This morning I got up and opened Facebook on my iPad. The first item that showed up was just outright ugly. I closed Facebook down and haven’t looked at it again. I probably won’t look at it tomorrow, either.

This ugliness has to stop. If the next two years go like the last two years, we are in big trouble as a country.

I’ve sent an email to the Idaho congressional delegation pleading with them to put aside the rabid partisanship and to engage in real dialog and honest compromise. I urge you to do the same. Email works better than a letter to a Representative or a Senator. Mail gets quarantined and then put through all kinds of tests to be certain the envelope doesn’t contain anything nefarious. Email gets delivered immediately. It’ll take more than one email; more than one letter to the editor. But, it’s time to let congress know that business as usual is no longer acceptable … and retreating into more one-upmanship or more zingers and gotchas is not what we as a country want nor deserve.

My friends list in Facebook and the folks in my Google+ circles are going to get a serious trim as well. I’m through with all this partisan junk.

On an other note … today was another physical therapy session followed by three hours in the office. The physical therapy went very well. When the therapist measured the bend in my knees, both were 115 degrees, an almost 10 degree improvement since Monday. 120 is the target and well within reach.

It felt good to be back in the office as well. I’ve been slowly ramping up my workload at the office and am really looking forward to getting back to work full time. Tomorrow my plan is to drive myself to the office. I won’t have physical therapy tomorrow, so driving myself should work without any issue. I’ll do a couple of turns around the block, however, before making that final decision.

Ta ta for now!

My mind is telling me it’s time to be doing something other than sitting around the house. The trip to Rehab on Monday, while painful, was a breath of fresh air. I did go to Sacrament Meeting on Sunday and enjoyed that time out of the house as well. (Warning: Lots of Mormon jargon follows)

Another opportunity came up yesterday evening. My Church calling is to serve on the High Council for the Pocatello Stake. The High Council is kind of like an advisory body to the Stake President as well as his eyes and ears in the Wards and Branches in the Stake. I haven’t been able to do anything in this calling for the past month. Then I got an email from the Stake Executive Secretary that there was a meeting on Tuesday evening at 8:30 to include the High Council, Young Mens Presidency, Young Womens Presidency, Stake Sunday School Presidency, Bishoprics, and Branch Presidencies. That was intriguing enough. Nina was willing to be my chauffeur, getting dressed in a suit would work (I’d done that on Sunday). So I decided to go.

The only issue in my mind was what would be available to sit on. Best would be a chair with arms so I could control the sitting down process and push up out of the chair. I was pretty sure that the Relief Society room at the Stake Center didn’t have that kind of a chair. There would be enough people there, though that I should be able to get a couple of men to help me stand up.

The other change I made was to get into the front seat of the car rather than the back seat. We have a six-foot kind of a belt strap. I thought I could use that to loop underneath each foot to help lift it into the car. It worked! Getting into and out of the car turned out to be relatively pain free and straight-forward.

The meeting went from 8:30 pm to 10 pm. There was exactly the right kind of a chair in the foyer and one of the brothers volunteered to push the chair into the Relief Society Room for me to sit on. It worked perfectly! I managed to sit for 90 minutes without too much fidgeting and participate in the meeting and discussion. The meeting was to introduce the new youth curriculum for next year. The Church is making a significant change and upgrade to the materials and lesson topics for the teen-aged Sunday School, Young Mens, and Young Womens organizations. All of the material is online with lots of supplementary information. The youth are directly involved in deciding what topics should be discussed. They also aren’t “lessons” anymore in the traditional sense of a lesson. The expectation is that the “teacher” will talk 40% of the time or less with the members of the class doing most of the talking (my past experience is that the youth have no trouble talking … we’ve spent most of our adult years shushing them up). This is going to be a good change.

I got back home about 10:30 pm. Tired … very tired … and ready to crash for the night. It was very good to get out of the house!

Today is another trip out of the house … this time to Rehab. I expect to also come home exhausted. It’s a beautiful day outside. The temperatures will be in the mid 50’s for the Trick or Treaters tonight. We should get quite a few of them. Nina will need to do the duties at the door, though. I don’t have enough strength and agility.

Ta ta for now!

Sure is nice being vertical! I perhaps need a shave, though. It’s been another day with good progress.

I met with the doctor this morning at 8 am. That meant getting up at 6:30 and navigating down the steps into the car by 7:30. It all worked out pretty well, except sitting in the car is very uncomfortable! I was quite happy to get back home. The doctor is pleased with my progress. He took me off the continuous passive motion machine (“Do more walking,” he said). The nurses took out the seal strips and the incisions look very good. I’ll go back to visit with the doctor on November 19th.

Home health will continue this week. On Monday I’ll start with outpatient rehabilitation therapy up at Idaho State University.

Meanwhile, the World Series of Baseball has started. While I’m not invested in either team (the Detroit Tigers or the San Francisco Giants), I’m really enjoying tonight’s game. I think I’ll be able to watch most of the series while icing my knees….

