain, I don't think I've ever felt pain like this before.

Needless to say I called in to work today. Actually I text messaged my boss around 2am, letting him know and then while I was waiting at the CVS for my drugs I called all three of my stores and told them to make sure that the managers did NOT call me this morning.

That's almost as painful. I have had to move my schedule around here and there when the kids are sick and it's my turn and I've changed my days off a few times when I had a cold but I haven't called in 'sick' to work since sometime in 2002 or 2003. It's just not something I believe in. I told the nurse that I don't call in sick unless I'm in the hospital so I guess this counts...

Hopefully all of you folks out there are having a great Thanksgiving, even those of you who don't celebrate.

This year is sort of a first for me on Thanksgiving and it's not a good thing. Those of you that know me from my old site know that I run several restaurants so Holidays are not something I get to spend with my family. We celebrate Christmas on whatever days I happen to be off closest to Christmas. Most years it's the weekend prior to the holiday. Last year we celebrated a couple of days later. My kids are used to Santa coming at weird times.

Thanksgiving though isn't a huge holiday in the restaurant business. You get a great breakfast and then it dies around 11am and picks back up from 7pm until about 10. No big deal. I've always managed to shoot out of work in time for the family to drive to my aunt's house in Stone Mountain. This year however, due to my grandmothers health, they are eating at 2pm. I'll be lucky to get out of work by 2:30 and that's if my three store managers get all of their shit done on time. I don't leave until they do. There's no way for me to make the hour and a half drive to Stone Mountain so this year the wife and girls will be attending without me. Sort of depressing actually. I had to go in to work supper supervision tonight and the entire way to my Bremen store I was cursing under my breath and had decided that this would be my last fucking set of holidays working. It won't happen of course but I certainly am not very happy about it.

I guess once I get out of there I'll come home and put up some more Christmas decorations and then take a nap or something. Hopefully the wife will bring me a nice plate of turkey and dressing.

For lack of anything to do when I should really just be preparing for work this morning I stole this from Eric who got it by way of Elisson. Things that you have done should be in bold.

1. Started your own blog
Obviously. Several actually.

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower

6. Given more than you can afford to charity

7. Been to Disneyland
The Florida version. Four times now I think.

8. Climbed a mountain
I was 30-something the last time and was considerably out of shape.

9. Held a praying mantis

10. Sang a solo
In fifth grade I could hold a tune quite a bit better than I can now.

11. Bungee jumped
While I never did it with a rubber band attached to myself there is a certain bridge where Hwy400 runs over the Chattahoochee River. There was a buddy of mine involved, along with skipping school and the police. Amazing what stupid stoned teenagers will do. I'm lucky I didn't break my fucking legs.

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch

15. Adopted a child

16. Had food poisoning
Only a mild case

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
It was closed when I went, but we did make it to the top of the Empire State Building.

18. Grown your own vegetables

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France

20. Slept on an overnight train
Three times

21. Had a pillow fight

22. Hitchhiked

23. Taken a sick day when you're not ill

24. Built a snow fort
Snow? What is this snow you speak of?

25. Held a lamb
I've eaten them. Does that count?

26. Gone skinny dipping

27. Run a marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run

32. Been on a cruise

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors

35. Seen an Amish community

36. Taught yourself a new language

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing

40. Seen Michelangelo's David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Been transported in an ambulance

47. Had your portrait painted

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

51. Gone SCUBA diving or snorkeling

52. Kissed in the rain

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theater

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China

57. Started a business

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma

65. Gone sky diving
I see no reason to leave a perfectly good plane after having left the perfectly good ground. Christ, I can barely get on the plane.

66. Visited a Nazi concentration camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten caviar

72. Pieced a quilt

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person

80. Published a book

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
Only if fish count

88. Had chickenpox

89. Saved someone's life

90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous
After many concerts as a teen

92. Joined a book club

93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake

97. Been involved in a law suit

98. Owned a cell phone

99. Been stung by a bee

100. Read an entire book in one day

Quite a little list there and something to work on.

So I've dumped all the action streams stuff and gone back to just displaying the posts. It was one thing having them at Shadowscope where I post several times a day but it's an entirely different beast when I post here a couple of times a week and have 5,000,000 tweets showing up in between.

Came across this by way of Trench, the other dude with the awesome hair. Thanks dude.

Damn, Dio really sounds old.

I haven't done much in the way of blogging in the last several days. Worked a ton of hours this past week but I have also been pretty sick. Some kind of bug has been going around, both girls were out sick at the end of the week and I guess I got the bug as well. Friday night I worked a double but I ended up sleeping in my car from 7pm on and the waitresses cooked. Had shit coming out both ends.

Since the girls had been sick Pete missed her field trip to the Georgia Aquarium on Thursday. She was not very happy. She'd been up most of the night previous blowing chunks so we wouldn't allow her to go to school. To make up for it we took the girls to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga on Saturday. I was feeling pretty weak when we got out of bed but it's not often that I get a full weekend off so we decided to go anyway.

Chattanooga is a couple of hours from the house so it makes a nice day trip. I figured we could go check out the Aquarium and then maybe go see the Chattanooga Choo Choo and hopefully go to Chickamauga. I've been to the battlefield but it's been about 30 years or so.

We met Eric and Fiona for a nice lunch at a place called Big River. It was a pretty decent place. The beer was good too. They brew their own. The food was good but I couldn't eat very much. For that matter I haven't managed to eat much since Thursday. After lunch the girls and I parted ways with Eric and his bride and we went ahead to the Aquarium. Pretty cool. I've posted some of the pictures over at Flickr. The links are below in my Action Stream if you want to check them out. This one's not the best shot but it is one of my favorites.

We didn't finish the Aquarium until around 5pm and by that time I felt pretty crappy so rather than do anything else we just came on home. I got myself a nice long draught of nyquil and slept most of the night, only getting up once around 3am. I still have to be back at work tomorrow and am not looking forward to it very much.

This is one of the reasons I moved all of this stuff off of Shadowscope. OMFG. I've been saying for years that sooner or later one of my ex-employees is going to be on Jerry Springer and sure enough one of the guys that used to cook for me came in today and told me he'd seen this chick on the Springer show last week.

What do I do when I get home from work? Go to Jerry Springer's web site and check out the videos. Jesus Christ. There the old hag is. Some shit about a housewife sleeping with younger men. bwahaha. Just needed to share that. I'll be laughing my ass off about this for weeks.

So tomorrow is the day. I unfortunately have to work until about 9pm tomorrow night so I went and voted on Friday morning. Had to wait a little while but it was pretty much painless. Compared to how long I stood in line in 2004 it was great. One thing I noticed was that there were a LOT of young people there. more than I had ever seen in an election. A lot more minorities represented as well. Overall I think it's a great thing but unfortunately this is a pretty shitty election to bring them all out.

Hmmm...a liberal or a communist. Damn. Lesser of two evils anyone? Needless to say I voted for the old dude and the sexy librarian but that's about it for Republicans. I did vote for Gingrey though as my congressman. He voted against the bail-out bill so unless he just fucks up and starts speaking in tongues or screwing his pages I'll keep voting for him.

I went pretty much Libertarian down the board otherwise and if there was an incumbent with nobody running against him/her I voted Dax Montana! What the fuck, vote your beliefs and I believe that Dax would be a better choice than most of the thieving lying sonsabitches out there.