For those who still have and/or use my landline number, the one my dad and I have had for 30 years, it’s now disconnected forever. Cell phone only from now on. Very sad to let it go… but it was time. I’ll remember it forever.
Photography/lighting errors aside, I think this cast photo could NOT have been better. I am proud to be a part of its brilliance.
I scanned the photo in to do some color correction and correct as much of the lighting as I could, added the captions, and submit to you the cast of “Date Night” which included three one-act plays (“Miss You”, “Post-Its”, & “Check, Please!”) about love and everything else.
I went to the cardiologist’s today. It was mainly a follow-up from the time when, a couple months ago, when I was feeling awful and couldn’t even take a few steps (unless the ground was flat) before feeling short of breath and nearly passing out. I had an echo done then and everything looked fine. I have been thinking the medication I’m on may be contributing. It’s designed to make the heart pump with less vigor. I’m taking it as a precaution, though, to keep my heart from pumping out of control and erratically…. which may or may not happen. It’s basically helping me keep an even rhythm. And yes, it theoretically could be contributing.
But my most recent EKG is showing a new problem; one that’s started since (and most likely DUE to) the surgery I had in January.
I now have what’s known as a Left Bundle Branch Block (LBBB). As I understand it, this means the electric pulses which flow down to the left and right ventricles, causing them to beat in sync, were damaged on the left side during surgery (which, by the way, was quite successful in what it was intended to do; reduce the gradient, allowing the outflow to become normal). I’m given the impression that this is common after the surgery because the tissue they have to take out is right where the electricity flows down through. So, now, my right ventricle pumps and the left one pumps just a wee bit behind it. This could be contributing slightly, perhaps fully, to my recent inability to move without feeling short of breath (which has subsided somewhat, as of 2 weeks ago).
The next step is to get an electrophysiologic study, which is kind of like a heart catheterization, but much less risky, severe, and less difficult to perform. They will be testing to see how the right side is doing and determine if I’m at risk of ventricular arrhythmia (i.e. an irregular heartbeat). If the test is clean, we can sit back and even try getting me off the medication I’m on now. But if the test shows that I am susceptible to a wacky rhythm, then I will be urged to have an ICD put in. (i.e. A pacemaker)
So…
I’ll probably be scheduling the test sometime in September. It shouldn’t be a big deal. I’ll be able to go into work by the next day and everything. I was seriously thinking this pacemaker/ICD talk wouldn’t happen for at least a few years after the goddamned surgery. But I suppose I’m not that lucky.
So I just installed this new Wordpress theme on my website… and I’m completely loving it! It’s so funny! To me.
I notice there’s a strange glitch when browsing through pages and through some of the photo albums, though… I hope I can get rid of them because I definitely want to keep this theme around for awhile. HA haha hee hee!
I think I realized this blog was really only existing for one person. I have no interest in sharing such intimate details with anyone else. I didn’t/don’t care that anyone else reads. So now, since I’ve shut her out of my view and assume the opposite has occurred, too, I have little use for this space.
Besides, only one person even bothered to ask for part 2 of my surgery blog. Just goes to show how many are truly interested. I’m not hurt by that, because it’s not surprising.
I will probably end up changing this layout… maybe to something more appropriate to my online life. Less focus on this rotting corpse of a blog and more on Twitter and/or other things.
I need the record to show that I have done quite well with my withdrawal of Lee Anne. It’s been a little scary, though. I’ve always said that the thing that keeps us going is knowing there’s something to live for, something better than here and now. So when I put every ounce of hope into a particular dream, knowing that will make everything better, allowing it to be the one and only thing I was living for… well… it’s a little scary to let such a thing go. Will I lose faith in life? Will I succumb to complete and total apathy and put an end to this now-pointless life?
Nope. I know there’s something (see: someONE) else out there. I believe in my heart we were meant to be together, when we met, but it didn’t happen. I also know there can and will never be anything as great and powerful as what we experienced. But there are so many facets to our relationships with people, there stands the possibility that I will have something equally as important and equally as fulfilling in due time.
I was never bitter about the situation. Disappointed, to say the least… but never bitter, never jealous. Just thoroughly confused about how something so completely right was just not able to be possible. No, I was never bitter. And for a while, almost 2 years, I was a better man because of it. I could revel in the enlightenment I achieved from knowing her. I was at my best in that year following their marriage. I was the fittest I ever was, I was all-around healthier, too. But things quickly changed after all the ups and downs.
