a funny thing happened on the way to PT

So I ride my motorcycle to physical therapy. Physical therapy is located in the Wilce Student Health center. Think of it as a clinic serving the medical needs of OSU students. It's tucked away in an alley, so I figure I can park my bike wherever. I pull into the alley, and then begin to turn around. What I didn't notice, however, is that part of the street nearest an opposing building had an incredibly warped section.So I turned hard, bounced on the brick, hit the brake (to keep from smashing into the building) and promptly fell over (to my left). No big deal, as I was going roughly 5 mph. I fell over with the bike, cut up my leg a little, and scratched up the underside of my right leg...or so I thought.
I pulled the bike up, parked it, and walked into the health center. I looked at the back of my leg and thought "that looks pretty scratched up, but no big deal." Then I thought, "hmmmm...that actually burns a little bit." the adrenaline begins to leave my bloodstream and I realize that I didn't scratch my leg, I burned the ever living crap out of it. My leg must have fallen against the engine.
So the check in lady sees me looking at my leg and says "are you o.k.?" I say "Um...I think I need a little help." So she points me into the appointment nurse office wherein I say "Wassup. (or something to that effect) I need some first aid. Do you guys have a kit around here?"
The lady looks at me and says "You need to see a doctor before I can give you first aid. Let me see if there's an appointment."
At this point my leg is starting to heat up. Stay cool, I think.
Luckily my usual doctor, Doctor Colgate (who kicks major ass) was avaiable.
"have a seat in the waiting room" says she.
"my leg hurts" says I.
"he'll be with you shortly."

So I sit...and wait...and now my leg feels like someone is rubbing out cigarettes on it. My hands start to shake and I start to sweat. A nurse calls my name. salvation. she brings me in back.
"step on the scale" says she.
"my leg really hurts" says I.
"185 pounds" says she.
She brings me to her desk, sits me down and asks "What seems to be the problem?"
I look at her. I look at the blistering flesh on the back of my leg. I look at her.
"Um...the second degree burns on the back of my leg?"
"O.k. what would you rank your pain on a scale of 1 to 10"
"Um...it's hard to say. Let me show you. Do you have a cigarette?"
Takes my temperature.
"96.5..."
"Yeah, that could be because I'm going into shock because of the second degree-"
"Please have a seat in the waiting room and the doctor will see you shortly."


so I wait.
pain. much pain.


Dr. Colgate (who is my hero) brings me into his office.
"Hey, Peter."
"Hi, Dr. Colgate."
"What's the problem?"
I show him the back of my leg.
"Oh, goodness, hop up on the table." He calls in a nurse.
me: "My leg hurts."
Dr. C:"it looks like you have first and second degree burns here."
me: "yeah, and I weigh 185 pounds. I should really stop eating at McDonalds."

long story short, they clean me up, bandage my leg and send me off.
it feels better with the bandage, but it still hurts. the bike is fine, though the sideview is now loose. ah well.

this made me smile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4


Oh the places you'll go.

motorcycle

So it's about time I showed y'all some pictures of Alice, my 1972 Honda CB350. She's beautiful isn't she?

What would you say?

On a cool Autumn night, you are gazing up at the sky when a being suddenly appears and asks, "What can I do to make you believe that I am God?" What is your answer?

sometimes popups can be fun!

I was watching some daily show clips and I got an ad with this link:

http://www.shaveeverywhere.com/index.html

and then check out the music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpEsNrYEssw&search=bodygroom

I was intrigued. I went. I laughed.
Kudos to norelco for finding a way to market a product which many deem taboo.
Who knows, the next time you see me I may have gained an optical inch.

-SP

t-minus two weeks

One more week of class, a couple finals, and then it's a much deserved ten day break before summer classes start.

For now, Jen and Erik are driving to Columbus to visit yours truly!!!

You gotta love those kids.

Mama said there'd be days like this...

Word up, my homies?

I had a bad day. You know what cheers me up when I'm having a bad day? The Justice League of America.

I don't know...even the Justice League are having a difficult time pulling me up from this mood.
Tell you what. Why don't you post your favorite "pick me up" song so that I can make a feel good playlist for myself.
Thank you in advance.

Twenty-Five

Hey kids.

Well, it's official. I'm 25 years old. I'd like to give a shout out to Karen Grumstrup, my biological mother. I'd also like to give a shout out to Mark Sprangers, my biological father. Without those two people I may have never existed. Finally, I'd like to give some props to Alex. Without his amazing show of self-restraint, I would have been killed in numerous gruesome (yet creative) ways.

Peace out, y'all.

-The Plug

Petrus

also best website ever

http://www.peepresearch.org/index.html

I know that easter was three days ago, but can't we all still enjoy watching Peeps dissolve in Phenol?

Cheers,

SP

best website ever

Dudes,

My friend Bernhard (a.k.a. The German) sent me this from Deutschland.

http://peter.sprangers.youaremighty.com/

Sooo cool.

Happy Easter!!!

What better way to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ than by doing statistics while wearing bunny ears.

Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?

Maybe I'm overestimating my blog's popularity...but I was expecting a lot more than two Fibonacci poems! Thanks to the creative individuals who posted. I'm guessing the second one was Johnsoep@stolaf.edu?

Anyway, please post more!!!!

I love you all.

Fibs

Check this out!
http://gottabook.blogspot.com/2006/04/more-fibbery.html

Poetry based on the Fibonacci sequence? Can you think of anything that would excite me more? No.

