TOMAL Therapy

I did a search for branches of alternative medicine and a list as long as my arm came back. And I have a long arm. Most of them have a cure rate no better than a placebo, but there are a lot of people that are willing to pay for them. This has been going on since the 1800's when snake oil salesmen sold elixirs and potions that claimed to cure anything from toothaches to bunions.

Let's take chiropractic for example. It's not approved by the AMA. The training course to become a chiropractor takes like six or eight weeks and then you're awarded your "degree". The wife goes to a chiropractor. I don't know his real name but I call him Dr. Charlatan which really pisses her off for some reason. The last time I took her for an appointment I told the "doctor" that I've been performing chiropractic on my knuckles every day for years. He said that was enough experience to be his assistant and offered me a job!

Dating Tips for the Ladies

I have a few single female friends looking for a relationship and they're going about it in a completely nonsensical way. For them it's all flash and no cash. They were my inspiration for this post.

If you're a female on the wrong side of 30, you're probably over the casual dating thing and ready to move on and look for something more permanent. This requires a completely different approach. Cute and exciting are not the keys to a long term relationship. You need to think financial stability. If it helps, you can replace the term "financial stability" with "unlimited shopping". In this case, it means the same thing.

Anniversary

Well it's our 31st or 32nd anniversary this year. I suppose I could Google it to see which it is but I'm too lazy to bother. I used to remember by picturing the wedding matchbook in my head. Back in the day, each of the wedding place settings had a matchbook with the date embossed on the front. But after all these years the memory has blurred and faded just like my sanity.

We're past the crystal and silver anniversaries. I'm pretty sure this year is wood, so I'm going to give my wife some wood for our anniversary. Then again, I'm pretty sure it's the wood anniversary every year and I haven't been right yet. The next big anniversary is the 35th. The gift for that anniversary is Jade. After all these years I'm jaded enough for the both of us so I'm just going to give her myself, and some wood.

Restaruant Adventures: Chipotle

This tale begins with a trip to the Urgent Care medical facility. The wife and I arrived home from work about the same time a few weeks ago. She had ankle socks on and while her feet and ankles were of normal size, her legs above the sock line were blown up like a salami float in the Macy's Day Parade.

Off to the doctor who asked "Have you eaten anything unusual lately?". The wife paused and then said "Well, we did have Chipotle." As the doctor raised her head in interest, I added "Six days in a row!" At that point the doctor stopped her examination and looked at us like we were idiots. I shrugged my shoulders, threw my hands up and said "What?"

Beach Handbook

A handy dandy guide to beach etiquette.

Don't smoke. You can't smoke on the beach anymore. Why? Because a bunch of candy asses complained about second hand smoke. Today the beach was packed and there was an aroma of marijuana wafting through the air. Not one candy ass complained about that.

Don't bring glass. You can't have glass on the beach. Today, one of those little Beach Patrol girls in her little white uniform and bicycle helmet sneaked up behind me on her knees and stuck her face over my shoulder and told me I had to throw my Starbucks drink away because it was in a bottle. Scared the bejesus out of me. It was like something out of an old movie of the future showing silly stuff that would never really happen.

I'm Pregnant!!

Imagine? I can't. It would be the weirdest thing ever.

First you start by bleeding 4 or 5 days out of the month. That's got to be weird enough. Then, when you finally have a month that you stop bleeding, you would think the first thing that would come to mind would be "Whew, I'm glad that's over!" But no, the first thing that comes to mind is to run into the bathroom and pee on a stick to see if it changes color.

The stick peeing, however, is a lose / lose situation. If it doesn't change color, you're going to start bleeding again. If it does change color then you have a living creature growing inside you. The only thing I can relate this to is the movie Alien where an affected crew member has a creature growing inside him which eventually bursts out of his chest and starts screaming. Really all you have to do is take that sentence and replace the word chest with vagina and you have pregnant. How crazy would it be to have someone growing in you for nine months and then have that person crawl out of a hole in your body? It sounds like something out of a bad Monty Python skit.

Addicted to Love

-Celebrities cheating on their wives is nothing new but I love the excuse de jour which is "help me, I'm a sex addict!". That just cracks me up. They say it like there's a guy out there who isn't a sex addict. If a hot girl walks into a crowded room with a little side boob showing I can guarantee that every guy in the room will notice within 5 seconds. If there's a nipple slip you're likely to hear at least one guy lose it and just say it out loud. "Nipple!" For men it's like spotting a shooting star or a firefly. It's a rarity we just have to point out.

