The most disability unfriendly city I have seen

As I previously posted I broke my ankle and am in this funky boot thing. Well just to make life a bit more fun, I went to see Harry Potter the day it came out and while at the theater I slipped on some junk they left on their floor and fell. I didn't want to hurt my ankle again so I put my hand on the seat to steady myself. The seat was shaky and my hand slipped between the seat and back, pressing the thumb almost double over backwards. I didn't want to miss the movie so I told Ken after we left. We decided to see if maybe it was just sprained so I waited to the next day to see the doctor. Over night my thumb swelled up huge. Well the doctor who saw me wanted me to go to a hand specialist. They were worried that I had hurt the tendons. The hand specialist said he thinks it is broken but its hard to tell.So I have to go back there next Tuesday. The pain is amazing. I am actually taking pain pills for it. I hope they do something soon. I am not sure I can stand this for long.

OH yes I had a sleep study done and have sever sleep apnea. I guess I stop breathing 48 times an hour. Wow.. Anyways when the doctor and the insurance get off their butts I will get a CPAP machine that I wear while I am sleeping.

Ken will thing he is sleeping with Darth Vader. Face mask, boot and hand wrapped up.

OK so back to the disability unfriendly place. Louisville sucks for people that are mobily challenged. I am using the knee scooter to get around. Going to places like stores is a challenge. I have as of yet, and I have used it now for 3 weeks, not found a single door that opens with the press of a button for the disabled.

Most doors are heavy and slim making it difficult to get my scooter through, I would not want to try a wheel chair. Many stores have stairs with no ramps for wheel chairs. One strip mall we use on a regular basis has no disability parking so I find myself trying to get the scooter out of the van while squished between two vehicles. This same strip mall has so few up ramps to get from the parking lot to the sidewalks in front of the stores I find myself parking a long ways a way just to be near the ramp.

When going out to eat I have found restaurants with disability friendly washrooms who have piled unused chairs in the way making it difficult if not impossible to get past them unless you are walking.

Oddly, even the place I rented the scooter from (it also rents wheel chairs) had narrow heavy doors with no auto opening on them.

I do get around but I can say its a pain. I would think that in a place like Louisville the ADA would have long ago made things better.

Big boot

I went to the orthopedic doctor and he took more x-rays. He put me in this huge boot and told me not to put weight on my foot for 3 weeks. after that if its healing well I should be able to put some weight on it. I have concluded that I do not get along with crutches at all. With that in mind I went out and rented a Free Spirit Knee Walker. It is called the crutch substitute and I love it. We had to set up the dog's ramp on the front steps to make it so I can carry it in and out of the house when ken is not home. I used it a bit today and it is great. no more sore hands/armpits for me.

Ouch

Well I went to work out on Wednesday after picking ken up from work. My legs were still sore from the weekend but I could walk again (I think I had a reaction to my Physical therapy) anyways I decided not to do any legs at all so I did upper body. What happened next is what I believe happened but I have no real proof. I did this exersize that you put weight on the system and then twist the upper half of your body while standing up. I stopped that exersize before I was done because of pain in my leg and took ken to the rest of the machines he wanted to do. I told him I could not walk down the stairs so we took the elevator and went to the change room. When I took my shoes and socks off my ankle was super swollen. We skipped the hot tub and headed off to the imediate care clinic. They exrayed and I have one maybe 2 breaks in the ankle. So I got an air cast and a referal to a bone doctor next week. Its rather odd because it does ache and such but there is no real pain unless I accidently move it one certian way. So now I am hobbling around like a fool on crutches. What a pain. Today we went to get some groceries and I got to drive those funky carts at walmart.

My ghost has visited again.

Well this is the latests in a string of odd happenings around this house. When we first moved in here we went grocery shopping and bouoght a ton of food. As always Ken carried in all the bags while I unpacked. When I had everything unpacked I noticed there was a number of items I had purchased that were missing. I thought this was odd and asked Ken if he had brought everything in. He assured me he had. I moved the bags around and even shoved all the bags into one bag, I had not missed any in the sea of bags. I went outside to recheck the van and nothing was in it. I came back into the house and there were 4 bags of groceries sitting on the kitchen floor. I asked Ken where he had found them and he denied having put them there. Either he was pulling my leg ot the bags walked in on thier own. Rather odd.



