elftao

Actually, far from it! Things are going really, really well over here.

I am losing weight for the first time in my life. Like, actually consistently losing .5-1lb/week, seeing and feeling it. It's not that I have a ton of weight to lose, but I want to get it under control now while I'm ~10lbs overweight rather than a lot more than that. It's been a really hard struggle, but I'm finding ways to work with myself. I've been going to the gym a lot - I started a personal training plan that is one session a week, and am now going in 4-5x/week on average - I never thought I would be able to make that kind of time in my life, nor that it really would feel so good - but it does!

I'm also "shedding" a lot of things. Just yesterday Landon and I traded in our Prius for a Yaris to cut down on the car payments - the Prius was an awesome, awesome car, but it's more "car" than we need, and far more "car payment" than we want. We're also trimming down on books we are never going to read, junk in the kitchen, clothes we don't wear, etc. It's been nice to have less things - especially since our house is rather small.

Speaking of the house, we're considering holding onto it rather than flipping it. I'm still planning to do a bunch of renovations (in fact, after I have coffee and breakfast, I'll be going up to do some rewiring in the attic), but instead of selling it, we might see what it would cost to put an addition on the back to make it big enough for us. Then we wouldn't have to move again, and we could eventually pay off one house instead of bouncing around for another few years.

So, there it is. I feel kinda lame for not posting here often, but honestly, most of you are also on FB and that's where I do most of my networking these days. Love you all!

I'm getting better every day. I keep telling people that - and it's really true. Every day, I feel better, hurt less, can do things I couldn't do the day before, etc. Today I can reach the floor pretty easily, turn at the waist while seated, get up and sit down easily, etc. And drive! The only thing that's getting worse is the maddening itch of the bandages that have started to get a little loose (but not enough to trim down), and at worst that will be gone when I go back on Monday.

Well, and I cant' lift anything over 10lbs. That is also maddening, since there are many still-packed boxes in my house that I can't do anything with. That one is going to be another 3 weeks at least, and I'm not sure when I'll get to ride my bike again. :( I was all jazzed up to do a bunch of biking to the office, too.

Ah well. Not dead, unpacking is slow but it is happening, which is something. I'm actually sitting at my desk, which means that its set up enough to function. Woo-hoo!

Hi, everyone! I came home from the hospital on Tuesday evening and promptly slept for 12 hours. Wednesday I was up and puttering around the house, doing pretty well. I even put pants on and walked across my street to get my broom from the apartment. (I have not yet used said broom, but I did manage to load the dishwasher and do some dishes.)

Standing up straight is difficult and painful - it pulls on everything and hurts. And I can't get to the floor or my feet very well - woe if I drop anything that I actually need. But as long as I take it easy, I can get around and do things. I'm sleepy a lot, my percocet makes me really dizzy and a little nauseous, and I can't pick up anything over 10lbs (including my cat). But I worked a few hours yesterday and I'll probably do that again today. All told, I think I'm doing pretty well.

It'll be at least four weeks before I can lift things again, maybe longer. So any work I wanted to start doing on my house is now on hold. I'll probably use the time to keep researching things and work up plans for other rooms.

Thanks for all the moral support everyone has been sending my way - I really appreciate it!

The short story: I came down with a case of acute appendicitis, had my appendix removed, and am recovering pretty well.

The long story:

Well, this past Saturday Landon and I moved into our new house at 209 W. 3rd Ave in Columbus. Sunday night, while unpacking and getting furniture arranged, I started to have a bit of a stomachache. It got worse and worse until I finally told Landon that I thought maybe I should go to an urgent care. It being around midnight, one of our good friends here in Columbus drove us to the emergency room at the OSU Medical Center where they were kind of overwhelmed by drunk injured people from a large, ill-managed rock concert at the Columbus soccer stadium.

