Please indulge me as I try to figure out what we want to do for a new car. Of course, a lot of this will be fantasy, as I'm not even sure what our insurance company is going to offer for our totalled 98 Civic. Still, this is how I'm coping with the accident... and darn it, this is MY blog and I'll write about what I want to!
Looking at brand-new cars, I think I've narrowed it down to the Ford Focus ZX5, the Honda Civic sedan, the Toyota Corolla, and the Mazda3. There's a reason I've selected each, and each has its own pros and cons.
The Ford is what I'm driving as a rental, courtesy of State Farm, and it's pretty sweet. It handles quite well, has great visibility, and gets good gas mileage. OTOH, it doesn't have much get-up and the rear seats leave a little to be desired. If tricked out, it's a little high on the price range; as a more reasonable model, it's as competitive or moreso than the other three models. It is still a Ford, though, and at least one review ended with something like "the only bad note is the fact that Ford has a history of recalls"... hrm...
The Honda Civic is what could have saved my wife's life. It's always a good choice, offering safety, performance, economy, and features. In fact, I really have very little to say about the Civic except that I loved ours. The only downside is the price; to get a Civic equipped with front and side airbags, ABS, and all the safety goodies would generally cost a grand or two more than the next most costly car. But the Civic, in our experience, as been worth every dime. (Well, the engine crapped out at 115k miles, but I suspect that might have more to do with our lack of maintenance than any faulty design...)
My parents recently bought a Toyota Corolla and we drove it around a bit before the rental car came through. It's a bit more conservative than the Civic, especially in terms of acceleration and handling, but it's a bit more comfortable as well. All in all, it does everything in a competant, if not spectacular, manner. Combine that with a stellar safety, a virtually non-existent repair record, and a good middle-of-the-road price, and the Corolla is certainly a safe bet.
Finally, the Mazda3 is sort of the dark horse. I don't know much about it (outside of the extremely positive reviews), I don't know anyone with one, and it's a brand-new car for 2004. And yet, with the most horsepower of the bunch, gas mileage second only to the Corolla, styling like no other compact, and handling described as "European in nature", the Mazda3 sure gets me excited to drive it. :-) The best part is that it's near the low-end of the price range.
I'm leaning toward the Mazda3, and a test-drive (hopefully tomorrow) should help that along. Are there any others I should be considering? (The mid-size cars are just out of our price range.) Any words of wisdom?
Thanks to everyone for your prayers. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of good news to report at this time. However, since it's easier to write it here than to report it to numerous people separately, I'll write a little. :-)
Nase is still in the hospital. LAC-USC is a nightmare, as any trauma center in the heart of L.A. might be. The doctors seem very nice and extremely competant, but getting to see them is a bit of a chore. They are obviously overworked and understaffed, and since Nase is "stable" it's hard to get them worked up about getting her seen when there might be a gunshot victim or a stroke victim waiting for the OR. As such, her second surgery--the first was a minor thing to get her laceration sewn up and to take an initial look at the injury--has been delayed. They had hoped to get to it on Tuesday (11/25) but failed, then had wanted to operate today (11/28) but failed. (More on today's problems in a bit.) At this point the next likely date will be Tuesday, 12/2... so once again, we're praying for a quiet night in L.A. on that night.
The nurses continue to be a complete nuisance. Nase had been moved to an ortho-only floor to make it easier for the ortho doctors to get to see her. For a while, it seemed like the nurses were going to be a little better, but as time went on they showed their true colors. Waiting two hours (after she had asked) to give her pain medication, changing her bedsheets (well, removing the old ones BUT NOT PUTTING NEW ONES ON) after she had requested her 4-day-old sheets be changed, and failing to take her to x-ray to get her foot scanned again (which is why she didn't get to go to surgery today!) are just a couple of the fun snafus they have pulled in the last couple of days. We desperately tried to get her transferred to another hospital, especially since the other insurance company said they would pay for it, but trying to get a hold of a doctor to get her treated is a little tricky on the holidays. So at least for the weekend, she will be staying at LAC-USC.
