Sunday in D.C.

This morning we got up and had breakfast at the M Street Bar & Grill. It’s located just across the street from the CBS building. While eating, Dianne noticed several camera crews setting up at the CBS building entrance. We didn’t recognize the gentleman who came out the door, but he stopped and answered questions for the reporters. I checked the Face the Nation web site and found out the guy was Daniel Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. That’s our brush with greatness during the trip.

We started out the day at the National Archives. Unlike the movie ‘National Treasure’ where Nicholas Cage just waltzes into the rotunda area to see the Declaration of Independence, we had to go through a rigorous screening where all gum was purged. It was crowded in the document area and dimly lit to protect the documents. Although you could take pictures without a flash, the Constitution and the Declaration were so faded they were difficult to read in person. I could barely see John Hancock’s signature on the Declaration. All in all, I wasn’t too wowed by the experience. The principles the founding fathers put in the documents seem way more important than the faded documents themselves. Interestingly, just outside the rotunda there was one of the four copies of the Magna Carta that was approximately 700 years old and yet was much easier to read. Here is a shot of the National Archives building from across the street in the sculpture garden. Note the person in the red hat.

After visiting the Archives we went to the National Gallery of Art. It is a large museum and there is a lot to see. I enjoyed the Impressionist art (or the lumpy stuff as Dianne likes to say) and the Netherland/German realism art. These schools represent two extremes of realistic, almost photographic representations of still lifes or people and a blurry, overall impression of a subject conveyed as much through color and lighting as in shape. Dianne enjoyed the more contemporary American paintings (Sargent, Homer, etc.) as well as paintings by the Masters like Rembrandt and Durer. Dianne also wanted to check out the special exhibit on Venetian drawings, but they were more watercolor and gouache type media than strictly pen and ink or pencil drawings.

After seeing the indoor art, we went across the street to the sculpture garden. There were a lot of nice flowers and landscaping, a few large sculptures, and a large pond & fountain. People were sitting on the edge of the pond with their feet dangling in the water to cool off. Dianne called it the fountain of feet (see the picture above). One of my favorite sculptures in the garden was that of a large typewriter eraser. Another, which really didn’t photograph well in two dimensions, was a representation of a house which from a long way off followed perfect lines of perspective. However, up close, you noticed the different walls of the house and the roof tilted opposite of the way they would meet at the actual corner of the house. It was like they were inverted from their normal perspective – almost like the house was turned inside out. I thought it was a very clever play on perspective. I also got a picture of Dianne near a sculpture made from concrete cubes showing her counting the blocks like one of the exercises in the Big Brain Academy game. Some of the sculptures were strange – or I guess I wasn’t able to appreciate them. For example, this sculpture was just a metal plate with rounded corners. Go figure!

You can see a collection of photos from the National Gallery and the Sculpture Garden by clicking here for the Flickr group.

After the sculpture garden, we walked to the International Spy Museum. There isn’t any photography allowed in the museum. It covered the basics of becoming a spy and the techniques and gadgets they use as well as many blurbs about spies throughout history. Personally, I liked the gadgets like .22 caliber cigarettes, spy cameras, bugs, etc. It’s a nice museum, but a lot of reading so I’m not sure how well it would be received by kids.

Dianne’s feeling a bit better, but still not eating too much. Surprisingly, she actually asked me to slow down while walking and she didn’t wander away much today.

