So, the batteries in my camera died. I'll have to post pics later, after I get them from Keiko, Greg, et al.
A quick recap of the day:
1) reading on the balcony listening to the waves
2) reading in a hammock down on the beach (finished Sundiver)
3) 90 second swim in the super-cold ocean water
4) lunch, including margaritas
5) reading by the infinity pool (started the 2nd book in the series: Startide Rising. It's even better!)
6) swimming in the infinity pool
7) napping at the infinity pool
8) get ready for wedding ceremony
9) attend wedding ceremony
10) reception cocktail-margaritas for an hour or so
11) dinner, screwed up my part of group speech (never did play well in groups)
12) danced from 930pm-230am without stopping except for 5 min while they cut the cake
All in all, a pretty good day.
Here are a few observations about doing your vacation in a super-fancy resort:
1) Whatever outrageous price you happen to be paying for the room ($625/night in this case), you should plan to rack up about 50% of that in daily incidentals. EVERYTHING costs something, and what that something is, is roughly 3-10 times what you would pay for it elsewhere.
2) Being at a resort like this means you will have to work pretty hard to get out of it; indeed, we're only leaving the resort because we're shifting to the Westin (which is 1/3 the cost) for our last 2 days. It's a combination of the resort being pleasantly awesome, and the ever-present undercurrent of holy-shit-for-what-I'm-paying-I'm-going-to-squeeze-every-last-drop-of-fun-out-of-this.
The implication is, if you actually want to see the country you're in, this is not the way to do it. As it happens, there's not much country to see other than this resort; we're at the bottom of the Baja peninsula and pretty much everything here exists because white people decided to build something, and needed other people to do all the work (starting with the Spanish, who founded the place).
3) Because of the cost of labor here, the ratio of random serving people to guests is at least 1-1, maybe even higher. The resort is organized in small buildings, and each building has its own butler, maid, etc. If you don't put on the privacy sign, there is someone coming in and out of your room like every 10 minutes in an effort to be servile. Turn down your bed, make sure there's fresh fruit in the bowl, give you more towels, whatever.
We quickly put on the privacy sign and have left it on constantly since, since neither one of us needs any of the shit they're wanting to give us, and neither of us particularly cares for people to be wandering in and out. But it's really caused our poor butler a lot of consternation; he even came up to us yesterday afternoon and somewhat plaintively asked if we were *really* sure we didn't need our beds turned down. I think he's worried he and his buddy the dayshift butler are not going to get tipped.
Now we're off to the day-after breakfast, and then we shift over to the Westin, where I think there is also a very nice pool. More reading! I haven't done this much nothing in decades, and while I don't think this is really the way I most like to vacation, I *am* enjoying this very much. And we're very proud of Alex & Rose, who are, in some really weird, ineffable way, perfect for each other...
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Cabo, Day 2
After 2 days here, I think the dominant strategy is this:
1) be poolside by 9-ish. Lay out/swim until around 11.
2) eat lunch.
3) nap on the enormous, super-comfortable deck furniture at the room, listening to the waves crash in.
4) be back poolside by 3-ish. Lay out/swim until 5 or 6.
5) shower, change, have dinner, socialize until 1-3am. Because yes, we're great big pussies who throw in the towel around then in part so that we can cycle back to (1) above the next day.
Also, all steps except (3) include drinking margaritas. From the menu over at the Agua restaurant, I've now downed 3 of 17 margarita types in their entirety, and sampled an additional 3 from others. I think we need to spend more time at the pool that's closer to that restaurant, because I'm pacing behind on my goal of drinking all their margaritas before I leave.
Keiko is starting to look really pink in places. I'm perilously close to burning myself, though I don't exactly turn pink. We're going to have to be more aggressive with the sunblock. Also, we're going to go to the actual beach this morning, and try laying around there. The beach here is mostly wild beach, with craggy rocks and such, but there's a supposedly swimmable beach at the north end of the resort. We'll check it out. Also, there's talk of zip-lining today. We'll see if that happens- I'm fine with laying around and reading.
Here are some pics from yesterday- most of our pics we're taking with Keiko's camera, including basically all the pics of other people, but here's a taste of the pool area:
Morning at the room. That futon thingy is so-o-o-o comfortable...
The adults-only pool, with the island bar that you can literally belly up to.
