A life less private

Archive for November, 2004

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Snap, snitch, slice and dice

Monday, November 8th, 2004

All this running around and I didn’t even get paid for it. This has probably been one of my busier days in months, and there’s already two more days this week I’m assured of losing paid time on. But it’s all for the greater good of keeping my personal sanity and my health.

Today’s big event was yet another trip to Palisades Medical Center to have my insides photographed by hulking machines emitting funny noises and radioactive beams. All this just so one of my doctors can have a few snapshots of kidney stones three and four on their trip through the highways and byways of my internals. For these photos I also had to regiment myself yesterday to an almost completely liquid diet and ingest a mixture of pills, powders and other less pleasant medicines to help “cleanse my system”. Nothing like having to run to the bathroom every 15 minutes until 2 am to prepare you for an early morning, huh?

My internal plumbing woes aside, the rest of the experience was fairly painless but still a bit interesting. Today was training day for a few of the techs and I became the subject-non-gratis for the exercise in x-raying. I would have asked for a student discount or something like you’d expect to get at a beauty school, but since my insurance company is picking up the tab getting discounted service is quite far from my mind.

After that there was a massive amount of running to and fro, taking care of some long neglected errands and a quick stop at Weehawken city hall to try and clear up a parking ticket that I received while in the midst of getting my town-issued parking pass. That will all be cleared up tomorrow when I present all my paperwork, but it won’t be the only reason I visit that classy building overlooking the Lincoln Tunnel. Seems as thought I’ve been issued my first subpoena relating to a little car vandalism suffered a month or so ago — the exact date escapes me since I never actually saw the act. My driver’s side wiper arm had been completely ripped off and I didn’t find out until long after the act. When the subpoena arrived, my mind linked it to my parking ticket long before it ever crossed my mind that the vandals were actually caught. Big props to the Weehawken P.D. on this one.

But the big event this week will be me going under the knife Friday afternoon to have my ill-tempered Gall Bladder removed, along with the offending stone it has grown. The timing couldn’t be better, because the little bugger is now starting to make its presence known more frequently with little stabs and jabs of pain here and there. Best to nip this delinquent behavior in the bud. Sure it’s claimed to be a relatively minor surgery, done all arthroscopicly, but still this will be the first time anyone has cut into my body and actually removed something. I’m a complete set today in good condition; by this weekend the set will be broken. Good thing I’m not a set of trading cards. This is a 95% certainty right now simply waiting for the hospital to confirm the appointment my surgeon has made.

Hopefully I can make some good use of the bed rest I’ll be forced into yet again this coming weekend and get a head start on some of the few freelance projects I’m starting to line up. Then again, I might just find myself playing San Andreas all weekend. Either way, I’m sure I won’t be bored.

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I don’t know my country anymore

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004

I find myself in shock this morning. Not because the country is once again waiting to hear who our next president will be, but because it looks as thought that president will once again be George W. Bush. I knew it was going to be close, but not only has Bush taken the lead in the electoral college but he also got a lead in the popular election.

Have I lost touch with the pulse of the nation I call home? I wrote yesterday of the chance of Bush winning and pressing on without a mandate, but if everything plays out to his favor he actually will have that mandate, slim in margin but a mandate regardless. That thought makes my head spin, almost as though I followed through on my rum-binge threat from yesterday. Half of me thinks that a hangover would be easier to deal with than entertaining this thought.

About the only good I can possibly see coming from a Bush-slanted result is the fact that he would be gone four years from now and that Cheney has claimed to have no desire to jump up to the highest office. Of course, why should I start believing Cheney now after swimming through his lies for four years?

Now in both the far and no-too-distant past I’ve joked that I’d move out of country before dealing with another four Bush led years, and that may still come to pass. But truth be told it won’t be Bush driving me out. If I decide to go Canadian for a while or hop to some other part of the globe, it will be for more tangible, personal reasons. Ditching Bush would just be a nice benefit of any said move.

The count in Ohio is ongoing, provisional ballots are the new hanging chads and the sense of deja vu is thick and heady. When we’ll actually have a winner is up in the air. It could be five minutes from now, or five weeks…wait a sec. Well, as I’m writing the news has started to trickle in that Kerry is conceding the race. Sigh…so much for hoping against hope.

Well, comedians and corporations will have another four fruitful years. The masses have spoken and it looks as if it’s more of the same. Will this mean more wars? The no-volunteer army? A deficit that my great-grandchildren will be chipping in to pay? Multiple ultra-conservative appointments to the supreme court? Further alienation of our allies and the cultivation of more enemies of our nation? Only time will tell, but I feel less safe today than I did yesterday.

Politics: same as it ever was.

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Omens abound

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2004

My sense of civic duty must be stronger that I realize. I found myself awake at 6:30 this morning and in line to cast my vote before the sun had even cracked the Manhattan skyline. Maybe it was all the anticipation that had been building up over the past few years; the constant immersion in all things political. The anticipation of this moment to do my part to help wrest the country from a man I see as ill-equipped to lead it. Hell, could have been bad dried pineapple for all I know. Regardless, my first vote from the urbanity of northern Jersey took me less than five minutes and left me with a long day of watching, waiting and listening. But I have a good feeling that change is on the way.

Little hints have been showing up over the past few days — mostly in sporting events — that give me a sense that things will be shaded more blue than red. How else can you explain the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series? So long as it’s a fore-bearer of a Kerry Presidency, I’m certain that my Yankee heart can find some way to be happy for their win. The stronger of the predicting events was the Redskins loss to the Packers this past Sunday. The outcome of Washington’s last home game before Election Day has correctly predicted the winner of every Presidential race since 1936. To be fair, the Steelers clobbering of the Patriots on Sunday could also be taken as a sign that Kerry will get clobbered in Pennsylvania, but I’ll take the alternative view that a 21-game win streak being snapped means something nasty for the current incumbency.

History and the world at large are now looking down upon our country, in what has been called the most important election of our generation. For once I don’t see that as a gross exaggeration: we are walking the edge of a very fine blade. If Bush wins, he goes into his second term with a perceived mandate (wether the populous gives it to him or not) and who knows what becomes of it. If Kerry wins, the work begins to repair our country’s shattered name in the world at large and the beginnings of real safety at home.

I’ve tried hard not to see Bush wholly as a devil, though I feel his vice-president and the majority of his staff certainly are. There have been brief moments turing these past four years when I thought he might some day be able to transcend his company and the way he obtained his office; to prove my hunches wrong and become a leader worth respecting. But I ask you: how can you respect anyone who refuses to admit that he has made mistakes and is willing to learn from them? That last ember of hope went out long ago for me, but the point was driven home time and time again (remember the debate question when he was asked for three mistakes he’d made and all he could come up with were a few appointments he made?).

Is Kerry the best man for the job? Would things really be as bad as I think under Bush for another four years? Those are questions that only time and history can answer. All I know for certain is that my vote is cast and tonight I’ll be sitting in front of the TV, beer in hand, listening to election results just like I did four years ago. Unlike four year ago, I expect to actually have some kind of result one way or the other before my head hits the pillow. And heaven help me if things start to tilt towards a second reign of G.W., because I’ll have switched from beer to rum by then to numb the pain.

Aren’t elections fun?

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