…pounds lost, that is.

That’s all since February 4.

If I keep this up, I’ll be able to find my talleywhacker again soon.

I sure miss him.

…for “Excrement.”

But at least Cranky professor doesn’t think so, because she tagged me with this lovely little piece of hardware to hang on my ego wall sidebar.

I’m supposed to name ten blogs I think deserve the same accolade, and do it without repeating any of Cranky’s picks. Well, that leaves out LawDog, William the Coroner and Scalpel, three blogs I’d have picked myself.

Sigh.

Problem is, the really excellent blogs are already fairly well known, and receive a goodly amount of traffic anyway. Even so, I’ll point you to some of the other names on my Blogs I Read Every Day. They’re on that list for a reason.

There’s Matt G of Better and Better, of course. He’s an honorable man, and a thoughtful one. He almost always has something interesting to say.

Crystal McKnob of Boobs, Injuries and Dr. Pepper is one of the few blogs that should come with a standing Class IV Beverage Alert. Put your glass down before clicking.

If you haven’t read Danny Evans of Dad Gone Mad, you should. He’s the male version of Crystal. He’s also got tons of readers, and for good reason. He’s funnier than nitrous oxide.

Murphy Was a Grunt always gives a humorous insider’s view of life as one of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children. Give it a read. You won’t regret it.

Wyatt of Support Your Local Gunfighter is always an entertaining read. Even if he is a lousy hockey player.

Kevin Baker of The Smallest Minority is not simply a blogger; he’s more as Tamara described him – a gen-yoo-wine essayist. His essays on politics and gun rights are always worth reading.

Farmgirl of Tractor Tracks has a knack for creative fiction, and following her latest misadventures with her horse Monkey keeps me entertained.

Speaking of such, Musings of a Highly Trained Monkey is one of the better nursing blogs out there.

Of course, there’s Tamara, who needs no endorsement from me. View From the Porch is one of the more popular gun blogs out there, but it’s got something for everybody. If you like your snark in small, easily digested bites, go read.

Last but not least come the doctors from M.D.O.D. If you follow the med blogs, you know who these guys are, and like me, probably can’t get enough of them.

Enjoy!

Yeah, well so does this guy:

Cue outraged screeching of his spineless deluded destined to be subjugated culturally sensitive countrymen in five…four…three…two…one.

What they should do is elect him to Parliament, and ask him if he has any like-minded mates.

Medic March and Stretcher Jockey, if you do this, I’ll spring for a $25 sponsorship for each of you. Hell, if I lose enough weight by then, I may even sign up to ride with you. There’s a former partner and current guardian angel I’d like to honor.

For my other readers, visit the National EMS Memorial Bike Ride to learn how you can sign up to ride in your own state, or sponsor another rider.

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:13

Honor a fallen EMT this May, won’t you?

I think once Babs learns to play her fiddle, I’m gonna get myself a uke…

    ”So what have we got in Room One?” Favorite Doc sighed, balefully eyeing the ever-growing stack of charts for patients who have yet to be seen.

    ”Syncopal episode,” I grunt, not even bothering to look up from my own pile of charts. We’ve got only four rooms at Podunk General Hospital, Nail Salon, Tire Repair and Crawfish Hut. Every one of them has been full for the past eight hours, with patients camped out in the lobby like Macophiles waiting in line for the release of the newest Igizmo.

    Except that Macophiles don’t usually hack, cough, groan, vomit, whimper piteously or reek of c. diff diarrhea.

    That is, unless you force them to use a Windows machine.

    ”So why is she on a spine board?” FD wants to know.

    ”Because Dumbass Paramedic brought her in, and a ten-second loss of consciousness and fall from a standing height is enough to warrant spinal immobilization in his book. That’s why.”

    ”Any neuro deficits or neck pain?”

    ”None of the above. If you’re looking for justification for spinal immobilization, you won’t find any. She is, however, desperately resisting the urge to puke while she’s strapped flat on her back, so if you could go clear her spine real quick, I’m sure we’d both appreciate it.”

    ”Could she have hit her head on anything?” he muses. I hate it when he does this. He’s envisioning ghostly apparitions of lawyers.