The pool. The trees. My legs.
Keiko, unconsciously making a very nice ad for the Kindle.
Reading "Sundiver" by David Brin. Finally getting some color back. Ironically, I never have time to sunbathe in CA.
On our way to lunch. This is all hard work, let me tell you.
With Greg & Claudia for lunch. That's the "Blue" margarita- #3 of 17 from the drink menu.
Off to go get some wild beach pics, and read my book out on the sand. Very much liking "Sundiver"... all of y'all who read sci-fi should check it out.
1) be poolside by 9-ish. Lay out/swim until around 11.
2) eat lunch.
3) nap on the enormous, super-comfortable deck furniture at the room, listening to the waves crash in.
4) be back poolside by 3-ish. Lay out/swim until 5 or 6.
5) shower, change, have dinner, socialize until 1-3am. Because yes, we're great big pussies who throw in the towel around then in part so that we can cycle back to (1) above the next day.
Also, all steps except (3) include drinking margaritas. From the menu over at the Agua restaurant, I've now downed 3 of 17 margarita types in their entirety, and sampled an additional 3 from others. I think we need to spend more time at the pool that's closer to that restaurant, because I'm pacing behind on my goal of drinking all their margaritas before I leave.
Keiko is starting to look really pink in places. I'm perilously close to burning myself, though I don't exactly turn pink. We're going to have to be more aggressive with the sunblock. Also, we're going to go to the actual beach this morning, and try laying around there. The beach here is mostly wild beach, with craggy rocks and such, but there's a supposedly swimmable beach at the north end of the resort. We'll check it out. Also, there's talk of zip-lining today. We'll see if that happens- I'm fine with laying around and reading.
Here are some pics from yesterday- most of our pics we're taking with Keiko's camera, including basically all the pics of other people, but here's a taste of the pool area:
Morning at the room. That futon thingy is so-o-o-o comfortable...
The adults-only pool, with the island bar that you can literally belly up to.
The pool. The trees. My legs.
Keiko, unconsciously making a very nice ad for the Kindle.
Reading "Sundiver" by David Brin. Finally getting some color back. Ironically, I never have time to sunbathe in CA.
On our way to lunch. This is all hard work, let me tell you.
With Greg & Claudia for lunch. That's the "Blue" margarita- #3 of 17 from the drink menu.
Off to go get some wild beach pics, and read my book out on the sand. Very much liking "Sundiver"... all of y'all who read sci-fi should check it out.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Cabo, Day 1
Yesterday I left HMB for 6 days in Cabo, to see Alex and Rose get married...
I was worried that my arriving at the airport 90 min early would doom me to some kind of mishap, but in a strange twist of fate, nothing went wrong and I arrived in Cabo exactly as scheduled. Keiko and her BFF Claudia, and her husband Greg, had gotten there an hour earlier but waited for me at the airport so we could head into town together.
We got a taxi into town ($50), and went straight to our hotel: The One & Only Palmilla. Now, those of you who have followed my travel stories over the years know that I usually stay in places like the Happy Land Hotel, in Luxor Egypt, where $1.10/night includes breakfast. However, Alex & Rose are the exact opposite of that, and they picked the Palmilla as the place to get married. Now, there are other places to stay in town, but knowing that hanging out with A&R means you're a great big pussy if you throw in the towel at 3am, I decided we should stay at the Palmilla, since that's where the events are and that way we wouldn't have to try to get to some other place at weird hours of the morning.
To view the One & Only Palmilla, follow this link:
http://www.oneandonlyresorts.com/flash.html
So, the discounted rate for wedding guests, including all taxes and fees, came to $625/night, nonrefundable, the first 2 nights of which they charged in advance when I booked back in March. So once you book, you're committed. For $625/night, I decided that it was reasonable to expect that I would be greeted by a unicorn. A talking unicorn. A talking unicorn that pulled up on a magic flying carpet. A talking unicorn on a magic flying carpet that would escort us to our rooms, pooping little rainbows the whole way.
Sadly, no rainbow-pooping talking flying unicorn. But, we do have a giant room. With a gorgeous view of the ocean. And a butler. Here are a couple pics from the room, which we took on arrival:
The view from our balcony, to the north
Greg & Claudia are our next-door neighbors. There's a little wall that separates our balconies.
Sunset, from standing on the balcony railing.
