forget about man & dog being best friends, this is better

WARNING: the following video does involve a doggie running across a freeway and ever so sadly getting hit by a truck. HE DOES NOT KICK IT and what happens next simply amazes me. Watch this amazing clip. Don't be afraid, it is a video of a heroic act.

And say this.

My Golden Birthday!

IT'S MY GOLDEN BIRTHDAY this exact minute (9:59)!!!

This only happens once per lifetime (in this universe). It's 30 on the 30th! Hopefully with 30 friends & family members, opening 30 presents, and I may be trying to have 30 strawberry milkshakes simultaneously, so I'll have an E.R. with 30 doctors per patient on 30 standbys (why more than one?). And amazingly (we measured 30 times), my balance is 30 times better than a year ago. And-- get this-- my balance is INFINITE times better than 30 years and 1 second ago!

I leave you with some almost-haiku a birdy in my dreams left:

I have turned thirty
Bummer that clothes I wear are dirty
So I don new shirty
(I've applied some cleansing squirty)
I do hope women still be flirty
On flip side of thirty!!!

holy cow

I just discovered that Google has read and understood Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! (don't click if you might ever read it) http://www.google.com/search?q=the+answer+to+life%2C+the+universe%2C+and+everything

Googling for a cell phone

Well, it's been a few days, but my kind folks gave me an early birthday gift! (since the return period for this product would run out otherwise) And I don't remember the 1st 28 years worth of gifts, but this beats them all! AND to make it even more surprising, I found out before I got it that this product existed (and because I'm such a Google Geek), & I'd been doing research, downloading user manuals, etc... and my parents did an AMAZING job of keeping that secret.
Voila: http://www.t-mobileg1.com/ This thing is new, like brand new. It is the only cell phone that seamlessly connects to Google's services like Gmail & Google Calendar. If ya can't get a cell signal, then find a Wi-Fi hotspot (my whole house) and you're good to go on Gmail and Calendar apps, and if ya buy/rent their wireless router, get phone calls even out of range of cell towers (which our house is, by two streets, but I won't be stayin' in this house FOREVER-- so I don't get calls on it at home YET (I may get another device that's needed, we'll just see)). Gmail- check. Maps- GPS is included, so as long as it's on Google Maps, you can say "find me the nearest pizza joint to where I'm standing."! No need to spend hours plugging all the phone numbers in from your old cell phone into your new one-- as long as they're set up as Gmail contacts with their phone numbers, you're good to go.
I mean, you know you're a geek when you think that checking your email or surfin' the web while you're standing in a field is DA BOMB. Did that today.
This. Is. Totally. Wicked. Cool.

Oh yeah, and the kind rep at the store we went to for support issues misheard our home address-- which is on Fathom Court-- as "Fat Home Court." So now we live in a phat home. And props to all my mad peeps who be keepin' it real while I'm chillin' 'round the hizzy wit mah Google cell phonizzy, yo.

and before the Avetts played...

We were here. Sweet shot.

Avett bro's, state of the union

OH MY GOODNESS. Oh me, oh my. We just saw the BEST concert EVER. I first saw them at the Skunk (we're pretty sure). Tonight at the Peace Center we saw THE AVETT BROTHERS!!! Oh man was that good. The crowd in the stuffy ol' Peace Center spent the whole show on their feet. They started as a mostly bluegrass-y group, but apparently, over the years they've become a bluegrass-oriented hard rock-ish band. So my parents, for having sat through that rockin' good time, are no longer "old farts." They are now "young whippersnappers."

But I started this blog to let y'all know how my recovery is going, so let's get down to it. A state of the union address (wait, as a Southerner, shouldn't that be "state of the Confederacy"?):
1) This week ends my 1st week in the Hospital's Executive Skills 3-days-a-week class (I have no idea why I capitalized that). It's a group class with us 3 students & the teacher. What's said in that room stays in that room, to give us the freedom to say whatever. So I'll refer to my classmates as 484229e52 and 777147973. It turns out that 777147973 was also in a coma, so it's my 1st chance to see what similarities we have-- pretty cool.

2) Other therapies kinda come with getting into the Executive Skills class as a package deal. So although Occupational Therapy (I don't know why I have a thing about capitalizing tonight) was the 1st therapy that this hospital graduated me from, I'm back in it, and this time, it appears to be less about arm strength and more about getting skills that are employable.

3) Speech "therapy" is in the package deal. The first time I took speech therapy (with someone else), it was ALL ABOUT memory. Now I'm been through 4 or 5 speech therapists. Since it has become harder to be CLEAR in my speech, I have had to actively slow down the rate at which I speak-- not easy when your mind races at a million-miles-a-second as it does for us genius folks. ;-) The reason I originally put "therapy" in quotes is that since that therapist was doing absolutely nothing that had to do with my speech production, I eventually went to a private pay-my-own-way high school drama coach-- and he is very good, but he's on "pause" right now while I get this new hospital speech therapy figured out.

4) Vision therapy - I stopped that on Monday the 27th. (or maybe that was just pushing "pause"-- we'll see) I have 2 vision issues: A) I see double (issue with my brain, not my eyes-- which surgery can't correct-- or well, surgery CAN correct, but then I rather like this "living") The best they said they could do is bring the two images in line with each other ONLY WHEN I LOOK STRAIGHT AHEAD. As in, look at something out of the corner of my eye, and there's the double image again. B) The image from my right eye (that's the one that was injured) is slanted about 30 degrees. No glasses could correct THAT they say. "If I don't backslide, I won't be back," I say.

So all these therapies come with the Executive Skills class. This entire 1st week was just testing, so I won't see if they have any good ideas until next week. But the new speech therapist actually was testing my tongue strength in various (odd) ways, so they might ACTUALLY work on my speech (I know, crazy).