Honey, I’m home :)

So I'm home :)

I went in fricken' early on Wednesday morning and had to wait around in the waiting room with some old lady who felt the need to share with everyone her talent of cracking her gum as loudly as she possibly could. Hooray for being annoyed first thing in the morning. After awhile, they took me up to "prep" me. Fortunately for me, I had a really great nurse, Bill, who took great care of me and didn't make fun of my needle issue. The IV wasn't bad at all actually. Bill numbed my hand before he put the needle in, so all I felt was pressure. He taped the thing down really well so it didn't move either. I was down with the IV :) Three of my orthopaedic dr's came in to play with my knees, explain to me what was going on, and answer any of my questions. What great service :) They pumped me full of drugs and let my mom come up to see me :) Then, they sent me on to the OR, where I scootched over onto a table and they gave me more good drugs...

Then I woke up, kinda hurtin'. I heard the nurses talking in the background about all kinds of things. My nurse was apparently under the impression that I was a wacked out republican war monger like he was and started to talk to me about how great the president is, how war is awesome, how those other countries better look out because they are next, and about how this tax cut is really going to help out the economy... I guess he could do that because the people he talks to don't really fight back, myself included. I love a good debate, but it just wasn't a good time. I was freezing my ass off too, so I wanted to be on someone's good side to get some blankets. They put me in a room with someone else, but then Mom mentioned that she was staying the night with me, so they put me in a private room... Thank god. I don't know if I could've delt with other people so much.

So apparently, my knee was wrecked. Along with have no ACL, my meniscus (cartilage on my knee) was all torn up and moved around backwards (a rare "bucket handle" tear). The surgery took 3 1/2 hours, but the good doctors managed to fix everything. Mom was with me for awhile and I remember dozing sort of. They really ripped up my throat with the intubation though; I could barely talk afterwards and my throat is still sore. Tommy came later in the evening, and between Mom and Tom, they took really good care of me. The occasional shot of morphine from the nurses was nice too :)

A little bit more of the same stuff throughout the night and into the next day, and I got increasingly stronger as the hours went by. I did really well at the physical therapy and they decided to send me home midday. They took the IV out with no incident... I'm a champ :)

I made it home and got a few phone calls from folks. Mays came over twice, and it was nice to visit with him. He also fixed my mom's PS2 :) What a handy man :)

Poor Tom and Mom... they have been taking such good care of me. I must really be getting on their nerves. It sucks to be so reliant on them, but they seem like it doesn't matter.

And I have a badtz maru bandaid :)

Time to go to bed now... nitey nite ;)

04.24.03 10:09pm(5 comments)

Eat it…

I updated my resume, so that's one less thing y'all can bitch about :)

04.08.03 1:00pm(0 comments)

And now it’s time for a breakdown….

The last few weeks have been rather exciting! In a little demonstration of Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), for some of Tom's friends, somehow this has become the latest craze in a few of my circles. Tom even plays it and is doing incredibly well! We've been playing it together almost every other night and it really helps as far as exercize goes :) Fortunately for me, we have the inhome psone version with some nicely modded game pads. Tom had the great idea of cutting up an exercize pad to put under the arrows of the dance pad, which we then stapled to a big piece of plywood. We have a nice little setup over here :) Now there's no slippage of the pad, and some tactile and cushy response when stepping on the pads. Actually, Tommy is playing DDR as I write this entry. I can only go for a max of about an hour and a half of constant play before my knee starts to hurt...

I went to Pheonix to visit my family last weekend and I didn't see one cloud the entire time that I was there. My grandparents live in retirement land on the west side of the valley and my mom also happened to be in town for business. It was like a little mini reunion. We did some shopping and went to see Miss Saigon at the Orpheum theatre. This show might have actually been tolerated by Tom, who hates musicals, because the heroine shoots herself at the end. The theatre was really cool too; one of those big '20's theatres that was redone. Saturday we headed to Lake Havasu and Laughlin, Nevada. We hit a lot of the casinos, but I didn't gamble why I was there. I'm not much of a gambler really. I can't see wasting all that money, especially all those quarters that I could use for laundry. So I changed 4 bucks and played DDR in one of the arcades for awhile. Eventually, these cute little Mexican boys started to play with me and they were quite good. After that, I got this gargantuan margarita, drank it, and we all went home. There was a Randy Travis / Pam Tillis concert at the flamingo, but it was at 8pm and outdoors, so we decided to pass it up. *sniff*

Sunday, we did a lot of the sitting around and bitching that my family is so fond of, and then Mom and I did some shopping. We headed over to Luke Air Force Base and obviously, they were having a 100% ID check. Dudes with big guns and nasty looks... creepy. We went to the exchange to check out some shirts that my mom wanted to buy, but she didn't find any. However, they have a Claires there too and they were having a 10 for 5 sale, except the stuff didn't suck, so I got some nice things. I hate paying full price for that stuff anyway. If it weren't for all the killin' and war and bad stuff, I'd probably join the military; they get some great benefits and the groceries are so cheap! Man, Phoenix was beautiful... it was sorta tough to go home, but I missed Tom, a lot. I'm glad I got to visit my family though, because I had been missing them lately too.

Wednesday night I put on a little dinner for some of the AOII girls at my place. Spaghetti and Meatballs, salad, shrimp, breadsticks, cheesecake, and I had them each take a longstem red rose home with them (I got 2 dozen for 13 bucks at sams!). They all really enjoyed the food and convo... and then I whipped out the DDR pads and everyone was really into it :) After that I headed to Mullican's apt for a little "milk and cookies" party. I drank wayyyyy too much because I was trying to party like a rock star with the young college kids. In the morning, I felt incredibly old and I hurt pretty bad too.

Work is going swimmingly well and they're always keeping me busy. Right now I'm working on a little Office fix. The setup has domain users as local admins, which lets anyone and their mother download and install crap on their computers. Well, from a security standpoint, that sucks. However, that's what Microsoft told Brandon to do when he was setting the stuff up. I'm playing a little bit with the Run As local admin and it seems to be working really well. I'm stil testing it though. It'll be nice to lock down those computers a bit. That hotbar thing was a real "pain in the cock" as Brandon would have it. Fuckin' hotbar.

This war is really pissing me off too. The blind faith of the American public is disconcerting and the whole French vs American / British thing is getting petty and rediculous. The more I read about it.. the more pissed off I get. However, I count myself fortunate that, if I so chose, I could ignore the news coverage and the rest of the shit. Some people aren't lucky and they've got war all up in their face, in their backyards, and forced to participate by their countries.

I've started weightwatchers too and have been doing really well, especially with all this DDR. Mardi Gras and Phoenix (I gained 8 pounds there!) have put some dampers in my progress, but I've made it back down to -5 pounds. I'm probably going to start up a section to show my progress soon too. I'm *really* worried that this knee deal at the end of april and lack of exercise is going to make me gain weight, so I have to be really careful. Someone on the msg boards called me an inspiration today, which totally made my day! That and the realization that I had lost 7 of the pounds that I had gained really made me feel much better than I had earlier this morning.

Well, it's almost my bedtime.... nitey nite!

04.03.03 11:50pm(5 comments)