Greg, who is a golf teacher, decided to head straight for the course, with Alex. Claudia, Keiko and I decided to head straight for the infinity pool that has the bar in the middle of it. That's right- the pool surrounds a bar. No man is an island, except the bartender in the infinity pool. Soon we got hungry though, and that meant having to go to the *other*, larger infinity pool, which has a landside bar that serves food. And margaritas. 17 different kinds of margaritas. I decided that I'm drinking pretty much nothing but margaritas on this trip, including, if possible, all 17 kinds on the drink menu there.
As I formed that noble goal, I had no idea of the size of those margaritas- they come in glasses that are huge, and they're very strong. That makes my goal that much harder, but what is life if not an opportunity to achieve audacious goals?
After some food, and a huge margarita, we swam in the infinity pool for quite some time, before heading back for a short nap, and then cocktails with the whole wedding group on the central plaza of the resort. That meant more margaritas, and at 130am when Alex & Rose decided to organize a trip into downtown San Jose del Cabo, Keiko and I decided that we are indeed great big pussies, and we went back to the room to order room service dinner and go to bed.
Now it's 9am, and we're headed back to the beach for a day of aggressive sunbathing and margarita drinking. I could get used to this life...
I was worried that my arriving at the airport 90 min early would doom me to some kind of mishap, but in a strange twist of fate, nothing went wrong and I arrived in Cabo exactly as scheduled. Keiko and her BFF Claudia, and her husband Greg, had gotten there an hour earlier but waited for me at the airport so we could head into town together.
We got a taxi into town ($50), and went straight to our hotel: The One & Only Palmilla. Now, those of you who have followed my travel stories over the years know that I usually stay in places like the Happy Land Hotel, in Luxor Egypt, where $1.10/night includes breakfast. However, Alex & Rose are the exact opposite of that, and they picked the Palmilla as the place to get married. Now, there are other places to stay in town, but knowing that hanging out with A&R means you're a great big pussy if you throw in the towel at 3am, I decided we should stay at the Palmilla, since that's where the events are and that way we wouldn't have to try to get to some other place at weird hours of the morning.
To view the One & Only Palmilla, follow this link:
http://www.oneandonlyresorts.com/flash.html
So, the discounted rate for wedding guests, including all taxes and fees, came to $625/night, nonrefundable, the first 2 nights of which they charged in advance when I booked back in March. So once you book, you're committed. For $625/night, I decided that it was reasonable to expect that I would be greeted by a unicorn. A talking unicorn. A talking unicorn that pulled up on a magic flying carpet. A talking unicorn on a magic flying carpet that would escort us to our rooms, pooping little rainbows the whole way.
Sadly, no rainbow-pooping talking flying unicorn. But, we do have a giant room. With a gorgeous view of the ocean. And a butler. Here are a couple pics from the room, which we took on arrival:
The view from our balcony, to the north
Greg & Claudia are our next-door neighbors. There's a little wall that separates our balconies.
Sunset, from standing on the balcony railing.
Greg, who is a golf teacher, decided to head straight for the course, with Alex. Claudia, Keiko and I decided to head straight for the infinity pool that has the bar in the middle of it. That's right- the pool surrounds a bar. No man is an island, except the bartender in the infinity pool. Soon we got hungry though, and that meant having to go to the *other*, larger infinity pool, which has a landside bar that serves food. And margaritas. 17 different kinds of margaritas. I decided that I'm drinking pretty much nothing but margaritas on this trip, including, if possible, all 17 kinds on the drink menu there.
As I formed that noble goal, I had no idea of the size of those margaritas- they come in glasses that are huge, and they're very strong. That makes my goal that much harder, but what is life if not an opportunity to achieve audacious goals?
After some food, and a huge margarita, we swam in the infinity pool for quite some time, before heading back for a short nap, and then cocktails with the whole wedding group on the central plaza of the resort. That meant more margaritas, and at 130am when Alex & Rose decided to organize a trip into downtown San Jose del Cabo, Keiko and I decided that we are indeed great big pussies, and we went back to the room to order room service dinner and go to bed.
Now it's 9am, and we're headed back to the beach for a day of aggressive sunbathing and margarita drinking. I could get used to this life...
