Hips are hurting and other things that aren’t new

Lately I go to bed and my hips hurt but eventually I can get to sleep. Then I wake up in the morning and they hurt again, but different, and before I have dinner, or maybe after I have lunch, they hurt like they did when I went to bed. And then they hurt like that for the rest of my day. Apparently hips that don’t hurt are not on my menu.

In other news, sky without clouds has a distinct blue tint, and rain is wet. This is my new reality, things hurt 24/7, and there’s nothing I can take that stops it. Until recently pain was a warning that something serious was wrong with me, now it’s just telling me I’m still alive. But I already know I’m alive, cogito ergo sum works for knowing the difference between alive and dead.

Also in other news, weather in the local area is changing between hot but dry and chilly and wet. Also we had a rainless T-storm come through, followed by a quiet gentle rain. Texas weather, can’t make up its mind.

Current writing jam: “Ball and Biscuit” by The White Stripes, followed by “Clint Eastwood” by gorillaz. At least I have access to good tunes these days. I hope you have a pleasant one in spite if what I’m going through, no need for both of us to have a bad day/night.

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My ears are ringing so loud right now…

Seriously, I can see why some people kill themselves over tinnitus. Mine is so loud right now that it drowns out just about everything else. The dryer, the dishwasher, Mrs. the Poet, traffic outside the window, all just an undertone to the incessant screeching in my ears. Unfortunately my med for this is only slightly effective today, I even heard it in my dreams last night, which is highly unusual.

To go with the screeching in my head I also have aches and pains in my hips and the muscles around my hips. I had a massage Friday, which helped for a day, but the pain came right back Saturday, and even worse yesterday. And this morning I barely had the DEX to get out of bed because my hips hurt so much. Getting up and moving around helped restore some of my DEX, but I’m still a bit of a klutz around the house. And I’m still having problems getting out from behind the desk quick enough to not pee my pants trying to go to the bathroom. Today my shirt got tangled up in the drawstring on my pants further delaying getting the pants clear. Yeah, this has not been a good day for Opus the Poet.

I noticed that the volume of the noises in my head was inverse to how rested I am, when I’m good on my sleep, very little noise, when I’m just a little off the noises are louder, and when I’m really tired it sounds like a centrifugal-flow jet engine in my head, you know the ones that have the siren built into the design. Today has been a constant flyby of the little screamers. Unfortunately the med for the noise is the same med as I take for the nerve pains in my legs and hips and I’m maxed out on that to keep the twitching in my sleep from waking Mrs. the Poet. Anywho, I’m taking as much Gabapentin as I can at night so I can sleep, but even that wasn’t enough to silence the jet engines in my head last night and today. Yet another reason to strangle the guy who’s been dead about a year less than I was, only he didn’t have the fortune to comeback from the dead, so I could strangle him for the pain and suffering he’d inflicted upon me… Yeah the noise gets worse with lack of sleep, which makes it harder to get to sleep which makes it louder which makes it harder to get to sleep, ad infinitum.

In news not related to the noises inside my head I entered a contest for a fully-built LS3 engine with a 4″ stroker crank that makes an advertised 700 HP from 415 in³. It has an advertised price of just over $14K which means if I win it I’ll have to come up with about $1K for taxes, but still I’ll have an engine for the Sprint-T and I won’t have to crawl around with the snakes and scorpions in the junkyard to get it out.

And I’m still hearing the sound of AT-37s taxiing down the street. And I’m tired so Imma put this to bed.

Been out of sorts lately

I’ve basically been hurting pretty much everywhere and it has disturbed my circadian rhythms among other things. All my joints are reminding me I have arthritis, and every severe muscle injury reminds me of what I did. Now since I’m old and lived an active life I have several severe muscle injuries to be reminded of.

Basically my hips and shoulders are reminding me as Mrs. the Poet likes to say I’ve been ridden hard and put away wet, but I’m not here to complain (much). I’m here to talk about Grandpa chasers on dating aps. I get people (women) talking to me on these aps because of the silver in my hair and the snow in my beard, but they don’t ask me for money so maybe these aren’t running a scam. Some do ask if I’m looking for a wife and ghost me when I tell them about Mrs. the Poet, so wedding scams. But there are a very few that don’t disappear when I tell them I’m looking for a cuddle buddy without sex. I’m not sure what to do about them.

I think a big part of my problems is the weather bouncing back and forth between the deep freeze and Mediterranean early spring. We have had lows in the 20s and the high teens, and highs in the high 60s and low 70s a few days later. The forecast for tomorrow is for 72°F, flirting with a record high for the date. Friday is even higher at 78°F and lows about 45 both days. Texas weather can’t make up its mind this time of year. We are between the Continental weather area and the Coastal weather area so some times we get weather like we are in the middle of the continent, and sometimes like we are against the water on the coast.