    ”Yeah, the mattress,” I snap tiredly. “She’s had vomiting and diarrhea for the past two days, and very little oral intake. She got out of bed to go to the bathroom, got dizzy and fainted. Classic orthostatic syncope. Only I can’t take orthostatic vital signs to confirm it because she’s strapped to a fucking board. Can you go clear her, please?”

    ”I hate that guy,” FD grumps. “He’s dangerous.”

    ”No argument from here, Doc.”

    ”No, I mean he’s dangerous,” he explains. “He gives narcotics without calling for orders.”

    I carefully set my pen down and turn my chair to face his. “Okay, explain that one,” I say reasonably. He misses the warning. When I go out of my way to adopt a reasonable tone, I’m about one stupid comment away from telling the commenter exactly how stupid they are.

    ”He gives Demerol and Phenergan to old people. Doesn’t even matter if he’s just around the corner, he’ll give it anyway.”

    This statement puts me in an interesting moral conundrum. On the one hand, I hate defending Dumbass Paramedic. On the other hand, I can’t let such an ignorant statement go unchallenged, not even from Favorite Doc. I choose the lesser of two evils.

    ”Well, I’ll agree that giving Phenergan to little old ladies ain’t the best idea,” I allow, “but it’s entirely possible that he’s never hung around long enough to see the hallucinations afterwards. But what’s so wrong with pain relief?”

    ”Nothing, but he does it without orders.”

    ”He has standing orders written into his protocol, Doc,” I retort. “And say what you will about DP, he follows his protocols to the letter. Even when they don’t make sense.”

    ”I have had him bring in patients from the nursing home, not even two minutes away, with IV narcotics on board,” he states flatly. “That could wait until they’re in the ER.”

    That’s easy for you to say, when it’s not you lying on the floor with a broken hip,” I point out.

    ”A little pain never killed anybody,” he says callously. “A narcotics overdose can. He should wait until he gets to the ER, where we can deal with the side effects.”

    ”You know, Doc,” I say, choosing my words carefully, “you’re my favorite doctor. You’re a good clinician, and you’re nice to people. You’ve got a good bedside manner. You’re not arrogant like the stereotypical surgeon. But you’ve got blind spots, and sedation and analgesia are two of them.”

    ”What’s that supposed to mean?” he challenges.

    ”It means that you’re fucking scared to death of medicating people, even when they need it. Your standard two milligrams of IV morphine might as well be homeopathic. I could read the patients a bedtime story and do a better job of relieving their pain. The cops bring in some tweaker on meth and PCP, and you refuse to sedate them, even though they’re so wild we can’t even assess them. So they howl at the moon for an hour, tear up equipment, injure us and themselves, before I come in and have to get ugly with you about ordering some friggin’ Haldol and Ativan.”*

    Or wait until they’ve started their death spiral from excited delirium, and by then it’s too late.

I don’t say it, but I definitely think it. Pointing that incident out would not only be counterproductive, it would be mean. I have no problem with being blunt and even insubordinate occasionally, but mean and petty I don’t do.

    ”You give narcotics in the back of that ambulance, you’re asking for trouble,” he says, turning back to his charts as if that statement ended the discussion.

    But I’m not that likely to let it go. I get up and walk to the door, and pause to prop an arm on the doorframe. “Just what do you think we can do in this ER that they can’t do in that ambulance?”

    ”Well, what if their pressure craps out?”

    ”They have Narcan. They have IV fluids and a patent line,” I explain patiently. “You know; that same IV line they’re giving the narcotics through. They have all the same drugs we’d give to reverse a narcotic overdose.”

    ”They don’t carry Romazicon.”

    ”That’s because somehow, they
lucked out and wrote a protocol that makes sense. They have no need for Romazicon, because they understand that it shouldn’t be used indiscriminately. That’s more than I can say for most of the nurses and doctors here.”

    ”Now what’s that supposed to mean?” he flares indignantly.

    ”It means that half the people here, including you, will give Romazicon to an intentional overdose patient, conveniently ignoring the fact that the patient was prescribed benzodiazepines for a reason, and there’s a high likelihood they’re dependent on them. You give ‘em Romazicon, they go into withdrawals and start seizing, then what are you gonna do? You sure as shit can’t give ‘em any benzos, because you just fucking blocked them.“

    ”That’s never happened to me.”

