Those Blue Diagonal Lines...

Mean “No parking,” Douche.

The Recovery Project moved out of their old diggs at the Livonia YMCA into a new clinic space in Livonia back in July. It’s a nice upgrade; more space, new equipment, no more having to share facilities with the YMCA patrons. However the new clinic shares office space with a medical walk-in clinic, a family practice, an eye doctor, and a pharmacy in an adjacent building. There are five accessible parking spots available in the entire shared parking lot, four in the front near the building's main entrance and one spot sort of hidden around the corner of the building by the employee entrance. What at one time may have been a sufficient number of accessible parking spots before The Recovery Project moved in the office complex is not any longer.

To the casual observer, one accessible parking spot is as good as the next, but the well-initiated knows that certain spots are more desirable than others. In most large parking lots, especially at newer stores/malls, some spots will be marked “van accessible.” This means that the area designated for passenger unloading, by the diagonal lines painted on the ground, will be much wider than that of a typical accessible spot. There are no such spaces in the parking lot at The Recovery Project’s new clinic, but almost every one of their clients (me included) arrives in some sort of accessible van transportation. We are all looking for a parking spot with sufficient room to drop a lift or ramp from the passenger side of their vehicle. In the five accessible spots that are provided in the parking lot there is just enough room available to drop a wheelchair ramp, assuming everyone who needs an accessible spot has properly followed accessible-parking decorum. This is often times not the case and it has quickly become my latest pet peeve.

I very rarely encounter accessible spots occupied by a vehicle that has no right parking in that space. And in that instance, it doesn’t really bother me to find someone parked in a spot where they shouldn’t be parking. I understand a little asshole-ery every now and again. These are usually people who simply just don’t care about their impact on the community-at-large and therefore they’re easy to deal with.  I’ll just see their not-caring and raise them a not-caring-if-their-car-door-“accidentally”-gets-all-scratched-up because they’re blocking my spot. No, my biggest parking frustration comes from drivers like the owner of the car in the accompanying picture*.

First of all, why do the parking inept inevitably choose to drive friggin' land yachts like this Caprice Classic? I’m sure the good people of Flint appreciated it back in ’92 when you decided to buy American, but good god, Admiral. If you can’t get the U.S.S. Missouri properly squared up to the moorings out at Pearl, then it’s either time to let the harbor pilot bring her up to the dock, or take a commission on a smaller boat.

Now, on rare occasions these cockamamie parking jobs may have been performed with an actual purpose in mind. In the case above, the intent is to provide the driver with ample space to exit the vehicle without having to navigate over deadly, uneven, hip-shattering curbs. This is often done in scenarios in which two accessible parking spots share a common unloading zone, the left-hand spot being bordered by the aforementioned impassible terrain, and the right-hand spot is already occupied by a whale-like, Town Car-type vehicle. Fine, I understand the rationale – safety first – but the execution of this maneuver has domino effect ramifications that irritate the hell out of me. Here’s why:

I show up to the parking lot in my van, the accessible spaces are full, save for the space that the Town Car has just exited. The parking space to the immediate right of the now-open accessible spot is occupied by another car. Needing room on the right side of my van to drop my exit ramp, I have three options: I can pull up right next to Orville’s crooked car into the space intended for unloading between our two accessible parking spots and drop my ramp into what should be my parking spot (see fig.1 below); I can drive out to the back of the parking lot in B.F.E. and park diagonally across two regular spots, thus guaranteeing myself sufficient room to exit my van; or I can back my van –because I know how to drive – into the open accessible space, positioning the designated unloading zone on the starboard side of my vehicle where it’s needed.

(figure 1.)

Option one alleviates my problem for the time being, but leaves me possibly victim of having a car pull into the vacated open space to my right after I’ve exited my vehicle and folded my ramp back in place. When I return, not only do I run the risk of not having enough room to drop my ramp again, but I’m also now the jerkoff who parks in the way of everyone else. Option two isn’t much better than the first because not only am I blocking two spaces, but it totally defeats the purpose of having close-to-entryway accessible parking privileges. Furthermore, I again look like a complete fool who can’t get his car properly positioned into a parking spot. However, I have resorted to this tactic on numerous occasions when the absolute lack of available accessible parking spaces deems it necessary. At this point, I feel it’s painfully obvious the only acceptable solution is option number three. It’s the only way to meld the goals of helping to achieve some semblance of parking lot order and maintaining my high-minded opinion of myself in comparison to others.

We, the accessible-parking needy, are all in the same boat together and have undoubtedly all experienced a point in time in which our valued accessible parking space has been corrupted by someone else’s poor understanding of their vehicle's spatial footprint or straight-up inability to park. Therefore, with the frustration of that experience stored in the brain, it makes no sense, if only in the self-serving interest of preserving one’s own sanity, to perpetuate that same behavior.

