Chapter 1: Zombie Knee

Here's the first chapter of my book:

Chapter 1 Zombie Knee

Eight Months Earlier

101 Grand Avenue, Capitola, California

It was 4 a.m. I hadn’t slept for three days. The only noise was the sound of the waves sliding into the rocks at the base of the cliff below my apartment, and the strange robotic purr of the CPM (continuous passive movement) machine to which my right leg was strapped.

At that moment I realized I didn’t have to kill myself. I would die from despair.

#

     Three days before I had undergone a seven hour experimental operation on my right leg to rebuild my knee and femur out of cadaver parts. It wasn’t an elective surgery.

Eight years before, in 1992, I had broken my leg, but had somehow failed to notice. I had been a competitive and obsessive runner most of my life and raced in 10Ks until 2000, when my leg started collapsing underneath me. I didn’t think the collapses were a major issue until it happened while I was walking through a cafeteria with a tray full of food. It seemed wasteful to buy an overpriced plate of macaroni and cheese only to have it end up on the floor.

     I thought the cause was overtraining, something I was prone to do. But the diagnosis was much worse and changed my life forever. My leg kept collapsing because the right knuckle of my femur had broken off in an accident in 1992 and, over the years, the jagged remains of the bone had smashed the inside of my knee to pieces, like a broken glass bottle hammering into a filet mignon.

An initial surgery to fix the problem was botched and the surgeon informed me that my knee had to be removed and replaced with a titanium rod. I was too young for a mechanical knee, and there was no way for the doctor to replace the large amount of bone I had lost in my femur, or the lateral meniscus, which he had mistakenly removed in the surgery.

     He told me that the rod would prevent me from bending my leg. And wouldn’t make a cool didgeridoo sound when I walked, as I had imagined when I first heard about it. Unwilling to give up running or walking in stilettos I left that doctor’s office and never saw him again.

Then I embarked on a series of visits to twenty three knee doctors in the Bay area to see if someone had a better idea for my leg. At the start of my quest I had assumed that, since most of the doctors were well known and treated professional athletes, it would be easy to find a surgeon to fix my leg.

     At each visit I would explain my situation, and produced the surgery report, X-rays, and arthroscopic pictures. Then I would ask if there was a solution for my problem that didn’t involve a rod. Every doctor looked at me as if I was asking if it was medically possible to replace my knee with something more interesting, like a Pez candy dispenser.  No one could help me.

     Then I found out that there was a doctor - one of two in the US - doing experimental knee surgeries with cadaver parts. And his practice was in San Francisco. Although I wasn’t excited about the idea of having a zombie knee, and was worried about where the parts might come from, I went to see him. Dead body bits seemed like a better option than having something in my leg that might make me more susceptible to lightning strikes.

     And that’s how I met Dr. Douglas Blatz. At my first appointment he said he couldn’t help me. But then I managed to convince him to try. I’m ashamed to admit I did that by crying like a two year old and then threatening to cut off my leg. At the time he didn’t know that I was lying about owning a bread knife.

     I had assumed that Dr. Blatz had spare body parts stored somewhere that he could use to fix my leg, but that wasn’t the case. He had to order the parts. So I had to wait around for someone to die who matched my bone and tissue profile so my knee could be rebuilt.

Chris Kuhn, a physical therapist who had treated me since the first knee surgery, worked many long hours during the eight month wait for a donor to prepare me for my zombie knee surgery. He kept my spirits up during the grueling therapy sessions by inventing fun games, like one where he would throw a ball at my head while I stood on a wobble board. “Next time try to catch it with your hands instead of your face,” he would coach. He knew damn well I would never catch it.

     Dr. Blatz warned me that the surgery would be extremely painful, that it would likely fail, that I would never run again and that I would have to wear a brace on my leg for the rest of my life. He stressed to me that I would not be able to run again and that I would be limited in what physical activities I could do for the rest of my life.

I didn’t listen. I thought that if I had managed to run on a broken leg for eight years I could do anything.

     #

As the weeks past I became more stressed out that Dr. Blatz would never find donor parts. And even with therapy the constant sharp pain in my knee failed to improve even as the scars from my first surgery healed. Because I have an allergy to pain medication, the only thing I could do was ice my knee and take copious amounts of aspirin, one week consuming 200 of them. I vomited blood any time I ate spicy food or didn’t eat for a few hours.

The pain affected my job as well. I was moved out of my position as an engineer at work because it required me to be mobile. I was forced into a program management role that didn’t require any physical exertion beyond typing.

I couldn’t run, I saw my new job as a demotion, and I was scared about having an experimental surgery. My partner, whom I had been with for about a year, did not understand what was happening to me. The worst medical problem he experienced was having his wisdom teeth removed by the US Army. Our relationship started to fall apart.

I made things worse. Instead of trying to talk about my pain and anxiety, I pretended I was fine. I didn’t give my partner or anyone at work a chance to help because I didn’t want people to think I was weak or a whiner. I shut everyone out and decided to handle the pain alone.

The day the donor parts were found I felt relieved. Finally, I thought, I’ll get the zombie knee surgery over and then things would go back to normal.

#

Three days after the surgery, my knee resembled a rotting cantaloupe. It felt as if someone was jack hammering into the side of my leg. My femur coursed with an electrical sensation that ran through the bone into my thigh. Every time the CPM forced my knee to bend 20 degrees it sounded like someone slowly stepping on a box of Wheat Chex.

     Since I had the surgery over the Thanksgiving holiday, the few friends I had made during my short time as a resident in Capitola were all with their families and friends, eating turkey. My partner’s company had just received a new round of financing from investors and he had to leave for an emergency business trip the day after I got home from the hospital. Having had no idea how bad the surgery was going to be, and not wanting to force them to fly during the worst travel week of the year, I had told my family on the East Coast that I would be fine after the surgery.

The break in my femur

The bone plug

The cadaver meniscus

But now I was trapped in my apartment, I was out of ice for the ice machine, and the only pain medication I could take that I wasn’t allergic to, Tylenol, had no effect. I had been given localized morphine after my surgery and though it had worn off after 24 hours, I was still vomiting from an allergic reaction to it and had broken out in a rash that went from my scalp down to my abdomen.

I had wanted to take some Benedryl for the rash but it was in the upstairs bathroom, and I couldn’t negotiate the narrow stair case to get to it with my crutches. I was in a soft cast that went from my ankle to my hip, with two huge metal gears sticking out on either side of my knee to keep it from bending. Walking any distance beyond the bathroom down the hall was too painful as I had to hold my leg slightly up and in front of me to keep it from touching the ground.

Exhausted, it never occurred to me to call someone for help.

     The pain affected the rest of my body. My heart felt like it was trying to bounce off of my lungs and out of my body. My right hip cramped. My toes, covered in a substance leaking out of my knee that looked like baby shampoo, had swollen to cartoon proportions. It seemed that someone had set off a fire alarm in my brain and then evacuated without turning it off.

The day after my surgery

#

In military strategy it is advisable to attack your adversary in the early hours of the morning because that’s when people are the most vulnerable. This strategy is borne out by scientific studies that show as the night gets darker, before the sun rises, people are slower to respond to the world around them, and their decision making abilities deteriorate.

At 4:15 a.m., three days after my surgery, I decided I was going to kill myself. The thought of enduring even 10 more minutes of the pain was unbearable. I had spent the past two days trying to figure out what to do, analyzing the situation from every angle as if it were an engineering problem. The issues seemed insurmountable. I couldn’t take drugs, Tylenol wasn’t helping, I was out of ice, and I couldn’t leave my apartment. I thought no one could help me.

There seemed to be only one solution. The only way to stop the pain was to stop everything.

I propped myself up on my elbows and looked around the room. How was I going to do it? I glanced over at the ocean, 40 feet below the cliff where my apartment building sat. At the bottom of the cliff were many large rocks.

In the short time I had lived in that apartment at least one tourist had died on the cliff, walking too close to the edge of it. The grass appeared solid but, underneath, was unstable. I’ll jump off the cliff, I decided, and began the slow process of un-strapping my leg from the CPM.

I got myself to the side of the bed, reached for my crutches, and then realized I couldn’t get to the cliff. My apartment was on the second story of the apartment building, and I couldn’t negotiate the steps down to the cliff with the soft cast. There was a service elevator, which I had taken up after my surgery, but it required a key that was kept in the manager’s office. On the first floor.

