Alin's Site

I really am sick of granulation tissue… I never get it on my G-Tube anymore, EVER. But, my trach is Granulation City, the ZIP Code assigned by the postal service is 98742-7846. The area code assigned by the FCC is 899-XXX-XXXX for valid phone numbers located within Granulation City. Note that these are transient services and are only active when Granulation City is populated. lol

OK moving on from my lame assed joke. I am on the steroid cream till next Tuesday to see that it clears up.

There are many things I am thankful for, and we took yesterday to be thankful for them. I am thankful for my health, my family, my girlfriend MyBigMouth (Angel Bird), the technology that I have at my fingers, my wheelchair, my mobility etc. etc. The list goes on, but I won’t bore you all with the excessively long list. Instead, I will give you some photos to look at. Hit above to view those. Yesterday I and dad baked cookies in our new oven, and we loved the outcome results! Then in the bird went! We all ate together and talked and had a good meal. Then, we all went back to our usual routines. I also took the video clip of the dog below.

Why am I not making much hooplah about Black Friday, well I am the kind of person who is not a zombie of the mass marketing, my parents aren’t really either but they still manage to get suckered into it. I am a sucker for Cyber Monday though. Then again there isn’t much I want because I pretty much HAVE everything I want. Only thing I can think of that I am waiting for is the Google Galaxy Nexus that is slated to come out on the Verizon network in December, xmas present to myself maybe? Who knows! Either way I will be scoping things out on Monday just for the heck of it but I am not expecting to have my credit card in my hand for a large purchase.

Friday, I got a new camera. I sold my old Panasonic camera to Angel Bird for her daughter as an xmas present. I bought a Sony DSC-HX100V with the money. In reality, the new camera only cost me 60 bucks to buy! I really find it funny how the tracking number was 1ZW0W I guess UPS knew that I would be amazed with. 1. How fast it shipped to me and 2. How great of a camera it is. It is 16.1 Megapixels and has more features on it than many Digital SLR cameras. I’ll leave technical mumbo jumble to Google. And yes, I do intend to do some careful camera tossing with this camera. And I mean Careful.

Last night we went out to eat at a local restaurant, and I had to take my camera with me. It was a good thing too. I took some very cool HDR (High Dynamic Range) Images with the automated HDR system in the camera. The results are astonishing. I cannot wait until Spring/Summer when I can take this camera on a walk and do some real nature photos. But even with being couped up inside I can definitely do some damage with such an awesome camera. I did some damage at the restaurant! Take a look at the photos I took and that the Reverend and my dad and mom took.

Oh and not to mention, the camera has a mode that if it detects a smile it automatically takes a picture, that’s how I handed it off to the Reverend since she does not know much on cameras so handed it to her had her aim it at me and I smiled and CLICK!

Well Sevoflurane makes my vision swirl before I fall asleep / pass out from it. Well I decided to get into some camera tossing / dropping / Kinetic Photography and the results are astonishingly awesome and it’s addictive to do. Just don’t break your camera!!! Anywho I will be uploading regularly to the Camera Toss folder!

For those of you asking, “Did you really sleep like that!?” Yes I did. It’s quite comfortable actually to the point I have slept like this or in other ways in my wheelchair many times since I got my new OBSS. Otto Bock Seating System. I put that in italics for a reason. I think its interchangable with Sleep haha. I get so comfortable in my chair in whatever position is good with me and I go out like a light. Mind you I don’t sleep in my chair all the time but I definitely do when my back and my bed just are not cooperating. Hey Otto Bock, you listening, I know you are! One of your reps reads this blog. Start making a sleep system…

As you all know hit the picture to go to the gallery. Sorry for the poor photo quality, dads phone went through a factory reset and we never set the camera up to use Flash ALWAYS. The DROID X is a great camera but ONLY if you use FLASH ALWAYS, so if you are a DROID X user out there and wonder why your indoor photos come out junky USE FLASH. But otherwise, hey, they are photos and a documentation of the event!

This is something new, notice the DVD page has the SAME youtube video? It’s FREE, I decided to go VIRAL with this video and make money off of specifically advertising revenue, share the video as much as possible with colleagues and people you think may be interested in it! I will be doing this with my 2010 speech and materials too. That will be another day though, I will alert you to when that becomes available.

I got some cool stuff from Genny Burton a good friend of mine at bodypoint, stuff including some cool wooden airplanes, a Bodypoint pen, I want more pens, I LOVE pens. She also threw in, no pun intended a cool collapsing frisbee which I will turn into a wall decoration. the BP logo is literally one of my favorite logos on earth since it has to do with Straps! Video is below, Pix are above!

I am having trach issues as usual hit the picture for more images. Or don’t hit it. I really hate the itching and pain!

Well I was kind of slow to do this blog post, by 2 hours but oh well. Monday, I went for my trach change and that went uneventful and pleasant and Sevofluraney and Fentanyly. Very good experience there. Then, we went over to our local Walgreens and got my FluMist done which is so easy compared to shots for me! It is a Live Attenuated Influenza Virus; Attenuated meaning it has been harmed with radiation to make it unable to replicate or make 97% of people who get it sick. There is minimal risk of getting sick from it if you are in good condition. Me with my condition, I just make the bar to get it; otherwise, I would have to get the dead shot. I hate needles

Last Friday they came to do my wheelchair back fitting and what I thought would be the delivery but the back was not authorized yet on my Medicare. Mom called Monday and gave them hell for it, and they had it authorized Yesterday morning, the papers were placed in the queue at 8 AM and finished by noon and I was in my seating system by four! I love it! I was in it for 4 hours and had no pain! It is very close fitting and quite warm to be in. I find it to be super comforting especially with all my tight straps holding me. I have to readjust my leg harnesses, I had to redo my harness and seatbelt but thought I could get away with not redoing my leg harnesses however, they are way too tight and cut into my skin in a bad way at the underside of my leg as that area is not padded, don’t ask me why it’s not padded there, I just will redo them.It is much tighter feeling than my old seating system anyway so I need to make the leg harnesses a little looser anyway. The lovely thing about this seating system is how it hugs me at the lateral sides and will do even more once we get a midline strap installed on my chair, it will be a Bodypoint Monoflex like below.

This will be instead of being at my chest be at my belly to pull the lateral supports of my wheelchair cushion tight and snug against me to ‘hug’ me in my seating. God I will fall asleep so easy in my wheelchair, I nearly did yesterday but the little releases for the laterals were stuck as stuck gets and won’t let me release them and I like to turn my head to the side when I sleep and to look at things, so I had to remove the laterals. The headrest is fixed as of today. Sort of I had to take off the lateral supports on the headrest and leave myself with what you see below. The lateral assembly that is responsible for the release and adjustment needs to be repaired or replaced. I have a repair request into national seating and they will handle it quickly I am sure. Either way my seating is absolutely awesome, even if my head position is sub optimal it’s not life or death.

I will get more photos once I get the Monoflex strap installed.

Oh and did I mention the new seating system SMELLS good, It smells like some sort of good rubbery smell. Ahh so nice! Too bad the smell goes away after a while. They need to make Otto Bock Smell air fresheners!