Thumbs Up for EAW

I want everyone to remember that my friend and fellow EAW-goer (thats El Azteca Wednesday for the uninitiated) Paula Igou is very sensitive about her *little thumbs*. Her condition is your average run-of-the-mill deformity and it cannot (I repeat CANNOT) be "caught" as I so callously lead you all to believe last week. In short: Paula's *little thumb* deformity is not contagious and you should not be afraid to eat with her, shake her hand, ride in the car with her, look at her, talk to her on the phone, or breathe her air as I originally indicated.

I am sorry for the confusion surrounding Paula's crazily-deformed, wacky-looking, almost freakishly tiny, midget, *little thumbs* and I want to make sure that you all know how terribly sorry I am for ever making fun of how incredibly weird and truncated her *little thumbs* appear to outsiders. I am doubly sorry for bringing her insanely disturbing deformity to the attention of people who were not already aware of it.

In my effort to make sure everyone is sensitive to Paula for her horrific and embarrassing defect I am including in this EAW invitation a description of ordinary thumb deformities and their treatment. Please see my checklist below:

JGE

undergrowth of digits
Underdeveloped fingers or thumbs are associated with many congenital hand deformities. Surgical treatment is not always required to correct these deformities. Underdeveloped fingers may include the following:
1. the digit is small (oh definitely. You might even say it is "nubbin-like")

2. muscles are missing (definitely Paula here too)

3. bones are underdeveloped or missing (I think so, yes, but without an autopsy it is hard to know for sure.)

4. there is absence of a digit (no, not this one).
Treatment may include:
A. limb manipulation and stretching (oh my - yes. We should try to stretch out those weird little suckers. That’s the ticket.)

B. splinting of the affected limbs (no - I'm concerned that splinting her minidigit against her normal digit would only serve to retard the normal digit)

C. tendon transfers (I'm short on tendons, but I have 2 strips of raw bacon and a microwave. I bet if we concentrate we can just wrap her little porkers in more bacon and fry up those *little thumbs* for more stable movement).

D. external appliances to help realign misshapen digits or hands (we at the DudeRanch were hard at work building an appropriate *little thumb* replacement, but progress was halted by a shortage of popsicle sticks).

E. physical therapy to help increase the strength and function of the hand (we feel that Paula's very healthy middle finger will compensate sufficiently to render physical therapy unnecessary, but, yes we agree she should be in therapy).

F. skin grafts - involves replacing or attaching skin to a part of the hand that is missing skin or has been removed during a procedure.(oh my. Indeed, but we'll need more bacon).

G. prosthetics - may be used when surgery is not an option, or in addition to surgical correction. (again, pending discovery of another Ziploc bag of popsicle sticks DudeRanch Prosthetics Inc. should have a working model available in 2007).

So, dear friends support your friends with *little thumb* disorders. After all; they're people too.

Lobes of Love

I recently made the classic mistake of taking my lovely girlfriend, Meredith, deer hunting. She is a very good sport. I knew that and I appreciate it. A lot.

What I failed to realize or appreciate is that she (despite being an extremely good sport), entertains a severe allergic reaction to mosquito bites. Ahh, would that I had known that before choosing a deerstand location near a swamp.

About an hour into our hunt several deer walked into sight. Before being completely engrossed in the scene in front of me I gave the strictest of orders "not to move" and indicated that multiple deer were within range.

I failed to notice Meredith's desperate attemps at blinked distress signals until several minutes later. Finally she hissed "SOMETHING IS BITING ME!!!" Naturally, I again gently encouraged her "not to move" and shifted my eyes towards her just enough to see a look of intense pain and concentration come over her face. I then shifted my attention back to the deer.

After approximately 20 more minutes the deer relocated and I again shifted my vision towards Meredith. There had been no change. She appeared frozen in place with a look of intense consternation pasted across her furiously-clenched brow and tightly-clamped eyelids.

I waited a few more minutes for my own private enjoyment, then nudged her and indicated that it was ok to move about again. She immediately began clawing rabidly at her right ear and kicking me viciously in the knee.

After the furious melee, we continued to enjoy our time together and I quickly forgot about the incident. Several days later I noticed that she had taken to wearing her hair down over her ear. Curious, I lightly brushed aside her chocolatey brown locks only to find that the top of her right ear had swollen to twice its normal size and had taken on a decidedly "pointy" appearance - not at all unlike Mr. Spock from Star Trek. When I say a "pointy appearance" I mean "freakishly pointy" "pointy to the point of public humiliation" or even "embarassingly pointy."

