Haiku You!

This week I thought I’d try something different.  I whine, bitch and moan most weeks, and the format is typical blog BS: paragraphs of text supporting my argument.  This week, I thought I’d whine, bitch and moan in Haiku.  Enjoy!

Took dog to the vet:

Paid through the nose to have the

Doc finger her butt

Speaking of paying,

PT workouts are akin

To ancient torture

At kindergarden

meeting, most important note:

You must feed your kid!

Got to office late

Roomie is playing Police

The white-man’s reggae. 

Shameful lunch today

complete with Wendy’s chicken

and indigestion

Stoked for CrawfishFest!

Come for Cajun artists, but

Stay for food coma!

That’s it folks.  If you’re hitting Sussex County’s Crawfish festival this weekend, we’re going on Saturday for some zydeco and alligator sausage.  See you there!

It's a moth!

Working in the rustic mountains of NJ, you tend to see a lot of wildlife not typically associated with the “Garden State.”  And, certainly, Chester, NJ is not terribly exotic by wildlife standards.  However, I thought it would be interesting to share the list of critters seen that are/were more interesting than others.

As we’re in the foothills of the Appalachians, one would expect to see black bear…which, since I’ve worked here, two have decided to walk through our parking lot.  Also, we’ve seen red fox, coyotes, ground hogs, squirrels, chipmonks, etc.  The usual suspects.  Here’s a couple of some of the more interesting things…feel free to look them up.

Ruby Crowned Kinglet

Green Throated Black Warbler

Rosy Maple Moth

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Red-breasted Nuthatch (hubba hubba)

Gray Tree Frog

Amazingly, the two above pictures were taken with the iPhone.  Cool, eh?  Amazing what you find when you look!

To sum up

Let me explain.  No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Health news:

I came, I saw, I got the green light to move forward with my life.  In short, x-rays showed continued bone growth in my leg...enough to convince the Good Dr. (Tardis excluded) that I was due for a PT script and a "partial weight bearing" on my right leg.  Also, when comfortable, I'm allowed to drive, which will alleviate much work tension and allow my awesome co-workers to get on with their effing lives instead of picking me up/dropping me off every day.

FaceBook/Football news: 

It seems that those stupid quizzes have run their course.  I see less and less of them every day.  It's been replaced with baseball hopes, hockey scores, NBA gibberish (go Nets?), and football drafts.  Fine.  I can at least see the logic in those. 

Speaking of which, for those who know me, I'm a huge NY Football Giants fan.  And, while I pay close attention to their workings, I don't follow the changes to other teams as closely.  That said (and obviously, working in a vacuum), I believe that their off-season moves, including the draft were awesome.  And, as a season ticket holder, I'm happy, especially after the debacle which was last season.  Also, in my estimate, and this isn't as much of a dig as it's going to sound, I think that their off-season maneuvers were more productive than the stadium rivals in green.  It remains to be seen, but, on paper (and we all know how that works in reality), Giants will thrive, and the Jets are doomed to have a new coach in 2015.  That's my opinion and bold predictions based on zero games played, and without spending a lot of time doing the math.  Take it as you will.

Sonic Fury news:

Apple bloggers are now predicting that the newest iOS will include provisions to allow for higher bit-rate audio through both the lightning cable and headphone jack.  What's that mean?  Apparently the request for higher-quality audio is coming through loud and clear.  While Apple has had a lossless audio codec (ALAC) for a while, neither the lightning connector nor the headphones bundled with the phone could handle the extra detail supposedly preserved in this larger file format.  With regards to my earlier rant about Neil Young's Pono player and audio store, Apple would prefer not to lose those customers with existing iDevices, and so, it seems likely that iOS 8.0 will address this, new lightning cables will be issued with new phones, and the apple headphones will likely get more complex, with higher impedance and better overall sound.  TBD, but overall, a move in the right direction, especially for those of us audiophiles who are moving in this direction anyway.  Thanks Apple (maybe?) and this may explain why you just spend $3.2 Billion with a "b" on Beats Audio by Dr. Dre. 

And, that's the news.  Stay tuned for next week's installment of "what's he bitching about this week."

Stasis

It's a strange thing being physically limited for a brief part of your life.  I'm now entering week 7 where I still can't put any weight on my broken leg.  The intention of the Doctor is to allow it to permanently heal (min 8 weeks, but could take as many as 12) before he assigns me physical therapy.  The muscles in that leg have severely atrophied, and, due to the increased load, the other leg is strained, as are my arms and whole body from crutching.  It's not pain, but more like perpetual ache.

