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About this blog

How my wife and I come back!

Entries in this blog

The Fourth Sunday

Every 4th Sunday of every month My parents and my daughter, my wife and I get together for dinner and to play a board game. We take turns meeting at my parents house or Michele and I have everybody over. Even though we meet at my parents house from time to time our daughter and Michele and I take turns preparing the dinner there. my parents are in their 70s so we try to make it easy on them. This month our daughter will be busy tomorrow so we moved the dinner to Saturday night. We had Chicken C

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alpinejunkie

Wow! Nice work on the site.

Well here goes the standard "lost blogger" disclaimer. I haven't been around for a while but I'm back now. Well the reality is I've been the same place I've always been I just haven't been logged onto StrokeNet. (Hmm, that is weird, the spell checker didn't recognize StrokeNet as a real word. I can't believe I've never typed it, after all these years.) Shame on me.   What a great board we have hear and what a great job Steve has done! You know I have to say that I have been addicted to bloggi

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alpinejunkie

Beethovens Rolling in His Grave

Well, as many may know in my never ending search to find fun and interesting substitutes for my boring and tedious cognitive therapy I took up learning to play the Recorder. Normally it is used with Elementary school kids to get them interested in learning music.   Well it has proved to be a very daunting task for me. I got a book for kids and it has taken me over three months to get to the point that kids get in a couple of weeks. BUT, yesterday was a milestone!   I made it through the fi

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Fox Hollow Hill Goes Down

Yesterday I made it up a hill; I call it The Fox Hollow Hill. Let me explain. The last time I made it up that hill was roughly 19 months ago. It is a long steep hill and it comes at the mid-point in my ride so I was not real fresh. Nineteen months ago I spun up that hill with a cadence of 75 and in a mid-range gear! Yesterday I made it up in the tiniest gear my drive train has to offer with a cadence of roughly 30 rpm. (That can be decoded using the StrokeBoy Super Secret Decoder Ring as

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alpinejunkie

Strikeboy Stokes again...

Or maybe that was StrokeBoy Strikes again!   Awesome Chick and I are always looking for things that are constructive for me to do yet therapeutic. All the assigned therapy I do can be so tedious, boring and there isn't much of a feeling of accomplishment. Yesterday I was assigned long division and multiplication of two digit numbers. It turns out I have a long way to go to be able to do that. That's kind of depressing for a person whose favorite classes in college were 4th and 5th semester Ca

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Danny Dietz and Pericles of Athens

Michelle Malkin: "Danny belongs to the nation"   "The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage." ~ Pericles   Thank you Danny Dietz and thank you to your family and thank you to all those who have gone before you!   I live blocks from where the memorial will stand. I will be there when the monument is dedicated. I'll visit it often. If I could I would have it in my front yard. Danny personifies what Pericles reasoned almost 2,500 years ago. Courage, backed by

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Musical Update

I now can recognize the notes A, B, C, D, F and G on the musical staff and I know the fingerings and an alternate fingering for B. I've attempted to play ' When the Saints Go Marching In' with a small bit of success. I played it for Awesome Chick and when I was done I told her what it was. She quickly responded something like "Oh yeah it took me just a second but I knew what it was." She is such a kind person.   Today was the day I learned F. This is the first note that will require me to fin

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More on My Friend Pain

My friend was close by my side yesterday. He was winding his way through my back, my neck, my head and my eyes. He was especially angry, and when angry he is efficient and merciless at what he offers to me. His offerings are so abundant that he, Pain, literally overflows and cannot be contained within me. When pain overflowed yesterday he became confusion and anxiety. How can I explain being so overwhelmed that I don't recognize familiar places? I am exhausted and wanting sleep but Pain keeps

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Do I accep? I DO NOT!

I don't think I will ever accept that I had a stroke. In fact I make an effort to not accept it. I know some people say they only look forward and that they don't look back. I won

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alpinejunkie

Pain

I guess I have to start writing about my Pain. I have my wife, kids, family and friends I can count on. But my Pain is my constant companion. It is the one that never leaves me alone even for a moment. I am never by myself thanks to my companion, my Pain. When my Pain demands attention I cannot provide; it overwhelms me like spoiled child demanding attention and gives birth to its sibling Nausea.   The last couple of days Pain has been demanding. He has surged as nerve pain from my head to my

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Music to my ears..... Oh Really?

This post is a follow up of my (click here earlier post). That post is dated yesterday but I posted it a couple weeks ago. Yesterday I realized it was posted as a draft though so I "undrafted" it.   Anyway the first song I play on my recorder was to be 'When the Saints Go Marching In'. Well according to the music notes and my fingering that is exactly what I did. It sure didn't sound like any version of that song I have ever heard. YUK! Our two Beagles started baying like the Hounds of

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alpinejunkie

Music to My Ears!

OK, anybody who has read more than one of my posts knows that I can't stand the exercises that my cognitive therapists give me. I do them because they have a purpose but I look, and I look very hard for things that I can do that I enjoy and will provide a theraputic component.   Well I found one that is GRRRRrrrrreat; as Tony the Tiger would say.   I went to a music store not 10 minutes from my house and purchased a Yamaha Baroque Recorder. That sounds fancy but it's not. Anybody who ha

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alpinejunkie

New Start to Therapy

Today I started back at Cognitive Therapy. I haven't been for quite a while for various reasons.   I like my therapist and I told her some of the things I've been doing on my own and she thought they were great. But, she gave me the same old basic word search, maps and other junk that I got before. She wants me to do this stuff and when I go back in two weeks she will hopefully have something more suited to me.

