Hectic

Hi blog,

Apologies for the late post, my computer recently attempted some bizarre form of self-destruction and I put it in the time out corner...forever. In its place is a new computer that seems to function normally as of writing this, so I shall stick with this one because I like functional technology. But the technology has not been the only hectic thing going on lately, it's been a veritable madhouse of events and non-events.

The magnetic donut

Still no word on my knee. In fact, I still haven't even had the MRI. I should have included in last week's post about the fun MRI waiting games "Hey MRI, when are you going to get scheduled so I can actually learn something?" But I have a date with a giant magnetic donut machine on October 10th, so at least that's good. Although if it takes two weeks to get figured out, I'll be cutting it really close to my surgery date on the 28th of the same month. Down to the wire!

It is now official: I have begun (in earnest) on the second draft of my memoir. Please, please, hold the applause. Oh, there is none...right, well keep holding it then. After Nick got back from insane death race in which he kicked proverbial ass (because kicking a real ass usually pisses off its owner, or worse, it'll kick you back), we shortly resumed work on our books. Nick has been screaming through his (I'm not sure if that's literal, you'd have to ask him) and cranking through his edits at a blistering pace. Meanwhile, I am trudging through the quagmire of my childhood and questioning the legitimacy of keeping any of it for the final product of the book. It's an agonizingly slow, painful, annoying process to go through nearly 40 pages of probably unnecessary junk to sift out what is important, especially when you know the real content hasn't gotten done and you feel like all you're doing is wasting time when really you'll have to rewrite that whole section almost completely. And the feeling that I have to rewrite that entire childhood-high school section is reinforced by reading Lance Armstrong's 2000 memoir and seeing how much more compelling the telling of his story is than the telling of my story (at least through the pre-cancer parts). It's driving me crazy, knowing that what I've done is supremely subpar work and having very little idea how to fix it save for scrapping it all and starting over is just...GAH!

Anyways...I'm at least making progress through it and am now on the edge of getting to the real meat of my story. Progress has been slowed somewhat by a resurgence in physical issues (discussed shortly), but I'm doing my best to push through them and get the work done anyways.

(Told you it was shortly)

Well if I ever had a nickel for a dime, I'd tell you that the first part of this sentence makes no sense. However, I'd also tell you that my migraines have crept back in when I wasn't looking. Over the last week I've been dealing with borderline crippling headaches, and over the last two days the headaches haven't been borderline at all, they've been full-force Andrew-stopping nightmares. I'm not sure where this sudden surge of headpain comes from, but I suspect it's stress-related. The other option is that my preventative migraine medication is no longer functional. This happened last year with a different medication, which I'd been taking for a year. Now that I think about it, I've been taking this new medication for about a year too. That's probably just a weird coincidence that I don't particularly like at the moment.

But let's focus on something else: my shoulders! The right shoulder continues to improve and is now functioning just as well, if not BETTER than the left shoulder! Then again, this might not be as impressive as it sounds, because my left shoulder is slowly deteriorating at an increasingly not-so-slow pace. In fact I can hear the grinding crackling crunches when I rotate my left shoulder in certain ways, which, although they don't hurt, elicit a kind of anticipatory wince for the pain that doesn't come. But I'm not worried about the left shoulder, because I'm getting a better one soon anyways. What's more important is my right shoulder and how it's been holding up. The range of motion is improved, the pain is nonexistent at the best of times, and not as bad as it used to be at the worst of times. I'm continuing to stretch and work on both shoulders, both in physical therapy and at home (although probably not as much as I should be at home, but that's something I'm working on), and I think I can expect a very good recovery for the right shoulder, and the left one once that's been dealt with.

All right, time for me to fly off and do something. Ciao blog and readers!
Your aeronautic overlord, Andrew