I’m glad we cleared that up. Now move your stupid car because you're f'n it up for the rest of us.

*for the record, the driver of the Caprice was a nice, slow-moving, old lady that said "hi" to me as I left. As far as I know, she is not a douche.

This Is What Happens...

When you send Virgil to the print shop

He means well and he'll sell out a parking lot of blue spruce somethin' fierce, but he's not too quick on the uptake. Personally though, I blame Jim and his shoddy penmanship.

KINKO'S CLERK: Are you sure this is how you want the banner to read?

VIRGIL: Jim said to make it say exactly what he wrote on the paper.

KINKO'S CLERK: Really?

VIRGIL: That what's Jim said. And big too. Jim said 12-footers. Two of them.

KINKO'S CLERK: O.k. dude. Whatever.

Help Wanted

Position: FEEL GOOD STORY

Job Description:  Defying the odds, befuddling the skeptics, slaying Goliath, reawakening the passion of a burned-out city, making dreams become true

Qualifications:  Remarkable, youthful talent; playing with heart, emotion, & determination; ability to heed the advice of grizzled, loveable curmudgeon; spraying champagne

Prior Experience:  Decades of ineptitude & futility

Status:  NO LONGER TAKING APPLICATIONS.  Second round of interviews, as of 10/07/2006

Position:  SECOND FIDDLE

Job Description:  Despite ample talent, and flashes of brilliance applicants will always be second best

Qualifications:   Standing in the shadows; history of self-implosion; unraveling at inopportune times; possession of massive inferiority complex

Prior Experience:  Numerous years in the fields of second banana, court jester, annoying next door neighbor, or red-headed stepchild

Status:  FILLED.  Again, as of 10/07/2006

Tigers 4, Yankees 3, Series tied 1-1

Oh, and those tickets I have to Game #4 are now for a chance to see either team clinch the series with a win. And, the Tigers game now is scheduled in direct conflict with the Michigan/MSU game. So, I'm not sweatin' it.

If It's October...

It must mean the Tigers are in the playoffs (Although I'd be a lot more confident about their chances had they not been swept by the Royals this weekend)! Yes, the Tigers are returning to the playoffs for the first time in 19 years and I have tickets...Sort of. Finishing up the season at home with the Royals on the schedule, a team that lost 100 games this season, a team the Tigers lost to only once during the course of this season's prior 15 match-ups, seemed like a gift from the schedule makers. Had los Tigres managed to win one of the three games this weekend, two which they blew (5-run lead Friday, 6-run lead today, three bases-loaded, 1-out situations in the last two games in which they came away with no runs), they would have won their division. Thus, earning them the right to host the first round series and be guaranteed two home games. The game I purchased tickets for is home game #2 and would have been played on Wednesday afternoon. 

Now because Detroit finished as the Wild Card qualifier, they must travel to New York to play the Yankees and are only guaranteed one home game. For me to see the Tigers in a playoff baseball game, in person, they must win at least one against the Yankees to force a Saturday game in Detroit. It's a plausible scenario, but not one that comes without other conflicts of interest. 

Saturday is also the Michigan-Michigan State football game, scheduled to be played in Ann Arbor at 4:30. This pretty much guarantees I'll miss viewing significant portions of that game (should the Tigers still be playing at that point) regardless of what time the Tigers' game is scheduled to start. I guess I should just be happy that the Tigers have finally made it back to the playoffs, after years of horrible, horrible baseball, and enjoy the ride as long as it lasts. It really has been a great season of baseball in Detroit.

Eat It, Mary!

Jesus saves, but not today.

Let me go a little off topic today.

I've been aware of Michigan football from early in my childhood, but I became completely cognizant of Michigan football during the 1986 season. I have recollections of watching certain games, from seasons prior to that, but it was the 1986 season in which my understanding of the game of football, my idolization of the players on that team, the anticipation for upcoming games, an understanding of what it meant to have high expectations, the frustration of national championship aspirations derailed by an inexplicable loss to an inferior opponent (Minnesota), a classic UM/OSU match-up, and a crushing Rose Bowl loss, all synthesized into what became a lifelong dedication to Michigan football. Since that season, I have followed the outcome of every game in which Michigan played, watched almost every game that was televised, through my adolescent years, kept a scrapbook of Michigan newspaper clippings, and between the years of 1996 – 2003 attended every home game (save for Baylor in ’97), several road games, and three bowl games, the pinnacle of course being the 1998 Rose Bowl in which Michigan won the national championship.

