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3-27-08 Sunday evening

Got snowed out of smith rocks last night. Our spring break trip was not spring. I would have stayed but Jessica, Austin and Paul all wanted to bail, though it was forecasted to be only 20% precip the next day.

We did some nice routes, and I led "pop goes the nubbin", my first clean 10a smith lead in a decade. Yesterday was frustrating for all of us due to the bitterly cold temperatures, but especially for me.

Both Paul and Jessica wanted to work on 10b to 11b projects. All three of them wanted to watch each other work on these hard routes. I wanted to lead something easier, but was forced to hang around freezing watching them watch each other lead or top rope. I couldn't get them to stop gang banging the routes and simply be my partner.

Too many people on one route is one of my pet peeves, and to be involved in the very thing I dislike the most about the gym generation was irksome.

Paul eventually saw my dilemma and offered to belay me on something and we had a great time on tammy bakker, which I led clean.

Jessica and I seemed to be butting heads over really stupid things. Our former friendship has turned into sort of a 'bickering between siblings' kind of thing. I still like her and enjoy her abundant energy but she seemed a little shallow this trip.

Probably they didn't find me all that friendly at times either either as I was pitching them grief about their tattoos, always a touchy subject. In turn they were telling me I sounded old, which I am. Mostly I think we were just ornery because it was so dang cold out all the time.

Paul is a rock, I really like that guy. He's got a rare maturity for a young guy...a good head on his shoulders. Never the less, I think I'll try to focus on climbing with Sue for a while. No one has ever been as good a partner as she was...except maybe Paul DeHope, who is dead, or Fupp, who stopped climbing. Mark L. is great guy, but doesn't climb much rock anymore. And of course Dave, when we aren't bickering.

I seem to have trouble getting along with people...maybe it's me...sigh.

3-16-08 Sunday evening

Two weeks since my last dizzy spell. I think I'm back in remission...hopefully for another 7 years. Climbed at Vantage with Nick and Ciara Saturday. We had a fire Friday night to ward off the chill. I had a couple beers and enjoyed hanging around the fire with Nick and his wife. They are wonderful people, and kind to put up with this grizzled old man who is definitely past his prime.

I climbed fairly well over there. Nick led "ride em cowboy" (5.9) first thing in the morning. He left the draws on and I led it next, cleanly, which surprised the heck out of me. That climb has scared me badly in the past. I also led the 2 eights (one of which was clip em or skip em) over in the "air guitar" area. I had to hang on one at the crux, but led the other one cleanly. I need to take a fall to get over my tentative leading.

I hated to come back Saturday night as we were having so much fun, but I'd promised Sue I'd ski today. When I woke up this morning, Sue said she'd changed her mind and would just as soon drive down to see mom and dad in Olympia.

We went on a two hour bike ride around capital lake and up to the falls, then came home to dads house and hung out for a few hours. I'd brought my guitar down to play for mom, thinking she would enjoy the music. Strangely though, after I started to play, she acted almost as if she couldn't hear it, and walked away during the third song.

She used to always love to hear me play, so I guess the dementia is affecting her ability to hear music...or maybe I just played badly. She seem to be interacting with the world from a great distance off, as if she is far, far away, and running mostly on autopilot...not really there as it were.

It's sad, she's there, but she's not there, and I miss her...I think we all miss her.

3-9-08 Sunday evening

It's been almost seven days since I had a dizzy spell. I'm wondering if this is the start of another 60 day remission as happened after having 3 dizzy spells before Christmas. I have some low grade unsteadiness at times, but nothing that I can't handle easily. I went for a long bike ride down a gravelly, sandy dirt road out behind the house on some steep hills and felt great. I was very strong riding up the hills, hardly slowed down at all and they are some long, steep hills.

I worked all six hours yesterday at the gym, freeing up my entire month for more interesting endeavors. Today Sue and I had talked about visiting mom and dad in Olympia, but when Sue called down there this morning dad sounded rushed as my sister was there already so we stayed home.

