Went out for coffee today and my wife and I spotted a squirrel pup on the sidewalk next to the auto parts store. It was alive, alert and waiting for its mama… who never showed.

So, what are you gonna do? It’s living with us now. It likes drinking puppy formula from a dropper, climbing my sweater, and sleeping curled up in my beanie. I think I’ll call it Baxter.

I’ve been reading all afternoon about squirrels in the house, apparently they’ll bond with you but still can be easily reintroduced to the wild at about 6 months of age, so the plan is help it through the winter and turn it out in the spring. It’s very healthy seemingly, no signs of injury, sickness or parasites. But man, can it ever sleep!

Wish Baxter and me luck oppo!

No car news, since I can't drive or really even walk. Instead I have fascinating medical updates!

A week ago Friday I felt a stabbing pain in my left chest. I couldn't breathe without pain, I was way short of breath, my pulse was thru the roof, and I thought I was having a heart attack.

The ambulance came and found a clean EKG, so they took me to the ER to find out what the heck was wrong.

They took a chest x-ray and then I waited. The gunshot wounds and the car crashes got precedence... OK. The pain died down a bit so it was fine.

The doctor saw me finally and said "well, there's an anomaly on the x-ray, but we don't see it as serious. Since the pain's gone I'm going to send you home. If the pain comes back see your primary care doctor."

This is where I fucked up. I should have told him no, something is wrong with me, you've got to find it. But I didn't. I just wanted to go home and sleep. So for the better part of a week, until I could see my primary care doc, I was limping along with four of these bad boys in my lungs:

[image stolen from google cause I don't have my CT data:]

Blood clots! My primary got so mad about the ER doc it was amazing. He told me I have textbook pulmonary embolism symptoms and I need a CT scan immediately.

Found the clots, got on blood thinners, feeling better. But yeah that's a week of my life where I could have been a lot healthier.

TLDR, fight for yourself in the hospital and clinic, cause no one else is going to do it for you.

Yesterday was a yuuuuuge day for my broken leg!

I'm walking

and I'm driving!

And today after breakfast I'm going to try and ride a bike.

The damn leg ought to be strong enough to hold my weight, given all the metal scaffolding in there LOL:

She’s up 25g since she came to us and loving solid foods! Squirrel facts: squirrels love grapes but not the skins (ew gross, throw those around the cage) and also squirrels are helpful when dealing with a slow day at work:

Baxter is sucking down formula like crazy and his tail gets fluffier by the hour. Earlier this morning he was sitting up on his back legs with it curled over his head like a real adult squirrel… but then he fell over backwards

Baxter dreaming of the syringe with formula, aka the giant sky nipple

First track day ever today. Wowwww! you can drive a street car fast if there's no traffic! I hit 116 on the front straight which is a personal land-speed record

The event was at Portland International Raceway which struck me as a simple and forgiving track. It's wide, the track is only two miles long with just 12 turns, and there's plenty of space if you run off.

Although another novice driver in front of me did in fact run off, I had grip for days thanks to my recent tire purchase -- Falken Azenis RT660s. Good God damn those are sticky! I can't believe how much of a difference they made over my first stab at autocross when I was understeering all over the place on my street tires.

I had so much fun! We were doing lead-follow instruction (covid) and I told my instructor, hey I'm good, we can brake much later. He told me "Great! you go in front then!" I led the rest of the day with tips from behind via radio... it was magic.

Here's me shredding on the front straight (116 hell yeah!!!!!)

And a few photos of cool cars. (There was also a heavily modified Porsche 924 that screamed like a banshee... soooo fucking cool... but I didn't get a pic )

The orthopods say I can start to train my broken leg to walk again. Hell. YES! I'm going to walk the shit out of this weekend.

Happy happy hour oppos!

Ok, I just went camping. I thought I’d share some neat photos from my Memorial Day trip with my wife.

The cascades near Portland are slammed at all times, you can’t even park let alone hike in peace. So we have been going to the Ochoco mountains recently. Here’s an abandoned cabin where we camped for the weekend. Not quite square but whatever:

Neat plants and an old snag with lichen:

We did a lot of hiking around to the different rocks, bluffs and viewpoints because I’m a sucker for a good view. The Ochocos are really nice in that regard because they are very open unlike the high cascades which are a thicket of hemlock until you manage to get to tree line.

10/10 trip, would overland again!

oh she craaaaayzzzy!

@taylor-martin I dunno, that looks like the kind of thing you buy when you decide to go all in on your meth addiction

@chan I knew that black plastic cladding was good for something lol

@Bloody-the-resident-shitposting-saffer yesssss do it!

@bloody-the-resident-shitposting-saffer said in Private 'conservation' land:

@ibrad said in Private 'conservation' land:

I do appreciate the irony of their land acknowledgement though.

How much you want to bet that if the tribes listed asked to have the land back, they'd get a resounding "get fucked" as an answer?

"we acknowledge that the land on which we operate is the traditional territory of the Wendat, Anishnaabeg, Mississauga and Algonquin Peoples and is covered by the Williams Treaty, Treaty 27 of 1819 and unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg People."

so fucking give it back then!

Yeah, wow, this is top-shelf assholery. Fortunately, 87% of ontario is public land so these guys should likely have little to no profit.

@exage03040 gimme the Town Car, baby!

@dr-zoidberg totally agreed. So much so that I'm thinking about getting a car payment again (ugh) to buy the PHEV version

@taylor-martin spend that money on a much cheaper BEV and a solar panel setup for your house. Cheaper to buy and you can run your house on the solar system too.

@carsoffortlangley my extended trips are to get away from civilization. I have a solar-chargeable lamp but that's really it.

@mark-tucker that's hilarious, I love it!

@ranwhenparked said in He Made An Interesting Choice:

thinking outside the box at least

nope, get back in the box.