Andrew's View of the Week

On Vacation

Posted on 04/14/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

Officially I am on vacation and there is no post this week.

I had planned on writing a bit of a post before I left and then set it to auto-publish tonight. Yeah, that never happened and here I am in a party hotel listening to loud music and writing. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t do any writing or looking at the computer at all this weekend. So far it’s been three days since I’ve touched a computer keyboard. The withdrawal symptoms haven’t been too bad. You should know that I don’t have a smart phone to fall back on so I’ve not read email, looked at Facebook or even any other blogs.

The music isn’t great but there’s enough drinks flowing that no one seems to mind.

Now I do have a perfectly good reason to be on the computer right now – it’s gets back to that not having a smart phone. You see, tomorrow we’re off to LegoLand and I needed to get directions on how to get there. I guess I could have rented a car with GPS instead of dragging a laptop through two airports, a bus, a train and the rental car. But then, how would I write this post so you’d know that I was just taking a week off of writing and not in the hospital on those tiny little screens ? My typing teacher never taught me how to type on one of those.

Nothing like that – just Heather and I here in a hotel without a smart phone and me needing to figure out how to get to LegoLand. I am thinking that having a smart phone might be a good idea when we travel. It would certainly be lighter and you’d get much shorter posts while I was traveling. The only thing that’s kept me from getting a smart phone so far has been the expense, the question “would I really use it,” and the fact that my ten-year old cell phone still works for the three phone calls a month I get. A friend at work was showing me this new fancy thing called, “Texting” which looked really cool. My 14-year-old grandson has confirmed the coolness factor of being able to “text.”

Over the last three years, I’ve repeatedly said that my next phone will be a smart phone and that I’d get one as soon as the battery in my ten-year old flip phone dies. It just seems wrong to take a perfectly good working phone and just throw it on the scrap heap so I can text Heather while she’s in the garden and I’m in the workshop. I guess I could start sending her hourly updates while I am at the office. She might be interested in everytime I go get myself a cup of tea or go to a meeting. Do you send a text to tell someone you’re not going to be texting for a while?

Seems all too complicated to figure out and I only logged in to tell you that I am on vacation am not got to write a post this week.

Till next week,

Andrew

Posted in General, Writing | Comments Off

Pain of the Keyboard

Posted on 04/07/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

My legs hurt. My arm hurts. My back hurts. My foot hurts. Even my hair isn’t feeling so good. Every step is filled with pain. Standing up from my chair brings a new dimension in pain. I sat down hoping to relieve my leg pain, but sitting highlights the pain in my back.

Why the pain? Well, this is completely self inflected. Remember that hole I dug last week? I do. Well, this week it was time to put it all back. I worked on it all day yesterday (really, 10 – 5 with a short break for lunch, tea and a couple of crying fits when I realized I’d glued the wrong pipes together). Here’s what it looked today:

Here are the valves all redone and tested.

and here’s a picture of the forest garden and flowers this mass of pipes will water:

Our ‘forest garden’

The planter box garden

What is worse it that it’s reduced my ability to write. I am trying to think of short words to write with my left hand. I think I’ve set off my tendonitis in my right arm and words with these characters hurt to type: yuiop hjkl;” nm,.?

I’ve tried typing with just my left hand or one finger but I can’t write like that. Every time I try to type with one finger, the image of my 8th grade typing teacher looms up and I immediately sit up straight, eyes to the copy at the left and fingers in home position. From the front of the class I hear: “Don’t look at your hands – eyes on copy.” “We type with all fingers.” “What finger is ‘s’?” “Right thumb for the space bar.” I feared that woman. I still fear that woman.

In the 70’s it wasn’t normal for boys to take typing – that was a girl’s thing. Except for the drill sergeant in front of the class, being in a typing class full of girls wasn’t all that bad for a 14 year old boy.

Until they asked, “Why are you taking typing?” Which was usually followed by a few vague innuendoes about my future manhood, or lack thereof. Possibly this was compounded by the fact that I was also enrolled in a cooking class in the home economics department at the time. It was called, “Boy’s cooking,” but I think the girls were just upset because we made better cakes than they did…

After rereading that last paragraph, part of me wants to say something in defense of my manhood, but we now live in a world where …

I can’t finish that sentence with a straight face because the 14 year old in me is wishing we still had ink wells so I could get back at all those girls for being mean to me.

So now comes the painful admission: Why was I the only boy in a class of girls training to become a secretary?

I can’t handwrite – never could, never will. Put a pencil in my hand and ask me to write and not even I will be able to read it three days later. Trust me, the best teachers and my parents did their best to teach me. I was given pages to copy, books to read and sent to a specialist. Nothing – my ‘s’ and ‘5’ looked the same. ‘j’ and ‘t’ could only be distinguished on rare occasion.

There was talk of sending me to the “vocational school” – after all most car mechanics don’t need to write. I was saved from a life of manual labor by a frustrated 8th grade civics teacher who, after struggling through yet another one of my four page essays on government, suggested to my father, “why don’t you get the boy a typewriter and make him take typing classes – at least, I think he knows how to write, but I can’t make it out through the chicken scratches he turns in.”

I think this was the first time in my father’s life where he decided to “help me,” without deferring to my mother. Mother was all for sending me back to the third grade to start all over with the handwriting, but father pointed out, “I can’t handwrite either and with me as a father, Andy doesn’t have a chance at ever doing it right.” My father had some deep insights.

