Sebbylite

Brought to my attention by Frankie, and I decided that it not only needed to be a pic-a-day, but also needed to showcase the reopening of the comments by having a Caption Contest (I added a little bit of comment-spam-catcher, so if for whatever reason you can’t comment, send me an email and I’ll try to fix it). So bring it on, do your worst. You know He would…

What can I say, I’m boring.

Or at least that is what almost all of my doctors and nurses told me today. I’m not allergic to anything, I don’t have any sort of medical history (other than getting my wisdom teeth out, which doesn’t count), I’m pretty healthy in general, I have a good heart and lungs, I don’t notice or squeam when they put the IV in or give me shots, I don’t get nauseous from being in general anesthesia, and I don’t even notice that I had surgery today other than the fact that I can’t move my leg much. Basically, boring.

Although it seems that no one believes me when I say that my knee doesn’t hurt at all. The nurses kept asking if I wanted a wheelchair to get out of the Recovery Room. All my friends claim that it is just the leftover pain medication that is masking the knee pain (although if it was leftover pain medication, why would my throat hurt from having the breathing tube in and then removed, but not my knee?). And my dad just flat out doesn’t believe me (he had ACL surgery a long time ago, and it didn’t go good for him).

Not that I am going to tell any of this to my office. They hooked me up with a laptop so that I could work from home, and by golly I’m going to do just that for as long as I can. I should be able to push through until at least next Wednesday before I need to go back into the office, which is amazing.

I guess the best story I can tell about today is that the anesthesiologist who was working on me all morning was mildly attractive (not in scrubs, but her ID picture was pretty good), and that they gave me some vanilla pudding when I woke up. Of course we had to settle on vanilla pudding because they didn’t have what I originally asked for (bacon, eggs, waffles, and toast), but it was pretty good anyway.

Oh, and the fact that my dog hates me now. I lumber around after him, which he doesn’t really understand. And I don’t move very fast, so when I took him for a walk this afternoon, he kept looking back at me as if to say “What the hell, man?!? I move faster than this when I’m dragging my ass on the carpet at home. Let’s get a move on here!”. Maybe that is my imagination, but if I were him that’s definitely what I would be thinking.

Unless anything goes drastically bad or uncharacteristically good, this is probably the last I’m going to tell everyone about the whole process. For the most part, it was boring, and I’m not so much of an asshole that I’ll subject you to a hour by hour account of my recovery (I’m close, but I’m also lazy which is taking precedence right now). So this is me, hour 5, saying I’m bored of watching movies already, and I’m out.

As I sit here and read through my “Patient Education: About Your Surgery Experience”, I can’t help but laugh at how stupid people are. Honestly, does it really need to be said that if you have had a regional anesthetic, then that part of your body will be numb until it wears off? I guess it does.

But this one really got me:

Please do not do any of the following for 24 hours after anesthesia or sleeping medicine: drive, drink alcohol, travel alone, operate machinery, sign any legal papers, be responsible for another person such as a child.

Damn. I guess that will signing won’t get done this week. And that settlement for the class action suit? Not gonna happen. Oh, and those adoptions papers that I was going to sign? Well it looks like I’m just going to be put back to the bottom of the list. And I was going to close on my new house too, but oh well, that can wait for next Monday.

Ah, sarcasm. I love it.

I decided to go out hiking on Saturday, because it was the last weekend that I will have the full use of two legs for about a month and a half.

Yep, I’m going under the knife on Friday. What for, you may ask? Well, the “patellar tendonitis” that I’ve been dealing with for the past year has actually turned out to be a torn patellar tendon. And the options were 1) deal with it for the next 10-15 years until you give up playing sports altogether, or 2) have surgery and be back to 100% in about 5-6 months. Freakily, I chose the latter.

Back to the hike, which was awesome. Esky loves the snow, and as soon as we got out of the car he just started running around in it, stopping every once in a while to eat a mouthful just because. I also like the snow, but it makes taking pictures a little tough, especially since it was raining for the first part of the hike, until I got a little higher in elevation. But I got a couple good shots, some of which are added to the end of this post.

Basically the hike was straight uphill, which I wasn’t really looking for but it turned out to be good for me anyway. Esky ranged ahead the whole time, jumping in streams and digging up rocks, checking out different things off the trail, and generally having a grand old time. I was a little slower (since I only have two legs, and was carrying all my stuff), but still managed to go fast enough to keep him happy. After about a mile of uphill, we came to an overlook of I-90. The snow was really coming down at that time, which makes for bad pictures but an awesome view. You couldn’t really tell what was snow falling, what was snow on the ground, what was cloud, and what was freeway. Pretty neat. (Yeah, that’s right, I said “neat”, what are you going to do about it?)

Here’s a couple shots I did get that turned out:

Snow berms before we got into them.

Did I mention that the dog likes snow?

Sounds like pretty solid advice. At least as far as signs are concerned…

Who would have guessed 20 years ago that we would have so many different means of communication available to us today, and yet we use so few of them to actually talk to people?

For example, the other night I was involved in a Facebook version of Scrabble with a friend, and over the course of the night we chatted through gmail and talked on the phone. There was also a way to chat through the Scrabulous application, which we used a little bit, and then over the last few days we’ve emailed and sent text messages as well. And yet I don’t feel like we actually said all that much to each other. It was mostly just telling stories, funny anecdotes, trash-talking, and general shenanigans.