Interesting thing happened, Mrs. the Poet was invited to a virtual party over the weekend and the microphone is working with my laptop now since the forced update from W10 to 11. Turns out I just needed a better driver than any of the ones I had in 10. Speaking of which I’m getting another update notice that I need to restart my computer so this looks like a good place to put this post to bed. I’ll get back online after I do the update thing, but I’ll see you guys later.

Nothing much new since last post

Basically nothing has changed since I last posted except for new pains in my knee. Well not “new”, just pains that I haven’t had in a while. Oh, and I had an update on Windows that I didn’t approve before it happened. Basically I shut the computer down before bed and had to wait 20 minutes for the update to install when I fired the computer back up after I woke up. Very annoying.

The “new” pains are actually old pains I hadn’t had for a while, like years. Basically my right knee is a little unstable from back in the XXth century because I have been abusing my knees since the 1970s, and when they get sloppy the edges pinch and hurt. Well my right knee is “sloppy” and I’m getting pinching pains off and on at the inside and outside edges when I walk. As said, it’s annoying, but not crippling. And I know crippling pain. As in when I got hit there was torn ligaments in my left knee that didn’t get caught and fixed until months later and the doctor wasn’t able to do much because I had already healed up the torn edges but the ligaments were longer than they should be because the edges should have been touching as they healed but they weren’t. And I had the same pinching pains in my left knee I have in my right knee now. So long story short an old injury is back from a long time ago.

On the Sprint-T the aches and pains are keeping my from finishing the layout for the Drillium of the front axle and I really need to get longer drill bits so the pilot holes line up on opposite sides and look better, so the actual holes are directly behind the hole in the front of the axle and on the same plane front to back. I don’t know how much actual weight a bunch (theoretical maximum of 76 total) of 0.75″ holes drilled front and back of 0.25″ wall thickness is going to save, but it is something. Also the holes will reduce the strength in impacts so less force gets transmitted to the driver in a wreck. As you might imagine less forces on the driver in a wreck is kinda important to me. And running the numbers I can realistically expect almost 2 pounds less unsprung weight from all those holes. Yay? So actually worth the work?

Other news I’m taking Mrs. the Poet to dinner for her birthday but not on her birthday, she’s turning 69 tomorrow, but we’re going to dinner on Sunday. It looks like we’ll be going to the local Red Robin, because she wants to sit down with a menu but doesn’t want to spend money. She’s fully vaxxed, so am I, but we still want to limit exposure and the local Red Robin is still doing social distancing, so that makes us happy less worried.

I’m turning into a grouch

Basically I have things that hurt all the time, even when I take painkillers. I mean seriously I wake up with a pain in the neck, butt, and my feet are touchy and sore. I’m a grouchy old man, because I’m in constant low-grade pain that never quits, and I can’t do the things I want to do if they cost money because I don’t have any disposable income.

Anywho, getting back to the painkillers, I have two (ibuprofen and gabapentin) I take before bed to let me sleep, and another (celebrex) I take when I wake up because I hurt during the day. And I still hurt at night and all day long, just not as much. I just “don’t hurt” enough that I can function most of the time. And I hate it. I hate just being “functional” instead of enjoying life. And I hate just existing instead of doing things I like because “disposable income” is more a concept than a reality in my life because I was killed 20 years ago and never recovered from it.

I’m still thinking about the Sprint-T project because I have to, I have been thinking about it every day for the last decade, and off and on since I saw the movie in 1968, The Lively Set, on NBC’s Saturday Night at the Movies. That’s a long time to be thinking about a project. For years it was a back-burner because I wanted to fly, then because I had a family, then because we became desperately poor because I couldn’t get a job after the wreck.

Basically before the wreck I relied on using my brain to get work, then I had TBI from the wreck and all the stuff I used to do better than anyone else I could barely do at all. I lost all ability to compose search strings that took me to the answer in a database in a single step, which we now call having good “Google-fu”. Basically I had google-fu before google was a thing, and after the drunk with the truck I didn’t have anything. I also used to be able to write and perform poetry to a high level, and now I write… this. I do good “stream of consciousness” writing because I still have that, but planning out a post/article is basically gone. I still can clean up a bad translation like nobody’s business, because I have the train wreck sitting in front of me to work with, and mostly it’s just bad grammar, or confusing word order that means something different than what the client wanted to say because machines don’t do emotional context.