Cursing, I looked around the room again. In the dark I could see a balloon arrangement sent by my office. It had been decimated by Prickley, my feral cat. During my first day home after surgery she hid somewhere upstairs, terrified of me, the CPM, and the balloons. But by the early morning hours of the second day, she was emboldened enough to sneak down stairs. Sensing the balloons, which were drooping from helium loss, were sleeping, she crept up on the kitchen counter and then dived into the middle of the arrangement, popping the balloons.

The thin ribbons tied to the balloons would not be strong enough to strangle myself with, I determined. I had 20 Tylenol, but given the amount of them I was taking a day, I knew that would do nothing.

I thought about the kitchen. I didn’t have any sharp knives or small electrical appliances to electrocute myself with because I didn’t cook. I considered electrocuting myself with the CPM, but it was too big to carry and too big to fit into the kitchen sink, the only receptacle I could get to that could be filled with water. I didn’t have poison, razors, or even a lighter.

I had nothing.

      I started to cry. Through my tears I could see the waves picking up in the ocean. It was now 4:30. In another hour the surfers would be showing up at the punch bowl, a local surfing area below my balcony. I was filled with hatred for them. They would be walking leisurely down the beach with their boards, floating out in the water, and then having breakfast on the boardwalk at Zelda’s before carrying on with their lives. They would be driving cars, working, going to the gym, eating pizza at Pizza My Heart, hanging out in the evening with their partners, talking and laughing. I would be lying alone in bed, doing nothing, unable to leave the confines of my apartment because of my leg.

     Then I noticed something. Just a few feet off shore, a school of dolphins was swimming in the surf. There were at least 30 of them, maybe more, fins bobbing in and out of the water as they played in the rolling waves. At that moment the sun appeared, a faint yellow line on the edge of the ocean, gradually rising and making the dolphin fins glow.

     That’s what I’ll do, I thought to myself.

     I’ll swim.

#

    

February 2001 email sent to family and friends

As I have been getting a lot of inquiries concerning my progress in physical therapy, I thought I would provide an in-depth look at my experiences working with Chris Kuhn at the MORE clinic, located inside the Club One gym.

      December 6

My first day of physical therapy. The session starts with a few wimpy exercises and then I'm wired up to a machine that shoots electrical currents through my knee. This is called "muscle stim", which is synonymous with "electrical torture that your HMO covers". Chris's assistant tells me that muscle stim is the part of therapy most people like.

      I assume this remark is made to me to see how dumb and gullible blondes are.

      December 15

While riding the stationary bike at Club One Fitness center I accidentally knock my crutches over. They bounce when they hit the floor and are way too far away for me to reach. Doppelganger of John Gotti comes to my aid. Oh great, he's going to think we are friends now.

      December 18

I start work on a machine called "the shuttle". You lay on your back with your knees bent at a 90 degree angle and put your feet up on a board that is perpendicular to the floor. You then push off to extend you legs fully. The resistance of the machine is controlled by rubber bands. I am only doing 3 rubber bands. Everyone else is doing at least four. Chris announces loudly that I am only allowed to do three rubber bands.

      Oh the humiliation.

      Then a guy who hurt himself wind surfing (based on his physical appearance I was surprised to find out he had hurt himself exercising) decides to talk to me while I am trying to shuttle with my three wimpy rubber bands. He asks if I hurt my knee, which is still swollen to more than twice the size it should be. Um, yeah!

      December 20

John Gotti and I are the only ones in the gym. Because of all the Christmas lights the floor is strewn with power cords. Maybe it's all a plot to kill me when I fall due to a crutching navigational error. Gotti comes over and gives me some tips on riding the bike because he knows I can't run away.

      Chris is on vacation this week so I distract the substitute therapist in an attempt to read what Chris has been writing about me. His handwriting sucks so I can't read my file, although I notice he has drawn a very unflattering picture of my knee. It isn't THAT fat.

      December 21

In an attempt to improve my knee-bending flexibility the substitute therapist tries to bend my knee past 90 degrees. He keeps talking as I pass out and then regain consciousness. He's from the deep south so he doesn't notice any lag in the conversation.

      Also, he accidentally reveals the secret of muscle stim - the more hydrated you are the more conducive your body is to electricity. I decide to go on a water strike immediately.

      3 January

My knee cap is finally visible again. I have moved up to 4 rubber bands and I am on my way to being crutch-less. I have found it is important to use my crutches in situations where a) Chris can see me and where b) there are dishes to be done or dinners to be cooked. The kitchen is a VERY unsafe place for crutches, except for the cabinet where the lemon cookies are.

      12 January

I receive a note from Pacific Gas and Electric that if I don't lay off the muscle stim machines California is going to experience a power crisis caused by my knee absorbing all the electricity in the state. Also, I finally get to start using the balance board, which will rebuild the stabilizer muscles in my leg while at the same time make me look like a flailing idiot.

      15 January

After listening to Chris' numerous complaints about my foot socks (which always fall off in therapy) I am forced to go shopping to buy socks that cover my ankles. My partner seems a bit suspicious and voices his opinion that I actually wanted to buy new socks. He doesn't understand that last time I made Chris mad he punished me by inventing a "therapeutic" exercise involving me walking backwards on the treadmill in the gym. I know I'm blond but did 5 people REALLY have to come up and tell me I was walking the wrong way?

      22 January

Chris makes me stand on this white half circle foam thing (it looks like an upside down speed bump) to practice balancing. Then he hands me a ball and says I have to throw it at the wall and catch it while still balancing. He recommends throwing it close to my face to make it easier to catch. I sense a trick. I wait until he walks away to try it.

The first time I miss the ball and it almost lands on the face of a woman stretching three feet away from me. The second time it hits me in the face. I'm wondering if I should stop making fun of Chris for being a soccer player. His other, nicer, patients don't seem to be doing the same kinds of life-threatening exercises I am.

      29 January

I have a minor set back in my knee flexibility when I decide to do my bending exercise for one hour instead of the recommended two seconds. Surprisingly, this makes my knee LESS flexible. Something to do with over-exertion apparently. To attempt a recovery I promise Chris I will take a whole week off of doing anything around the house. In addition I buy some new shoes just in case the ones that I currently own are contributing to the problem. I deny that I bought them because I am obsessed with shoes. It’s okay to own seven pairs of running shoes, even if you can’t run.

      5 February

A weekend of drinking seems to have improved the condition of my knee tremendously. I have reached the twelve week mark of my therapy, which means Chris can really start, as he says, "cranking" on my knee. It's all downhill from here I guess!

Prologue - the latest

Here's the latest prologue to my book. Comments are welcome...

Prologue

     29 July 2001, Somewhere in the San Francisco Bay

 “I think when Dr. Blatz recommended you take up swimming, he meant in the pool.” The words of my physical therapist Chris Kuhn came back to me as I struggled to stay afloat in the three foot chop.

     My goggles were fogged. I tried to clear them, but was so hypothermic I couldn’t move my fingers. I was wearing a 3mm wet suit which did nothing to keep me warm in the 65ºF water. I couldn’t feel my feet. I assumed they were still attached to me though I hadn’t seen them since I had jumped off the ferry at Alcatraz Island. A thick fog moved in, making it impossible to see the shore of San Francisco or Alcatraz Island.

     That’s when I realized I was lost.

     Swells rose around me like large shark fins, smacking me in the face and sometimes flipping me over onto my back. Waves crashed on top of me and pushed me down into the murky brown water. The strong current I was caught in carried me closer and closer to the Bay Bridge. As the seconds passed I realized that I would soon be swept out into the open ocean.

If that happened, the chances I would be rescued were miniscule. I doubted a boat would be able to find me, even though I was wearing a hideously bright yellow swim cap that didn’t match the rest of my swimming outfit.

     My predicament had not been covered in any of the training films I had watched a few months before. It made sense to me now why people had told me I was crazy when I said I was learning to swim using internet videos instead of a coach. And why they thought it was a mistake to make my open water swimming debut swimming in a race from Alcatraz to San Francisco.

     I didn’t want to drown in the diesel, sewage, and kelp infested waters of the Bay. I had to keep swimming.

     But which way should I go?

     I thought of a quote from the movie Himalaya: “When two paths open before you, always take the hardest one.”  The tide wanted me to surrender. It was counting on killing me by taking me out into the no man’s land beyond the bridge.