It took about three hours for them to get me into a bed, and somewhere in there I started to have a pretty sharp pain in my lower right abdomen in addition to the stomachache. Evidently (according to the doctor I was talking to), it's really common for the pain associated with appendicitis to begin around the navel and then move down to the appendix area. So they gave me a bunch of "berry" flavored sludge to drink and sent me to have a CT scan of my abdomen to see if that was the case. This whole process took about four hours, during which they gave me a painkiller and I was able to doze a little bit.

So around 7 or 8 in the morning they moved me out of the ER and into another section where I was going to wait for them to be able to fit me into the operation schedule for the day. A friend came and sat with me for a while so that Landon (who had sat with me all night, sleep-deprived and hungry, without a single complaint!) could go get some food. I slept for maybe an hour or so, and at about 11:30 they came to take me to pre-op.

I spent a little longer in pre-op than is usual - I guess the OR I was scheduled for was running a little late. The OSU med center has 26 ORs and they were all in use, so the pre-op room was just one long row of beds. Everyone had a heart monitor that beeped with their pulse, but there were about four different pitches of beeps plus one lower tone that would sound if you became detached from your monitor. It was sort of like a long, live performance of a completely digital kind of phase music. Eventually it was just me and one other patient, and when my OR was finally ready, they started my anesthesia and off we went. I got to see the OR for about 30 seconds as they got me on the table and started getting everything ready, and then I was out like a log.

Evidently I was in the OR for about 45 minutes from start to finish, and most of that was prep and clean-up - it sounded like they only had me opened up for about 10 minutes! The surgery was laproscopic, so instead of one 10-cm incision, I have three smaller cuts - two tiny spots on the left and right sides of my abdomen, and one larger one in my belly button. That one hurts! I woke up in the Recovery Room in a hilarious round of being in a pretty good mood with absolutely no short-term memory - I had to ask people their names about four or five times, and I know that I asked a handful of other questions more than once. I actually ended up staying in the RR for about five hours - the hospital couldn't get a bed for me to move to. My nurse in the RR was fantastic, though - she fed me ice chips (the first thing I had been able to eat or drink since the smoothies for the CT scan, and really the first thing I had had to drink since about 10pm the night before) and gave me some kind of fantastic painkiller that knocked me out flat, so if I wasn't sucking on ice, I was sleeping. They let Landon come in and see me there (he still hadn't slept!), even though they don't usually let family in the recovery rooms, just because it was taking so darn long for them to get me a room. Then he went to find dinner - it was around 6pm at this point.

Finally they got me up to a room, and Landon met me there. The floor nurse ordered me a dinner - solid food and all - which I ate very slowly and enjoyed immensely, since I hadn't actually eaten anything in over 24 hours at this point and I was STARVING. (This morning a doctor asked me if I had eaten anything and seemed surprised that they had sent me solid food, so I think I was supposed to be on liquids yesterday, but I felt and continue to feel fine so he wasn't too worried.) Some of my friends came to visit and brought me an adorable stuffed wooly mammoth, which has actually been quite useful in addition to being snuggly. At the recommendation of the nurses, I've been using it to support my abdomen while I move, which gives it a "splint" of sorts and keeps it from hurting as much. Landon went home with them so that he could get some sleep and take care of our cats (a little abandoned when we left Sunday night).

I went to sleep at about 9pm and slept more or less solidly through until 6am (they did poke me at midnight and 3am, and at some point they brought in my roommate who seems to have been in a car accident). When they came to check in with me at 6, I pretty much woke up and stayed that way. They have me on a pretty low dosage of percocet, which is keeping the pain under control. I mostly have a dull ache (uncomfortably similar so the stomachache I had at the beginning of all this), and a sore throat from the breathing tube they used during surgery.

I'll be able to go home as soon as my latest enormous dose of percocet wears off enough that I can stand up. I'll be sure to update everyone if anything too exciting happens, but it looks like things will go pretty smoothly from here on out.

Well, since it's "post about the music you listen to while writing" day...

Yes, I've been writing a little. No, it isn't going very fast. I really like the soundtrack to Chrono Chross.

