Scott Desgrosseilliers

Water on the Elbow

Whenever I need information I google it.  I may be looking for the nearest bar, oil change, convenience store, doctor, whatever – Googling saves time and allows me to quickly get up to speed on whatever topic I am interested in.  Well – I came down with water on the elbow, and despite my proficient search skills, there was virtually no information to help me out.  So I’m posting this to help the next googler that has a freakish blob of unknown contents hanging off their elbow.

Water on the elbow is very similar to water on the knee.  Somehow your elbow got banged up and its response is to sprout a blob off of the joint.  Look at the picture of my elbow – Yikes! 

I was having dinner Wednesday night and my elbow itched.  I went to scratch it and felt this blob on the elbow.  My first thought was either a sock or a racquetball had somehow got stuck in the sleeve of my shirt and miraculously settled at the elbow spot.  I rolled up my sleeve expecting the foreign object to fall out and nothing fell out.  That is when I recoiled at the UEO (Unidentified Elbow Object) protruding from the elbow joint.

I immediately used my UEO to freak out both my girlfriend and my waitress. The waitress reacted like she was in a Halloween house of horrors and I was a menacing ghoul.  Showing my doormen later on produced winces and exclamations of fear.  But the elbow didn’t hurt at all, so I decided not to spend any time worrying about it.

At the doctor’s office the next day I kept my cellphone on.  I figured I could get some gruesome pictures of water on the elbow drainage to share with my faithful readers.  Unfortunately both doctors refused to pierce the elbow bubble.  With water on the knee, treatment is most commonly having your knee drained.  I know this because I got my knee stuck in another player’s football helmet once, and another time I fell off a couch flush on my knee.  Both times I had a tennis-ball size sac of fluid that required a HUGE needle piercing and squeezing to drain out the fluid.  It was like popping a ginormous zit. 

Draining water on the elbow is not usually a course of treatment because it greatly increases your chance of having the elbow get infected.  If you get water on the elbow, take a bunch of advil and compression wrap the joint.  That was the prescribed treatment.  I did both of these for 2 days, but it stopped being fun rather quickly, plus my stomach did not need advil while I was coordinating and participating in my brother’s bachelor party.  The swelling will go down and everything will be fine as long as the joint pain doesn’t increase.  Hopefully my elbow will look normal again soon.  It is now magically half the size after a week, hopefully I do not re-injure it playing football tonight.

Update post UEO-dispersal: I am updating this 8 months later because I realized I never concluded the story on my UEO disappearance. At football that evening, one week after my water on the elbow appeared, I made a diving interception which caused me to land on my UEO. It felt a little sore but nothing out of the ordinary. I got home and took off my wrap. The water sac had exploded internally and I had a very gross bruise. There was almost no pain. My bruise cleared up over 10 days time and my elbow was as good as new.

The Passion Test - Authors Workshop

I have a separate email address I use whenever a web site requires an email to be input.  This way all the junk the site would send is now out of sight and out of mind unless I check that specific account.  One of my many un-read email subscriptions is to John Assaraf's website, but for some reason when I scanned my spam email account 2 weeks ago his email kept nagging at me.  He was touting a book and process called The Passion Test and I kept reading the damn email.  I clicked on the link provided and noticed that the book's authors would be in Chicago October 15th.  One problem - the Red Sox playoff game would be on at the same time.

I shocked myself by deciding to miss the middle of the game for the Passion Test presentation.  The rationalization is that I would only miss 3-4 innings, and probably not much would happy in the middle innings anyways.  What kind of cradle to the grave Sox fan says that?  I was bewildered by my own decision-making but still found myself headed over to transitions bookstore in Chicago to hear the authors.

The people that attend workshops and presentations are seeking something.  I was inspired to go after my hellacious last work week.  I normally have it very good at work, there are spurts of hard work and equal parts of downtime.  But the prior week I had to work back-to-back 18 hour days and it incensed me.  Why do I want to waste even one day of my life giving up time to something that is not important to  me?  Fixing bad business process logic data is not the way I want to spend 36 out of 48 hours!  I have made the decision to find a way to only spend my time doing things that I feel passionate about, are fun, excite me, and give me enjoyment.  I can't stand any concept of any of my time being someone else's anymore, even if it is a "reasonable" amount of time, such as a 40 hour workweek.

The Passion Test is a process for discovering what matters most to you.  You list everything you care about.  Then you go through the list, comparing one passion against all the other ones to see if it is the most important.  You continue this method of "passion showdown" until you have your list of top 5 passions.  In the event you can’t choose between two, you are to close your eyes and envision completely achieving and living one passion, and having no possibility to have any experience with the other passion.  The authors demonstrated this with someone from the audience.  She was faced with deciding between "supporting and serving my family and children" with "living God's will for me".  That is a tough one!  After doing the exercise, she chose living God's will.  The authors pointed out that the critical rational mind and all its judgment must be suspended so you can listen to your heart and choose what you truly feel, not what you feel is right.  Perhaps God's will for this woman will be to support and serve her family, more likely she will be able to do both passions, but regardless, don't deny what you feel when going through the process.