Next my inlaws were over visiting and had left the previous day, my ferrets were playing in a plastic bag from the pharmacy I think it was. when I went to lift Finn out of the bag I noticed a photo in there. No one I had ever seen before. Thinking my inlaws may have dropped it I send them a scan of the photo and they had never seen it before. I suppose the ferrets could have found the photo somewhere in the room. Who knows.

Then sitting in the middle of the living room with no dirt on it, and crumbling to the touch there was a collar. I blogged about the collar on December 10 and December 11th. If you want to read the whole story behind that.

Which brings us to today. I had been looking for the bottle of Pet Calm because I wanted to cut Corky's nails. I could not find it anywhere. I looked on my bed side table. I looked on the kitchen counter, on the fridge, in the kitchen window, on and around my desk. Nothing. After 2 days of looking I was ready to say to heck with it and just buy more. Its onl y $9 a bottle after all. Well I walked back up to my computer to do something and low and behold there is the bottle sitting in a spot on my desk it could not have been missed previously. I normally eat at the computer and it was sitting exactly where I put my dish. You would think I would have noticed it if it had been there all the time. A bit odd

Ken thinks I am nuts. I am begining to wonder myself.

Graduated

I got the news yesterday that I graduated as a certified dog trainer from the Animal Behaviour College. I wanted to get a certification behind my name to help with my Dog Training business. I am glad to have gotten it all done with. There is a course I want to take in Texas sometime, likley when I am in better shape.

My birthday

Well my birthday went pretty well. Matthew my middle son sent me the neatest looking dragon. The dragon is wrapped around a crystal ball. I just love it. With the dragon was a birthday card that had this voice on it. It really made my day that he remembered me. Normally Ken has to remind the kids, this year he did not.

Pasha sent me something too but thanks to the post office I will have to wait a little bit for it. I am excited to get it.

We went to Ruth Chris's Steakhouse and it was great. It had the best food ever.

Free Wow Pet

For you blizzard fans out there. If you sign up you will get a free ingame pet robot.

Worked out

I worked out again today. My feet are still feeling great. I have had no pain since I got the new shoes. I am still boggled at how much of a difference it has made in my life. I can just hope it keeps up. I am suppose to go to physical therapy next week for my feet but I am not sure I will need it. I will go the first time to see what happens.

I also got an appoint for a sleep study on the 27th. That should be interesting. They want to find out why I wake up so much at night and why I fall asleep at weird times. I hope it helps the problems.

Tobias helped me with my business cards to change the address on them. Stupid me, I lost the file that I could edit and so he took the JPG and editted that for me and got my new address and webpage put on there. The webpage is HTTP://PawsOnPerfection.com but I am still fighting with dreamweaver to figure out how to make the pages so bare with me on that. (I miss frontpage)

I took my business cards into Staples today and the woman said they would be ready tomorrow. I was amazed at how fast they would have them done.

Things that make you go Hmmm

Ken and I were talking about things that people report to the police as missing or stolen. Its kind of funny because it really is not wholey based on a monetary value.

If I have a $500 cell phone and it goes missing I call the cellphone company and report it lost and curse myself for not paying for the replacement plan.

If I have a $500 car that goes missing I call the police and report it as stolen.

Same value different responces.

Again if I drop a $75 dollar watch that goes missing I mutter and curse and go buy a new one.

If a $75 toaster goes missing from my kitchen I call the police because I was robbed.

Ok maybe we are nerds but it was interesting to think about.


Another interesting thing is how good my feet feel in these shoes. I have had so many doctors and not one went "well how are your shoes?" Do they want us better? or do they want us returning?

And when it comes down to that What about the shoe lady that helped me. She watche me walk she stood me on this little metal device that messured me foot in all directions and then she picked shoes she showed me how they should fit. Hell she tied my laces! then she walked me walk in them.

We used to get service like this but that has gone by the way side. Now we walk into payless or walmart and look at millions of shoes and pick one out and buy it. What did we lose when we lost this type of service? I know what I lost. I lost about 5 years of my life walking around in so much pain I sometimes wished I had a wheel chair. Its sad, what we lost in exchange for convience.

