I'm lucky in that my private medical healthcare covers what I need although even that took a while as I needed to run through the initiation area in the NHS process first. I'm also lucky in that my mental health issues are minor and easy to deal with, there are a lot more people out there who need a lot more support than I, but because there is less visible symptom and a larger social stigma attached to it they don't get it. I'm also pleased to see that the concentration is not on prescriptive drugs to hide the symptoms but on the actual covering of the root cause.
Naturally, this change will take time, but at least it's out there now.
David
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
badrap_blog: Sally Needs a New Home!"A most wonderful wants-to-stay-anonymous donor gifted Sally to us and asked that she be auctioned off so we could get some dogs in that darned barn already! How amazing is that?"
The Sucker Punch Sallys Swinger is a modern suspension bike done in the tradition of a mid 1950's Harley Davidson FL; low stance, big fat fenders, spoked wheels and custom pinstriping. She's powered by an 88 cubic inch RevTech V-Twin with a 2-into-1 exhaust for easy cruising, channeling power through a 3 inch belt driven primary and a Baker 6 speed transmission. She features Harley Davidson controls and a 4.2 gallon split tank for long highway rides. The bike currently has 905 plus miles on it. The only minor defect is a little discoloration of the exhaust pipe. Other than that, she is flawless.
This is a charity auction for BADRAP, a non-profit organization that works to help homeless and victimized pit bulls and pit bull mixes. 100% of the proceeds from sale of this bike will be going to help BADRAP build a halfway house for pit bull victims of cruelty. Visit www.badrap.org/rescue/barnraising.cfm for more info. Thank you for bidding!
[Cross-posted to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
motorcycles and petbulls :)]P.S.: If you have any negative comments to make about pit bulls, feel free to keep them to yourself, or they will be deleted with prejudice.
The only good view of a thunderstorm is in your rear view mirror.
Four wheels move the body; two wheels move the soul.
I'd rather be riding my motorcycle and thinking about God, than sitting in church thinking about my bike.
Life may begin at 30, but it doesn't get real interesting until about 75 mph.
Midnight bugs taste just as bad as Noon time bugs.
Sometimes it takes a whole tank full of gas before you can think straight.
A bike on the road is worth two in the shed.
Young riders pick a destination and go; old riders pick a direction and go.
When you're riding lead, don't spit.
Catching a yellow jacket in your shirt at 75 mph can double your vocabulary.
If you can't get it going with bungee cords and duct tape, it's serious.
Only a biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window.
- Mood:
contemplative
Stolen from somewhere: Although some men hate tying a necktie, feeling as if it is a hanging noose, it is a symbol of power, masculinity and success. What a necktie for a man is what a pair of high heel shoes is for a woman, uncomfortable but necessary! All these accessories and styles are invented as weapons in the power games between man and woman as well as in the business life.
We have some friends coming over for supper tonight – we only met them quite recently, and we’ve never eaten together before. I asked Linda if there was anything she didn’t like, and she said “I don’t like spicy food – I just like things plain and bland”.
Aargh – I don’t do plain and bland, as a rule. I tend to tip the contents of the spice shelves and other larder ingredients into whatever I’m cooking, and absolutely none of my stock supper dishes could count as plain and bland.
I asked my friend Moyra, and she suggested a roast chickie! – perfect. So there’s a 5lb free range chicken in the oven, with half a lemon inside it, the other half squeezed over it, liberally sprinkled with sea salt, ground black pepper and good olive oil. I put three bay leaves in the roasting dish from my beloved bay tree, which accompanied me from Somerset, and now lives outside the back door.
And [whispers] just a bit of garlic into the tray. Not much, honest. And there are mince pies and cream for pudding; shop bought, but at least from the local bakery, not a supermarket.
Food price note: free range chicken from the butcher at the top of the road is £1 per lb – amazing.
![[Bloglines]](http://www.reactivecooking.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/bloglines.png)
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.reactivecooking.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.reactivecooking.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Google]](http://www.reactivecooking.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[Ma.gnolia]](http://www.reactivecooking.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/magnolia.png)
![[MySpace]](http://www.reactivecooking.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/myspace.png)
![[Reddit]](http://www.reactivecooking.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/reddit.png)
![[Slashdot]](http://www.reactivecooking.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/slashdot.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.reactivecooking.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://www.reactivecooking.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Email]](http://www.reactivecooking.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.
