Media-crity

Howdy, long time no see, eh? How have you been? Yeah, me too. Crazy about that, huh?

Well, okay, in reality things have been pretty all over the place in my personal life, which I’m not going to stick out here all out on the public internets. That’s not what I came here for. I came to tell you all about this great organization I’ve recently gotten involved with.

Coming home in a terrible mood made me want to focus on the whole reason I left the house today– training to work on the Samaritans 24-hour helpline as a “befriender.”

The commitment is intense: after an 8 hour day today, I have two more 8-hour training sessions the next two Sundays. After that, there are some training shifts. Once I’m fully trained, I am required to put in one four-hour shift a week, plus one eight-hour overnight (11pm-7am) shift per month. But I can already tell what an incredible experience this is going to be. So if you’re in Boston and looking for a way to give back, this is a great place to go.

You can also volunteer in other ways, like doing office work, or helping with the survivors program for grief counseling, if you’ve lost someone to suicide. They also have a teen program for HS students. In addition, there’s always the dolla dolla bill route, or in-kind services, or even stuff like office supplies or snacks.

Obviously I won’t be talking much about it, here or anywhere else, due to confidentiality and privacy and all of that. But if you have any more general questions, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can tell you.

Dear Harvard Vanguard:

Thank you for being so convenient and having every specialty I could ever imagine needing under one umbrella and the technology to truly take advantage of such a system. That I could go in and see one doctor yesterday and within 15 minutes have a spot in general surgery to get taken care of is invaluable. Especially when, instead of nickel and diming me, you just transferred my internal medicine appointment to gen surg.

Thank you for your same-day appointments and, barring that for whatever reason, your urgent care office.

Thank you for having pharmacies in each of your locations. I do like getting my insulin at Walgreens, since my local one is 24 hours and I’m kind of a spaz at not refilling before I run out, but when I have a raging sinus infection and all I want to do is go home and sleep, it’s nice to just stagger downstairs and pick up my 12 prescriptions on my way out the door with hardly any waiting time and not have to make an extra stop. Your pharmacists are also super helpful and knowledgable about good, cost-effective substitutions when my insurance won’t cover whatever superstrength decongestant I was supposed to take.

Thank you for your email system, allowing me to communicate with my doctors how I feel most comfortable and without playing phone tag.

Thank you for your compassionate nurses, like Diane yesterday, who offered to let me squeeze her hands while I was being injected with anaesthetic and scared out of my mind. The same nurse I was able to get on the phone in two minutes when calling, freaked out about my incision, who calmed me down and didn’t sound at all impatient or annoyed with the crazy hypochondriac.

Thank you for giving me a team of kick-ass doctors to ease the pain of having to replace my old team in Hartford. I didn’t think it was possible to ever find anyone approaching Dr. P, Gayle, and Dr. Lassman but you’re really making an effort. They will always be #1 in my heart but you’ve given them a run for their money.

Thank you.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of days now, but I’d forget, or get distracted, or something, and now here we are halfway through the week.

Courant reporter Helen Ubinas is spending a week reporting from Garden St in Hartford. I’ve been following her on Twitter (@NotesfromHeL) for awhile, and I used to read her column religiously back when I actually read The Courant regularly, but this project has been riveting. It’s also really gotten me thinking about something I meant to post back in May or June. It’s late, I’ve just spent 12 hours watching a very frustrating baseball game, and I’m tired, so this will be rambly, but I hope it’ll capture what I’ve been meaning to put down for a couple of months now.

Anyone who has ever spoken to me for any length of time has likely heard me mention, possibly more than once, my great love of Hartford. Those same people also likely debate my mental health behind my back, but that’s neither here nor there. I love Hartford. I miss Hartford. I live in Boston now but I have moments, at least once a week, where I genuinely miss Hartford. I’m not ashamed to say it.

It gets a bum rap a lot of the time (sometimes it’s deserved, yes) and I will defend it to the death. It’s a city with a crooked mayor with way too much power, an unfriendly layout, not much of a downtown to speak of on account of the aforementioned layout (though it’s trying!), and a sobering swath of blight.