Dysthymia seeped in at some point. I’m now fully engulfed by this disorder and oh, how it touches so many around me. The dysfunction it causes it only strengthens its grip on me.
So this is what I need to work on, now. That and a body which is worse-off now than it was before the surgery. The past 3-4 weeks, I’ve been eating healthier than ever before. I actually am making my own salads using fresh ingredients and preparing them the night before! Dinners are all turkey & cheese, tuna, and/or baked beans. …But I’m still not losing weight.
I’ve not made mention of it, but I can’t even go up a flight of stairs without it totally knocking the wind out of me and making me feel like I’m going to pass out. I have to sit down after standing up some times. And the test is scheduled weeks in advance so I won’t know for awhile if they see anything wrong. My knees, at times, feel like the cartilage in the joint is thinning. The good news is, I’m not coughing up blood since the surgery.
Anyway, these subjects are pretty much all I write about on here anymore. Boring!
I advise you to not check here often, since there won’t be much going on.
Not for awhile, anyway.
I’m done. I’m done.
I’m going to try to be done.
But I need to be done.
…..I don’t want to be done….
But I’m done. I think I’m done.
I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I’m going to try.
Almost five and a half years of being a rock. Steady and patient. Devoted and keen. Empowered, enlightened, and grateful; I cannot be a rock any longer. My heart has atrophied.
So much has changed! With her, I mean.
But I have all these words saved with me that I can read over and over again, to remind me of what once was the ultimate kind of love and connection.
Then I wonder, what is love without background; without history and time behind it? True, we had unspeakable chemistry and I believe the forces of nature were putting all their effort into making us find and be together. But there’s something to be said about the time two people spend with each other that gives that relationship substance you cannot otherwise have with someone you just met. It gives real meaning to loving someone. So I have to wonder.
And without any explanation (and PLENTY of attempts at obtaining one), she’s ignored me for almost a year. Is this her way of giving me a hint? I don’t take hints very well. I like pure, unadulterated honesty. I’ve said time and time again to tell me to go away the moment you don’t want me in your life anymore. That doesn’t happen, so I go on believing I am still wanted. But going through a major, somewhat risky surgery without a peep? One that was only a 2 hour drive from her home? And then, being here in town with nothing to do and purposefully, with intent, did not contact me? This is big-time rejection, more than I’d expect from even the most casual of acquaintances. Hell, I even got “Get Well Soon” wishes from people I’ve never even spoken to!
It matters no more. The explanation for this silent treatment is what *I* needed to move on. Obviously, it’s not what she feels she needs to give me — and I can’t keep hanging on to that, giving me another excuse to keep this door cracked, letting the hope continue to seep in.
I don’t exactly know how I’m going to do this.
I have some ideas, which my chances of success are questionable, but we’ll see. Either way, I’m done.
Really.
Door is closed.
I will dedicate no more time to your birthday this year than that which I have put into writing this sentence.
Have I ever told you about the first time I acted?
I was in high school. Senior year. I had interest in taking the drama class for a few years but it wasn’t open to underclassmen until I was actually IN senior year. Bugger.
The first half of the year was spent mainly reading plays in class at our desks, watching movies and plays on film. By the time mid-terms came up, we were ready for our first big assignment: To perform a soliloquy from either MacBeth or Hamlet. If necessary, we could use another classmate to read a line or two during it. If I remember correctly, there had to be at least 32 lines or something within the soliloquy. I chose MacBeth.
I chose the part which includes “Life is but a walking shadow…” and quickly memorized the surrounding 31 lines, but it wasn’t enough. There was still a lot more to this scene and I couldn’t just stop there. I went on to memorize the entirety of scene 5, act 5, and I enlisted the help of Mary Falls to play the part of Seyton and a messenger.
SCENE V. Dunsinane. Within the castle.
Enter MACBETH, SEYTON, and Soldiers, with drum and colours
MACBETH
Hang out our banners on the outward walls;
The cry is still ‘They come:’ our castle’s strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn: here let them lie
Till famine and the ague eat them up:
Were they not forced with those that should be ours,
We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,
And beat them backward home.A cry of women within
What is that noise?
SEYTON
It is the cry of women, my good lord.Exit
MACBETH
I have almost forgot the taste of fears;
The time has been, my senses would have cool’d
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in’t: I have supp’d full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
Cannot once start me.Re-enter SEYTON
Wherefore was that cry?