And that’s enough “pitiful me” kvetching. Go find something useful to do that makes beautiful things.

I’m so tired of things hurting all the time or at random times

Seriously, my hips hurt in a dull ache almost 24-7 now, my knees hurt sharply at random times throughout the day, and now my bone scar from the truck wreck throws a sudden spike of pain in the works at unpredictable intervals. I resigned myself to aches and pains, just not constantly. Seriously, this makes me want to hurt somebody.

We had a good game today as a one shot in Shadowrun because we had two players and the GM out for various reasons including illness and family gatherings. It was out of continuity so we didn’t get rewards outside of getting to play today, which was enough for me. I actually got to use my katana this game for something other than frightening children and other helpless people. Now that I’m ranked up in blades I can actually cause some useful damage with my sword.

This is funny. I’m eating ice cream and wearing (just) shorts and fuzzy slippers (because my feet are always cold), and Mrs. the Poet just got out her Fisherman’s Sweater because she’s cold all over. She already has long sweatpants, long sleeve shirt, socks and fuzzy slippers, and she’s cold enough that she had to drag out the heavy sweater. I wonder if we live in the same reality sometimes. I know we do, but the difference in how we dress for the temperature makes me wonder.

I have one of my playlists from YTM playing right now, my electro swing list suggested from the app. Single genre playlists work best for me because I like so many that unless I specify one I get either a bunch of one genre that I get bored with quickly, or pure crap from several styles of music. It’s amazing to me that YTM can find absolute dreck in so many styles of music one piece right after another. By selecting one particular genre I usually get a long string of decent music. Also music that I like has changed over the years, as a fer-instance I used to really like Kansas but now I can’t stand them, ditto Chuck Mangione. What ended Mangione for me was discovering two cuts on one album that were almost identical except one was ornamented and the other was played straight, the melodies were identical. How he managed to have a half-century career totally escapes me.

In other news I’m still making absolutely no progress towards completing the Sprint-T. Same as before, no money for parts or raw stock. Also I can’t do detail work on the design without an engine that defines where most of the stuff goes. I would be pulling my hair, except my depression has made me apathetic about a project that is older than the moon landing. Some days I’m enthusiastic about it, but today is not one of those days. I have too many things weighing down on me, see the first paragraph of this post.

Anywho, this has dragged on long enough, plus my swollen feet are starting to hurt now, so this seems like a good place to stop writing and go to bed and wait for the 5 pill cocktail of 3 different pain meds to kick in and put me to sleep.

I’m sick, still

As the headline said, I’m unwell. I have aches and pains, always tired, and no appetite. And no enthusiasm for anything.

As a “fer-instance” we just finished Championship Weekend for NASCAR. Three days of intense racing and barnburner finishes, that I had to fight to stay awake through. Congrats to the winners and champions, I just wish I could remember who you are. Except Kyle Larson, fuck his racist ass.

Nothing new on the Sprint-T or Mini Sprint-T. The former’s stalled for lack of parts, the latter for lack of enthusiasm. I have the parts, tools, and raw stock to have the build done in a couple of days, a week at most, but getting the enthusiasm to actually do something about it? YAWN

I know where part of this comes from, Mrs. the Poet does not feel good and everytime I try to get amorous with her I get shunned or slapped. But that’s not enough to cover all of it. My usual levels of depression don’t cover it either, not even combined with the lack of a love life. Long story abridged too short for Reader’ Digest, there are multiple things taking a whack at my ability to do things. And I have nothing I can do to correct the situation.

I know this is way short of my usual gabfest where I go on for several hundred to a thousand words, but I just don’t have it in me today.

Couldn’t sleep this morning

I kept getting woke up by noises and pains. And the odd twinge and muscle spasm.

At least now I’m not bothered by engineering problems I can’t solve without access to a computer for parts information and a calculator for other problems. As in there are multiple OD ratios available for that T5 gearset upgrade and one I think might be too tall for the Sprint-T. That would be the 0.59 ratio that comes standard with the upgraded gearset. With the difference in diameter between the race tires 23″ and the street tires 27″ is like throwing in another gearchange so the top gear spins the tires at like 235 MPH at redline in 5th and dividing that out to convert it to a RPM/MPH and then multiplying by cruise speed gets me below idle RPM until 33 MPH.

I think I’m getting EGT sensors and tuning 200° lean of peak at cruise, for gas mileage. And changing the A/F ratio until I get best average power as determined by idle to redline pulls in 2nd gear. Which means to 61 MPH because that’s what redline in 2nd works out to. So since I don’t need a precise number I can just put the car in 2nd rolling onto the onramp of a freeway and time how long it takes to get to redline from idle in 2nd a few times on the same onramp and change the fueling a bit and try again in a few minutes and see if I’m quicker or slower to redline. I’m sure the people living close to that onramp are going to love my tuning sessions. I should probably make sure I install an effective muffler.

