Family?

Recently I joined a group of Parkinson's patients to have my DNA sequenced. Normally this costs $299.00, but thanks to funding from the co-founder of Google, Sergei Brin, we were only charged $25.00. The purpose is to find if there are any common genetic markers in Parkinson's sufferers.
I received what they delicately labeled a "spit kit" in the mail, drooled into it and sent it off by Fed Express to" 23 and Me," a genetics lab. About a month later my results came back.

I found that my genes show that my Parkinson's wasn't inherited, so I probably acquired it by inhaling bug spray or laquer thinner or God knows what else over the last 70 years. Along with scads of data, there was a section on maternal and paternal chromosomes and family prehistory. It seems that mom's side of my DNA shows a pretty common group of Europeans originating in Scandinavia. However, when I looked at the paternal, Y Chromosome side I found this:

Haplogroup R1b1c9

Your Y chromosome DNA determines your paternal haplogroup.

Today R1b1c9 is found mostly on the fringes of the North Sea in England, Germany and the Netherlands, where it reaches levels of one-third. That distribution suggests that some of the first men to bear the haplogroup in their Y-chromosomes were residents of Doggerland, a real-life Atlantis that was swallowed up by rising seas in the millennia following the Ice Age.

Doggerland was a low-lying region of forests and wetlands that must have been rich in game; today, fishing trawlers in the North Sea occasionally dredge up the bones and tusks of the Mastodons that roamed there. Doggerland had its heyday between about 12,000 years ago, when the Ice Age climate began to ameliorate, and 9,000 years ago, when the meltwaters of the gradually retreating glaciers caused sea levels to rise, drowning the hunter's paradise. Doggerland's inhabitants retreated to the higher ground that is now the North Sea coast.

Dogger what? The lost continent of Doglantis? Truly, I could never have dreamed up a weirder family history.

JC's Awning

After our first Three Stooges attempt at installing an RV awning on the side of JC's mobile home, we sat back, sipped a little wine and slowly came up with several new plans of attack.
Then lo and behold one day when I walked up for my daily visit, there it was in all its glory!
JC had won the battle single handed!
Since then we've spent many enjoyable hours sitting on his deck protected from the rain and sometimes even the sun!

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.

The Old Deer Head

Early the other morning, watching CNN with Taz stretched out upside down beside me on our favorite overstuffed chair, a piece of firewood fell from the stack beside the fireplace. Taz jerked awake, growled, looked around and started barking at the deer head hanging above the fireplace.

It took 5 minutes of petting and shushing to quiet him down. He just knew that damn deer had knocked over the piece of firewood, and he wasn't about to let it get away with it. He's been suspicious of it ever since he was a puppy, when he first noticed it up on the wall looking down at him.

For quite a while after the firewood incident, any strange noise would result in Taz instantly looking up at the deer head first to make sure it wasn't responsible. That's when I started thinking about how long that old deer head has been with us.

I shot the deer in October of 1958 just a few miles from our ranch in the Colorado foothills. It was on a steep, rocky hillside and when I tried to turn the big buck over to dress it out, the deer, my rifle and I slid, tumbled and rolled down the hill in a cloud of dust and rocks. When I untangled myself at the bottom I discovered that one of it's antlers had poked an inch-deep hole in the inside of my thigh. I was going to the Colorado School of Trades at the time to learn gunsmithing, and I had entered a big buck contest at the start of deer season. All of the entrants were officially measured using Boone and Crockett rules and my buck had a high enough score to make the record book and win the $50.00 first prize. Dad and I took it to Jonas Brothers in Denver to get it mounted.

The next time I saw it was in 1960 after I had moved to Las Vegas and opened a gunsmith shop with Cecil Fredi. Mom and Dad came to Vegas to visit and brought the deer head with them. We hung it on the gun shop wall where it gathered compliments from celebrities like Red Skelton and Brook Benton, and former Cleveland mobster turned Desert Inn owner, Moe Dalitz.

After Carol and I met in Vegas and then moved back to Colorado to get married, the deer head was with us, overlooking our family in a house in Golden and then back to the ranch where it had started from. When we sold the ranch house in 1973 and bought a campground in Cottonwood, Arizona, it hung on the office wall watching over us.

We sold the campground several years later, and the deer head was back in Las Vegas again, hanging in my brother's living room while we took a three year vacation traveling around the country in our travel trailer.

When we finally settled down again on the Oregon coast, our youngest son, Rick and I drove down to Vegas to get some things we had left with my brother including the deer head. On the way back my brother was driving when a Nevada highway patrol car pulled us over. Instead of asking, “Can I see your driver's license?” the officer asked for my brother's hunting license!