      I chose, and began to swim against the current.

dead roses?

These are my peace roses. There's white mold looking stuff in the dirt. Some of the stems are still green but there's no leaves on the plant.

Are these roses dead?

go to church and bow to the canadian

I don't know what got into me today. I swear I am still suffering from getting put to sleep for my surgery...btw, Jeffy, this entry contains a brief story about my latest cooking escapade. I know you hate it when I write about cooking, and since you pissed me off last night, I decided that was going to be part of my entry today.

So today I had to buy wine, go to home depot, and get groceries. Wine shopping I love. The guys at my shop know me, and I just walk around while one guy pushes my cart and the other one fetches me bottles to look at. Then they carry everything out to my car. It's like I do nothing but somehow I end up with a case of wine. Nice.

Then I went to home depot to get this black flexible pipe gutter stuff that you use to drain water from the gutter to your yard. No one was at home depot because it was kind of early this morning (I forgot about daylight savings time today - my wine store, btw, opens at 8 am on Sunday - is it just me or does that seem disturbing?) so all the orange apron people were mobbing me to see if I needed help.

hose roller thing

black pipe stuff

Anyway, I found this guy to help me with the pipe gutter stuff. I had a cart, with a hose roller holder thing in it, and that's it. The guy looked in my cart and said "oh, so I see you have a big painting job planned!" I was like, um, what? Then he started giving me painting tips. Not sure why he would think I was doing some painting when I just had a thing to store my monster 100 foot hose in an organized way. Crackhead.

Then I found the sections of pipe I needed and tried to take them out of the bin thing where they are stored. The guy was like "NO! DON'T TOUCH THAT!" I thought maybe the pipes were there for display purposes only. Then he points to a sign that says "see associate for assistance". Right. The fuckwit who thinks I'm going to paint with my hose storing thing is more qualified than I to pull a piece of pipe off the shelf.

The dude started trying to stuff the pipe in my cart, and actually hit himself in the face with it a few times before I said "look, I'll just carry it". So I'm walking along with this stupid wobbly piping and the guy says "you look weird, people are going to laugh at you". So I said "I'll just tell them my boyfriend is out of town" meaning, that I have to buy stuff at home depot instead of my boyfriend. He obviously was thinking of something else (pipe as penis, maybe?) because he said "you need to go to church".

Then I decided, since I have a can of tomato paste that I had to open for my soup, to find a recipe to use the rest of the tomato paste so I don't waste food. I see that as kind of an advanced cooking skill, and I was pretty proud of myself for flipping through my jewish sicilian cookbook til I found some spaghetti sauce I could make that required tomato paste. I wrote up my ingredients and headed to the store.

I have to admit, I feel pretty cool when I'm at the grocery buying raw ingredients. I used to just buy cookies and cokes. Now people will look in my cart and say "oh, you're making vegetable soup" or "oh, you're making beef stew" and they think I can cook. I don't know why I like that, but I do. And today I was standing in front of the garlic with this japanese guy and we were talking about how the garlic looked a little shit (I actually didn't notice the garlic looked bad because I think it all looks the same - anyway, I need to download some pictures of good garlic) and that guy probably walked away thinking I knew what I was talking about.

Anyway, at the safeway in my neighborhood they always have someone in the parking lot asking you to sign a petition for the stupidest things. If you refuse they heckle you as you walk to your car. So I had been plotting my whole shopping trip what I was going to do to get past this crazy lady standing out there with her petition to oust a school board member for teaching evolution. At first I thought I would pretend to be british or russian. But as I was practicing my accent while shopping (all the crazies in five points shop there so I was not the only one talking to myself) I realized the petition person would know I was faking. So when I walked out and was accosted by the crazy petition lady I said "I'm canadian, eh. I don't live here, eh. So I don't think I can sign your petition, eh."

Seriously, this lady bowed in my direction, like I was the fucking queen of england or something. Then she spread her arms wide and said (really loudly, which was embarrassing) "WELCOME! WELCOME TO OUR COUNTRY! I am SO glad you came to visit the United States! I hope you have a wonderful time!" Then she bowed again. Uh, okay. Like, I didn't say I was from the middle east or something. Canada is just next door.



Cooking tip: Do not put pepperoni in your blender.

Oops, have to go check the onions I was supposed to be browning but I started writing and forgot about them...

I hate Jeffy

I called my friend Jeffy last night (he almost had heart failure since I never call anyone, except for my friend Neil and my dad) and he told me it looks like not only is HIS book going to be published before MINE, but also he has a potential celebrity who wants to work on his book.

Hey Jeffy, why not invite me to be a writer (or your ghost writer) and let's make it a threesome. Hee.

I'll be the fluffy beaver.

Jeffy wishes I would learn to ride the gondola

Last night I had this really bizarre dream. And, shut up Jeffy, I know you hate reading about my dreams, but you were in this one.

I dreamed that Jeffy and I had gone skiing in Europe, and oddly the resort was at the top of the mountain, and we had to take this weird silver ball-shaped gondola thing down to the base of the mountain to get on a ski lift to go back up the mountain so we could ski down again. I know that doesn't make any sense, but my dreams usually don't.

I was worried because I wasn't sure how to get into the gondola thing. The guy running the gondola said "we take the top off and you get in". So he took the top off and we got in so now we were sitting in basically a silver bowl with chairs but nothing to hold onto except the side of the bowl. Then the gondola guy pushed the bowl off of the platform we had just been standing on. I was like what the fuck is this guy doing? we aren't strapped in yet!

I looked up and saw that the bowl was suspended to a beam by four stretchy ropes, and we were plummeting down towards the bottom of the mountain when suddenly the ropes got taut and made us bounce up towards the platform again. Jeffy was sitting with his arms spread out on the chairs to either side of him, and he had his legs stretched out in front with one foot crossed over the other. He didn't seem to have a care in the world. I was clinging to the side of the bowl for dear life and sliding off of my chair.

Then the bowl flipped over and I almost fell out. I yelled to the gondola guy, as we fell past him, that I wanted off the gondola. He said "no one gets off the gondola". I was like "oh god Jeffy, we're going to die" and he said "I wish you would learn to just relax and enjoy yourself". I said I was afraid because we were falling and the gondola was out of control so how could I relax and he said "no matter how many times I take you somewhere, you never learn to ride the gondola, and then you annoy me".

I looked over the edge of the bowl and realized we were about to hit the ground at a very fast speed. Then I woke up.

why I make fun of canadians - my fake shark attack

Sometimes people think I make fun of canadians because it's so easy. But that's not true. I make fun of them because they have this canadian way about them. You know how clothes are sold in discount places if they're defective? Canadians would be the defective americans sold in those shops.

Case in point...

I was on a vacation in St. Maarten with my friend Rita (links to other stories from this vacation are at the end of this post; they also make fun of canadians). On the second day of our vacation, after spending the day snorkeling, we went to a pizza place for dinner. We overheard some canadians talking about how dangerous it was to swim in the waters of St. Maarten. Rita, being much more social than I, interjected into their conversation to report that we had spent the whole day in the water and except for seeing some barracuda, had no problem.

One of the guys (who later in the night tried to bite beads out of my hair, subsequently getting us kicked out of a bar) said "No, it's very dangerous! Just today I saw a woman get attacked by a shark in knee deep water!" All the other canadians decided they would be safer spending the rest of their vacation golfing.

I thought golfing in St. Maarten? Seriously? For fuck's sake. Or maybe I said that out loud to them. I was a few beers into the evening so the rest of the conversation is a blur. But, being obsessed with sharks, I found it intriguing that there had been an attack. I made Rita promise that the next day we would go snorkeling to find the man eater.

Later in the evening, however, I realized that I was the one that the canadians thought had been attacked by a shark. What happened was...

Earlier that day, I had promised Rita I would teach her how to snorkel, but I was so hung over all I could do was lay on my chair 3 feet from the water and contemplate cutting my head off so it would stop hurting.

I finally fell asleep, and Rita, who was pissed about the snorkeling, decided it would be funny to put some cheese puffs between my toes. I hate cheese puffs and had been making fun of her for eating them all morning. Finally the drinks guy came around, and I managed to wake up enough to order a pina colada (hair of the dog that bit me).

