The Tidal Wave – the best bar shot ever?

Spent the weekend in Dewey Beach DE where the latest rage in bar shots is the “Tidal Wave”.

Here’s a video I shot of a bunch of Santa Clauses (more on that later) doing Tidal Waves (yes I did one too but I couldn’t videotape myself) at the Starboard in Dewey.

The shot can be anything that you’d like, it’s the water in the face that gives it the name. The shot was taking the bar by storm and people were lining up to have water thrown in their faces

OK – now the Santa suits story.

There’s a group in Philly that sponsor’s their version of a Santa Claus bar tour (similar to the one that I run in State College but on a slightly grander scale). Their tour is called the “Running of the Santas”.

“Rudolph’s Revenge” is their July version of the Santa Run. It’s a bus/ferry trip from Sea Isle City NJ to Dewey Beach that departs Friday night and returns on Sunday with the centerpiece of the trip being the Revenge Party at the Starboard.

Here are a couple of photo’s I took at the Starboard during the Rudolph’s Revenge party.

IMG_0107

IMG_0108

Next year I might bring my Santa costume, or I might try the Starboard’s Dewey Beach version of Pamplona’s “Running of the Bulls” festival instead – or maybe both.

Following up on my surgery

The adhesive tape fell off today so here are the photos that I promised. It looks kind of gross but everything feels pretty normal (normal but still numb that is).

IMG_0099

IMG_0100

Props to the bride and groom

It took some chutzpah to pull this off but I’ve got to credit the couple (I don’t know them) for having the fortitude to go through with it. What a great way to start your wedding.

This video hasn’t quite gone viral yet (only 10,000 views) but I think it might.

I have a new phone number (maybe)

After a very long wait, I’ve finally been accepted into Google Voice

I signed up for a Grand Central number a long time ago (4-5 years) but unfortunately when I was accepted back then they had no 814 area code numbers so I passed on the service (I could have gotten a number in another area code, and I thought about getting one in Chicago, but elected not to).

They finally got around to having 814 service but were completely backed up on fulfilling requests when they did. I put another application in and Google bought the service shortly afterward (2-3 years ago). Right after Google bought it they shutdown additional requests while they redesigned the application.

At some point after Google’s takeover I dropped my old attglobal email address which is what I had made the Grand Central request. For the last six months or so, Google has been filling those old requests. Unfortunately, since mine was under my old email, it got lost in the shuffle. So a few months ago, I had to reinstitute my request. Today, my acceptance email finally arrived.

One neat thing about Google Voice is that you get to select your phone number (as long as someone else hasn’t already grabbed it). I had really hoped that I’d be able to get something like (814) UncLarx but all the UncLar_or Uncle__ were already taken.

So I wound up with 814-39Larry – which isn’t too bad.

Now I need to play with it some and figure out how I’m going to use it.

Cameras are everywhere these days

Seems you can’t go anywhere without getting your picture taken these days. This just showed up on Facebook last night.

6292_101549739483_853029483_1936190_1253058_n

Over the fourth, I ran into Gary and Katie Gray downtown with a bunch of their family and friends celebrating the 21st birthday of one of their sons. I had just come from a Fourth of July party which had a hat theme (and yes I did win the prize for best hat).

Wrist Surgery

I briefly mentioned in a comment on Steve’s Battle Creek post that I was having wrist surgery. Here’s a follow up with more details.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had numbness in my right ring and pinky fingers for over six months. I first noticed it sometime after my pneumonia bout. I wasn’t sure if the numbness perfectly coincided with the pneumonia or not because there was enough other things bothering me that a little finger problem was easily overlooked by me.

At some point in the process of regaining my health, I noticed the numbness. At first I thought it was from spending too much time on my computer – since that’s about all I could do (I was thinking carpal tunnel syndrome but it turns out carpal tunnel affects the other fingers). I tried a couple of home remedies but they didn’t work. At my two month checkup with my doc, I mentioned the problem. He diagnosed it as probably ulnar tunnel entrapment (he was dead on there).

It turns out that there are three likely spots that the ulnar nerve can get entrapped – the wrist, the elbow and the neck:

My doc said that the rapid weight loss that I had could have caused some things to shift around and caused the nerve to get pinched up by my elbow (turns out he was off on the location). He said to wait until I gained the weight back to see if it would go away. If it didn’t he’d send me to a specialist.

Well it didn’t go away, so he arranged some additional tests. I had an EMG (Electromyography) where they stuck a punch of pins and needles in me to run an electric shock up and down the nerve path to figure out what was getting through to where.

The EMG showed that the problem was in my wrist which was a little unusual in that most times the blockage occurs at the elbow. In a way that was good news because it’s a lot easier to get at the nerve in the wrist than it is anywhere else. The bad news was that physical therapy can’t do much for the wrist problem and surgery is pretty much the only course (waiting it out to just hope it goes away is another).

So I went off to see an orthopedic surgeon who confirmed the diagnosis and scheduled the surgery. BTW – my surgery was done by Paul Suhey, the brother of longtime Chicago Bear running back Matt Suhey. The operation was Tuesday a week ago. Basically, what they do is to partially cut the ligament that’s causing the pressure on the nerve. Scar tissue will eventually fill in the gap in the ligament but it should reduce the tension in the ligament enough that the pressure will no longer be on the nerve and it will regrow.

Unfortunately, the regrowth is a long process. The doc said the nerve will probably regenerate at a pace of about 1mm per day. Since I’ve got about 5-6 inches of affected nerve that means it could take 5 months or so to completely heal (1 inch equals 25.4 mm, so 6 inches would be 152 days).

The surgery was done on an outpatient basis and I was conscious the whole time (although they didn’t let me watch the actually cutting of the wrist). It was kind of weird because I could feel him doing something down there but there was no pain involved.

The whole procedure only took about 10-15 minutes and I was good to go. They wrapped my wrist up in kind of a brace and sent me off. I had some oxycodone as a pain killer but only took that for a couple of days. I basically had no restrictions in what I could do. The doc basically said that the brace will prevent me from doing anything that could actually damage the wrist. His quote was “If you can do it, it’s ok to do it”.

Here’s a little video of what I’m walking around with at the moment.

Anybody know Russian?

This is a photo of a friend of mine shaking hands with the President. It comes from a Russian site and I don’t know what the caption says.

Barry and Obama

You may have heard that Obama was in Russia early this week. One of the things that he did there was speak at the graduation of group of students at the Russian New Economics School.

One of the founders of the school is Barry Ickes, who is an econ professor at Penn State and one of my golfing buddies. Barry and I played golf Friday a week ago, then he left the next day for Russia (he heads over there about once a month) for the school graduation and to meet with Obama. Kind of funny that he has to go all the way to Moscow to meet our President.