The constant through all of those games has been a legacy of Michigan winning. Close games, lop-sided games, important games, rivalry games, ugly games, exciting games, but always winning more than they lose. So much winning in fact, that in the years in which there are just 7, 8, or 9 wins, it doesn’t seem like enough. To the Michigan fandom, so spoiled by all that success, those types of seasons are looked upon as disappointments. Peoples, whose jobs simply consist of talking or writing about winning (but who have no actual bearing on the winning of the games), point fingers, lay blame and pontificate on what should be done to rectify those 8 or 9-win years as so they become seasons with 10, 11, or 12 wins. Then they say that other programs—the Ohio States, USCs, and Notre Dames—have passed Michigan by, in terms of success and stature; such is the way of the world of big-time college football.

Well, Michigan, its players and coaches, made an announcement yesterday about how they were going to define their own success this season, in the form of a resounding victory over their much-hated rival Notre Dame. As a lifelong Michigan fan, I can say that yesterday’s win was one of the most enjoyable victories I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching. And for right now that's enough.

Indisputable Video Evidence.

All scores:

Detailed defensive highlights:

Detailed offensive highlights:

Further reading.

Another relieved Michigan fan basking in the victory glow

Oh, Those Crazy Canucks

Here's a story aboot a quadriplegic guy from Vancouver who climbed a mountain on Sunday.

Click here to view his full website.

And here's a story about a quadriplegic from Japan who's buddy carried him up a mountain with the help of a robotic exoskeleton.

Mitch Albom has my back.

MITCH ALBOM: Bush's stem cell veto: Whom does it save?BY MITCH ALBOMFREE PRESS COLUMNIST

July 23, 2006
Consider this scenario: Many years from now, some great-granddaughter of President George W. Bush is crippled in a car accident. There are treatments available that will heal her wounded spinal cord. But the doctor shakes his head and says, "I'm sorry, your great-grandfather didn't support our research, so we're not going to help you."

That would be cruel, right? Turning your back on someone in need?

No crueler than what Bush did last week.

There are people dying in this country from conditions that might be cured through embryonic stem cell research. Their children may be prone to similar afflictions.

Yet with a staged backdrop that was as hypocritical as it was arrogant, Bush used the first veto of his presidency to put a kibosh on funding more stem cell research. This, despite 63 yes votes in the Senate and 70% of Americans being in favor of it.

In a presidency already peppered with questionable decisions, this may go down as the most stubborn and selfish of them all.

Now, put down your pens if you're going to write me about abortion, because you'll be falling into the very trap that the president and his handlers set for you: to make you believe this is all about that issue. It is not.

Keep one thing in mind as we discuss this -- the embryos in question here are being thrown away. Disposed of. Tossed out. And thanks to this veto, they will continue to be. Bush never mentioned this once in his well-orchestrated event. But it's true.

Bill carefully constructed
The bill that Bush vetoed was painfully constructed to avoid abuse. It insisted that only extra, discarded embryos from fertility clinics -- and only when the donor of those embryos gave written approval and was not paid for them -- could be used for research.

Yet Bush made it seem as if scientists would be grabbing babies from mothers' wombs.
"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life ..." he said. "Each of these human embryos is a unique human life with inherent dignity and matchless value."

OK. If Bush's believes that, why isn't he closing down every fertility clinic in America right now? Almost any woman who goes in for fertility treatments ends up producing more embryos than are implanted. According to Dr. Sue O'Shea, the director of the Michigan Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research, "per treatment, approximately 20 to 30 individual embryos get thrown away."

That's per woman, per treatment. If, as Bush insists, these embryos are little people, that's 20-30 murders per patient, right?

Where is the outrage?

Thousands of embryos available
Instead, with babies crying behind him, Bush ignored that question and proudly noted that embryos could be adopted, as some mothers in the room had done. So? How would this bill have stopped that? According to Sen. Arlen Specter and others, there have only been around 128 adoptions of such embryos in the last nine years. And since there are currently around 400,000 frozen embryos, clearly anyone who wants to adopt one can do so. That still leaves the unused ones to be thrown out.

And if you do that, you are surely showing them less respect than using them for potential cures for Alzheimer's, diabetes or ALS.

"Crossing this line would be a mistake," Bush said. But those are code words for what this is all about: making it look, sound and feel like the abortion debate. Yet, much as this pains people to hear, abortion is legal in America. So fetuses can be aborted but tiny cells about to be thrown out can't be used for research? We don't see the hypocrisy in that?

We're heard all the tired objections: We have enough stem cells. You can get them elsewhere. Scientists have negated these arguments. Even usual Bush-supporters such as Nancy Reagan and Bill Frist supported this bill. The research will go on -- despite Bush -- through private funding and in foreign countries. But it will be slower, and future patients who might be saved will die.