Then I decided, after my drink arrived, that I would feel even more refreshed if I went into the water. I should mention here that the beach we were on was a topless beach. So, there I was, topless, hung over, carrying a pina colada and smoking a cigarette as I waded into the water. I imagine myself looking like a blond, skinny version of Bill Murray.

I waded into the water, focusing on not getting my cigarette wet, when suddenly I felt a pinching pain in my foot. I looked down and about 10 fish were biting my right foot. "What the fuck" I thought to myself. I lifted my right foot out of the water, and the fish suddenly focused on my left foot, biting me again. "God dammit!" I yelled, and then proceeded to start high stepping in the water, boobs flopping around, trying to keep at least one foot from getting bitten. Finally I am pretty sure I shrieked like a hysterical school girl and ran out of the water (spilling my pina colada).

Rita was doubled over on her chair laughing. I threw what was left of my pina colada on her and yelled "I could have DIED!" Later she told me about the cheese puffs between my toes. We ended up taking them with us when we finally went snorkeling, after I had a second pina colada that didn't get spilled, so we could get the fish close to us.

So that was my fake shark attack, courtesy of canadian imagination (bet you didn't know they occasionally have imagination).

I wish I could say it was the worst thing to happen on that vacation (besides almost drowning in the hotel pool, having a pervert lick my foot, and being accosted by other canadians), but later that week, because of snorkeling, I almost killed myself in the bathroom. For more on that vacation see http://blonstar40.blogspot.com/2009/03/hott-tomato.html and http://blonstar40.blogspot.com/2007/02/commodal-concussion.html.

Luv R/X - climbing for couples

So My Other Nine Lives is not my first two year book project...

In 2007 a guy named Dave was looking for a co-author for a book that was the brain child of my friend Joe (aka Brassy, I've written about him before - http://blonstar40.blogspot.com/2009/03/rebuttal-by-joe-josephson.html), who at the time owned First Ascent Press (at this point I didn't know Joe). The book was supposed to be a serious relationship book to help couples who climb together.

Dave initially wanted to get this girl who was a famous climber with big tits to help him. Unfortunately she was depressed and hating on men because she had just had a bad break up (which begs the question why Dave thought she would be a good co-author - see comment about "big tits"). Anyway, he was talking to my friend Will and Will sent him a link to my blog. Then Dave read my blog and asked Will what I was like because he was looking for a co-author.

So I was sitting in a customer office at 730 in the morning when I see this email from Will:

She's one insanely bright, very ironic and overall entertaining person. She could well be good for the project. As per usual, the best way to deal with her is straight up, so I've cc:ed her. FF, meet Dave and vice versa. You two have no fun together now, y'hear?

I was like, what the hell is this? Then I saw this email from Dave:

Will,

 

Thanks. “Bright” can be a bit of a liability in the molasses of the modern aether, However, irony is always appropriate, and “insanely” anything is invariably promising. It’s the next question that always gets me into trouble.

 

“But can she type?”

 

Hi, Franki.

I was excited about the prospect of writing a book, and a bit put off by the "can she type" question. So instead of doing the appropriate thing, which would have been to think before responding, I sent this:

  

Of course I can type. My favorite word to type is vagina. If that's not in your dictionary maybe you should switch to the US version of English, rather than the Canadian version. In the lower 48* we also recognize crotchless as a word.

Hi David.

*based on contiguous land mass

 Surprisingly, Dave took me on as a co-author. I was excited and put together an outline, with bullets for each chapter. I put together a schedule, estimates on the words for each chapter based on the overall word count Dave had supplied. Will must have known what I was in for, because his last email said:

Nice to see two friends having some fun and possibly work. I take all credit and no responsibility for the creative celebration or disaster that may ensue. Good luck.

(highlighting added by me)

Over the next 6 months I wrote 140 pages, about 50K words. Dave wrote nothing. He didn't even read the stuff I wrote. I would send him chapters with a request for comments, and when he finally got around to responding to my emails it was usually a one word sentence making fun of me, with a picture attached of Dave skiing, climbing, or doing other stuff that was NOT writing the book.

In the end, Joe's publishing business went bankrupt. The book was never finished. Dave never wrote anything, except to add a line that said something to the effect of  "allowing your climbing partner to have a bite off of your gas stationed purchased burrito shows you are a true climbing couple".

I recently talked to Joe about taking what I wrote and trying to condense it into a series of articles for a climbing mag. He seemed enthusiastic, but he hasn't read anything yet. 

That's why I need to paint him a magic writing dinosaur. Then maybe he'll want to write with me.

 

painting and plants

If you've never been to the Denver Botanical Gardens (http://www.botanicgardens.org/) I highly recommend it. It's almost a crime that I lived here for so long and just went. I liked it so much I bought a membership for myself and my dad.

There's tons of cool indoor plants. This one was my favorite. It's called the lollipop plant. How ridiculous does that look? And I guess I have a more than usual appreciation of people who can grow plants and not kill them. I've even managed to kill a cactus. One of my favorite cacti has some kind of mange. And my stupid white peace roses are probably dead (there's nothing but stems left, though one stem is still green) and the dirt has some kind of mold on it.

There's a whole room of orchids, and plenty of outdoor gardens to walk through, with cool statues. It was fun to see even with all of the snow.

And, hee, I had to take a picture of this person's painting. In the main building I saw 3 painters set up in these little areas where they can put an easel. She paints like me! But maybe worse.

Which reminds me, I owe my friend Joe a painting of a writing dinosaur...maybe I'll do that today...

soup!

My soup turned out really well! It even looked like the picture in the book. And I didn't die even though the chicken broth I used had expired.

I brought some soup to the FRG when we met at the climbing gym, and he said it was good.

Maybe I am learning to cook. Which is good, since I plan on redoing my kitchen, and want to justify the cost beyond adding to the resale value of my house.

dead babies, dead ambition

My brother and I were joking all last week about the dead baby painting at DIA (http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_denver02.htm#Part%20Four%20-%20Dead%20Babies%20and%20Commander%20Skeletor). So at first I thought that's why I had a disturbing dream on Saturday...

In the dream there was a completely featureless crying baby, and me. We weren't even standing on a floor or in a building. The space around us was three dimensional, and gray, but it wasn't "real" space. Anyway, the baby was crying really loudly and annoyingly (even though it didn't have a mouth) and I started smacking it, and then hitting it really hard to try to make it stop crying. Even though I was hitting it hard it didn't make a difference, the noise stayed the same. So finally I thought "I have to kill this baby to get it to shut up" and then another part of me said "if you kill this baby, you will die".

So, understandably, I was freaked the fuck out when I woke up. I knew the baby was mine even though I don't even have a uterus to have a baby. So I looked it up in my dream book and under baby one of the things it said was "represents a secret dream or ambition". I think the baby is supposed to represent my book, and even though I keep wanting to give up and just say fuck it, I have to see it through because it's going to scream in my subconscious for the rest of my life if I do.

Or else, I had too much to drink that night, and had a fucked up dream that is the fault of my brother constantly laughing about the dead baby painting at DIA.

By the way, don't shake the baby.

http://www.practicenotes.org/vol1_no3/dont_shake_the_baby.htm

puree of vegetable soup - another reason why I hate cooking

So today I decided to make some healthy vegetable soup. My friend Cam lent me a Williams Sonoma cook book with soup recipes that, she said, "even a moron could follow".

So I decided to make the puree of vegetable soup, which is leeks, carrots, potatoes, zucchini, garbanzo beans, some tomato paste, and a few other things. I used a box of open chicken broth for the broth part, even though it's been open in my frig for 4 weeks and expired 4 March. I asked the FRG and he said it was okay to use it.

Anyway, the first thing I had to do was finely chop leeks and put them in some oil. I've never seen a leek before, and had no idea what part of it I was supposed to put in the soup. So I watched this video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6zHAIfyJxI. I gave it a thumbs up even though it wasn't really helpful because her leek didn't look like my leek.

Then I texted the FRG and asked if a leek is comprised of one leaf thingy or the whole stalk thingy. He said to put in the whole stalk thingy, which is not what was in the video. And he said to peel off the outside leaves if they looked "old and dry". Well, the whole damn leek looked old and dry to me. I started peeling off the outside leaves and then there was like nothing left. So finally I just chopped off the really bushy looking parts and this is what I had left. I have no idea if this is the "leek" part that was supposed to go in the soup.

