Tomorrow...

Well, tomorrow is surgery day. I'm actually not too nervous. more worried about afterward and such (you know, the whole pain thing).

Spent this weekend getting the place ready. Doing housecleaning, changing bed sheets, doing lots of laundry. Baking a bunch of stuff,as it'll be a little tough to cook one handed. So Monday and today have been just taking it easy and relaxing. Glad I did go to work both days. not only finished up some stuff, but working kept my mind occupied.

My friend JP is gonna head over with me (thanks JP). I think he's just looking forward to giving me a hard time while I'm all drugged out and can't respond with witty repartee. Either that or you'll see some compromising pictures of me and a hospital gown on facebook on Thursday. :) Getting home will depend on how drugged out I am. It'll either be a quick cab ride home, or spending the night at my friend Bryan's place if I'm still doped out of my mind.

Just taking it easy tonight. Clock in some pain-free couch time :) I have time to catch up on anything afterwards. Hopefully get a good night's sleep and be ready for the roller coaster ride tomorrow...

Countdown to Surgery - 1 week

At this time next week, I'll be at a friends house recovering from surgery. After waiting a month, surgery is one a week away (And yes, I'm getting tired of all the jokes about surgery on April 1st. :-)

One week before surgery marks drug changes. I need to get off of ibuprofen and on acetaminophen (Tylenol). Ibu thins the blood, and that's not a good thing when you're going to be sliced open. Also have to quite the vitamins, as they may thin the blood a bit, but they just recommend you stop everything to be on the safe side.

I meet with the PA (physicians assistant) last week (postponed by a week due to my having the flu). They just want to make sure you're actually healthy enough to have surgery. One of those take the afternoon off appointments to see the doc for 10 minutes. ugh. the PA seemed competent enough - he'll be taking part in the surgery as well. Looked up his profile on the health care site - he's quite the overachiever. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I also have a 'phone appointment' with anesthesia on Thursday. not sure if they'll have any real questions, or just want to remind me not to eat or drink before surgery.

I'll try and blog more before surgery. I'm sure the week left is going to fly buy and it'll be here before I know it.

History plus

Just finished a book that was unusual on many levels, so I thought I'd share. The Book was The Terror by Dan Simmons. It calls itself a historical novel. Dan has taken a historical story and embellished on it a bit.

The story is about two ships trying to find the Northwest Passage - a sea passage from England to China going through the waters of Northern Canada. Apparently they knew the waters freeze over int he winter, so all ships making the trip planned on being frozen in and wintering on their ships as part of the journey to China. As of the trip being written about, no one had found a Northwest Passage yet.

The first odd thing was reading this book in the winter. Here I was reading about ships frozen in the Atlantic, and trying to live on a ship with very little heat temps 30 to 40 below zero. Reading it in the middle of January - making the 15 degree commute feel as if it were -40 here in Boston. I should have saved the book for a 90 degree day.

Second item, there happened to be a PBS type special on the Northwest Passage on TV while reading the book. The special was about the guy who finally did find the Northwest Passage. Rather than take a massive ship like other explorers did (and as the Terror did), he took a smaller lighter ship, and was able to avoid the winter ice floes and take smaller passages between islands. This particular captian also spend his winter hanging out with the natives, so he ws able to keep warm and learn the ways of the locals, keepign him and his smaller crew alive over the winter. The exact opposite of what happened to the crew of The Terror...

After i finished the book, I did some light research on the HMS Terror and the ships captian. Apparently Dan Simmons did more research than I had though. I thought Dan hd taken a light story and went with it. Apparently people in England were concerned enough when The Terror never returned that several rescue missions were sent out, including searches for the wreck as recent as 2008. A great outline of The Terror can be found on Wikipedia.

I don't usually blog about books, but after reading this one, and doing some research on my own, I found Dan Simmons' interpretation of what might have happened on The Terror to be even more fascinating. (Dan also takes a lot of liberties as to what happened day-to-day on the ship, and adds a bit of a supernatural twist to the story, so this isn't a history book).

But in one last little twist, there is a biography that recently came out on the captian of The Terror, Captian Francis Crozier. Odd Timing? Or Dan's inspiration? Either way, the true biography looks to be interesting reading in and of itself.

Check out both books - you might enjoy...

The Visitor

Had a bit of a visitor today. I saw him fly by the window and perch on a branch on the tree outside my window. I tripped over a dozen things to get the camera out so I can snap my photos. Turned out he hung out for over three hours! It sat in the exact same spot for the whole time - just moving it's head about. It often looked like it was trying to stay warm during the windy snowfall. The only real movement was when it 'relieved itself'. Talk about volume and distance. I'm glad I wasn't on the sidewalk.

But I do have a bird guide handy. Nice as the guides are, a lot of hawks tend to look the same. My first guess was Broad-Winged, but they don't winter in New England. It could be Sharp-Shinned, but my visitor may be too large for that. My best guess is a Cooper's Hawk. is there an ornithologist in the house?

I put some more pictures on my Flickr Page. A bad scenario for photographs though - the snow gave me a plain white sky. I had to blow out the sky to get any details of the hawk. But it was still pretty cool.

So it hung out for just over 3 hours. The Blue Jays came around and started making a ton of racket. Unfortunately I did't see it fly off. One second it was there and then gone. A look at the wingspan could have helped with identity. Another friend has seen it flying about before - maybe it'll be back again... In the mean time, I of course found a way to spend money on this :) There's an iphone/itouch application that helps identify birds and will play their calls. Pretty cool.