slathery goodness

I must say I am sitting pretty high in my pirogue (p. peerow) today. Sometimes just being yourself can be very rewarding in most unusual and unexpected ways. What am I talking about? Take a look at what Veronica at Hissy Fit had to say about me and you guys that were kind enough to go say hi to her. That lady has a lot of c l a s s and she ain't afraid to use it! And a huge bonus, take a look at that absolutely gorgeous oil painting she did called "Mardi Gras Grrl". She is going to send me a print of it in the mail! I already know where I want to display it and I will cherish it forever I am sure. In fact I just thought of another very cool place to display it! See it here! So if you haven't checked her out yet you better rush over and say hi and she will luv ya dearly and there ain't nothin' wrong with that!

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Ritchie Goes Diving

In my previous post I talked about Ritchie and Tommy and I want to expand on Ritchies story a bit. Inspired by Catt. It seems that the neighborhood I grew up in as a teenager had several commercial deep sea divers, so it was natural to be inspired by these men and want to go on the very same semi-romantic type of adventureism for yourself. Ritchie and me were two of those kids and he became a really great diver in his own right.

One of the things that make diving so dangerous is the possiblity of the bends in a way that cannot be repaired. What happens is a tiny bubble of oxygen or nitrogen that is normally in your bloodstream is allowed to expand so quickly that it lodges itself in a way that blocks bloodflow or puts pressure on a nerve in your central nervous system called a cns hit. To give you a simple idea of how this works imagine an ordinary balloon filled with air, then take that ballon underwater and the deeper you go the smaller it will get because of the water pressure increase surrounding the balloon. Return the balloon back to the surface and it will expand back to it's original size! Well the exact same thing happens to the microscopic bubbles in your bloodstream, as you return to the surface they are aspirated out thru the lungs as you breathe. However if they expand too quickly meaning you are rising too quickly to allow them to aspirate out, then they may become lodged someplace and that is very, very bad.

Now Ritchie as it turned out happened to be one of those men that was most unfortunate in that he got a bubble in his central nervous system and it caused some damage in the nerves in his spinal cord. They were able to remove the bubble by recompressing him and then slowly decompressing to allow the bubble to pass normally out. However the nerve damage had been done and he was not able to walk any longer without the use of a cane. He had a very severe limp and a lot of numbness in one leg. He also could not be useful as a diver anymore and that was very sad, but he did go on to sue the company and was able to prove negligence in which he was awarded a huge sum of money and as far as I know is still wealthy today. His outlook on life after the accident was very good that I can recall and I still wish the man all the luck in the world.

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Mardi Gras is getting closer kids and I am getting stoked up to bring ya guys lotsa slathery goodness about all the cool events coming up! Stay tuned!