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Archive for the ‘Awesome’ Category

Still Alive!

28 Oct

It’s been a while since I’ve updated, but that’s how it’s been with every blog I’ve ever tried to run. Far too much has been going on since I last posted to catch everything up here, but the newest thing is that as of today, I’m “going primal” – starting on the Primal diet. It’s supposed to have some incredible health benefits, especially with regards to type 1 diabetics. A great friend of mine went paleo years ago, but the impression I got was that it was too militant, too intolerant of modern life. Then again, she lives in California, where such things are a great deal easier. The primal diet seems to be sorta…”paleo-lite”.

At the very least, I cooked more today than I have in years. Admittedly, cooking a few eggs would have qualified as well, but suffice it to say – it was more than a few eggs.

But since trying it out, my blood sugar’s been under 100 all day. And since my numbers generally run around 150-200, this is a marked improvement.

So it appears I’m off on another adventure. Good thing I’ve been looking for one of those lately.

 
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Posted in Awesome, Medical, Primal

 

Scents and memories and Burning Man (oh my!)

14 Apr

I’ve heard it said that the sense of smell is the one that’s tied the most strongly to memories, and I think that’s accurate.

I was putting a tarp down on my garage floor so I wouldn’t get all filthy as I was working on one of my car speakers – the damned thing rattles and I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I listen to my music way too loudly. As I picked up the tarp from the corner of the garage to lay it out next to the car, I got hit in the face with a plume of playa dust from my time at Burning Man last year. Just catching a whiff of it made me think back to the entire experience: the uncertainty of what to expect, the realization that it was better than anything I had imagined, and an intense longing to return. All this before the tarp hit the ground.

I can’t wait to go back.

 
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Posted in Awesome, Happened To Me

 

“A frenum what?”

14 Nov

Insertion Taper

So on Saturday (yesterday), I had an appointment to get a checkup for my prince albert piercing. They like you to come in after 30 days just to make sure everything’s healing up well. I was 99% sure it was, but since this is my first non-born-with-hole-in-my-wang, I figured I’d let the experts give me the all-clear. Well, I get there and after a quick trip to the mall to buy some body jewelry, I’m sitting there with my pants around my ankles. Again.

Since everything was healing up just fine, we decided to gauge the piercing up a bit. To those who are unfamiliar with the term, “gauging a piercing” basically means to stretch it so it’s wider. I couldn’t decide on a 12 gauge or a 10 gauge (it was a 14), so we decided to try out a 12 and see how it went. The way this is done is pretty simple – remove the old jewelry and insert what they call an “insertion taper” (shown upper left). The end of the taper is…well, it’s tapered. It starts off small, and at the largest end is the same size as the new, wider jewelry you want to wear. That way, there is less trauma to the existing piercing location and it generally makes for a much easier stretching experience. So I’m sitting there and making small talk, and then Jenn asks “Well…want to try for the 10 gauge?” Apparently, gauging up to a 12 gauge was a snap – I literally felt nothing. So of course I want to give the 10 gauge a shot. Unfortunately, we only managed to get that taper halfway through before the discomfort was too much. Yes, I might have been able to “tough it out” and eventually get the 10 in there, but…why bother? All I need to do is just wait a while and I can try again later on and there’s really no rush. So she re-inserts the 12 gauge taper and follows it up with the new captive bead ring.

Ta-da! New jewelry and larger gauge.

And since I already had my pants around my ankles and I was in a piercing studio, I decided I wasn’t walking out of there without a new hole punched through me. I had been kicking around the idea of getting a frenum piercing (NSFW). Actually, I’d been considering a frenum ladder (multiple frenum piercings), but really figured it was a good idea to start with just the one and build up from there. And hey, if I didn’t want to get the ladder, then the one piercing would be sufficient.

Frenum Loop

Come on, TELL me this doesn't look at least somewhat interesting.


