Wet!

After yesterday’s mild wind storm, today we’re suffering a deluge. I have no way to know how much rain has fallen in the past twelve hours, but I suspect the scientific answer is a lot. Today’s rain is heavy and wet and constant, which is unusual. Typical Oregon rain is light and misty and fleeting.

I have fond recollections of bus rides home from school spent staring out at the seasonal marshes and swamps that formed in the pastures and fields around Canby. It’s a bit early for them, but they’re still a welcome sight. They make me feel at home.

The gutters here at the shop have flooded, and Jeff is outside trying to clear them. Puddles are everywhere. I was soaked simply walking from my car to the grocery store earlier this morning. I’m curious to see Tiffany’s reaction to a wet Oregon winter. She’s spent most of her life in southern California, and this weather may prove a burden for her.

In general, I am disdainful of people who use umbrellas in Portland. Not today. Today you have may use an umbrella with my blessing.

I drove to Hillsboro yesterday to deliver some samples. On Farmington road leaving Beaverton, I was stuck behind a black VW Jetta that was all over the road. The driver drifted into a tree-filled concrete median. He drifted into the neighboring lane. He drifted into oncoming traffic.

“This guy is lucky,” I thought. “If there’d been any traffic, he’d have caused an accident.”

I increased my following distance and kept an eye on the car. I jotted down the license plate. “The idiot is probably jabbering on a cell phone,” I thought, “Or drunk. And it’s only eleven o’clock.”

I followed the Jetta for a couple of miles. I frowned at the driver and stared daggers into the back of his head. Then, at a stoplight, I was startled to see two kittens jump into the back window, chasing each other around the car. A third kitten followed close behind.

At the next stop light, I looked more carefully inside the Jetta. There was a kitten on the driver’s shoulders, and one on his lap, standing at the steering wheel. Another kitten was leaping around from seat-to-seat. My anger faded. Suddenly the erratic driving made sense. I, too, would drive like an idiot if my car were full of kittens. In fact, at that moment, I felt an urge to roll down my window and ask the other driver if I could have one of his. The urge passed quickly when I remembered my poor track record with cats in cars. (Most journeys have involved urine.)

Windy!

The traditional foldedspace spooky story can be found at the end of this entry.

Wow. I wasn’t expecting a wind storm, were you? When I crawled out of bed this morning, after the worst of the storm, the winds were still at 23mph with gusts to 43mph.

My drive down River Road from Oak Grove to Oregon City was over a sodden mass of pulpy leaves, a brown slush. Traffic lights were out along 99E in Gladstone. (Some of the drivers along the highway were dangerous, treating these lights as if they were green instead of treating them as four-way stops. Very scary for side-traffic.) The wind had blown down traffic signs between Oregon City and Canby, and there were fallen limbs scattered along the entire route.

This is the first wind storm I can recall in several years. Perhaps I’m overly impressed with its moderate strength because (a) it has been so long since we’ve had another and (b) it occurred during the early morning hours, while we were lying in bed, listening to the windows and the branches and the awnings thump and scrape and clatter.

The last severe wind storm in the Portland area occurred about ten years ago, in November of 1995. I left work early that day to be at home with Kris. The power was out at the shop, so we couldn’t get any work done anyhow. The power was off at home, too, so we listened to a battery-powered radio, and when darkness fell, we read by candlelight.

I wonder if this storm might not have been more damaging if we hadn’t had that massive freeze two years ago. That ice storm destroyed a lot of trees and branches that might otherwise have been injured last night.

I really do seem to have turned the corner on my year-long bout with depression. Through sheer force of will, I am changing the way I think, feel, and act. I like it. Through it all, I’m repeatedly reminded of Action Girl’s Guide to Living, which remains filled with good advice.

It occurred to me last night that some of the best entries I’ve made here at foldedspace are those in which I regurgitate information I’ve gathered regarding Action Girl’s approach: getting things done, a brief guide to better sleep, and get rich slowly What if I were to create a web site specifically devoted to this type of information? Or — dare I think it? — what if I were to write a book that collated this information into one easy-to-use manual? An Action Boy’s Guide to Living, perhaps?

Finally, here’s a foldedspace Halloween tradition: my favorite spooky story.

The Velvet Ribbon
by Ann McGovern

Once there was a man who fell in love with a beautiful girl. And before the next full moon rose in the sky, they were wed.

To please her husband, the young wife wore a different gown each night. Sometimes she was dressed in yellow; other nights she wore red or blue or white. And she always wore a black velvet ribbon around her slender neck. Day and night she wore that ribbon, and it was not long before her husband’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Why do you always wear that ribbon?” he asked. She smiled a strange smile and said not a word. At last her husband got angry. And one night he shouted at his bride. “Take that ribbon off! I’m tired of looking at it.”

You will be sorry if I do,” she replied, “so I won’t.”

Every morning at breakfast, the husband ordered his wife to remove the black velvet ribbon from around her neck. Every night at dinner he told her the same thing. But every morning at breakfast and every night at dinner, all his wife would say was, “You’ll be sorry if I do. So I won’t.”

A week passed. The husband no longer looked into his wife’s eyes. He could only stare at that black velvet ribbon around her neck.

One night as his wife lay sleeping, he tiptoed to her sewing basket. He took out a pair of scissors. Quickly and quietly, careful not to awaken her, he bent over his wife’s bed and SNIP! went the scissors, and the velvet ribbon fell to the floor. And SNAP! off came her head.

