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| Much Smaller Bandages At Last |
I rushed home and jumped straight
into the shower, as recommended by the nurse who applied the bandage. She must
own stock in the medical tape company because it was pretty intricate. I removed the neck bandage fairly easily but
the ear thing was a true challenge. That
thing must have weighed ten pounds when it became soaked.
When I finally did get it
off I checked to make sure it didn’t take a part of my ear with it. I finally saw what my ear (or remnants
thereof) looks like. If you’ve ever seen
a piece of liver pummeled into paste – well there you go. It was kind of
grotesque (but cancer free I’m told). I’m
fairly certain my anticipated career as an ear model is kaput. My wife applied hydrogen peroxide (fun) and a
thick layer of vaseline before applying thankfully much smaller bandages.
While I was trying not to scratch
my ear earlier in the day I had to sit through another day of technology
training. My operations manager and I finally
got to poke the egos of all the “young guns” that are responsible for deploying
the technology and making it user friendly for us dinosaurs.
The trainer was teaching us
one way to do something when I leaned over to my operations manager and said, “Watch
this.” I then asked our company techo
whiz kid and the representative from the company providing the technology that
this didn’t seem like what they’d been telling us. The whiz kid jumped up and started a self-important
lecture complete with white board illustrations for us “idiots”. The company rep
(smartest person in the room) was smart enough to get on her cell phone and get
a straight answer from the home office.
After ten minutes the whiz
kid gave me my opening by saying “This is what you are thinking!” I then proceeded to read him the riot act (I
was gentle) where I explained to him that he shouldn’t venture into that territory
and that he had missed the point completely.
The smart gal got off her phone and acknowledged there was a problem
with what was being taught. I was then
able to tell them this was the base of our frustration. As smart and tech savvy
as they all were – they did not have real world experience in getting things
done outside the electro-magnetic spectrum.
Basic coordination and talking with each other seems to take secondary importance
to chasing the latest “cool” innovation down a rabbit hole. To make something work “in the real world”
they needed to coordinate with each other before foisting it as a completed
product. The operations manager gave me
a high five and the itching subsided for five minutes.
Speaking of itching, my wife
has been after me for a couple of years to paint the stairwell leading down
into the basement. I do not share her passion
for this project, so it hasn’t been done.
She’s right (of course) as this is the way we use to come in the house
95% of the time and is the only wall in the house the remains in the condition
we found the house. After my hurried shower I noticed everything was moved out
of the stairwell. I know she wasn’t
asking me to do it with my limited neck range of motion (my story and I’m
sticking to it).
It turns out she wanted to
paint it herself and just needed my help acquiring the paint because she deemed
the dozen cans of old paint we had as inadequate (translated – not the color
she wanted). Since I no longer looked
like a recovering Elephant man I “volunteered” to help her with that and we
headed over to Wal-Mart.
It was there that I met
Christian, a very nice abut exceedingly insecure recent immigrant from Africa . He was in charge
of the paint section. My wife chose a
color and then disappeared to see what kind of further damage she could do
shopping. Christian was nervous about
using the machine which mixed colors but with a little prodding he figured it
out. He nervously put the paint can and
added the colors the computer told him to.
After retrieving the can from the mixer he opened the can to find
exactly the right color and produced a dazzling smile of relief. I got the impression this was his first foray
with the machine and to achieve success made his day.
Life’s about small victories,
Christian had his with the color machine and I had my mine with the techno
geeks. A good if itchy day.
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| Site of Wife's Project |
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