Ta ta for now!

Today is (knock on wood) so far an up day. Yesterday definitely was not. Friday was not either, leading into the issues on Saturday. Let’s say it all just came down to improperly managing my body functions. Bowel movements are pretty important in the larger scheme of life. Thanks to the ride to the emergency room by the fire department at 3 am on Saturday morning followed by five hours of reasonably diligent work by the Portneuf Medical Center ER staff, but mostly to the work put in by Nina, functions have pretty much returned to “normal”.

I don’t take many ambulance rides. I think the last one I had was back in New Haven, Connecticut before Nina and I were married when I came down with mononucleosis. The memorable parts of Saturday morning’s ride were how cold the ambulance was, how narrow the gurney was, and how much everything lurched around as we went around the many corners and turns to get from the house to the hospital. The fellow riding with me in the back would hold onto me as we made right hand turns as it seemed the whole gurney would tip over! I’ll be quite OK if this is the last ambulance ride I have for many years to come.

But, this is a good day. I’m feeling pretty good, I’m ambulatory (meaning I can get up and move around), am getting stronger every day. Physical Therapy as well as the Home Health Nurse will be around tomorrow morning to check up on things. I have an appointment with Dr. Altenburg (the surgeon extraordinairre) on Wednesday morning. We may even talk about a potential return-to-work day.

I’ve been giving quite a lot of thought about what it means to have both knees done at the same time. Just about every medically-related person I run into says something about “how brave” or “how much a gluton for punishment” I am. Not necessarily so. There are all kinds of things that have to be in place in order for this to be a success. I’m not in hardly any pain. The biggest issue today will be restless leg syndrome. The one thing that has made this all possible is Nina … without her willingness to do everything necessary and go above and beyond … this would not be a pleasant experience at all. More about all of this on another post.

Ta ta for now!

I’m to arrive at the surgery center at the Portneuf Medical Center at 9:45 am tomorrow morning bringing a photo id and my insurance card. I think I can handle that. I suspect that means I’ll go to the operating room around 11:30 (judging from Nina’s experience last August). I should get out of the recovery room in the late afternoon.

Huzzah! It’s finally almost here!

Ta ta for now.

This weekend was LDS General Conference weekend. That means pretty much staying home, sitting in my easy chair watching TV. Hard to find much wrong with that! The interesting part of LDS General conference is the difference between how I see things and how Nina sees things. I come away pumped up and excited for all the things going right and Nina comes away all pumped up and excited for all the things that need to change. The stunning announcement was a change in the age at which young men and young women can apply to go on a mission. For young men the age was lowered to 18 (must have graduated from high school or the equivalent). For young women the age was lowered from 21 to 19. That’s a big and probably life-altering change for many young women.

My Dell monitor that I’ve been using for a second monitor gave up the ghost overnight. It’s been acting a bit wonky for several days and finally decided it had enough. I’ve had a Samsung monitor/tv sitting off to the side, mostly being a TV and sometimes being a monitor for an older iMac computer. I decided to press this into service as my second monitor. Only problem: I’m sure I bought the right adaptor to connect my Macbook Pro to the monitor, but it’s somewhere in a very safe place (meaning, I can’t find it). I’ll need to make a quick trip to Best Buy tomorrow on my way home from the office. Hopefully, they’ve got it in stock. More than half of my visits to Best Buy end up with me going away not finding what I needed. I’m singularly unsurprised that Best Buy is having financial problems.

I have an Apple TV that I’ve not done much with. Now that the HD TV is now directly in front of me, the Apple TV is busily engaged showing pictures from my iPhoto directory. I have Hulu Plus on the Apple TV box. Thought I’d try out a couple of TV shows. Started with Grimm. That was definitely a no-go. Suggestions for what to watch while I’m rehabilitating are welcome.

Sometime late tomorrow afternoon the surgeon’s office will call to tell me what time I need to show up at the hospital. Hope it’s early!

Ta ta for now!

So, everything I wanted to get done today (other than watching LDS General Conference) didn’t work. The motor home wouldn’t start … I needed to empty the holding tanks so I could winterize the vehicle (the battery charger is still on the battery … I need to remember to go out and take it off before going to bed). I decided to blow out the lines anyway, but the air compressor broke and I’ve had to go buy a new one. I couldn’t find the adaptor to blow out the lines, so that was another trip to the store.

A side benefit: on the way I saw a Fat Boy truck selling 25 count boxes of Fat Boy ice cream sandwiches. I stopped on the way back. Excellent price … $15 for a box of 25. Reason for the good price? They’re seconds. Turns out the reason they’re seconds is that the top cookie is missing … they’ve got a bottom cookie piled up with ice cream but no top. I’m justifying that by remembering that the missing cookie makes this a “Fat Boy Lite”.

Not sure how I’m going to get the winterizing done before the really cold weather arrives. We’ve already had a hard freeze. I’m so not worrying about that. Time to go take off the battery charger. Ta ta for now!