Mashed Van

I picked ken up from work today so we could drive down to Fort Knox to get me signed up for Tricare Prime. On the way there I went to make a left turn on a side road (I wanted to check the GPS and what not) While I was in the turn some guy plowed his truck and trailer into the back of my poor van. I now have a mashed van.

What was annoying is I got out and asked the guy if he was ok. He got out and yelled at me that I didnt have my turn signal on(I did).-blink- Nice to see you are more worried about yourself then anyone else dude.

Aiden (the dog) was asleep and wokeup long enough to grump that we jarred the van while he was snoozing and Ken was fine.

Well the police showed up and took our stories and will be filing a report. I guess it happens. The amazing thing was ken called 911 since we didnt know where we were to call the local police and they pin pointed us from his cell phone. That is awesome.

We spent a fair bit of time walking around and my feet feel great. I am not useing the inserts and I have no pain at all. Awesome.

New Shoes

I went to a kick off for a program I signed up for called "Exersize is Medicine" Basically I agree to get in 2.5 hours of exersize a week. What was interesting was after the speach there was a podiatrist there. Ken had been bugging me to get new shoes so I went up to ask her if the kind of shoes i had was good or if I should look at a new kind.

As some of you may know my feet often hurt so bad I can barely walk. I have been to 3 podiatrists and 2 doctors about my feet as well as a store that sold these special inserts and promised to fit you properly. Anyways The podiatrist said she did not like the shoes and told me about a place called footworks. I went there directly after the kickoff and got some new shoes. I had been wearing a size 8.5 or 9 for many many years now. The women messured me and told me I was in the wrong shoe size and that I should have a 10EE. Bow was I shocked. I bought the new shoes and wore them out.

MY feet have not felt better. I love them.

High Speed Cable???

We have been fighting with the cable company here for a while (Insight Cable). In the evenings often at about 7:30pm-9:30pm I get dropped constantly. It can start as early as 6 and go as late as 10 but its normally within those 2 hours. We have bought a new router, we have tried without the router, we have made them change the modem and still it does it.

Ken called them and the phone kept cutting off his outgoing voice which is what happens to me on the computer. They are going to send people out to check out the line on Tuesday but the stupid thing is they send them out during the day.

There is no problem during the day and the techs will go 'your line looks great'. The only thing I can think of is that someone is running something in the evening that interferes with the cable signal. But that is just a guess on my part.

Valintines Eve/Day

Ken took me on a dinner cruise yesterday (February 13th) on the Spirit of Jefferson. He had thought it was going to be the Belle of Louisville which is a steam boat but even with that aside it was a nice evening. They had a buffet style dinner and music/dancing after and everyone got their photos taken as part of the evening. It would have been nicer as a day time cruise so you could see the scenery but I did enjoy myself.

On Valentines day we went to Sweet Surrender which is a bakery/vegetarian cafe. They have some of the best deserts I have seen. We had chocolate dipped strawberries for our desert after a nice lunch. I will defiantly be going back there.

Wysong Battle

I found a couple more things on the battle this morning. Here is a link to the pantant mentioned. http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5968569.html. Wysong also has a forum for people wishing to discuss this.

I posted the press release on the Everything Ferret forum as well as sent it to MSNBC. We will see if the big news agency contacts Wysong about this. It would be kewl to get it into the more public eye.

I just got this in my mail

I am rather annoyed to read this. I use this food for my ferrets. I have been trying to find out more information on this but have as yet found none.


==========================
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Wysong Corporation
989.631.0009
989.631.9280
Wysong@Wysong.net
www.Wysong.net

NESTLE/PURINA VS THE NATURAL PET FOOD INDUSTRY
Midland, Michigan – Nestec S.A. (better known as Nestle), parent company of Purina, a pet food manufacturer based in St. Louis, Missouri, and Wysong Corporation, a health education and nutritional development company in Midland, Michigan, have filed suits against one another in the Eastern District Federal Court in Missouri.

