New project

I may have bitten off more than I can chew this time.

We've been keeping an eye on our ex-boss and friend's river front house while they spend the winter in warmer and less rainy places. Joanne moved to Hawaii and then when the volcano fumes got too strong, she came back for a short time, and then went to her brother's home south of San Diego. Laura, her daughter, went to their home in southern France.

Around the first of the year she called and asked if we would oversee the crew that was going to tear down their old dilapidated boat dock. We agreed, and told her that we would take pictures as the work progressed.

When the foreman told us that the wood would be taken to the dump to be disposed of, I asked if they could dump it off at our house instead, so I could saw it up for firewood. They happily agreed and a few days later the first trailer load showed up.

The old Cedar and Fir, rough-sawed timbers and dimensional lumber had been torn apart, loaded on a barge and floated a couple of miles down river to the boat ramp where it was winched on to a 26 foot flat bed trailer and then hauled by truck to our front yard. It was difficult backing the trailer into our driveway, but by stopping traffic on the highway and a lot of back and forthing they managed it.

After I helped throw off the first trailer load the foreman asked me, "There should be at least two more loads like this, are you sure you want it all?"
I looked at the huge pile of soggy, barnacle encrusted, nail infested lumber, swallowed, and said, "Sure, I'll take it!"

Now my work's cut out for me!

Medical Marijuana Test #2

3/11/2009

4:05 am:
Taz growled me awake, I got dressed, put the coffee on and we went outside for our morning pee.

4:15 am:
I got a fire going in the fireplace, poured a cup of coffee and sat down in front of the computer. While it was booting up I realized that it would be a good time to try one of the medical marijuana cookies I'd been given, to see if they would help with my Parkinson's tremors. The marijuana cigarette experiment a few weeks earlier had mostly been a failure.

4:30 am:
I washed the weird tasting chocolate chip cookie down with hot coffee while I was surfing my usual morning web sites.

4:40 am:
Right in the middle of reading the Drudge Report my eyes went out of focus.

4:45 am:
I realized that I'd been staring at the same out of focus article for about five minutes, and that I'd better go lie down. I tried to close down the browser and go off line but I couldn't remember how. I squinted my eyes really hard, concentrated, and managed to find the red X to shut down Firefox. I tried to stand up and almost fell, so I crawled on my hands and knees into the living room and up onto the couch where I started flying through the air. Unfortunately it wasn't that good kind of flying like Superman, it was more like uncontrollable tumbling.

4:47am:
Taz jumped up on my chest and licked my face. My vision cleared enough that I could see the digital clock in the TV stand. I closed my eyes and I was upside down going through bright bands of color, still rolling and tumbling. I didn't want to fight the weird sensations so I tried to relax, but the tremors in my hands increased and some new jerks and tics in my neck and legs started. About fifteen minutes went by before I opened my eyes and looked at the clock.

4:47 am:
How could that be? Now I was floating among the colors, lost in space somewhere. Taz began licking my hand, which usually drives me nuts because it tickles. I tried to move it but I couldn't move anything. I was paralyzed, and I was starting to get sick to my stomach. I concentrated on trying to move and all of a sudden the paralysis was gone, and I was back on my trip. In a little while I opened my eyes again.

4:47 am:
Either the clock had stopped or marijuana has the property of stopping time. Now I was really getting sick, so I struggled to get Taz off of me and stand up. I weaved around and staggered a step or two before I fell to my knees and crawled into the bathroom. I barely made it in time, and although I hadn't eaten anything since lunch the day before, I barfed up a Technicolor nightmare. I remember thinking, I never ate anything like that! I staggered to my feet and wobbled over to the washbasin to wash my face and rinse out my mouth, but before I could start I began retching, and had to kneel before the throne again.

5:00 am:
Using the support of the bathroom fixtures, walls, and furniture I got back to the couch, and shivering, I covered myself with a nearby afghan. The fire was dying down, but I didn't trust myself to mess with it. Taz hopped up to help keep me warm and I sank into a deep sleep.

7:00am:
I was supposed to wake Carol up at 6:00 am, but I was totally zonked out. I remember hearing her stoking the fire and I know she put her hand on my forehead, but when I woke up she was gone on an ambulance run. I alternated between sleeping and throwing up stuff I hadn't eaten the rest of the day.

I think medical marijuana test #2 was also a failure. For the next test, a small piece of cookie?

Late Snow

After a cautious first few steps outside this morning, Taz decided that the white stuff all over everything was fun. First we wrote our names in the snow, and then after I watched him running in circles, jumping in the air and sliding around, I joined him and we ran around the back yard like a couple of little kids for what seemed like a long time to me. (At least it got my heart rate going pretty good.)
It sure is late in the year for snow here. I guess it's because of that damn global warming.