Saturday in DC

Got up this morning and had breakfast with Dianne – well, I had breakfast while she picked at some fruit. We went back to the room and she fell asleep almost instantly. After an hour or so, she said she still wasn’t feeling well and suggested I should go to the National Air and Space museum on my own. It’s sad she wasn’t feeling well, but I don’t think she was thrilled about going there anyway. I grabbed the Metro just south of Washington Circle and went through the museum. It was fun to see many historic planes and space vehicles. In the main area there is the Spirit of St. Louis, the X-1 Glamorous Glennis, the X-15, and SpaceShip One that recently won the X-prize. Across from these planes on the second floor were other notable planes like the Lockheed Vega (the B model that was similar to the Winnie Mae flown by Wiley Post) used by Amelia Erhardt to fly solo across the Atlantic (~5 years after Lindbergh) and the Lockheed Sirius floatplane used by Charles and Anne Lindbergh to chart great circle routes from the West coast of the US to the far East. Some of the early planes like the Wright Flyer and the Vin Fiz (made the first transcontinental flight) were interesting. Pictures of the Vin Fiz are here and here. I wonder what Vin Fiz tasted like? The story of Cal Rogers and his journey across the US in that plane to win the prize put up by William Randolph Hearst is pretty interesting. I can’t imagine seeing the US that way. The Ole Miss was perched high above the viewing floor. Imagine riding in a plane continuously for about a month! They even had a platform built just behind the radial engine so they could work on it while in flight! It’s amazing what folks did to promote aviation. In that same era were air racing items like the Hughes Racer that set speed records and the Bendix Trophy.

One thing nice about the NASM is not only can you walk around the planes at their level, but you can also view the planes from raised platforms that go around the periphery of many of the rooms. That gives you an interesting view that you don’t get at other museums like the US Air Force Museum in Dayton. An example is this picture of an ME-109 – a German WWII era fighter. You can see other pictures from my visit to the NASM by clicking here for the Flickr group.

It was very hot in DC today (upper 80’s) and very humid. I walked over to the reflecting pool in front of Capitol Hill and felt like jumping in the water to cool off. On the way home, I stopped at a 7-11 store to get some liquids and meds for Dianne. She looked pretty pale, complained about being cold, and felt pretty hot. She’s not having a great vacation so far. Hopefully she’ll get back on feet tomorrow. I think I’ll be eating dinner by myself again tonight.

Friday in Washington, DC

We made it to Washington yesterday afternoon. The flight was smooth except for the descent into DC. There was some turbulence going through the cloud layers and the pilots were working to fly the approach the whole way.

After checking into our hotel, we went to the National Natural History museum as they have summer hours that extend later in the day. We spent a good 3+ hours walking around. It is a nice museum with lots of different exhibits including dinosaurs, fossils, skeletons, minerals & gems, etc. A lot of the fossils in the dinosaur area came from Ohio. Some were similar to those you see around the Caeser's Creek park area near Waynesville, OH. I enjoyed looking at the skeletons of creatures both extinct and those around today. It was interesting to see things side-by-side through the ages to get a picture of evolution. One of the best presentations of that we saw was an exhibit comparing horse skulls and forelimbs through the ages. Click here for a picture of Dianne at the exhibit. At the right is a picture of Dianne standing under a set of shark jaws from millions of years ago. If you look at the wall, you'll see a white outline that was projected on the wall to depict the body of the shark around those jaws. It was large! Click here for a close up picture of the jaw. Just above Dianne’s head and a bit behind the large jaws, you’ll see a smaller set of shark jaws from a recent great white shark. Quite a difference in size! We didn't spend a lot of time in the gem and mineral area, but we did see the Hope diamond and I took this picture for Eric. From top to bottom that collection of crystals was at least 4 feet high.

We also walked to the main building of the Smithsonian. Around the south side of the building (away from the Mall) is an extensive rooftop garden. Here is a picture of Dianne sitting in one section of the garden area. While sitting at the garden, Dianne mentioned she was tired and wasn’t feeling the best. I thought it was because we didn’t get much sleep Thursday evening and we hadn’t had anything to eat since having a light brunch. We jumped on the Metro and found our way back to the hotel. She didn’t feel like dinner, so I ate by myself in the hotel. Unfortunately, she is fighting some type of GI bug and isn’t feeling well at all. Check out her blog entry. Finally, all the Friday pics are collected in a group here.

We Cut the Umbilical Cord

We took the plunge a couple weeks ago and got rid of our traditional landline telephone. Our home phone number was transferred to my cell phone, so I’m carrying around the “home” telephone. With the evolution of cellular phone plans that include long distance calling, we weren’t using our home telephone much – except to talk to local telemarketers. The primary use of our landline was high speed internet access. We moved our internet access to our cable television line. With the change in internet access, it didn’t make sense to keep paying for the landline. Nevertheless, it seems odd not having the connection. I grew up with landline telephones that were all corded, so it seems strange not to have one. I still walk in the door every day after work and glance at the answering machine to see if we received any messages. Old habits die hard.