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Adventures in American Healthcare Part 2
So, my mom went into the hospital a couple weeks ago. She had been experiencing chest pains and dizziness for several days, with increasing severity and frequency, to the point where the doctor wanted her to go to the ER on a Monday, and she refused to go on the grounds that there was no one to take care of my dad. Of course, none of the rest of us in the family knew that.
By Friday, she wound up in the ER anyway. Fortunately, my cousin volunteered to take over caretaking for my dad for a couple days, even though she was putting on her biggest fundraising event of the year that weekend (she works for the National Kidney Foundation in StL). But after a couple days of dealing with giving him shots, cleaning up after him, feeding him, etc., plus not getting any sleep since he wakes up every hour during the night and has a non-trivial risk of falling, which requires a 9-1-1 call since he's too heavy for either my mom or my cousin to pick up (he can't help since half is body is basically non-functional), she called my sister for help.
So, my sister, 7 months pregnant, flew up to Stl Sunday morning to take care of my dad for a few days. I was scheduled to head to NYC on Wed night, but I changed the ticket to go to StL instead, and flew in to relieve my sister. Fortunately, by that time my mom had been released from the hospital.
Now, here's how it went down with the hospital: they admitted her on Thursday, did a first round of tests, determined that her ventricles were not working in sync with each other due to some issue with the nerves in her heart or something, and then decided that they needed to run a second round of tests, including an echocardiogram and a cardiac catheter, in order to determine the cause of the nerve issue. Trouble is, by the time they'd worked that out as the best course of action, it was late Friday, and they couldn't get on the Friday schedule, and the people who run those tests "don't work weekends".
Nice.
Apparently, the doctors felt my mom was at enough risk of something bad happening that they definitely wanted to keep her in the hospital over the weekend, but not at enough risk that it was urgent to get someone to FUCKING COME TO WORK and run the tests. The insurance won't pay someone overtime or whatever to come in unless there's an imminent risk of something life-threatening happening.
I looooooove healthcare in this country.
So my mom sat in the hospital twiddling her thumbs over the weekend while my cousin and sister took care of my dad, and then on Monday people came back to work and they ran their tests. They expected that they would find arterial blockages, which are apparently the typical cause of issues like the one my mom has, but both tests came up empty. At which point, the doctors admitted that "we don't really know why her heart is doing that", and decided that the best thing to do would be to send her home with medicine for her blood pressure, which was high, and have her start seeing a cardiologist on a regular basis.
Of course, they ended up having to keep her one extra day because she started bleeding from the site of her cardiac cath, but hey, she didn't contract a staph infection while in the hospital so I guess we should all just be glad it wasn't worse.
So, with all this fancy technology, all they were able to do was rule out arterial blockage as a cause. Granted, that's good to know, and is decisively good news. Still, to have been in the hospital for 6 days and have only that and a $10 trillion dollar bill to show for it, I question how much medicine has really advanced since the 1800's.
I mean, would the results have really been that different if they had just slapped some leeches on her and given her some heroin? I'm not so sure...
By Friday, she wound up in the ER anyway. Fortunately, my cousin volunteered to take over caretaking for my dad for a couple days, even though she was putting on her biggest fundraising event of the year that weekend (she works for the National Kidney Foundation in StL). But after a couple days of dealing with giving him shots, cleaning up after him, feeding him, etc., plus not getting any sleep since he wakes up every hour during the night and has a non-trivial risk of falling, which requires a 9-1-1 call since he's too heavy for either my mom or my cousin to pick up (he can't help since half is body is basically non-functional), she called my sister for help.
So, my sister, 7 months pregnant, flew up to Stl Sunday morning to take care of my dad for a few days. I was scheduled to head to NYC on Wed night, but I changed the ticket to go to StL instead, and flew in to relieve my sister. Fortunately, by that time my mom had been released from the hospital.
Now, here's how it went down with the hospital: they admitted her on Thursday, did a first round of tests, determined that her ventricles were not working in sync with each other due to some issue with the nerves in her heart or something, and then decided that they needed to run a second round of tests, including an echocardiogram and a cardiac catheter, in order to determine the cause of the nerve issue. Trouble is, by the time they'd worked that out as the best course of action, it was late Friday, and they couldn't get on the Friday schedule, and the people who run those tests "don't work weekends".
Nice.