SPOILER ALERT: Oh hell yes I’m getting the ladder – just gonna let this latest one heal up a bit first. And when I it heals up, check this jewelry out –>

So after getting the PA gauged up, I was told that it’s a good idea to let the area “rest” for a bit, so I got up and walked around a bit to make sure there were no complications or soreness or anything with the stretching. And there wasn’t. So, 30-45 mins later, we go back into the room to get everything underway. Now normally a frenum piercing is done relatively high up on the shaft, but since I have a PA already, it needs to be set a little lower – in my case, about 3/4″ lower than the PA.

The great thing about the place I go to get pierced – and more specifically the person who does my piercings (Jenn at Flippin’ Ink Tattoo – ask for her, she rules) – is that she basically measures and checked everything to death. You know that old adage, “measure twice, cut once”? Well, she’s like that, but on steroids. And that’s freaking awesome, because who wants to have a lopsided piercing?

Once it came time to do the actual piercing, we almost had a bit of a disconnect. See, she does the “breathe in, breathe out a few times and when you breathe out, I’ll pierce” thing. What’s left out of that sentence is exactly which exhale the deed is going to be done on, so I had to stop her twice just so I could be sure. I’m one of those people that needs to know when the pain is going to happen, or I jump or twitch or something. So once we got sync’d up there, I breathe, she pierces, I wince and deed is done. Oddly enough, this one hurt a bit while getting it done – a bit more than I expected it to. But within two minutes, there was no pain, no soreness, and as a matter of fact I went to the mall afterward looking for some tea tree oil (supposedly awesome for piercing aftercare) – something I absolutely couldn’t do after getting the prince albert.

Now that it’s the next day, there has been almost no bleeding which is a great contrast to the PA, where I completely destroyed an entire bedsheet set. There’s also very VERY little soreness, and the damned thing is perfectly symmetrical. Awesome.

I promise eventually I’ll do a blog post about something that’s not my johnson, but I really do have a boring life and this is the only thing of note that’s happened recently. =)

 
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Posted in Awesome, Happened To Me, Painful

 

“You pierced WHAT?”

15 Oct

Before I start, a few quotes from some people who I told about this:

“You really are a twisted person.”

“Did you pierce what I think you pierced?”

“You’re going all out with this shit, aren’t you?”

SPOILER ALERT: the answer to all three of those questions is “yes”.

Ladies and gentlemen, last night I got a Prince Albert piercing (wiki link, NSFW images).

I had decided to do it a few weeks prior to going to Burning Man, but various things kept me from getting it done. Don’t ask why I did it, because I don’t have a reason that’s any better than why I got my nipples pierced and the answer to that one is, “Why not?”

I’ve always been into body modification and I’m pretty much done with the tattoo thing for now. But recently I kinda got the itch to do something again. Piercings are quick and oddly painless, and if you don’t like them, you can remove them and they seal back up very quickly. And people who have been way more pierced than I ever will be have stated repeatedly that the nipples are by far the most painful out of all the ones they’ve ever had. Frankly, I doubt this includes an ampallang (wiki link, NSFW images) but I digress.

So on Tuesday, I decided enough was enough, and I’d just call to get some details about the procedure. Not the procedure itself, as I’ve done quite a bit of research as to how it’s performed, but rather how much it would set me back. I called the “good” tattoo / piercing place here in town (Flippin Ink) – there are several, but I’ve heard from different people that this is the “good” one – to get some details about cost. I was quoted $120 to get a Prince Albert. Ouch. I’m pretty damned tapped out monetarily lately, so that number hurt. But then they told me that the resident piercer is running a “portfolio special” and was only charging $10 for any genital piercing, and that includes jewelry! The catch? I gotta let her take a picture for her portfolio – hence “portfolio special”.

So wait…..in order to save $110, all I have to do is let someone take some pics of my junk? SOLD.

Unfortunately, nothing was available that same day, so I made an appointment for Wednesday after work at 7. Getting bored with nothing else to do other than think about what’s about to happen, I get there a bit early. I meet Jen, the apprentice piercer and her mentor Mason. Jen wasn’t ready yet since I was early, so I sat down and shot the shit with Mason for a bit. He’s got a PA as well, and asked me if I had any questions. I basically asked him to give me the answer to the same questions that every dude who gets a PA asks. In no particular order, here’s what I was told:

  • Get used to not being able to use urinals for a while. It’s possible, but it takes some skill as well as some manual manipulation of your junk while standing at a urinal.
  • First couple days, it’s gonna bleed, but it won’t hurt.
  • It’ll take 4-6 weeks to heal, maybe twice that for me (diabetic)
  • NO SEX. He relayed a story that really made me believe what he had to say on the subject (not that it’s a huge issue right at the moment =) )
  • Believe it or not, urination isn’t painful.