I worked on a very challenging flash movie that I was considering as a final project for my Wednesday class. After spending six hours on it and still fighting some minor bugs I've decided it's too hard. I was thinking about putting it to the class as a vote. I could let them choose between the standard easy final, and this project that I fought today. The bad thing about todays project is that the programming is far beyond even my advanced skills.

Sure, if they typed it right, and didn't stumble too badly on any of the dozen land mines in the poorly written instructions, it would work...with a lot of coaching from me, but that does not sound like a good final. The final should work flawlessly if it is done correctly, not be full of bugs.

I looking forward to our spring break. We have some climbing adventures planned, it will be great to get away. I'm tired of this computer, think I'll go out in the garage and make something.

3-2-08 Sunday morning

Had three short dizzy spells in a row last week, one a day Wednesday through Friday. The first one happened in my office during lunch. I was practicing my guitar lessons on the beater camping guitar I keep in the office. I felt a wave of dizzyness hit me and put the guitar away very carefully, trying not to move my head very much. It got worse and the room started to spin. I started to sweat profusely as my body tried to stay balanced in the bizarre spinning room. I lost most of my lunch in the waste basket, but half an hour later I was reasonably normal and walked down to my classroom where no one had even missed me, it being a lab. It was very disturbing and the first dizzy spell I've had since Christmas.

I'd already agreed to meet Paul at the gym that night, and while I should have gone home and relaxed, the devil in me decided to go climbing. It was sort of thumbing my nose at the disease, but I didn't want to bail on Paul, as I hate it when partners bail on me. To my surprise, I was leading better than ever, cruising up three hard routes that I usually take lead falls on. I was joking around with Paul and told him that I ought to have dizzy spells everyday if it would make me climb so well.

The second dizzy spell happened the next day right after my guitar lesson at 5:30. It had been very stressful week, far too much going on at work, and too many trips to the gym both to work and to climb. I couldn't concentrate on what the guitar teacher was trying to tell me. He demonstrated the rhythm strumming I was supposed to play, and then kept playing it expecting me to pick it up and play along.

I could keep up if I watched and mimicked him, but whenever I did that he'd stop and say, no, you can't watch me, you have to read the sheet music and play it from there. Well, I didn't know how to read the quarter, whole, half and eighth notes well enough to play them while learning the new metronome strumming technique all at the same time. It was like walking and chewing gum at the same time...well, maybe a little harder.

Anyway I walked out of the lesson frustrated with myself for being so stupid and slow on the uptake. When I got in the car, I was hit with a deep wave of dizzyness...almost vertigo. It felt like someone had turned on a high powered gyroscope in my head. As I turned my head, the gyroscope fought the motion of my muscles.

I sat in the car for 20 minutes until it passed, cursing this damn Menieres disease until it passed. I'm very lucky it was such a short one. The very next day, while I was out running errands the same thing happened at the counter of a sporting goods store. I had to lean on the counter and told the clerk I felt dizzy and might need a chair. He looked at me with compassion and said, "is it Menieres?". When I asked him how he knew, he said one of the other clerks had Menieres.

Again, it passed the violent stage within 10 minutes and I simply leaned on the counter until it was over, then walked carefully out of the store and sat in the car. I was twenty minutes late getting back to work. One of my students noticed and complained about it, said he thought I'd skipped out to enjoy the sunshine. When I started helping him, his computer crashed and he lost 2 hours worth of work. He has a tendency to work for long periods without saving, never a good idea.

I've decided to stop the guitar lessons and cut back on my gym visits. The Thursday faculty class I'm teaching only has two more Thursdays and it will be over so that will give me two more days a week that I can go home early and exercise. I miss my after work bike rides. I just bought new fenders for my bicycle so I can ride even if it's raining, that will be very cool. I used to have them back when my bike was my car, but that was way back in the day.

I'm hoping this new relapse of Menieres disease is all related to stress, and if I cut back on the stress I'll be fine. If not, then I need to go in to see my ENT doctor and see what he can do for me. I saw him a year ago and he said that the treatments have gotten a lot better in the 9 years since I had regular attacks.

My old buddy Dave is back in town after a year in Iraq. He should have some interesting stories to tell. I've only known a couple guys who were over there and they were soldiers who didn't want to talk about it.

 

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