It rolled over the floor in the moonlight, wailing tearfully: “I…told…you…you’d…be…s-o-r-r-y!”

Here’s the mp3 for The Velvet Ribbon. Listen and shiver.

My Throat Hurts

I get sick a couple times a year, but usually it’s nothing major: just a head cold accompanied by endless weariness. Once every two or three years, though, I get knocked on my ass by some bug or other. Now is one of those times.

I’ve been fighting something for the past month, and thought I had kicked it. Maybe I hadn’t. Or maybe I caught something from one of the kids at Monday Night Football. (I do a poor job of not sharing food with them.) On Wednesday night, the illness began to take me down. My throat hurt. My nose was stuffed. My throat hurt. I couldn’t sleep. My throat hurt. My throat hurt. My throat hurt.

I stayed home from work yesterday to sleep late. When I woke, my throat hurt. I drank three huge mugs of hot Thai tea. My throat hurt. Hopped up on all the caffeine, I cleaned the entire (!!!) house. My throat hurt. I took a long, hot bat. My throat hurt.

In the evening, Kris made a quesadilla for me. It was my first real food of the day, and tasted more delicious than it ought to be, but after I ate it my throat hurt. I took my temperature for the first time: 99.8. (My personal norm is 98.2, except that it is 97.8 after waking in the morning.) I tried to watch an Africa documentary from Netflix, but couldn’t concentrate. My throat hurt.

I went to bed at 8:00 and slept til midnight, when I woke because my sinuses had become plugged (which is not good while wearing a C-PAP mask), and because my throat hurt. I took my temperature: 100.5. Finally, I sprayed my throat with some of that green gunk, but it didn’t do anything. My throat hurt. (Roths are notoriously slow at applying medicinal treatment to ailments.)

I’ve spent the past hour sitting at the computer, surfing aimlessly, waiting to become tired, or for my sinuses to clear, or, especially, for my throat to cease hurting. I can’t concentrate, though, so mostly I sit here, staring into space, listening to the patter of the cold rain outside the window. I think that maybe I should go downstairs and wash dishes or sort my books out of Dewey Decimal order or do some Extreme Soduku.

But my eyes are watery and sore. My body temperature is 100.0. I want to sleep.

My throat hurts.

Forty-Four Ounces

“[I doubt my senses] because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

After a wonderful meal at Paul and Amy Jo’s last night — beer-cheese soup, salmon cakes, garlic aoli, mashed potatoes, a corn dish that wasn’t grits — Kris and I slept in this morning. When at last we rose, I made hot cocoa for breakfast. I started to prepare a single cup, but that left only enough cocoa powder for one more serving. “Why not just have it all now?” I thought, and so I did. I sat at the table, reading the paper, dunking honey toast into my cocoa. Delicious.

In the afternoon, we saw The 40-Year-Old Virgin. “My gut hurts,” I told Kris as we drove to the theater. “My gut always hurts after I drink cocoa, especially if I drink too much.”

Kris shook her head. “Maybe you should stop buying chantico,” she said.

“I’ll just get some pop at the movie to help soothe my gut,” I said. I’m not sure why I thought this would work.

Kris paid $12 to get us into the matinee. ($12!!!) I bought refreshments. “What can I get you today?” asked the bright young Regal employee.

“Uh, well. I see you have combos available,” I said, pointing at a sign, “but you don’t list the prices for them.”

“I can tell you the prices. Which one would you like?”

“Well, what’s the difference between the nachos and the super nachos?”

“The super nachos come with more chips and two dipping sauces,” she explained, as if the super nachos were the best movie concession in all the world. “Would you like the super nachos?”

How could I refuse? “Uh, sure. How much does that cost?” I asked.

“Ten dollars,” she said, “and it comes with a medium drink. Also, if you buy a combo you can have any candy for two-fifty.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll have a diet. And some M&Ms.”

“Is Diet Coke okay?” she said, and I sighed inwardly. Of course Diet Coke is okay — that’s why I say ‘diet’ instead of ‘Diet Pepsi’, yet whenever I ask for a diet soda, the server always asks “Is Diet Coke okay?” or “Is Diet Pepsi okay?” Maybe I should ask for ‘diet cola’ instead.

The girl scooped up our chips and M&Ms and then handed over a tub of diet cola. “That’s a medium?” I asked, awed. She smiled and nodded. The forty-four ounce “medium” drink contained the equivalent of four cans of soda. Thank god I ordered diet.

“I can’t believe we’re paying $24.50 to see a movie,” Kris said as we waited through the barrage of music videos and advertisements that Regal Cinemas inflicts on its customers. I hate Regal.

“At least I got a forty-four ounce diet,” I said.

“The thing of it is,” said my wife, the trained observer, “we didn’t save any money by getting all this food. They didn’t list the prices of the combos because there’s no discount for buying them. They cost the same as if you’d purchased the items seperately. I added it up while you were ordering.”

“At least I got a forty-four ounce diet,” I said.

As the movie began, I realized I was in trouble. I’d been sipping on the soda for only fifteen minutes, and already I needed to urinate. I held out a while longer, but was soon forced to make a dash for the restroom. I hate to miss any part of a film for a bathroom break, but ultimately I had to miss three chunks of The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Forty-four ounces of diet cola are too much for my bladder to handle.