I was lucky growing up – for many reasons. My mother worked for the telephone company so we had quite a few of the latest and greatest phone models. I remember thinking a Trimline phone was so cool in that you didn’t have to stand by the base to dial the phone – when you actually had to move your finger in a circular motion to dial the phone. You could dial in the palm of your hand. Touch tone service was even more amazing. Forget all that dialing and having to start over when your finger slipped. We also had the large, four prong jacks installed all over the house so we could move phones around as needed. And then there was the occasional “conference call”, usually when talking long distance to relatives, made by picking up secondary extensions after the main contact was made. But even with all this ‘fancy’ equipment, I still relied on my brain’s memory to store frequently called numbers. Otherwise I had to pull out a paper book to look up numbers.

How things have changed as the equipment has improved. Speed dialing or voice commands make calling so simple it’s rare to touchtone out a number and it’s sometimes hard to remember numbers I’ve entered in my contact list. Even basic cell phones have a speaker mode to facilitate simple conference calls like we used to do with multiple extensions. We decided on the LG VX9800 for our cell phone. It has a full qwerty keyboard built in that makes text messaging a snap! I can also check the news headlines and watch video clips of news stories.

I wonder how long it will take me to stop looking at our old answering machine when I come home.

Friday Activities

Friday was a busy day for us. We started out looking for Da Kine Bail Bonds. All the fans of Dog the Bounty Hunter will recognize that business. If not a fan, you can read a bit about him here. Dianne snapped a picture of me out front. Unfortunately, no one was in the office. The white board had pictures of two people taped to it and written below them inside a heart was “Leland’s most wanted”. My theory is they were out tracking someone down. The office is much smaller than it appears on TV. Dianne was glad they were closed so I couldn’t get a Dog T-shirt. In case you want to find them, they are close to the state capitol area on Queen Emma street.

After that we had lunch at Grace’s. It’s one of Dean’s favorites, but a familiar spot for Dianne as well.

We drove up through the Nuuanu area and saw several temples. We stopped at one to look around and you can see several pictures here. There were many offerings of cut flowers and plates of apples and oranges. There were several altars where incense was burning. In one of the buildings behind the main temple, there were some folks saying a chant. It was very pretty, but I don’t know anything about the Buddhist temples.

We continued by going up the Pali highway and stopping at the lookout point. It’s near the ridge of the Koolau mountain range at about 3000 feet overlooking the windward side of the island. It’s near the spot where King Kamehameha drove his rivals over the cliffs in his quest to “unite” the islands. The picture here gives a sense for the steep cliff. The set of pictures here shows some of the view. It was a bit cloudy and extremely windy when we were up there. You can read more about the Pali here. Fortunately we were there during the day so we didn’t have to worry about the Night Marchers (or as I like to call them, the Midnight Stalkers).

After going over the mountains, we followed the highway north along the windward side to go to the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC). We stopped and got a couple pictures of a windward beach that you can see here and here. The PCC has areas set up for many different South Pacific islands. In each area, they have historical buildings representative of the island and have programs or craft exhibits conducted by people with a connection to that island. We visited the areas for Hawaii, Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. It’s one of Oahu’s top tourist destinations, so it wasn’t number 1 on Dianne’s list of places to see. But it is an interesting spot and we hadn’t been there since we were married. I thought it was nice and there are several pictures here. The day at PCC was capped off with a buffet dinner and an evening show highlighting song and dance from each of the islands. Thanks to Milton for arranging tickets for us.

