Garden didn't work out this year.....bummer.

Euphorbia wulfenii (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I wasn't able to make much of a garden this year.  Certainly not anywhere near my ambitious plans made during winter.  I was just too ill and didn't have the cash for a lot of frivolous luxuries. Plus I had bigger issues to deal with.

Still, I will have a few container veggies and some small fruit/nut bushes to be planted.  Scavenged containers from Craigslist help keep the cost down.  I recommend Guerneys seed and nursery mail order for some good deals on high quality plants if you wait for their sales. I don't care to plant anything that I don't like to eat so that limits what I grow.  Flowers are pretty but I want something that will provide me with a little return on my investment.

The existing giant trees in my garden area need a good trim to allow some light in for veggies and other plants.  We have a 27 foot manual pole saw that needs to be employed on a sunny day with no wind to get rid of all the shade producing branches.  Last year we even had some one foot puff ball mushrooms spring up over night under the trees.  Its time to let the sun shine in to this dark abyss.  I tried using the long pole saw on an extremely high branch but its a little tricky and my muscles are not like they were 20 years ago so I temporarily delayed until I have more time.  Its easy to use a 16 foot pole saw but these 27 foot honeys take some practice.

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Alarm clocks should not be everywhere.

English: Alarm clock Polski: Budzik (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Years ago, I used to work for an engineer (lets call him George) who also happened to be a pilot of a small two engine prop plane.  I liked the person and he was good at his job but part of my job description involved being a passenger in the small plane he flew to a few job sites.  (I usually preferred large multi-engine jets with restrooms where the flight attendant doted on your needs.)  They would probably still have paid me to do my job even if I had used alternate transportation instead of flying with George but I wouldn't have felt right about it.  George liked me to sit in the co-pilots seat because he said my large weight in that seat helped make the plane easier to fly.

I noticed there was what appeared to be some type of alarm clock installed in the control panel.  Later someone told me that George would turn on the autopilot, set the alarm clock and take naps on long flights.  I never noticed George nod off when I was in the copilots seat but he did tell me to keep an eye out for any other plane in the area when I first started flying with him. This kind of worried me slightly because I am essentially blind in one eye and I greatly prefer someone with two eyes looking for any potential crash partners. He did put the plane into a deliberate dive once after I said I didn't give a damn what he did.

I heard numerous flying stories from other employees regarding George which I can't verify such as running out of fuel in flight and clipping power lines because the plane was over loaded.  Apparently he used a credit card once to scrap off accumulated ice from the front window during flight after something failed so he could make an important social engagement.  George is a Korean war vet and a good engineer so I didn't hold minor piloting irregularities against him.

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G.I. doctors knowledge of Crohn's disease varies greatly.

Schematic of patterns of disease in Crohn's disease (CD). Based on diagram of human intestine in GFDL. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Don't be afraid to change your G.I. doctor if you have Crohn's disease.  I recommend going to a larger hospital with a specialty clinic even if you need to travel a little bit.  Crohn's disease is something that requires a doctor with specific experience.  If your doctor does not have that experience, it is likely that you will get more surgery than you need sooner than you need it.

When I originally started having mild Crohn's symptoms I was only being treated by an internist doctor that was unfamiliar with the disease. He ordered a bunch of tests that said I was fine.  He then suggested everything was in my head and that I should take up yoga to reduce my stress.  The pain finally got so bad that I staggered into his office and said I was going to die right in front of him unless he did something.  At that point it was obvious something was wrong so he finally sent me to the hospital where they proceeded to tell me that I had cancer and made a giant incision on my belly.  Fortunately it wasn't cancer.  After I woke up a nurse told me I had Crohn's disease instead.  "What's that?" I managed to wheeze.  She said the doctor would explain it to me and she walked away quickly.  That is when my new journey with Crohn's began.

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