Year: 2011

Mixin’ It Up

Had a visit with Dr. PCP the other day for my bi-annual check up. My cholestrol numbers were basically very good except for the triglyceride anomaly, but we are shaking up the medications because the FDA says so. Apparently the simvastatin I’m taking in combination with another drug might cause myopathy (med speak for frakked up muscles), so he his changing me to pravastatin and rechecking in 6 months. At that time we can either up the dosage of the new drug or maybe try the generic version of Lipitor which is supposed to become available next month.

  Chol HDL LDL Trig
Goal <200 >31 <100 30-150
10/10/11 162 43 88 155
04/04/11 155 38 96 107
12/06/10 176 41 114 105
05/18/10 151 38 91 109
12/15/08 167 41 92 171
03/21/08 164 37 104 115
12/12/07 175 38 104 165
07/17/07 185 36 117 162
03/05/07 195 39 123 167
09/19/06 167 37 103 135
04/06/06 168 37 106 126
12/08/05 182 35 120 137
07/28/05 177 30 113 169
06/17/05 164 31 85 238
05/06/05 174 27 108 194
01/10/05 176 33 110 167
09/21/04 209 24 131 271

Smoke On The Water and World Travelers

The early morning sun and the mist coming of the water in a small park in Midland Valley.

Today Donna and I (plus Joan) visited the following places and found geocaches: Afghanistan, Alaska, Egypt, Great Britain & Ireland, Kamchatka, Middle East, Peru, Scandinavia, Siam, South Africa and Southern Europe. We drove to all of them and only put 90 miles on the car.

[—— Stop reading here Sandy. ——]
The Arnone Dynasty crumbled today. The Purple Whales are leading their game this week 82 to 79 and still have one player to play on Monday, while their opponents have none left to play. Win!

Geocaching Trifecta (and then some)

We went out to lead the MMC on the October Breakfast Run, but nobody showed up, so Donna and I ran across the street and ate at a Waffle House. Afterwards we pulled off a Geocaching Tirfecta, we DNF’d a cache, found a cache and then hid a cache.

We were going to stop there, but someone else published a series of caches based on the the game of Risk and all of a sudden there were 46 new caches to look for in the CSRA. Some were within a few miles of the house so we ended up being FTF on the three closest. Tomorrow morning we are going to head out fairly early and try to find a few more of the series.

Pink Drink

There were 4 of us who went to the Tool Show the other day and after we had seen all there was to be seen it was time for lunch. At first we thought we were going to be treated to lunch by the salesman who sold our company that fancy-schmancy (and very expensive ) CNC machine, but he bailed on both the show and us. This was actually not a big disappointment to two of us because that meant we could go across town to Mark & my favorite restaurant in all of North Carolina – Razoo’s Cajun Cafe! There was going to be a few toe-less rats around after we got there.

When the 4 of us arrived at the restaurant after the 30 minute drive, 3 of us settled in to a booth and the other made a bee-line to the restroom. When our waitress arrived to take drink orders I ordered regular Coke and the two others got Diet Coke. We didn’t know what the other fellow wanted, so we ordered for him. I asked the waitress if they had anything pink and frilly. She said that they had pink lemonade and we said, “Perfect.” Instantly catching on, she asked, “Do you want me to put a little umbrella in it?” “Umm, why, yes we would.”

When she returned with the tray of drinks, poor unsuspecting Kieth looked at the four glasses and wondered who ordered that pink drink, but it slowly dawned on him what had happened, as she passed out the other three drinks to us and he had nothing in front of him with the pink drink was still on the tray. Our waitress offered to go get him something else to drink, but he waved her off and said, “I’ll just drink this.”

The new guy, Tom, is a quick learner, as he too needed to use the rest room, but decided to wait until after he had ordered his meal before going…

7,000 Widgets

Went to SOUTH-TEC 2011 Expo, AKA the Charlotte Tool Show, today with some co-workers. We were there to place eyeballs on a new fancy-schmancy CNC machine we bought and won’t take delivery of for another 16 weeks. And of course, wander every aisle and marvel at all the widgets on display, while managing to score free pens, cheap bags and multi-colored lanyards to give away to the unlucky souls back home who didn’t get to go. We might have even picked up some useful information.

When I first heard we going it was in the company’s Ford 9-passenger van. Ick, who wants to spend 3 hours each way in that thing. When it was confirmed that it was just 4 total going, I offered to drive the group in the Purple Whale. Even with it raining for almost all of the trip, I definitely enjoyed driving in my own car than riding in that van for 340 miles.

Somewhere just south of the South Carolina state line on the way home the Sonata hit the 7,000 mile mark.

Pink, Purple, Tito & Missing Yankees

Enough already with the pink. I can relate to the sentiment, but when NFL quarterbacks star wearing hot pink shoes, it has gone too far.

The Purple Whales bounced back from their loss last week by knocking off one of the two remaining undefeated teams in the End Zone Entourage FFL, thereby pulling back into a first place tie in the Western Division.

Maybe because I’m a homer, but I thought ex-FRS manager, Terry Francona didn’t sound half bad as a color commentator during the first two games of the American League Championship Series.

When I turned on the first game of the ALCS I thought for sure I had stumbled onto some sort of wildcard game. Detroit? Texas? Where were the Red Sox, Rays or Heaven forbid, even the Yankees?

The Ottoman Empire

After a dry run of the route, and dining at the destination, of next week’s MMC Breakfast Rally that we are leading, we did the weekly grocery shopping. With that out of the way, we got down to the serious business of living room furniture shopping.

Our destination was Rooms To Go in Augusta. Not only do they have a big ol’ selection, but I was angling to up the $800 sofa to a $2k, six or seven piece suite with a “Free” 51 inch Samsung 3-D TV. And my plan might have worked had we been able to find something that met our comfort needs and more importantly had the looks/style we liked. Didn’t happen, where we got one, the other was not there or vice versa.

After lunch went back to the store where we saw the couch candidate the other day and to see how well it might match our current stuff we had brought along one of the accent pillows. Turns out it didn’t look half bad, but after a more in depth try out, we determined that the contoured seat areas were really not comfortable for the afternoon nap laying across pose.

On second thought, our current couch didn’t seem that bad, sure it was slightly worn, not nearly as bad as Marty Crane’s recliner, so let’s just say that it had acquired a nice patina. And because what had started this whole furniture shopping expedition in the first place was the desire to remove my feet off the coffee table, which not only holds our obligatory fan of magazines, but doubles as our dinner table on weekdays when watching Law & Order re-runs, we just took the easy way out and bought a $50 ottoman.