ailments

A little over a month ago, my friend Drew ended up in the hospital with blood clots. It was pretty dangerous. Now he's stuck at home keeping his legs elevated.

Joe broke his leg playing rugby. He fell forward over a prone teammate but his foot stayed planted. He's got a titanium rod up the length of his lower leg.

Greg broke his leg while walking his new puppy, a while back (he got rid of it). He just went back to work the week before last. He's been out sick since Thursday.

Derek had a spinal tumor last September. He's still getting back to normal. He hopes to go back to work part time in a couple of months. He made it up my back steps last night. He was telling me that when he was in the hospital, he had a blood clot in his lungs, and another that could have gone to his heart.

Paul has not had any physical ailments, but he just broke up with his girlfriend of four years and is living with Drew.

addendum: I just got an e-mail from Joe.
"I broke both bones in my lower left leg and had a titanium rod inserted into where the marrow used to be in the tibia (they drilled it out). I am not going to be playing contact sports ever again."

lucky... or stupid... or both

I used to drive a fork truck as part of my job when I worked in shipping. At one point, my boss' boss told us that, as a safety measure, we must ensure that truck drivers block their wheels before we went on the semi-trailer with the fork truck. If we did not, and drove onto a trailer that did not have its wheels blocked, we would be fired.

I thought that was not a bad idea, but in two years, I had never seen a trailer roll, so right off the bat I was not very conscientious about this new rule. Within two days of hearing of this rule I drove onto a trailer, and it rolled about a foot. Had it gone a little bit more, the dock plate would have slipped off the dock or trailer, and my fork truck could have fallen in the gap.

I feel very lucky to have kept my job.

thoughts

If, as W. told Fidel, only free and democratic elections will lead the U.S. to cancel its economic boycott, shouldn't Cuba be boycotting us?

-Dave Berkman, columnist for Milwaukee's Shepherd Express

It's a humorous thought, but what overshadows it, for me, is that I don't believe a dictatorship is cause for a boycott. And Cuba has a much better human rights record than many nations with which we do business.

Say, wasn't China granted Most Favored Nation trade status by Clinton?

Spiderman

I saw the movie tonight. I enjoyed it. the characters were very thin - thinner than comic book characters need to be. The story was good, though. I liked how the kid discovered his spider powers. And there were those usual defiance-of-the-laws-of-physics thing, but oh well.