Tiger Woods, Jesse James and now David Boranz or Bornaz or whatever his name is, you know, the guy from Bones and Buffy. They've all been caught and they're all crying sex addiction. The beauty of this defense is that the more women you have sex with, the better it works! Two of these guys actually cheated with the same woman. I'm pretty sure that's like heroine addicts sharing needles.

The Curious Case of the Alcoholic X-Rays

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It reminded me of something out of a Sherlock Holmes novel. As I headed to bed one night I turned off the lights and locked the door. The wife and the boy were already asleep so I didn't expect the house to be much different in the morning when I was the first one to rise and shine. Mostly rise without a lot of shine since I'm not really much of a morning person before the crack of noon.

My computer desk is in the kitchen and I have folders full of X-rays and MRI's standing upright on the floor leaning on the side of the desk as they are too large to fit in any of the drawers. I awoke that morning, (awoke being a relative term) took a shower and headed out to the kitchen. As I stepped into the room I saw between 40 and 50 pieces of film strewn about the kitchen table and counter tops. The kicker was that the entire room smelled like alcohol. Surely a mystery worthy of Mr. Holmes. The game was afoot!

55 And I Still Drive

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Holy crap! I'm a senior! A senior.......... really? A senior? Holy crap! How did this happen? How did 55 years go by without me noticing? Whenever I'm driving some gram-pa or gram-ma will cut me off or will be driving 12 miles an hour on the freeway and I'll start complaining that the damn seniors should have to take road tests every year. We have a senior community in our area called Seizure Wor, uh, I mean Leisure World and nobody drives within miles of it. The huge boat sized cars are bad enough but the crazy ones are taking the golf carts out on the street. I don't want to take a road test every year!

Old people aren't the only deadly hazards out on the road. There are Asians, women and cell phones. The most dangerous thing on the road is an old Asian woman talking on her cell phone. It's like Jaws of the freeway drifting in and out of lanes trying to hit anything and everything around it. When you see this coming up in your rear view mirror you can hear that Jaws music in your head. dun dun, Dun Dun, DUN DUN!

Girls vs Cars

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Fast cars or fast women? What if you could only have one?

Cars always warm up quickly-
1 point: Cars

Cars don't talk back
1 point: Cars

Cars are always "girls" as in "She's a beauty"
Girls aren't always girls as in "Shemale"
1 point: Cars

Girls have better headlights
1 point: girls

Cars always have gas
1 point: girls

A car with the top down is nice.
A girl with her top down is awesome.
1 point: girls

With a car, you decide when to put on the brakes.
1 point: cars

With cars, no one cares if there's junk in the trunk.
1 point: cars

With cars, bigger back seats are desirable.
1 point: toss up - depends on your ethnic background.

Cars have mufflers
1 point: cars

Cars don't have knees
1 point: girls

Car seats look good in leather
Girl seats look better in leather
1 point girls

A stripped down, souped up car makes a hot rod
A stripped down, souped up girl makes a rod hot
1 point girls

Decision - It's a tie. You need them both.

Winter Olympics 2010

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Image via Wikipedia

I'm just a casual fan of the Olympics so I missed the last opening ceremonies in China which by all accounts were quite spectacular. Thinking Canada would have to outdo them I tuned in to the 6 hour event with some genuine anticipation. The theme of the ceremonies was the four native tribes of Canada which no one cared about except the four native tribes of Canada eh?

I kept waiting for something spectacular to happen but after an hour or so my hopes were waning. Then when one of the commentators said "How do you top the Chinese ceremonies?..........Maybe you don't try" it was pretty much over. When the torch lighting mechanism malfunctioned it was the icing on the cake.

The games were covered on 3 networks, NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. One of them almost exclusively showed the riveting "sport" of curling day and night. For anyone unfamiliar, this is like boccie ball on ice for neat freaks with a housecleaning obsession.

One player throws a rock with a handle on it towards a target on the ice. Oh! The athletic prowess! Then two teammates with space-age looking brooms clean the ice as quickly as possible. Apparently neatness counts in this game. Each game takes 3 or 4 hours to complete so the excitement never ends.

