O l l i e ' s B l a h g

| - Kind of a small thing, but…

Originally published at Oliver Dale .net. You can comment here or there.

So I had a minor writing breakthrough today. I should probably file this under ‘accomplishments that most people wouldn’t understand, but still made you squee like a sissy girl’ category. While writing this morning, during a particularly moving scene, I teared up. Okay, well. This is something I’ve heard other writers talk about. They say that they cry and cry while they’re writing, for their sad characters. It always makes me feel like a hack. That’s never happened to me.

Well, well. It wasn’t quite like that; there was no sobbing. But I did tear up. That’s got to mean something. (Not enough sleep?)

| - Life goal #32976.3

Originally published at Oliver Dale .net. You can comment here or there.

Obtain employment where it is both legal and expected to have a wet bar in office. In other news, 30 Rock rules my universe. That is all.

| - Webpage Fail

Originally published at Oliver Dale .net. You can comment here or there.

Everytime I click the Upload/Insert Photo button, WordPress crashes Firefox.  This makes me a sad panda.

| - One of the bad days.

Originally published at Oliver Dale .net. You can comment here or there.

I work in a cancer center.  I am a medical physicist (some day I’m going to write up a detailed post on what the hell that is and why you’ve never heard of me), and so my patient involvement is touch and go.  Some procedures I’m intensively involved with, others I am very behind the scenes.

The first thing people comment on is how depressing my job must be.  Okay, actually, when I tell them I’m a medical physicist their first reaction is: Whoa! You must be smart. …  What the hell is a medical physicist?  Then they comment about how my job must be depressing.  But, to be truthful, it really isn’t.  Many of our patients come in to our center as fighters.  One of my most favorite aspects of this job is doing HDR treatment for breast cancer patients.

It is a relatively complicated procedure and so physicists are very involved at every stage: simulation, planning, and treatment. In the other parts of the department, radiation therapists (who are the hardest working employees of a radiation therapy center) get to see patients daily. But HDR is where I get to.  And breast cancer patients are among our best.

Often young–due to improved screening processes–they are warriors. They come in smiling and they almost always leave that way, no matter what horrible things we do to their bodies in our attempt to heal them. 

But cancer in general is an older person’s disease.  The years add up, each moment a roll of the dice.  The longer you live, the more times you roll the dice. 

Today we have one of our older patients in for the treatment of a large tumor at the base of his skull. He is not entirely oriented. He has been incapable of walking for a few years now and is carted around in a wheelchair by his daughter. The only glimmer of his personality we see is when the therapist asks him if he is ready for treatment, and he shakes his head slightly.

His daughter coaxes him along, promising ice cream when they are done. The therapist wheels him to the treatment vault. Her voice is singsong, cheerful. They are both talking to him like he was two years old.  I suppose, that’s not far from the truth. 

There are moments when this job is depressing, and this is one of them. But usually it is not.  Usually, our days are pretty good.

| - Parable of the Drone

Originally published at Oliver Dale .net. You can comment here or there.

I got out of the job today with sunlight to spare. I was motivated and fired up and, after the two hour drive home, I now want to do nothing but sleep. Shady Pines, here I come. If you visit, just look for the old man on the porch rocker. If you cross over to me to say hello, be sure to use the walkway lest I shake my old-man fist at you, damn kids.

Maybe I’ll do some writing tomorrow? Now I’m off to read some Butler. Yay.

| - This work?

Originally published at Oliver Dale .net. You can comment here or there.

New webpage. Check it out. (Or rather, don’t yet. Still tweaking.)

| - MS Word .. abandon all hope, ye who install this piece of crap

What the hell was Microsoft thinking? I mean, okay. I'm not a hater. I get it: Microsoft is a big bad corporate conglomerate. They push out small business only to replace good software with mediocre software with lots of bugs. But still... I didn't really much care.

But what is this crap? Word 2007 (for Vista, of course) is a complete redesign. And it makes no sense at all. What was wrong with the way Microsoft programs were designed before? Everyone knew how to use them, where all the features were... why screw with that? But this new layout makes no sense to me! It's ridiculous! It took me twenty minutes to figure out how to center text. It should not be this difficult.

Damn you jerks!

| - Wonder if this thing will work...

Can it be? A picture posted from my iPhone? This is the result of Dr Pepper and an unplanned three hour nap....

( Restless Ollie )

| - Wonder if this thing will work...

Can it be? A picture posted from my iPhone? This is the result of Dr Pepper and an unplanned three hour nap....

( Restless Ollie )

| - I wonder...

'Spose one day I can just start to post, randomly, and no one will notice it's been three-hundred years since my last one?

| - Got a camera

In anticipation of my upcoming trip to New York (upcoming as in... I should be packing right now instead of playing online) I purchased a new digital camera. Maybe when I get back I'll have some pictures for you. But in the meantime, here's a picture of me and Amber when we went Skiing last winter:

From Skiing with Amber

| - Oh yeah, remember that test?

If you glance back a bit, you may recall that I took my American Board of Radiology exams for my Therapy Physics certification. I thought I failed; I knew I failed.

I passed.

Well, I'll be.

| - Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk

So I finally buckled and got my Oklahoma driver's license. This feels like a momentous event. Despite not having lived in Minnesota since 2000, I've always officially been a resident there. Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, Iowa -- all of the other places I've lived have just been temporary.

Oh, and I didn't even think about it when I went, but of course they took my picture for the ID card. Lordy, lordy, is that a sight to behold. (There will be no scans of my ID photo, in case you were going to ask.)

| - Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea?