Perhaps those three missed chunks were crucial to one’s enjoyment of the film. Despite my appreciation of Judd Apatow‘s televison work (Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared), I found The 40-Year-Old Virgin mediocre. Parts were funny, but invariably the audience laughed where I didn’t, and I laughed where they didn’t. (The biggest laugh for me came from a music cue, for goodness sake.) This isn’t a movie one needs to see in a theater, if ever.

We did chores in the late afternoon. I tried not to get distracted by side projects. (I have a bad habit that goes something like this: Perhaps I am sweeping the library floor. As I sweep, perhaps I gaze absently at a bookshelf filled with Latin books, and perhaps it occurs to me that I ought to put the Latin books into alphabetical order. Rather than finish sweeping, I pause — because it will only take a minute — and sort the books. Then I pull one of them down to thumb through it. Pehaps I think to myself, “I should begin studying Latin again.” Perhaps I then decide to go upstairs to google a Latin word. Or two. Or three. Perhaps I then decide to check the football scores. And then I might as well try to catch up on my e-mail. Before I know it, Kris is scolding me because once again I’ve forgotten what it is I’m supposed to be doing, which is sweeping the library. Without Kris to guide me, my rooms would be perpetually half-swept, though at least all of my books would be in alphabetical order.)

After chores, I was hungry. The super nacho and the forty-four ounce diet soda hadn’t been filling. “Can I have your leftover Chinese food?” I asked Kris, because I knew she’d say yes. I piled her Mandarin Chicken into a bowl with my General Tso Chicken and stuck it in the microwave. The resulting mass was terrible (deep-fried Chinese food just does not reheat well.) “This sucks,” I said.

“Then don’t eat it,” Kris said, but I did anyhow. I didn’t enjoy it.

Later in the evening, my gut began to hurt again. I ignored it and climbed into bed, but I could not fall asleep. I took a sleep quiz in a magazine: “Are you an owl or a lark?” I was a lark: best in the morning, not performing well late at night. I turned out the light and lay there in my C-PAP mask, breathing deep Darth Vader breaths (breaths that scare the cats), unable to sleep for the gross Chinese food causing a pain in my gut and for the fourty-four ounces of diet cola I’d consumed earlier in the day.

Burger Therapy

It has been a strange week.

We’ve been unusually busy here at work, which is good. As you might expect, the incredible self-destructing weblog has sucked up all my spare time. Between the two, I feel drained. Meanwhile, there’s a mountain of e-mail accumulating on my computer, e-mail that needs replies. Jason wants to go for a walk? Too bad I didn’t even read the e-mail until after the suggested walking time. Somebody wants to host a wine-tasting event? I know there’s a message somewhere about it somewhere, but I can’t find it.

At night, I’m exhausted. Kris, too, has been coming home tired. Last night — our third night of this — we knew we had to take drastic action. We drove to Mike’s for burgers.

Mike’s Drive In is a sort of local Dairy Queen-type semi-fast food joint. They have good burgers and great shakes at reasonable prices. There’s no mistaking it for gourmet faire, but there are times when all you want is a good burger. (Lew’s Dairy Freeze is actually much closer to us, but we ate there the first day we were in the new house and have never gone back. We weren’t impressed.)

You know what? After a chili burger, an oreo shake, and a basket of onion rings, I felt refreshed. And fat. Very fat. (I’ve gained back all the weight I had lost this summer. Can you believe it? Of course you can.)

Back home we watched the third of four DVDs that make up Undeclared: The Complete Series. Undeclared was a short-lived sitcom from the same minds that created the brilliant Freaks and Geeks. (And, more recently, filmed The 40-Year Old Virgin, which I’ve yet to see.) Whereas Freaks and Geeks, a one-hour drama, followed the travails of a group of high school kids during the early eighties, Undeclared follows a similar group of kids as they enter college in the early aughts. (By “similar” kids, I mean that some of the same actors have prominent roles in both series, and that certain characters seem to have been deliberately plucked from Freaks and Geeks and transplanted into Undeclared.)

Undeclared struggled to find its footing during the first few episodes, so much so that we almost removed the series from our Netflix queue. I’m glad we hung in; our perseverance has been rewarded. By the end of the series, the actors and writers had become more confident, endowing each character and each story with a sort of enthusiasm that is contagious. The show busted me up several times last night: I was in stitches. My favorite character is Lizzy’s stalker ex-boyfriend, Eric. He runs a copy shop, and with his posse of co-workers, he bumbles through his possessive, obsessive life — shouting, stomping, storming, swallowing tongue studs.

Personal Day

I saw an amazing thing on the drive to work today.

I was at a light that had just turned from red to green when, on the other side of the street, a young man on a bicycle rode into the crosswalk against traffic, against the light. The sky was still grey, and he was wearing dark clothes. His bike had no lights. This kid was violating a dozen rules of traffic and common sense. “Does he have a death wish?” I wondered, and just as I thought that, a police car turned on its lights, angled through the intersection, and rolled in pursuit of the young man.

Excellent.

As a bicyclist myself, I cannot abide when others use bikes in a reckless or irresponsible fashion. It gives us all a bad name. I’ve never seen a bicyclist get pulled over before now.

I’ve been feeling a little under the weather this week, so yesterday morning I stayed home in an attempt to thwart any incipient sickness. I slept late, cats by my side, C-PAP mask strapped to my face. When I did wake, I woke refreshed. I felt great, with no sign of sickness. “Ah well,” I thought. “I’ll just treat today as a personal day.”

