Look – you can’t even tell the house had polka dots anymore 
go us for finding leftover paint in the garage! (and a small amount of primer).
Of course, I did very little of it, since I am still not 100% (or really, even 70%), but that’s a discussion for another post. But go Joelle!
<Again, if you are viewing this in an RSS reader or e-mail, you might need to view the actual post to see the video>
Molly, as you saw with the previous post, is a bit obsessed with running and chasing moving lights. When Joelle’s mother was in town a couple of weeks ago, we discovered her fascination with flashlights. Below is a video showing this… (sorry for the quality, I was having lighting issues and was using my digital camera, which isn’t too adjustable)
I was going to put together some posts on the issues with the Rubashkin Kosher Meat processing plant (and why we’re boycotting), but my friend John has put together a couple great posts already – might as well just link to them:
Thankfully, Trader Joe’s has flipped to Empire Kosher only, at least the one by me, which isn’t tied into this.
Greg, Joelle, Shay (woof!), Molly (woof!) and I spent some quality time at the dog park on Saturday – and then we got hungry for dinner. We spent a bit of time researching where to eat that would allow dogs to sit with us (since we had the dogs with us, and it was so hot out, we didn’t want to leave them in the car). We ended up back at Norm’s, the only place we know of that allows dogs both inside and out. Luckily, we were able to get an outdoor spot, so both us and the pooches were happy with the choice.
Rather than always going back there, I spent some time looking up additional places around Seattle that are dog-friendly. Found a couple of a articles with good links
Good to have options!
As I mentioned previously, we wanted to beef up some of our insulation in the house (add more to the attic, and blow insulation into the previously un-insulated walls), especially as the energy company paid for most of it.
Well, yesterday was that day, and all went smoothly. I haven’t made it up to the attic yet to check out the new stuff (I’ll wait until I feel comfortable stepping on a ladder again), but it is pretty clear that the exterior blow-in insulation was done – our house looks like it has chicken pox! (or polka dots, if you will)
These dots (seen in the picture on the left – click on the link for a full image) are where they drilled in 1 1/4 inch holes into the siding and cavity, and then blew in the new insulation. They then plugged the hole up, patched it, and left it (we knew this was going to happen). These were done around the entire house, just about entirely on two 
straight lines of siding – a lower piece and a higher one (except under windows, as you can see).
Other than looking funny, this will be easy (albeit time consuming) to finish cleaning up – the next nice day (which is supposed to be tomorrow - 80 degrees, lasting through the weekend) – we need to lightly sand all of the holes and apply some exterior primer. Once that dries, a quick paint should fix it right up (which is why it’s really nice these are all in the same level of sidings – we’ll be able to go straight across).
The true measure of all of this, of course, will have to wait until the next winter when we see the reductions in our gas bill.
I have already felt our furnace working less, though, so that part, at least incidentally, seems to be working!
After living the past 5 years (or so) without a home phone, Joelle and I decided we really wanted one. There’s a few reasons:
So there you have it, we are now proud owners of a new home phone number! If you want to know it (and we know who you are), shoot one of us an email.
Don’t worry – our cell phones aren’t going anywhere. This is just an added option for us…
<Warning: Anatomy Images ahead – stop reading if you don’t like seeing them – not really graphic though>
My leg pain is getting a bit better, day by day – I was actually able to walk around for about 25 minutes yesterday, along with handling a short car ride. Go steroids go! (albeit, I still can’t feel my foot at all, but I can only ask for so much, can I?). The plan is to be in the office for the first time, in a while, tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes – hopefully, I pass with flying colors. That will make me feel much better, or at least, normal!
As part of this process, I had an MRI done last Friday for 2 purposes. One was to confirm the diagnosis of the ruptured disc. The second was to provide good visuals for the radiologists who performed the epidural on me last Thursday. (For more on that, see my previous post: http://averbuch.net/2008/05/07/nervous-system-updated-and-out-of-whack/)
Since I had the MRI done at a different facility than the epidural (or my orthopedist) due to time efficiency, I was given a CD of the results to carry from place to place (doctor’s prefer to see the actual images over faxed copies, obviously). Joelle, who has never been trained on MRI reading but has much better knowledge on anatomy than I do, took a look through all of the images for me this morning and pointed out a couple that show the disc issue quite well. In the name of “there’s no privacy on the internet anymore”, I figured I might as well post them for people to see
A couple of notes while you are looking at my back:
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| Notice the bulging disc sticking out from the vertebrae and hitting the spinal cord. That’s my current “resting state” – even that’s not good. If you notice the other discs, they are all normally-placed – it is the one that is causing me issues. | Here’s a great shot of a “pain” period. Pretty clear that the disc is hitting spinal cord and the nerves. Ouch |
One interesting thing about hosting your own blog is that you get access to the searches people make to find your site. Here they are in full glory… I am not quite sure what this says about me and what I write about in general – I’ll leave that up to the readers judgement!
A few notes first:
Here’s the list, in order of most frequent searching
(Courtesy of WordPress.com blog stats)
Since I’ve been laid up on my back so much recently, I decided to take a little time and check out a few web 2.0 services I hadn’t yet played with and see how I thought.
Not sure if I will stick with paying too much attention to these, but it’s pretty neat how easy and seemlessly all of these different services play together, so I shouldn’t need to think about them too much. As these are getting much more press and utilization, I thought I would pass along the fact that I have signed up for them so people can track if they are interested in keeping up with what’s going on.
