Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Pix
Personality v. Experience
No, not a post about Palin v. Biden. What were you thinking? We’re talking about me. That’s what this blog is about, after all. Me me me.
Here’s the issue. The getting-to-know-me page over at doctorhoffman.com looks like this. Karen wants to nix the photo and replace it with, say, something like this.
“No one wants to think their doctor is a seventeen-year-old boy,” Karen says. Even Doogie Howser was in his twenties, right? But I like that old photo. As I was telling our audiologist today, that’s my mind’s picture of me, not the dude you see above.
Not only that, but I think the photo of the little pisher is amusing. It has personality. It’s fun. And as I told one of my patients last week, “I’d rather be a bit unprofessional and have fun than be professional and boring.” I had been joking around with her about something or another, and she seemed to be enjoying The Wonder of Me, so I wasn’t too surprised when she agreed with me.
I can be irrepressible at times. This isn’t always a desirable quality for someone in such a grimly serious profession.
True story: many years ago, a woman came to see me for a wart inside her nostril. When I told her it was a wart, she said, “A WART? How the hell did I get a WART up my NOSE?”
I didn’t even think before answering.
“Oh, I don’t know . . . where have you been putting it?”
Fortunately for me, she laughed, and the State Medical Board was none the wiser.
D.
Head shot
My new employer needs a head shot for the company web site. Last night, while goofing around with my new cell phone, I generated this:
Damn thing reminds me of something. No. Wait. Is it . . .
Quickie shout-out
Good thing I wrote that Q-tip post early yesterday. If I hadn’t, you would have had nothing but “Sorry, nothing tonight” to read. Yeah, it was that bad. I was in the ER from 6:30 to 11, and then, when I got home, I had to figure out how to turn a digital photo into a passport-sized photo. If I had been wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, I’m sure I could have done that in ten or fifteen minutes. After 15 hours of almost continuous work*, the best I could manage was a couple of grainy head shots of this grim dude:
Did you know you can’t smile for a passport photo? No, really! It’s a 9/11 thing. From wiseGEEK:
The reason smiling in passport photos has been strongly discouraged or banned has to do with international security measures. Many modernized airports now use advanced biometric scanning devices which contain facial recognition software. Ideally, a targeted passenger’s face can be scanned electronically and compared against a database of legally obtained passport photos. Distinctive biometric patterns, such as the distance between one’s eyes or the shape of one’s mouth, can rarely be sufficiently altered to prevent a match.
The passport photographs used for comparison should ideally be consistent and accurate, with no shadows or reflections to distort the facial measurements. Passport applicants must also sweep any hair away from their faces, place their eyeglasses on the tip of their nose, and face completely forward with a neutral expression. Smiling in passport photos can distort the subject’s eyes and change the relationship between biometric points.
Anyway, since I’m not feeling much like an entertainer tonight, I’m going to turn y’all on to a blog my son found. Thanks, Jake, for finding The Internet is an In-Joke. Check ’em out, enjoy, and wish me a good night’s sleep.
D.
And another shout-out!
Telltale Games (of Sam and Max fame) will be releasing a Wallace and Gromit game, Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Adventure. Watch the trailer!
*Work at the office and hospital, NOT fifteen hours of work on this photo.
Why it’s a good idea to clean the office once per decade
Look what I found! Is this a great photo, or what?
The date on this is December, 2000. Jake is five years old, and we’re at the Newport Aquarium (Newport, Oregon — a terrific aquarium, by the way). Note Wild Things tee-shirt and cute kid.
Sorry it’s crooked. I’m feeling too tired and lazy to futz with cropping.
D.
Thinner
I never thought it would be so pleasurable to give stuff away.
It’s not the satisfaction one feels from donating to a favorite charity. It’s the exquisite lightness of not having so much crap. Here’s how my day went:
I woke up a little after 6 and went out to the telephone pole to nail up my “FREE” signs. My last two “FREE” signs disappeared on Monday, thanks no doubt to some neighborhood busybody’s fear that free stuff might attract the wrong element. This time around, I hauled out the ladder and nailed my signs as high as I could. So far, my strategy has worked brilliantly.
LOLFERRETS
No, the idea isn’t original. Check out these guys, for example. Or this post.
Still, no one quite has my sensibilities when it comes to pets . . . or humor. Not that I’m at the top of my form tonight, but what the hell. Here goes.
Tonight’s LOLFERRETS is dedicated to Bueller’s obsession with footwear.
What do they find so fascinating about shoes? Stinkier the better, it seems. Perhaps . . .
Between cases today, I filmed the OR gals who have made my professional life bearable these last ten years. Once I cobble together a video, you (and they) will be the first to know.
It’s gonna be special.
D.
I am such an asshole
I went through the office yesterday snapping photos. My employer in Santa Rosa might want to purchase some of my gear; what he doesn’t want, I’ll sell at an office “yard sale.” Anyway, while snapping photos, I held the camera up over the divider for Catrina’s space and said, “HEY, CATRINA!”
Name that ferret (contest!)
Harmonica, our blond ferret, was getting depressed and neurotic, so we bought him a pal. Help us name him, and if we choose the name you suggest, you’ll win a $25 gift certificate to PetSmart.More below the fold . . .
Mo pix
We saw a cute bird over near Pike’s Market. Me, I don’t know birds. I can distinguish crows from herons, vultures from pigeons, and that’s about it. To me, anything small and brown like this is a sparrow. If anyone wishes to correct me, go right ahead.
During lunch, we had an entertaining view.
More photos below the fold.
Thirteen photos for my mom
As y’all know, I decided the other day that I would put together some sort of photo montage for my mom for Mutti’s Day. (She hates it when we call her Mutti. I have no idea why.) Why not kill two birds with one stone and share those photos with you?
If you’ve seen some of ’em before, well . . . sorry.