You wonder if one of those future patients will be one of Bush's great-grandchildren. If so, I hope that person is given help. It would be a kinder fate than what great-granddaddy just delivered to others.

Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or malbom@freepress.com.
Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.

You are Looking Live!

Welcome to the new website. Bookmark this address. The Carepage website served me well, but I decided that for the things I'd like to do in the future the old structure was a little too limiting. This site will allow me to do everything I was doing on the old one and in reality nothing too different, but in a more streamlined and open setting for you guys - direct linking for example.

Although it was kind of tedious setting this thing up, I've been enjoying the process. I only inadvertently deleted all my template modifications once.

I want to thank everyone who kept tabs on things over on the Carepage. Kudos to Amy Derkos for being far and away the most frequent visitor to the old site checking in 262 times in the 2+ years of it's existence! That breaks down to nearly 7 visits per actual update (just a word of advice Amy, stay away from slot machines). As much as I'd like to encourage that kind of devotion to this site, I know my own track record, so if you'd like to be notified when I put a new posting up click the link in the sidebar under the heading "Want Updates?" and follow the instructions that follow.

Feel free to poke around. I archived the last year's worth of posts from the Carepage, so you can still access all your old favorites.

Later.

I'm in the wrong business

It's nice to know that in these financially unstable times the UMHS is still finding ways to pay the bills.

Yes, I realize doctors are very busy. Yes, they have mountains of paperwork to complete on all their patients and there are plenty of better things for them to be doing, but $35? It was only a two page form for christsakes. The ultimate irony is that the form in question was a form my insurance company requested in regards to assess the continuance of my disability payments. Somewhere, in some boardroom with a really great view, a bunch of old men in expensive suits are lighting cigars with burning hundred dollar bills and high-fiving.

I couldn't find my pen filled with blood, sweat, and tears, so I wrote, "what a racket" on the memo line of my check.

DY's Rehab Video

Click here to view video

This may take a few minutes to download; so after you start the download go make a sandwhich and by the time you're done the video should be ready to view.

A Little Q & A

Today I went and spoke to a group of fourth graders about living with a disability. The Novi public schools have this program, in which the kids get to spend the morning doing different activities that relate to having a disability, like walking around blindfolded, using a wheelchair, using crutches or a walker, trying to do different activities without using their arms and legs, etc., and then in the afternoon the schools bring in a speaker with a disability to answer the kids’ questions. I was asked to be the speaker a couple of weeks ago, when Charlie, the owner of The Recovery Project, found out he wasn't going to be able to participate this year.
So after therapy today I drove over from Livonia to the elementary school in Novi. I told the kids who I was, how I got hurt, and a little about what I was doing now to try and get better, and then I opened up the floor for questions. The kids asked a lot of interesting questions. Most of the questions were basic, "how do you do this and that" kinds of questions, and when I would explain one thing a bunch more hands would go up because that made them think of questions about other stuff. That is, until I got this one:
"How would you feel if you hadn't gotten hurt?"
Um…Jeez...is it Caleb (that wasn’t actually his name; that was another kid’s name. His was Dylan, or Maxwell, or something. I couldn’t see the nametag)? Did you say, "How would I feel if I hadn’t got hurt?" Well…I…I don't know, Confucius, that's a tough one. I have a pretty good answer for the one about the trees. Do you want to ask that instead? I mean, I'm pretty sure a tree makes a sound when it falls in the woods, or at least the motion of the tree falling disturbs the air molecules around the trunk and that disruption of energy is transferred in a wave-like motion that my ears would pick up, regardless of whether I was there or not. That's just basic physics.
But I don't know. If I hadn’t been hurt, I really can only speculate on how I would feel now. But that begs the question, "How do we know what we might feel about something, if we don't know anything about the thing that hasn’t yet happened?" And now I'm just answering a hypothetical question with another hypothetical question, which gets us nowhere. Something tells me you want a more definitive answer, seeing as your last question was, "How do you brush your teeth?"*
This reminds me of the time Mitch Albom asked me to summarize the ethical pros and cons of stem cell therapy at the end of a three-minute radio interview.** You didn’t happen to catch that by any chance? Did you? No? But I digress…
I mean, I'm not really sure you're asking me what I think you're asking, nor am I sure that you’re sure you're asking what you think you're asking…; Do you understand what I'm saying? Then again, maybe I’m underestimating Novi's fourth-grade philosophy curriculum.
Well, I guess my answer is—and this doesn’t really answer your question—but all I can say for sure is that I can only tell you what I know now that I didn't know then. OK?
Now, who’s got a question about wheelchairs?
* electric toothbrush with a modified, loop handle
** see Patient Update dated 3/01/05