For those of you not familiar with old Fibonacci, he is most famous for a recursive arithmetic sequence that was inspired by rabbit breeding (i kid you not). You set the first value=0 and the second value =1 then any number in the sequence is defined as the sum of the previous two values in the sequence (i.e. recursively defined). so it goes
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ...
you can also set the first two values to 1 and 1 and it'll work out the same way (obviously). So here's what I want, I want you all to write poems and post them here. they must be of the form
1 syllable
1 syllable
2 syllables
3 syllables
5 syllables
8 syllables

like a haiku, only different.

The fibonacci sequence is truly a remarkable thing because it shows up a lot in naturally occuring phenomena. For instance, If we take the ratio of two successive numbers in Fibonacci's series, and we divide each by the number before it, the sequence converges to the golden ratio, Phi=1.618034. The spines around a pineapple follow the Fibonacci sequence as do the seeds in a sunflower. Pretty cool if you ask me.

so here's my contribution:

math
poems
so hot
so sexy
build the foundation
of transcendent joyous rapture

o.k. you guys can do better. post away!!!!

you gotta love the PEPY kids

On Cambodia

These are a few of the children of the PEPY school. These are the faces I will never forget. These are the individuals who now have the chance to receive an education thanks to the efforts of my friends Greta and Daniela.
For the past 4 or 5 months I have been helping these women by maintaining their website (www.pepy.org). I have been doing this as a favor for Greta and, honestly, while working on the projects that came down the pike, I never really thought about what the PEPY Ride was doing. In my defense, it's difficult to think of a school in a place you have never been and mentally picture the children of a race you have never seen. But when the opportunity arose for me to visit this foreign land, I jumped at the chance.

Here are some pictures:



The walkway to the temple of Angkor Wat.

---

Preah Neak Pean

---

Preah Khan

---

Beng Mealea


Our unofficial guide through Beng Mealea

---

These are a few of my 200+ photos. These were all from the three days we spent "templing" outside of Siem Reap. The last night I spent in Cambodia I went to a traditional Khmer wedding. Actually, it was the third and last day of a traditional Khmer wedding. The third day is dedicated to eating, drinking, dancing, and drinking. I didn't take my camera with but I'm trying to get some pictures that Kristian (one of the PEPY Riders) took. The hostess of our guesthouse (http://www.earthwalkers.no/) was invited to the wedding and was instructed to bring all her western friends along. The bride and groom got a real kick out of the 12 or so white people who came to the wedding. In our group there were Norwegians, Canadians, Americans, and a Briton. Initially, we drew many furtive glances, but by the end of the night, strangers were walking up to our table to play their drinking games with us. And if the Norwegians I met in Cambodia were in any way representative of the general population of Norway, then it is truly a blessed land...and my next vacation will be to Oslo.

I'll leave it as this for now. In my next post I hope to write something about the Khmer (cambodian) people and my experiences with them as a whole.

Thanks for reading.

tongue tied

I've sat down several times to start writing about my trip...but my words fail me. I don't even know where to begin. Cambodia has touched me so deeply. The people I met and the places I visited. My time with Greta and meeting the other members of the PEPY Ride...
I'll sit down tonight and try to work something out...and least start somewhere. Maybe I should try to break it into smaller, more manageable pieces like the venerable Andrew Olaf.

Sorry to keep you all in suspense.

stateside...

I'm back. I'll be posting soon.

-SP

Consistently Sexy

Click on the image to get a larger version.

What you see before you is a display of the astonishing (yet true) mathematical statistical prowess of one Peter E. Spangers.

Love from Ohio,

Peter

What do Kurt Vonnegut and Mila Jovovich have in common?

It was pretty amazing to see the master (Kurt Vonnegut) in the flesh. It's difficult to describe him...or even what I thought of him. his oddly rhetorical and oftentimes flippant style of discourse was a little disconcerting. I feel like he didn't say anything of substance for the hour or so that he sat and chewed the proverbial fat.
He made more than few comments along the lines of "George Bush is really dumb." which made the crowd cheer wildly, but left me feeling a little cheated. I mean, that's hardly insightful and it certainly isn't constructive. When asked what we can do to make a difference he said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that it doesn't really matter since the end of the world is neigh. I'm not sure if he was being prosaic for some effect...but if so, it was lost on me.
So...it was good to see and hear him in person, but I think he may be reaching the end of his public appearance lifespan.

Also a bit disappointing was the movie Ultraviolet starring Mila Jovovich. Let me begin by explaining that there are few movies I have ever watched during which I repeatedly say to myself "Dear God, let this be over." And this is coming from the guy who thinks Starship Troopers was a brilliantly wrought film (I'm looking at you, Martinson). Ultraviolet was plagued with horrid characters, cheap and unsuccessful attempts at emotionality, and a palpable desperation to make the movie seem epic. To all moviemakers out there, please, PLEASE do not play gentle music and shoot soft focus close ups and assume we're going to be crying our eyes out...especially when in the last scene, our heroine shoves a broken samurai sword blade through a man's forehead (after killing nearly 100 of his closest friends). Also, this does NOT constitute good dialogue:

Bad Guy:
You got hemophage blood on me. Oh, it's on.

(10 to 30 second dramatic pause)

Mila Jovovich:
Yeah
(10 to 30 second dramatic pause)
it is.



And this is one of more florid dialogues. It upsets me because virtually anyone, ANYONE, I know can write dialogue better than this. Stick Falconer, Nelson, and me in a room with nothing more than two 1 pound bags of skittles and a word processor and we're going to generate something that eclipses this garbage!

*sigh*


-The Plug