So by this point, Jen’s gotten things more or less set up, and I go back there, along with Mason as he’s supervising. She asks me if I’d prefer to sit or lay down, and I relate my earlier revelation that reclining seems to keep the vasovagal reaction at bay. Mason comes in, closes the door and says “Alright dude, best way to do this is for you to drop trou, hop in the chair and let’s get this started”. Keeping it light and informal was awesome, as trying to be too serious would have just been weird. Which is why I had absolutely no problem commenting on just how fucking cold they kept it in there and thanking them profusely for it.

After I de-pants and get in the chair, I see that they’ve laid out a couple of different sized rings and were determining which one to use. The largest was about the circumference of a penny and was the one they decided on. I asked why it needs to be so large, and they explain to me that since it would be somewhat awkward to ask a guy to get an erection right before someone jammed a metal needle through it, they have to choose one that’s large enough to accommodate flaccid as well as rock hard. Not doing so could lead to….tightness. Yow. I comment “Yeah, I think I’d have a hard time with that. No pun intended.”

In retrospect, maybe making the piercer laugh isn’t a wise course of action but what can I say, I gotta be me. And me gets all chatty when he’s nervous.

So they decide on the size of the ring, and now she’s measuring / marking exactly where the piercing is going to be placed. She told me later that she prides herself on “measuring twice, piercing once” and to my mind, that’s a really, really good thing. Now, I don’t know if you know anything about how this piercing is done, but I’m going to assume that you don’t and I’ll explain.

This thing was wider than I care to recall


What you see to the right is called a “receiving tube”. This thing is lubed up and then fit into the urethra and the beveled (is that the right word?) edge is pressed against the bottom of the penis to stretch out the skin and give the piercing needle someplace to go. The piercing starts on the bottom of the penis, and goes into the tube, rather than starting inside the tube and exiting on the bottom.

They started using the “holy shit that thing is huge” size but when positioning it, it slipped out, so I took that opportunity to ask her to use the “jesus christ that thing’s still huge but it’s smaller than the last one” size. That one worked out a lot better. I mentioned that I think this tops the list of Least Sexy Things I’ve Ever Had Done To My Junk, and she apologized for it which was amusing. I assured her it wasn’t her, and that I was just babbling as I tend to do when nervous. At this point, everything was more or less ready to go, and Mason had me start doing some breathing exercises: inhale through the nose, exhale hard out the mouth. Keep doing it, and then they started the countdown – on the third exhale, she was going to pierce. So I breathe, he counts down, and on the third exhale, I brace for the pain and…

Nothing.

Well, not really nothing, but it wasn’t bad at all. Just a small pinching sensation that lasted for ~1 second. Now, I had done my research, and I knew that this is what I was supposed to expect as the skin there is very thin and it’s not through any fibrous tissue or anything, but knowing a thing and experiencing a thing are usually completely different until after the fact. So this thing was really a great big non-event. Shame no one told my vagus nerve.

So they’re asking me how I’m doing, the same way they always do after you get pierced / tattooed / whatever, and I tell them that I’m fine. They say they’re going to wait until I’m ready to insert the jewelry, as right now the receiving tube’s been removed, it’s just the needle sticking through. I tell them that there’s no time like the present, and it’s not actually hurting, so go for it now. She gets the ring and threads it through the needle, then pulls it through and voila! Deed is done.

They offer me some water and cold air, and I gladly accept as I can feel the vasovagal reaction start. Now, sometimes it doesn’t go full bore and breathing, drinking water, cold air, etc help to head it off at the pass. Not this time though. It happened very slowly, so I was talking to them throughout it happening as the tunnel vision completely closed in and I just sorta went deaf. This was our next conversation:

Him: “…….smelling salts”
Me: “You don’t need smelling salts, man.”
Him: “We lost you for a few, dude.”
Me: “Yeah. Yeah you did, and now I’m back. Worst is over, I’m good now. Thanks.”