He seems to be settling in reasonably well now :)
Mirrored from the Tribe.
Well, it's been a month since I last posted and I'm starting to feel like I don't make any actual progress on anything that I enjoy doing. So I'm going to do monthly status updates so that I can look back and hopefully not want to stick my head in the garbage disposal.
Motorcycles
I can now ride the XT for about 10 miles, or ride the Beemer for about 3 miles. I took the latter to the ATM and the bank on Friday afternoon -- the first time I've ridden it since June and the first time I've tried out the Rox bar risers and Wunderlich Vario levers. I also had the Rick Mayer saddle raised a little bit (!!) to take some pressure off of my shoulders. So far these ergonomic changes seem to help, though 3 miles isn't exactly an arduous test.
After my ride on Friday, my back felt very stiff, but there wasn't a lot of pain per se. I spent the afternoon with a heating pack on, which helped; I did have pain going to bed that night, but it was back to normal (for my current definition of normal) the next morning.
Note that there's no way I could ride two days in a row yet. I'd like to try to ride again on New Year's Day (for the symbolic element); that'll be exactly four weeks from my last ride, so it should be OK. Fingers crossed!
Hockey
No skating yet. Before last night's game, I did stand by the door to the boards with someone's stick and hit 4 or 5 pucks (with decent lift, too!). I stopped as this became painful pretty quickly.
I think I'm going to try using my wooden stick indoors with a tennis ball, though. I'll clear it with my physical therapist, but I think this would be OK.
Physical therapy
I've started PT again since my last update. It's still pretty painful after a PT appointment. The exercises themselves are going OK; not a lot of pain, but they take an embarrassing amount of effort.
Today I did 10 face-down leg lifts (10 each leg) and I was sweating and cursing by the end of them. Illustrated here by a small child, who is neither cursing nor sweating. I'm fairly certain a 90-year-old grandmother would have an easier time of these than I do.
10 leg extensions took forever and it was very difficult to keep my core engaged. More sweating and cursing. I can't find any photos online, but it's essentially lying down with my knees bent (like the guy below), extending one leg out straight, and then returning to the starting position. Then swap legs.
Doing 10 hip extensions were somewhat easier. I can get my hips raised about halfway as far as this randomly shirtless dude.
I go to the gym usually three times per week. After doing the gym (usually 20 minutes of recumbent bicycle, followed by the above and stretching), I'm pretty stiff but no pain. Lots of glute burn (in the nervous system sense, not the rippling muscle sense) for the rest of the day.
Random daily stuff
Very little trouble sleeping, thank goodness.
Walking has good days and bad days -- generally I can do a normal amount of walking around at work without trouble. I still have to drive to the gym because I can't carry the gym bag that far (maybe 2 city blocks).
Sitting at work is pretty problematic. I do OK for about a half hour and then start to get stiff and burny.
Standing is still the worst, I think. I can stand up for 10 or 15 minutes without pain and after a half hour, things get pretty bad.
Doctors and meds
I saw the doctor again last week and he seems fairly pleased with my progress (glad someone is!). I'm back on another 6-day stint of methylprednisolone, which helps a lot despite making my vision blurry.
I see the doc again next month to see how the steroids and 6 weeks of PT is helping.
So, that's life. Hopefully the January update will have me moving around a bit more!
- 21:11 Had my car's new tyres & wheels checked on Friday, but still wander all over the road on repair strips & bumps like worn out ones on my bike #
- 21:19 @MediaCoach Do hope you have all those LPs on either CDs or DVDs before tour sent them to eBay :-) #
Next up: The Washington post explore apparent and rampant fear of a black planet.
"There was an error processing your request:
*Must provide entry text"
- Mood:
enraged
Now, before we start, let's just get it clear - I'm not a scientist and claim no expertise whatsoever in interpreting the results of scientific research.