Dinner at KCC

Tonight we went to dinner at the Kapiolani Community College Culinary Institute with Milton, Carol, Michelle, Marc, Taylor, and Grandma Tong. The restaurant is a proving ground for the students in the culinary program. The presentations of all the food were wonderful and everything tasted good -- although in true Top Chef fashion, there was a lot of analysis of the flavors. We had a nice appetizer of brie cheese baked in a phylo dough pastry with a fig and fruit sauce. The house salad was mixed greens stuffed inside a hollowed out tomato with wax beans, green beans, and sliced avocado on the side. I had a grilled pork loin with an onion sauce as my main entre. Dessert was a pear tart with a frangipan glaze and ice cream. It was a very nice dinner. I took a couple camera phone pictures of the main dish (at left) and a spring roll appetizer that you can see here.

Hawaii's North Shore

Dianne, Michelle, and I drove up to the North Shore of Oahu to go to the beach. We found a spot just a little north of Haleiwa town that was very nice. I took a few additional photos that you can see here. I stayed in the shade to avoid looking like a lobster. Dianne and Michelle both fell asleep in the sun.

Afterwards, we went to Kaneohe to do some laundry and relax by the pool. In the evening, we met Milton, Carol, Taylor, Marc, Paige, Jacob, and Madison for dinner at Pah Ke's in Kaneohe. It's a great Chinese place that we've been to several times before. All the dishes were very good -- but the salt/pepper shrimp, the taro duck, and the lettuce wraps were the favorites.

Diamond Head State Monument

On Tuesday, Dianne and I drove to the Diamond Head State Monument. It’s an area inside the Diamond Head Crater where you can park and then hike up a trail to the rim of the crater where an old fire control station (i.e. gunfire from shore batteries – not forest fires) has been turned into a public lookout. The brochure we got mentioned observers here not only controlled fire from artillery batteries at Diamond Head, but also the artillery at Fort DeRussy where we visited the Army Museum (see my earlier post). Because it’s up so high, you have a wonderful view of Waikiki and downtown Honolulu as well as the southeast shore of the island. You can see a few of the photos we took here. It was pretty warm when we were hiking up and there wasn’t much of a breeze inside the crater. Once we got to the rim, the breeze helps cool you off. The view made the hike worth it. It’s worth the hike, but take plenty of water.

Afterwards, we went to the Waiola shave ice store to help cool off. It's the first review when you scroll down that site. It really is the best shaved ice on the planet.

Hawaii Update 2

On Sunday morning, Dianne and I drove to the Sand Island Beach park. You can see a photo of the beach park here. It isn’t the nicest beach for swimming, it’s in an industrial area, and there are several “campsites” that appeared to be groups of homeless people. Nevertheless, it was very pretty and we got to see some tugboats taking in a barge that was full of shipping containers.

In the afternoon we met Carol and Michelle at the Taste of Honolulu. It isn’t as large as the taste of Cincinnati, but there were many bands and a lot of different types of food to try. It was very hot and there wasn’t much of a breeze. Before going inside, we looked around the civic center and got some pictures of Father Damien, me and the Queen, the Iolani palace, King Kamehameha, etc. Take a look at all the pictures in the group here.

On Sunday evening, Milton arranged for us to see the performance of Cirque Hawaii. It’s a smaller scale version of the Cirque du Soleil shows in Las Vegas, but there are some amazing acrobats with great athletic ability! I enjoyed the show. Afterwards the family went to a very nice Chinese restaurant near the theater.

We're on Oahu

It was a long flight, but after about 10 hours we made it to Hawaii on Thursday afternoon. The flight was uneventful.

On Thursday evening, we went with Milton & Carol, Taylor, Marc, Paige, Jacob, and Madison for dinner at Irifune. It’s a good local spot that you can read about here and here.

Friday morning we got up early since we weren’t quite adjusted to the time change. We went to the market near Grandma Tong’s place that has the best manapua spot around. It’s a favorite of mine and since we got up early, they were still warm when we got there. Here is a picture of one of the buns. Manapua is a Chinese barbequed pork (char siu) that is stuffed inside a slightly sweet dough and then either steamed or baked. The pork at this place is minced so it’s very easy to eat. After breakfast, we visited with Grandma Tong. She’s getting a new, bamboo floor put in her living room so much of the furniture was moved in preparation for the work.