Due to LJ deciding that I should have to endure flash-based in-window popup ads to see what y'all are up to, I might be abandoning my LJ account. It's nothing against any of you - it's just that I don't see LJ as providing me with enough value to be worth the irritating Best Buy ads that pop up.

I am going to give it until after the holiday, to see if perhaps they just got eaten by the capitalism dumb. But if they keep it up, then I'll be packing up and officially moving over to Facebook full time, where (at least up to this point) they have kept all the ads on the sidebars like a reasonable organization.

Yesterday was feeling the first stages of "the cold." Last night woke up in the middle of the night with my throat so swollen and sore I could hardly drink water. Couldn't talk at 9am. Feeling better now...have only been up ~11 hours with a 1.5 hour nap in the middle.

Hopefully tomorrow I"ll be back on my feet. Want to work on the apartment!

I just got a POPUP AD on LJ! What's that about?

I have taken up knitting. Landon now own a Jayne hat, and I am working on a pair of mittens for myself.

But I'm guessing many of you thought I could be since I haven't posted in months and months and months.

Well, I'm not dead. Landon and I moved to Columbus, OH in April. Columbus is perhaps the best possible place to be living, period. For those of you who naysay, I encourage you to spend a few years in hell Peoria, IL, and then move to Columbus. It is a large enough city to have night life, diversity, tolerance, progressive values, culture, art, music, dance, theatre, great food (I've gained almost 10 lbs since moving), eco-conscientiousness, public transit, local breweries, major shops, major shopping centers, an Apple store, and more. Yet at the same time it still has polite and friendly people, polite drivers (yes, I did say that - you obviously have never lived in Peoria), local shops, local eateries, hippies, students, and walkable areas. And, unlike, most large cities, the crime is not too bad and you can get around without facing horrible traffic.

So, living in Columbus has been fantastic. We have great, supportive friends, a good work environment, a lovely neighborhood, good parks, a fantastic stretch of local shops/restaurants just two blocks from our apartment, etc.

On the downside, Landon lost his job about a week after we moved. Fwiw, it had nothing to do with him moving and more to do with the fact that Caterpillar is managed by idiots and has no concern for employee welfare or loyalty; they suddenly realized that they weren't going to make that month's budget and dropped a bunch of people. Turns out that working at Cat is far worse than cutting corners and squeaking by on unemployment. Lots of applications sent; no employment yet. We'll see how things go when April comes; it looks like the U.S. might have to figure out what to do with a standing 20% unemployment, unless they intend to extend unemployment benefits indefinitely, because the job market is not getting any better and doesn't look like it will anytime soon.

However, in his copious amounts of free time, Landon has been working more than full-time on www.metroplexity.com. If you haven't checked it out, give it a try: it comes with recommendations from gamers and nongamers alike. Then tell your friends!

(Landon has also become quite the housekeeper, maintaining the cats, keeping the place clean, learning to cook - it's been quite fabulous!)

My job has been and continues to be fabulous. I've been traveling a lot lately, and it's good to be home for a few weeks (maybe even months!!). It makes a huge difference to be working from an office rather than from home, and I'm highly appreciative of that.

I'm also playing with a local early music ensemble called the Early Interval. I found them through my undergrad instructor, who has played with them when he was living in Columbus many years ago. We have a great time and I've been learning a lot. New instruments lately: soprano shawm, historical-fingering recorders, and medieval bagpipes. (!)

Zoe and .tif are good, if being a bit of a pain in the "waking Lyz up at 4am most mornings" manner.

Doing a little bit of writing; nothing worth writing home about. Also learned how to can pickles, tomatoes, applesauce and jellies this summer; next summer I'll be on a mission!

Anything I missed? Feel free to ask questions, I'll actually respond.

fwiw, I use Facebook more than LJ these days, although I do read LJ every morning to stalk all you people who are still on here.

Had another dream about the crazy A-frame house in Peoria last night. WTF?