However, she is still in quite good spirits. (Anyone who knows Nase probably wouldn't be surprised to read that.) She has great roommates, she has been introducing one in particular to Jesus, and she's getting around (on her broken foot!) more each day with a combination of a wheelchair, a walker, and crutches. Nonetheless, come Monday, we hope to have her moved to a private facility and scheduled for a firm (!) surgery date... God willing...
Pictures are now (or will be soon once they finish uploading... stupid hi-res camera settings...) available for your perusal. Man, the more I look at it, the more I'm amazed that things weren't worse...
UPDATE: I've taken the plunge and set up gallery instead of my hackish script. Check out the gallery of car photos here. :-)
Here's the short version: my blogging of favorite albums (and, in fact, all of my life) was interrupted by the fact that Nase (my wife, for those just joining us) was in a pretty bad car accident. It was a one-car accident (the car hit an electrical pole) and all involved are relatively okay. Nase is the only one who was really hurt, and she is still in the hospital being treated for multiple fractures in her left heel. She will require surgery, both now (of the fix-it sort) and possibly later (of the reconstructive sort), but all things considered, she is doing quite well.
Read on for the sordid details.
Around 3pm on Friday, Joe[*] (a friend of ours), Ilyana (our 5-year-old daughter), and Nase were driving from Tehachapi to Palmdale for a wedding rehearsal. It was rather windy, as is the norm for Antelope Valley and Tehachapi. Joe was driving our car since Nase was feeling too tired to drive. Everyone was singing hymns and feeling good.
Suddenly, the car lurched to the right-hand shoulder. (My guess is that the wind blew the car over, the right-hand side tires fell off the pavement and jerked the car to the right, and the tires lost traction on the soft shoulder.) The car fishtailed and struck an electical pole in the right-front of the car, spinning it around a couple of times before it came to a stop.
The car was a mess, Ilyana was scared, Joe was stunned, and Nase was severely injured. However, through her injuries, Nase directed Joe to remove the relatively uninjured Ilyana from the car, while she broke out the passenger-side window (we still aren't sure how) and climb out through the jammed door. The three of them staggered to safety a little ways from the car.
Over the course of the next few minutes, dozens of people stopped to offer their assistance to Nase, Joe, and Ilyana on this back road. (For reference, the road (90th Avenue in Rosamond, around Backus Rd.) is relatively well-travelled between Antelope Valley/LA and Tehachapi, but is still fairly "in-the-middle-of-nowhere".) Many of the people who stopped offered coats and blankets to Nase, who was disabled and bleeding quite profusely from her foot. One, presumably a school teacher, even gave Ilyana some books while they were waiting for the emergency response team.
The EMTs finally got there, and decided that Nase and Ilyana (who were both complaining of abdominal pains and other injuries) needed to be airlifted to the hospital. The cloud cover and wind were too great to fly them into Bakersfield (the largest nearby city), so they were taken to the Antelope Valley Hospital ER. Ilyana was quickly discharged, as was Joe (who had hitched a ride in the ambulance to AV), but Nase wasn't so lucky.
Unlike Ed, I didn't have any trouble convincing the doctors that we didn't have health insurance. The fact is, we don't have ANY health insurance (whereas Ed was trying to convince his wife's health insurance company that he no longer had insurance). None, zip, zilch, nada. Yes, this is one of those horror stories where you don't have health insurance and you need surgery, an extended hospital stay, or both. Yes, this sounds like the kind of thing that only happens to someone else. But I am here to say that this indeed happens.
AV Hospital didn't have an orthopaedic surgeon available on the weekend. So Nase needed to be transferred to a hospital where she could see an orthopaedic surgeon for her mangled foot. And because we had no insurance, our only real option was the trauma center at the USC/LA Country Hospital, which is also a school of medicine.
As a sidenote, I hate not having options. I feel trapped when only one option presents itself, and this was no exception: I didn't like the fact that because we had no insurance, my wife's injuries (which stemmed from an at-fault, one-car accident in which she was a passenger) would be treated at a public health care facility. But I realized that it was more important to see about getting her into a place where she at least stood a chance of being treated (as was the case at USC) than it was to deal with my own personal preferences of having choices. So we arranged to have her shipped, via ambulance, to USC near downtown Los Angeles.
