Then Comes the Blue Goo

It has been an interesting last few days for the Fat Man...

Friday afternoon I got to see my own heart at work. I have been having intermittent pain in my chestal region, and I had a let's-cover-all-bases echo stress test in Paoli. For those who have never had a stress test, let me explain what it is. First, they make you take off your shirt. Then they shave select areas of your chest hair - creating a nice contrasting effect when the entire chestal hair region is viewed all at once. They then apply multiple electrode-sensor thingies that work with the ultrasound to let them see your ticker. Then comes the blue goo. The blue goo was quite cold, and goopy. The goo allows for conductivity of the images, and for easier sliding of the knobule across areas that may or may not have resistant chestal hair at this point. The next few minutes entail various breathing, or breath holding, as they capture the "before" images. Before as in before they put you on the treadmill to get you to your max heart rate - which for someone with 74% body fat like myself, shouldn't take very long. I was told that the treadmill would speed up and incline every three minutes. It took only 12 for me to reach the threshold, which is a good thing because while my chest felt ok, my calves felt like they were going to separate from my legs in order to run and hide. As I exited the treadmill, I was dizzy. Not sure if it was from my heart rate being so high, or from staring at my feet the entire time I was on the treadmill so I wouldn’t fly off. I went back to the table, and they got their images as I lay there wondering why it felt like my heart had moved into my skull looking for an escape route. All-in-all, they found two slightly leaky valves (which I was told was completely normal) and everything else looked okay to the cardiologist. Thus, the pain I keep getting in my chest is musculoskeletal. Which is a good thing.

Work continues to be interesting as well. Finally got to sit down with the owner's wife (my immediate supervisor) to talk about how I am doing, what I can do better, etc. I have been dreading this conversation because I was under the impression that she didn't like me very much. This was pretty distressing for me because one thing that has always been a constant for me in the workplace is people liking me and having confidence in me. The sit-down went surprisingly well. We went over my job description and I am doing a good job in most of the areas. Some of the accounting stuff I need to get a little sharper on, but all-in-all I felt really good after talking to her. That lasted about an hour, until the owner came in, found out we had what was a mostly positive talk, and promptly reminded me how much I suck.

Speaking of sucking, I played in my first hoops game in over three weeks last night and I have bottomed out as far as how bad I have gotten. It became most apparent last night that I have egregiously fallen below the point where I can take as much time off as I want, carry as much weight as I want, and still perform at a high level. I scored 2 points. I was 0-2 from the foul line. I had maybe 5 or 6 rebounds. As recently as two seasons ago I was dominating games inside. Now, I am a shell. It has come down to a couple of fundamental choices: either start working out and practicing some in between games, or quit. The good news is we have played 5 games and I haven't been thrown out yet (just one technical so far). The bad news is we are 2-3. Worse news is the guys we split from are 4-1. And we play them next Wednesday. I like my team a lot better this season than the group we used to run with. A lot of those guys will not play defense, will not rebound, are soft, and just want to stand outside the arc and shoot threes. My new team is better defensively, rebounds better, but we do not have any three-point snipers. That being said, I like how we match up defensively against them, and we are just going to have to make it tough for them to score. I am optimistic about our chances for sure.

I was going to write about Prez Dubbya basically telling Congress and everyone else to F Off concerning the port control deal with the company out of the United Arab Emerates and also about how figure skating is not a sport, but I'll save those topics until later...

[Currently Listening: Juelz Santana - "Oh Yes"]