Friday Photo

Taken on Highland Ave outside of a trendy eatery.  Our local graffiti artists have really raised the bar as of late. I’m proud of them.

Filed under: camera, Los Angeles, Non-Work

Next Tuesday – the official end.

Of my being out of work, that is.  September 1.

That’s the day after my disability officially runs out, and the today the doctor opined that I’ll be okay to return to work at that time.

The foot’s not 100% healed yet (when I asked the doctor when I could expect this thing to be completely healed up, he just kind of mumbled and then changed the subject. The physical therapist would only say that it won’t clear up quickly), which means, of course, that the first work call I’ll get will be something like a 14 hour rig day walking on cement floors and carrying cable up and down stairs.

According to both the doctor and the physical therapist, the foot will heal a lot quicker if I turn jobs like that down for a few months.  I tried to explain that my bank account won’t allow me to turn any work down right now, only to be informed that this isn’t something about which I can successfully argue.

So, sadly, I’ll only be sort of back to work, but it’s a start.

Filed under: Uncategorized

I’ve been trying to be decent all this time…

The 113 dBA alarm clock

If you think you can barge in from Sicily and change that, you’re wrong*!

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to the extra loud alarm clock.

Maybe I’m just cranky since I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a week.

*Apologies to the angry ghost of John Steinbeck for taking such liberties.

Or maybe Thumper and Bumper upstairs really are just a plot device to make me eventually realize the errors of sinking into passive-aggressive alarm clock-related revenge at 5 am some morning when you least expect it, you jobless fuck-ups (oh… wait).

Or maybe not, I don’t know.

I’m going to go sit on the couch and watch Cops.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Double the shenanigans, half the price!

Like many older Southern California dwellings, my building has no insulation (it’s paradise, right? It never gets cold here so let’s save on construction costs), so the hollow walls combined with lath-and-plaster construction conduct vibration from the hardwood floors in the unit above mine really well.

Thanks to the former landlady and her batshit crazy, said unit has been vacant for years, so there’s not been a problem. Now, however, I have upstairs neighbors who are very, very nice but unbelievably noisy nearly around the clock. After some discussion, they agreed to remove the hard-soled shoes after about 10 pm, which brings the noise level down to merely unpleasant (as opposed to completely unbearable) things that go bump, bang and crash in the night.

The really cruel part of the joke here is that despite (or maybe because of) my ability to do things like nap standing up (lean against wall, lock knees, catch power nap while the producer’s not looking), I’m probably the world’s lightest sleeper, so it doesn’t take much to wake me even without the thundering hipsters over my head.

I suppose the upside of this is that no one will ever be able to draw anything embarrassing on my face and then take my picture while I sleep.

With the use of earplugs, I’ve been averaging 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night, but in the wee hours of Sunday morning the upstairs dwellers decided to have what sounded like elephant races – the noise was so loud and my entire place was shaking so much that I thought it was an earthquake, jumped out of bed, failed to don any sort of  footwear and ran to stand in the bedroom doorway.

Turns out it was four guys and three girls all clomping around in club shoes. Indoors.  At three in the morning.

Needless to say, the foot’s not feeling so terrific anymore.

I saw the physical therapist today, and he says it’s not that bad, which is a very, very happy thing to hear.  I’ve got three sessions a week scheduled for the next two weeks in an attempt to get the damn thing to hurry up and heal because my disability runs out at the end of August, which means I’m going back to work in the beginning of September whether I’m ready or not.

Filed under: Non-Work

Friday Photo

Disney Hall on the Holga. This is from last year, and has been festering in the depths of my Flickr stream (I get 500 views of my mangled foot, but there’s no love for the good photos) ever since then.   More recent photos are festering on a roll of 35mm that I just haven’t gotten around to dropping off yet. Damn film processing. So inconvenient.

On a positive note, I walked two blocks to the Thai place to meet some friends for dinner. Aside from the ankle being a bit stiff, the foot doesn’t feel bad.

Lets all hope this is the beginning of the end and I can get back to work, and back to posting something other than missives about how much my foot hurts.

Filed under: camera

Same old, same old.

The days, they all seem the same. Wake up, drink coffee, go to physical therapy,  go to gym or go to pool, come home to bad TV and noisy neighbors. The foot’s getting better but not yet 100% healed and  I’m going crazy because I really want to get back to work but can’t just yet.

The only thing I’ve been doing a lot of is swimming – the therapist says I can swim as much as I want, so I’ve been doing about an hour and a half a day – it’s really helping with the nervous energy and an added bonus is that I’ve dropped all the lard I packed on post-surgery. I’ve also got one hell of a keyhole tan on my back.  No strapless tops for me anytime soon.

Today, I dropped the cat off at the vet, went for a swim at the USC pool (they segregate the lap swimmers from the recreational swimmers, which is nice. They also have youth water polo – watching 8 year olds play water polo is hilarious and well worth the drive down there), failed to complete the New York Times crossword puzzle (I just can’t concentrate lately), and then drove back to the vet and got the bad news.

A $300 bill, and the cat’s got cancer.

I must have blanched (60% bill, 40% cancer), because the vet hastily assured me that it’s not the ‘bad’  kind of cancer.

Somebody fill me in here – there’s a good kind of cancer now?

This particular cancer is a lesion on her lip which is treated by applying a topical medication – thankfully for the skin on my arms, this has to be done at the vet’s office weekly,  and he thinks it’s only going to take a few treatments to deal with the problem.  I guess when I think about it, this isn’t so bad as cancer goes.

The cat’s home now and very, very angry. Not about the cancer, but about suffering the indignity of being given a flea bath and transported in the carrier. And being given shots. And a whole host of whatever else pisses cats off.

I’m cautiously optimistic about the cat’s chances for recovery and my chances for getting the hell back to work.  Soon. Before I go completely insane.

Filed under: Uncategorized