The suits are related to a technology invented by Dr. Wysong in the early 1980’s to enrobe pet and human foods with probiotics – health giving organisms such as found in yogurt. Although Wysong did not seek a patent, it has used the technology in both animal and human foods since the early 1980s. Due in large part to Wysong’s educational efforts and product development, probiotics have become a part of the collective health consciousness of the public and food industry. Of late, many natural pet food companies have begun using Dr. Wysong’s technology as well.
Nestle/Purina obtained a patent granted in 1999 for the same technology. To this date, however, Purina has not incorporated probiotics in its own products. Instead, it is attempting to prevent Wysong and other companies from enrobing dry extruded pet foods with probiotics unless a licensing fee is paid to Purina.
A patent is not valid if the invention (prior art) exists in the public domain prior to the patent. The evidence of Wysong’s prior art for over fifteen years before the 1999 Nestle patent was granted is, according to Wysong, incontrovertible and ample. In fact, within the last few years just a portion of Wysong’s prior art evidence swayed a European patent review board to deny Nestle/Purina a like European patent. The decision was upheld upon appeal.

These facts have been repeatedly made known to, but ignored by Nestle/Purina in their suit filed against Wysong. Purina’s ultimatum is that Wysong either pay sales-based licensing fees (essentially, royalties) going back six years and forward into the future, or pay for expensive patent litigation.

Wysong, a small family owned company, is unwilling to pay licensing fees to the multibillion dollar Nestle/Purina for what amounts to Wysong’s own invention, and consequently now finds itself being sued by a company literally hundreds of times its size. Purina takes the position that since they were granted a patent they have a right to enforce it.

Wysong argues that the patent should have never been granted, is invalid and unenforceable, and that any attempt by Purina to use the threat of litigation costs to force licensing fees is unethical and illegal. Since Wysong publicized and used the technology in products distributed nationally for more than 15 years prior to the patent, Wysong claims that the patent holders copied Wysong art and did not reveal this to the patent office when filing. Thus, Wysong has either filed or is exploring the filing of claims against Purina for Sherman Act violations/patent misuse, misleading the United States Patent Office, failing to comply with the U.S. Patent Laws, including 35 USC §101-103, 111-113 and 133, improper attempts to monopolize the market, unfair competition, antitrust violations, false advertising under the Lanham Act, state claims for deceptive trade practices, RICO violations, and punitive damages under the Clayton Act.
Wysong Corporation

Purple George (Tobias named the blog today)

While playing World of Warcraft Tobias tried to kill me. I was laughing so hard I had an asthma attack. I have heard of epilepsy with lights from games but not ashma from laughing at games. I think I should sue Blizzard! With my luck they will just tell me to delete my WTF folder and that the problem is on my end.

For dinner we went to the word famous Genny's Diner. Why its world famous I don't know. I guess a movie was shot there. It was pretty good but I would not classify it as spectacular.

Its your typical diner, minimalist decor with a bit of dust and grime where the cleaners don't normally look. The bathroom floor was filthy, it felt like someone spilt a coke on it and didn't clean it up. A large fish tank is prominent as you enter the diner which was kind of nice at first but watching mondo sized gold fish trailing fish poop behind them kind of kills the appetite

The hamburgers were much too big. In fact all the food was too big and there was no options of smaller sizes. Oddly when we went in there, they had no sugar or honey. I don't use it but I did find that an odd thing to run out of. There is a Kroger's down the way if you cant get your supplier to deliver some go to the grocery store dude you are a restaurant.

Interestingly the coffee cups look like they were taken off the shelf at someones home. Cups with pictures of someones kids on them saying 'I love mommy'. Mine had a huge crack in it which was not to nice but I did chuckle at the down home feel of the cups gave.

They had one interesting food there, fried pickles. I know it sounds gross and I was expecting it to be so. But in reality it was very good. I really enjoyed them. the food was lacking in spices, maybe they ran out of those as well as the sugar. So my take on it is clean the bathroom floor, add some spice to the meals and make a smaller size. The staff were really nice. I did enjoy that. And the unrushed relaxed atmosphere was pleasant. So I think out of 5 stars I would likely give it a 3.