So that week, father went to the office machine shop and found me a nice second-hand manual typewriter and brought it home. He also got me a ream of paper, a typing eraser, and a box of extra ink ribbons (apparently they’re cheap if you buy 50 at a time).

Two days after that I got called into the counselor’s office at school and was informed that my request to transfer out of music class was granted and that I was to report to Miss Evil Typing Teacher on Monday for the first of four months of torture at the keyboard. I was also rewarded with the news that in summer school they were offering a special six-week class in typing and my teachers had all agreed that I would benefit from the four hours a day of typing.

I mentioned the summer school to father, hoping he’d see that watching soap operas would be a better use of my time.

By the time the class was over I could type 50 words a minute, never looked at my hands and hadn’t managed to say one coherent word to any girl in class.

None of us realized it at the time, but typing is one of the best things that happened to me. As a software engineer and a writer it is a foundational skill – without it I couldn’t do either.

But from time to time I like to remind myself why I didn’t become a plumber or whatever else they were teaching at vocational school by engaging in a little sweat generating activities. I just wish the lessons didn’t hurt so much.

Till next time,
Andrew

Posted in Health, Writing | Tagged school, typing, typing class, writing | 4 Comments

Peter’s Creek to Long Ridge Loop – February 16, 2013 – The Reluctant HikerThe Reluctant Hiker

Posted on 04/03/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

I finally got around to writing up our February hike on my hiking site. Hoping to finish writing up the March hike before the April hike – don’t want to write another post on why I don’t write posts…

Peter’s Creek to Long Ridge Loop – February 16, 2013 – The Reluctant HikerThe Reluctant Hiker.

Posted in Hiking | Tagged health, hiking, writing | Comments Off

Digging Holes

Posted on 03/31/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

I have a number of hobbies. One that I really love is digging holes in dirt. It’s almost as much fun as taking a sledgehammer and breaking up concrete. It is certainly more fun than taking my brother to the doctor, which I had to do twice this week so on Saturday I starting digging a hole. The cool factor in digging a hole is that you can just look at the resulting dirt pile to see how much you’ve accomplished.

Here’s a hole I dug yesterday in my backyard:

Shoe trying to show how big the hole is

The shoe is there to show the size of the hole. My shadow is there because I find this whole light source camera angle thing confusing. The whole picture concept I had was kind of a failure, but I was standing there on one foot and didn’t feel like taking another picture.

Let me explain to those of you still reading – This hole is where the valves for the backyard irrigation system used to be. One of the valves developed a leak that soaked the side of the house.

Note the missing valve and the mess the pipes were in.

The one on the far right was the one with the leak.

I know what you’re thinking, why not just replace the valve? Well to quote The Great Gonzo in the Muppet Movie, “Sure, if you want to do it the easy way.” The other reason is simply that the person I paid to install the system years ago put the whole thing too close to the house, and these valves fail all the time so best to move it. Plus we’ve added a lot plants in the back, so it was time to change how the zones were plumbed.

The whole procedure can be summarized like this: Dig out all the dirt around the pipes, cut the pipes out of the ground, replace valve, put everything back while changing where some pipes go, put the dirt back and finally call the doctor to beg for drugs to deal with the terminal backache.

Couldn’t be easier. It just takes some work, sweat, scraped knuckles, fingers glued together, backache, twice almost falling, a trip to the hardware store for the parts – I thought I had in the shed but didn’t – and a patient wife who is willing to let her husband tear up the backyard for a couple of weeks.

Seriously, it’s totally cool – Here’s a picture of half the dirt I moved:

Half the dirt I dug. Sorry no shoe to gauge the size by.

I didn’t get a picture of the dirt in the wheelbarrow – was too busy putting my shoe back on. The size of the dirt pile, the amount of wrecked piping and all the tools scattered about proved that I got a great deal done.

Wish I could say the same for visiting doctors this week. On Monday we saw a doctor and a RN. Both were very nice. Both were helpful. Both helped us see another doctor on Wednesday who helped us get another appointment with a different doctor next month.

None actually said, “Here’s what you do to fix this problem.” Not one doctor we’ve seen yet has been able to say, “Here is the scientifically proven treatment that cures this cancer.” That’s the problem with the human body and modern medicine, little certainty and a lot of “Studies suggest…”

We do have a treatment plan in mind and have discussed it with three doctors, two nurses, a receptionist and a couple of people we met in an elevator. So far they all say, “That is a good treatment and has a reasonable possibility of working, but you need to talk to the specialist that does that.” There have been no, “That won’t work,” or “you’re out of your mind to try that.” It’s been a thoughtful, sympathetic, caring and sincere, “let’s get you to the right doctor.”

It’s been frustrating taking my brother through the process. He’s looking for THE answer, that thing that will cure the cancer and make the world right again. He looks to me and the doctors, and all we have to offer him is estimates, theories, statistics and uncertainty.

I find it so frustrating. I can’t fix it for him. He’s not a plumbing project where I know I can fix it – replace the valve, dig the dirt and solve the problem in 10 simple predictable steps. With the human body there is so much uncertainty that all we really can do is to take our best guess and hope.

And dig holes in the backyard.

Till next week,
Andrew