    ”So your N=1,” I say sarcastically. “It happened to Ancient Doc last week, but it could have just as easily been you.”

    ”You shouldn’t give IV narcotics in the ambulance,” he insists doggedly, the physician equivalent of putting his hands over his ears and chanting “La la la la la la I can’t hear yooouuuu…”

    ”Narcan, IV boluses, pressors…” I say, ticking them off on my fingers. “Everything we do here, they can do on that ambulance.”

    ”What if they need airway support?”

    ”Doc, every one of those medics has intubated more patients than you have in the past ten years. I’ve intubated more patients than you have in your career. You’ve always had an anesthesiologist or respiratory therapist intubate your patients for you, remember?”

    That pisses him off. But it’s true.

    ”When it winds up in court, they’re going to look at the name on that ER chart, and it’s going to be mine. They’re going to come after the doctor.“

    ”So that’s what this is really about,” I snort in disgust. “It’s not patient care you’re worried about, it’s defensive medicine.”

    ”Defensive medicine never hurt a patient, and it keeps the lawyers off the doctor’s back. Like it or not, you’re not going to be the one getting sued. Everybody practices defensive medicine.”

    ”Yep, everybody practices defensive medicine to some degree. That lady in there unnecessarily strapped to a spine board proves that. But whether you choose to admit it or not, unnecessarily causing her pain is harm. And if she develops a pressure sore, or pukes and aspirates her vomit, then that little piece of defensive medicine caused someone real, quantifiable, legally actionable harm.

    ”What about DP giving people IM narcotics before they get to the hospital? Does that make any sense when he’s less than five minutes away?”

    ”No, I’ll agree with you there,” I admit. “There’s no point in giving an intramuscular injection that isn’t going to take effect for twenty minutes or more if you’re only five minutes from the ER. He should have gotten the IV.”

    ”You’d start an IV just to give narcotics, even though you’re only five minutes from the ER?” he asks incredulously. “That’s crazy.”

    ”Doc, if I picked up an eighty-pound granny with a hip fracture off the floor of that nursing home, I’d start an IV and give her some narcotic pain relief before I even moved her off the floor. Even the move and the splinting are painful. Even if it adds an extra five minutes to my scene time, it’s well worth it.”

    ”That’s just crazy, AD! You’re just as dangerous as DP is!”

    ”You’ve worked with me for a year now, Doc,” I say gently. “You ought to have a good idea of my capabilities. I’m telling you that I’m going to relieve someone’s pain if it’s within my capabilities, and if my protocols allow it, I’m not going to bother with calling a doctor to ask ‘Mother may I?’ first. And I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if the ER doc doesn’t like it.”

    ”That’s asking for trouble, doing that on your own,” he argues.

    ”You’re not listening, Doc. Those standing orders were written or approved by the doctor that serves as medical director for that service. If I’m following the protocol, I wouldn’t be doing it on my own.

    ”But the ER doctor would be liable if something went wrong.”

    ”How? Someone’s going to hold you accountable for someone else rendering treatment protocols developed by another doctor?” I ask, rolling my eyes. “Doc, that wouldn’t even happen if you told ‘em to give the appropriate dose of morphine. Our EMS statutes have a ‘hold harmless’ clause that shields on-line medical control doctors from civil liability. You give the medic an order and he screws it up, or it’s the wrong order based on flawed information from the medic, it’s his ass, not yours.”

    ”Okay you win, AD,” he sighs with a hint of sarcasm. “It’s entirely appropriate for a paramedic to gork out ninety-year-old ladies with narcotics, even when the ER is right around the corner.”

    ”Don’t patronize me Doc,” I warn, “and don’t put words in my mouth. That wasn’t what I said. I will go you one better, though, and this will really overcook your grits; they’re using the wrong narcotics. They should have Fentanyl instead.”

    FD says nothing, but his eyebrows creep up his head dubiously.