Although she arrived in good shape, she soon began to experience the ambivalance with which public health care nurses and doctors treat their patients. Before she could get a bed, she had to go through the ER again, only at USC rather than AV. The staff at USC is used to dealing with gunshot wounds, knifings, and other severe traumas, so they were pretty unimpressed with Nase's condition. (This, of course, didn't affect the fact that she was in severe pain.) In the busy ER, she was pretty much ignored; she was given very little pain medication to deal with her shattered heel, and was frequently approached and pitied... but no assistance.
After four hellish hours in the ER, she was given a bed in an orthopaedic trauma ward early Saturday morning. The neglect just continued there. Nurses would generally come in about every 60-90 minutes to check on her, but would rarely respond to individual requests to speak with them. (And the times they did respond to our requests, many of the nurses had a bit of a language barrier with English. The Korean nurse assigned to Nase's shared room was adequate when it came to English, but her grasp of the language was by no means firm. Don't get me wrong: I have no problem with foreign nurses, but when they cannot communicate with their patients, it becomes a problem.) The rule was pretty much that we had to request to see the nurse about four or five times before she would actually come in. As for the doctor... forgetaboutit. Nase saw the doctor precisely once before Things Changed (keep reading), and that was a five-minute meeting to inspect her foot and help his interns/residents get some experience.
Because of the nature of her wound (it was actually an open fracture, exposing the bones in her foot), we were assured that her surgery (to sew up her foot) would take precendence over other surgeries. Of course, any major traumas would take precedence over her, but that was something we could accept and live with. What we couldn't accept was the fact that when the Demoral shots weren't working well enough, they decided to try Tylenol with codeine. (Why scale down the medicine when the more-powerful stuff isn't working?!?!)
When I told my dad how they were pretty much ignoring her, and giving her weak painkillers (when they were actually paying attention), he got pretty upset. He decided to drive down, to stay with Nase overnight, and to deal with the hospital staff as the situation arose. Upon arriving, the first thing he did was to call the nurse and grill her on what the Tylenol/codeine prescription was all about, since it was far too weak to actually do anything for Nase as the Demoral wore off. He made sure to speak to one of the residents and convince them that Nase needed treatment. Ten minutes after that, I received a call from him that Nase was in surgery. We were relieved...
...until we found out that they really didn't do anything. They *did* flush out her wound, pump her full of antibiotics, and sew her up... but they didn't actually address the fact that her heel was in many pieces. We found out that they would do that in a second surgery, but we also found out that that second surgery probably wouldn't happen until at least Tuesday. Here it is, late Monday night, and I can testify that their estimate seems to have been pretty close.
In the meantime, she was treated to the wonders of socialized medicine for the uninsured. After her surgery on Saturday night, she was moved from the ortho ward to a general ward. To her relief, the nurses in the general ward seemed better and a little more attentive. That was before they:
In a nutshell, this is a hospital from hell. I'd say they have poor bedside manner, but that assumes SOME bedside manner, and most of the nurses have precisely zero. Nase is miserable, I am miserable because I can't help her (short of getting in the faces of the nurses to get her help, which I have had to do on a number of occasions), and nothing seems to be moving. (Well, she has moved beds twice in two days, but nothing *productive* seems to be happening.)
Please don't think I'm mincing words. The nurses are worse than worthless. They are animals, apparently thriving on cruelty to those in the most need of their help. They feel no obligation, or even desire, to do their job even poorly. Rather, they sit around their little nurse's station in a little clique and bitch about life, the patients, whatever. They are worse than worthless because they give the air of actually caring, doing something, helping. And yet, they are imparting only desparation to the patients (Nase isn't the only one from whom I've sensed this) and encouraging resentment among the doctors (toward the nurses). That is worse than worthless: that is soulless.
Not all of the nurses have been this bad, but the good ones have been so few and far between that I think they must not actually be nurses, but simply human beings.
(For more reading on the miserable state of this hospital in general, see this article for example. It's important to note that once you actually get *seen* and your problems get *addressed*, the doctors are absolutely top-notch. It's just getting to that point that is difficult.)