If you think about it, I’m sure that you can probably also add your own version of this story to your own blog. How often do you tell your family that you love them? How often do you tell your friends why they are your friends? How often do you tell the boy/girl that you have a crush on that you do have a crush on them? How often do you tell your significant other that they are the greatest person in your world? How often do you tell your coworkers that you appreciate the team effort? For me, the answer to most of these is never.

I’m also pretty sure that I’m generalizing here - I know that I’m not the most expressive person in the world when it comes to “feelings” (blech!). But if you think about it, a lot of the comedy bits out there in terms of movies, sitcoms, etc deal with just this type of situation. How many times have you seen a movie with this scenario: guy and girl are best friends since childhood, girl finds Mr. Perfect to the chagrin of guy so guy does everything he can to discredit Mr. Perfect, but Mr. Perfect ends up being too good so guy gives up and gives his blessing to girl, girl realizes how good guy is from this one simple act and calls off the wedding to be with him? Don’t you think this all could have been avoided if they had just said something to one another before Mr. Perfect came around? I’m pretty sure that these “best friends since childhood” talked to each other every day via phone, text message, chatting, in person, etc. And I’m also pretty sure that this scenario is so prevalent because everyone has run into this situation in some form or another.

Now I’m not saying that just telling someone what you really mean is going to be the impetus to save the world. But you have to admit that it’s a good spot to start, right? And maybe putting down the phone/blackberry and actually talking with someone is how that happens.

Then again, it could just be me.

I know so many people that need one of these.

I remember I was in charge of making sure that my brother woke up for school while we were growing up. Yes, my older brother, the one that is supposed to be more responsible, blah blah blah. Basically he wouldn’t even use the snooze button, he would just sleep through whatever alarm was set, until I walked in and pushed him out of bed. Then of course he was mad at me all day long…

But if I had one of these here things, I never would have had to be in charge of him. More than likely the whole neighborhood would have been woken up as well, but that’s not my problem now is it?

Still, I like the theory.

Skipping rocks on Lake Michigan.

My brother just sent me a text message, and I’m not sure if it is because it is my birthday soon or if there is an actual International Disadvantaged People Day, but this is what it said:

Today is International Disadvantaged People Day. Please send an encouraging message to a retarded friend just as I’ve done for you. Because I don’t care if you lick windows, screw farm animals, take the short bus, or occasionally shit on yourself. You hang in there Sunshine, you’re Special!

So consider this my forwarding of said text message. Because I know that the only people that actually find what I write amusing probably do ride the short bus. Or have to use sporks because they aren’t allowed to use forks for fear they might harm themselves. Or have to wear a helmet indoors to prevent injury. Or wear rec-specs when they play in athletic events. You know, Disadvantaged People.

On a side note, the 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games will be held in Boise, and I’m pretty sure that my brother isn’t going to be able to take it. Because on the one hand, they are Olympians. But on the other hand, they are Special Olympians.

And now I’m pretty sure I’ve alienated half of my remaining readership (2 people). And I’m also pretty sure I’ll be going to Hell. So drop me a line sometime…

I still have no idea how to embed youtube videos into my blog, so I’ll just add this link here:

Craziest Night - Nerds.

I just remembered a bit of a dream I had last night, and I wanted to share it with y’all. Mostly because it was a pretty sweet dream, and I think it will make a good story to tell (and also because I’ve slightly been heckled into posting by someone who will remain nameless).

Basically the part I remember of the dream is that I was a member of a team of ninja assassin’s and we were trying to win a war against a bunch of Foot Clan-esque ninjas. You know, the kind that blunder around but call themselves ninjas because they wear a full purple pajama suit with mask and belt? Yeah, those guys. The problem for them is that me and my team were actual ninjas, and assassins, and were picking them off like ducks in Duck Hunt.

After going through this for a while (which was pretty sweet - usually my dreams are the “frustrating” kind, where I’m playing frisbee but wearing 25 pound shoes and everyone else has jet packs, that kind of thing. But in this dream it was the other way around, and I was kicking ass and taking names and they had no chance), the “Big Boss” showed up to try to take us out himself. It turns out that the Big Boss was Jimmy Chu, and he was actually taking out my teammates. I was still fighting ninja style so they hadn’t found me yet, and was making my way over to take Jimmy out, when all of a sudden his fiancee Kim walked in looking extremely pale. I left my cover and went over to grab her, because my mission was to get her away from Jimmy before they were married (kind of a like a Princess Bride-Man in Black-Prince Humperdink menage a trois, or maybe it was more of a Matthew Broderick-Rutger Hauer-Michelle Pfeiffer thing, I’m not sure). As I run up to grab her and get her out of there, she just looks blankly over at me and says “It’s too late.”

Of course I don’t believe her so I keep trying to convince her to come with me. She looks up at me, and then takes her hands away from her chest to show that they have been covering a bullethole in the center of her chest. When I see this I go into a blind rage and finish off the rest of the Duck Hunt/Foot Clan. And as is the way of dreams, just as I square off with Jimmy for an ultimate ninja style showdown, it’s wakey time.

Usually I don’t remember my dreams, so on the one hand it’s strange that actually did remember enough to write something down in a cohesive manner. On the second hand, it was a pretty sweet dream. Like I said before, I tend to have the frustrating type dreams, the ones where I seem to be running through sand or running uphill, where I can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a frisbee, etc, and the fact that in this dream I could do anything and everything I set my mind to, it was awesome.

Maybe tonight I’ll have more to share with y’all.