The FRG insisted I get one of those rocker knives that make it easy to cut shit up if you know how to use a knife. I decided to use it today to cut up my leek and vegetables. After about 30 seconds I stabbed myself in the palm with it and changed my game plan to putting everything in the chopper thing I bought from pampered chef at the party where I got drunk because I saw some guy get hit by a train in downtown Baltimore (got the chopper back from Miss Daisy when I moved):
(http://blonstar40.blogspot.com/2008/02/bad-train-story.html).
The whole soup had to go into the blender anyway, so I figured who cares if I cut it by hand or not...

So I got everything "simmered" (not sure what that means, so I put the heat on medium and went outside and smoked for a while), pureed in the blender, and was down to the last step, when I came across the sentence "add salt and pepper to taste". What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Why don't you just tell me how much salt and pepper to put in? Because this is supposed to be a cookbook for morons! I don't know how to taste if something needs more salt or pepper!

I swear, this is why women get a bad rep. The cook book was written by a woman. Why don't you just tell me how much fucking salt you want? Why are you making me guess? Oh, I know, so you can say "that's wrong, I wanted more salt (or less salt) you don't know me at all, I guess you don't care about me". That's why guys get frustrated with women, all you ladies out there. So, next time you write a cook book, think like me, a female engineer. Add MEASUREMENTS because I know you are capable. How do I know you are capable...

Because most women can tell you how much they weighed ten years ago and what size clothes they wore. So how is it that they can't tell you how much salt they put in their fucking soup?

I may bring some soup to the FRG tomorrow if I don't die from eating expired chicken broth. I'll let you know what he says (unless I am dying from food poisoning).

speaking of "holy", my pitch letter for the holey wars

I found this doing research for my book. It's the first pitch letter I ever wrote, pitching an article Mayo and I wrote for Falling magazine. I did hear back from the gentleman I sent this to, but they never did publish our story. The story can be found here: http://blonstar40.blogspot.com/2007/02/holey-wars.html

Almost too embarrassing to read this now:

I tried to submit this via the email listed on the Falling web page but the server seems to have disappeared. No comments on the skills of the web master.

Anyway, Mayo suggested I email this to you. He would have sent it himself but he's busy right now getting Banff blow jobs and soloing something called "the pencil" (not a name to impress the ladies – even "the eraser" would imply more, um, girth). Now, take a couple of shots of your favorite scotch/bourbon/whatever before you proceed further into the ACTUAL MESSAGE:

To the esteemed editor of Falling Magazine:

I have always been a fan of your country, including the hard working Mounties with those oh so shiny buckles. And I'm an even bigger fan of Falling, as many of your articles have helped me improve my climbing and inspired me to make even more fun of sport climbers. 

Will Mayo and I have written an article for your review, titled The Holey Wars. It concerns the dangerous and unprecedented jihad going on in the climbing community against people who bolt climbs. We feel that this information will be useful to your readers.

The article includes:

- an interview with the Jewish Jihadist who chopped all the bolts on the Royal Caribbean cruise ships

- an update on the Pentagon's latest bolt technology

- a short plug for the new drink Red Bolt

- more information on the blow up doll debacle on Everest

We hope you enjoy it.

Sincerely yours on belay,

Franki & Will

p.s. if you didn't find it amusing, please have more shots and then start again, from the top, up we go...

baptist bastards

I was just reading an article on NPR about the Westborough Baptist church in Topeka Kansas. They've been protesting at military funerals against gay people and were sued by the father of a soldier who died in Iraq (his son wasn't gay):

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/02/134194491/high-court-rules-for-military-funeral-protesters

What the fuck is wrong with these people? Though the supreme court voted they can continue protesting at funerals because it's their first amendment right, if those stupid fucks really had an issue that they wanted to resolve, they should fucking go to Washington and protest there. Disturbing the families who have lost someone in the war is unconscionable, sick, and not christian. Obviously they are trying to get media coverage, and they carry signs like "god hates fags" and "pray for more dead soldiers".


If hatred and prejudice was the answer, all of the world's problems would have been solved a long time ago. These protesters will accomplish nothing, at an emotional toll to families that shouldn't have to suffer more. Idiots. I hope all the toilets of the people participating in this protest back up and cost thousands of dollars to fix.

proposal is done!

I am so damn productive today...I also just sent off the final version of my newly revised book proposal. The last three days have been hell, trying to write a proposal that was funny, to the point, and informative about my book. It was a great exercise though. And even no agent picks up my book, I think they will laugh at at least one of the jokes.

When I get feedback from David I'll post my new proposal, for any of you aspiring writers.

And now back to writing. Finishing up the last edits on my book. Then on to the next project...a children's book about a giant, an alligator, and a kangaroo who's arms are too short. If anyone can think of a catchy title please post it in comments...

bread in a blanky

 I'm making bread again. I know you dudes are thinking, like, what kind of disaster is it going to be this time.

Well, for your information, I did things differently. When I added water to the dry ingredients I used warm water (though my brother told me that the yeast is supposed to be refrigerated or it goes bad or some shit like that, I'm going to have to research that in more detail because I looked at the yeast packet and there was NOTHING saying to put it in the refrigerator). And this time, instead of just covering it with plastic wrap I also gave it a little bread blanky to keep it warm.

So far the results are good. The dough rose this time. I just made it into a ball and put it in a towel, as the directions stated. We'll see if the ball really doubles in size or not. Hm. Wonder if I should use a lighter towel. What if the bread can't rise because the towel is weighing it down?

I also realized I left out two steps last time I made the bread. The first was to flour the dough and let it rest for 15 minutes before making it into a ball (will have to research to find out why I had to do that). The second thing is I forgot to take the lid off of the dutch oven the last 15 minutes I was baking the bread. Oops. Also, I think I only baked it for 30 minutes instead of 45.

I'll let you know how it comes out. My brother, his girlfriend, and the FRG are coming over for dinner tonight. FRG is making everything but the bread. Thankfully.

phone book procrastination

I'm procrastinating finishing my book proposal, YES, I'm writing it AGAIN, new format this time. I'm following the format from The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published. It's a great resource for any writer (I'm not just saying that because they are helping me with my book). There's samples of EVERYTHING and explanations on why, for example, a pitch letter or proposal is good. I finally started reading it after talking to David Sterry a few weeks ago and wish I had this book a year ago.

It turns out a lot of the stuff I had in my original proposal and cover letter was right. Then two editors, who are actually great editors, gave me all this advice about making my letter and proposal sound "more professional". Instead of the funny stuff I wrote they had me put in boring crap. So now I'm taking the proposal I wrote 1 1/2 years ago and trying to enhance it along the guidelines in Essential Guide.

But it's taking a long time. It's hard to summarize things. And then I have to make them funny. I can make stuff short but then have to re-edit to get in some one liners, then it's too long, then I have to fix it again. Ech.

I'll put it out on my blog when I'm done.

I've also spent the past week editing and rewriting large parts of my book. Again. I thought I would be done by Friday but I was so burned out I decided to work on the proposal instead. Anyway, the final rewrites will be done by Wednesday of this week. I think the book is funnier and I hope I've taken care of the problems people complained about (two stories had "no point other than climbing" and "not enough personal stuff"). I think the ending is much better too.

Maybe someday...this damn thing will be on a bargain bin shelf at Barnes and Noble...

bye bye phone books!

I just read an article about this great new service that lets you opt out of receiving phone books! The address is www.yellowpagesoptout.com. You can choose to receive no books or only certain books.

Who uses a phone book these days anyway?

bronchitis

Have you ever wondered what it would feel like if you injected bleach into your lungs? It feels like bronchitis, which I have had, seriously, for two fucking weeks. So much for bragging that I haven't been sick in 5 years...

Surgery, oh yeah, that thing. It's going well. I have some gross scars, a little pain, but other than that, I've fine, except that I got bronchitis. Which is the worst illness I have ever had. Especially when I have a coughing fit and this green stuff that looks like spackling flies out of my mouth. I've been told by my doctor that the spackling stuff is what's known as a "productive cough".

Great, because other than my cough, I haven't been productive at all.

