I cut my finger. A long story.

So last night, I remember that the light bulb in the hallway needed to be changed. I begin to unscrew the lampshade, and I start feeling the shade getting wobbly. Before I have a chance to tighten the screw again, it begins to fall—I thrust my hand to cradle it into my hand but the balance is off—the shade flips over to the wall, and since I moved too fast, shatters, in my hand. I look down to see shattered glass all over the hallway floor, and some dull pain in my right index finger from bumping against the wall. I look up at the index finger, making sure that I didn’t get cut. I stare in bewilderment to see a 6-inch piece of glass sticking out of it. It doesn’t hurt like a scrape or cut usually would—it just kind of throbs a bit like a dull pain. I pull the shard of glass out, and apparently I’m Moses tapping a rock in the desert from which a geyser shoots out water. Except this time, it’s my own blood shooting out, dripping the faux-wood floorboards.
My initial reaction? “CRAP! The deposit!! I need to get this cleaned up! How much can I clean up until I pass out?!” Yes that’s how I know I’ve moved to California- all I care about is getting the deposit back for when I move, rather than my own safety. I quickly grab the first clean shirt I find (unfortunately it happens to be my favorite OU shirt ever) and wrap it around, then raise my hand above heart level.
In the meantime I call my mom and stay as calm as possible. Just a nice easygoing lax conversation, that’s what I’ll do. Easy breezy… that’s the style I’ll need to convey.
“Heeyyy, ma… how’s it goin? Yeah? Really? Oh cool! So listen, got a little bit of bad news- I cut myself on some glass here… yeah… oh nothing too much, just called 911 to be on the safe side though… uh huh. No it’s fine! I feel great! Just calling to let ya know. And actually the paramedics are here so I’m gonna go now. Great! Good talking to ya!”
It goes well; she seemed to take it well. I make sure to have my wallet, keys, and phone. The three critical things in going to the hospital- insurance, a way to get back in the house, and access to Twitter. I come out and greet them, and they take a look at my hand— one of them says, “Oh it’s not too bad, it’s actually really small.” Now I don’t know why but this kind of irked me. I’m not really the type to go to the doctor, much less a hospital, for minor things. And this guy has the nerve to say it’s really small? Alright then hotshot! Then fix it now! So I can go back inside and have my pot roast and lasagna!
So two paramedics start working on my hand, and a third rather portly fellow asks, “Do you really need an ambulance? Because if not, I can send it back. If you can take yourself to the hospital then no problem, I can send the ambulance back.” Wait— I’m losing blood by the quart and you want me to drive myself to the hospital? What kind of paramedics are these? I ask if they think I should, and he responds, “Hey no pressure—if there’s no one who can take you then we can take you. But I can send it back now if you’d like.” I stutter a bit, and he continues, “How about now? You want me to send ‘em back?”
So what exactly DOES count as a valid reason to go in an ambulance? I get it, if my finger’s sliced clean off then maaaybe I’ll get an ambulance. If I’m having a heart attack too—but apparently this doesn’t warrant it. Anyway I get to the hospital which happens to look like it’s something from the Dharma Initiative. All the equipment is from the early 70’s, and there’s a stench of non-chalance about the place. It’s disorganized, and the look of disdain is running rampant through all the employees’ eyes. When finally the ER doctor shows up, he’s as cold and non-personable as can be. Wonderful. I felt like I was in a 3rd World Country. By this point my roommate has arrived, and I’ve already told my parents what’s going on and how it’s completely fine—there’s not much to worry about. Of course if I actually believed what I said it might have had more weight, but you see—I have a fear of needles. And I knew that this would require stitches. So it was hard for me to convince them fully.
An hour after my initial consult Dr. Lee comes back in, and puts my arm on a rolling trolley so that he can start suturing it. He takes off about 3-4 yards of blood-stained cotton that the paramedics had put on there, and of course—I start gushing onto the trolley. He begins squeezing and probing the inside of the cut with his fingers with more force than was necessary. He tells me, “This may sting a bit—I’m gonna numb it up,” and proceeds to insert a needle into the wound. My finger is throbbing with pain as an acid burn courses through my veins. He asks the male nurse for rubber tubing, and he proceeds to make a tourniquet around the finger to cut off all blood flow. NICE. So that means that in a few minutes, if he’s not careful- and he certainly doesn’t seem like cares- my finger will be dead forever. He continues injecting the local anesthetic, and I’m writhing in pain.
“HOLD YOUR HAND STILL,” he yells. I can barely FEEL my hand, much less tell what I’m doing with it, especially because I’m not looking at it. “I’m…. trying….,” I manage to tell him through clenched teeth.
“HOW ABOUT THIS? YOU FEEL ANYTHING SHARP? YOU FEEL PAIN THAT’S SHARP?”
“NO it just HURTS when you squeeze it so hard!”
“Yeah yeah I know it hurts- but SHARP pain like glass. I’m trying to find if there’s any more glass in there—so can you feel anything?” I shake my head no, and he gives a final tenderizing blow to the finger like I’ve done many a time with a cold steak. He proceeds to start stitching it up, but by this time the tourniquet has already proved to be ultra-efficient: the pressure is building up and it’s killing me that I’m not getting any circulation. I start writhing again, and he yells at me yet again to stop moving.
I struggle, “The pressure—it’s getting too much… it hurts.”
“Yeah, yeah it hurts. Give me a couple of minutes I’m almost done stitching you up. Then I’ll release the blood back into your finger. Stop moving and talking.”
I want to kill the b****d. I resist doing so thankfully, and I can write this instead of being in prison for assaulting an ER doctor.
“There. We done.” And he releases the tourniquet and blood gushes into my finger—causing an overwhelming and delicious feeling of released pressure and tingling.
There’s some x-rays done to make sure that there’s no glass still stuck in the finger, and I’m released home. I don’t think I see the doctor for more than 30 seconds after—he doesn’t explain how to take care of my finger or what I need to do. Just scribbles a prescription for antibiotics and barks at me to go see my regular doctor to get my stitches taken out and if there’s further swelling or pain.
So that’s my finger story.