    ”Less chance for respiratory depression, for one thing,” I say, ticking off my points on my fingers. “It also works faster, which means it takes effect while the patient is still in the ambulance. That makes it easier to titrate additional doses, and if the patient is going to have a bad reaction, it’s more likely to occur with a trained medical professional sitting eighteen inches away, rendering one-on-one care. With morphine or Demerol, it doesn’t kick until they’ve been in our ER for fifteen minutes. By then, there’s no one-to-one care, the nearest nurse is in another room, and everyone else is busy taking care of a horde of people who aren’t even sick enough to be in an ER in the first place.”

    ”Well,” Doc hedges, “I should have said that I don’t trust DP to give narcotics. I trust you to treat the patient appropriately, because you’re better than he is.”

    Translation:
“I’m not listening to a word you say, but I’m tired of this discussion because I’m starting to get the nagging feeling that I’m losing the argument.”

    ”Whatever,” I sigh. “So what do you want to do about the lady in Bed One?”

    ”CT her head,” he muses, “and just to be safe, CT her cervical spine too. Once we get those back, we’ll get her off the board.”

    I nod my understanding, walk into the med room and repeatedly pound my head against the cinderblock wall until the urge to kill has passed.

    Sigh.

That’s ten minutes for the CT scans, ten minutes to transmit that many images, and another hour on the board – minimum – for some night-school radiologist in Bangladesh to read that many images, and fax us a report. And all the while she’s strapped to a hard piece of plastic, and she’s so thin that pressure sores are more of a foregone conclusion than a mere likelihood. And that’s the bright side. She could still aspirate on her own vomit.

Nope, defensive medicine doesn’t hurt the patient. Suuuuure it doesn’t.

*Yes, I really talk to him this way, and this conversation is pretty much verbatim. We’re a relaxed crowd here at PGHNSTRACH, and we can argue and get over it pretty quickly.

…myself, that is.

If I don’t bring a blizzard with me like I did last time, I’ll be in Sioux City, Iowa from March 13-15, speaking at the Emergency Conference 2008. Drop in and say hello, share a brew or tell me how bad I suck for not posting more often.

I’ll be at EMS Today in Baltimore from March 25-29, and likely as not, the publisher will have me stuck in a booth signing books when I’m not lecturing. Swing by and make a contribution to the Double Wide Fund.

From April 16-19, I’ll be whoring myself out speaking on several topics at the South Carolina Emergency Care Symposium in Myrtle Beach.

From June 19-22, I’ll be at Louisiana’s LANREMT Conference in Lafayette, pretending to know what I’m talking about.

I’ll be at EMStock in Midlothian, TX from September 26-28. In between sessions, I’ll be stewing in my own juices hydrating myself with beer, and sampling the wares of the chili and barbecue contests.

At the Texas EMS Conference in Fort Worth from November 23-26, my buddy Gary and I will reprise our Two Jews and a Redneck EMS Comedy Tour, as well as boring shit legitimate EMS educational presentations.

That’s the schedule for now, although there are several more conferences still up in the air. If you’re a fellow blogger or a reader and I’m in your neck of the woods, I’d love to meet you and swap a few lies over an adult beverage or three.

Give me a holler!

…at Star of Life. That concludes Part One of this experimental novel o’ mine. Part Two will introduce a few parallel story lines, to introduce and develop a few new characters.

Got a new post cooking for this blog, too.

Ya’ll enjoy the Star of Life post, and try to be patient with me.

“Got hit.”

“By God, I’m on kill thet sombitch.”

If you recognize those lines, you’ll no doubt find this funny.

…because my brain is not filled with angry little emoticons. My brain is filled with fluffy bunnies and happiness.

Every time some malingerer with a Medicaid card snarls “I pay your salary!”, I can hear Karen Carpenter sweetly singing Close To You.

When the slack-jawed, inbred mouth-breather with a simple cold bitches for the umpteenth time “Why did HE get to go to a room right away? I’ve been sitting here for HOURS!”, I smile beatifically, because my emotional soundtrack is playing Walking on Sunshine.

When I explain to the Human Hippo (so named because she weighs 400 pounds and has a big mouth with precisely four teeth in it), for the fourth time since yesterday, that “It’s a stomach virus. We can’t cure viruses. We weren’t able to cure your other three kids when you brought them in over the past 24 hours. We’re not going to be able to cure you. Go home and stick a few of those Phenergan suppositories up your ass. You ought to have plenty of them,” I can do so without the slightest sign of frustration, because Louie Armstrong is personally serenading me with What a Wonderful World.