I spent the morning cleaning. I am an accumulator and a piler. (I always have been.) Though it grieves my wife, I am pathologically incapable of keeping the house clean, and often have stacks of books and stacks of magazines and stacks of comics on the kitchen table, at the computer, on my writing desk. I spent time purging these piles, and then I moved on to other chores.

Later in the morning, I ran errands. I returned library books. I went to the post office (where I mailed a book to Jim and a box of comics to Joel). I stopped at the grocery store to pick up something for lunch. It was here that my day went off track, descending from productivity into something entirely different.

Rather than select a sandwich or a salad for lunch, I decided it might be nice to fix myself a steak. I bought a pound of beef tenderloin and a cheap bottle of red wine. Then I got sidetracked and spent ten minutes in the organic foods freezer section, examining the nutrition information on all of the “chick’n nuggets” and burgers and breakfast patties. (I’ve been on a vegetarian meat kick lately — I’ve decided that many of these meatless meats actually taste pretty good. Since they’re also healthier than most of the crap I eat, I’ve been dabbling. I’ve purchased something like ten types of veggie meat in the past week, and hope to try them all.) Next I was waylaid by the gourmet chocolate bars. I bought eight different bars of dark chocolate, all of them high in cacao content.

At home, I prepared one of my favorite recipes:

Caprial‘s Beef Tenderloin with Pepper and Port Sauce
(as recalled by J.D. Roth)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Grind about two tablespoons of fresh black pepper onto a plate. Take about a pound of beef tenderloin (three six-ounce steaks or two eight-ounce steaks, etc.) coat both sides of each piece in the pepper. (You want a nice thick layer of pepper. Grind more if you need it.)

Heat one tablespoon of olive oil over high heat. When the oil is smoking, place the steaks in the pan. Sear each side for three minutes.

Place the pan in the oven for six minutes.

While the pan is in the oven, combine one-half cup port wine, two tablespoons soy sauce, and one tablespoon butter. This will become your sauce.

Return the pan from the oven to high heat on the stove. Add the sauce mixture and boil for three minutes, flipping the steaks midway through.

Serve.

This is a great recipe, but it is peppery. Don’t be tempted to go easy on the pepper. We used light pepper when preparing this for Kris’ aunt and uncle, and the results were decidedly mediocre. Coat generously with fresh-ground black pepper!

The meal was delicious. I ate the first steak and decided I could do with a second. When I finished the second, I decided it would be a shame to save the third (and final) steak for later. I ate it, too. I drank my red wine. When I was finished with my meal (which comprised only steak and wine), I treated myself to one of my new chocolate bars, a mon cherri bar from Oregon’s own Dagoba Organic Chocolate.

What a fantastic piece of chocolate: 72% dark chocolate with bits of dried cherry and a hint of vanilla.

As I ate my lunch, I listened to Motown music and followed a series of links from Metafilter. Somehow I found myself immersed in the strange world of pick-up artists and fast seduction. I sang along to the Jackson 5 while reading about “negs” and “HBs” and “the three second rule”. It was a completely surreal experience.

Tangent:

While waiting in line at the library last week, I picked up Hitsville USA: The Motown Singles Collection 1959-1971. This is remarkable boxed set collecting 104 of the top Motown songs from the sixties. Many of these have been played to death (I never need to hear “My Guy” or “My Girl” ever again, thank you very much), but others are difficult to find. I particularly like the quality of the Motown output from 1968-1971, which featured songs like:

“For Once in My Life” by Stevie Wonder
“I Heard it Through the Grapevine” by Marvin Gaye
“Up the Ladder to the Roof” by Diana Ross & the Supremes
“I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5
“Ball of Confusion” by the Temptations
“Signed, Sealed, Delivered” by Stevie Wonder
“War” by Edwin Starr
“I’ll Be There” by the Jackson 5
“The Tears of a Clown” by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
“What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye
“Never Can Say Goodbye” by the Jackson 5
“Mercy Mercy Me (the Ecology)” by Marvin Gaye

“I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5 may be the perfect pop song. I’ve always said that George Michael’s “Faith” held this title, but I’m willing to reconsider. “I Want You Back” is as good, and possibly better. Remember how great Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was back in the early eighties? His stuff with the Jackson 5 is even better. I’m not sure why I’ve not heard much of the Jackson 5 before, but they’re great — they sing driving, energetic pop, fun to listen to, foot-tapping, engaging.

The other musicians in the late Motown period are good, too. (For the purposes of this tangent, I’m defining “the late Motown period” as starting just after “Love Child”. “For Once in My Life” by Stevie Wonder (1968) is the start of the good stuff.) The Temptations? Fantastic. The Four Tops? They made some wonderful music. How can anyone not love “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” by Stevie Wonder?

Apparently there’s a second Motown boxed set called Hitsville USA: The Motown Singles Collection 1972-1992. I’ll be sure to borrow that from the library, too, though its track list doesn’t look nearly as appealing as the first set.

In the afternoon, I played a five-year old computer game. Nick and I have become obsessed with Diablo II again, which cracks us up. Where did this come from? (Well, I know in part that this is because it doesn’t require a monthly subscription fee.) Of course, we still play Civilization II all the time, and that game is nine years old.