Tags: California, Happenings, Health

Ahhh.. I kinda dig IKEA

Sure sure, IKEA has a reputation for having furniture that will be useless in 6 months. And that’s fine, really. All I know is that I actually went there on Friday and found a desk, a file cabinet, and a chair and had it delivered for under $300. That’s pretty good, in my book. The desk itself was actually the cheapest (and easiest to build) of all three– it came up to a whopping $50.

It’s an interesting phenomenon, and I’m surprised they don’t have one in Oklahoma City ($5 says Mathis Brothers paid someone off). Basically, picking a table top, then whichever legs you want, and then dependent on your configuration, it costs more or less. Intriguing. I think this has really been the only time I’ve ever wanted to have a pickup truck instead of my Civic, so I could bypass the delivery fee. And it’s true of anyplace you want to go that isn’t a full-time furniture store where delivery is included (as part of the well-inflated price). Plus, do I really want to drag all this stuff upstairs myself? Not so much.

Anyway, it helps to have these things, and I’m thankful for them. Now it’s Sunday night and I think it’s time to go to bed for another week at work.

Tags: California, Happenings

Ahhhhh… finally.

Okay so I can’t quite say that I’m ‘fully’ set-up yet, but ya gotta understand– in Vinoj World, being away from the internet is an eternity. The odd thing is at work I HAVE internet, but I’m always so reticent to use it for anything other than ‘work’ sites because I don’t think it’s appropriate to constantly check your Facebook status, or write a blog post, or whatever. I mean if it’s on your lunch break, I guess it’s a bit more understandable, but still, your usage history is still being tracked, and who needs the extra headache?

Hence why I haven’t blogged in a while.

And although I may have a total reader count of…. less than 10, I feel it’s my duty to inform you all of that.

Anyway now I’ve got internet and TV. Although I had to go and actually buy a 19″ LCD TV yesterday. Lemme tell ya, nothing beats portability. But it is a bit humorous considering that my TV monitor is actually smaller than my iMac’s screen size (22″). But whatever. All that matters to me right now is that I have the possibility of watching shows– or more importantly– OU football.

My poor sister. She had the misfortune of having to actually describe OU plays to me over the phone. “Umm.. so like, Bradford’s doing well… he’s got 3 touchdowns–” “Yeah but how’s our secondary? The defense? And the offensive line? “Uhh… pretty good I think….”

