Just the tooth
searching for the Perfect Margarita Or a Shady Spot to Drink My Beer

As you might have read in my Alabama entry two blogs down (if you actually read all of that) that last Saturday during vacation I felt the pain in my side like a kidney stone. Well I went to bed Wednesday night around 11:00pm or so and was only asleep for a little bit when I felt pain again. I tried a few things to get around the pain. Over the counter medicine, heating pad, and some other stuff. Well the pain just kept getting worse and worse. By this time it was about 2:00am and Jen was asleep downstairs. Two hours of this excruciating pain was enough for me. I put some clothes on, told Jen what I was doing, and drove myself to the hospital. Why does this shit always happen at dark o'clock. There was no way that I was going to make Jen take me since that would mean waking all the kids up. And I didn't want to call my mom at that hour. So I get to the hospital around 2:30am or so and there is no one in the lobby. I kind of look around and finally someone comes out and asks if I need help. By this point its about a 9 on the 1 to 10 pain scale. As I am sitting there thinking they will usher me right in and get me some pain killers, a guy comes walking in. She asks him if he is alright or if we were together and he says no. He says that he is having chest pains.... come to find out that chest pains trump kidney stone pain and he gets ushered back right away. She tells me to have a seat in the waiting room and they will be right with me. Just my luck. I thought for sure that I would be the only person there at that time of night. Well I waited and waited. I tried sitting, standing, walking and do anything I could to ease up the pain. It seemed like forever,but finally they took me back and got me checked in. It wasn't long and they started an IV with that magic medicine. I started to feel a little better and they took me to get a CT to see if they could see the stone. After that they wheeled me back to the room and I started to fall sleep for some short cat naps between the blood pressure machine going off and nurses checking on me. The doctor came in and told me that they saw a stone about 4mm between my kidney and bladder. Stones this size they usually just try and let pass by themselves and don't usually require a surgery or procedure. Unless they get stuck. So I am basically free to go with a prescription for pain medicine around 5:00am. I run into a problem that they won't let me drive because of the morphine and I don't want to have Jen wake the kids to pick me up until a little closer to the usual wake up time. They let me catch a little more sleep and I finally call Jen around 6:30. After my second nap I am actually feeling pretty good and fell like I am alright to drive, but they insist I wait. So I go out to the waiting room after singing my paper work and wait for Jen and the boys to arrive. I get thinking of the pain in the butt of trying to pick up the Saturn later on in the day and I really feel fine. So, I am debating what to do, and finally just walk out the door and drive home. Yeah, I am a bad boy. Needless to say I took the day off to try and get some rest, but again Jen had to work so I tried to catch naps around watching the kids.
We call Andrew El Destructo because it seems like everything that he touches, he eventually destroys. On our trip to Alabama, my dad gave us an old DVD player that he had. He knew that the DVD player that the boys used in the toy room was the portable one, and that it has been taking a beating over the last year or so. He just happened to have an extra one that they didn't use. So we get the player home and the very next day Andrew is whining that he wants to watch a movie in the toy room. I think that this is a good opportunity to pull out the new player and get it hooked up. I put in a movie and it works fantastic, but the movie that Andrew was watching quickly fell out of favor so he put in a new one. Seconds later I hear, "daddy, the TV isn't working". I figure that it is just a dirty DVD. The boys always finger up the discs so they stall or skip. I get in there and try to eject the disc to clean it and it won't eject. Crap, the DVD player wasn't even on for 10 minutes before Andrew breaks it. I play with it for a while, but can't get it to work. Finally I decide that there is no way to get the DVD to work so I decide to pry open the case to get the DVD out. I am trying to be a little careful for the chance that I can tear it apart and get it back together again. I finally get into the tray and notice that Andrew had put in two DVDs at the same time which jammed the player. Lucky for me I was able to put the player back together again and it is working fine. El Destucto rides again....
My POS tv keeps messing up and I found the way to fix it online, but everytime I bookmark the page how to fix it I either loose it or my computer dies so I decided to blog it so I will always have it.