But you know what else it has? Really spectacular dining. I can think of only one bad meal out of many I had in Hartford (farewell, No Fish Today), and I’m pretty sure I tried just about all Hartford had to offer at one time or another. I still pine for some sweet potato and rock shrimp fritters or the mac & cheese at Trumbull Kitchen, or the table-made guac at Agave, or the baked berries at Peppercorns. Or pretty much anything imaginable at Wood-N-Tap. (I am purposely, though reluctantly, leaving out Plan B, as that’s in West Hartford and no one really needs to be convinced to hang out in West Hartford).

There’s also a ton of culture. Touring broadway productions? Smaller indie fare? Original productions? You can find it all. How about art? Got it. History? You can’t walk without falling over a historical museum or house.

I’m not delusional. There’s a lot Hartford lacks. A decent music scene is a big one. For more on that, hop on over here to Eric Danton’s blog Sound Check and he’ll be happy to hook you up. Lord knows I’ve railed against it often enough myself. But that’s not why I’m here.

Hartford is also where I met some of my best friends. Where I made some fantastic memories. Where I really grew up and learned how to make it on my own. It’s where I, like the city itself, had soaring triumphs and crushing defeats.

Hartford’s not hip like New York. It’s not reinvented like Providence. It’s not really charming like my beloved Boston. But it’s trying, and it’s community, and it’s heart, and it’s people.

Which is why I’ve been so sucked in to these dispatches from Garden St. They’re sad, they’re scary, but they’re hopeful, too.

They’re Hartford.

Michael Jackson has, as most everyone knows, died at the age of 50. I’ve been trying to come up with some pithy way of summing it up for Facebook and Twitter. Is this what has become of my love of writing? Nevertheless, I failed. Thus, my dusty blog.

I really have no opinion on him either way. He has some catchy tunes, and you can’t deny his influence on pop music, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan.

Really, stuff like this just makes me think about mortality and here today, gone tomorrow. He’s been such an institution in the media and in entertainment, for better or for worse, so knowing that he’s gone is unsettling somehow.

Now, back to my NCIS marathon. Two days in a row, USA! You must really love me.

Last night I inadvertently broke back into my very first gmail address, which I set up 5 years ago and pretty much never used again.

It seems 3 or 4 people have been handing it out as their own since then and I have 91 personal emails in that inbox.

Things I have learned in sorting through the 1000 emails in the inbox to find the personal ones.

1. When you add a number to the end of your email address (such as jsmith2), half the time people will forget it.
2. Talbots sends a shitload of emails. 50% of the emails were from Talbots.
3. ALWAYS CHECK THE EMAIL ADDRESS BEFORE SENDING NAKED PICTURES FROM YOUR CELLPHONE.

You’re welcome.

My finger’s been bugging me– swelling up, hurts to touch, etc. So after a week of this, I headed to the urgent care clinic in Kenmore to make sure I didn’t have spider eggs or a fracture or anything.

They sent me for x-rays and I, because I’m 12, took the x-rays into the bathroom on my way back to the clinic so I could take this picture:

It’s apparently tendonitis, which I think is the go-to “get out of my office, crazy hypochondriac.” However, it was ALL worth it to get that x-ray. I wish I could have kept it.

At the very least I’ve been selected to save the world from evil.

First, when I turned my TV on Wednesday night, I found this image frozen on the screen for no discernable reason:

Then, last week I was in the mailroom ripping open a box of dental insurance booklets to distribute. This guy walked in while I was struggling with it and asked if he could help. At that moment, I wrestled it open and said “Nope, looks like I got it!” and then he said “Of course you did, you’re very powerful.” and smiled.

I have no idea who this guy was.

So I’m pretty sure I’m either starring in my own supernatural thriller, or I’m a prophet/superhero/savior. I’m still figuring out the details, but I think the island– that is, the world– communicates with me via the TV. I just hope I didn’t fail my first test by not going to find that creepy child and prevent her from sucking out her parents’ brains or something.

On the one hand, it’s good to finally have everything confirmed. The endless speculation and covering up was making me dizzy.

On the other, it really, really sucks to be right. Jerry Remy taking an indefinite leave of absence to recover from cancer surgery.

Looks like Eck will continue through the homestand, ending the 8th, then the greatest man ever, Dave Roberts, will join Don for the west coast road trip, with no plans being announced beyond that yet.

