you're trying to make me swear

I try not to swear much these days. Not sure what the point is in swearing really, so why bother.

But today can get me into a bitch fest. I heard that the NCAA was offering streaming live videos of the men's basketball games. So I logged on the site, wait through the queue.

Only to get a local blackout message.

So I can't watch my local team and watch them possibly implode on themselves.

I can watch frequently updated scores at various sites. They started strong, but it's the second half when they tend to collapse and blow a big lead and lose.

Guess that means I have to get some work done since I can't watch the game.

*sigh*

UPDATE: They seemed to keep the whoop ass going throughout the game. Doubtful they can win the next one though.

water in them hills

According to the website for Sabino Canyon, there's water flowing at the Sabino Dam. I'm hoping I can muster the energy to be able to go out there. It's supposed to rain Saturday night. So even if I don't go today, I'll take boyfriend out there next week, and hopefully the water will still be there.

I've been to the dam several times since it's been dry. It's a nice place to sit, be still and appreciate nature. I've also seen girls out there working on their suntans. I still haven't found the equipment used to measure streamflow rate, but maybe someday I'll figure it out.

The other nice thing about going to the dam is that it's only a couple miles round trip. If you take the main road, there's a few nice views and stuff as well as benches to sit down. But it a bit more walking to get there and back.

Principles of MCS

Now that I can muck around a bit with my MCS settings, I figured I should explain what I'm talking about.

My MCS is a pulse generator (located under my collarbone) hooked up to wires. The wires run up the back of my neck, over my ear, and to leads. The leads are attached to the covering of the brain (the dura). This part of the brain is called the central solecus (I know I'm not spelling it correctly). The neurosurgeon confirmed the leads would do the job by waking me up and asking me.

The leads deliver a pulse of energy. When correctly located, it can prevent the pain signals I get from my face to my brain. It's not a perfect solution because the cause of the pain is still there. But at least I'm not crippled by pain.

A pulse of energy is simply diagrammed as a wave. There are three priniciples of waves: power or intensity, frequecy or how many times a minute, and width or how wide the wave is.

My remote device allows me to increase or decrease all three paramters. But there are safeguard limits set to all so that I don't fry my brain with too much power or something like that.

Through trial and error, I've learned the the (pulse) width has the biggest effect on my pain perception. Then power (amplitude), and lastly frequency.

I've already had a hard lesson in that if the pulse width is set too high, things like my right hand become affected. So I don't have a lot of lattitude on adjusting my pulse width. I have more flexibility in adjusting my amplitude. I turn it down when I'm not experiencing a lot of pain so that I can turn it up when I need it.

I'll keep playing with the frequency setting, but so far doesn't seem to have any dramatic effects like the pulse width and amplitude can.

Just falling apart

All week, the back muscle on my right calf has been tight. The inside half of my right foot is numb after standing for just a minute. Don't know if the two are related or not. Since tomorrow I can sleep in, I might take a muscle relaxant to see if I can get this problem cleared up.

So what else can go wrong - heartburn and acid reflux. I had leftovers last night from the dinner I made the night before last. Didn't have problems after the first night of this dinner. But this night, I was woken up at 1:00 AM with terrible heartburn. Rolled to my other side, and I was burping up acid. Tried for a half hour to ignore it, but couldn't. Finally got up and took some Pepto and antacids. Propped myself up for a short while, then settled on my side, and was finally able to go back to sleep.

But I'm dead tired. I was dead tired after work yesterday. You know you're tired when you can't find your way out of the post office. So this heartburn was the last thing I needed last night.

Hope there's something of me left when my boyfriend makes it over to my place Monday night....