For a while there was total confusion until we realized that the tarp had blown back on the rental trailer we were towing and the deer head was exposed. After a few thumps on the deer's hollow head we were allowed to go. “He didn't even check your driver's license!” I told my brother.

“That's good, because I don't have one!” he answered.

For fifty years the old deer head has been a part of our family, getting petted by little kids, (visitors and family,) festooned with silly decorations and hats, but stoically watching over happy times and sad times, birthdays and holidays, births and deaths.

The great experiment

I made up my mind some time ago that if the occasion arose, I'd do a small experiment and see if marijuana would have any effect on my Parkinson's symptoms. A few days ago I got the chance to share a “joint” at our barbecue. It was the first marijuana I'd smoked in over 20 years and I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

Much to the amusement of JC, after deeply inhaling I started coughing and hacking. My eyes were watering, and I coughed some more until finally I stopped long enough to take another drag. The whole coughing and crying thing started all over again and I waved off the offer of another puff.

I didn't know if two puffs were enough to have much effect, but I carefully watched the tremors in my left hand as the high began.

I definitely had inhaled enough to get high, but the tremors remained. I tried stamping my left foot in a steady rhythm, but there was no improvement; still just as spastic as before. About an hour later, disappointed and still coughing, when asked if I'd like to try it again, I answered “No thanks, I'm trying to quit!”

I thought the experiment was over and a failure, until the next morning when I said “Good morning!” to my dependable, 4:am, alarm clock dog, Taz. The loudness and tone of my voice startled us both. My voice lately sounds more like a whisper than anything else, so something had definitely changed for the better. Was it all of the coughing I'd done, the marijuana, or both? Over the next day I gradually resumed talking in my Muhammad Ali voice again, but I think that the results call for another experiment, maybe something with less smoke like... cookies?

Bad Cook

I'll have to admit it - I'm a terrible cook! Thank God I married Carol, because she knows her way around the kitchen. If I had remained a bachelor I'd probably weigh about 70 pounds by now, refusing to eat my own lousy cooking, or maybe 700 pounds if I ate the greasy stuff.

I've been banned for life from contributing to our weekly barbecues. JC and Kelly both cook when we're at their house, but when we're at our house all I'm allowed to do is start the charcoal, pour the wine and take out the garbage. Carol does the rest.

The exception is breakfast. Since our dog Taz and I are early risers, I almost always make my own breakfast.

I think a person can learn anything, especially if the threat of pain and fire extinguishers is involved, so over the years, after experiencing many disasters, I've learned how to cook one meal with decent results. Of course, since I'm the only one who eats it, you'll have to take my word for it. (Taz does get to lick my plate when I'm done, (for a dishwasher pre-rinse) and he seems to like it OK.)

Here are some of my favorite breakfast recipes:

High fiber microwaved bacon

Take two pieces of extra fat bacon, lay them on two layers of paper towels on two paper plates. Cover with another layer of paper towel. Microwave on high for three and a half or four minutes. (If the paper plate catches on fire, cut down cooking time.) When done correctly the bacon should look and taste like high quality pork rinds, only blacker. In fact if you're out of bacon, pork rinds can be substituted. If the bacon sticks to the paper towels, which it usually does, peel off what you can and don't worry about the rest. (This is where the high fiber comes from!) Enjoy!

Sunny side up Wal-mart eggs

If Wal-mart eggs are unavailable, other eggs can be substituted. Spray egg pan with Wal-mart cooking spray, making sure that the pan is well greased. Crack two eggs into a pan pre-heated to medium temp, and fish out the small pieces of eggshell with a larger piece. Fish that piece out with your fingers and run cold water on them to prevent blisters. Cover the eggs with a lid to steam them to a runny perfection.

Alaska White Baked Potato

Put one medium size Alaska White potato in the microwave set on high for six minutes. (No other kind of potato will do.) Through experience I have learned to poke holes in the potato with a fork so it doesn't explode. (If you poke the holes just right, the escaping steam will make the potato self rotate!) If it does explode, see the recipe for Alaska White Hash Browns below. When it's done, mash it with a fork, season with Dollar Store freshly ground pepper, and sea salt, then smother it with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and Blue Cheese Dressing. Bon Apetite!

Alaska White Hash Browns

Grate a medium sized Alaska White Potato. ( No other kind of potato will do.) Be careful of your fingers on the grater, (but really, you can't see the blood when the potatoes are browned.) Drop the grated potato into a hot cast iron skillet greased with Wal-mart cooking spray. When one side is brown flip with a spatula, being careful to keep most of the hash browns in the skillet. Season with freshly ground Dollar Store sea salt and pepper, add a dollop of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, and when the second side is browned to perfection, serve!

Le Petomane Bean Pancakes

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This recipe has been censored in the public interest by the FDA and the Department of Homeland Security.

