patchmonkey.net

Oh, and hey…

Congrats to Marc (Plev) and Jen on their engagement.

Hey folks. Thanks for everyone who has well-wished me on my knee surgery on Wednesday.

Wait…you mean you didn’t know? I had this happen a few weeks back, and just had the surgery on Wednesday. So, for your education, here’s some information on me and my surgery.

Arthroscopy is a procedure that lets an orthopedic surgeon inspect and repair a knee problem without making incisions. Basically, they use a special instrument called an arthroscope(gee whiz) to look directly into the joint and make repairs. The arthroscope has a fibreoptic light and a tiny video camera, which let the surgeon examine the problem (further, after X-rays or a MRI), pin-point it, and give treatment, all during the same operation.

Now what I did was tear my meniscus. This could be done by a blow to the leg (which happened) or a sudden twisting while the foot is planted (which also happened), that pinches the meniscus between the bones of the knee and can injure the cartilage pads.

In any case, the surgery went fine, and I’m basically resting and watching cartoons now. I’m on Vicodin for pain, and I can walk with the help of crutches, which is nice.

Again, thanks everyone!

Yes. I haven’t been posting much of anything anywhere. It seems summer has the same laggy effect on my posting that it does to everything else. I suppose that’s because school typically leaves me with so much nothing-time, and in the summer, I try to do lots of things rather than sit around doing nothing.

Eh, such is life. In any case, I submitted a campaign setting proposal to Wizards of the Coast for Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, I know it’s dorky, but if you get chosen, it’s an incredible amount of money. $120,000 dollars worth of dorkiness.

Not much happening lately. Nothing really new or exciting. I really have to stop coming back to NJ.

Saw a sneak preview of Minority Report today. It was quite good. I enjoyed it.

Thanks to Lexus for the free tickets, food, and gifts.

For those of you who missed it, Natalie Portman turned 21 on Sunday (Yesterday). I’ll be in Boston if you need me.

Waiting for the Barbarians - “The contemporary American situation could be compared to that of Rome in the Late Empire period, and the factors involved in the process of decline in each case are pretty much the same: a steadily widening gap between rich and poor; declining marginal returns with regard to investment in organisational solutions to socioeconomic problems (in the US, dwindling funds for social security and medicare); rapidly dropping levels of literacy, critical understanding, and general intellectual awareness; and what might be called “spiritual death”: apathy, cynicism, political corruption, loss of public spirit, and the repackaging of cultural content (eg “democracy”) as slogans and formulas.”

Okay, here we go…The Knee Story:

In December, I went to my Japanese final about four hours early, and saw a note on the board that said the final was in another room. So I walked to the other classroom, which was extremely hot (in December, in Maryland). So, being a bright young fellow, I said “Gee, I should turn on the air conditioner.”
Well, I flipped the switch, but nothing happened. So I looked up, and lo and behold, the air conditioner is turned off. I pulled over a chair, and, using the chair, climbed up on the radiator to the windowsill to reach up to the air conditioner. I turned it on, and moved to step down. Instead, I fell, and my knee went between two of the coils of the radiator.
No lasting damage, we thought…
Flash forward to 3 AM on Sunday 19 May 2002. I’m sitting in bed drinking with a beautiful blonde girl, and she is sitting on my knees for a while. Now, my knees have been making noises for a few days, but I figured it was just the way I was sitting. It wasn’t. I moved to stand up.

*CRACK*, I hear, and I go down. The next day, I’m limping all over, and begin the process of doctoring. It appears that I have torn the cartilage in my knee. Fun fun fun.