One final note on the hospital issue: the second operation on Nase's foot is supposed to happen tomorrow. If it does not (say, because another trauma comes in that trumps her spot in the OR), she will be in a private hospital by Wednesday morning and under a different ortho surgeon's knife by sundown on Wednesday. The two insurance companies (ours (since it was our car) and Joe's (since he was driving) seem to be playing pretty nice together, and while they cannot preauthorize a procedure, they can tell a doctor what the limits are and what they plan to pay if a procedure is done. Hopefully, this will be enough for one of the eight private ortho surgeons we are contacting, and she will be in St. Joseph's in Burbank before tomorrow is over... IF the USC doctors end up unable to help her out.
Nase is okay, awaiting surgery, and in good spirits. The car is totalled, and we aren't sure what we're going to be able to do for a car, long-term. At least for now, we will have our choice of a couple of cars from family and friends to borrow, so that's good. I'm going tomorrow to the tow yard to collect our things from the car, and I'm a little excited to see what it looks like. Maybe I'll take pictures...
Anyhoo, keep us in your prayers. Right now, we are praying for a couple of things:
- A miracle, in which Nase's foot fuses together before the surgery in such a way that she has no chronic pain or stiffness, thus baffling the doctors. Yes, our God is that big.
- Peace for Nase about whatever happens, and comfort as she toughs it out at USC.
- The ability for Nase to get around well enough by Thursday to enjoy Thanksgiving with the rest of our family.
- Patience and self-control for those of us who are ready for God to get on the ball, who are ready to strangle the nurses, or both.
Watch here for updates (though I promise not all of them will be as long as this one :-).
[*] Name changed to protect his dignity^Widentity.
I'm sure there are better Depeche Mode albums out there (People Are People and Black Celebration come to mind as highly-touted offerings), but this is one that I've loved for years. I bought this after Songs of Faith and Devotion to get in touch with "old" Depeche Mode. (Of course, I used to make fun of people that listened to them when I was in high school; then again, *I* listened to hair metal, so looking back, I guess I didn't really have much room to talk...)
In any case, I chose to buy this album because of "Personal Jesus", "Enjoy the Silence", and "Policy of Truth". And the album is nearly worth it on the basis of those three songs alone. "Policy of Truth", in true 80s fashion (okay, it was published in 1990), explores the allure in pretending to be something one is not, as well as the difficulties that arise in telling the truth.
Things could be so different now It used to be so civilised You will always wonder how It could have been if you'd only lied . It's too late to change events It's time to face the consequence For delivering the proof In the policy of truth [...] Now you're standing there tongue tied You'd better learn your lesson well Hide what you have to hide And tell what you have to tell You'll see your problems multiplied If you continually decide To faithfully pursue The policy of truth -- "Policy of Truth"
Hardly a rulebook for maintaining a good relationship, but it makes for wonderful music. This song, and the whole album, displays the pre-industrial sounds of Depeche Mode, but in a much more mature way. The loops are much more complex and refined, whereas earlier albums simply toyed with drum machines (cf. "Just Can't Get Enough").
The lyrical style of Depeche Mode generally inspires... confusion. And excitement, though because of the confusion one generally doesn't understand why. Violator is a hallmark in that regard, as evidenced by the opening track, "World in My Eyes".
I'll take you to the highest mountain To the depths of the deepest sea We won't need a map, believe me Now let my body do the moving And let my hands do the soothing Let me show you the world in my eyes . That's all there is Nothing more than you can feel now That's all there is -- "World in My Eyes"
I don't know what it means, but I know it makes me happy in special places.
Aside from the singles, no one part of the album stands out as great. However, the album as a whole works as a cohesive unit and is infinitely listenable... over and over and over.
You might be surprised to see a country album on my list. Then again, if you know I live in Tehachapi, California, you might NOT be, since Tehachapi is fairly hickish. I always say that they issue the gunrack and "smellhound" with every pickup here... so Garth is pretty much par for the course.