I was also told that quitting smoking cold turkey right before my surgery was "a stupid thing to do" and "possibly the stupidest thing a patient has ever done". I'm allowed, by my doc, to smoke 2 cigarettes a day to help my lungs get through this difficult time. I know it seems counter-intuitive to smoke while sick, but it helps with my cough, which is exacerbated by suddenly quitting smoking.

Right, enough bitching about being sick. I promise to go back to writing interesting things in the next few days, assuming my bronchitis keeps getting better...

I give Joe the finger

My friend Joe "Brassy" Josephson was driving to the outdoor retail show the night I had surgery, but he wanted to know how I was. I sent him this picture giving him the finger (hee). For the record, because I've had frostbite in a lot of fingers, my middle finger was the only one they could get a reading from.

Check out all those jacked up IVs they put in my arm. I was like you dudes are doing that because I have good veins, not because I need them. Which made the nurses laugh because I do have great veins and it gave the interns a chance to practice. Interesting fact - new needles for the IVs are plastic, not metal. But still, I don't like having that shit in my arm. See that blue thing? That's to monitor my oxygen. I unplugged it and forgot to plug it back in...oops...I got yelled at for that.

 Joe had recently burned his fingers, so he sent me this pic of his finger in response to my middle finger picture. Of course, he's not really giving me the middle finger.

And now, I have to go lay back down on the sofa and watch a movie or something. Still feeling tired and it's uncomfortable to sit up for long periods of time. And somehow my eyes are messed up, they've been blurry since the surgery...

surgery

 The surgery was a huge success. It's amazing that, even though my innards were chopped up I have less pain now than before surgery. My doctor said that the tumors were sitting like a bowling ball on top of all my other organs and that's why I was in so much pain. And all along I thought I just had an ulcer.

My anesthesiologist did a great job (and was a smoker, and told me that he would have snuck me out for a smoke break if the doctor hadn't shown up). He gave me something he called "medicinal bourbon" to relax me. I don't know what the fuck it was, but I literally felt it hit my vein. He said it normally takes a few minutes to kick in, but right as it went into my arm everything in the room got crazy. I vaguely remember saying "Did anyone else notice that everything in the room just turned purple?" Then I don't remember anything. My mom said that I was carrying on as if I had been on a drinking bender for hours. I'm glad I don't remember what I said.

When I came to in the recovery room, I was still pretty jacked up. The nurses said I kept laughing uncontrollably. Surprisingly I didn't vomit once. The key is to take Dramamine before surgery if you are allergic to anesthetic. Wish someone had told me that 10 years ago. I'm normally vomiting my brains out in recovery. This very sweet orderly took me to my room. I remember telling him "look, you've had a lot to drink, maybe you should let me drive". He told my mom that I was the first patient he's ever wheeled up to a room that was like a happy drunk.

I stayed at Rose Medical Center. Say what you will about the annoyances of HIPAA, one good thing is hospitals can no longer crowd patients into a room. I had my own room, a huge contrast from my last hospital stay when they packed 3 other patients in a room the same size as the one I stayed in at Rose.

,

The nurses were bored because there weren't many patients on the floor. They kept bringing me stuff to eat, even though I wasn't hungry. They would show up with ice cream and then say "oh, you can't eat this can you" and then they would eat the ice cream while sitting on the edge of my bed. After re hydrating I started feeling more human and was able to show the nurses how to do a little hack on their computer system to make it easier to enter patient information. I learned how to use all the computers in my room so I could get out of bed to pee or wander the halls without setting off any alarms.

After getting knocked out for surgery your lungs get lazy. One thing I had to do was breathe into this machine to register how strong my lungs were working. My lungs were kind of shit (this is also supposed to keep you from getting bronchitis, but I got sick anyway because my mom got it, supposedly because she was with me in the hospital).

I had asked the nurses what I had to do to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible. I met all of the tasks they gave me by Thursday night, but they wanted me to stay so I did. At 3 in the morning me, two nurses, and a nurse intern had a contest with the breathing machine. I won for the strongest lungs, which surprised them because I smoke(d). Then they said I kind of cheated because I didn't tell them that I also run.

One of the nurses, Kathy, came in to see me every hour. I always woke up when she came into my room and she would tell me stories about her family. She also would bring me popsicles and as much coke as I could drink even though I was supposed to be drinking water. She kept telling me to order a sandwich from room service (yeah, hospital with room service) but I really couldn't eat anything. And she took me off the "standard diet" delivery so I could order what ever I wanted for breakfast and dinner.

When I left the hospital they didn't even make me ride down to the car in a wheel chair.

If you're ever in Denver and need surgery, I highly recommend Rose Medical Center. It was seriously the BEST hospital I have ever been in.

five points batmobile

While doing laps around my neighborhood (you have to walk a lot after having abdominal surgery) my mom and I came across this.

Weird. What the fuck is this thing? The batmobile with empty gun turrets? Oddly, on the same corner some guys were selling drugs. Maybe it's their car.

Very subtle. Not.

weird things the French eat

Yesterday I was way swamped with work tying up loose ends before my surgery. It didn't help that I had a conference call from 754 to 1030 last night...

FRG offered to make me dinner since I didn't even have time to go pick something up. Dinner consisted of potatoes broiled in spices that are from FRG's "prah vansss" and salad. If you can roll the S sound out really long when saying provence you get extra points from the French.

He also brought two kinds of cheese. One was Roquefort cheese, which I've had, and the other was Morbier, which FRG used to make when he lived in France. For the record, we americans do cheese wrong. It was in the wrong kind of plastic packaging and the sticker on the cheese, according to FRG, "is stupid and sucks". I guess in France the cheese is served in leather jackets with matching pants.

There was a very long explanation about the temperature at which you serve cheese, as well as how it's made. Morbier has this green stripe in it because back in the day farmers didn't have a big enough pot, or what ever you make cheese in, to make the whole cheese (I didn't know cheese had to be a certain size) so they would put some stuff (I didn't really understand the word) in to mark where the cheese was stopped so the next day they could make more. Making cheese is totally stressful. You have to press it, get the whey out, make some bacteria grow in it, and beat it to pieces with some metal blender thing, but if you beat it too much all the cheese goes down some drain thing. But it you beat it into too big of pieces it's "totally fucked up" as the FRG helpfully put it.

I disgraced myself by sticking a knife into the middle of the cheese and pulling a blob of it out to put on my baguette. FRG looked at me as if I had picked the cheese up with my toes and said I must never do that again, specific guidance being "You cut a whole slice, put it on your plate, and then you can spread it on your bread". Who knew... He also cautioned me not to eat the rind of the cheese. As if.

I was a little worried about the cheese because it smelled sort of like feet, and things that go into your body come out smelling at least 4 times as bad. I figured if the Morbier cheese made me fart they would have to block off my house as a toxic waste site.

He also brought prosciutto to go with the potatoes. I never had it before, and was not pleased to see that it looked like the skin that's peeled off of an infected blister. Gross. Also, the label on the package said "Boar's Head". It took about 5 minutes for FRG to convince me that was the brand name of the meat place and not where the meat came from (I have reasons to be suspicious - he told me about how in his village people drink blood from a pig right after it's been killed - "with spices" he said as if that makes drinking blood alright - you apparently have to share your blood with your neighbors and they share their blood with you when they kill a pig - I'm glad you can't raise pigs where I live).

After smelling the prosciutto and attempting numerous times to put it in my mouth, I finally ate a piece. It was like pig sushi. So gross. I told FRG "this tastes like raw bacon" and he said "that's essentially what it is". I almost puked.

He said I have to be more adventurous in eating if I expect him to continue cooking for me. So I plan to take him for sushi after I've recovered from my surgery. We'll see how he does with raw quail eggs.

Fair is fair, even when it comes to the french.

French translation

While hanging out with my French rope gun (who would have imagined I would become friends with someone who is French, real French, not Canadian French, and worse, from southern France) I've had a few moments of confusion over his English. I've provided some translations of French English in case you decide to become friends with someone French who "speaks english".

While we were driving in the worst traffic ever on Saturday to go skiing, FRG was (oh wait, I just noticed, the abbreviation of french rope gun almost spells frog - I did NOT do that on purpose) telling me a story about getting in trouble in high school while taking some test they have to take to graduate. He didn't study for the exam, but he and his friend devised a little plan to pass the test. But, what I heard when he was telling the story, was "I was accused by my teacher of being a shit" (I can see that, he's french) and "she accused me of shitting with my friend" (okay, that sounded weird, even for french boys in boarding school). I finally figured out shitting was cheating. I have not corrected him on that word, and have encouraged him to tell that story to more people because it was so funny.