After our visit, we walked around the Ala Moana shopping center and then went to the beach park near there.


On Saturday we walked around Waikiki, looking at the various shops and the International Market place. I got a good picture of Dianne near one of the statues. We also saw the statue of queen Lili’uokalani that had several leis placed on it. You can read about her here and here.

After taking a quick peek at the west end of the Waikiki beach, we went to the US Army Museum at Fort DeRussy Park. It’s a small, but nice museum that is inside the Battery Randolph that was used to guard the coast. They had two, 14 inch guns as the main artillery for the battery. They said when those guns were fired, some of the windows in Waikiki cracked and many of the surrounding buildings rattled. You can learn more about the museum here and here. I took a couple pictures of a WWII era US and Japanese tanks outside the museum. The museum has a lot of history about the attack on Pearl Harbor and the 100^th battalion composed of Americans of Japanese Ancestry. There is a lot of info about the battalion on the web including the sites here and here.

Saturday evening we went to Kurt and Tracy’s wedding that was held at the Halekulani hotel. It is a very nice hotel on the west end of Waikiki that has a garden courtyard in between two main towers of rooms. The wedding was held in the courtyard. After the ceremony, a reception was held in the ballroom. The food was wonderful and there was a nice program for the reception. One of the highlights of the reception for me was the Chinese Lion dance. Since both Kurt and Tracy are half Chinese, they included this dance as part of the reception. I was not aware of the tradition and there is a nice explanation here. There were two lions with the traditional drum, gong, and cymbal. It was a nice performance that will assure lots of good luck for them.

Pepsi and Mentos

Pat had an interesting 'fun with science' post that had a link to a website showing what can happen when you mix Pepsi and Mentos (the fresh maker). A couple weeks ago on VH1, I was watching a show called Web Junk 20 that highlights various viral items circulating on the web. One of the items was this video that investigates what happens when a girl tries to reproduce the mentos fountain in her stomach. I thought it was hilarious!

Cincinnati Roller Girls

While growing up, one of the most entertaining sports to watch on TV was professional wrestling. My Dad took me to a professional wrestling match (the AWA) as a kid and I went to a couple during graduate school when the WWF was coming of age and Hulk Hogan was on top. It was fun to see some of the wrestlers live -- Mad Dog Vachan, the Crusher, Andre the Giant, and Hulk Hogan to name a few. I still watch Hogan Knows Best on the VH1 network.

Right behind professional wrestling was Roller Derby. Basically it was like wrestling on roller skates. A lot of posturing, yelling, fighting, and hard hitting action. Unfortunately, the revival of the roller derby teams in the 70s didn’t last long. However, teams are sprouting up again around the country. Last year, the A&E network had a series called Rollergirls that followed teams in the Texas roller derby league. That was an interesting show, although the roller derby matches themselves were slightly different since it was all women. I don’t know if A&E is going to have a second season of the show.

I was pleasantly surprised to see on the Cincinnati Enquirer site that a flat track roller derby team is starting up in Cincinnati! You can read the Roller Derby Diva’s blog about the start up here. They are having there first public scrimmage in July and their first match in August. That has potential for good local entertainment.

Krohn Conservatory & Butterfly Show

I took the day off yesterday since I had a follow-up with the orthopedist for my shoulder and physical therapy later in the day. In between I went to the Krohn Conservatory for the annual butterfly show. I thought a weekday would be a good time to go since kids are in school. With fewer people I hoped to have an easier time getting some photos with the new camera. Boy was that a bad assumption! I got there about a half-hour after opening and there were two school buses parked outside. It didn't occur to me that schools would have field trips to the conservatory this time of year. There were kids running around all over the place! There were also a lot of moms with kids and/or strollers taking in the exhibit. It was pretty crowded, but I got some good shots anyway.

Since it was a cloudy day, they gave passes for a return visit since the butterflies aren't as active when it is cloudy. However, there were many flying around. They also had a couple volunteers brushing some type of nectar on your hands so the butterflies would land on you. A lot of people had butterflies landing on their hands. The kids eyes really light up when they "catch" a butterfly that way. This year they had a lot of butterflies from Australia and some were quite large! I collected the best of my butterfly photos in a Flickr set you can see here.

