my mathy family

I knew that sooner or later, after I posted my little caesar's story, someone in my family would weigh in. I swear I have the mathy-est family in the world. From Steve (sorry if this embarrasses you, I didn't see any legal restrictions on reprinting your email). I've bolded my favorite parts:

"I read your article “pizza facts and factorials“.  Your article may be factual in its recollection of events but the actual way this calculation is done is wrong.  Simple factorials will tell you all possible combinations, allowing for repeated selections.  You should treat the problem as a combination problem.  This is very common problem in computer applications and does not require the services of a mathematician, a undergraduate college student will suffice.  In fact, a Wikipedia article or an article from Microsoft is sufficient to explain both the problem and how to do the calculations.

  Some time ago, the historical Blacksburg pub, the Cellar was redoing their menu.  They wondered exactly how many combinations of calzone they offered. Much drunken intellectual debate, that closely resembles your article,  ensued.  Because of Tammie, they asked me do the calculation for them.  My report to them is below, including a simple spreadsheet that will do the calculation for them in case they add or remove toppings.  To this day their menu states, “Try one of our 6,144 calzones” on the cover.

So what’s the answer for Little Caesar’s?  It’s 44,552 per pie or 89,104 for both, assuming they have 23 potential toppings (probably a bad assumption). "

Hahahahahaha...I knew I could get at least one more person obsessed with the little caesar's problem. 

 In closing, I can't believe those assholes didn't take the time to hire someone to provide a mathematically correct answer. And if anyone wants a copy of my brother's spreadsheet, too bad. Only I am allowed to have it.

pizza facts and factorials

After all these years, I don't know why I'm still obsessing about this...

Back in the early nineties there was a little caesar's commercial on tv (I found it on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmlRAstCCro). In the commercial there's a pizza special - 2 pizzas, 5 toppings each. The little boy in the commercial says "wow, the possibilities are endless". The dad says "what do you mean, 5 + 5 are 10". And the little boy says "actually, it's 1,480,576 possibilities".

So, for fun, I decided to try to calculate the number. I decided it would be a factorial:


n•(n - 1)•(n - 2)•(n - 3)....•1

For 5:
5•4•3•2•1 = 120

Not even close.

So I wrote the number and the problem on the white board in my office to work on when I needed a break. That proved to be a disaster since I was working with a bunch of mathematicians. Everyone became obsessed with the problem and we would spend hours arguing about it.

One of the mathematicians said that, since you could get all the same toppings on one pizza, the problem was 30! (5 toppings + 5 of the same topping * 5 - though this was debated as being wrong). That answer:

30! Factorial -    265,252,859,812,191,058,636,308,480,000,000

We then began calling little caesars pizza places to find out how many toppings they had to select from. The average was 10 so we did 10! -  3,628,800.

After more arguing, calculating, and one guy writing a computer program, we gave up on finding the answer. So I went to the library (this was back before companies were on the internet - wow, that makes me feel old) and looked up the address for little caesar's corporate headquarters. I sent a letter to the president asking how the number used in the commercial was calculated. I suggested in my letter that they must have hired someone to calculate the number, rather than making something up, because it wouldn't have been that expensive to hire a mathematician. And I also had a rambling paragraph about the sorry state of math in the US.


In response I received a form letter, and $30 worth of coupons for free little caesar's pizzas. I gave the coupons away and have, to this day, never eaten little caesar's pizza because I was so pissed about the commercial. 


Last year I finally took the commercial number off the back of my calculator, where I had taped it in case I had a sudden insight into where it might have come from.

snake face

I had another weird dream last night. In the dream I was in a doctor's office because I had cancer. The doctor was pushing me around in a wheel chair and he said that since I had to have surgery for the cancer I should also consider getting plastic surgery. I was like "I don't think I need plastic surgery" and the doctor said "but we can make you look unique!"

Then I saw a wheel chair coming in the other direction. There was a small woman, and she had cloth where her nose had been removed. Her entire face was covered with white beads sewn into her skin, and he eyelids had black beads. The doctor said "this woman had her nose cut off and her face beaded so she could look like a snake". She did look like a snake, sort of. And I got scared as her chair was getting closer to mine. When she was about 10 feet away from me she took a huge leap out of her chair and I realized she was jumping on top of me and that she was going to kill me.

Then I woke up

Publish Post

lights

On Saturday I finally, after four years of procrastination, bought new track lighting for my house. I hate shopping, especially for boring things, like lights.