However, I purchased No Fences long before I moved to Tehachapi; in fact, it was one of the albums that carried me through when I was living in Costa Rica, after nearly all of my CDs had been stolen in customs. I was cruising around on the weekend with a guy from Tennessee and two sisters whose father was on sabbatical in San Jose. The guy had this cassette that we listened to over and over, partially because it was about the only tape we had in the car, partially because it was about the only tie to the US we had. And what better tie to US culture than country?!
The album is classic country about drinkin' and lovin' and achin'. Garth comes out *against* wife-beating (which may be saying something considering it *is* country) in "The Thunder Rolls" which received national attention for the video. Even in its twang, one can appreciate the lyrics that describe the stress and agony a wife whose husband is cheating on her would go through:
Every light is burnin' In a house across town She's pacin' by the telephone In her faded flannel gown Askin' for miracle Hopin' she's not right Prayin' it's the weather That's kept him out all night And the thunder rolls And the thunder rolls [...] She's waitin' by the window When he pulls into the drive She rushes out to hold him Thankful he's alive But on the wind and rain A strange new perfume blows And the lightnin' flashes in her eyes And he knows that she knows And the thunder rolls And the thunder rolls -- "The Thunder Rolls"
Perhaps the video controversy came in the final verse, which was cut for the album:
She runs back down the hallway To the bedroom door She reaches for the pistol Kept in the dresser drawer Tells the lady in the mirror He won't do this again Cause tonight will be the last time She'll wonder where he's been -- "The Thunder Rolls"
Y'see, in country, women didn't go killing their cheating husbands, especially not in a song sung by a man, and especially not in 1990. Women were expected to "Stand by [Their] Man" according to the formula, so the song about a vindictive wife was a little risque.
In any case, not all of the songs on the album are quite so deep. "Friends in Low Places" is one of the ultimate bar and kiss-off songs around, one that (in the right bar) the first stanza can set off a singalong that everyone wants to join. It's a typical country story: boy dates girl, girl dumps man, girl marries other boy, first boy shows up at the wedding to get completely bombed and tell off girl in front of everyone. You know, a love story. :-)
An honest love story is told in "Two of a Kind, Workin' on a Full House". Through a rash of poker and other country references, Garth declares his love and devotion to his woman. The description of his beau is priceless:
Yeah, a pickup truck is her limousine And her favorite dress is her faded blue jeans She loves me tender when the goin' gets tough Sometimes we fight just so we can make up -- "Two of a Kind, Workin' on a Full House"
It's corny, it's country, but it's still one of my favorite albums.
Unlike The Sundays, my wife and I discovered The Cranberries together. We both liked their song, "Linger", when we heard it on the radio, and were privileged to see their television debut on the Letterman show. As became evident, Dolores O'Riordan was every bit as wispy (and suffering from stage fright!) as her voice. Yet in that innocence and frailty came a great strength.
Everybody Else... became a staple in our dating collection of CDs, though looking back it wasn't for the lyrics. "Linger" expresses the frustration a woman feels in being unable to leave her boyfriend, even after she catches him with another woman:
but I'm in so deep you know I'm such a fool for you you got me wrapped around your finger do you have to let it linger? do you have to, do you have to let it linger? -- "Linger"
That didn't quite fit our relationship... at all. However, the vulnerability in her voice somehow fit the band's Irish origins, singing about the hurt and desparation even in personal relationships. The only song on the album that doesn't express this sort of pain is "Dreams"; even then, the hint of normalcy and health is expressed in a dream, as opposed to a solid reality. The band has seen its share of atrocities in their native Ireland, and they express their outrage in later albums. In this album, they express more sorrow and heartache at a macrocosmic level in the problems of the general human experience of relationships. (Yes, too many prepositions in a row, sorry college English prof.)
More than the lyrical content, though, this album stands on the strength of O'Riordan's voice. She has a mystic, tribal quality in which one can immediately recognize the foreign-born influences; it gives the music a misty and celtic feeling, even in its "pop-iness". She employs a technique similar to yodeling and fills out the instrumentation nicely with her singing.
Like the previous entry, the ethereal voice and solid musical stylings of The Cranberries' first offering make it a great album for any collection.