In the evening, I whiled away the hours watching hockey, Lost, and the Martha Stewart iteration of The Apprentice.

It was a very good day.

Comments

On 06 October 2005 (09:43 AM),
J.D. said:

I’ve long argued that if you like two individual food components, you ought to like them combined. For example, if you like ketchup and you like mashed potatoes, you ought to find the combination delightful, too.

Well.

I’ve just encountered a combination that puts the lie to my reasoning.

I love ice cream sandwiches, especially those from Schwan’s. (Let’s not discuss why I’m eating an ice cream sandwich on a cool October morning.) I love garlic even more. (One of my standing rules for recipes is to quintuple the garlic.) Something (I think my veggie breakfast sausages) in the Custom Box freezer is exuding a garlicky odor.

Apparently — and here’s where it gets kind of gross — the garlic essense is powerful enough to have penetrated the paper wrappers of the ice cream sandwiches. They’re no longer vanilla ice cream sandwiches with delicious chocolate cookies. No, now they’re garlic-vanilla ice cream sandwiches.

Not something I recommend.

On 06 October 2005 (12:00 PM),
Rich R said:

I once dipped a banana in queso…I wouldn’t recommend THAT either. (And yes, there was drinking involved.)

On 06 October 2005 (12:04 PM),
Joel said:

I really can’t think of a better way to spend your free time than mailing me your personal possessions. I think more people should follow your example.

On 06 October 2005 (12:05 PM),
Joel said:

[Looks pointedly at Jeremy’s booze collection.]

On 06 October 2005 (01:25 PM),
Johnny Doe said:

[Jeremy looks pointedly at his shotgun collection.]

On 06 October 2005 (02:35 PM),
Jethro said:

[Joel pointedly offers Jeremy a swig of Scotch from his flask and all is well.]

On 06 October 2005 (08:36 PM),
Denise said:

I got a ticket in college for biking down the wrong side of the street. I even tried to use the “My dad’s a motorcycle policeman for Portland…” and all I got was a “Then you should know better.”

I even had to go to traffic school to keep it off my record.

On 07 October 2005 (08:59 AM),
jenefer said:

I guess Kris Gates is not always right! I heard her telling you to go light on the pepper on the steaks, but since we had no experience on how you cooked, we didn’t object. Bob uses salt much more sparingly in his diet now and has replaced it with pepper. He really goes heavy on the pepper depending on the food he is seasoning. I prefer to do less seasoning altogether and just taste the food. However, seasoning while cooking the food is different from seasoning after cooking. Next time, maybe we should try the dish as you normally prepare it instead of eating a “watered down” version. It was still pretty good. Using a good quality of food, whether meat or veggies, etc. does make a difference. I feel patronized. What I want to know is how you could eat a POUND of meat in one meal? Did you just have meat and wine? My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

Kris’s aunt

On 07 October 2005 (09:03 AM),
J.D. said:

It wasn’t a pound of meat; it was seventeen ounces. And I didn’t just have steak and wine. I had chocolate, too.

I didn’t feel well in the evening.

Sleep Apnea

Yesterday, I finally received the results from my sleep study. It’s confirmed: I have obstructive sleep apnea.

While sleeping, my airway becomes obstructed and I stop breathing from time-to-time. (How often? I’m not sure.) As a result, I get less oxygen than I need, and wake frequently in order to begin breathing again. This would explain why I am so damn tired all the time. It would explain a lot of things, actually, though I’m unwilling to assign blame for all my bad habits to apnea until I learn more about my condition.

The symptoms of sleep apnea include:

loud snoring
morning headaches
unrefreshing sleep
a dry mouth upon awakening
high blood pressure
overweight
irritability
change in personality
depression
difficulty concentrating
excessive perspiring during sleep
heartburn
reduced libido
insomnia
frequent nocturnal urination (nocturia)
restless sleep
nocturnal snorting, gasping, choking (may wake self up)
confusion upon awakening

I suffer from twelve of those seventeen symptoms. Some of them — unrefreshing sleep, irritability, depression, difficulty concentrating, perspiring while sleeping, insomnia — are severe, especially since last fall. The lack of motivation has been a particular problem lately. (I recently learned to counter the insomnia with melatonin.)

I know of three people (including Scott) who, upon learning they suffer from sleep apnea, have begun using a C-PAP machine, a device that gently forces additional oxygen into one’s lungs during sleep. All of them claim that this machine has changed their lives. “It’s as if I’d never actually slept before,” they say, “and now, suddenly, I’m completely refreshed. I’m a New Man.”

It would be nice to think that sleeping with a C-PAP machine will make me a New Man, too, but I remain skeptical. I’m also worried about the expense. (Though just about any expense would be worth it to be a New Man.) Too, I wonder if I mightn’t solve my apnea simply by continuing to lose weight. Who can tell?

I’m scheduled for a second sleep study next weekend, at which time I’ll actually be tested with a C-PAP machine. Perhaps I’ll emerge the next morning as a New Man.

Comments

On 08 July 2005 (12:26 PM),
Tiffany said:

Good luck, please keep us posted.

On 08 July 2005 (01:05 PM),
Clackablog said:

1. Had a palate reduction and uvuloplasty (tonsillectomy) at Kaiser when I was first diagnosed. In a word, DON’T. Didn’t solve it for long, surgery is never risk-free, and the side-effects are Not Pleasant.

