Medical team to the bridge
11am tomorrow, H-Hour. That’s when I go under the knife.
I know it’s a bit over-dramatic, but that’s how I’m feeling right now. I just can’t seem to maintain an even emotional keel at the moment. I’ve had surgery before, my hip replacement decades ago and my gall bladder just weeks ago, but this one has me really worked up. They’re going to make the second biggest incision a surgeon’s ever made in my body, and they are going to take a tennis-ball-sized chunk of one of my organs.
The surgeon does dozens of these a year, and has had papers published on the subject. I might well be back home before my birthday. The overwhelming odds are that everything’s going to be just fine. So why am I so worked up?
Starr will be posting to Twitter and Facebook, and passing out phone messages to be spread around. They say I’ll have wireless in my room, so I might even be posting here myself before tomorrow’s over. We’ll use the 21st Century to it’s full advantage. To everyone who’s been sticking by me in person and online, thank you so – I doubt I’ll find the words to say how much it means to me.
In a completely unrelated note, Happy Belated Birthday to southernsinger. I’d have mentioned this before, but I’m a bit distracted.
Happy Returns for the Rat
Happy belated birthday to rattrap!
Of all my friends, you’re in the few that have had the most influence on who I am and where I am today. I’m very glad that I know you, and I only wish we got to catch up in person more often.
If you didn’t get to this weekend, go treat yourself to Ponyo. You fanned the flames of my newborn anime fandom back in the day, and it just seems appropriate.
Brief updates
- 11:38 I hope that plenty of folks got to take LeVar Burton’s Birthday off yesterday. #
- 13:42 Holy smoke, I completely missed the WoW “Love Is In The Air” festival! Glad I wasn’t going for the meta-Achievement this year. #
- 14:22 @dragonpearl Print jobs submitted late always made me homicidal, because I knew I’d be staying until 11 or 12 that night. #
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Moving forward, but glancing back
Sunday, I locked the door to the Portsmouth apartment for the last time, and turned the keys in to the main office. It’s weird, looking at the place all empty and echoey. That apartment was home for 18 months; having spent most of the first 30 years of my life in one dwelling, I always find it strange to leave.
We’re having folks over on Saturday night, so the new place has to be presentable. That’s an interesting task, as our five rooms of this ‘n’ that have to be shuffled into a house which still has plenty of Starr’s parents’ stuff in it. Of course, since some of that stuff includes objects such as big flat-panel TVs, I can accept the challenge, but it’s still a lot like trying to work the new expansion cards into your favorite CCG deck without going over the card count.
In other words, I’m still exhausted. There’s a bright side when I pass my old exit every day and remember that I don’t have to stop at the apartment for anything, but with the work we still have before us, I predict that Sunday will be chock full of slacking.
Anyway, let me tell you about the awesome computer I set up in the study this week. 8 MHz processor – 4 megs of RAM – 20 meg hard drive! The 9″ screen will display images in a palette of two colors (black or white), and the entire operating system fits neatly on an 800K floppy.
I love that old Macintosh SE; it was a much-appreciated gift from rattrap back in (I think) 1991 or so, and I got a lot of Starfleet paperwork, creative writing, and Hypercard gaming done on it. Eventually, my dad bought me a Mac LC III which introduced me to the amazing world of color graphics; the LC III is long gone, but the SE booted up happily on my shelf and is right now running MacWrite II, A Mess O’ Trouble, and the Dark Side of the Mac screensaver. Very decorative and retro. (The clock battery inside is long dead, and I’m not sure it’s worth cracking the case just so I don’t have to fix the time on every reboot. Otherwise, it’s humming along nicely.)
And may I also wish a Happy Birthday to shrewlet, who may well have found the Answer to the Ultimate Question…
Effort and Reward
First, let us get the day’s whining out of the way. I am in very great pain: as in, I’m hoping to avoid standing up until it is time to leave for the day. My legs and back are screaming at me, wanting to know what kind of idiot I am.
The good news is that almost everything is out of the apartment – one more evening’s work, tonight, should do it. We’ve made a deal with a friend to give the place a professional cleaning tomorrow, and this should leave me clear to turn over the keys on Friday or Saturday. I’ll be relieved!
Last night, my gaming group threw me a late surprise birthday party. Two separate awesome cakes, and some excellent clothes from Jesse. (Starr’s reaction to the clothes: “Squeee!”) Everyone did insist on wearing black to this little event, but heck, that’s hardly unusual for my friends anyway! Thank you very much, guys!
Nativity
I had a good, if exhausting, birthday weekend.
Starr bought me the delivery pizza I like (which we don’t get often, because they don’t have much that she likes) and a couple of this year’s Trek ornaments for our Xmas tree. Some new clothes and a Barnes & Noble card rounded out my birthday. I confess that I’d rather be 30 than 40, but I’d rather be 40 than dead. Besides, my life doesn’t exactly suck right now. 40 ain’t so bad. Thanks much to the people who wished me Happy Birthday on the last entry! My friends absolutely rock, and I’m fortunate to have folks like you in my life. *group hug*
Of course, we also moved furniture and unpacked stuff at the house, and made another run to the apartment. The front room’s full of empty packing boxes and stuff to be Freecycled, and the kitchen and full bath are just about clear; we still have the half bath and the bedrooms to do, though all three bedrooms are at least partially done. I had hoped to clear them this weekend, but that turned out to be unreasonable. We’ll work on them this week instead.
However, because of the dust we kicked up and the wacky weather, I was sneezing furiously all weekend – I know it was driving Starr crazy. I had to take two Benadryl before bed to ensure that I could breathe all night; it worked, and I got a good night’s sleep, but man, I’m still feeling those Benadryl this morning.
At the Movies
I am turning Starr into a Hayao Miyazaki fan, getting her attention with “The Castle of Cagliostro”, cheering her on a bleh evening with “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, and charming her last night with “My Neighbor Totoro”. After “Nausicaa” and “Spirited Away”, though, I’ll be all out and have to pick up some more sometime.
Oddly enough, by coincidence she’d been reading up on Shinto traditions yesterday afternoon, and recognized much of them in the movie – more than I! I foresee a Catbus plush in our future.
Also, over the weekend I finally saw the “Lost Skeleton of Cadavra” (Rowr.) An intentionally bad 50s-style SF movie, this flick is awesome if the viewer’s got the right sense of humor. The associated drinking game required drinks on the words “science”, “meteor”, “atmospherium”, “alien”, “mutant”, and “skeleton”. I didn’t participate, mainly because I don’t drink, but also because I’d have ended up blasted out of my mind. Why do people need to pretend to be forced to drink alcohol?
The other weekend movie was “Dorkness Rising“. I really loved it, and am tempted to buy a copy; good script, nice production values for a low-budget film, and an utterly believable – if silly – look at the GM-player dynamic in tabletop RPGs. Additionally, much of the scenes ‘within the game’ are absolutely hilarious. Really, if you game and you happen to see this on the video schedule at a con, make time to see it.
I will be 40 years old on November 15th. I’m not sure what it says about me that I’m still reminding myself multiple times per day to act like a grownup. I’ve taken responsibility for a lot of things in life, and willingly so; I want the perks of adulthood. But it means there’s a long list these days of stuff that I can’t wait for someone else to take care of for me, and after all these years I’m still learning many of the tricks of handling a grownup’s duties.
On the other hand, I am surrounded every day by people who aren’t giving that half the effort I am, so I suppose there’s hope. 🙂
Crack open the rum
Aye, the sun’s long over the yardarm for her special day, but shiver me timbers, it seems a fine idea to be wishin’ kittykatya a late Happy Birthday on Talk Like A Pirate Day!
