briarhood.com

The 7th February Freeze was a surprising success! As the date drew closer, the Evite kept adding people all over the place, over 50 responses! They all showed-up, too! Eric brought a crew of 9 people, my worlds of volleyball and work combined to bring many new faces. I think all had a great time, no crazy stories that I know of, but it was a fun time. Pictures are posted!

I am getting Verizon's FIOS service for phone, cable TV, and Internet installed.

Before leaving Comcast for good: 6,279 kbps download and 361 kbps upload speeds (out of New York, NY).

My Verizon FIOS internet speeds are:  5,142 kbps download and 1,838 kbps upload.

My kidney is ok.  It is just a congential narrowing or kink in the ureter and nothing to worry about as I have had it all my life.  Diuretics (like alcohol) are actually good in that they help to flush-out the kidney :)  I get an ultrasound in 6 months to ensure everything is ok.

The last components of my new PC just arrived.  I will post a full report later when it all works.  My laptop died last week so I was able to find an old laptop at work to get me by.

My ADS MXL-581 media server works really nicely.  I can play MP3s and movies located on my file server.  Corey downloaded Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes for me and I can watch them on my TV from my home server!  Next will be the Terabyte storage where I will rip all my DVDs to the server and have video on-demand!

Since my volleyball tournament Sunday was canceled, I went to the hospital with Eric, Abby, and Natalie.  We all squeezed in the minivan with Amy and Pheobe.  Everyone is doing well, Phoebe eats a lot and is very healthy.

My volleyball rating has just been re-rated from C+ to B-.  This is because I have been improving all-around and entered good teams in Men's B- tournaments and played very well at a Coed/Reverse C+ tournament.  I am happy about all my work to get here.  I hope I can justify it when I play next

I play in the Yankee Men's B- tournament at Bryant University. I still need a middle and Libero!

Yesterday I went to the urologist who agreed that my right kidney is dilated, a condition called hydronephrosis (may be congenital). The ureter could be obstructed by a substance, "kinked" by a blood vessel, or just be smaller in diameter. So, the renal pelvis (section of the kidney) is dilated because it is not able to flush urine out of the kidney. I went to the hospital's nuclear medicine department for a Mag 3 scan (with Lasix flush-out).