New England Winter
Photograph taken by Adam after an earlier storm.
Don’t know if there is of any interest, but here’s my hand then and now.
Monday, February 13, 2006
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Photograph taken by Adam after an earlier storm.
Don’t know if there is of any interest, but here’s my hand then and now.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
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Cool! But you seem to have an affinity for whacking the middle finger, too (with a hammer?). Hard life your hands have had …
And not only does someone make steel pins of all sizes for reinforcement during healing, but they also make little condoms for the ends so they don’t snag on bandages and clothing. I wonder if either are made by the people who make rebar and the bright orange tip protectors for same … ?
Comment by adam — February 13, 2006 @ 7:04 am
I got into a discussion the other day that somehow that led to the question of how brief a part of human history it is that the non-poor spend the vast majority of their time at a temperature (within 7 degrees Fahrenheit) of their choice. What do you think? (HOW brief, and what percent of time would you say?)
Comment by Jennifer — February 13, 2006 @ 3:21 pm
It may be a trick of perspective, but your middle finger looks longer now than it was. Is that possible?
My left forefinger is now 1/4 inch shorter than it used to be before The Magical Dr. Pyfrom screwed my wrist bones back together. With all the other wrist things on my mind, I didn’t even notice it until last week. I don’t think I have have any “before” pictures to prove it, though.
Comment by rakkity — February 13, 2006 @ 4:23 pm
I didn’t just stick my ring finger in harm’s way, that would have been difficult and less dramatic. Nearly every time I had an x-ray (a dozen before it was all over? How about you rakkity, with such a complicated injury?), I’d grab the tech by the collar, pull her to within an inch or two of my bad breath and say, “It’s the ring finger that’s busted babe, not the middle.”
Comment by michael — February 14, 2006 @ 9:20 am
I was zonked out during my first X-rays, but the second set was post-op when I had just visited Magickal Dr Pyfrom. He saw that my right wrist was swollen, and wanted an X-ray to see if I had broken it too. I toddled into the X-ray room with the order, and the X-ray tech, seeing the cast on my left wrist,
had me put my left hand on the table. Then she started to twist it into position. She obviously didn’t know (a) it was the wrong hand (b) there were pins that prevented any rotation. I screamed, and she backed off. I didn’t grab her by the collar, but she was chastened and embarrassed.
Comment by rakkity — February 14, 2006 @ 9:52 am
Answering Jennifer…How brief a part of human history?
What a hard question to answer. Part of the problem is that when kids grow up in a hot or cold climate, they adapt to it, and as adults most likely don’t want to move to a cooler or hotter climate. Take the Tierra del Fuegans, who (according to Darwin in the Voyage of the Beagle) walked barefoot in the snow. Would they have enjoyed a warmer climate? And how about south Pacific Islanders? How would they like moving to New England?
Comment by rakkity — February 14, 2006 @ 9:59 am
And how about my brother, Peter, or my son, Matthew, both of whom grew up in very different climates at very different times, but both needing a comfort range between 79 and 82 degrees, with a gentle breeze from the NW and 42% humidity?
Comment by michael — February 14, 2006 @ 11:44 am
A comfort range between 79 and 82 degrees…
Isn’t that your comfort range, too, Mike?
Comment by rakkity — February 14, 2006 @ 12:04 pm
Mikey’s “comfort range” is 82 and up, preferably low-to-mid-90’s …
Comment by el Kib — February 14, 2006 @ 1:53 pm
More like low one hundreds..ask Auntie Sue.
Rakkity, do you remember our thermostat settings in Somerville?
And, now that we are confronting college selections, and many of our friends have done or are doing the same, how would you like to describe the process with your children?
Comment by michael — February 14, 2006 @ 2:07 pm
Patrick & Katie had to go to one of the MD state schools,
and that was it. We gave them no choice. The reason was that University employees get complete tuition remission.
Of course, if they had wangled a scholarship to Harverd or Stanford or the like, we would have let them go.
Comment by rakkity — February 14, 2006 @ 4:03 pm
Those Somerville thermostat settings were like 50 deg, right? But that was thriftiness; it wasn’t because you preferred the cold, even back in the hot-blooded days of youth.
At night, thrifty New Englander that she is, Beth sets our thermostat to 60. In the morning, I swing it up to 70, and she swings it down to 65. I like a warm inside temperature to heat up my lizard metabolism, but I like it cool outside when my raptor metabolism kicks in. Patrick & Katie pad around bare-footed, apparently oblivious to temperature, high or low.
Comment by rakkity — February 14, 2006 @ 4:14 pm
I’m pretty sure they were set to 58. I remember a semi-running battle with Jim McMahon, our good friend and room mate before you. I’d come home from my evening shift at Somerville Hospital to find it bumped all the way up to 62 (He was making $5.00 an hour at EDC while I pulled in $3.25). I’d, of course, turn it back down.
Comment by michael — February 15, 2006 @ 9:14 am