He was also telling me, after skiing that he was worried about his harm. He then went on for a few more minutes about his harm. I thought at first he might have been talking about how dangerous ski conditions were on Saturday (half the runs on the mountain were closed because of high winds, and I literally could not see more than 2 feet in front of me due to blowing snow while I was skiing). I finally realized he was talking about his arm. Which is interesting BECAUSE...

A few days previous he was showing me pictures of climbing areas in France and Washington State. In one of the pictures he said "Look, that is art lake". I thought that was a kind of stupid name for a lake, though it was very picturesque and had a nice reflection of flowers in it. So I said "Yes, I can see why someone would want to paint that, which is why it has that name I guess." He looked at me as though I was a moron (that happens a lot, especially in the gym when I am trying to learn proper footwork or how to use a gri-gri). Later, in another picture, I noticed that the lake was in the shape of a heart, and realized he had been saying "heart lake".

So I accused him of randomly leaving out or adding an H to words. He said that he doesn't like to say "arm" because "it sounds stupid, and is a stupid word". So he will add an H or extra vowels to words he doesn't like to make them "sound better". He also leaves off consonants on words. He refuses to say "th" and replaces it with either an F or an S sound. If I make fun of his pronunciation he asks me to say phrases in French. He especially likes my pronunciation of my cook ware, Le Crueset. When he says it it doesn't even sound like a word you could spell.

I guess I'm going to have to learn some French so FRG can write a blog making fun of me...

my quit smoking program

So I will hopefully quit smoking starting this thursday, when I show up at the hospital at 530 am to get my uterus cut out. Fun.

Don't recommend that as a quit smoking program for everyone, but getting rid of the curse and a nasty nicotine habit all on the same day seemed like a good idea to me.

my bread! like jesus, it finally rose!

my bread! it's really flat but tasted good...

Mickey Mouse uterus - a gross blog you might not want to read

On Wednesday I went to the doc's for a check up. I have to do that every year since I had problems back in 2004 requiring surgery. I almost skipped the appointment because I just had one in April of last year, and had a pap smear (if that mention bothers you, don't read the rest of this) in December that was normal.

Well wouldn't you fucking know it...during the ultrasound my doctor started freaking out and taking lots of pictures. That's never a good thing. I could see the screen and could see the dark spots that are tumors (know how to spot them after my last surgery). There were 5 big enough for her to take pics of, and smaller ones. Plus, I have some tumors growing on the outside of my uterus. My doctor, who is very cool, said my uterus looks like Mickey Mouse. Which would be funny if it didn't also suck.

So now I have to get a hysterectomy. My doctor wants me to do it as soon as possible because the tumors grew so fast (8 months), they're big enough for her to feel by just poking my abdomen (not that I have a lot of fat on my abdomen, but still, that's gross). I go see a specialist tomorrow to figure out what the fuck I'm going to do.

Positive thing: no more monthly curse. Negative thing: a lot of blogs I've read doing research say that constipation is a problem, along with gas, and potential weight gain. And some other crap stuff.

The cool thing is I met with my veteran yesterday and she had the same surgery. My vet was a combat medic and I'm her mentor to help her transition into a commercial job (I'm volunteering through an organization called ACP). She's great and really tall. She said she'll be my surgery mentor since I'm helping her with the job stuff. I like that we are helping each other.

More to follow after my appointment tomorrow...

quiet please, my dough is resting

So last night, after 2 glasses of wine, and while switching to the second DVD for Godfather II, I decided to make some bread. I had been given an "easy" recipe from the ladies at La Crueset when I bought my pots. It's a bread I can make in my dutch oven. In theory.

I thought last night went pretty good. I put my flour through the flour shifter (shocked I own one, aren't you). Then I didn't exactly measure the amount of yeast I put in, but more should be better, right? I had to do some mathematical calculations on the water (perhaps that's where things went wrong).

This morning when I checked my dough it looked exactly like the directions said it should. Bubbly on top. I luckily checked the directions around 2 (I'm making the bread for dinner tonight at 630 - my rope gun is coming over and is making me chicken picata) and found out the dough had to be taken out of the bowl, rolled in some flour, laid on a towel with more towel on top, and that it still needed another two hours to "rest" before being ready to cook (for an hour and a half - that seems excessive).

I rolled it out and did just what the directions said, except that it said to form the dough into a ball, which was kind of impossible because it's like a total blob. Then it said to rest the dough on its seam. Seam? What the fuck is that? I just put it on the towel and it sort of oozed into a flat kind of thing. I tried putting more flour in but the recipe said you can only do that if you do it quickly and not to man handle the dough too much. It was supposed to rise to twice it's normal size.

Anyway, after an hour it's still the same old blob as before. I even turned on the oven to give the dough more heat and that's not helping (it's sitting on top of the oven).

Damn. Fucking bread. How about this dough blob? Less resting, more rising.

I will post a picture of it after it's cooked. Should be good for a few laughs.

OR victory from the jaws of defeat!!!!!!!!!!!

I was kind of bummed last night that I lost pitchapalooza. But, when I was walking home, in a way, I felt like something good was going to happen. I talked to Brassy last night and he cheered me up, but still I felt like there was something unfinished, or that something was going to happen.

This morning I checked my email, and had one from someone in my writer's group that I haven't really met. He was at the pitch last night, he's a published author, and an award winning screen writer splitting his time between here and NYC (which is why I haven't met him). The email said:

Hi, Franki,
After the event, I bought a book and got it signed.  I put in a
nice word for you with David (the pitchapalooza panel guy).  He wants to follow up
with you and was really impressed with your pitch, Franki.  He
wanted me to make sure you contact him.  His email is [deleted].

Good luck!  Awesome job tonight.

I was shocked, surprised, excited, and stunned that this person who's never met me, or read anything I've written, would go out of his way to help me. I sent a profusely thankful email back to him, offered to buy him a drink, and then got on the stick and sent an email, which was probably crappy, to David. Now I guess I'll wait and see what happens.

In the mean time, I got a response back to my thankful email:

Your story is CAPTIVATING!  I have not seen your writing, but if it is anything like the way you tell it verbally, I believe you will inspire many people.  Plus, you're a really nice person and I want you to succeed.

See you soon.

 

Stay tuned...

I lost

Well, tonight was a weird experience...

When I got to the pitchapalooza 64 people had shown up to pitch. I was like uh oh. They had us put our names in a basket to be randomly selected to pitch. They said they would take 30 people. I didn't get called. Then they said they only had time for one more pitch (19 had been done) because Tattered Cover was closing early. I thought as hard as I could for them to pull my name as the last pitch.

Amazingly, they did.

From the first 5 seconds of my pitch there was an audible gasp from the panel. Then they laughed at the cadaver knee part. When I finished they even applauded me (they didn't applaud anyone else). The main guy said my pitch was perfect and that he loved it. A guy who is a book rep said he thought my book would sell really well and that if the media got their hands on me they would eat me up (his exact words). They all said there wasn't a single thing about my pitch that they would change (unlike every one else that had pitched). I told them I had gotten some rejections on my book and the book seller said "that's because they aren't reading your pitch, but that's going to change - don't see those as rejections at all".

The one woman on the panel asked if my stories were true. I said I had the pictures and witnesses to prove it which made everyone in the audience laugh (maybe because of the way I said it, I don't know).

Then the woman and the book seller went out of the room to pick the winner. I put my hat on and got my jacket ready. Everyone was like "what are you doing? you had to have won!" When the woman and book seller walked back in the room a bunch of people from the writer's group started saying "You know you won".

Which was embarrassing because I didn't win. The woman who won wrote a memoir about making a major change in her life from being a house wife to a feminist. Her pitch was so boring compared to some of the others that I didn't even remember what it was about (someone pitched a kid's book about the Cat Intelligence Agency, where cats solve crimes by manipulating humans - thought that was a great pitch).

Afterward a bunch of people came up to me, that I didn't know, and told me that they really liked my book idea. It was weird.