I also went through the other non-butterfly rooms to get some plant and flower photos. It was cloudy and so the light wasn't the best. Nevertheless, I got some nice shots in the orchid room. Even though the light was flat, I think the flowers look better in the natural light rather than with a flash. The flower and plant photos are in a Flickr pool here.

Spotback

With the blog explosion on the web, it's hard to keep up with all the things posted on even selected blogs. I am a big believer in Bloglines, but I've had trouble with that site in some browsers so I'm not able to keep up on my reading. Also, although many stories propogate through the blogosphere so you'll likely see them on some popular sites, the problem with a site like Bloglines is your focus may limit exposure and you might miss something of interest. Because of these limitations I started looking for alternatives.

I recently signed up for a free account at Spotback (now in Beta). It's a news aggregator of sorts that has more of the feel of a newspaper. Stories are organized in categories like general news, technology, science, sports, etc. As you browse through the headlines and read stories, you can rate the stories. The software uses your ratings to customize which stories appear on your page. So rather than signing up for a particular feed, you're being fed stories in categories that match your interests.

I'm curious if others have tried this site or similar services. I have only started making ratings, but it didn't take long for stories to show up from some familiar sites like BoingBoing, MAKE magazine, and others. Hopefully as the number of ratings increases, the story selection will improve.

Dream Dinners Session

Thanks again to Kyle and Tresha for giving us a sneak preview to Dream Dinners. Dianne had a post about it here. On Friday evening, I had our first true session where I assembled the ingredients for 6 different dinners. It wasn't too bad, although I was on the slow side. I'm rationalizing it because I split 4 of the entrees into two separate portions so we wouldn't be having leftovers for days and days. The most difficult entree was the chicken crepes. That took awhile to make the filling, fill and roll the crepes, and make the sauce for the top. When I was done, I was glad we had picked that item as that is never something I would have tried making at home on my own. It would have been too much work to assemble all the ingredients and make the crepes itself before doing the assembly.

Dianne stopped in to help me load up the car when done. I still can't lift much with my left arm. She got there early so she went to the neighboring GameStop to look around and then she played with her DS in the Dream Dinners waiting area until I was done.

On Saturday, we had the oven baked almond chicken -- scroll down here and you can click on the description. I thought it was really good. I think it'll work out well having some Dream Dinner items on hand.

New 7 Wonders

A Swiss based group called the "New7Wonders Foundation" is sponsoring a global vote to select a new set of 7 wonders of the world. Apparently there was a list of 77 nominees that was narrowed down to 21 candidates at the beginning of this year. You have plenty of time to review the candidates and make your vote. The final selection will be announced on 7/7/07 (I wonder if the announcement will be at 7:07 and 7 seconds on the morning?).

Personally, I don't understand all the nominees. Some are clear: the Great Wall and the pyramids at Giza. Clearly they seem like worthy candidates. I'm curious about the other nominees that didn't make the final set. I can't help but think there are significant structures that should have made the list ahead of some of these (e.g. the Statue of Liberty). But, since I didn't vote for the finalists I guess I should be quiet.

You can become a free member of the N7W foundation and place your 7 votes. You can also buy votes by purchasing a certificate for a site or sites. The proceeds go to funding the voting as well as providing money to restore or preserve historical structures (50% of money earmarked for preservation work). Thanks to Michael at the Neverending Rainbow for pointing out this site.

140 out of 145

After my fall in January, my left shoulder strength and mobility were very poor. At first I could barely raise my arm forward like you’d reach for a doorknob. Initially the orthopedist wanted to wait for the bone to heal before starting physical therapy. Obviously he didn’t want me using the arm for anything due to the risk for an additional fracture. However, he didn’t want to immobilize the arm in a sling or cast as that would increase the likelihood of a “frozen shoulder.” A frozen shoulder refers to limited muscle function caused by muscle adhesions that form during muscle healing. If the arm and shoulder aren’t being used, these adhesions limit the range of motion for the muscle.