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alpinejunkie

A down day

Well not really a down day but I'm still wiped out from my class on Saturday. When I do a training ride on my bike two days in a row I'm always very tired the next day. It's amazing how much more mental work can wipe me out than physical work. All I wanted to do today was sit around, sleep and of course eat.   Awesome Chick knew I was having a hard time and she knew I was supposed to ride my bike today and she also knew that if I just get on my bike and go I always feel better after a few

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Day long class

Yesterday, that was Saturday, I went to class on the Liturgy of the Hours (LOH) at my parents parish. It is also called The Divine Office or simply Christian Prayer. The LOH is a form a prayer that dates back to the first Christians. I started doing it about 8 years ago. There are a couple links below for anybody who wants to know more. I also went with my parents. It was a day long class and it was the first time I was in a "class" setting since my strokes. On the positive side I was able to la

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alpinejunkie

Field Test - Pass the oxygen please!

Today was the big day, my second Field Test! My big plans of doing it outside got shot down but that's only temporary. Once I have more practice and get off the blood thinners it's off the trainer and on the road full time for me; at least while the whether is good.   I was really happy with my results. I worked a lot harder this time but only because I was capable of working harder. If I had anything left to give I don't know where it was. When I got off the trainer each time I felt like I w

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Cleaning Toilets?

OK, so I have trouble staying focused. If somebody isn't directing me all the time I will get distracted and end up who knows doing what. When Awesome chick comes home at night unless I keep careful notes about my day, or keep recording in a digital voice recorder she got me I won't remember anything. So, my therapists came up with a plan.   Awesome Chick puts a list of things I'm to do every day on a white board. When that list is complete, then I get to do things just for fun, like get on t

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Field Test

Well I got taken down a notch! Awesome Chick who is always watching out for me made sure she checked with my doctors, I have kind of like an entire college of doctors, and I got some bad news.   My neurologist is fine with me doing training rides but wants me to stick to bike paths for now. This is for two reasons, one is that I'm still on big time blood thinners. I sort of forgot about that little detail. I have a beard now because when I shaved if I nicked myself I'd bleed all day. The othe

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alpinejunkie

Life goes on...

Geeeez! I can't believe it has been over three months since I posted. Well a lot was going on. I was here reading other blogs from time to time and made a few forum comments.   For over a month our computer was trashed and we struggled with a new computer that never worked. It was the "new" Lenovo brand. Lenovo is the giant Chinese company that bought IBM's PC division. When I saw what I thought was a good price on what I thought was an IBM computer just under a different name I jumped at th

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Another Perseveration Sunday

Well it was a new one on me. A couple months ago I was told that I was perseverating. I'm what? Should I be embarrased? Should I cover it up? I guess perseverating is something like doing the same thing over and over again for now reason. Yesterday was a BIG perseveration day. I really have this problem on the computer; especially on the Internet. What's bad is if I'm on the computer more than 20 minutes or so the big time migraines can come on. If Awesome Chick isn't home to stop me I can

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A big day for me

Before I stroked I was a daily Mass goer. I know that isn't popular now days. It was obvious from how empty the church was each morning; me and only about a dozen retired parishoners. It's not hard to explain why I went. It just seemed like the right thing to do to start out the day worshiping God.   Well since my strokes I can't drive and I don't walk around by myself because I will easily get lost. So it has been hard for me to get to Mass. Today Awesome Chick took me before she wen

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alpinejunkie

50 Coolest Websites for 2006

Hey the title says it all! I haven't been through all the sites but make sure you have a lot of time when you start looking at this article. Not only can you find 50 sites from 2006 but you can link to the same article for 2005, 2004 and 2003. Time: 50 Coolest Websites

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alpinejunkie

Happy New Year

I'm really looking forward to the New Year. Everything was so new in 2006. It seemed like I was just along for the ride; if somebody decided I should do something that is what I did. Lately I've been trying to take more control of my environment and life. This is good for me but sometimes I think it drives Awesome Chick nutty. It must be an adventure to be married to somebody who is charging through life one minute and sitting down the next with no clue what he was doing the minute before. Of co

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alpinejunkie

Ice Cubes on the Brain

More and more I have been having the ice cube sensation. I read it described like this on Stroke Net quite a while back and I couldn't describe it better. It is like ice cubes are melting in my head. Actually it is kind of a cool feeling. It is also one of those things that when you tell the Dr. about it they just shrug like they have no idea. It's a good thing it is a pleasant sensation.   I figured out that the bout of seizures I had over the weekend was because of a medication change

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alpinejunkie

Seizure Update

Thanks for all the good info. I am laying of the computer games and stuff. I feel pretty crumby now. When I have a bunch of seizures in one day I pretty much can't remember ANYTHING that happened because they wipe out my memory of a lot before and afterwords.   June you are so right. It is a "smell sensation". Not really a smell but it is never the less a sensation of a smell. (Oh my gosh... if my therapist heard that she'd get out the straight jacket! ). Once again I put myself into

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