When the fourth person of the day complains of 10/10 pain and claims drug allergies that can best be summarized as “everything but potent narcotics,” I swear I hear Debbie Boone singing You Light Up My Life.

When the local witch doctor sends yet another patient across the parking lot to the ER for a fucking workup he could easily do himself, I hear the Beatles singing Let It Be.

When a good friend e-mails me and snarkily reminds me of the times when I actually had the time and energy to post frequently, I can hear Wilson Phillips encouraging me to Hold On, for just one more day. And even the fat one seems kinda hot.

Nope, no stress, anger and pressure here. Just warm spring breezes and alpine meadows with chirping birds and Julie Andrews prancing about, and all those lovely, uplifting songs in my personal inspirational soundtrack…

…where they all seem to merge together into one cacophonous clanging in my head until only one word comes through clearly:

KILL.*

So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get my deer rifle and find a high spot somewhere.

Or put up a blog post. Whichever.

…nineteen pounds.

It surprised me so much, I rechecked the calibration on the scale. Yep, I had lost nineteen pounds.

I weighed on the morning of Monday, February 4. Our digital, high-capacity scale on the acute care floor was way off, like by thirty-five pounds light. That scale said I weighed 328 pounds. Numerous attempts to calibrate that scale failed. Although it finally did record something close to my actual weight…it then recorded everyone else 15-20 pounds heavier than their actual weight.

The ER scale said I weighed more than its 350 pound capacity, but by how much?

Well, using Dinosaur Doc’s handy dandy trick for extending a scale’s capacity, I discovered my actual weight was 362 pounds.

I’ve deliberately avoided weighing until today, when I stepped on it out of sheer curiosity.

343 pounds, after factoring in the added capacity of the counterweight.

It surprised me so much, I checked the scale without the counterweight, and sure enough, it read 343 pounds. I am now well within the scale’s weight capacity, without modifications.

Heh.

It always used to infuriate the Ex Missus that I could drop weight so quickly and easily. Before our wedding, I lost sixteen pounds in just under two weeks. Looks like I haven’t lost the ability.

I’m not congratulating myself, though. I realize I’ve only dropped about 19 pounds of water. It only gets tougher from here. Still, it feels nice, especially considering that the weather has only allowed me to walk for four days of the twelve.

If you’re wondering how I’m doing it, here’s how:

1. Stop the Cokes and tea altogether. Our tea at work is made with Splenda, but I’d rather just drop the caffeine from my diet as well. Drinking lots of water, and the occasional Coke Zero.

2. Low carbs. I get a six inch Subway club about three days a week, when I pick up KatyBeth from school. On wheat bread with light mayo and two slices of American cheese, it’s still only right at 500 calories.

3. If it was fried, it ain’t going in my body.

4. I have the hospital cafeteria fix me salads. I get a grilled chicken salad and a ham salad every day I work. With all the stuff they put on them, including one packet of regular Ranch dressing, they’re around 500 calories or so.

5. Find something to do. My problem isn’t willpower, or a crappy metabolism, it’s that I eat when I’m bored. Simple as that. So, I occupy my time otherwise, and when I absolutely have to snack, it’s a handful of unsalted peanuts, or celery with Ranch dip, or 4 oz of tuna.

6. Exercise. My next item on the agenda is to get a rainsuit. This wet weather is not going to keep me from walking. It’s a 3.2 mile round trip from home to work, and I plan to walk that much every day. When my legs and knees quit complaining about it, I’m going to extend it, or walk it faster.

Basically, it was nothing Earth-shattering. I just took steps to make it easier to eat the right way rather than the wrong way.

So many of my bad habits were simply a matter of convenience. So, I dumped all the bad crap in the pantry and started over. Now, it’s more convenient to cook something at home, rather than run to McDonald’s. I grill chicken or fish, and I eat one serving of peas or beans. That’s it.

Basically, I’m expending more than I’m consuming. There hasn’t been a day in the past twelve where I’ve consumed more than 1600 calories, and I haven’t really been all that hungry. My tastes are simple, and I like the taste of the foods I’m currently eating.