Can I get my vote in now for more Roberts/Eck/Don action? It would help ease the pain.

Thank you.

There are so many reasons to love Surviving Grady. Many, many reasons.

This is but one of them.

Trying to get a post explaining the Legend of the Diet Coke up before tonight’s game but I’m not sure if it’ll happen.

It’s nearing midnight and I’m sitting here shotgunning a fresh can of diet coke. I have to be up in just over 6 hours.

Yup. Just another game night.

AND IT PAYS OFF WITH A 2-RUN HOMER FROM BAY! Bay has been most receptive to my help this season.

Soon I should chronicle the history of the diet coke and why I spend baseball season in a caffeinated haze.

Jacoby Ellsbury.

Oh. My. GOD. I want that clip uploaded to my brain so I can watch it over and over and over and over.

Hope Girardi’s been networking. He’s gonna need something to do after September.

I just … DAMN.

When the season started, I was still working on a case of cherry DDP, so I had no diet coke with games.

And we got off to a lousy start.

So when my case was finished, I got a case of Diet Coke, more for the tradition than because I actually thought it would turn things around.

BUT IT DID.

FACT: I bought that first case about two weeks ago, when the losing spiral snapped.

FACT: On Friday, I cracked one open five minutes before Bay’s tying homer in the 9th, when all looked to be lost.

FACT: Yesterday I was running around, making a cake for a friend’s birthday, getting stuff done around the house. I checked the score and saw the Yankees were up 6-0. I had reached a lull in cake-baking (cake was cooling, icing was made and dyed and waiting) so I decided to sit down and concentrate and try to give them a shot in the arm. I turned it on, cracked a DC, boom! Bay hits a bases-loaded single, one run in.

Alright, sez I, not bad.

Then.

BOOM!

TEK GRAND SLAM.

Never doubt the power of the Diet Coke. Never.

Today I have been catching up on the <a href=”http://www.survivinggrady.com/”>Surviving Grady</a> archives I’ve missed since I stopped checking Google Reader when I started my job in January and it took over my life.

Which, coincidentally, is about the last time I posted in my blog. Ahem. Sorry about that. Things are winding down, though, so maybe I’ll come back.

Now, though, the Fenway Franks are cooking and I have a caffeine addiction/gameday ritual to indulge.

If only it weren’t on ESPN. My kingdom for Remy and Don sitting at my dining room table so I could mute these jokers.

It was a bad, bad week. I was in the hospital, we had a death in the family, then a layoff. I’m tired.

I’ve already talked about the hospital, not sure if I’m ready to talk about the death, and legally can’t talk about the layoff. That leaves …

…banging my head against the wall catching up on last week’s arrest of Hartford’s mayor Eddie Perez. Well. Who couldn’t have seen that coming? Aside from the majority of Hartford’s residents who voted for the bastard.

Aunt Eileen, you touched a lot of lives, as evidenced by the dozens of cars in the procession Saturday. I know the last years were rough and I hope you’ve found peace. We won’t be the same without you.

This is horribly disjointed but so is my mind this week. Hope all of you out there are doing well.

Wound up in the hospital in DKA again this weekend. I definitively identified the cause last night when I removed what I suspected to be a bad pump site:

Yeah. That’s supposed to be straight. It’s what puts the insulin into my system. No good.

I was released yesterday and am taking today to recover as well because I’m still just worn out. It’s hard to get any decent, quality, restorative rest when you’re being woken up every hour for fingersticks, injections, vitals, blood draws, potassium pills …

As hospitals go, the one I was at wasn’t bad. I had a private room, which was nice, and awesome friends who came to visit and watch a bit of the Superbowl with me.

Now, for some breakfast and quality couch time. I’m tired.

I have some 2008 wrap-up meme thingies planned, but first I’m breaking my silence to say RIP, Mayor Mike.

In my time at the historical society, I dealt with Mayor Mike as part of an auction item he donated– a lunch with him, obviously– which is something that has stuck with me since. In a good way. Not like the time I met John Rowland and he invited me to come trick-or-treating at his house. Ahem.

Incidentally, last night I dreamt that I accidentally took a clinical rotation in Hartford.