Unfortunately due to a delay in PT approval, I was starting to stiffen up when I saw the orthopedist in March. He wanted me to focus on improving my range of motion by working through the pain associated with stretching the muscles. He gave me until the end of April to get my arm straight up above my head using a forward arc style windmill motion (like the first flexion pictures here except while standing). I was also limited in my ability to move my wrist outward while my arm was bent 90 degrees with my elbow staying at my side (like the shoulder external rotation picture here – but with your elbow at your side).

If traditional physical therapy doesn’t work, the alternative to restore motion in a frozen shoulder is manipulation under anesthesia (MUA). In short, they put you out and yank your arm around to break up the adhesions. Needless to say, it’s painful after you wake up. That was my motivation.

Some of the therapy sessions were painful when they were stretching those arm and shoulder muscles. Progress was slow, but I could sense improvement. They’d measure the range and see improvement, but it wasn’t close to expectations. Dianne was watching me stretch one night and I asked if my external rotation was improved. She looked puzzled and asked me to show her with my good arm. I could rotate out about 35 degrees whereas she had an almost 90 degree range! By the way, I now call her Mr. Fantastic when she shows off her shoulder movement. I shared this story with my physical therapist and she measured my “good” side and found I could only rotate my straight arm up forward about 145 degrees whereas 180 is standard. She said typically after injuries, people get within 10% of the range in their good arm. That gave me hope.

Besides intense stretching during physical therapy, my therapist also added exercises to start building strength. They were mild so as not to cause further fracture, but I think that helped stabilize the joint and aid the range of motion. Last Wednesday the therapist made measurements again for the orthopedic progress report. Raising my arm up I was 140 degrees compared to 145 on the right. An improvement from about 30 degrees when first measured. Rotating out, I was 25 degrees versus 35 on the right. Again, a big improvement from the -5 degrees I started with. Yes, the muscle was actually pulling my left arm in 5 degrees to the right so I couldn’t hold it straight ahead when the arm was bent 90 degrees (as if typing).

The question is would this be enough to satisfy the orthopedist? I was nervous about my follow-up last Friday. I really didn’t want to face a MUA. I got up early and got my shoulder warmed up and stretched out for my visit. Although he said I still have work to do, he was pleased with the range of motion. He also took x-rays which showed the bone is healing nicely – although there is still some remodeling that will take several weeks. Now that he’s sure the bone is getting stronger, he wants me to focus on building strength while still doing stretching.
A quick slip on the ice has caused a lot of difficulty. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if some early but gentle, passive manipulation that wouldn’t have risked further fracture would have minimized the range of motion issues I’m working through. While the healing is slow, it’s amazing how your body can repair itself.

Bunny Movies

We don't subscribe to the Starz network, but I love the 30 second bunny movie parodies that they have available online. The latest is for the first Rocky movie. They also have one for Brokeback Mountain which is pretty funny. There is an index for these and more here.

Flying Through the Aisles

Looking through Flickr photos, I ran across this shot [NOTE: Photo removed 26 February 07] by carlosluis that I thought was hilarious. He has a series of shots showing his son Vincent in grocery shopping carts. I thought this one having the illusion of speed was the best. The eyes, the hat, and the arms just bring it all together. He has a lot of other great photos of his kids, hummingbirds, flowers, etc. A very nice collection.

Films From National Archive

Google Video has more than 100 films from the National Archive available for viewing or downloading. Here is a link to a few from the Department of the Interior. There are several WWII documentaries and a few films about space flight. There are a lot of interesting films -- some that remind me of films I saw in grade school. I watched a documentary about the making of Boulder Dam (warning -- a huge download for a 30 minute film). There are some interesting shots covering the whole process from diversion of the river through to the finished dam. Having visited Boulder Dam a couple years ago, I was astounded by the construction feat as well as the conditions the workers had to endure. It was really hot when we were visiting. I can't imagine establishing the infrastructure necessary to build a dam under those conditions.

I'm sure by now there is a lot of trash on Google Video. However, it's nice that films like these are available on the web for a wide audience.