Plus, Babs has dropped a few pounds too, and I need to keep up with my smokin’ hot girlfriend.

Around ten months ago (sometime in April; I lost our IM archives when my laptop crashed), two bloggers struck up a friendship.

That friendship grew into something much more, until both of those bloggers realized that they loved one another.

I consider myself a fairly talented wordsmith, but my Achille’s heel is that in expressing the things most important to me, to the person most important to me, I often find myself tongue-tied like a high school freshman summoning the courage to ask out the homecoming queen.

When that happens, I just crib some lines from people who said it better:

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

                                                   Pablo Neruda

I love you, Babs. Happy Valentine’s Day.

You suck.

When I pay for cable internet service, I expect two things: speed and reliability. It’s bad enough that I could get faster downloads from DSL, but the fact that your obsolescent southwest Louisiana equipment craps out on a nightly basis, sometimes for an hour at a time, but it chaps my ass like cheese-grater toilet paper when every frickin’ little rainstorm totally knocks out all internet access for 48 hours.

And no, I don’t want to hear your drones assure me that you’re working on the problem. I want you to fix the problem. Permanently.

Until then, Communicom sucks, and it is my fervent hope that this entry will appear in the top results of search engines nationwide, so that every poor sap who Googles your company name will be able to read how much your service sucks big, greasy, sweaty donkey balls.

PS: FTD, you suck too. It’s bad enough that the big name in flowers will not deliver to just about anywhere in rural Georgia, but when you say you can deliver said flowers to my sweetie’s place of employment, and on a certain date, I expect the flowers to be delivered on that date.

Assholes.

Flowers.com just got my business from now on, and I hope some disgruntled suitor plants one of Mercury’s winged feet right up your corporate ass.

That is all.

…alternatively entitled, Brother Can You Spare A Comment?

As some of you know, I have a monthly paying gig with the nice folks at EMS1.com, an entire website devoted to EMS news and events, with a sizeable stable of EMS luminaries as regular columnists.

How they ever got suckered into signing me on, I’ll never know, but I am ever grateful for the undoubtedly alcohol-fueled wise decision to bring me on board.

Now, my scribblings there may not be of any interest to my non-medical readers…

..but I’m starving, people. For comments, that is.

Like Sumdood’s minions in their search for The Precious, we wants comments. We needs comments. Gollum!

So go pay me a visit there, and let me know of what you think. It’s witty, insightful, profanity-free and non-fattening…

…in short, everything that this blog is not.

In addition, EMS1.com has a new feature called Paramedictv.com, which is a sort of YouTube for us stretcher jockeys, but without Chris Crocker begging us to leave Brittney Spears alone.

And you know, that’s a shame. Every public forum oughta have videos of an emotionally overwrought, androgynous Emo boy crying on camera for our general amusement. Somebody oughta post a Chris Crocker EMS parody forthwith.

And while you’re at it, put up a decent version of my Theme Song. I’d appreciate it.

There is a new chapter up on Star of Life.

Enjoy.

…I used to go around singing James Taylor’s Fire and Rain, only somehow the lyrics got twisted in my little three-year-old brain until the second line came out “Suzanne Flanzimay will put an end to you.”

I didn’t know who Suzanne Flanzimay was, or why she had offed James Taylor’s friend, but evidently she was one bad bitch.

I still check under the bed for her before I go to sleep.

That memory was dredged up by a couple of hilariously misunderstood song lyrics posted on a couple of blogs I follow. First, Cranky Prof’s kid mangled the lyrics to You Are My Sunshine and forever changed the way we both will remember Louisiana’s beloved singing governor.

Second, check out A View From The Mushroom for a music video that will forever scar your fond memories of Creedence Clearwater Revival.

There is a Beverage Alert in effect, people.