Which was completely true. When this happens, I tend to lose consciousness for about 5 seconds, but once that happens, it’s all uphill from there, so I knew I was fine.

After that, it was just a matter of finishing up. They had to pinch the ring closed so they could get the tension ball on there, wait to make sure the bleeding stopped, etc. They get everything taken care of and finished up, and hand me a mirror so I could get a good look at their work which was awesome. Placement was great, dead center and everything. Mason agreed, saying “Damn Jen, that placement is perfect! Way to go, your first Prince Albert came out perfectly.”

…..say wha’?

I actually didn’t care, I just thought it was funny that I was the first PA she’d ever done. But regardless of whether or not it was her first or hundred and first, it still came out great. Then they took some pics from a few different angles for her portfolio, as agreed.

After that, I got dressed, went out and paid, made some small talk, and went home. I then proceeded to completely destroy a nice set of sheets because I fell asleep in the middle of getting prepped and when I woke up, there was a sizable bloodstain.

And then the next day, I had to work from home because the damned thing kept scabbing, and I kept moving, and the scab kept ripping, and the bleeding would start again. It’s not a lot of blood, it’s just persistently there. Aggravating to say the least. They promised to get me copies of the pics they took, but I don’t have them yet.

So, the question of the day is:

Should I post (password protected) pics?

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Posted in Awesome, Happened To Me, Painful

 

My first foray into piercing

14 Oct

Not doing it, but having it done to me. It’s how I discovered that I truly and absolutely despise my body.

As some of you may know, I have what’s known as a vasovagal reaction (wiki link) whenever I have any kind of trauma inflicted on my body: giving blood, having blood taken, tattoos, piercings, etc. In the normal run of things, what happens is I get very clammy and all the color drains from my face. My hearing starts to get all cotton-y, like tunnel vision of the ears (pipe down, it works in my head). Then the real tunnel vision starts, to the point where I eventually can’t see anything. At this point, I’m still able to talk, and I tell whomever what’s going on, and that I should be fine if I get a little water and some cold air. Usually that’s the case. In the worst case, I’ll do the world’s slowest faint.

It’s so fucking masculine, people 3 blocks over are in danger of testosterone poisoning, lemme tell you.

So back on July 26th of this year, I was in Saginaw to see the diabetic folks at the VA so I could blah blah blah worthless fucking waste of my time and for once, I told them so. That didn’t go over well. Anyway, I digress. So I get the text message letting me know that my divorce was finalized as I was leaving the VA and I saw a body piercing place, and thought, “Fuck it, why not?”

So I swing in, and make lots of nervous, stalling chit-chat with the piercer there, talking about healing times, etc. Then I ask on a scale of 1 – 10, how bad the pain is supposed to be. Without missing a beat, she replies, “One to ten? About as damned close to ten as it gets, really.”

Lovely. At least she’s honest.

So, rather then pretending to decide – since I had already decided to do this a week or so ago – I told her to go set everything up. A few minutes – and a few text messages consisting of little more than “OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD” – she calls me back. I sit down, and start making nervous chit-chat. It’s something I do when I’m terrified out of my mind, you see. Lucky for me, the lady was a purist – no ice, no anesthetic, no nothing. And then she said something that I thought was complete bullshit: “You know, most people say that the actual piercing doesn’t hurt. The clamp hurts worse, all tight and uncomfortable.” SPOILER ALERT: she was absolutely right, to my surprise.

The piercing equipment used

This is the equipment they laid out prior to the piercing


So she explains everything she’s going to do, showing me all the equipment, etc because that’s actually the kind of thing that puts me at ease. Then she asks if I’m ready, applies the clamp (after the iodine and alcohol – we’re not savages up here!) gets everything positioned. Tells me to take a breath, she’ll count down from three and then push the needle through. I get ready, brace myself as well as I’m able for something I’m completely unfamiliar with, and she says “Three…..you’re looking, stop looking…..two….no really, stop looking, you don’t want to see this and breathe wouldja?….one….”

