Tellurian Circus

The theraputic Effect of New Shoes

2009-08-02T19:19:00.001-04:00

Every single day for the last month, I've been walking around my neighborhood on a course precisely measured with the ruler tool in Google Earth. Each week, I've increased the distance about a 1/3 of a mile such that now I'm at 2.1 miles. I can now walk this 2.1 miles in about 35 minutes. This puts my average speed at about 3.6 miles per hour.

Since there are no sidewalks in my neighborhood, as I'm walking, the terrain frequently shifts between gravel, grass and asphalt. I've been wearing some cheapo Costco tennis shoes ($15), and so far, there doesn't seem to be a problem, but I can foresee a day when I might want something better.

I'm a barefoot kind of guy. I guess it might be because I've spent my career as a construction electrician wearing heavy black leather steel-toed, high topped work boots. Enduring 10, 12 sometimes 14 or more hours straight in these 'foot prisons', I've always spent as much free time as possible in my bare feet. There seems to be a consensus building among experts that running and walking bare footed is much better for your posture, your balance, and the health of your ankles, knees, and hips, than wearing any kind of cushioned running shoe.

That's fine if you live somewhere where you can go walking or running on the beach, but you can't expect to be able to run around the neighborhood streets in your bare feet.

I found that Vibram makes a line of shoes called FiveFingers that are really more sort of heavy gloves...for your feet. I really want to give these a try and I intend on acquiring the KSO model of this shoe as soon as my budget allows.

In December of 2006, I took a nasty tumble in my driveway and twisted my right foot around 180 degrees completely fracturing my right fibula about 3 inches above the ankle. The injury required the addition of a metal plate and some screws in my leg to secure the nasty spiral fracture until it healed. Nearly 2 years later, the swelling and pain still hadn't gone away, the bone was completely healed but my body was having a reaction to the plate and screws, so they were removed in a second operation. When the surgeon removed my staples after 10 days, the incision immediately began to pull apart.

To make a long story short the circulation was so compromised (due to the damaged vein) in that leg that it took nearly 6 months and weekly visits to the local wound clinic for that wound to finally close. The vein in my leg was damaged in the original injury which was never really adequately explained to me. The doctors can put the bones back together but the massive soft tissue injuries I suffered were largely left to heal themselves. There's not really a fix for this type of injury besides physical therapy. With some luck and this walking 2+ miles a day I can regain some of the flexibility I lost. And the therapy will help my vein heal itself as far as it can.

I hope...

I still have quite a few trips to make up and down the ladder yet...

Still on the Fence About Facebook

2009-08-01T09:51:00.003-04:00

At the suggestion of a fellow tradesman friend I met playing Entropia Universe, I joined facebook a few months ago. Over that time, I've gained a dozen or so 'friends' in my facebook profile, precious few it would appear, by facebook standards. I suspect everyone has a slightly different feel for what facebook is most useful (or useless) at doing for you.

My experience with it so far has left me a bit uneasy about having a lower level of privacy than I've been used to in my Internet dealings (and yet, here I am blathering on about it on this blog - go figure). Everyone has a level of privacy they're comfortable with and facebook is designed, it seems, to push you into being less private about yourself than you might be comfortable with. I'm not really sure how comfortable I am with that just yet. In these times of rampant identity theft, I'm not so sure it's a good idea to be less private with my personal info.

Facebook can best be described as having a collection of acquaintances (some you've never personally met), people you work with, people you knew in high school, your family members, and your closest friends all in the same room talking out loud (posting) for you to hear (see). Each of them being in a completely different room of their own, with their own set of 'friends' and so on. All of these people busily engaged in chronicling the important events in their lives, posting pictures and videos, or just cracking wise. When you post something on your 'wall' everyone on your friends list can see it on their homepage unless you, or they, have turned it off. Yes, you can control who's postings you see and who sees your postings, but where's the fun in that?

The only complaint I can come up with, besides the privacy thing, is that I've really got a low tolerance for postings that are overly religious in tone. If you feel you must mention God or Christ or Allah in every frigging post to your wall, there's good chance your postings aren't getting to me because I've turned them off in my facebook settings. That's the way I am.

With just about a dozen or so 'friends' on my list right now, I can't imagine the cacophony my facebook homepage would be if I had a few hundred or a few thousand (gasp) friends in my list...

I guess in that case, I'd have to be more choosy which friends postings I could allow...

