I found out this morning that my knee surgery has been pushed back from tomorrow afternoon until Wednesday morning at 7:30. I'm disappointed because I was really looking forward to getting this over with, but I guess one day won't really matter much.
I spent today running around getting ready for my big day on Wednesday. First, I had my annual (sort of) physical. I coincidentally had this scheduled for several weeks, which was good because I needed some "pre-surgery" tests done before my knee thing. I gave up my fear of needles several years ago, but if I have too many guys like the guy I had this morning drawing my blood I may go back to being scared of the needle. He was not good, and I have a nice bruise to prove it.
After the physical I had to stop by Methodist Hospital in Sugar Land for a chest x-ray, which was required as part of the pre-surgery check list. I asked my doctor why my knee surgeon required me to have a chest x-ray, and his response was - "It's a CYA required test." His honesty was refreshing.
My next stop was at Oak Bend Hospital to pre-register for my Wednesday procedure. When I arrived, Linda - the lady in the office - handed me some paperwork to verify. They managed to get my name, date of birth, SSN, address, etc. right, but all the forms said my surgery date was tomorrow instead of Wednesday. When I pointed this out to Linda she seemed to think that this error was somehow my fault. She betrayed her thoughts by heaving an extremely heavy sigh that seemed to last for about 30 seconds. She asked me if I was sure my date was Wednesday, not Tuesday. I was then forced to remind her (I really hated to do it) that it was her who called me earlier in the day to tell me the date had been changed from Tuesday to Wednesday. At any rate, I'm supposed to show up at 7:30 Wednesday morning and I should be ready to go home by around 1:00.
On a non-knee note, Vicki and I were notified today that our application to be the judges for the Greatwood Christmas Lighting contest has been approved. I got the distinct impression from the congratulatory email that we were the only ones who had applied for the job. After several years of pondering the judges' decisions on the winners we will finally get to impose our will on the contest. Due to our trip to Costa Rica and my knee problems (I'm swearing off ladders for awhile) we're not planning to decorate the outside of the house this year, so there will be no conflict of interest. For a change we won't get to complain about not winning. I wonder what that will be like?
Vicki was hugely successful in her quest to collect 125 dozen cookies for the Second Mile Thanksgiving food give-away at the Stafford Center this Wednesday. She surpassed her goal by about 100 dozen. You should have seen our kitchen - wall to wall cookies. One of the most wonderful sights I have ever beheld. Have I ever mentioned that I've never met a cookie that I didn't like?
BONUS BOOK REVIEW -
I just finished reading an interesting book, with an even more interesting title - We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families. The book chronicles the 1994 massacre of 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis by their rival Hutus. I remember following this at the time, but for some reason most of the world didn't take much notice. The amazing/disturbing thing about this unfortunate episode is that it happened over a period of only 100 days, and the Rwandan government not only let it happen, but encouraged their citizens to do it. More disturbing is that the offending Hutus carried out the majority of the killings by hacking their neighbors to death with machetes. I highlighted one very interesting quote from the author, Philip Gourevitch. "Power consists of the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality, even if you have to kill a lot of them to make that happen." Hmmm.
On that uplifting note I'll say good-bye for now.
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