So this morning I get up bright and early. Who am I kidding I was awaken by the boys before 7:00am. I ran outside and put down weed and feed on the front yard to help keep up with the Joneses next door and have a weed-free lawn. I will do the backyard tomorrow morning. Anyway after doing that I headed out for a hair cut. I wanted to get my hair cut short for our vacation. Oh, by the way did I mention we were heading to Alabama to see my dad? The forecast for down there is mid to upper 80's so I want to have as short of hair as possible. After my haircut I headed over to the Saturn dealership for an oil change and to see what "other"service they want to try and talk me into. We get free car washes for the Saturn as long as we own it, but since we live on the other side of town we don't use this service that much. It was real handy when Jen worked across the street at Lincoln. I figure over the 8 years we have owned the car we have used it enough. Anyway, I find that if I get the car washed before I get the oil changed I can usually avoid a huge crowd at the car wash. Yeah they are free, but they are free too ALL of the cars that they sell at the automall, and there is only ONE thing to drive through so it gets real busy on the weekends and after 5 on the weekdays. The quality of the wash is kinda poor but it's free. Anyhooo. I get into the dealership and it doesn't look that busy. I deal with the girl service advisor that I like working with. They have a grumpy old man that tries to sell you everything under the sun and makes it seem like if you don't do the service he recommends that you will surely kill yourself in an accident. I notice that I am 500 miles away from 100,000. The advisor says it's time to start looking at the 90,000 service for the car, but then she does an ideal thing. She actually takes the time to look back at my previous service to see that I had had alot of the stuff done over the past couple of years. That's the kind of service that I appreciate. I can't afford the "recommended" service at 30, 60,and 90,000 miles, so I have been doing a couple thing at a time. I call it my a la carte service plan and it works pretty good. She tells me that I am next in line so it won't be that long which is fantastic. I go into the waiting room and grab a pop and a couple of cookies (I really like that feature at Saturn). I go outside to look over the used cars and some of the demo models. I like to take a look just to have some idea of how much it would cost if I would ever have to replace the Saturn. It's cold and windy outside so I don't hang out there long. I go back in and grab a refill to hear my name being called. Dang that was fast. Of course as I am paying my bill some one else pulls a car in front of mine blocking the exit. The service girl gets pissed at her co-worker and kind of lets me know it under her breath. After a short wait I head out.

Man the past couple of weekends have been busy. First up was an event for work. We were a sponsor of the March of Dimes "Walk for babies" in Dekalb county. Actually since I have worked with the March of Dimes for 13 years now I made sure I put a little something in the budget for them this year. Come to find out it was nothing new since work used to be more involved in past years, but for some reason just stopped. I can see how it can happen since they go through personnel at the March of Dimes like tissue paper. Just when you get comfortable with a director, they would quit or get fired. Anyhow I arranged to be a sponsor this year. I put out the word to get a group together to walk or just help at the start of the walk. I got a resounding 1 reply from my email to all employees.. and she ended up cancelling. The problem is that the March took place on the same weekend as the credit union was going through a computer conversion so it was all hands on deck for that Saturday. So I show up with some giveaways for the walkers and also bring out a 12 foot high inflatable piggy bank. Its actually a pretty cool inflatable that can also float if I put helium in it, but I am reserving that for parades since helium is so expensive. I got the idea to put air into it, to be able to use it at more events during the year. My first attempts to inflate this balloon took a little over an hour with an air compressor. I was thinking that it might be a bad idea to use it with air. But at our annual meeting as we were deflating the balloon a member came up to me and said, "why are you using an air compressor, you need volume not pressure, you should use a shop vac" All I could say was DUHHHHHH. So I bought a little shop vac that can inflate and deflate the balloon in a little over 10 minutes. So I hung out at the beginning of the March, and after they left, I grabbed something to eat and took off for the day. It was a small crowd, but there was ALOT of other stuff going on that day in Auburn.