2009 - The Year In Review

Today is the last day of that year...and what an unforgettable year it was for a lot of us.

We lost a great deal of good people this year...too many.

As we embark together on the journey that is to become the year 2010, please take a moment with me to think about what these people gave us during their lives.

Here, in no particular order, is only a partial list of who we lost:

-Michael Jackson-

-Farrah Fawcett-

-Patrick Swayze-

-Brittany Murphy-

-John Hughes-

-Natasha Richardson-

-Ron Silver-

-Bea Arthur-

-David Carradine-

-Karl Malden-

-Ed McMahon-

-Dom DeLuise-

-Ricardo Montalban-

-Walter Cronkite-

-Danny Gans-

-Henry Gibson-

-Mary Travers-

-Merce Cunningham-

-John Updike-

-James Whitmore-

-Soupy Sales-

-Les Paul-

-Maurice Jarre-

The world is a little emptier without their presence...

The Way I See It #20

"Mommy, what kind of fishing bait is this? It's all gooey!"

Uh, could you change your name...please?

I'm actually at work right now, entering information into the company's database. My job, at least for now, is to update the companys' contact info from the past, oh, several decades.

I just entered an address yesterday that was dated "1986".

But today I entered the name of an organization I simply cannot believe. It's the "History Day in California and Free Expression in a Free Society Programs Constitutional Rights Foundation".

...these guys take themselves WAY too seriously.

Drumroll please...

I got the results back from my recent MRI.

As I feared, they didn't find anything wrong with my knee. No tears, no damage of any kind.

Worst of all, they didn't find ANYTHING. They didn't even see that I'd had part of my meniscus surgically removed in Germany back in 1996.

That's more than just a little disturbing.

What the doctor did state, was that she thought I may be suffering from "tendinosis".

Wikipedia defines "Tendinsosis" as:

"Sometimes called chronic tendinitis, tendinosis, chronic tendinopathy or chronic tendon injury, is damage to a tendon at a cellular level (the suffix "osis" implies a pathology of chronic degeneration without inflammation). It is thought to be caused by microtears in the connective tissue in and around the tendon, leading to an increase in tendon repair cells. This may lead to reduced tensile strength, thus increasing the chance of tendon rupture. Tendinosis is often misdiagnosed as tendinitis due to the limited understanding of tendinopathies by the medical community."

WebMD defines "Tendinitis" as:

"When the tendon gets inflamed it is known as tendinitis, and when the tendons are chronically overused, it may lead to microscopic tears in the collagen matrix and causes a gradual weakening of the tissues."

It is also pointed out that:

"Initial recovery is usually within 2 to 3 months and full recovery is within 3 to 6 months. About 80% of patients will fully recover."

But they also point out that:

'Recurrence of injury in the damaged region of tendon is common."

The doctor is referring me to a specialist who I assume I will be seeing sometime after the New Year.

They will let me know.

Back to work...sort of.

I went back to work yesterday, only 3 hours after having an MRI taken of my knee.

I'm not back to my old job, there's no way I can move furniture all day. I won't receive the results from my MRI for several days.

I've been stuffed into a back room roughly the size of a ham sandwich, sitting down in front of a computer and creating, from scratch, a contact database from years and years of stored up paperwork.

I'm working alphabetically.

I worked for almost 5 hours yesterday.

I'm up to the word "American".

That's halfway through the letter "A".

Or in other words, 1/52 of the way through the alphabet.

Now, I'm no slouch on a computer. At top speed, I've been clocked at 90 words per minute. But some, no MOST of these files are incomplete. For about 1/3 of the entries, I have to go on the Internet to find a missing phone number, or contact name, or e-mail address. It's very time consuming.

It's a damn good thing that the "closet" they've stuck me in is only about 20 feet from the coffee station. Guess I can count my blessings.

No wait, the men's bathroom is on the other side of the building.

So, judging by yesterdays' outcome, mathematically speaking, it's going to take me roughly 260 hours to complete this job. At a full 40 hour work week, not allowing for lunches or bathroom breaks, that's 6 1/2 WEEKS of sitting in front of a computer screen, in a cramped room, entering the same information over, and over, and over, and over.

...and you know there are more entries under some letters than others.

I can't WAIT to get to the letters "E" and "S"!!!

But do you want to know the silliest part of this entire situation?

I have to show up for work every day dressed in black dress slacks, a white pressed shirt and a tie.

I enter the hotel through the back door.

I walk down a short hallway to my dungeon, where I spend the entire shift at a computer console in a modified closet.

I don't come into contact with any guests.

I might see 1 or 2 other employees...probably not even that many.

So why can't I come to work in a tank top, pajama bottoms and fuzzy, pink bunny slippers?

UPDATE:

After another 8 hours of data entry, I'm finally up to the letter "B".