2. Here’s an NPR story on vocal exercises which strengthen the palate muscles. No idea if they will help in your case.

3. If a CPAP is prescribed:
a) make sure to get one with a heated humidifer. Unhumidifed machines dry out your throat, and leave you very vulnerable to colds and flu.

b) Get a copy of the prescription letter from your doc, and tape that to the CPAP. You should never check your CPAP machine when flying, as you will never get enough reimbursement for it if the luggage is lost… so you carry it on board. Without the prescription copy, one of the Hitler Youth at airport security can take it away from you, or a snotty flight attendant can bar you from flying.

c) If you end up having to buy your own machine, or your health plan gives you broad discretion in selecting the dealer, the CPAP MAN over on the Dry Side in Kennewick, WA, has good prices, and a very broad range of gear. I bought a spare from him last year with use-it-or-lose-it health care funds. I use it for travel, as it will work on 12vDC from battery or a car (although cigarette lighter connections can be problematic as some sockets won’t give the needed current).

Snake in the Grass

Sometimes I forget how goddamn fun it is to stray outside my comfort zone, even just a little bit. Doing something new is inevitably entertaining or educational, and often both.

For example: today Kris and Marla dragged Will and me to watch one of their fellow crime lab workers perform in a community theater production. This, I admit, is innocuous enough, but I’ve been so inwardly-focused lately, so worried about righting my own ship, that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to do something new, what it’s like to have fun. (I even forgot to go see Lisa’s dance recital, something I had meant to do.)

The Gresham Little Theater is housed in a grange hall between Sandy and Gresham. Its production of The Snake in the Grass, an old-fashioned melodrama, was pure cheese. I loved it.

This is the sort of story in which the villain demands: “You must pay the rent!” and the poor seamstress cries: “I can’t pay the rent!” and the hero steps in to save the day: “I’ll pay the rent.” It’s the sort of story in which the heroine is bound to the railroad tracks and the hero must make an improbable rescue.

As I say, the show was pure cheese, and most of the acting (and sets) was no better than that you’d find at a high school play (though this only added to the fun). The audience was encouraged to participate: we were invited to sigh when the sweet heroine, Dakota Melody, appeared on stage; to cheer when the brave, handsome, and ambitious sheriff, Billy Bold, came out; and to always boo and hiss the villain, Silias the snake-oil salesman. I didn’t do much participating, but I enjoyed listening to those who did. (There was a group of about thirty — the theater held fewer than a hundred people — that was wholly into the show by the end.)

Justin, Kris and Marla’s co-worker, did a great job as the carrot-wielding hero. The fellow who played the villain had a grand time taunting the other characters and the audience. But I was most impressed by Wild Prairie Rose, who strutted on-stage near the end of the first act, growling her lines with glee and hamming it up to great effect.

I also enjoyed the show’s music. A piano sat on a corner of the stage, and one of the actors kept up a continuous soundtrack, similar to those used to accompany old silent films. Before each act, various cast-members entertained the audience by singing period songs (such as Meet Me in St. Louis and Bird in a Gilded Cage).

I also had fun watching the other audience members. For example, there was a small group of old people from an adult foster care home seated in the front row. Two toothless old men gummed popcorn, sang along with the songs, and generally had a good time. One of the old men was seated next to a boy of about seven. The boy was dressed in his Sunday best, and he sat patiently throughout the entire performance.

(This show reminded me how fun it was to do theatrics in high school. I was in only three shows, and only in bit parts, but I had a blast.)

After the show, the four of us had a fine meal at Gustav’s, including fondue, onion rings, and lots of schnitzel. For the evening’s grand finale, I made a demonic little man from straws and radishes. If only I’d brought a camera.

Later, Kris and I watched Wes Anderson‘s latest film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. We’ve been Anderson fans since his 1998 film, Rushmore, which is one of our favorites. Unfortunately, his other films don’t quite measure up.

The Royal Tenenbaums was disappointing. His first film, Bottle Rocket, had some fine moments, but was more uneven than Rushmore. Kris and I are split on The Life Aquatic: I thought it was a return to form (though not as good as Rushmore), but Kris was unimpressed. (Anderson’s next film is an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox; I can’t even imagine how that’s going to work.)

Quick plot summary: Bill Murray plays a once-great oceanographer (sort of in the mold of Jacques Cousteau). His life is a mess. His recent films can’t find an audience. His partner and best-friend is eaten by a jaguar shark. His wife(?) leaves him for another oceanographer. He’s surprised to find a thirty-year-old son he never knew he had. He’s dogged by a feisty reporter. Through it all, he’s surrounded by a the strange crew of his boat (the Belafonte).

I liked it.

My favorite bit — and this should surprise noone — is when the cub reporter (played by the ever-wonderful Cate Blanchett) is reading aloud to the child in her womb. What is she reading? After listening to a line or two, I paused the movie and turned to Kris with a big grin on my face: “It’s Proust!” Indeed it was. And not only Proust, but Proust from the Modern Library edition!

Before we climbed into bed, I went downstairs to grab my Modern Library edition of Swann’s Way. I lulled myself to sleep with:

When a man is asleep, he has in a circle around him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth’s surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, to break its ranks…Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them. For it always happened that when I awoke like this, and my mind struggled in an unsuccessful attempt to discover where I was, everything would be moving around me through the darkness: things, places, years.

I love Proust.

