Take a stab at it

I have a good idea about the first thing you noticed when you looked at this picture. I saw it too. The iPhone makes me look like I still have a 32-inch waist. Damn I love that phone.

The other thing you might have noticed are what look like meth-tweaker track marks on both my arms. "He really needs to stop bingeing Breaking Bad."

I have to admit when they first appeared, they actually were a pretty combination of blue, purple, yellow and green. I sort of stared at them, detached from the fact they were actually my arms. Which is better than staring at my detached arms. Word play, it's ON!

Anyway, I think it was a lot to go through for a regular blood test.

I take a couple of meds for blood pressure and cholesterol. It's a pretty common cocktail. Whenever I start talking about it I'm always surprised how many of my friends are also in the same artery clogging, systolic and diastolic boat. I mean sure, I could drop a lot of weight and I'd be off both pills. But I'd have to have much more self-discipline, will power and respect for myself and my body. That's just crazy talk.

Anyway, every six months I go in for a blood test to make sure the Lipitor isn't acting like a meat mallet pounding my liver into ground round. Just one of the lovely possible side effects of cholesterol medicine, along with short term memory loss and, wait, what was the other one?

See what I did there? I still got it.

Now I'll be the first to admit I don't have the best veins, even though I do work my guns lifting those Double-Doubles up and down. And I've had excellent blood draws in the past. Sometimes it's over before I even know it's happened—which is the case with many things in my life.

Clearly this wasn't one of those times.

One of the downsides to being me, and despite how easy I make it look there are several, is that I have no problem watching while they stick me with the needle and make the draw. I know some people can't watch, but I have to. So I had a nice view of the technician moving the needle around, trying in vain to find the vein (sorry). After what seemed like forever, she decided to try the other arm. You see how that went. But somehow she managed to get enough blood out of me.

The good news is I don't have to go through it again for another six months or so.

Until then, I'll be working on getting in better shape. And by better shape, I mean taking more pictures of myself with the iPhone.

Anger management

It's hard to know exactly what makes people angry. It's different for everyone. But I have one friend in particular who, because I've known him so well for so long, I know exactly what trips his trigger.

Everything.

It must be a tough place to be. For as long as I've known him, he's been the angriest person I've ever known. It never ends. His rage is like bottomless glasses of lemonade at Islands.

You'd think some ambitious young turk out of Anger University, ready to be royally pissed off at the world, would come along and steal the title. But year after year, he manages to hold on to it as if it were a point of pride.

I've seen the toll it takes on him. I know it takes a toll on those around him. I've offered many times in the past to help him in various ways, but he's never accepted. And I've been at this point for awhile where, in a life that gets more and more demanding, I simply don't have room or desire to be witness and occasional target of his anger and nastiness any longer. It's a negative drain and it's exhausting. And life really is too short.

I'm not sure exactly when it was, but somewhere along the line I asked myself what I was getting out of the friendship at this point. When I couldn't think of anything, I knew it was time to cut ties.

I used to feel bad about it, but I don't any more.

Clearly running his blood pressure up forty points every five minutes at some perceived slight would indicate his survival instincts aren't kicking in. But mine are.

When I used to read his rants about the tiniest, most insignificant things that would normally be a surface nuisance at best, but for some reason set him off completely beyond the pale, it just made me sad.

This is a smart, talented guy in so many ways. He'd be better off showing that side of himself to the world instead of the Mr. Fury side on display at the drop of a hat ("Why the f&%# are you dropping that hat!?")

He's reached out to me a few times with bizarre, sad messages that don't deserve a response. They're anger (and alcohol) fueled, and I'm not taking the bait.

I sincerely wish him well. Maybe somewhere down the road we'll reconnect.

But it sure as hell won't be until he realizes he has a lot less to be angry about than he thinks.

The pressure's off for now

I have high blood pressure. Go figure.

When I found out about it seven years ago, my first question was how on earth could I have a condition like that? After all it's not like I have any stress in my life.

I work in advertising. It doesn't get more stable than that.

And thank God I don't have teenage and almost teenage kids.

Oh, wait a second.

Then there's that little inescapable-no-matter-how-hard-I-try fact: hypertension is one of the things my mom died from. So I take it seriously.

I've taken Diovan 160 for almost 7 years. It's my personal miracle drug. It's controlled my blood pressure beyond reason, keeping it at a chart-perfect 120/80 virtually regardless of what kind of stress I've been under.

Father's little helper.

But a funny thing happened yesterday. My blood pressure shot up to 145/90, just outside the high end of normal (by the way, The High End of Normal was the title of my first album. I think it's still available on Amazon).

If you know anything about me, you know that my body is a finely tuned precision machine. For years I've been finely tuning it with In-N-Out burgers and sugar-filled Coke from Mexico. And you can always tell when a finely tuned machine isn't running right.

Yesterday morning when I got up, I knew immediately something was wrong. I was anxious, clammy, out of sorts. When I stood up my heart was beating like the opening drums in Hawaii Five O.

Well, I saw my doctor today. He checked me out, gave me an EKG and said everything looked fine. At 136/84, my blood pressure was a little higher than normal and a little lower than yesterday.

What he decided to do was take me off Diovan 160, and put me on Diovan HCT 160/25.

The difference is the new pill is actually two medicines: one controls my blood pressure, and the other is a diuretic. What will a diuretic do you say? For starters, it'll make me pee like Seabiscuit about 100 times a day while it gets rid of the salt and extra water in my body that's increasing my blood pressure.

So I'll start taking it tomorrow and see how it goes. Then I'll check back with my doctor in a couple weeks.

In the meantime, my blood pressure will be under control.

And I'll be sitting very close to the door.