I am going to miss Abby desperately. She's my favorite character of the whole series. But did anyone else find it a little ... umm ... off ... when they compared her to Job?

Anyway. This whole damn season is going to be depressing as hell, I think.

| - Those coin-like eyes.

I'm re-reading THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES. I'm not really sure why. I think it's because I'm feeling a bit uninspired, and lazy, and Bradbury has always, always been able to motivate me. The man is a poet. And this book is just as beautiful as I remembered.

| - What's three months?

Took the first round of my board exams on Wednesday. I'm still recovering. Do any of you know how to calculate the energy difference between protons in the parallel and antiparallel states in a two-tesla MRI? I sure as hell don't, but the American Board of Radiology apparently thinks I should. Now I get to stew in my own self-doubt for four weeks before they send me a letter telling me how stupid I am.

My solution, you ask? Martinis by the dozen.

Also, I came really close to flying my ass to NYC this weekend to catch the last performance of "There Will Come Soft Rains" that everyone keeps talking about. I couldn't quite justify the approximately $800 it would cost me to do so, however, so I backed out. But just barely. If you're in the area, please go and then recount the experience to me so I can feel like I am not, in fact, locked in the middle of nowhere right now.

| - Star and navel gazing

I can't remember the last time I looked at the moon.

This is a bit strange for me in particular since I used to be an astrophysics major whose intended field of study was local/near-Earth astronomy with a special emphasis on Lunar studies.

Driving home from the contract gig last night, I leaned back in the driver's seat to stretch my neck and there she was. Big, bright, beaming. Made me wonder where the time has gone and marvel at my change in focus. It was like all those old feelings and aspirations were buried deep, but still there waiting for me to visit them.

Bizarre.

---

On that same trip home, I saw a church sign. That sign is principally the reason I thought of this blog. It read: "Oh yeah? Well what have YOU done lately?" I'm not entirely sure what that means or what message I'm supposed to take from it. But it is exactly the sort of thing that the internet could not go one more day without knowing about.

---

Aren't you proud? I made it this far into the entry without the long diatribe on why I haven't been posting. Don't worry; I'll skip the majority of it. Basically, it's not that I'm out of the habit of writing, but that I'm in the habit of not writing. It's a poisonous, necessary feeling that I hope to remedy soon. But I so closely associate this blog with writing that it was easier to just ignore the whole thing all together than to keep up with it and constantly remind myself that I was, in fact, poisoned.

We'll see what happens.

Anyway. How have you been?

| - Baaaaaaaa....

I was a little bad today. I spent a crap load of money on crap I don't need. I also got a bad haircut. Or rather, it's a decent haircut, it's just too short. Like way too short. I was shorn like a sheep.

But I got new glasses! And they're cool. They do, however, have the unfortunate side effect in conjunction with the haircut of making me look like that dude from "Falling Down."

Observe:






In the words of Bill Foster, "I am not economically viable."

But it sure is fun.

| - Home sweet smelly home.

The trip was splendid. As promised, pictures of cuteness and cake:



What can I say? Iowas was cold. Much colder than I was prepared for. The key, it turns out, is plentiful layering. At any given moment, I was wrapped in a minimum of four layers. This, I'm sure, is the single item that prevented me from dying of exposure. The unfortunate aspect of going to the frozen north, you see, is that the people who live there are woefully unaware of its actual temperature. Their ice-addled minds have been numbed into believing that an ambient temperature, in doors, of 68 degrees is comfortable and optimal operating temperature for warm-blooded creatures. This is inaccurate.

There are two independent central heating units in my condo (remember, it was actually two units combined) and if you think either of them are ever turned lower than 73, you're nuts. This has the happy coincidence of allowing me to exist in my dwelling without resorting to the murder of seals for their blubber.

So, anyway, Gabe's birthday party was at a Chuck-e-Cheese (sp) knock-off joint. There were some rides. Some air hockey was played. A worker donned a large costume and walked around greeting children, a permanently stitched grin on his face and the unmistakable odor of sweat trailing behind. Oh, and we had a few relatives crash our party. My grandmother, aunt, and two younger cousins popped by. And by 'popped' I mean, drove five hours to surprise us. It was wild. They were clearly tickled at having caught us so thoroughly unawares.

Actually, here's a picture of my grandmother and me playing Simpson's Bowling (consequently, my sister and I reprised this act of virtual bowling the following morning by playing wii, practically my first experience with it [there was one other small occasion during which I may have touched a wii controller, but it was at my ex-roommate Kevin's pre-wedding party, and I don't really recall much.. I was too busy winning poker]):



Look at all those tickets. Aren't you proud? While I'm on the subject, can any of you explain to me the insane level of ticket inflation going on these days? I don't know what's happened to this economy of ours, I really don't. Back when I was young, you had to scrimp and pinch and save and fight to get a few tickets. And those tickets were worth something. These days, you get fistfuls for even playing the game, let alone actually winning or performing well! And what do you get for these dangling carrots? Plastic crap that's probably tainted with Chinese lead (if you think my grandmother wasn't worried about the Pb-level of the toys, you would be wrong, sir).

At least my flights were uneventful. Of course, the airlines always have this coming Wednesday to screw up my currently warm feelings towards them by delays, cancellations, or just plain stupidness as I make my way to Minneapolis for Tofurkey day.

| - this work?

word up from my phone