Yahoo! News – McCain Lashes Congress, Bush for Overspending – I wrote a letter to John McCain a few weeks ago, telling him how sorry I was that I didn’t vote for him when I had the chance. Of any politician of any party, I’ve thought for several months that McCain would make the best president.
Archive for November, 2003
I’m a regular blood donor at Bonfils, and I got a call from them shortly before my knee surgery asking if I could come donate. I declined, given the upcoming surgery. They called again and left another message a couple days ago, so I just called them to find out how long I have to wait after surgery before I can come donate. The answer is that I need to wait until my “doctor releases me” and says I can “presume normal activities.” I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I’ll ask my doctor on Tuesday when I visit for my followup.
Well, it’s Friday now. On Wednesday, Beth and I went into Boulder for some errands and lunch. I was getting around pretty good on one crutch, but I think I overdid it that day. I had more knee pain than I’d had since the day of the surgery. So I decided to take it easy for a while. Yesterday was Thanksgiving, of course, and I spent the day watching TV, playing TFC, and working on my band’s website. Then, we went over to Jon and Raechel’s for Thanksgiving dinner, which was very nice. Afterwards, the 4 of us played a game of Spacefarers of Catan.
Today, the knee machine is back upstairs in the guest bedroom, and I’m on it again. It just wasn’t working very well on the couch downstairs, mainly because the couch isn’t long enough and so I had to sit up at a weird angle. And this was causing pain on my knee once in a while. Now that it’s back on the bed, it’s a lot more comfortable and I feel like it’s doing more good than harm, which I wasn’t sure of on the couch.
This morning, I’ve been doing some web surfing and working on stuff for the band a little. But most important – willing my knee to heal.
Yahoo! News – Energy Bill Collapses, May Be Revived in 2004 – Here’s some good news, a small victory. Hopefully, Big Energy’s political power and Bush’s attention will wane in 2004, and they’ll drop this idea that oil companies should be immune to lawsuits based on water contamination. I was just wondering to myself what my own industry – commercial software development – would be like if we had the same power and backing and lobbyists as the energy industry.
Rocky Mountain News: Local – Your money at work: the new “Healthy Forests” bill will take $760 million of taxpayer money and give it to logging companies. Doesn’t it seem absurd that the government should take one person’s money, use it to pay another person to cut down trees that belong to all of us, and sell it to another private business? Something doesn’t seem right about this.
I think I overdid it on the movies yesterday. In one day, I watched Terminator 3, The Tuxedo, Solaris, and Coyote Waits, plus some other shows on TiVo. Today marked the 72 hour mark of my recovery, which meant I was able to take off my wound dressings and bandages and finally shower. It was nice. I got all the wraps off my knee, revealing the two small incisions which are sutured up. I took the old gauze off and, after a hot shower, put band-aids over both of the entry points. My knee isn’t swollen very much compared to the other one, but it’s definitely stiff and doesn’t have the same range of motion. So I’m back on the knee machine! Beth made me a lunch of bean tostadas, which was very good. It’s great having someone else do all the cooking and cleaning, although I’m getting stir crazy from spending so much time lying down or reclined with ice on the knee.
Yesterday was a pretty good day for recovering. I didn’t need any pain medicine, and spend something like 7.5 hours on the knee machine. I’ve been watching lots of movies and some TV and catching up on web surfing and a little reading. We watched the 2nd half of the Two Towers last night, and then this morning I watched some TiVo and then Terminator 3. Beth also rented me Solaris, which I’ll probably watch on my notebook PC upstairs while doing more reps on the knee machine.
I just finished lunch, which I made for myself for the first time since before the surgery. I’m getting good at hobbling around on 1 or 2 crutches, or hopping up and down stairs on my one good leg. I also finally changed my clothes. I’d been wearing the same stuff I had on before the surgery. I can’t bathe or shower yet (that’ll come tomorrow) but I stripped down and gave myself a sponge bath of sorts, and then put on all clean clothes. I also took off my “panty hose”. I can’t remember the real name of these things, but they gave me leggings that I was supposed to wear the first 48 hours for blood circulation purposes. It feels nice to have them off.
Now I’m going to enjoy a slice of Marie Callendar’s cherry pie and enter some stuff into Quicken and then maybe play a game of TFC, before returning back upstairs for more time on the knee machine.
Yahoo! News – Turkey & Gravy Soda on the Table for Thanksgiving – Sign me up. Not!
My Knee Photos – In case you care, here are the photos of the inside of my knee before, during, and after surgery.
Investor Relations Polycom Worldwide – Looks like my employer is being sold! There had been rumors of this floating around the office for a week, but it just got officially announced today. I doubt it’ll affect me too much, except that I’ll be a smaller fish in a bigger pond.