And just like that, the deed was done. It hurt considerably less than I ever would have believed, so that was a bit of a shock. Once it was done, the usual “Everything ok? Doing alright?” is said, and I told her that I could really use some cool air and a cold drink, things that normally help forestall the vasovagal reaction. She goes and gets me a drink and as she’s walking back, I hear her mention something to her co-worker about possibly needing her back here in a few. I tell her that I should be fine, cold water and air really help out, and I’ll be alright.

That’s more or less the last coherent thought I had for roughly 5 seconds.

Next thing I know, I’m being held up by two lovely women, with one of them yelling at me, “COME BACK TO US! WAKE UP!” with the other one waving smelling salts under my nose. Smelling salts! That crap REALLY stinks, by the way. My body went into full-on shock and skipped all the steps I outlined above and went straight from “fine” to “passed-the-fuck-out” in no time flat.

I AM ALL THAT IS MAN!

Afterward, I seem to remember telling them to stop shouting and giving them a weak thumbs up. The associate says, “Oh good, he’s getting color back now. I mean, it’s not a good color, but at least it’s color.” At some point, someone brought in a bucket – unused (go me!) So once I started to feel better, I lie down while my body recovers. Part of the recovery process is for every single pore to open up at once and dump massive amounts of sweat. It’s attractive. No really. At one point, we were joking that I might actually slip off the table that I was lying on.

Ten minutes later, I’m feeling better, go up front to pay, tip her well, and get into my car to drive away. What’s really weird is that sitting here now, 7 hours later, the piercing feels fine, as does the area around it (which is the area that was throbbing earlier, not the piercing itself). This is odd to me on several levels: I’m a diabetic and it takes me twice as long to heal than it does for most others, so….weird. Also, it’s supposed to be 6-8 weeks before preliminary healing takes place, not 6-8 hours. Weird.

Anyway, as a result of my body going into some weird form of shock, I was only able to get one of my nipples pierced. I can’t stand being asymmetrical. Fortunately, about a week or so later, I found a place here in town that does body piercing so I went in, paid my money, and had a very nice lady punch a hole in my non-mutilated nipple. This time, I had no issue with any vasovagal reactions. The main difference between the first one and this one was that for the first one, I was sitting up in a chair and for this one, I was reclined.

This is not foolproof as I found out when I went to get my next piercing. But that’s a story for another day. Seriously, I’m still writing it, so give me a day.

But, to all the people who’ve said “pics or it never happened”, there’s a pic. Fair warning though, you click on the “Show” link, you’re gonna see my nipples. But that’s why you’re gonna click on it and you know it.

NSFW (Not Safe For Work):   Show



 
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Posted in Awesome, Happened To Me, Painful

 

Traffic and driving and “that look”

12 Oct

There’s a certain unspoken understanding between people that drive the same way: people who drive slow, people who are overly cautious, people from California – they all have certain idiosyncrasies that stick out if you happen to share them. If you’ve ever been on a long trip – longer than a few hours – you’ll probably be familiar with what I’m talking about.

For instance, on my last cross-country trip to California/Nevada (and back again, naturally) there were people who were enjoying the trip more than the destination, taking their time, just drinking in the sights and generally letting the journey relax them so they could better enjoy the vacation they were traveling to.

I am not one of those people.

Boy, I'd rather fuck a bag of glass than be here!


When I’m going somewhere, especially on a long trip, chances are I’m going to be on an interstate. The interstate system was not designed to be scenic. It was designed to get the military from point A to point B quickly and efficiently. When the military wants to get somewhere, they do not fuck around. Likewise, when I want to get somewhere, I want to get there as quickly and efficiently as possible.

So I hit the road, do my responsible 4 miles over the speed limit and turn on cruise control. Before long, I find that I’m switching lanes and keeping pace with the same several cars. Several cars that are driving in precisely the same way I am, passing when I pass, speeding up when I speed up, and generally being several of the most awesome people on the road because they are driving like I drive.