The ear? It was pointy; there is no denying that, but pointing that out sure was a huge mistake.

Recently (and to my great dismay) there has been some discussion of Meredith removing a significant portion of her hair and donating it to "locks of love."

I suggested donating a portion of her ear to "Lobes of Love" instead.

She was not amused.

Meredith: may your ear live long and prosper.

A Lot Cleaner Than I Really Am

Dear Watershed Services:

I just opened up a $502.47 water bill representing 66CCF of usage over a 27-day period. Looking back at my bill history I have used an average of approximately 10-15 CCF per billing period for the last several years. That is a 340% increase in water consumption at my house in a 27-day period with no other changes in my home or residents - roughly 6 months of normal water usage. All bathrooms in my house are currently being used, so a constantly running toilet would attract attention. I checked each bathroom for toilet leaks and found none.

I immediately considered the possibility of an underground leak in my yard. So, I checked the yard for pooling water and/or waterlogged areas and found none. I also checked to make sure all water inside the house was shut off, then checked the meter in the front yard to see if it was spinning - it was not. Based on that observation it appears that there are no leaks between my house and the meter, which makes sense because that much water would (literally) flood my entire front yard. I would be the only floating house on River Springs Court.

Given that 1CCF = 748 gallons of water; my usage this month is 40,392 gallons higher than normal. My yard is .54-acres and slopes back-to-front. 40,392 gallons of water (even coming from a source 18" underground) absolutely MUST surface in my yard. Needless to say, here is no such water to be found. Especially given the rain conditions over the last few weeks - that water has to flow somewhere and, given the slope, it would have to run out into the street almost immediately!

Assuming that showers in my house approximate the national average for shower output of 2.7GPM: that means a shower would have to run (full-bore) 249 hours in order to put out 40,392 gallons of water. I'm not nearly concerned enough about hygeine to shower for 249 hours, even on a bad day.

A 27-day billing period only has 648hrs in it, so that means over my last billing period I would have had to run a shower, full-blast, 24hrs each day for 10.4 days. I assure you that has not been the case. I think maybe the City of Atlanta thinks I'm much cleaner than I really am.

In the case of a leaky toilet [assuming it leaks at .5GPM, which is high] - a leaky toilet would have to run 1,346hrs to leak that volume of water. That’s roughly double the hours in my 27-day billing period. In other words - the laws of this universe dictate that a leaky toilet does not have time in 27 days to leak that much water.

Graphically: 40,392 gallons of water would fill a 10' x 10' pool 74 feet deep.

Either there must be an error with my bill or my roomate, Matt, has done a better job hiding his 5-story hot tub on the premises than he did hiding his last box of twinkies. I spotted those right off.

Also - call it arrogance, but I like to think that my powers of observation are such that I'd immediately notice construction of a 74-foot water tower in my yard fairly quickly and think to myself: "Wait. Something is not right."

Based on my analysis it appears physically impossible that I have used an additional 40,392 gallons of water in the last 27-days. Could you please help me with this?

Sincerely,

Jimmy Ewing

Whereupon I Realize I Can Blog From My Deerstand

I'm in a deerstand. The wind is blowing. It is pouring down rain. My rump is wet and beginning to itch. There are no deer. Everyone else is at the camp. It is dry there. Their rumps are not wet and they do not itch.

That is all.

Sometime later:
You know that somebody-just-spilled-beer-on-me feeling? I've got that except without the beer. Or the people. Or the loud music. Or the bad date that you can't wait to lose, but have to be nice to because Mom's best friend asked you to take her out claiming that "her wooden leg isn't really that noticeable" and you homeschooled so you're really not that great a catch either.

Sometime after that:
I take that back. There is a deer. Hallelujah. He looks very good-natured and very stupid. I think he is grinning at me. I say he looks stupid, but I'm the one sitting in a steel box 30 feet off the ground under a lone pinetree in the middle of an otherwise empty field...in a thunderstorm…..

No make that a hurricane: pieces of the titanic just floated by.

I'm going to have to tell Kate Winslet to gimme some more room on the dang floating door here in a second. I'm gonna need to paddle us out of here.