Late Christmas Present

The New TV

Our old big screen TV that we got from Radio Shack about 7 years ago started acting up last month. JC is a whiz at fixing TV's so he printed out some pages from the service manual CD, tweaked the settings and cured the dim picture and several other problems. But after he left, a black horizontal bar appeared that bounced the picture up and down like a Parkinson's patient on a “Magic Fingers” motel bed.

We put up with it for a while and even began to get used to it, until Carol started complaining of headaches and I gave up trying to time my tremors with the bounces. JC wasn't sure what it would take to fix it, and Radio Shack wanted a hundred bucks just to come and look at it, so we finally decided that it was time for a new TV. If JC could fix the old one we'd give it to one of the kids.

“Since we can't figure out what to get each other for Christmas, let's get something that we both can enjoy!” I said, rationalizing my hopes for a really big screen TV.

“After all,” I said, “What else is there to do in the winter time except watch the boob tube?”

I went on line and found a 65 Inch Mitsubishi on sale at Amazon dot com with free shipping, and best of all it was bigger than JC's!

After some trepidation, and discussion with the boss, I went ahead and ordered it. Amazon confirmed the order and gave us a tracking number to watch its progress as it traveled by truck from Lewisberry PA to Harrisburg PA, to Columbus Ohio, by air to Sacramento, then to PDX in Portland and finally by truck, hopefully to its new home.

Its journey started on December 23^rd and it was supposed to end here on January 5th. That gave me enough time to build a stand to set it on. Amazon wanted $400.00 for one and I figured I could build one just as good, if not better, for less than $50.00. I picked up a piece of high density particle board at the lumber yard and went to work.

After a lot of sawing, cussing, screwing, gluing, nailing, more cussing and sanding I had a TV stand that was ready to paint. I bought a quart of flat black enamel and a roller at Ace Hardware and commenced to paint not only the stand, but both of my hands and just about everything else in close proximity. I cleaned up by throwing the roller and brush away and taking a shower.

I was disappointed the next morning when I went out to the work shop to view my handiwork. The flat black was just too...flat. I hurried down to Ace, picked up a quart of black semi-gloss, another brush and roller and went to work. When it dried I was disappointed again, in my rush I'd picked the wrong color, stupidly thinking there was only one color of black, I'd picked “India Ink Black” instead of “Ace Of Spades Black” and now it was too... India Inky?

And so, back to the hardware store where I carefully picked out a can of “Ace Of Spades Black” satin, (they were out of semi-gloss,) and another roller. (I'd at least cleaned the brush!) The third try proved to be the charm, and the well-painted TV stand was finished. Total cost – particle board $27.00, paint and rollers - $42.00.

I set the stand up in the living room and filled the lower part with two tower speakers, a Hi Def DVD player, surround sound amp, video recorder and a center speaker. We carried in a small, (25”) but heavy, TV from the bedroom and put it on top to try it out and to give us something to watch until the new set arrived. Unfortunately the whole conglomeration was so heavy it was almost impossible to slide across the carpet.

A trip to Wal-Mart solved the problem with a package of furniture glides which I glued and screwed to the bottom, and I was finished just in time for the new TV!

On the next morning, Jan 5^th, I called the trucking company to find out what time the TV would be delivered. When the secretary said, “Uh, Mr. Cleland, there's a problem, let me put the dispatcher on. Great, I thought, it's probably not going to get here today. A man's voice came on the phone. “Your TV was at our loading dock in Lincoln City last night and someone broke into the truck and stole it along with two cases of Nike tennis shoes!

It had traveled all the way from Pennsylvania and got swiped 60 miles from it's destination!

I spent the rest of the day on the phone with Visa to get the payment stopped, with Amazon where I talked to an Asian lady who's English was so bad I could barely understand her, and with several of the trucking companies that had handled it. Two days later Amazon reordered the TV, I lifted the dispute from our credit card and another TV was on its merry way across the country.

The new tracking number supplied by the trucking company showed a now familiar route; Harrisburg Pennsylvania, Columbus Ohio, Sacramento California, and then PDX in Portland on January 13th.

The trucking company called the next day to get directions and an hour later we had our new TV. It took me all afternoon to figure out how to operate the electronic gizmos, bells and whistles, but it has a beautiful picture, and its bigger than JC's!

Chewy 1993-2009

Chewy was a tiny runt in a large litter of Lhasa Apso puppies. The couple who gave him to us called him “Chip” because he was literally the size of a chipmunk. We changed his name to Chewy because of his fondness for gently chewing on our fingers, but our grandson Austin called him “Choo Choo” I guess because our black lab was named “Boom Boom.” As soon as Austin came in the front door he'd yell, “Choo Choo and Boom Boom!” and head for the back yard to play with the dogs.

Chewy was a friend and companion to us, our kids and our grandkids.