The Wandering Minstrel

Yesterday, I went to the clinic where I had the minor surgery performed two weeks ago. The surgeon removed the stitches from the incision he made to remove suspicious tissue that may have contained additional carcinoma. The lab report was good. They found no more basal cell tissue.

The surgeon brought a student in the treatment room to observe the suture removal and to discuss the technique used for the procedure. He referred to the process as subcutaneous suturing. The Better Half was in the room and told me that he clipped off a knot at the bottom of the incision and then pulled the knot at the top to remove the remaining suture.

You can view the incision with the sutures at this post. You can view the “after” result by clicking in the rectangle above right. Voila! the subcutaneous technique left very little scarring. It is nothing like the spiderweb scar that a former surgeon left on my back a few years ago.

Last June, the landscape crew planted two citrus trees in our little “orchard” on the west side of the house. We had them plant one orange and one lemon tree.

The one in the (clickable) image to the right is what’s left of our lemon tree. Luckily, we harvested the lemons last month. As you can see, most of the leaves have been eaten by javelinas.

How do we know it’s javelinas and not something else? Exhibit A - javelina hoof prints (inset in photo) in the sandy soil next to the tree. Exhibit B - leaves at the top seem to be out of the goddamn little beasties reach. The orange tree didn’t fare as well since it is still under four feet tall. There is one orange on the tree which is still getting ripe in spite of all the missing foliage. Click here to view the naked orange tree.

Oh well, we like living in our semi-rural little house. We would rather have javelinas as neighbors than some of the unsavory types we left in the LA area.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an appointment with my medical caregiver to remove a dime-sized growth on my right shoulder. I went home with a little round bandage on the excised area.

The lab at the clinic performed a biopsy on the removed tissue and it turned out to be a basal cell carcinoma - skin cancer in other words. I got a call last week that they wanted to schedule a second procedure that would remove additional tissue that would “get it all.”

On Monday, I went in to have the second procedure performed. After it was all finished, I had a two-inch gash on the shoulder held together with a bunch of sutures.

This is actually the second time I have gone through this; the first basal cell removal and follow-up occurred before I retired in 2009 and left a nasty, jagged scar in the middle of my back.

This time, this surgeon did a much better job of stitching me up; if you’re inclined to view my new nice, straight incision, you can click in the rectangle above and to the right.

At the California house, the weather in June typically is mild temperatures with night and morning low clouds and fog. Late spring and summer in our town in Arizona is a completely different story. We have warm temperatures and a phenomenon known locally as “dust devils.”

Image: Arizona dust devil

The little twisters have shown up at our new home a few times since the weather has warmed up to highs in the 90’s. We quickly learned that lightweight objects are best stored indoors rather than on the back patio or behind the garage.

Three buckets we had out by the garage got caught up in one of the devils. Two of them got lodged in palo verde just to the east of the lot. We found those right away, filled them with something heavy and put them away. The third bucket was at large for about two weeks until The Better Half spotted it under a large creosote in the vacant lot to the east several hundred feet from where the twister picked it up.

Our trash bin has been knocked over three times and once was thrown across the driveway at the same time the buckets were taken. Frankly, I don’t know what I can do to the trash bin short of dumping a boulder in the bottom. I’ll think of something.

The devils, though rarely fatal, have done some pretty interesting things, like this:

In 2010, three children in an inflatable jump house were picked up by a dust devil and were carried over three houses and a 10-foot fence, in east El Paso, Texas.

Over the past several days, Arizona Power Service workers have been showing a lot of interest in the dilapidated power pole across the road from our house. The pole showed obvious signs of needing replacement. Yesterday, APS erected a metal pole next to the existing pole. Their plan was to move the transformer and power lines in a week or so.

Last night, in the wee hours, Sniff (the little dog) woke us up with maniacal barking, obviously upset by something. She finally settled down and we wrote it off as a dream or some random noise she heard. We went back to sleep but a little later she did a barkfest encore. We got her settled down after a while and got back to sleep until about 0655 this morning. She went off again, but this time, I could hear the sounds of men and equipment at work nearby.

Looking out front across the road I saw the old pole which had toppled during the night. That explains the K9 outburst. The initial pole falling and the ensuing arrival of those investigating the event must have been what the dog heard. I guess the vibration of drilling a new pole hole had weakened the old pole and over it went, fracturing somewhere near the top and bottom.

You can see the original pole, the toppled pole, the reconstruction in process and the finished job in the (clickable) image above. Lucky for us, our power hookup comes from an underground feed form a transformer behind our house and we did not lose power.

The Better Half and I are back in California today. We had a good, productive visit to the Arizona house, so that offsets the weather we got while commuting between the homes. We had a rainy drive going and coming.

Top image - entering Arizona. Bottom image - entering the L.A. area (clickable).

I estimate that this magnitude 6.9 quake epicenter was over 250 miles from here. It made the ground bump and roll slightly and the wind chimes sounded as well as all hanging chandeliers were wobbling. Looking at the fault map, I believe this was along the southern San Andreas fault group. There is a Mexican village called Guadalupe Victoria about 16 miles away that probably got it pretty hard. Moderate to strong shaking and damage reported in Yuma, AZ.

A strong earthquake occurred at 3:40:39 PM (PDT) on Sunday, April 4, 2010.
The magnitude 6.9 event occurred 26 km (16 miles) SSW of Guadalupe Victoria, Baja California, Mexico.
The hypocentral depth is 32 km (20 miles).

Update: USGS now says magnitude 7.2.

Now that the Obamination has taken over General Motors, the GM management is embracing the sort of horseshit near and dear to the left. As a consequence, their sales have fallen off dramatically in spite of the Obamination’s attacks on Toyota. GM’s latest entry into the auto sales fray is a two-person electric piece of shit - not unlike the Segway®

“We were the S.U.V. company, and we accept that,” said Larry Burns, vice president for research and development and strategic planning at G.M. at the time. “We want to become the U.S.V. company — known for ultra-small vehicles.”

U.S.V., also known as “Un-Safe Vehicles.” Imagine a collision between the POS above and the SUV below. Which one would you like to be in?

Reportedly, the SUV market is playing a big part of Ford’s success. Their SUV and truck sales have topped new vehicle sales across the board, with Ford’s F-150 trucks leading the way.

Automotive Sales:

On Tuesday, the Ford Motor Company announced that its sales rose by 43 percent in February, enabling the automaker to outsell General Motors and become the best-selling carmaker in America for the month, but not by a lot.

Ford sold 334 vehicles more than G.M. Ford’s Mercury brand sells roughly that many vehicles every day. In 2009, General Motors outsold ford every month by an average of approximately 33,000 vehicles.

G.M.’s sales also increased, 12 percent from the same month in 2009, and 32 percent for the four auto brands G.M. is holding on to: Cadillac, Chevy, Buick, and GMC. Nevertheless, it dropped behind Ford, which announced a 54-percent increase in the sales of passenger vehicles.

Thus far in 2010, Ford’s sales are up by 34 percent, compared to only 13 percent for General Motors.

Via Planet Gore