Okay, I'm following the trend. I'm going to post my top 24 (since I'm one less cool than Ron for coming up with the idea) albums of all time. These should only be construed as my personal favorites, and not any sort of exhaustive or official list of the best albums ever.
The Sundays was one of the first bands my wife introduced me to while we were dating. S&S was their 1997 album that featured the released song, "Summertime", that saw a little radio play. Until then, I had written them off as "my wife's music" and knew only their song, "Wild Horses", which had been featured in the 1996 flick, Fear. I bought S&S for Nase when it came out, but ended up listening to it pretty heavily, which I still do.
Harriet Wheeler's voice is ethereal, beautiful, and vulnerable. The tenderness extends into her lyrics, including songs like "When I'm Thinking About You" and "Summertime":
two-minute hailstorm then melts into rain (oh) sing me a rainbow it's sunny again swallows overhead while the traffic snarls below could I could I keep dreaming for a little while longer? oooh yeah, hope I'll never wake when I'm thinking about you so that you know - I never want to wake cause now I'm thinking about you -- "When I'm Thinking About You"and it's you and me in the summertime we'll be hand down in the park with a squeeze and a sigh and that twinkle in your eye and all the sunshine banishes the dark and it's you I need in the summertime as I turn my white skin red two peas from the same pod yes we are or have I read too much fiction? is this how it happens? -- "Summertime"The songs in which Harriet expresses her feelings of love (requited or returned) constitute the majority of the album, but by far the best song on the album is "Monochrome", a remembrance of the night the Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. It's a beautiful story about how a girl and her sister crept downstairs to view the landing on a black-and-white ("monochrome") television, and the excitement that they felt.
and something is said and the whole room laughs aloud me and my sister looking on like shadows the end of an age as we watched them walk in a glow lost in space, but I don't know where it is they're dancing around slow puppets silver ground and the stars and stripes in the sand we hear a voice from above and it's history and we stayed awake all night they're dancing around it sends a shiver down my spine and I run to look in the sky and I half expect to hear them asking to come down (oh) will they fly or will they fall? to be excited by a long late night -- "Monochrome"Needless to say, anyone who can sing about space travel and make it a thing of beauty is pretty high in my book. (And yes, I considered Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and I wouldn't exactly call "Major Tom" a "thing of beauty".)
Overall a beautifully crafted album with excellent lyrics and a voice come down from heaven.
Posted by pcg at 11:29 PM | Comments (3)
Once again, it's been a while since I've written. Work has been spectacular, and I'm continually amazed at how much God is blessing our business. Not that it's been quiet on the work front; quite the contrary, we've been working our butts off.
I'm celebrating our ongoing success this evening with a couple of yummy beers. One is a staple: Flying Dog Scottish Porter. Flying Dog is a Denver brewery that makes a great line of beers, and the Scottish Porter is not only delicious, but readily available even out here in the boonies. Not to mention that porter is generally my favorite brew... more refreshing than stout, yet more substantial than most ales.
Speaking of stout, the second beer I got was a Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout. At $3.50/pint it isn't cheap, but I no longer wonder why it's so highly regarded in the beer community. Oatmeal stouts are particularly good, IMO, and this is the best of the bunch, at least in my limited experience (Barney Flats and maybe a couple of others). As just about any stout, it had little hoppiness, which is okay by me. But it wasn't overly malty either with that assault on the senses that some stouts provide. It was like drinking a cup of Starbucks after drinking Maxwell House for years and years. I can't explain it, but it was everything it was cracked up to be. I just wish I had a bigger beer budget...
So I'm waiting for wxPython to compile, drinking my beer, so I can install BitTorrent, so I can install ISOs of RedHat Enterprise Linux 3, which have been developed by, of all things, a public library in Louisiana. I've also ordered CDs for Debian Linux, Gentoo Linux, and FreeBSD 5.1, just in case. :-) All of this is in response to Red Hat's not-so-recent End-Of-Life announcement regarding their only server-stable public release (i.e., RH 7.3).
Not much else to say other than that... oh, and I received a copy of Unreal Tournament 2003, and will be getting online soon enough (handle: pcgTheDestroyer) to frag the lot of you.