I had done some research and had an idea of what I wanted. I went to lamps plus and was immediately engulfed in the mob that was shopping there. I was like are you fucking kidding me? Why would so many people be shopping for lights on a beautiful Saturday afternoon (I had to because it was the only day I could go). There were literally lights, fans, and water fountains every where, all blinking and blowing and bubbling at the same time. On top of that, there were three families with small children running and screaming all over the place (seriously people, please - don't take your kids in public if you can't control them - like what possible reason is there to bring kids to a light store? - shop online or leave them at home - just because your kids torture you with their bad behavior is no reason to expose the innocent public to your bad parenting).

I did what I usually do in those situations. I stayed on the perimeter of the store, near the windows, and decided I would walk around the perimeter of the store and leave. As I was heading into the first perimeter turn an older guy sitting in a chair in the corner of the store said to me "Hi". I said hi back and smiled. Then he said "you knocked me down, you owe me $500,000". I was like what the fuck, so I ignored him and kept walking. So he said, louder this time "You KNOCKED ME DOWN. You owe me $500,000!" Tres embarrassing. Why do the crazies always target me? I later saw him with a younger woman carrying the biggest floor lamp ever out of the store.

As I was about to leave a sales guy came over to me and asked if I needed help. Um, duh! I explained my idea for replacing all my track lighting, showed him pictures, and then he passed me off to another sales woman. She kept me waiting for 10 minutes while some annoying fuck asked her the same damn questions over and over again:

"does this lamp come in red?"
"no, it only comes in silver or gold"
"can I order it in red?"
"no, it only comes in those two colors"
"okay, so I guess I have to figure out what color I want...(pause) does it come in red?"

I could have screamed. But, then another sales woman came over. For the third time I explained my project. She did a great job helping me pick out light fixtures and fans for my room and my dad's room. But, it was still BORING. And took TWO hours. I don't ever want to have to do anything to my track lights again after this project is done.

Tomorrow the electrician is coming to give me an estimate. I can't wait until my new lights are up!!!!!

missile stickers

Last night I had the weirdest dream.

I dreamed the FRG and I were working security in the white house. Bush Jr. was still president. Anyway, we were sitting in an office outside Bush's office "protecting" him.

We were bored and suddenly the FRG said "wouldn't it be funny if we made something on Bush's door so it looked like a big missile blasted through it?" I was like hm, that would be kind of funny. So I went out on the internet and downloaded a bunch of free graphics and then I made a power point presentation that looked like a big hole made by a missile.

Then we snuck down to a special office that had a printer that made cool stickers and made a huge sticker of my power point. We then snuck back up to the office and put the sticker on Bush's door. A few seconds later some secret service guys came up to yell at us because we had left our post. Then they saw the sticker and they were like "oh my god! the president!"

I was like "it's just a sticker" and they were like "that wasn't funny, you're fired". The FRG said "Yay, we hate working here!" and gave me a high five.

FRG and I started laughing really hard. Then I woke up because I had started really laughing.

No idea what that dream is supposed to mean...

shelf whip

This is a video of a friend of mine climbing on the wall opposite where I was climbing. He's the light blue figure moving almost in the center of the frame. It has a sad ending and graphically illustrates the meaning of the word "whip" as it applies to climbing. I'm the one snickering at the beginning of the video and then the rest of my climbing group is cheering the climber on.

getting sporty at shelf

I enjoyed hanging out at shelf this weekend...it was the first trip I've ever taken for climbing where I camped out with other people. Usually my trips are just me and what ever rope gun I'm hanging out with.

One weird thing though...everyone was a sport climber. Sport climbers are strange. Really, really strange. Some examples:

• They give each other beta before and during climbs. That would be a good way to get your ass kicked if you're with trad climbers.
• People who have been climbing for only 6 - 8 months can climb 5.11b sport routes. That amazes me. Hell, even I climbed some 5.11 routes. How is that possible? I suck!
• They talk obsessively about climbing. Literally, from the time they get up until they go to bed. They seem to remember every move on a route, in fact, they MEMORIZE moves on routes. Weird.
• They put chalk marks on holds so they'll remember them. That seems a bit like cheating to me.
• They file holds if they are too sharp. They make new holds by knocking stuff off that's loose. They always argue that routes are over rated, or under rated. You never hear a sport climber say "that route was rated 10d and it felt like 10d".
• No helmets, so they get cranky when you knock rocks down. But then they climb on chossy shit that has loose rocks.
• They share ropes and slings. I was amazed when climbers would leave their draws on a route so someone else could climb on it.
• They hate to walk. They're like boulderers. They'll climb crap rock because the good rock is a half mile further and that's too far.
• They bring their annoying dogs that pee everywhere, bark, and eat food from your backpack (I think trad climbers are better about that, but maybe not much better)

Definitely a different scene than what I'm used to. Most of the trad climbers I've hung around talk with their feet, not their mouth. But spray is common in camp and on route. There were times when I was climbing and three different people were yelling advice to me. Or, as I was tying into a route, people would come up and say "the key hold is blah blah blah". But then they'll sit there and argue if someone red points or flashes a route "oh he climbed that two years ago so it's not a red point" or "he only flashed it because I gave him beta".

