This post is to give a little levity to the day before the post around noon hits. Noon’s post is heavy and it should be passed along to anyone you know that might be described in it. But in the meantime here’s part of my favorite obsession – off the wall music. I present to you: Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qagfnqQNkeo&feature=relmfu
So, sue me, it’s not a movie review. But I do like the idea of reviewing movies. This is more of a twit’s ode to Sinatra. 
Kings Go Forth was released in 1958. I won’t go into all the anachronisms and other problems with the film. (Well, just one – Sinatra is 43 in the movie and Natalie Wood is only 20. He’s kind of old for a guy who enlisted in the Army and has never had a girlfriend of note.) What I want to talk about is the “cool” factor and how Frank pretty much epitomizes it in films of that era.
Sinatra did this movie at a point in his career when he could have just phoned it in and left it at that. He did some movies where I wondered if he’d even looked at the script. But Frank was always very smooth in whatever he did. This movie, including an excellent performance by Tony Curtis, was on the leading edge of the Civil Rights Movement. It involved a love affair between a female character who’s half black and a white man. Risky stuff in 1958. But that was Sinatra.
Whatever faults Frank had race wasn’t one of them. He was right out front in his support of civil rights. Frank didn’t put up with the nonsense of discrimination and he wasn’t afraid of what a film like this might do to his career. And I think this was probably a good film for him in that it let him stretch his acting chops beyond his winning smile and voice. He’s a real character in the movie and he’s so good at the role that you lose sight of the fact that it’s Frank Sinatra. When he (WARNING SPOILER (is that possible in a 54 year old film?)) promises to kill Tony Curtis you can see the rage. It’s an icy version but it’s there.
I won’t blow the ending of the flick. But I will endorse it. If you get a chance to watch it it’s two hours well spent. And remember to look for Frank being “cool” throughout the film. And, just because I’m a nerd and have nothing better to do, there’s a bit of foreshadowing in the movie for the actress, Natalie Wood. She almost drowns in a suicide attempt. Funny how life works that stuff out, eh?
I guess I better categorize this post as pure blather. But I just finished watching it and wanted to share my enjoyment of the movie.
Back to important stuff in the next post.
I went to the memorial service for my friend and coworker Jean on Thursday evening. It gave me some time to contemplate her life and death.
I sat in the chapel room with her cremains. Twenty years ago nobody I knew was cremated when they died. That’s changed radically and now most funerals I attend the body is disposed of in that manner. That’s my plan when the time comes. My wife and I will eventually be deposited at Fort Snelling, no doubt a few dozen rows from where my father and mother will eventually rest together.
But Thursday I stood and looked at the pictures on a board that represented the life of a person whom I’d known for just a few years. Jean was a sweet person. As I noted earlier in the week she was the kind of person who saved you a piece of cake if you couldn’t make it to the party. And the pictures reflected that person. Pictures of her at family gatherings, at the side of her children, with assorted classmates, and with Santa. I identified with that picture in kind of a strange way: sixty years from now people will be laid to rest and their picture with Santa will be one with me. A strange man whose knee they occupied for a few minutes in their childhood. I’ll be long gone in body, but that photo of me will still be cropping up six decades or more from now. That’s kind of cool.
One of the pictures on Jean’s board was of her dog. If you love your pet you will get it, and if you don’t have pets you might not. But I know that dog meant a lot to Jean and she found it very difficult to lose her friend. Pets take a piece of our hearts with them every day of our lives and give us love out of all proportion in return. And when they leave, the gaping hole in our existence is exquisitely painful. I like to think that on that Friday morning that Jean left this world there was great joy and barking in Heaven because they were reunited at last.
Jean was a good looking woman, and some of the pictures of her in her youth showed a different person than the one I worked with in the recent past. A younger person who had not yet been tamed by life. Full of energy and excitement. And in some of the pictures a weariness and sadness that shows through even when a smile is on the face. The look that says, “Man, I’m bushed. Can we just move on?”
I understand that look as well. We all get it from time to time. It’s not a facial report of failure, or anger, or disappointment. It’s just the honest evaluation of our strengths and weaknesses. A self-assessment that leaves us in doubt of how well we’re coping with the challenges in our lives. Jean coped. She carried on. She worked very hard to make things go for other people. Including me. And I thank her for her kindness.
Maybe that’s where a sense of love from God comes into the picture. Christ admonished us to love each other as we love ourselves. Show that love to someone you work with today. They might be the man or woman in that picture with the struggle showing in their eyes. Your kind word or deed may be just what they need to get over the hump of that day and continue on to their destiny. You might be the spark that ignites their flame and helps them to come closer to God because you reflected his love in your actions.
I don’t always live up to that standard. I’d be lying if I said I even try every day. But Thursday, sitting quietly in that room with Jean for the last time I resolved to try a bit harder going forward. The soft glow of lights in Jean’s cube should help me remember that when the time comes.
I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel on Fall. I just got home from work and I’m wearing my shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, sandals, and a stocking cap (the fat head gets cold easily, even in Summer.)
I walked out of the building at 05:01 and it had that amazing smell you get when the first snow is coming. It still has a hint of falling leaves, but there’s a crisp edge to it that you only get when snow is in the air. It’s nothing like opening a freezer and taking a whiff. Once you’ve smelled it, you’ll never forget it.
I wasn’t too pleased when the little white devils swirled out of the night and covered my windshield on the way to the freeway. The thermostat on my car kept dropping as I got closer to home. It was right at 34 degrees when I pulled into the garage.
