karl.tsakos.us/blog

I’m not exactly what you would call the most religious guy. However, my Dad is. That’s why I will be at church this evening with him celebrating the greek Orthodox Easter. And before you say, “huh,” you must realize that since Easter follows Passover, the Orthodox church wisely choose to schedule it every year the week after Passover. Makes sense.

So I’m spending the evening before going to Dad’s around 10:30 relaxing. I tried to take a nap, but amazingly I couldn’t fall asleep. Sure, midday after lunch at work I would love a nap. Saturday evening… nothing.

To try and inspire sleep, I made a music playlist of what I thought were mellow songs. For the most part, they are. I however didn’t take into account that some of them build during the piece and end with full chorus, orchestra and tribal drums. Of course, I don’t think it was the music; I’m just not tired.

So it’s church this evening and it’s church in the morning (11ish) and that’s my regularly scheduled church visits for the year.

Easter Sunday has another important meaning in my family. It has to do with the Greek tradition of celebrating people’s Name Day. They do that more then celebrating birthdays. A Name Day is the day associated with the patron saint you are named after or other important day affiliated with a name. I add the last part because it is my father’s Name Day on Easter Sunday. His name is Anistasios which is derived from the greek phrase, “Christos anesti,” which translates to, “Christ has risen.” Oh, it is also my nieces name day (named for my father). Her name is Anastasia (the link is to the Greek pronunciation, not the anglicized version).

Well, time I got dressed for church.

Christos anesti!

I mean, it’s a legitimate question. Typhoid was once all the rage as were the bubonic plague and consumption. But now, what, they get the odd historical mention. And, what’s worse for them (them the diseases) is that they can often now be cured with penicillin or other antibiotics. The once mighty diseases that conquered much of the civilized world, now virtually wiped from the face of the earth.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.

However, with the demise of these ailments, man had more time on his hands to examine the problems his body faced on a daily basis. We started to watch the mechanics of the body and come up with syndromes and maladies based on malfunctioning body parts. If one was lucky, one could suffer from a problem the poor never had, tennis elbow. The name implies a life of leisure and frolicking so hard that one injures oneself. Well who wouldn’t want to suffer that one.

But tennis elbow is also a type of specific injury know as a repetitive strain injury. Such an injury is the result of taxing body parts by repeated motions and activities. Such activities can also include typing, playing an instrument, and gripping an item such as a camera. I partake in all of these activities, and all of these activities can result in a repetitive strain injury known as carpal tunnel syndrome. Currently, I also partake in that.

Well, I don’t know that I do for sure, but I have a classic symptom: numbness in my thumb and sometimes forearm. When the numbness didn’t go away for two weeks, I thought it was time to visit a doctor. He checked me out and recommended I see a neurologist suggesting I may have carpal tunnel syndrome. Amazingly, as one of the most self diagnosed people I know, that wasn’t one of my conclusions (although I thought it could be a repetitive strain injury). I thought it much more likely to be cancer of some sort or perhaps leprosy. I haven’t yet seen the neurologist, so nothings ruled out yet.

I won’t see the neurologist until the thirtieth of this month. That’s okay. In the interim, I have had plenty of time to do some more research on the topic and see what the problem really is and what self-help remedies I can do for myself. Right now they consist of wearing a wrist splint at work while I’m at my computer and some stretching exercises. I think if I am still numb (and all likelihood is I will be) the doctor will prescribe some steroid treatment and perhaps some more stretching.

And this brings us back to the title of this entry. In the late ’80’s and early ’90’s, carpal tunnel syndrome was all the rage. Not because it was new, but because it was categorized as an issue because of all the typing people were doing. But then, as with any hot topic in the media, it was forgotten about. I had just assumed it had been resolved.

I was wrong. Turns out, it is a fairly common ailment for people to get. Look on line for treatments and the web provides. Which is of course how I am able to diagnose myself and prescribe my own treatments.

Well, I guess we’ll have to wait and see if I was right. I mean really, leprosy makes you numb too.

As you may have noticed from previous posts, I have not been a participant in the social Internet. Well, I’m making some changes in that realm.

Two of my most recent changes of heart were the subject of my last entry. The first was Twitter and the second was Flickr. I have discovered (as I am sure you noticed) that I could integrate these two services into my blog. You can follow my tweets just below my most recent Flickr photos in the sidebar to the right of this page. But Flickr is what I want to talk about.

The thing is, I never had any desire to post my pictures on such crude a mechanism as Flickr. To me, it lacked style and design and instead had the rough, utilitarian look of so many of the early social networking sites. However, two things have changed my mind.

First, I wanted to take advantage of what I consider a neat trick Flickr offered. I can take a picture with my cell phone and then e-mail it to my Flickr account to be automatically posted on my Flicker page. I can also extend my blog to show the most recent posts on my FLicker page, thus the pictures to the right. My objective is to just take one picture a day of a simple or abstract subject and upload it to the page. Today, for instance, I took a picture of the street near my home where the sun was setting. I just whipped my camera out and the sunlight streamed into the lens. It is a simple but interesting picture. So I uploaded it.

The other reason for my getting a Flickr account was to possibly post entries in the This Week In Photography (TWIP) by-weekly photo contents. TWIP is a podcast I listen to. They have a Flickr group that they use for entering the competition. We’ll see if I choose to submit anything. I suppose if they have a topic of interest to my I shall.