What do you think when I say:

1. Beer: Two kinds: Budweiser and free.
2. Anorexic: Sandwich.
3. Relationships: Rare. Only had two.
4. Purple: Royalty.
5. Power Rangers: Rainbow Brite for the Y chromosome.
6. Weed: Cheetos and chronic unemployment.
7. Steroids: Stupidity.
8. Cartoons: The only stuff in the newspaper worth reading.
9. The President: A good one, who has unfortunately lost the distinction between being resolute and being mule-headed.
10. Tupperware: Burping.
11. Best vacation: African safari.
12. Santa Claus: Innocence and wonder. Would that we had more of it.
13. Halloween: Michael Myers.
14. Bon Jovi: Chick metal.
15. Grammar: Death by text messaging.
16. Facebook: Get a life.
17. Worst fear: Failing someone when they need me most.
18. Marriage: Burned, still hopeful.
19. Paris Hilton: Money doesn’t convey class.
21. Redhead: Natural?
22. Blonde: Not my type before Babs.
23. Pass the time: Hunting or shooting.
24. One night stands: Not worth it.
25. Donald Trump: See #19.
26. Neverland: Nightmares of Michael Jackson offering me Jesus Juice.
27. Pixie dust: PCP.
28. Vanilla ice cream: Ray’s PeGe.
29. High School: Izod shirts and deck shoes.
30. Work: Better than the average bear.
31. Pajamas: Naked.
32. Woods: Home.
33. Wet Sock: Toxic Sock Syndrome (the ER and EMS folks know what I’m talking about)
34. Alcohol: Job security.
35. Love: Honor and commitment.

Run with it if you you’d like.

Working computer? Check.

Internet connection? Check.

Beanbag chair and a bag of Cheetos? Not so much.

It is, after all, a desktop computer, and I’m on a diet.

I see that, in my absence, I have been given a blog award by Joey’s Mom.

Well now! I think I’ll just put that up right there on the ego wall sidebar right this minute!

The award is supposed to be for, well, writing powerful words. I’m supposed to tell you three things that I think make writing powerful, and provide exemplars of other bloggers who fit that criteria.

Well, my personal rule is to use lots of fancy words in my prose, like exemplars. Yeah, I know examples would have worked just fine, but I’m all hoity-toity like that.

1. Imagery. The ability to evoke a vivid picture in a reader’s mind is an invaluable talent. It can be through a nifty turn of phrase, a detailed description, a gift for simile, or even artfully flouting all the conventional rules of writing. There are a number of bloggers I follow who know how it’s done. Rocky Mountain Medic possesses a gift for vivid descriptive imagery. So did Scully of Skywritings. Sadly, both of them have stopped blogging, so here I’ll give you a familiar name: LawDog. He can be riotously funny, scathingly sarcastic, or elegantly lyrical. He’s a natural storyteller, and if ever he wrote a post to grip your heart and bring a lump to your throat, it was this one.

2. Well constructed ideas. Plenty of people have something worthwhile to say, but lack the ability to express it effectively. They fumble about the edges of an argument, never quite getting to the crux of it. It’s as if their passion for the subject leaves them literarily tongue-tied, unable to articulate their position, or why they think it’s the right one. Marko is not one of those people. I don’t know if he’s as cerebral in real life as his writing would indicate, but he is not one you’d want to engage in an ideological debate.

When people try to parse ideas into smaller, easily digested bites, all too often the flavor of the argument gets lost along the way. Not so with Marko. He has a gift for the distillation of an argument into its purest form, and nowhere is that ability as evident as in this masterpiece. Major Caudill only wishes he had such writing chops.

3. Imagination. No matter how elegant the prose, if the premise doesn’t immediately capture your attention, it ain’t worth reading. Luckily, Farm Girl has both.

A friend sent me this one today. Considering what a swa-vay mofo I was in high school, I took the test to see if anything had changed.

How cool were you in high school?

It’s nice to know I am just as cool at forty as I was at eighteen.

…comes A Voice In The Night, whose LEO brother-in-law just got seriously injured in an on-duty car accident.

Drop by and give ‘em some support, would you?

And on another note, y’all welcome another Stretcher Jockey to the blogsophere.

We Louisiana medics are on a quest to take over the world.

Heh. I’d have figured me for an A-10 Warthog.

Edit: I know I stole this from someone on my blogroll, but for the life of me can’t remember who. But thanks!

Lately I’ve been trying to cut back on the junk food and carbonated beverages, with some small degree of success. Hadn’t lost any weight, but then again, I wasn’t really trying.

