Youtube's Monty Python channel

So, yeah, I've read my fair share of British literature, and love their TV shows, but I most love their comedy. This is gonna be good.

rollerblading BABIES?!?

Recovery, therapy, getting better, blah blah blah. Now, a chuckles day in Jrox.blogspot.com-land:

Isn't it odd that palindrome spelled backwards doesn't mean the same thing? (or really, anything?)

Don't know if you saw this Evian commercial on TV, but check it out. It's so worth it, dude. Far out, my main man. Reminds me of that time I did that gnarly retro-encabulated, upside-down, underwater, wicked spin-tail-grab while my buddies literally briefly put me on on fire. Oh, wait, I said I was underwater. I guess I should admit that I was also asleep. I'm that good. (You gotta check out both videos, and know that Rockwell owned part of my last company)

Ultimate Frisbee, A.S.I. & Gvegas apt's

Oh wow. So I just played my first game of Ultimate Frisbee in probably 10 years. Woo-hah. Now, it did show me that I clearly need to work on aerobic exercises. I didn't actually play the whole game, only about half an hour. Holy junkbutter. But hey... sweet! Better than lying on your back in a hospital! Tried that, didn't fit me.

Who were they? In case you didn't know, meetup.com is a place for folks who are interested in the same things, to connect up & do those activities. As in, there is a whole group here for kickball, and I've begun playing with them. (Have you played kickball since you were 4?) There's other groups, such as one I went tubing with down a river last weekend, Foothills Outdoor Adventures, and more. It's free to register on the site & sign up for most things. I recommend it as a way to meet new folks who have the same interests. And I'm finding out that out of the folks you see in one group, you'll probably see some of the same folks in other groups-- it's a whole Meetup "crowd". And since the majority/entirety of my pre-wreck friends have disappeared off the face of the earth... sweet. Good find. (If you get involved in a local Meetup group, holla at me)

In case you don't know what ultimate frisbee is, it's sorta like football that's played with a disc (even played on the same field layout), and with some important rule changes.

1. No contact. Accidentally running into someone will probably be a foul.
   
2. Call your own fouls. This is reinforced by players' belief in a long-upheld mindset called "spirit of the game".
3. No running with the frisbee. All forward movement of the disc to the other team's endzone is only through passes. If a pass hits the ground, is intercepted, anything other than being caught, that right there is a turnover. And instead of football's notion of "get lined up and get ready to go when the ball is snapped", as soon as the disc is intercepted or touches the ground, immediately play starts in the other direction. So you only get a brief rest when somebody scores.
   

The reason I find this game so interesting is that 10 years ago (you probbly remember this), me & another guy started Furman's inter-collegiate Ultimate Frisbee team, "My House." (When you scored, you told your nearest defender "That was my house.") So, time to go get my stamina built back up. I'll call this game Ultimate Motivation.


Oh yeah, and this morning was my first day at the Accelerated Sports Institute (A.S.I.) getting worked out. (This is the place that's mostly used now by professional athletes) It seems pretty good-- the machines almost all have a built-in deal where the faster you go, the more resistance you get. So you can kinda pick how hard you wanna work as you go. I'm currently on a 2-3 days a week plan.


And, to make this the Guiness World's Longest Blog Post, I'm looking at moving to an apartment in Greenville. Since you pay a monthly membership to the A.S.I., go as much as you want, that would be sweet. I would really like A) a roommate & B) a job first... we'll see. And on the job front, I dropped off an application at Mast General Store today. It's basically an outdoors outfitter type of store-- so bearded hippies like me fit right in. And it's about 75 feet from the apartments I'm looking at. And I'm looking at apartments on Main Street, and there's such an overabundance of restaurants on Main, who cares that I don't really care to learn to cook. Healthy Choice microwave meals, a choice of restaurants, and me make a sweet threesome.

Itube. Do you?

Aha, so it's true that youtube. Then check these clips out.

A wacky cat has that same problem that we all have had.

Even folks who aren't golf fans gotta appreciate this.

NOT feeling sluggish today

Slugs. Some hermaphroditic species breed by wrapping their sex organs around each other. If one of said members gets stuck, the slug simply chews it off. What. The. Hell.

