Wednesday, September 30, 2009

GHS administration atta-boy speech #1

So on 9/24 I was invited to give feedback on the gym I attend, that the hospital just bought.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Speedflex machines

So I may have already said this, but:
Dad found in some hospital pamphlet a blurb about a new gym that the hospital just bought. We called, and I got admitted into the program. So it's not just a gym, it's trainers who watch you exercise and generate ideas for new exercises that help you reach your goals. And the machines they have are not regular free-weights. Their Speedflex machines are simply incredible. Check out this video.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

pure fun day

So, the basics are mostly covered here-- I'm living on my own, in vet. assistant school, and I'm only missing a driver's license & a job & tightrope-walking abilities & I'm also mising one 's'. So let's have some fun!
  • Yes, I'm an English freak, but I find this site very humorous-- unnecessary quotation marks.
  • Only play this "game" if you have LOTS of free time. It's ridiculously simple and real easy to figure out, but oh. My. Goodness. Is it addictive. Great stress buster. Just start drawing lines on the black screen, make sure you get one under the dropping ball, and be SURE your sound is on. I've already wasted hours on this, this morning. You could just put it down & walk away anytime, but you just kinda can't.
  • And let's finish with some dumb-cat humor. Maybe it's not dumb, maybe it's just different. Different from 'smart'.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

a day off

So on the calendar, it says that today is supposed to be a light, fun day. So we'll leave the nucleo-rocketometry lesson I had planned for today's blog posting for another day, and just share two good pictures-- this & this.
Now, the homework I gave you Monday, class, to figure out which celestial body the "big yellow one" is, that's still due this Friday.

Yes, this is what you do when you're sick with nothing better to do. But I'm going to the doc at 11:15, so look for a blog posting at 11:17 informing you if I'm gonna make it or not. (JUST KIDDING, sheesh)

Monday, September 7, 2009

sick

I was just writing an email to someonce, bowing out of our planned activity tommorow, that included this paragraph, and it cracks me up so much, I thought I'd share it. And yes, I do indeed realize that Jeff 2.0 has gone from just the odd-duck usual self that Jeff 1.0 was to being just plain... there's not a word for it yet.

"I woke up this morning sicker than a dog. My throat feels like... I bought it used on eBay and am in contact currently with their customer complaints department, after giving the seller a negative 42 rating. Apparently, the "truth in advertising" act doesn't apply to eBay sellers, or he/she didn't read the "full disclosure" part of the seller's contract. And I just cancelled my bid on a new skeletal right cranial hemisphere, sold by the same lying son-of-a-gun. I might have ended up with triple vision. And I was so happy I was winning that auction, too. Life sucks, and then you wake up tomorrow. (That's the sick-Jeff talking)"

Sunday, September 6, 2009

get; your! #punctuation-- right.,. %

Someone recently asked my favorite joke, and here's my reply:

I don't know that I have a favorite joke, but this has always been a standby:
"A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
'Why?' asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
'Well, I'm a panda', he says, at the door. 'Look it up.'
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'"

And I looked that joke up to make sure I didn't miss anything, and found it on this page, which includes this sentence about a book on grammar: "There is one chapter each on apostrophes and on commas; one on semicolons and colons; one on exclamation marks, question marks, and quotation marks, italic type, dashes, brackets, ellipses, and emoticons; and one on hyphens." W... T... H. It. would kill. the author to, know, that this badly; punctuated. sentence! is used, to describe her-- book. And if it's not weird enough that someone wrote a book with each punctuation mark getting a whole chapter, THERE'S A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ABOUT EACH ONE. Do people seriously not have better things to do? I mean, Wikipedia is updated by anyone in the general public. So it goes like this:
"Hi hon, what'd you do today?"
"Oh, cleaned up breakfast, got things ready for our trip this weekend, and spent the majority of the day clearing up any mental confusion anyone might have about semicolons. I mean, did you hear Mr. Whither's use of the semicolon at dinner last night? Scary, isn't it? I've still got goosebumps. I'm feeling overworked and the kicker is that Wikipedia doesn't even pay. And I've got the pieces about question marks, ellipses, and italic type only in unpublished rough draft form... you're gonna have to drive tomorrow, love, since it's looking like another all-nighter. And I invented a game we can play while driving-- let's play right now sweetie, try to put one of each of the punctuation marks into the fewest sentences. Get 'em all into one sentence, you win. Yes, smarty, an English sentence."

I re-read that, and why did I say mental confusion? As opposed to what? Extremity confusion? "My foot's been kinda confused, doc. I try to put my foot down on an issue that I believe strongly in, and end up being very agreeable. And don't even get me started on the process of walking."