Apparently, the doctors felt my mom was at enough risk of something bad happening that they definitely wanted to keep her in the hospital over the weekend, but not at enough risk that it was urgent to get someone to FUCKING COME TO WORK and run the tests. The insurance won't pay someone overtime or whatever to come in unless there's an imminent risk of something life-threatening happening.
I looooooove healthcare in this country.
So my mom sat in the hospital twiddling her thumbs over the weekend while my cousin and sister took care of my dad, and then on Monday people came back to work and they ran their tests. They expected that they would find arterial blockages, which are apparently the typical cause of issues like the one my mom has, but both tests came up empty. At which point, the doctors admitted that "we don't really know why her heart is doing that", and decided that the best thing to do would be to send her home with medicine for her blood pressure, which was high, and have her start seeing a cardiologist on a regular basis.
Of course, they ended up having to keep her one extra day because she started bleeding from the site of her cardiac cath, but hey, she didn't contract a staph infection while in the hospital so I guess we should all just be glad it wasn't worse.
So, with all this fancy technology, all they were able to do was rule out arterial blockage as a cause. Granted, that's good to know, and is decisively good news. Still, to have been in the hospital for 6 days and have only that and a $10 trillion dollar bill to show for it, I question how much medicine has really advanced since the 1800's.
I mean, would the results have really been that different if they had just slapped some leeches on her and given her some heroin? I'm not so sure...
Friday, June 12, 2009
I dream in puns...
This is the dream I had 2 nights ago:
I was in a large office with my parents, looking as I did when I was a teenager. It turns out to be a doctor's office, and I am there for some kind of medical exam. The doctor pulls out a tricorder, like straight from Star Trek, and proceeds to wave it over me like they do, finally tilting my head forward and waving it around the back of my skull. Finally, she speaks:
Doctor: "Hmm..."
Mom: "What is it??"
Doctor: "He seems to have too much of this amino acid in his brain."
Mom: "Which amino acid??"
Doctor: "Asinine"
(pause)
Me: "Is it serious?"
And then I woke up. Feeling extremely pleased with myself, I might add. I almost called JOC, except it was 5am StL time, meaning 3am for him, so I didn't. I can't wait to tell him though.
I was in a large office with my parents, looking as I did when I was a teenager. It turns out to be a doctor's office, and I am there for some kind of medical exam. The doctor pulls out a tricorder, like straight from Star Trek, and proceeds to wave it over me like they do, finally tilting my head forward and waving it around the back of my skull. Finally, she speaks:
Doctor: "Hmm..."
Mom: "What is it??"
Doctor: "He seems to have too much of this amino acid in his brain."
Mom: "Which amino acid??"
Doctor: "Asinine"
(pause)
Me: "Is it serious?"
And then I woke up. Feeling extremely pleased with myself, I might add. I almost called JOC, except it was 5am StL time, meaning 3am for him, so I didn't. I can't wait to tell him though.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Adventures in American Healthcare Part 1, or I Always Knew Chocolate Was Bad for You
This story begins on Memorial Day, when Joel suggested that we bike up the Mountain of Death...
The ride up was typically brutal, but the view from the top was typically amazing. And, there's always the reward of the fun part, which is riding *down* the mountain at breakneck speed. We got back to the house around 3, where I decided to reward myself with ice cream and a shower, in that order. I decided to fire up back episodes of Colbert and just chill out while I ate the ice cream.
Joel, not satisfied with having done that much biking, and possessed of a love for chocolate greater than anyone I've ever known who is not actually female, decided to bike into town and get a giant bar of fancy chocolate from the hippie grocery store (in which everything is organic and overpriced). Normally I would mock him incessantly, but having done that severak times in a row, and being somewhat tired, I simply waved as he headed out.
3 Colbert episodes later, I decided to take that shower, vaguely noting that Joel seemed to be gone a lot longer than he normally is when he goes on a chocolate run.
After a long leisurely shower, I got dressed and eventually wandered over to check the phone. There was a message from a random 650 number, which I assumed would be something work-related, a new family needing tutoring perhaps. So I decided I would listen to the message and call back shortly.
When I did finally listen to the message, it was from Stanford Hospital. It said: "Joel was in an accident. He is fine, but you should call in when you get this."
Uh oh.
So I call Stanford Hospital. Joel has been hit by a car and is in the emergency room. I can come down to see him at any time. So I get things together quickly, and drive over the hill into Palo Alto to the hospital.