So, this morning instead of sitting on the steps with the dogs, I turned on the furnace. It’s cold in here.
I wish you a warm and wonderful day wherever you are.
And, here’s a little taste of what’s to come. (I’m six feet tall. Do the math!)
Winter Wonderland my...That sign sticking up out of the snow is about 4 stories tall.
After the second longest night of the last year I need to capture some of the fun for my readers. And I’d like to plead with you to take this seriously. If you have sleep apnea you need to get it treated. And if the doctors tell you to wear a CPAP, DON’T FIGHT THEM! I have a dear friend who’s paying the price for that right now.
I’ve used a CPAP (Constant Positive Airway Pressure) machine for a long time to treat my sleep apnea. It’s a device that helps people with sleep apnea breathe during the night. It’s essentially a small compressor with a humidifier attached. A six foot length of hose attaches it to a face mask of some sort. I use one that fits over the head and … well, it plugs my nose and forces air in during the sleep hours. 
This is a huge improvement over the last one I had, which was like wearing a soapdish strapped over your nose all night. 
And, the CPAP I recently retired was about 1/10 as noisy as the original one I was given years ago. So, steady improvement over the last 15 years to be sure. And it’s kept me alive. But more of that at the end.
My apnea seemed to be getting worse so I went to see the doctor. He scheduled a new sleep study for me to determine where I was in my condition. And, so I went. This video shows a bit of what it’s like, but unlike Shaq, I went to them, they didn’t come to me.
As I mentioned in a previous post, they have you come in to the sleep center and wire you up six ways from Tuesday to monitor almost every physiological change in your sleep patterns. And then they ask you to go to sleep. Without your CPAP. That scared me. I couldn’t fall asleep because I knew it was a bad thing to sleep without it on. So, after about 1.5 hours of tossing and turning I gave up and asked to put on the CPAP. Nope, I was told to take a sleeping pill and tough it out, because they needed to actually see me stop breathing before they could continue the study.
I agree. That sounds nuts. But I played along. Took the Ambien and was out cold in 30 minutes. And wide awake again shortly afterwards when they woke me up to have me wear the CPAP. Seems I have sleep apnea… go figure.
For the rest of the night the self adjusting CPAP ranged up and down in pressure to determine what the proper level was for a bloated middle-aged guy with a beard. After a very short (it seemed) night of uncomfortable sleep, and a very long night in every other respect, I got up and went home. Yes, I had apnea still and because I had done the study I was eligible for a new CPAP (The old one was about 7 years old, past its “freshness date” by a bit.)
I got the new CPAP the day before I left for Dallas and it sat in my dining room until last night. It was time.
And thus the second worst night’s sleep in the past year. Why? Because they’ve changed the technology of the device and it was a completely different feeling than what I’d grown accustomed to over the past fifteen years. Very different.
For starters the machine doesn’t fight you when you exhale. The device senses your exhalation and quits forcing air into your schnozz while you get rid of the used breath. It then gently pushes air in. A different sensation, a different sound. It’s still quiet, but you get so used to that constant pressure from the first machines that it seems like the machine has failed when you try this model (and, yes, I know it’s more of a bilevel machine than a CPAP but it’s my blog and I can be ignorant if I want.)
I’ll bet it took me 2 hours to fall asleep. Partly that’s because I was doing the night-to-day changeover, but partly because it just felt so weird. Once I fell asleep I woke up frequently. That “it doesn’t feel right” sensation that the new mechanism gave me, versus the horrible feeling of waking from sleep apnea.
I think it is doing the work needed. I don’t feel drowsy today and no headaches (two major signs of sleep apnea in your life.) I will give it a few more nights to see how it goes before I start whining to the provider about my need for more pressure/a lollipop, etc. But it does feel really strange. And it was the second worst night of sleep this year.
I’ve had sleep apnea since I was skinny. But we just called it “loud snoring” back then. It impacts fat guys like me more than skinny guys. But in my case the throat structure that gave me a “golden voice” and allowed me to break into voice over work was the other side of the coin of sleep apnea. Basically your throat closes while you sleep and it stops your breathing. Hundreds of times a night sometimes.
That makes it hard on your heart, causes blood pressure problems, and makes you a narcoleptic freak who falls asleep at stop signs if untreated. (Yup, I can vouch for that.) It’s not a good thing to have. So, if you have sleep apnea, or snore really loudly and wake up a lot, get yourself checked. A great place to start is by clicking on this link and seeing what the experts have to say. It might save your life.
Oh, and if you think you don’t snore, ask the people close to you. You might just find out that you are a real pain. You never know if you snore – you’re asleep, goofy. It took me years to get that through my thick skull (yeah, I was stupid. Sorry, Honey, I should have listened sooner.) If they tell you that you do snore, ask about abrupt breathing or the snoring stopping and starting. If they have detected that, and you have high blood pressure or other cardiovascular disease, memory problems, weight gain, impotence, headaches, or extreme drowsiness you are a candidate for a sleep doctor. Do you fall asleep when your focus is not needed? Ever doze off at the wheel? Fall asleep talking to someone? Yup, go see the doctor.
This post is not completely light-hearted. Sleep apnea kills people. Stroke, heart attack, falling asleep at the wheel. It factors in to all of those causes of death. One of my best friends is at the neurologist today to find out what is causing the seizures he suffers from. Sleep apnea is a part of that picture.
So, enough preaching on the topic. Please take it seriously and get treatment if you have the symptoms. I’d like to see you around for a long time. I need the readers. (and, while you’re at it, head up to the upper right side of this page and subscribe! It is free, after all.)