JoJoe our Rescue Shar Pei

2009-07-22T15:11:00.000-04:00

Here's a video from earlier this year of JoJoe our beautiful black Shar Pei we rescued from a shelter in SW Michigan last August after spotting his picture on petfinder.com. We realized, while still at the shelter, that JoJoe was completely blind. No one at the shelter appeared to have noticed.

Upon taking JoJoe to our vet the next day, we discovered that his right eye was completely covered with pigmentation from an untreated condition very common in Shar Peis called Entropia. This condition causes the eyelids to curl inward causing the dog's eyelashes to rub against his eyeball which causes an ulcer to form on the cornea and eventually total pigmentation of the cornea.

His left eye had a large ulcer in the center of his cornea caused by the same condition. Someone had allowed this dog to go blind. Perhaps they couldn't afford it, or were just plain ignorant of the medical conditions that frequently plague these very special dogs. It would appear that his previous owners bred him, at least once. Any reputable breeder of shar Pei would never breed a dog with as many faults as JoJoe has (dont get me wrong, he is a very good looking dog, as far as shar pei go, but there are a lot of little flaws that would keep him and his offspring from the show ring).

That wasn't the worst of it. - JoJoe had tested positive for heart worm. A death sentence if left untreated.

Our desire to get the best possible veterinary care for JoJoe led us to the Michigan State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital in East Lansing. The availability of specialists played heavy in that

decision.

Heart worm Treatment involves a series of injections given monthly over several months each

followed by a 24 hour observation phase. JoJoe was not pronounced heart worm free until this past January. Some dogs don't make it through the treatment.

While at MSU, JoJoe saw some specialists who recommended tacking his eyelids temporarily to allow his ulcer to heal 'possibly' leading to some return to vision. Surgery to alter his eyelids (entropion Surgery) would have to wait till after the heart worm infestation was cured.

After the corneal ulcer in his left eye healed, We noticed something wonderful - JoJoe could see! OK maybe Just a little, but he could see well enough to see obstacles and not have to rely entirely on his 'scent map' anymore. Now, he can see well enough to chase a toy around, or follow your hand if you are treating him.

We figure JoJoe has recovered 30 to 40% of his vision - still mostly blind. For 8 months or so we dosed his eyes with a ophthalmic lubricant 3 times per day. He had the entropion surgery the day after this video was shot a couple months back and is doing great. No more eye lube 3 times a day, and the vet said we might see 'some' return of vision on his right eye (the badly pigmented one). That would be great!

It's hard to describe the satisfaction Holly and I feel when we see JoJoe staring intently out the front window at the neighbor across the street's kids playing in their driveway... 250 ft away...

The original video was shot using the inexpensive ($179) Sony HD 'Webbie' video camera (Model: MHS-CM1) in 1280x720 30p mode (the camera default). I'll talk more about this camera in a future post. As you can tell, it has no image stabilization system whatsoever...

My Fat Self... Why I Need to Lose Weight

2009-07-21T14:53:00.000-04:00

My Doctor has me on 2 different medicines to reduce my blood pressure, and a statin for my cholesterol. Now, I'm not young anymore, I'm in my early 50s. All of my medical issues can be corrected by proper diet and exercise. The sad fact is that I'm too friggin' fat. 60-70 pounds too fat for my just less than 6' frame. Oh don't go by that 10 year old picture next to these posts, the real me is fatter, grayer (but not balder!), and somewhat wrinklier than the guy in that picture. If I could just lose some weight, that pesky layer of abdominal fat wouldn't be there to compress my organs, my blood pressure would drop, my circulation will improve, and I wouldn't have to take these medicines that make me dizzy or sleepy. Changing my diet will mean that I don't have to take these damn Prilosec OTC pills every day like I've doing for years, either.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a book called 'The Gabriel Method' by a guy named Jon Gabriel.

Mr Gabriel is an American ex-pat living in Australia who at one time weighed over 400 lbs and has lost all the weight, he claims, by inducing his body to turn off it's instinctive fat storing system with a combination of proper eating, very moderate exercise, and self hypnosis.

The guy's techniques cant be faulted and I suspect that by following his directions I can improve my body, my self respect, and my hypertension.... without any damn medicines.

I'll return to this subject when there are results to speak of.

Today's weight: 258 lbs.

My Own Space to Bitch in

2009-07-20T22:14:00.000-04:00

Hey there you people,

I'm going to use this site to complain, cajole, and complement when and where needed. I wear my LIBERAL politics on my sleeve and I'll be demonstrating that regularly.