When I arrive, Joel is surrounded by a couple of nurses, who are cleaning his wounds with Q-tips and tiny squirt guns. He is heavily bandaged, and everything not bandaged is basically a giant road rash. They're cleaning out the dirt and tiny pebbles from all the open road rash. It's pretty gruesome. So, I'll share a couple pics I took...
Joel when I arrived.
Joel immediately after the nurses finished cleaning him. Note that he failed to use this god-given opportunity to get some digits.
Joel with the bar of chocolate that he almost died trying to procure. It also survived the crash, though it didn't ultimately survive Joel.
Joel, finally leaving the hospital.
Joel's clavicle. Ultimately, they had to do surgery & put a titanium plate in there, & tie the bones to it. Although painful, it moves Joel a tiny step toward his goal of becoming a cyborg.
The final tally of the damage: 4 broken ribs, 1 broken clavicle, 1 mildly sprained ankle, one actual chunk of flesh missing from his arm near his elbow (every time Joel raised that arm I had to look away- it was the most gruesome by far), and road rash over basically everything else. Glasses destroyed. The helmet did its job though- no head trauma at all. The helmet was cracked completely.
I leave the hospital around 11pm, and walk out to the garage. I get in my car, drive to the gate, and see the sign that says "After hours, pay at the self-service station in the garage." So I turn around, park again, and find the self-service station. I stick my ticket into the machine: $6. I get out my credit card, and look for the credit card slot.
Which has a metal plate bolted over it. Cash only, apparently. A quick examination of my wallet shows $2. OK, no problem, I keep spare change in little baggies in the car (organized by coin type- the first time Keiko saw me filing my change away we had the following exchange:
Keiko: "You organize your spare change??"
Me: "Uh, yes."
Keiko: "Wow, baby."
Me: "Admit it- you're a little turned on right now."
Keiko: "Yes babe, I have never been more hot for you."
Anyway, I go back to the car and discover that the big bag of quarters is not there, because I used it for the BART to go up to SF during the week, and left it in my backpack, which is at home. So all I've got is some dimes and nickels. Adding up all those, plus a couple coins on the floor, takes me up to $5.65. The annoying thing is, I've got enough with the bag of pennies, but the machine won't take pennies. I double-check this and then kick the machine.
So I go back into the largely deserted hospital, and after wandering around awhile, find someone who can direct me to the ATM. The ATM, of course, charges me $3 for cash, since it's rather predictably not a Chase/WaMu/Consolidated Barely Solvent Megabank atm, which means that my Chase/WaMu/Consolidated Barely Solvent Megabank is now also going to charge me $3 for the sin of using another crappy bank's ATM. Thus, my parking cost will literally double b/c the parking folks haven't figured out that ONLY DRUG DEALERS STILL USE CASH.
Dammit.
Joel comes home late the next day, and is pretty loopy from all the meds. Plus, the only way he can sleep is on our Sofa of Death (once you lay down on it, you will basically keep laying on it until you starve- it's weirdly comfortable), wedged up against it on his side so that there's no pressure on his various broken bones.
The next day, Joel's mom came down to stay a few days, which was nice. I was crazed at work and couldn't do all the helping he needed. But after she went to bed that night, Joel had trouble sleeping, and asked me to help him put new bandages on the giant open wound that was the left half of his back. That involved the following steps:
1) peeling off the existing bandage, which had been placed on while the wound was still actively oozing/lightly bleeding, and hence had become congealed. That's a LOT of surface area to peel congealed bandage off of, and poor Joel sang songs to himself while I slowly peeled away and tried not to cause too much fresh bleeding, which I was reasonably successful at. I offered to get him a towel to bite down on, but he muttered something about manhood blah blah blah, so I didn't press the issue.
2) once the old system of bandages was peeled off, the wound was freshly oozing/bleeding a little, and I said: "I can't put a new bandage on this without wiping it down a little." So I got a washcloth, put cold water on it, and lightly cleaned the wound. This process confirmed my long-held belief that I am in no way, shape, or form cut out for a career in medicine. I used a skill acquired in traveling in 3rd-world countries, which is: find the part of your mind that is really grossed out by what's happening right now, and pull the plug.
