alpinejunkie

Asha, sounds like a great trip. Can't believe Kiddo is in college. My how time does fly

Happy Birthday my friend.

Great post! One way I keep from getting depressed is that I keep trying to figure out cool new ways to do the things I have trouble doing now that I'm a survivor. Sometimes I get to buy a new toy... and that can be fun. Dave

Great post!

One thing that was so pleasing to me and my wife is that it was our 25 year old daughters idea that we start this. Michele and I look back fondly on the days when family gatherings were highlights of our youth and have felt like the younger generations had no use for that. Sue, I can just close my eyes and imagine the wonderful time you wrote about. What a wonderful mental vacation.

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 Cordon Bleu, cheese tortillini, spinach salad and peach pie with vanilla ice cream. After dinner we played a couple hours of a card game called Skip-Bo. We all had a great time as usual. What a great tradition this is. When I was a little boy. My dads mom would have everybody over for a huge traditional Italian dinner every Sunday after Mass. Growing up it was just something that we did. Now I realize what a labor of love and sacrifice it was for my Grandma and Papa to feed 20 or more relatives every week. She would start shopping and preparing food on Thursday for Sunday dinner. That does not even begin to take into consideration the financial part of it for my grandparents. There is a church at the end of our block that the pastor puts different sayings on a sign out front. This week it says "a good career does not make a good life". My grandfather was a janitor and my grandmother worked on an assembly line making luggage. But they had the best life of any people I know.

Asha I sure do remember you. Michele and I talk and wonder about you all the time. Boy are you right about the economy. All my friends still in the business are not sure about their jobs from day to day. I have resolved to stay more in touch with StrokeNet and the people here. I'll see you around!

Hey, I kind of know how you feel. I don't have a heart condition but I have other problems that require medications that constantly change and keep me sedated and all sorts of other fun stuff. I'm always trying to ride my bike. It seems like every time I get to the point where I'm really enjoying it something flairs up physically and puts me on the sideline or my Rx changes and does the same. Sometimes illness and medicine side affects are the same thing. What a crock of you know what. :Tantrum: One thing I know is Ethyl17 is so right. Make sure you give yourself a pat on the back for what you achieved so far. Take a breath, relax, give yourself a break. Then go back at it the way you got there before. It will come back faster than before, your muscles did not completely forget EVERYTHING. The sense of accomplishment will be just as sweet, maybe sweeter, the next time. Just the fact that you are upset by this setback tells me that you have it in you to do it again. If you didn't, you wouldn't care! Keep us posted along the way. Remember, your first success is just starting again. Another success is going a little further than yesterday. We will all be waiting to read your first success blog entry. I know it will be soon. Dave

Most incredible! You are an inspiration.

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 blogging for quite some time. I went over to Google Blogger and MySpace because of the tools and abilities they have that StrokeNet didn't have. The problem over at the other places is that you get very little input from others (really zero) and no matter what they say there are real security issues. What Steve has done here is taken a rock solid foundation and methodically and consistently built it into a full featured system, lacking nothing, where a person can actually get some feedback. It is obvious all along the way he has kept his users security and privacy paramount in the process.

Hey Fred One of the memories in my life, that has most marked (maybe warped) my mind was when my wife and I were on a cruise 6 years ago. We went snorkeling off a boat from the ship. It was me, my wife and a group of six, sixty something men all at least 40 pounds over weight. You would expect at least fairly modest swimming suits but when they were ready to go into the water they all pealed down to skimpy thongs that looked almost like nothing was there, especially when we were unfortunate enough to get the Full Monty from the backside. My biggest concern changed from watching for jellyfish to making sure I didn't sit on a bench any of them did. I told my wife then and there that if I ever lose my dignity and self esteam to the point I would dress like that, she has my permission to just put one between my eyes and put me out of my misery. Thanks for the "insightful" post. Dave

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 first several bars of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. If a person listens carefully, in a abstract sort of way, I'm sure that at least 2 out of 10 listeners would recognize it as Ode to Joy. I'm even more sure that at least half of all listeners would even recognize some notes and a hint of rhythm. On the serious side it is so cool to actually play something! It has been a long road getting hear but I've had fun and will continue on with my journey in music. As far as the cognitive value of my learning it has been far greater than I expected. To learn to read music, keep time, finger the Recorder etc. has taxed my cognition greater than 100 of the word search and 'follow the instructions' therapies my therapists give me. I still attempt some every day, but to work on the Recorder and then have tangible results is incredibly gratifying. In closing I would like to offer apologies to Ludwig. I promise to do better in time.