The first thought is that, if a number of governments agree on something, that something is almost certainly wrong. That sounds like a throwaway cynical line, but let's face it, the track record of government in terms of foreseeing things and preparing mitigation in advance isn't exactly stellar. Let's remember that, at least in the West, politicians aren't actually good at anything much besides getting elected and usually have never generated wealth or done anything socially significant, ever. They thus depend on specialist advice which is often influenced by the prejudices, ideology and self-interest of the expert advising community, whether Civil Service or the wider scientific community.
The second thought it is that, presuming for the moment that the orthodoxy is right, we have two choices - a. attempt to preserve the status quo by radically changing our approach to production and consumption (ferociously expensive and likely to have entirely unpredictable outcomes) or b. attempt an adaptation to the likely new end state and have a degree of faith in human ingenuity and engineering nous to develop ways of maintaining a comfortable and affluent lifestyle which will continue to spread to encompass more and more of the human race. That's the story of the last 10,000 years or so and, while we're nowhere near Paradise yet, the race in general is much better off (and a touch more numerous, let's not forget that without engineering-driven social structures, most of us are going to die) than it ever has been.
The third thought is that the arguments pro are increasingly shrill and emotional and are beginning to compare "climate change denial" with Holocaust denial, cannibalism and voting BNP. I don't know about anyone else, but, frankly, a bunch of dreadlocked Trustafarian parasites with blue faces marching through London beating drums isn't going terribly far towards convincing me one way or another. It's a truism that sincerely held beliefs are as likely to be wrong as any others and that cranking up the sincerity and emotional temperature of an argument to hysterical levels doesn't, actually, strengthen it one way or another. This is X-Factor politics, where simply wanting something is sufficient to generate entitlement. I've often thought that the 2003 demonstrations against the Iraq War might have been a bit more concerning for the political classes if they *hadn't* been hijacked by the SWP and similar groups and had, instead, been clearly Middle England taking to the streets in concern, rather than the usual suspects blowing whistles and winding up the cops. I know there were probably a million people altogether out on the streets, but it wasn't the normal ones who got the publicity.
The fourth thought is that scientists, whose living in the shape of research funding, depends upon proving that A=B will often find, miraculously, that their research demonstrates conclusively that A does, indeed, equal B. The recent nonsense about emails makes me wonder why, if the argument and evidence are so strong and conclusive, the senior CRU types involved in the various exchanges found it necessary or desirable to administer quite so much spin to their published research, to the extent of (and I'm reliant on the media here) coming close to falsifying figures and working hard to ensure that peer review was restricted to those who were on the team. If the argument is strong, it'll make itself, if it's not, no amount of spin will protect it in the long run.
Now, I'm no closer coming to a view. In fact, it doesn't much matter whether I have a view or not, things are going to happen with or without my informed or uninformed consent. I am curious, though. I'm old enough to have lived through the "Oh My God, we're all going to die!" meme on the basis of, variously, overpopulation, a new Ice Age, global famine and an abrupt running out of oil tomorrow, oh noes, so I am something of a veteran in these matters. Old age and cynicism leads me to ask, every time someone seems sure of something which, if true, will cost me a lot of time and money and inconvenience, cui bono?
Profile
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
khaylock- Ken Haylock
- Homepage of a Head-banger
Page Summary
- turbine2 : Mental Health review - at last [+0]
- dilbertdaily : Comic for December 9, 2009 [+0]
- motorcycles :: phyxius : (no subject) [+9]
- ramtops : ramtops' twitterings [+0]
- motorcycles :: skreidle : Buy a custom bike, help the pit bulls! [+17]
- motorcycles :: hlw : Twelve Important Things My Motorcycle Has Taught Me [+14]
- lionstar : Ties [+14]
- ramtops : “bland food” [+0]
- termofart : Special Election [+12]
- ramtops : Iggy in the study [+0]
- dilbertdaily : Comic for December 8, 2009 [+0]
- bluepoof_bikes : December progress report [+1]
- virbius_uk : Virbius Tweets [+0]
- ramtops : ramtops' twitterings [+0]
- termofart : Oh, LORD, The Stupid! [+5]
- hunkymouse : Fitness, dowsing, and St Anthony [+5]
- lionstar : Cat. [+5]
- landsmand : Climate Change and other Folk Devils and Moral Panics [+8]
- dilbertdaily : Comic for December 7, 2009 [+1]
- ramtops : ramtops' twitterings [+0]