Though, to be honest, I'm enjoying sport climbing because it's convenient, easier than trad, on face rather than in cracks which I hate because they're always full of shit or snakes, and I don't have to commit to a full day of hauling up some huge face only to get lost finding the bolts at the top, then run out of water, then be starving too, and then have to hike down in my climbing shoes.

My favorite things my fellow climbers said to me this weekend:

"I won't try ice climbing because it's stupid" (whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa? the closest sport to crack cocaine stupid???????????????)
"Some day I want to try a multi-pitch climb" (from a guy who had been climbing for TWENTY years! my second climb I ever did outside was a multi-pitch climb)
"All those trad routes are rated soft" (like they forget you have to put your own pro in instead of just clipping into a bolt - for the record, the FRG agrees with me on this)

how climbing is like life

I was talking to my neighbor Carol on Monday. She's coming out with a new addition of her book (http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Fall-Carol-Hampson/dp/0615208347) and wanted some feed back on the changes she had made to the cover.

She noticed my hands and forearms are torn up and scabby from climbing at shelf. I was telling her about how I need to work on my foot work. She knows about climbing at shelf because she did a lot of research for her book, which is about her son, a climber who died in Yosemite.

Then we started talking about my book. I told her that I was very frustrated, and that I felt any time I made progress and got excited that something was going to happen, events always transpired to slow down everything. Carol, who knows I'm not the most patient person in the world, was telling me (for like the millionth time) to slow down and enjoy the journey, and that things would happen as they should.

We started talking about how, in a lot of ways, climbing is like writing a book. You have to have good technique to get anywhere. You have to be aware of what you are doing and plan ahead. Then you can't rush things or get into a mental tizzy because things aren't going as planned.

Which is the theme of a post recently on gadd's blog (my smart ass comment at the bottom of the post): http://gravsports.blogspot.com/2011/02/helmet-fire.html

Anyway, I'm trying to enjoy the "journey". Even though it's taking a LONG fucking time. Ech.

Doesn't anyone out there know an agent????????

parents who hate parenting

I know this is going to piss people off, but seriously, seriously....


http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/parents-who-hate-parenting-the-latest-trend-2466533/

For everyone out there who tells me I will regret not having kids. Science says NOT.

I spent my weekend camping, climbing, and drinking wine. Yeah, my life sucks.

shelf

Just returned from a weekend climbing at Shelf with some friends from the gym. Will post tomorrow, and may include a funny video if the FRG gives me permission.

Quote of the weekend, from Gordie, an 11 year old climbing phenom (leading a 5.11a when we met), who was belaying his dad on a route - his dad has put up some really hard routes in Clear Creek and Devil's Head):

"There's a good hold up there dad. You just have to figure out how to climb up to it."

The essence of climbing...

Second best quote, from Gordie's dad (paraphrased, I'll try to get the exact quote) to Gordie:
"As long as you are under my roof and I'm paying your expenses you are not allowed to downgrade any of my routes".

cleaning the pipes

Since I have a maid (had to get one with the amount of time I spend traveling - someone has to check in on my house - shut up about the maid already, lots of people have one) I miss cleaning things. Though, it's freeing me up to do what I call "extreme cleaning".

Like this morning, when I woke up at 530 and couldn't go back to sleep. I did what any normal person would do that early in the morning. I removed all the pipes from under my three sinks (two bathroom, one kitchen) and soaked them to clean them. Then I used a bamboo pole that's supposed to be for propping plants up (like anything in my yard is going to grow tall enough to have to be propped up, the average height at death for plants in my yard is 6 inches) and scraped out the in situ pipes. Really gross stuff came out. I have no idea what it was. Probably my rotting hair or something.

Later I did some research and found out that you can dump a box of baking soda, a cup of vinegar, and boiling water down pipes to clean them. So tomorrow I'm buying an industrial size bottle of vinegar and a bunch of boxes of baking soda. You should try it, it's fun. The baking soda and vinegar make a little foaming volcano. Then adding the boiling water makes a huge bubbly mess. It's like a science experiment for adults that also cleans your pipes.

I should mention while doing a search for a natural way to clean my pipes, I discovered that's also a term for masturbating. I always thought it meant pooping. Maybe for people my age it still means pooping, I don't know. And I found like a billion web sites for cleaning pot residue from glass pipes. I found that interesting. Most people I know that smoke pot are slobs.

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...