So, I'm going to change my cover letter to my one minute pitch. Find some agents. Send them a paper copy of my letter, chapter summaries, and the first five pages of my book. And keep going. I have to be close at this point for something to happen.

pitchapalooza

Tonight I'm attending an event with my writer's group. It has the dumb name "pitchapalooza". Everyone gets one minute to give a verbal pitch to a panel of experts (what ever that means and how ever they qualify as an expert). The winner gets a 15 minute consultation that may or may not lead to book publication.

I spent Saturday and Sunday trying to come up with my pitch. I can't decide today whether I'm nervous or not. I wish I knew more about what the format for the event was going to be, and how many people are going to be there. I'm wondering if less people will come because of the snow we got yesterday.

Here's the final version of my pitch:

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have your head almost bitten off by a great white shark? Or to take a 70 foot fall in front of eight tourists while rock climbing in the gunks? Or to complete the Alcatraz to San Francisco swim after learning to swim on the internet?

Me too! That’s why I did those things and then wrote a book about them. My Other Nine Lives is a completed collection of 9 humorous non-fiction essays about my experiences in learning extreme sports, despite having little athletic talent and a knee built out of cadaver parts as a result of an accident that doctors thought would leave me crippled for the rest of my life.

The stories are woven together by a biographical thread that provides insight into managing extreme pain through extreme sports, as well as detailing my romances and mis-adventures with professional extreme athletes. It’s the usual travel adventure book, but with homicidal sled dogs, falling ice, and screaming barfies.

american express - I should have left home without it

My fucking head is going to explode. Seriously.

I spent 5 hours today (luckily had a lot of conf calls - multi-tasking!) going through every corporate am ex statement since March of 2007 along side the scanned in copies of all of my expense reports trying to find out why I have a $1,400 balance on my card.

If that sounds like not such a hard task, let me clarify by saying I have at least 2 expense reports every month, and for the past two years have had one submitted a week. Last year I charged about $200,000 worth of stuff to my am ex.

"Well," you're probably thinking "can't your company just run a report to see what expenses on your card haven't been assigned to an expense report?"

Yeah buster, I'm one step ahead of you on that one. I tried that. We use a system, the same one I've used at every company I've worked at since 1995, that uploads your charges and then you assign them to an expense report and the bills get paid. But, what has happened is somehow charges that I didn't make got assigned to my account in the system. Charges I did make probably ended up on someone else's account (for example, I had an airfare that never showed up in my card data). That has never happened to me before in the 12 years of using the system other places - only at this company.

When that started happening last year I called the morons who handle this shit in my company. They said "oh, just delete those expenses if you didn't make them." Regarding my missing charges, they said "you can't put them on a report manually, they will be rejected. We'll try to figure out what's going on."

What, me worry?

Anyway, since November of 2009 I have been trying to get this issue resolved. Even though Am Ex and I can both prove that expenses being applied to my account were never made by me, my company can't figure out how to take them off my account (e.g. $900 of stuff charged in New Jersey - car rental and hotel - when I can prove I was in the UAE when the charges were incurred). Am Ex tells me they can see the name on the receipts and it isn't my name - they know whose account the charges should go on but my company can't figure out, in their system, how to move the charges.

My company suggested I pay the $1400 until things get sorted out because my credit card is about to be turned off. Fat fucking chance. After almost a year and a half this problem is not any closer to being resolved. I can probably sweet talk am ex into cutting me a break, again, but I'm racking up late fees to the tune of $45 - $80 a month. But I'm afraid if I pay the charges my company will never give my money back.

They did give me a form to fill out for expenses over 1 year old. Unfortunately, after I filled it out and sent it in, I found out it was the wrong form. I filled out the new form a week later, and was told the process of who I have to submit the form to was also changed, so the person I sent it to just ignored it, and my subsequent emails, and it wasn't until I went to her boss that I found out I wasn't supposed to send the form to her anymore. No one can tell me who to send the form to, but they're going to email me real soon.

I would ask my manager, but he's not really my manager because he's working a different job now and they haven't replaced him with someone else. I inquired who my manager was and the response was a copy of the job description for my manager with the suggestion I apply for the position.

Fucking fuck I am annoyed!

I'll drink to that!

I saw this sign when I was on a walk today. In case you can't read it, it says "Fuck it I need a drink Please help".

Had the person who made the sign still been around I would have ponied up some cash for a few rounds.

bacon bird

My friend Cam sent me this picture last night. Her son James shot a pheasant, then her ex cut it's head off, and then she covered it with bacon. They ate it for dinner last night. I am glad I wasn't invited.

GROSS!!!!!!!!

I ate mac and cheese for dinner last night.

the wrong Ben

I am such a fucking moron.

When I was talking to Shim at the Bozeman Icefest he was telling me about a climber dude I should meet named Ben. I thought I knew Ben, and decided to email him about possibly building a bouldering cave in my garage.

So I send Ben, a guy I knew from the east coast, an email saying I had talked to Shim, that Shim said hi, and could he give me some info about building a climbing wall. Then I put a bunch of chatty shit in the email figuring Shim must have emailed him that I would be emailing him. Blah blah blah I went on about a bunch of stupid shit. Ben responded back to my first email right away so I emailed him back, inviting him to Denver as per Shim's suggestion. Ben never responded back to that email.

Then on Thursday night Shim called to wish me a happy new year. I mentioned to him that I had contacted Ben, but used his first and last name. Shim paused for a moment and said "I don't know that guy." I was like but you said I should email Ben. Shim was like "Well, that's the wrong Ben".

SO embarrassed. Ben probably thinks I'm some kind of idiot, and I wonder why he didn't ask me why Shim was saying hi when he doesn't know Shim. Worse, he's friends with a bunch of people I knew at this gym where I have a high profile ex. And all the people at that gym gossip like they're still in high school. I'm going to send Ben (the wrong ben) an email trying to explain myself so he doesn't think I'm a total twit. Though Shim and Cat both said I shouldn't email explaining.

I always have to do things people tell me not to :D

new year's eve

 My sister Cat came to visit me for new year's. Kind of an epic visit because she was supposed to arrive at 10 am on Thursday morning, but she missed her flight so didn't get in until 11:30 pm Thursday night (her flight was delayed 1 1/2 hours).

The weather had been perfect here, but of course the day she flew in we had a snow storm and then the temps dropped to single digits. Friday morning we had decided to do a hike at Matt Winters, and I lent my sister a bunch of clothes because it was only 3 degrees F outside and she didn't have anything warm enough to hike in.

The hike was fun, then we went to Wahoo's and had fish tacos. Cat took a nap while I worked on the photos we took at Matt Winters. We saw a huge buck and a family of 8 deer while hiking. I took a movie of them for my sister's kids.

I woke Cat up around 630 and we started getting ready to go out. Above is a pic of me with my hair kind of fixed (well, I dried it with a hair dryer, and I consider that "fixing" my hair) and make up on. This pic is of me and Cat sitting on my bed with a portrait of us when we were 4 and 3 that my mom painted (I'm the one on the right in the painting). I took about 10 shots to get this one. Guess we should have thought about taking the pic BEFORE drinking some wine. Cat was upset at the way her hair turned out because I don't really have any hair products and her hair is a lot thicker and is straight so she always puts hair spray in.

Hair spray is one of those things, like deodorant, that I don't understand and will never own. Oh well. She survived.

We were planning to go to 16th Street mall but it was way too cold to walk down there. Also, Cat was wearing boots with heels and I was worried about ice on the sidewalk. We went to Larimer Lounge instead, which was tres boring. We got there around 830 and it was dead. We had to pay a $15 cover to see a band that started playing a few minutes before we left (I think we heard one song).

We were standing against a table set up by the band, talking and having a beer (no wine - sucked!!!!!). People started showing up. Soon there was a group of 3 geeky guys. They kept walking by us and giving us meaningful glances. I was like I am NOT going to talk to a guy who doesn't have the balls to talk to me first. Then two other guys showed up and were standing behind us and the table talking loudly about climbing. I had to laugh. Yeah, I'm SO impressed you climbed at the Monastery. Then a guy came in with his girlfriend and did a double take when he saw Cat. He almost fell over. His girlfriend grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the room where the band was playing.

No hot guys, so after 2 beers we left and got home right at 10. Then we ordered a pizza and watched some Ab Fab. I had to get up at 330 this morning to take Cat to the airport. Luckily both her flights were on time. She's supposed to come out to go skiing in March. Psyched! Also, we decided next new year's we are going somewhere warm.