People are constantly asking me, "oh, are you feeling better?" or "how are you healing?"  I honestly couldn't tell you.  All I know is that I'm still on crutches, off pain meds, and can't drive.  It's been this way for about 3 weeks now.  I won't "test" the leg to see how much pain...that's just ridiculous.  Getting x-rays today may shed some light, but, the doctor won't be reading them until Monday...my official "Week 7."  

My family really wants me to be better so that I can pick up where I left off.  However, I still think that's a long time away.  I'm a bit unnerved when thinking of putting pressure on that leg again.  Will it hurt?  Will my muscles just ache?  How many days PT will I need per week and for how many months?  What's the total healing time?

I'm losing weight.  Strange to think that immobilization is allowing me to slim down.  However, I believe that I read somewhere on the internet that you tend to burn as much as 6,000 calories in a day as your body works to mend the injury.  If it's on the internet then it must be true.

I guess the biggest issue is that I feel as if I'm in a holding pattern.  A wait and see.  If I were permanently injured, there would be contingencies regarding mobility and permanent solutions for the disability.  Instead, because I'm healing, everything I used to do is waiting for me.  How long?  I have no idea.  Just a different mind-set, I guess.  Don't need to change much to make things easier as you'll be right as rain in just a couple of months.  So, suck it up.  Depend on the kindness of those around you, and get better, whatever that means.  I'm sure my family is sick of it. 

So, here I am, waiting out the clock.  Days come and go, but tomorrow won't be any different than today.  Sure,  the people around me change...different conversations and environments, but, until I've met a criteria that I can't conceptualize, I'm in stasis.  It's neither bad nor good...just boring, and I'm anxious to get on with my life.

Century Egg

So, last weekend, I had invited an old friend to come up, and asked if he could pick up some food for me on his way.  Still bummed from not being able to get to NOLA as planned, he agreed to cheer me up and come and play some rummy 500...keep me entertained as we watched JazzFest from afar (new AXS app for iOS was broadcasting for free).  We caught the latter part of Anders Osborne, the Mavericks, and then Santana's full set from the previous night.

What's for eats?  A couple of years ago, he turned me on to one of the only authentic Japanese ramen restaurants in NJ...minutes from his house.  He said that if I called it in, he'd grab it on his way.  Awesome.  A quick call later and I was on the phone with the one dude who seems to be always there.  I told him my issue: I know it's best fresh, but what could he recommend that could travel well, and then how do I prepare it once it gets here.  He quickly recommended the "doubly creamy" broth.  From experience, I know this meant a chicken and pork-bone-based soup where the cooking process turns the resultant broth a chalky creamy white without the heaviness of a cream-based soup.  Then, its filled with marbled pork back or belly, mushrooms, scallions, sauteed crispy garlic and ginger...and noodles.  Noodles are typically key, homemade and essential to the soup.  No problem.  Order me up one of those, and get it here ASAP.

When G arrived, he had my two containers of soup contents.  The instructions from the restaurant was to super-heat the broth to almost boiling, and hit the soup innards with 20 second of microwave time, then pour the noodles and contents into the broth.  No problem.  Instructions were followed to the letter.  The resulting bowl of soup looked amazing.  Noodles were an egg variety instead of a traditional alkaline soba.  Still, it had the other requisite ingredients: pork slices, Japanese version of gefilte fish (fish cake roll), mushrooms, and a shady looking egg.  Seriously?  Is that what I think it is?  That egg, ashy and gray mottled on the outside with a dark-green yolk, was none other than a century egg (1000 year old duck egg, 1000 year egg, etc.): an uncooked, but preserved chicken egg using alkaline and sodium-filled clays to ferment and preserve it for weeks, sometimes months before serving it.  The result of its hibernation is a gelatin-like egg white which looks like it's been dipped in ashes, and a yellowish-green to dark-green egg yolk which gives off a sulfur-like aroma, but is described as rich and creamy.

What did I have to lose?  I took the second half of that egg, which I had previously passed off as a strangely soft mushroom, and popped it into my mouth.  Mixed with the creamy broth and garlic, this thing was awesome.  There's no real chew, but that's not terribly unlike a hard-boiled egg.  The flavor was salty, rich and creamy like a really soft cheese, and it just melted into my mouth...and then was over.  I quickly pushed through the rest of the soup to see if there was another one in there.  No such luck.  So, I really have no option but to ask G to bring it again sometime in the future.  An amazing experience...but just the soup...I got my ass handed to me in rummy 500.