ASI

So I've got a new place of therapy. Well, really, post-therapy training. The ASI-- Acceleration Sports Institute. I'm one of the first patients-- well, definitely the first brain-injury patient, possibly even the first non-professional athlete to use it. The story is that dad saw this place mentioned in a hospital magazine article, so we went and toured on 7/16... /09... 2009. What it is: it's a brand-new facility (open only 5 months). It was even just purchased by the hospital system (so I volunteered to have the nickname 'Lab Rat'). It's not even open to the public yet, but plans to be. When we toured, it was full of professional athletes who were training there, by invite only. They have the latest technology in workout machines created specifically for professional athletes. And they monitor your progress by computer individually. There is only one center like this in the country, it's IN Greenville, and athletes travel from all over to train here, even Europe. Wanna see who? Click here & (kinda oddly) choose 'who trains here'. One of the owners is John Smoltz, and if you follow baseball, you might know of him. He was very nice.

Now what differentiates this from regular therapy is that they focus on speed, not strength. Previous therapies have focused on making me functional. (Yes, I can now make bead necklaces where I couldn't before, thank you, you may go now) So we are going to get right to work on my fast-twitch muscles. And those need work-- if you've seen me, you know that all of my movements are slow and guarded. Those are some of the reasons I don't drive right now.

I'll start next week. So let's get to work!

7/7/09 SHE'S PAYING THE PRICE

A chapter of my life has finally been closed. This morning I was in court. As per our plea bargain, she-who-ran-a-car-into-me pled guilty to all charges and ...

she is now in jail.

(Only for two days, does that sound right to you?)

While ordering my celebratory triple cone of gelato, a guy stopped me in the gelato store (an old favorite) and said he was a lawyer and was *IN* the courtroom this morning (imagine THAT coincidence) and said my story was really moving and I did a good job of presenting it. Also, dad pointed out that during the preceding 5ish seperate cases of shoplifting hearings, the courtroom was atwitter with hushed whispers, but when I was giving my statement of how this has affected my life, the courtroom was silent. So I figure I'll share what I said:

"My name is Jeff Knox. Please let me know if my speech is not clear.

Your honor,

Here is what her decision to drive drunk physically cost me.
I now have double vision where the 2nd image moves in relation to the 1st depending on where I'm looking. So if I keep my eyes on something but move my head, the 2nd image moves. It took me MONTHS to learn to walk with that as an obstacle. And there's no single spot where the two images could ever overlap correctly since the second one is slanted about 30 degrees.

My reflexes are slower now. I've only seen this demonstrated when I was going to the driving rehabilitation center and they have a machine to test that, but it's obvious to everyone else.

With the double vision and the slower reflexes, I'm not driving. And that clearly affects where I can live, or else always pay for taxis everywhere and I don't know that I can always afford that. And in addition to not CURRENTLY driving, I may never drive again-- who can say. I'll probably end up moving to a city with better public transportation, such as New York or Washington.

Balance issues-- that's the other reason it took so long to regain the ability to walk. Even though I'm walking now, my balance still isn't good. I almost always move over to use the hand rail on stairs. Since my injury was obtained from hitting the ground with my right side, my right ankle on up was affected.

Another side effect of the brain injury is that I have random shakiness in my left hand, medically known as ataxia. It's to the point where I have adapted by doing as much as I possibly can with my right hand only, such as carrying glasses of water, or typing with mostly my right hand.

Memory issues: in addition to my difficulty making new short-term memories, after seeing many doctors, I've learned that I have trouble converting the short-term memories I do make into long-term memories. So you can tell me something, and there's about a 80% chance I'll remember it 5 minutes later, and about a 10% chance I'll remember it the next day. And I have an incredibly hard time recognizing faces that I should easily know.

I spent months trying to regain the employment I had, but it's clear that I've lost MANY skills I had. I was a computer programmer at the time of the wreck, and I've lost almost everything I learned in college, so that didn't work out when I tried to go back. I've not had a job since the wreck.

Thank you for hearing this case."

more Google Voice coolness

Forget that part where I said don't call 735-SAIL after 10:00 since I share my home phone number. I just set it so that any calls after 10:00 don't ring that number and call only my cell phone.

And anybody besides my parents please see if the 'Call me' widget on the upper-right of http://jrox.blogspot.com/ works. That's pretty cool. Okay, yes, agreed, I'm dripping with geekness but I still think it's pretty cool. It'll work from your home phone-- for free.