And so forth.
And it couldn’t have come at a better time– this weekend is– you guessed it– OU v. Texas #1 vs. #5. Wow. I have to say that the Longhorns, even AT #5, seem to be rather under-appreciated, and this is said from a total Sooner fan. I want OU to win of course, but I certainly don’t want a blowout. (That would just mean that Texas was too highly ranked/the Big 12 doesn’t have any defenses/SEC is better/blah blah blah) No, I want a good, really tight game. A game where both coaches pull out all the stops as best they can. And whoever wins– yes, even Texas– I hope they get to the BCS National Championship game.

Dang. I’ve already written 360 words in just about 7 minutes after not blogging for so long. So let’s not do this again, shall we? Now… if I could only get a couch, a desk to put my computer on, and a TV stand, I think I’d be set… heheh

Tags: California, Happenings, Work

Starting work and getting a place

So tomorrow at 9am, I start work officially. And of course I’ve been working on freelance projects since I’ve been here, but I’m talking sit-down-from-9-5-type-job.

I gotta admit, I’m a bit nervous.

I guess I shouldn’t be– it’s coding xhtml/css/jscript, which I’m okay with doing… but I guess it’s what they call the ‘intangibles’ that I’m slightly trepidatious about. Things like,”Will my co-workers like me? What will they think of my coding and work? I hope I don’t smell bad. What do I wear??” You know, the really important issues. Back at Element Fusion, I think that was the best part of my day– I genuinely cared for pretty much everyone who worked there– it was more like a family than any company I’d ever worked for, and I’ll truly miss it.

But as for tomorrow, I guess all I can do is keep coding like I have, wear ironed clothes, and make sure to remember the deodorant.

Another thing that’s been trying to say the least is finding an apartment. I finally found a town, Alhambra, which seems to be idyllic. It reminds me a lot of Norman and has much more of a small-town feel than does the rest of Los Angeles. It’s about 30 minutes northeast of LA, which is probably why the apartments are cheaper, but the one thing I don’t understand about 95% of the apartments around here is that they don’t have refrigerators.

Let me repeat– they don’t have refrigerators.

HOW does that make any sense? Apparently at some point (according to one landlord) people decided that they wanted to keep their own fridges and not have the ones already installed in the apartments, so the landlords had to have them taken out. Now, people (apparently) just move from place to place hauling their huge fridges around. Wtf?? On top of that, parking is ridiculous too. Many places don’t have dedicated parking so you have to park in the street, which means parallel parking with 80 other people, and then buying a permit from the city each year so that you don’t get a ticket. Grr. Personally it sounds like a scam, but I also don’t have much of a choice.

Anyway… so that’s that for now. I’m off to iron my clothes and take a shower to get ready for the big day.

Tags: California, Work

Anxiety

I was anxious. Very much so. Things that I felt were rock-solid and totally going right ended up falling by the wayside. And then I read Matthew 6:25-34.

Take a look at it when you get a chance.

Tags: Bible, California

Settling in…

I left Flagstaff, Arizona at around 3:30am, and ended up at Aaron’s place at 11am. 7.5 hours? Not bad at all, I’d say, and that’s including stops. I got pretty scared as I pulled into a little town called Bristow in California for gas. Why? The lowest price for gas was $4.57. Nope. Not making it up. I found out later that this stupid little town is basically a scam. As in, there’s nothing there except a coffee shop, a gas station, and some lodging, and it’s the only gas station around for miles so they jack up the prices because people can’t go anywhere else. The bastards!

Thankfully, LA’s prices aren’t as bad. Aaron and I drove out to Burbank today and the price was about $4.09/gallon which is pretty nominal for a big city. True it ain’t the $3.43 of Oklahoma, but at least I didn’t pay $30 for 7 gallons of gas.

The day was pretty productive. We got some lunch, went to Lowe’s to make duplicate keys, I emptied out my car and set up my computer. After taking a nap for an hour, I went out to buy groceries and was pleasantly surprised that at a grocery store called Trader Joe’s, they sell almost solely organic foods (which is what I’ve switched to for the past 3 months). PLUS, whereas in Oklahoma I’d spend $85-90/week on groceries, today I spent $50. That’s right, California is cheaper, at least for me. Afterwards I went and washed my car, came back, made a turkey wrap, and now I’m typing this up.

Don’t worry- I’m not going to be writing detailed reports like this every day. I just wanted to give a full account of the trip in sordid and (slightly boring) detail. Tomorrow I need to go 100% into looking for web design work.

Everybody keep your fingers crossed and pray. Otherwise this will be one really short stay and I’ll be back in Oklahoma before you know it.

Now to get some rest… adieu.

Tags: California, Travel