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

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 Calculus and Partial Differential Equations. Hey I couldn't do that stuff now anyway but common... give me a break will yah?! Now for the topic of today's post. Awesome Chick and I try to come up with things around the house that I can do that have a detailed set of instructions. That's another thing my therapists are working with me on. It seems all my elementary school teachers were correct and I can't follow instructions. Well the task for the day was a set of instructions from the trusty Home Depot Home Maintenance book. Yep I was to unclog a drain in our bathroom. It went pretty well to start. Things took a turn for the worse when the instructions said do rinse out the trap I had just removed from underneath the clogged sink. Hey it didn't say to NOT rinse the trap in the sink that you just removed the trap from. I got that darn trap clean as a whistle but just about flooded out the cabinet and the rest of the bathroom. So my next assignment was drying out all the stuff from under the sink and letting the wood dry, and hopefully not mold. Details, details, I think those instructions were flawed.

What a wonderful Blog. I love the ICK factor if it is what I think it means. I have a lot of that with my kids, both grown and both loved more than they will ever let me show. It's great that he is there as you struggle to get better.At times I whish one of my kids were here when I sturggle.Dave

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 action, not in-action, gives all of us a chance at the happiness and the freedom we desire. Dietz has helped to ensure that in our great country; people who have ideas or agendas are not required to also have great courage; something Pericles could only dream of. He ensures that people are not required to be heroes simply because they have an idea. Indeed having an idea and getting it heard requires little more courage than to be a bit countercultural. Simple people with no outstanding courage, just ideas, can be heard and make a difference. Danny Dietz helped ensure that. Don't the people who would use a monument to Dannys efforts for their own agenda, see any irony in the fact that they perform their act on the shoulders of Danny Dietz? What they do is almost by virtue of the 'permission' granted to them by Danny and all the others that have gone before him. If this is about eliminating gun violence, which is a truly noble cause, don't desecrate or attempt to whitewash from history the people who have given you the opportunity to speak out. Thank you Danny; that for us to have an idea heard, we don't have to fear the hail of bullets you endured. Thank you Danny that for us to have an idea heard, we don't have to endure the bombs going off that you endured. Thank you Danny that to have an idea heard, we don't have to endure crouching in the dirt in a far off wasteland. Thank you Danny that to have an idea heard, we don't have to witness our friends bloodied and dying around us. Thank you Danny that in order to have an idea heard we don't have to decide between our own lives and the lives of our friends and comrades. Thank you Danny that in order to have an idea heard we don't have to have the courage that you had. I guess, simply, what I'm trying to say to Danny Dietz and those that have gone before him; I offer you my simple, heartfelt, tear filled Thanks, well done and Gods speed.

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 finger with both hands. Previously all notes I've played have been done with just the left hand. I've noticed that repetition, repetition, repetition is the key to remembering my notes and fingering. I also find that if I practice two or three times per day for like 10 minutes it is more productive than one long 30 minute session. The biggest problem I face is that the "interface" between me, the music on the sheet and the fingers on the Recorder is VERY slow. Unfortunately that interface is my damaged brain. To see a note on the staff, recognize what that note is, remember what the fingering for that note is and get my fingers into position is a very very loooooong time. I am fortunate that I come from a VERY musically gifted family. Both of my parents have Bachelors Degrees in Music Theory and my Dad also has a Masters in Childhood Education. He was a teacher for 30 years. Several times I've been stuck on something and asking them gets me unstuck. One idea my dad had that was REALLY helpful was to start out by putting numbers for the number of fingers a note requires to be played below the note on the page. This helped me just concentrate on learning the fingering and I gradually started to recognize the notes and I could do away with the fingering hints. Well I'm off to go practice "my music". Jingle Bells is the next song I get to massacre. :violin: Information about Recorders

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 me between the sweetness and comfort of sleep and the full awareness that he is crawling through the synaptic web within my body; angrily setting nerves on fire. Yesterday Pain performed with such expertise he even struck fear into the heart of his accomplice, Nausea. Even the powerful and debilitating nausea dare not show his face when Pain, is slithering wild and unabated through the nerves of my body. Even Nausea, his dear and close companion dare not tread on the purity of Pains exquisite work. Pain is master, pain is king. Only the Lord of Hosts will he bow down to. Only the Lord of Hosts can turn him to the infinite nothingness that he will one day become when I am free of him. But today, today my sweet Lord, has chosen to allow the demon to run free.