The theory is that the brain works best when you are constantly keeping in mind the 5 things you are most passionate about.  Whenever you are faced with a decision, decide which of the options correlates to the highest passion and choose that option.  The authors explained that there have been studies showing the brain's efficiency falls significantly if you try to keep more than 5 passions in focus.  I'm not privy to the details yet because I just bought the book but I will keep you posted.  But I don't need the book to know that this rings true.  When I laser-focus on a few goals, I achieve them very quickly.  Lately I have had a laundry list of things I want to do, and I am going nuts because I'm making a lot of small progress, but getting none of them complete.  It was worth my time just to hear this concept of shrinking my most important goal list, again.

Once you've identified your passions, how do you get to a life of living them?  The authors repeatedly stressed that people get caught up in the "how do I get there?" question, which then creates doubts and negative thoughts, which then cause you to subvert your own goals.  The Passion Test authors provide hundreds of examples in their book of peoples stories of following their passion and having the universe respond with the resources, connections, and occurrences necessary to achieve the goal of living your passion.  They say to start doing something, anything, towards how you want your life to be, and you will get there.  Focusing on the "how" is something that trips me up.  I start meditating on a goal.  News stories, random emails, casual conversations - you name it - all start sprouting up to validate and support the goal.  This almost always happens within a few days.  Then I start doing a few things towards the goal and hit a roadblock.  It could be, I don't have any connections in that industry, or I am not sure what the next step in this process is, or  Now that I have done some research, I don't know if I want to commit the time necessary for this.  Now, if I just keep going towards what I feel excited and inspired about, the Passion Test authors say things will continue to happen for me, as long as I don't dwell on how do I do the next thing?.  If I suddenly feel uninspired by the time required for a goal, then it is time to re-take the Passion Test to see if I still feel so strongly about the original goal/passion that got me on the path to being with.

Will something as simple as identifying my passions and taking steps towards them work?  I'm going to read the book and see what happens, you'll read about it here.  I had left for the workshop with the Red Sox down 2 runs after 3 innings and returned 4 innings later with the Red Sox down 2 runs after 7 innings.  I guess that is one rationalization that came from somewhere smart.

A Hint from the Universe

I now view the world as an effect from the cause of my thoughts.  I think things, those thoughts generate emotion, and over time the universe creates the dominant emotional thoughts into my reality.  It seems very clear to me now but that wasn’t my viewpoint in the past.  I was regularly practicing yoga and found the meditations at the end of my practice to be very eye-opening (figuratively).  The experiences and sensations of quieting my mind were unlike anything I had felt before.  This led me to begin investigating how my mind worked and what was going on during those meditative states.  Browsing the web as usual one day, a small interview at espn.com with Barry Zito mentioned a book called Creative Mind and Success by Ernest Holmes.  For some reason – I didn’t know why at the time – I couldn’t get that book out of my head.  It ended up completely changing my life.

In the article Barry Zito mentioned that he owed his pitching success that season to using the concepts of Creative Mind and Success.  I immediately went over to amazon.com and checked it out.  It was a very small book written by a guy in Maine back in the early 1900s.  Being from Maine, and being able to read 80 pages in an hour, I figured it was no harm to ordering it to see what the book was all about, it would only be an hour of my life.

Whoa.  Thoughts are things?  What the hell is this guy talking about?  I spend all day with thoughts rummaging through my head, don’t tell me these things are real, or, gulp, could come back to haunt me.  I re-read the book a few times, even though it was simply written and straight to the point:  What and how you think will show up in your life.  I know that The Secret is garnering a lot of attention to the law of attraction in 2007, and that is a great thing.  But here was this guy from a small town in Maine espousing the same theories 90 years ago in book form.  I decided to give this guy’s theories a shot.

It was the fall 2001, and that meant time to bet on football.  I don’t wager a lot, but I hate to lose, so I get quite stressed/excited/angry/elated at betting on football even with small wagers of $50.  Sometimes during tense betting related moments, I find my fingers in my mouth, fingernails in tatters, sometimes even a little blood.  Yes this is nasty.  It is a subconscious response to the stress I think.  So I put the book down, and I tell myself that if I can use Creative Mind and Success ‘es theories to stop biting my fingers, after 25 years of nibbling at that point, then it definitely works.  I went through the book’s simple mental processes and went back to watching/biting.

2 weeks later I was staring at my hands in disbelief.  I had to use nail clippers for the first time in my life.  I showed my mother and grandmother, they were in similar shock.  By simply picturing healthy nails in my mind repeatedly over 2 weeks I had halted a multi-decade habit.