Couple weeks ago, it morphed into a full-fledged diet. No Cokes or tea. Salads. Really cut back on the breads and starches. I was rocking along nicely. Lost six pounds in a couple of weeks, without even exercising.

Yeah, I know it was all water. Still, a good start.

I had a buddy in high school who was, shall we say, rotund. I believe the technical term we used was “lard-assed social outcast.” High school was not a fun time for my buddy

Back then, I was a solid 210 pounds, and people always underestimated my weight by 25-30 pounds. I was in good shape.

Fast forward twenty years, and we have switched places. My buddy got tired of not being able to wipe his ass without throwing out his back, and went on a strict diet and exercise regimen. 1500 calories, six meals a day, cardio three times a week, weight training 4 days a week…he totally transformed his body in one year. Now, he’s a rock-hard workout fiend and health Nazi.

Frankly, I liked him better when he was a jolly and good-natured lardass.

Well, some time in my twenties, coinciding roughly with my entry into EMT school, my atrocious eating habits and slowing metabolism conspired to play a cruel joke on me. Within five years, I became the jolly and good-natured lardass.

And now I know how my buddy felt. I look in the mirror and think, “Damn, that ain’t me. I don’t know who that guy is, but it ain’t me. ”

I have come to the unpleasant realization that I am only a couple of boxes of Ho-Hos from “can’t wipe his own ass” territory.

This ain’t a self-esteem thing. As most of you know, I already possess an abundance of rampaging ego self-esteem. I managed to carve a decent career, the respect of my peers, and a smokin’ hot girlfriend at my current weight.

My health isn’t that much of an issue, either. My blood pressure, total cholesterol and LDL, and HA1C levels are all good. I can still walk the legs off anyone. My joints do protest a lot at this weight, though. Walking the streets of Savannah with Babs last month killed my left knee.

The problem is, I simply don’t feel like myself at this weight.

So, enter the diet. Not cutting back, or eating in moderation…I mean a Diet, with a capital D – basically the same one my buddy used, minus the exercise regimen.

The exercise I had planned to accomplish by walking back and forth to work – a two mile daily round trip. It ain’t enough, but it’s better than nothing. Haven’t started that yet, because my willpower does not extend to willingly making that walk through a icy-cold monsoon, which is the weather we’ve had here for the past couple of weeks.

That was the plan.

Until yesterday.

Only I would be stupid enough to start a diet in late January. In south Louisiana, the place where you can buy a twelve pack of beer and ten pounds of these babies without ever leaving your car…

When I left the library yesterday, the sweet ambrosia of boiling crustaceans led me straight to the crawfish stand, slack-jawed and drooling, unable to recall how I had arrived there.

You know, much like Brittney Spears at the UCLA psych ward.

Before I knew it, I found myself pinching tails and sucking heads until I had waded through ten pounds of crawfish. The only thing that saved me was the fact that they are still absurdly expensive. I can literally eat crawfish until I get tired of peeling them.

Sigh.

Tomorrow, I start over at Square One.

…and taking a page from LawDog’s book, I give you Ambulance Driver’s White Chili.

*cue all Texans screeching indignantly that real chili is never white and never contains beans*

INGREDIENTS:

32 oz cooked navy beans
4 Tbsp olive oil
4 cloves minced garlic
1 cup chopped onion
4 lb ground turkey
4 lb cubed chicken
8 cups chicken stock
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp oregano
2 Tbsp cumin
1/2 tsp cayenne
4 cup Monterey Jack
12 oz sour cream

DIRECTIONS:

Saute chicken with garlic, olive oil, and chopped onions until done. Add in browned ground turkey. Mix in “Gumbo Pot” with chicken stock, black pepper, oregano, cumin, and cayenne. Cook for 30 minutes. Stir in Monterey Jack cheese and sour cream. Top with salsa.

Feeds anywhere from six to twenty, depending on appetite
Feeds anywhere from 6-20, depending on how gluttonous your Super Bowl guests are.

Serve it with hot cornbread, or with tortilla chips. Take your pick.

Best of all, if you can find the fat-free sour cream and Monterey Jack cheese, you can gorge yourself guilt-free.

Enjoy.