Comments

On 06 June 2005 (08:38 AM),
Jeff said:

I can see how that passage of Proust (or any passage of Proust, really) would lull you to sleep…

On 06 June 2005 (08:50 AM),
J.D. said:

You know, when I wrote that bit, I knew that Kris or Pam or Jeff or dowingba was going to write that very joke. I changed the wording of the sentence, but then I changed it back so I could see who would be first to the punch. I just hadn’t expected the punch to come so quickly!

On 06 June 2005 (10:16 AM),
Tiffany said:

Sounds like a fun weekend. Thanks for the ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’ review. I have debating renting that movie.

On 06 June 2005 (10:38 AM),
Ant-Man said:

Proust is a verbose, rambling fool, and I shall squash him!

Garage Sale Update

My plans to liveblog the entire garage sale fell by the wayside, obviously. I didn’t have time to jot down all the stuff that happened.

Here are a few bits I remember:

My comics were left virtually untouched until late on Saturday. Then, about an hour before we packed up, there was a run on them. Three people simultaneously decided to pick through the boxes, crowding each other, searching for Star Wars comics. I made $48 in just a few minutes.
On Friday afternoon, Lane stopped by. Lane has been reading foldedspace for about a year, but we’d never met. He chatted briefly on the front sidewalk before Kris and I excused ourselves to go eat. (We were starving after a long day.) As we sat in The Bomber, waiting for our food, we realized we should have invited Lane to join us. (Lane, you’re welcome to drop by any time, by the way, just to hang out and chat, to give us the history of the neighborhood, etc.)
Because I spent Thursday and Friday working the garage sale, I was hoping to do yardwork on Saturday. I figured Kris would take my place in the driveway. However, she seemed to repel customers. Whenever she joined us, the customers would vanish. Whenever she left, we’d get a fresh rush of people. It was strange. And frustrating. I know I was just being superstitious, but I let Kris do her thing, figuring I could mow the lawn in the evening.
In the evening, though, I was too tired to mow. Instead, we went to dinner at Cha!Cha!Cha! with Mac and Pam. (I didn’t care for Cha Cha Cha the first time I ate there, but I’ve come to appreciate it. The Mexican food is good, and best of all, it’s cheap. For $4.50 I can order six small tacos. It’s a good meal.)

When the garage sale was finished, we had collected $555. (We earned $123.50 on Thursday, $206 on Friday, and $225.50 on Saturday (nearly all of which came between noon and four).) Courtney claimed $25, Pam $35, Mac $57, Kris $135, and J.D. $304. I made big money because of my comic books and compact discs. It’s sad to think of how much money I poured into these two items over the past twenty years (thousands of dollars), but it feels good to have purged some of this stuff while getting some cash in return.

I actually earned a bit more for the weekend. On Friday, I took three boxes of books to Powell’s. The book buyer was stand-offish at first, but soon grew talkative. “You’ve got a lot of good stuff here. My games manager is going to be happy. These are great chess books. And we hardly ever get go books. These are great.” He answered questions for me about the book-buying process. He explained why certain books are rejected. (I thought they’d buy my baseball books, for example, until he explained that, for whatever reasons, their system is glutted with them right now.) When he’d finished, he said, “Yowza! That was a good buy.” I left with $192 in store credit (which sounds keen until you realize I spent hundreds of dollars on those chess books ten years ago).

My total earnings for the weekend were $496.

I planned to mow the lawn on Sunday morning, but a storm passed through Saturday night, leaving the ground wet and unmowable. The sun came out briefly in the early afternoon, and perhaps I might have mowed the grass except that we joined Andrew, Courtney, and Henry for a Portland Beavers baseball game.

“I might be able to get the lawn mowed this afternoon,” I told Andrew in the middle of the game. “The rain seems to have held off.”

I like the Beavers' old-fashioned scoreboard

“It looks stormy,” I said to Kris as we walked back to our car. We stopped near the front gates of Lincoln High School to watch a squirrel with a treasure: a half-eaten apple. Just then, the rain began to fall.

It rained heavily for several hours, and is only now just letting up. I suspect the lawn will remain unmowed for a couple more days. It’s going to be ugly tall when I get to it.

Comments

On 09 May 2005 (10:08 AM),
Pam said:

I feel like I have to explain some math to you:

Just because I used some of my money to make a purchase, it doesn’t mean that I actually earned that much less. My sales total was still $50, I just put my profits to use much sooner that the rest of you!

On 09 May 2005 (10:14 AM),
J.D. said:

Yeah, yeah, I know. But I had to list the earnings that way to avoid confusing my (meager) brain. When I tallied everything again last night, I came up with $570 in sales, but I could only find $555 in cash. I was so confused until I noticed the $15 difference was the same as what you had transferred to Courtney. My poor brain.

On 09 May 2005 (12:36 PM),
Paul said:

If you would like to bring the rest of your cd collection down to Eugene, I will take you to CD World to get in-store credit. In store credit in Eugene will mean that your use of the credit will need to be planned. This should provide a good catalog of new albums. Then you can get in-store credit for the new purchases on your next visit. You won’t have a library of cds ever again due to the turnover.

On 09 May 2005 (01:02 PM),
Lane said:

Thank you for the retro-active invite. I would not have been able to join you, because I had a bunch of Paragon City’s worst Criminals to bust that evening. See, my hero was getting ready to travel to the coast for a brief respite from villain-ass-whuppin’, and had to get the requisite number of hours in to keep active in the union. I will definitely take you up on your offer in the near future.