SEYTON
The queen, my lord, is dead.MACBETH
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.Enter a Messenger
Thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.
Messenger
Gracious my lord,
I should report that which I say I saw,
But know not how to do it.MACBETH
Well, say, sir.Messenger
As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look’d toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.MACBETH
Liar and slave!Messenger
Let me endure your wrath, if’t be not so:
Within this three mile may you see it coming;
I say, a moving grove.MACBETH
If thou speak’st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,
I care not if thou dost for me as much.
I pull in resolution, and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth: ‘Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane:’ and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!
If this which he avouches does appear,
There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
I gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish the estate o’ the world were now undone.
Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we’ll die with harness on our back.
And with that last line, I swung my back to the class and walked away towards Mary Falls, waiting in the back for the scene to complete. My eyes widened as I approached her, as did hers. My arms stretched out, as did hers, and we just hugged as we squealed. I was filled with electricity and adrenaline like I’ve never felt before.
But it was when I turned back around, to face the class and my teacher, which took me to another level. I turned and saw my teacher get up as he clapped… briskly walk towards me with his hand held out… and he vigorously… shook… my hand. He shook it with a combination of excitement, pride, and (if I may say so) amazement. The class had risen to their feet with him as they continued to clap. I was so overwhelmed, it was as if I was hit in the gut and had the air knocked out of me. The emotional release of the powerful scene with the addition of how the performance was accepted by my teacher, I can’t remember what happened the rest of that day but I will always remember that moment.
I aced that mid-term. The 2nd half of the year focused on the play we’d put on for the school and community at the end of the year. I played a crotchety old man, still in love with his crotchety, old wife as they reflected upon their lives together in a play entitled “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.”
I left high-school with a clear indication of what I loved. This was a passion greater than music or art or anything else. Above all else, THIS felt right. This fulfilled me in ways nothing else could. But I couldn’t pursue it when I left school. I had shift-work jobs that were unpredictable in the times and days I would work, preventing me from committing to any sort of community theater. When I did have set schedules, I worked too far from home to allow sufficient time in my evening to commit. Then I got the job I’m at now and learned a co-worker acted in a theater close to our job. But I couldn’t because I had the band.
I realized just last Friday that I can now do this. The time is finally right. It’s been over 10 years since I left school, though. It’s a very scary thing. But I have to do this while I still can.
So, I went to an audition at that local theater last night and for the first time in 10 years, I acted again.
It would be sad if I don’t get a part in the play, but in a way, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t really about getting the part. It was doing it. It was going. And man, what a fucking rush. Just like the soliloquy, each time I walked off stage I was shaking and unable to focus on anything or anyone. I was totally filled with adrenaline again. There was no applause for anyone during these auditions, which I found slightly rude, but maybe that’s just the way things are there. Regardless, I found it very interesting that I could still feel this way even without any praise. It proved to me it was not about that. It’s just being up there and doing it.
As for this audition, I don’t know if I was supposed to get a call today/tonight or not. I’m waiting to get confirmation on when I would receive a call, if I were to be cast. Whatever the case may be, I am proud of myself right now and I can’t remember the last time I felt that.
DumbVantage! Amiright, folks?
I’ve always been pretty happy with at&t’s VoIP system called CallVantage (see: Vonage, Comcast Digital Voice). I’ve had it since it first came out back in ‘04 or so. But lately there’s been a few things just not working right. Actual performance issues. But I haven’t ever said anything because I rarely ever use the landline.
But I wrote them an email yesterday in which I totally didn’t mention any service issues and just asked a question about how I’d prefer my voicemails to be sent in mp3 format rather than wav.
My email:
The voicemails are emailed in .wav format.
Can these be offered/emailed as mp3s instead?If not available now, may I suggest this feature for the future? Switching to mp3 will greatly reduce the file sizes anyway, which would be beneficial to the at&t servers which are storing them.
I received the “We received your email and will get around to it within 48 hrs.” standard form mail. I waited a day. This was the response I just got:
Dear Carl Baldwin:
In response to your bill inquiry, Tracking Number: ##############, requesting information on account: ############, the following information has been obtained:
We apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced with your service. Please contact our repair office to resolve your issues. You can reach this office by calling #############.
Thank you for choosing AT&T.
Really? REALLY?
This, along with my actual problems with the service as of late just may cause me to switch to Comcast. At least maybe then I’ll stop getting 3 Comcast junk mailings a week (of which I asked to be taken off that list a year ago, too).