I had something very similar happen to me today while driving into work. I’m driving behind someone who is just maddeningly slow, doing roughly 5MPH slower than the speed limit and generally slowing up traffic. So as soon as I was able to get around this person, I did. I didn’t whip around them like a total asshole, but I changed lanes, and sped up…only to run into someone doing the exact same thing. ARGH!

Credit: Pinoy Blogosphere

But as I made that lane change, I noticed something interesting – someone two cars ahead doing the same thing. So we’re both changing lanes courteously – but with purpose – trying to get to where the traffic didn’t suck quite so much. After a mile or so, and right before I have to turn off, I pull up alongside this person and take a look because let’s admit it: you really want to get a look at the only other person on the road who isn’t driving like they’ve been huffing gas fumes all night. Turns out it was a somewhat attractive woman who looked to be about my age, and she had the same look in her face that I had on mine: “Hey, you suck marginally less than everyone else on the road! Nice!”

Sure it could have been all in my head, but either way, it set an awesome tone for the rest of the day.

 
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Space shuttles and Yoshi and my awesome kid

10 Oct

Credit: ePower Propulsion

So this weekend is my weekend with Thing 1 and Thing 2, and the oldest – Thing 2* – found a set of DVDs from the library on the history of the shuttle program. So now, space shuttles are his most favorite thing ever and all he talked about on the say home was watching the shuttles on TV and shuttles go *VOOM* and they have lots of fire to get to other planets and so on and so forth. Incredibly cute. Incessant, but still cute.

Unfortunately, all 4 DVDs in the set sucked from a young child’s point of view. So, needless to say, he was crushed when I told him that the DVDs weren’t really for little boys. Not that there was an excessive amount of shuttle-on-shuttle action going on mind you, but there was far too much talking, and not enough *VOOM* so we had to come up with an alternative. YouTube to the rescue! So find a couple videos of shuttles lifting off, queue ‘em up, and he couldn’t be happier.

But as he’s watching, he has this perpetually perplexed look on his face so I ask him if he has any questions. He points at the shuttle and says, “What’s that?” I tell him it’s the space shuttle, and he just gives me a little look and says, “No, not the shuttle, what’s under the shuttle?” After a second, I realize he’s talking about the solid rocket boosters. Actually, he was talking about the propellant tank and not the individual SRBs but he’s a little kid, so he’s not expected to know the difference yet. Why would you even bring that up? Jeez. Anyway, so I tell him that the whole setup underneath the shuttle is called the “booster” and I explain to him that the shuttle needs the booster to get out into space because space is really far away. What’s really great, is you can see it behind his eyes – he’s processing it, committing it to memory, synthesizing it for later use.

Not too much later, apparently. Next thing I know, he’s dragging his little brother – Thing 1 – over, demanding that I replay the video. So as soon as I do, he starts educating his little brother on all the finer points of shuttle technology – how planets are far away, and the shuttle can’t get to them by itself, and how the boosters help the shuttle and then they fall off when they’re all done helping. Thing 1 couldn’t really care less about the ins and outs of shuttles, and he keeps looking all warily at the shuttle, afraid it’s going to make a loud sound despite my assurances that it won’t. But he’s just happy to listen to his big brother tell him things, so he sits and listens.

This is not a car. This is a space shuttle.


Then, a few hours later, Thing 2 is just tearing around the room with the Burger King toy pictured to the right in his hand, making loud engine-like roaring sounds. I ask him if he’s pretending that it’s a space shuttle going into space, and he starts rapid-fire nodding his head. Then, he jams on the steering wheel, causing the red part on the toy to fall off and says, “The car is the shuttle, and this part is the booster and it’s falling off now because the car doesn’t need it any more to get into space!” and runs off, making more space shuttle sounds. Mixed metaphor or no, it was awesomely cute.

* – before anyone asks about Thing 2 being the older one while Thing 1 is the younger, here’s the deal: my then-wife and I couldn’t decide how many children we wanted to have, so instead of arguing about it ad nauseam, we decided to roll dice and count backwards from whatever number came up.

Well, not really “dice”. More like “die” – just one.

A 1d20.

…christ, I got lucky.

 
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Posted in Awesome, Family, Funny, Kids