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That took so much time, I have to share it on my blog. And yes, I have nothing better to do than sit around and mock those with nothing better to do. Shmucks. Maybe that's what haves/have-nots refers to-- those who have something better to do and those who have not something better to do.

And no, I'm not an odd duck, but I play one on TV.

Friday, September 4, 2009

whoops, forgot this

Forgot to include pics of my new backyard.

RESIDENTIAL SECTION OF HEAVEN (and something about Congress)

This is too good. I MOVED OUT TODAY (Friday, Sept. 4th)!!! Did you think it would ever happen? I have moved back into Wachovia Place. I've lived in this apartment complex for 2 years previously. But this apartment is WAY COOLER than the previous one. It looks out from the porch onto a courtyard with a fountain (instead of the street view the last one had-- fountain vs. traffic, hmmm). And then there's the whole not-driving-but-living-right-downtown thing, which gets high marks from the expert panel of judges, including Igor, that cranky old guy from the former Rostroslovenia-ich-sky-dom.

And, yeah, I've lived in my own place before, since the wreck, for a month, but that was just a test run. Seeing if I could even do it, what accomodations I'd need to make, etc.

And let no one think that just because I'm THIS excited about moving out, that I'm excited to move away from my parents. They have been so amazing and supportive through all of my trials and tribulations (of which there have been 42 raised to the 42nd power), so take the love I already had for 'em (which everyone knows was freakishly high) and multiply it by the biggest number ever dreamed of, plus one-- that's how much love I have for 'em, at the least for even just putting up with the verbal abuse I dealt out almost daily for the past two years (I'm getting better about that). And it's not like I just said "Well, bye". I'm still gonna see them at least weekly, 'cause A) I don't drive right now and attend a school which isn't on the bus-line, & B) I want them to be a large part of my life anyways 'cause C) I love 'em.



And yesterday, I found out that I -might- end up before CONGRESS!

Wha-whatt? Did you say Congress? What the...? Okay, some of these facts may be slightly wrong, but it's 2:00 in the morning, so it's too late to fact-check, and I'll correct later. The back-story is that post-therapies, I started going to a gym recently bought by the hospital, the Accelerated Sports Institute, or ASI. Basic therapies pretty much get you to the point where you can, to the best you can, do activities of daily living (ADLs), like walking, kicking your parents' butts in video games, or feeding yourself (just kidding, kinda, on one of those). ASI's deal is that they help you do those things, but help you do them so much better. And they can tailor their program to what you need. For instance, one of my goals is to drive again someday, what I consider to be the last hurdle of recovery (true, that's a hurdle that can be worked around, but at an ouch-painful cost of convenience). And yesterday, the folks at ASI invented some games that purely work on my reflexes, which right now is one of the weakest areas of my driving skills.

Now, they have a federal grant proposal that has already been accepted for review. They're just putting the final touches on it. What ASI wants to do is start a program, called Wounded Warrior, which helps wounded soldiers regain the physical abilities needed to get their lives put back together well.

I'm their 1st brain injury patient (I'm pretty sure). VERY true, not all brain injuries are the same, I've learned. But there are very often similarities. And so if they help me achieve success, that opens up all kinds of possibilities. Step one of using Jeff to achieve this goal is that they have been video-taping me in some parts of my workouts (yes, with my permission, this has my blessings). I asked yesterday, and apparently, from the video-tapes alone, you can see my progress (and I haven't been going there long, around 5 weeks).

So yesterday, I was talking with one of the owners, Darren Holmes, who mentioned that if the grant proposal clears the next few hurdles, he might be going before Congress to present it. And here's the double-edged kicker:
HE MIGHT TAKE ME WITH HIM, AS LIVING PROOF THAT THIS PROGRAM WORKS. I -MIGHT- GO BEFORE CONGRESS!

Yes, oui, si, later on, I had the requisite fourteen heart attacks. I even followed with a fifteenth, just to be on the safe side. Stay tuned to Jrox for further developments. (You can sign up to get Jeff-Knox-news by email on the right)

TEST

Sorry, delete this, just testing to see if I can get all the technological doodads to line up right for my big announcement.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

APARTMENT HEAVEN

I signed a lease today! One that puts me into an apartment in the city! I move in on Friday the 4th. This is gonna be sweeter than sweet. (And even sweeter than that considering it's a block to a gelateria where everyone knows my name) And I know it's even sweeter since I've already lived in this apartment building for 2 years previously.

I haven't been in touch with the post office yet to get my stuff delivered there, and I just learned that putting your address on the Internet is not considered a good idea by all, so email me and also send a check with at least 1 one & 7 zeroes, and I'll tell ya. (no, not $000,000.01, smarty)

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In between Q & S is Arrr!

My pirate name is:
Captain Jack Kidd
Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. Even though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr!
Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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