I don't get these combination events like the biathlon where they combine cross-country skiing and target shooting. I guess the excitement of watching the skiers do the left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot thing for hours on end was just too much so they decided to slow it down by having them pull out a gun and shoot something. Now if they really want to make it worth watching they should have them shoot at each other.

I refuse to watch the ice dancing. I have a simple rule. If you need judges to determine the winner then it's not a sport.

I don't like the up close and personal nonsense either. I don't need to know the athlete's life story. If I want drama I'll watch Jersey Shore. If they are going to keep doing it, maybe the drama should be part of the competition. Snookie could be in the summer Olympic games as a boxer. That girl can take a pounding!

Ski jumping should be done 4 or 5 abreast. There's a little more competition when you're going down the ramp together.

The luge track should end with a ski jump ramp. That would be awesome!

Snowball fighting should be an Olympic event.

At the end of the day a large group of Olympic athletes go home with gold medals. They've made unbelievable personal sacrifices and trained for years so that they can be the best in the world.....on that particular day.........by a fraction of a fraction of a second.

Hockey rocks!

Post Op

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The wife (Diane) is recovering from feet surgery (she had work done on both) and is off the crutches but still on the meds. She still has to wear a plastic boot on one foot for protection which makes for some good times.

As we were coming out of a restaurant one night I opened the car door for her. She leaned back a bit and started falling and stutter stepping backwards to try and catch her balance. She must have taken a good 5 or 6 steps back before I caught her. The whole time she was yelling "Whoa, catch me! Whoa, whoa, catch me!" Hilarity ensued and we've since nicknamed her "DWHOA".

Thinking the end of the crutch use was the end of comical restaurant mishaps proved to be a mistake. As we headed into Denny's I was thinking for the first time in a while that we would be able to sit in the booth without a crutch flailing through the air sending the waiter and nearby patrons bobbing and weaving in an effort to get through the evening unscathed. Nor would a crutch fall from any of the precarious perches she liked to place them on and fall into someone's soup bowl showering the unsuspecting restaurateur with a lovely chicken broth.

We slid into the booth without incident. Just as the waiter approached, the wife moved her foot and the hard plastic boot got jammed between the table support leg and the bottom of the bench seat. She squirmed and wriggled but couldn't break loose. She continued to twist and turn and move every part of her body in different directions with her anger growing exponentially. Her face turned bright red as she cursed at the table as though it had lured her in and then sprung a trap. It was somewhat reminiscent of a scene in The Exorcist. The waiter looked at me with fear in his eyes but I just raised my eyebrows and shrugged. She finally broke free and we all breathed a huge sigh of relief. The waiter asked what we would like to drink but before we could answer (and I'm not kidding about this) she moved her leg and jammed her boot right back in the same place!!!

Then there's the latest trip to our local Mexican restaurant, Casa Franco. Things went well until the end of the meal. For some unknown reason, the wife decided to help the waiter with the plates and nearly made him drop everything on the floor. He regained control of the plates and silverware as well as his composure and looked at the wife with his head cocked like a curious dog. She began to mutter something completely unintelligible, stuttering along the way. He looked at me and I said "At least you don't have to live with her." He then looked back at her and said "Maybe ju take too much medicine. Sometimes I take too much medicine and I can't talk just like ju." It's always nice being out somewhere looking like we need medical advice from a food server.

While completely unrelated to the surgery, another restaurant story comes to mind that must be told. A while back we went to an Italian restaurant with some friends. I ordered the spaghetti and meatballs and as the food was served the waiter dumped the entire bowl of spaghetti in my lap. Everyone at the table gasped and said "OH!" which drew the attention of every patron in the restaurant. At the same exact moment my wife, with a deadly serious look on her face, grabbed a full glass of ice water and threw it in my lap. Now instead of having the spaghetti sauce confined to my lap it's seeping through my pants and running down my leg. I have to say this is one of the few times in my life that I've been completely dumbfounded. I just sat there staring at her with my mouth open not knowing what to say or do.

It turns out she thought the sauce was scalding hot for some reason and reacted like one of those heroes you read about that grab a fire extinguisher and put out a fire before anyone else realizes that anything is burning. When I told her they don't heat the sauce to molten lava-like temperatures she said....... "oh."

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