On the frame changes, I think the most structurally efficient way to get the diagonal braces installed is to let the intersection with the hoops curve at the same radius as the bend in the hoops so the diagonals fall in the same plane as the uprights.

And just as I was finishing that thought my computer locked up for about an hour. I couldn’t get the browser to change tasks, or anything else like shut down, or open a file, or pretty much anything except be shiny. And now I’m pretty much about to shut down myself having spent all my spoons trying to get the computer functional I think I’ll finish my beer and take a nap since it’s about 0600 which is functionally like roughly 2200 to me on my sleep schedule. but before I do that I’ll publish this post.

Hip still hurts

Not too much to say today. My hip still hurts, the joint not the muscles around it. I’m getting tired and falling asleep at odd times which doesn’t help my aches and pains because I fall asleep in places and/or positions that make my hip hurt more.

The cushion on the rocking chair I sit in when I use my computer has developed a lump that holds my hip in an uncomfortable position. I can’t seem to find a place to sit in the chair that the lump doesn’t put the whammy on my hip. Basically the cushion is holding my hip at a bad angle and making it hurt, from a little to a lot.

Another thing, I’m having digestive problems. Basically my poops are messed up, and if I wasn’t drinking fluids like a fish I would be dehydrated. I’m also eating raisins because fiber, and yogurt because gut biome. That helps a little, but I haven’t completely recovered yet. And AFAIK messed up BM are not a COVID-19 symptom, so don’t worry it might be that.

Also, I’m having a budget issue that I’m trying to work out that looks like I’m taking a $100/month hit. This really annoys me because this is something that used to be free, and now I have to pony up $100 for it. And I’m pretty much just stuck with having to deal with the expense.

I have achieved massage

Finally I have gotten a decent massage. I managed to catch the bus outside the house (around the corner on the end of the block, but “outside”) and the connecting bus was only a little late. I had to wait a while for the tech to finish up a client, but the room I was assigned had a space heater so I was nice and warm, but not hot while I waited. This tech used an appropriate amount of pressure on most of my body, except for the back of my left thigh that caused me some kneecap pain, but she had no way of knowing about that. It was one of those “keep the lights low so the client will relax” places, and the one dim light was on the opposite side of my body from most of my scars and the scars on my knee were facing away from the tech, so how was she supposed to know about my damaged kneecap?

Anyway, I got a good massage and my neck felt a bunch better, and my legs and neck were working almost up to spec when she got done. I have been out of tolerances for so long that “almost spec” felt like heaven. There were some pops and creaks as things were pushed back sorta where they go, with minor jolts to my psychic equilibrium as they assumed spec position. When things have been not where they are supposed to be, and then all of a sudden they are, for a second or two after it takes some mental realigning to go along with the physical realigning. It’s like you have to change your mental image of how your body is and where everything is supposed to be, from “broken but still somewhat functional” to “back in spec”.

While I was waiting on the table I had time to think about the Sprint-T, and how to get more progress on the build. I have come to the conclusion that I should just start making the frame, building it up and ignoring where the engine goes until I get an engine and transmission. I should mount the steering in front of the axle and the radiator with the minimum clearance to avoid interfering with the axle’s travels so as to allow almost any engine to fit, even V-10 truck engines. Now the current situation is I’m going to use a junkyard 5.3l LS architecture engine, but I have entered drawings for Ford and FCA V-10 truck crate engines and gen 3, 4, and 5 GM small block, as well as Gen1 SBC and small block Fords of various displacements including 347 and 427 Cu. in. displacements (there were a lot of contests announced in November that were giving away performance engine builds after the first of the year). So I’m letting my Boy Scout handle this by being prepared to win any of them, or nothing. Seriously the 5.3l Gen 5 small block in stock form is just about perfect for the Sprint-T. I would have killed to have an engine like this in a T-Bucket back when I first got my license back in 1976. I’m trying to find the Richard Holdener video where he compares the various 327/5.3l small blocks, but I’m coming up empty so far. Hang on, I found it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNhZXFEjkII&ab_channel=RichardHoldener

As you can see, the later engine without mods makes more power than the 60s engine with all the good stuff from the factory, and the later engine is a truck engine. It would run like that all day on pump gas and never even stutter. That would be the perfect NA engine for the Sprint-T, so if you know a truck that has one maybe find a way to send out here to the Suburbs of Hell so I can stuff it in my bucket?😇