After dinner we went to restock the groceries that we had to throw out due to the power outage. We tossed out much of the food with the exception of the meats which we are feeding to the dogs. With the exception of Sirus, they will eat anything. Sirus will eat it if it meets his expectations which if 'prepared by a 5 star chef who is trained in the art of cooking for the Canis lupus familiaris.

We were down to eatting pop tarts, canned soup and dog food so I (read Ken) decided it was time to get more food in the house. I got a new cookbook during the power outage I am sure I could have made the dog food taste good given half a chance.

Shopping was an experience in itself as I had to walk around while in pain. I must of turned funny at the diner and hurt my back. It was not a pleasant time shopping. Mind you I rank grocery shopping just above getting a root canal and below scooping dog poop off the lawn.

I also have been hearing from my kids a little more which is nice. Sometimes I feel like they have fallen off the face of the earth. They all seem to be doing well which is nice to hear.

Rob, a fellow from Kens work taped the sounds of the ice storm. I put them to some photos from the storm. Many I took, others I found on the net. Enjoy.

A full day of power

I know this is the third post today but I just have to say its nice to have power again. I moved the animals back to their normal sleeping spots. It will be nice to be warm all night long. And there wont be any getting up in the morning to stand outside freezing while I pour gas in the generator.  That really was the worse part I think. Having to stand in the cold filling that thing up. The new gas cans all have safety protection on them and it is almost impossible to use them to fill the tank. You have to press this or pull/push that its stupid.

I had to throw out almost all of our food. It had all gone bad. We wont go shopping again until we know for sure we are not losing power again. But I will sure be happy when I can make dinner at home instead of having to live on fast food. I figure we lost about $150 - $200 worth of food.

Cable tells me they had us ‘booked’ to rerun the wires for our phone and internet tomorrow. This is not what they told me when I called earlier in the day but the fellow this evening assured me that it had been ‘booked’ so we will see if I get any internet tomorrow.  I have to go fax some stuff for the insurance so I hope that they get done early.

Downloaded Windows Live Writer

Well I downloaded Windows live blog. We will see if maybe I can write the blogs while offline then upload them when I get a link.

One thing I hate about windows Live is when you want to download something from them, like this blog writer, it forces you to update the other stuff on your system. There is no “would you like to” it just does it.

I hate the new windows Live messenger with a passion. The sounds don’t work or if/when they work they are so soft you can not hear them anyways, I end up miss most of the messages I get. Even with Vista’s ability to turn up sounds on individual programs it does not work. I really don't know how the rest of the program works as I never got past that bad bit of coding.  I went on a search to find an older version of MSN to install. Again They don't make this easy to do. They force you to use the Newest and Worst version. Thankfully there are some helpful people out there with the older versions

If you DO manage to find an older version of messenger to install good luck trying to uninstall the newest one. You wont find it in the add/remove programs and you wont find a nice polite link in your  start menu. After searching my computer i found:

C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Installer\wlarp.exe

Which will let you uninstall parts of windows live like the messenger. Way to make it easy to do Windows Live Team!

Ok I am done cranking for the now. I am sure  I will continue later :)

Wired now for the power

Well the electrition came by and re-wired the stuff that was broken. He told us we had a burned out breaker box so that is new and the box outside on the wall of the house where the power comes in is new. Now we just wait till the power company comes by and hooks us up. We are hoping it will be today. I found an unsecured network when I turned on the computer today (via a surger protector and the power bar) so I got online to do what I can while I have the line.

The house has been so nice and warm the last 2 nights that I have actually been too warm in the evenings. its awesome. Of course the generator gets turned off over night so its chilly when you get up but not anything like when we were just running heaters. I can not thank Dave and Betty enough for coming over to get us hooked up like that. I never thought I would be warm again.

The animals are doing ok. Sirus is going stir crazy but he is holding up pretty well. I moved the ferrets back upstairs. its warm enough for them up there and they have both halves of the cage now that strabo is gone so they can get some playing in, even if its in a small area till we get power. Corky is happy where ever there is heat and just loves the fireplace. When we had the space heaters I kept having to get him off them. He does not underestand that a space heater is not a heating pad and you dont lay on them. The fireplace is up a little step so at least he does not crawl into there. He does get as close to it as he possibly can. And Aiden is Aiden he takes it all in his stride.