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At noon the city inspector showed up for the first official look at the garage. He said the forms we stressed so much over were too narrow for the type of pour we were doing, even though the city office cleared us for that type of footing on the official plans. He did say that if we pulled the forms and just poured the size of the hole we would be fine. Had we known that we could have saved a few hundred dollars as well as been able to pour while it was still warm and sunny. Chuck got off a little early due to the impending storm (we had hoped to pour the forms this evening) and he came over and removed them in just a fraction of the time it took to put them in. But that’s always the case, isn’t it? We pulled one board out and the leaves piled in the hole spilled off the board leaving one odd one stuck to the lumber. Turns out it was a well crafted butterfly.
Shortly after we got finished wrapping up the forms in a tarp to keep them from the snow it started to rain, and now we have about 5 inches of new snow.

Three Days of the Vacuum

Picture warning — don’t click on the link if you have a weak stomach.
So I got the vacuum changed Yesterday afternoon. The home healthcare nurse says it’s healing pretty quick, and if the tongue-textured section in that pic is any indication, maybe the doctor was right and I’ll be better (and ready for chemo) by Christmas. Yay. I hurt really bad today, though, and had a really hard time sleeping. I’d been off the pain pills (mostly) since before Halloween, but they’re making a reappearance in this second act.

It Augmented Me, Girl

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So, this is a graphic post, don’t click the pictures if you’re weak of stomach. About five weeks after my surgery I got a lamprey device to accelerate my healing. Supposedly it’s going to speed up my recuperation time by 75%. On Halloween the surgeon saw that I was retaining a lot of fluid up near my neck and it was getting a little infected, so he opened me up a bit and drained the fluid out and packed it with gauze. He asked Debbie if she thought she could repack it every day. She’d gagged audibly at the process and said she couldn’t, but she loves me so much she managed to do it almost every day since then. She’s pretty happy now that I have the vacuum and she’s done with playing Nurse Debbie. About the time I left for Reno the wound had opened up a little and looked like this. The pictures really don’t give a good idea of depth.
While I was at the conference, Brian helped pack it every other day, and he told me it seemed to be opening more. After getting back from Supercomputing Debbie was a little alarmed that several of the staples were hanging loose and it had opened even wider. Each time I went in to see the doctor and said that Debbie was nervous about the ever widening hole he told me she was doing a really nice job of packing it and it was healing up really well. The last time he recommended the wound-vac and it’s been sucking on my back for a couple days now.
I just tell people I’m a kool-aid machine.

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So I’ve been dawdling and not really getting anything done since I got back from Reno. Had I brought the right cable for the camera I may have tried to write coherently on a daily basis, but the internet was so slow at the hotel I may have given up anyway.
One of the shipping crates got forked by the airways shipping people.
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Our hotel had a driving range into a cee-ment pond that was one of the highlights of the trip. Reno is such a hole.
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Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?

nano_participant_icon_large.gif So after a couple years of good intentions, and with a lot of downtime on my hands I’ve launched myself into National Novel Writing Month. I had a pretty good first day, getting nearly the 1924 words that is my goal for each day. The idea is to spend all November writing like crazy and get 50k words in by midnight of the 30th. I’m writing the story I’ve had in my mind for several years, and while I’ve surprised myself a few times with some nice passages, I’m really struggling. I had a busy day Saturday so I got kind of behind. I can’t wait till something happens, though. I gotta get this kid out of the University so something can happen.