I have yo-yo’ed on the nail biting habit as my discipline wavers.  But it doesn’t change the fact that a seemingly random web interview pointed me in a direction that has changed the way I look at the world.  I was questioning my mind’s workings after yoga.  It was a thought in my mind about my desire to learn about the mind, which led to the web interview appearing during my daily browsing, then the book, and now 6 years of further investigations, experiences, and personal growth.  I don’t view these things as coincidences.  It is confirmation that the mind creates your reality. 

Chicago Marathon 2007

I thought something was odd when I noticed that EVERY single marathoner was walking.  I had got back from a flight and the road was blocked downtown a few blocks from my place.  I know that marathons are difficult, but if memory served correct, when the runners are at 600 north lasalle headed south during the Chicago marathon, that is only 10 miles into a 26.2 mile race, how could everyone be walking?  I remarked that they must have split up the runners into divisions and we were watching the very slow half marathon division.  I was wrong.  Along the marathon course there were forced walking zones due to people collapsing from the heat!  The people walking looked miserable.  I could commiserate, when I ran the marathon I had not felt such a deep intense pain often. 

I read today that someone died during the race.  I agree this is newsworthy.  However, it also irritated me to continue to hear "Runner Dies During the Marathon" blaring out to me from every tv channel, website, and newspaper today.  Why is this the only news from the marathon?  I remember in the months leading up to my marathon, I met a lot of people who were running to commemorate amazing feats, or raise funds for a great cause.  I can't find any such stories related to this year's race even though I am sure they are out there.

Mentioned only briefly in the Chicago marathon stories is the fact the race winner was competing in only his second marathon.  Jeezus!  I ran one and my time was anemic, I barely finished in under 5 hours and needed to take many advil during the race to numb my body.  It is unfathomable to think that my very next race I would've run in just over 2 hours.  How did this guy pull this off?  What was his training regimen?  I am extremely curious how someone wins the second marathon they ever attempted.

Sadly, the mass media exists to get ratings, and feels that the best way to do that is to play to fears and titillation.  Similar to how people slow down at a car wreck to ogle the damage, the media figures they are more likely to get attention when blasting out headlines of death and other terrible things.  That's why I don't watch the news.

Chicago Architecture Tour

I had been hearing about the Chicago Architecture Tour for so long it had got annoying.  Mouths gaped open at the incredulity of not attending this must-see Chicago event.  I heard repeated insistence at what a wondrous time the tour was going to be.  I dug my heels in and refused to go for 4 years.  Finally, to satisfy my curiosity and my girlfriend’s obsession with tours, I decided it couldn’t be so awful to be on a tour for 90 minutes, could it?

I have had a lifetime aversion to guided tours.  I feel like a tour can have the opposite of its intended effect.  When I want to learn about a city, I get out into that city and roam around looking for trouble.  Experience is the most memorable way to learn anything.

That being said, the Chicago Architecture Tour was not awful.  It was so-so.  The entire experience of the event was made fun because I took the tour with some wonderful Midwestern beauties, it was a sunny day in downtown Chicago, and there was a bar in the back of the boat serving $4 margaritas made from scratch.

Here’s the thing about a guided tour.  You are forced to sit riveted on the tour guide, while he frantically spews out facts.  Facts, facts, facts, I felt like I had spontaneously contracted ADD after about ten minutes, I really could’ve used a few minutes of mental downtime.  But no, the guide was relentless.  I have shunned tours because I get the same experience as going to a dueling piano bar; The pianist’s get visibly upset if you – Heaven Forbid – talk to people around you rather than focusing on the pianist like he’s a cult leader.  Tour guides in my limited experience have been the same way, they demand your undivided attention so they can hammer home more facts about why old Betty knitted a sweater while her husband built some building in 1842…not sure why I care about that level of detail.  The Chicago Architecture Tour guide was calmer than most guides in this area, he had a boat of 100 people held captive on the river.  So when myself and a few kindred spirits went to the bar for spirits, the guide somehow restrained from comment and let us get a beverage.

The tour itself, well, it was nice to be on the river on a sunny day.  Some of the building are nice looking and have interesting random features.  I thought about posting some pictures, but does anyone really want to see pictures of tall buildings?  It just doesn’t seem that unique to me.  I have no qualms with others getting excited about an architect’s motivation behind the lattice work of the river-facing building façade, its just not my cup of tea.  There was a 5 minute speech on the stories behind the great Chicago fire.  The “intrigue” behind the decision on what compass direction the opera house was built got shared with us.  Otherwise, I made snarky comments to my tourmates and took a short nap.

If you like buildings and the stories behind them, you will die and go to Heaven with the Chicago Architecture Tour.  If not, make sure it is warm out so you can enjoy the sun and $4 margaritas.  My best advice is to attend any tour with a good looking lady, then, as with most things, the day is probably a success no matter what the tour guide is yapping about.