3) I had a box of 3" x 3" bandages, a roll of tape, and a single contiguous wound constituting 1/3 of the total surface area of Joel's back to bandage. An additional complicating factor was that Joel is basically a lowland mountain gorilla that's evolved a capacity for speech and baseball fandom. So I said: "I'm not going to be able to securely bandage this without trimming some of this hair."
So, we trooped into the bathroom, and I got out Joel's shears. We stood in the bathtub, and I proceeded to shave his hairy-ass back.
Joel: "So, you've finally gotten me bent over in the shower like you always wanted."
Me: "Hahaha. Remind me again exactly which ribs are broken?"
Joel: "Don't make me laugh... it hurts."
4) After the shaving, I proceeded to carefully assemble a patchwork of bandage over the entire wound, and it did serve the purpose of covering the wound and allowing him to sleep. The entire process took over an hour. But I figure it helps the balance in my karma account, which empirically speaking, seems to not be particularly good. Either that, or I've inadvertently stored all my karma in a Consolidated Barely Solvent Megakarmabank.
The real lessons of this story are:
1) Chocolate can kill you. It almost killed Joel.
2) Had I simply mocked Joel as I was tempted to do, it would have delayed him a few precious seconds as his lowland mountain gorilla mind formed a comeback, thus putting him not quite in the right place at the right time to get hit by the car. (A zipcar, with a dude, his GF, and his GF's mom. That's gonna make a good impression on mom.) So I told Joel that I will never again willfully pass up an opportunity to mock him. It's for his own safety.
For more details of Joel's saga, check out his blog: http://aufrecht.org/
The ride up was typically brutal, but the view from the top was typically amazing. And, there's always the reward of the fun part, which is riding *down* the mountain at breakneck speed. We got back to the house around 3, where I decided to reward myself with ice cream and a shower, in that order. I decided to fire up back episodes of Colbert and just chill out while I ate the ice cream.
Joel, not satisfied with having done that much biking, and possessed of a love for chocolate greater than anyone I've ever known who is not actually female, decided to bike into town and get a giant bar of fancy chocolate from the hippie grocery store (in which everything is organic and overpriced). Normally I would mock him incessantly, but having done that severak times in a row, and being somewhat tired, I simply waved as he headed out.
3 Colbert episodes later, I decided to take that shower, vaguely noting that Joel seemed to be gone a lot longer than he normally is when he goes on a chocolate run.
After a long leisurely shower, I got dressed and eventually wandered over to check the phone. There was a message from a random 650 number, which I assumed would be something work-related, a new family needing tutoring perhaps. So I decided I would listen to the message and call back shortly.
When I did finally listen to the message, it was from Stanford Hospital. It said: "Joel was in an accident. He is fine, but you should call in when you get this."
Uh oh.
So I call Stanford Hospital. Joel has been hit by a car and is in the emergency room. I can come down to see him at any time. So I get things together quickly, and drive over the hill into Palo Alto to the hospital.
When I arrive, Joel is surrounded by a couple of nurses, who are cleaning his wounds with Q-tips and tiny squirt guns. He is heavily bandaged, and everything not bandaged is basically a giant road rash. They're cleaning out the dirt and tiny pebbles from all the open road rash. It's pretty gruesome. So, I'll share a couple pics I took...
Joel when I arrived.
Joel immediately after the nurses finished cleaning him. Note that he failed to use this god-given opportunity to get some digits.
Joel with the bar of chocolate that he almost died trying to procure. It also survived the crash, though it didn't ultimately survive Joel.
Joel, finally leaving the hospital.
Joel's clavicle. Ultimately, they had to do surgery & put a titanium plate in there, & tie the bones to it. Although painful, it moves Joel a tiny step toward his goal of becoming a cyborg.
The final tally of the damage: 4 broken ribs, 1 broken clavicle, 1 mildly sprained ankle, one actual chunk of flesh missing from his arm near his elbow (every time Joel raised that arm I had to look away- it was the most gruesome by far), and road rash over basically everything else. Glasses destroyed. The helmet did its job though- no head trauma at all. The helmet was cracked completely.
I leave the hospital around 11pm, and walk out to the garage. I get in my car, drive to the gate, and see the sign that says "After hours, pay at the self-service station in the garage." So I turn around, park again, and find the self-service station. I stick my ticket into the machine: $6. I get out my credit card, and look for the credit card slot.