On 09 May 2005 (06:13 PM),
Chelsea said:

Hello Mr. Roth!

I sent you an email and left a couple of comments. I was wondering if you could help me out with my research paper. It seems you are well acquainted with the classics.

My paper is on examples of Great Works of Literature relating to Gods, characters, and events of The Odyssey. Do you know what books are considered Great Works and if any of these reference The Odyssey?

I would really appreciate it if you could help me out with my paper. Being only 15, I haven’t taken the plunge into classics, but I guess I should.

Thank you sir!

-Chelsea Frvballbaby13@yahoo.com

Manly Talk at the Barber Shop

I seem to have escaped my funk, at least temporarily. How can I tell? For one, I have the urge to write. I’ve begun to observe daily life again.

Take for example, my trip to the barbershop today. During the past few months, I probably wouldn’t have noticed a thing; I would have sat dutifully in the chair and let the barber cut my hair, in the world but not of it.

Choose from a selection of shaving cream and shaving sets for your hair care needs. We can remove hair too

Today, though, I watched everything going on around me.

For starters, there were the three teenage girls loitering in the middle of the street, smoking. One of them was Joel’s little smoking friend (that’s how I think of her!); she was seated on a banana-seat bicycle much too small for her, blocking traffic. The girls were sort of c-r-a-w-l-i-n-g their way down the street toward Safeway, where I’m sure they were going to ask somebody to buy them more cigarettes. They seemed unconcerned with the automobiles that had to veer to pass them.

The first thing one notices about the barber shop in Oak Grove is that the television dominates the room. It’s not that the television set is big or fancy, but that it’s loud. When I walked in today, it was loud with a commercial for the Christian Children’s Fund. There’s nothing like watching loud starving children while you’re getting your haircut.

Mostly the barbers watch what you’d expect: Perry Mason, baseball, cross-country bicycle races. Today they were watching an episode of Home Improvement. It was about as (un-)funny as you might expect. (Before today, I’d seen one-and-a-half episodes of Home Improvement. I watched the very first episode but was unimpressed, so I tried not to watch it again.)

In the episode we watched, one of the kids had some sort of medical testing done. His parents were afraid that he might have cancer. The plot revolved around the tense wait for the test results, and the kid’s reaction when he learned his parent’s hadn’t told him that he might have cancer. It was plain, simple manipulative pap, but it sure got to the guy cutting my hair. After some chit-chat about my work and my home, he clammed up and watched the show. He was so intent on the television, I was afraid he’d mess up my haircut.

“I guess we shouldn’t watch such emotional shows in a barber shop,” he said softly, after the dad and the kid had resolved their big fight.

“Yeah,” said the barber next to him. “Remember how we used to watch Little House on the Prairie?”

“Yeah,” said my barber. “That was a mess.”

“We used to watch Little House on the Prairie every day,” the other barber explained. “That was rough. That show was moving. Grown men got choked up while we cut their hair. They tried to play it off, but you could tell. ‘I’m getting over a cold,’ they’d say, or, ‘There must be something in the air.’ Even after we’d seen all the shows three or four times, sometimes we’d have to wipe our eyes.”

Who would have thought the Oak Grove barber shop would be such a bastion of sensitivity?

The neighborhood liquor store is (conveniently) located next to the neighborhood barbershop. Thus, when my hair has been cut, it’s a simple matter to stop next door and replenish my supply of single-malt Scotch. Dave introduced me to Dalwhinnie 15-year the other day, and I liked it (it’s peaty), so I picked up a bottle. I also grabbed a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin so that Kris can make herself a gin-and-tonic now-and-then (like every two months).

“You’re buying the good stuff, huh?” said the clerk, smiling.

“What?” I said.

“You got the good stuff. I love that Bombay Sapphire.” He did, indeed, look as if he loved the stuff. In fact, it was quite possible that he had loved the stuff quite recently. His smile seemed like it might stretch off his chubby red face. He leaned closer to me, confidential-like. “I’ll tell you something. The liquor guy was in here the other day, and he turned me onto something. There’s a gin that’s just as good but much cheaper. It’s bottom shelf stuff, but it’s made with juniper berries, just like the good stuff. It’s called Gordon’s. You should try it sometime.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said, and I ducked out the door. Mr. I-Love-Gin seemed ready to launch into an extended discoursed on the merits of cheap vodka or coffee-flavored rum.

My final stop was at Safeway to pick up groceries for dinner. As I turned into the parking lot, however, my path was blocked by the three hoodlum girls, who were just sitting there, in the center of the parking lot, blocking traffic in three directions. They were unconcerned. Each carried a fresh pack of cigarettes; their quest had met with success. They only moved when a middle-aged woman with a harried expression laid on her horn. They flipped her off and scooted to the sidewalk, where I’m sure they blocked pedestrian traffic until they became bored.

There you have it: an hour of observation. The sad thing is, I’m sure there’s been plenty of this stuff to see and write about during the past few months, but I’ve been numb to it. Maybe I’ll be numb to it again tomorrow, but I hope not.

I tend to write about the barber shop a lot; it’s like a different world. Here are some previous tales: Central Oregon Weekend 2002 (in which I hear news of my childhood barber), Bad Haircut (in which I do not have my eyebrows trimmed), and Brushless Shave Cream (in which the new barber has a keen memory).