Which has a metal plate bolted over it. Cash only, apparently. A quick examination of my wallet shows $2. OK, no problem, I keep spare change in little baggies in the car (organized by coin type- the first time Keiko saw me filing my change away we had the following exchange:
Keiko: "You organize your spare change??"
Me: "Uh, yes."
Keiko: "Wow, baby."
Me: "Admit it- you're a little turned on right now."
Keiko: "Yes babe, I have never been more hot for you."
Anyway, I go back to the car and discover that the big bag of quarters is not there, because I used it for the BART to go up to SF during the week, and left it in my backpack, which is at home. So all I've got is some dimes and nickels. Adding up all those, plus a couple coins on the floor, takes me up to $5.65. The annoying thing is, I've got enough with the bag of pennies, but the machine won't take pennies. I double-check this and then kick the machine.
So I go back into the largely deserted hospital, and after wandering around awhile, find someone who can direct me to the ATM. The ATM, of course, charges me $3 for cash, since it's rather predictably not a Chase/WaMu/Consolidated Barely Solvent Megabank atm, which means that my Chase/WaMu/Consolidated Barely Solvent Megabank is now also going to charge me $3 for the sin of using another crappy bank's ATM. Thus, my parking cost will literally double b/c the parking folks haven't figured out that ONLY DRUG DEALERS STILL USE CASH.
Dammit.
Joel comes home late the next day, and is pretty loopy from all the meds. Plus, the only way he can sleep is on our Sofa of Death (once you lay down on it, you will basically keep laying on it until you starve- it's weirdly comfortable), wedged up against it on his side so that there's no pressure on his various broken bones.
The next day, Joel's mom came down to stay a few days, which was nice. I was crazed at work and couldn't do all the helping he needed. But after she went to bed that night, Joel had trouble sleeping, and asked me to help him put new bandages on the giant open wound that was the left half of his back. That involved the following steps:
1) peeling off the existing bandage, which had been placed on while the wound was still actively oozing/lightly bleeding, and hence had become congealed. That's a LOT of surface area to peel congealed bandage off of, and poor Joel sang songs to himself while I slowly peeled away and tried not to cause too much fresh bleeding, which I was reasonably successful at. I offered to get him a towel to bite down on, but he muttered something about manhood blah blah blah, so I didn't press the issue.
2) once the old system of bandages was peeled off, the wound was freshly oozing/bleeding a little, and I said: "I can't put a new bandage on this without wiping it down a little." So I got a washcloth, put cold water on it, and lightly cleaned the wound. This process confirmed my long-held belief that I am in no way, shape, or form cut out for a career in medicine. I used a skill acquired in traveling in 3rd-world countries, which is: find the part of your mind that is really grossed out by what's happening right now, and pull the plug.
3) I had a box of 3" x 3" bandages, a roll of tape, and a single contiguous wound constituting 1/3 of the total surface area of Joel's back to bandage. An additional complicating factor was that Joel is basically a lowland mountain gorilla that's evolved a capacity for speech and baseball fandom. So I said: "I'm not going to be able to securely bandage this without trimming some of this hair."
So, we trooped into the bathroom, and I got out Joel's shears. We stood in the bathtub, and I proceeded to shave his hairy-ass back.
Joel: "So, you've finally gotten me bent over in the shower like you always wanted."
Me: "Hahaha. Remind me again exactly which ribs are broken?"
Joel: "Don't make me laugh... it hurts."
4) After the shaving, I proceeded to carefully assemble a patchwork of bandage over the entire wound, and it did serve the purpose of covering the wound and allowing him to sleep. The entire process took over an hour. But I figure it helps the balance in my karma account, which empirically speaking, seems to not be particularly good. Either that, or I've inadvertently stored all my karma in a Consolidated Barely Solvent Megakarmabank.
The real lessons of this story are:
1) Chocolate can kill you. It almost killed Joel.
2) Had I simply mocked Joel as I was tempted to do, it would have delayed him a few precious seconds as his lowland mountain gorilla mind formed a comeback, thus putting him not quite in the right place at the right time to get hit by the car. (A zipcar, with a dude, his GF, and his GF's mom. That's gonna make a good impression on mom.) So I told Joel that I will never again willfully pass up an opportunity to mock him. It's for his own safety.
For more details of Joel's saga, check out his blog: http://aufrecht.org/
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