Snow? In Houston?

I heard the long range forecast this morning, and believe it or not it calls for the possibility of snow this Friday. That seemed almost unheard of until in the same forecast it noted that it snowed in Houston last year on December 10th. It must have been the lightest snowfall ever, because I sure don't remember anything about it.

My knee is coming along really well. As a matter of fact, unless I bend it in just the right way it doesn't even hurt anymore. I've been getting really serious about my rehab regimen, which I do twice a day. I'm also now riding a recumbent exercise bike 20 minutes a day and taking walks (I'm up to a mile and a half). I borrowed the bike from a friend at church. I put a notice on the FCCC Market Place (the church classified), asking anyone who had a bike they weren't using to let me know if I could borrow it. The response was overwhelming. It seems that just about everyone has an exercise bike gathering dust. I go in tomorrow afternoon for another session with my physical therapist, and she says that she'll be kicking things up a notch. After my workouts I put my leg into a "cryogenic sleeve" that has just come out of the freezer, which I pump up with a small pump. I think Michael Jackson slept in one of these things for awhile. I leave the knee in for twenty minutes, which just about freezes it.

This morning I made my first visit to the Jobs Ministry Southwest meeting, which is hosted by Williams Trace Baptist Church in Sugar Land. I signed up about two months ago, but today was the first time I actually went. They offer workshops on resume writing, interviewing skills, networking, etc. All the stuff you're supposed to master in order to find just the right job. They also sponsor a job bank, for which I registered online when I got home. And, they have a speaker every week. The guy today talked about defining what you're good at, what you love to do, and then selling yourself. It was supposed to be motivational, and I suppose it was for some of the people there, but I left feeling a little depressed about the whole job-seeking experience. It's now been almost eight months and all I have to show in the way of progress is one 45-minute telephone interview for a job I wasn't interested in. I'm going to two - yes two - professional events tomorrow. The first one is downtown at 7:30 AM. It'll be good to drive in some serious rush hour traffic again. I don't want to lose my edge. Maybe it'll be raining, which will make the experience even more memorable.

Speaking of the holidays, we decorated the house yesterday for Christmas. "Decorated" may be a strong word for this year's effort. As I may have mentioned ten or twelve times, we're taking the entire fam on our Costa Rican "trip of a lifetime" this Christmas. In light of the fact that Kayla and Bethany and the sons-in-law won't be showing up until December 23rd, and that we won't be home the last week of December, we went minimal on the decorating this year.

As I read this post it strikes me that it is without a doubt the least entertaining and biggest downer I've ever subjected people to. I'll try to do better next time.

Wait! I almost forgot . . . We went to see the movie The Blind Side this past Saturday night. We arrived about 30 minutes before show time and were surprised to find that there was actually a line of about 100 people waiting to get into this movie. I haven't waited in line for a movie since Forrest Gump. The theater ended up being packed to capacity, with people orbiting around looking for seats right up until the movie started. Sandra Bullock was really fantastic in this movie, but overall I was a little disappointed - maybe because I read the book and my expectations were too high. That being said, however, everyone else seemed to really love the movie (Vicki included). I give it an eight. It's a great true story - definitely worth seeing.

Turkey Legs and Wounded Knees

Well, things went pretty well with my knee-fixing procedure. There were a few minor foibles, but nothing of any real consequence. I do have one hospital tip for you - if they tell you to show up at 6:00 AM don't come early. We arrived at Oak Bend Hospital in Richmond (formerly called Polly Ryon and affectionately known as "Probably Dyin") at 5:45 and there was nobody there, which when you think about it makes perfect sense. If your work day started at 6:00 in the morning would you come in early? Neither would I. I have one other hospital observation that I'll share with you. Prepare to be progressively a little chillier than you'd like. I spent time in three different rooms, each about 10 degrees cooler than than the previous one, ending up in the actual operating room, which I would estimate to be about two degrees above freezing. Not that it really mattered because once they put the knock out drops into my IV I was out in about two seconds.

I started my rehab yesterday by doing a series of about 15 exercises and a few ten-minute walks around the neighborhood. My physical therapist is coming over this afternoon to take off my bandages and probably give me some more exercise stuff to do. Tonight I'm going to a high school football game with a friend, so life is good.

Here's the knee I've been talking about for the last two weeks. Does it look swelled up?

Here's me patiently waiting in Polar Zone #1.

Yesterday for Thanksgiving we went to Camelo's for dinner. As I think I mentioned, this was the year for both Kayla and Bethany to spend Thanksgiving with their in-laws, so we didn't see the need to do the full-blown Thanksgiving dinner routine for just the two of us. Because Vicki's sister and brother-in-law (Cheryl and Bob for those who know them) were in the same boat we decided to team up and go out to dinner. At first it did seem a little odd to be at an Italian restaurant with a menu in our hands instead of at the dining room table next to a big turkey, but we got over that in pretty short order. I wouldn't want to do this every year, but I must say yesterday's experience was very enjoyable. After dinner everybody came over to our house and we had the pumpkin pie I made last weekend for dessert. Not to blow my own horn, but the pie was probably the best I've ever tasted. I'm sure everyone felt the same. Nobody actual said that, but I could just tell.

Get this, on the way home from Carmelo's we passed the Best Buy store in First Colony, and there were people camping out on the sidewalk. And I don't mean just standing in line, but literally camping out - with tents! I wonder just what bargain could possible be so fantastic that one would spend the night sleeping on a concrete sidewalk in a suburban shopping center parking lot? Especially since I understand that you can get the same Black Friday prices online as in person. I hope nobody got mugged.

Okay, I'm off for my first 15-minute walk of the day. Yesterday when I was out for my first walk my neighbor - who had heard of my ladder incident - said "So, I guess you found out that you can't really fly." My response was "The flying part was easy. It was the landing that gave me problems."

The Cutting Has Been Delayed

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.

First the Pumpkins - Then the Knee

Well, I finally got the word on my knee. The MRI showed a torn meniscus and "some other damage behind the knee cap" so I'll be having arthroscopic surgery to repair the damage this Tuesday. I'm not sure of the time yet, but I know it will be in the afternoon at Oak Bend Hospital in Richmond. After a week of waiting it's a relief to finally know what's wrong, to get it fixed ASAP, and have the opportunity to get started on my rehab.

Yesterday could have been another day of sitting in the recliner all day, but I decided doing that would probably drive me crazy, so I decided to take control of my life and try to do something - anything - to get off my backside for awhile. After careful consideration I decided to do what anyone in my situation would do. I baked some pies. Pumpkin pies actually. From scratch!

Me baking pies shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone. I've done this before, back in 1999, so counting this time I bake for Thanksgiving every ten years. Check this blog again in 2019 for my next round of baking.

For those of you not as schooled in the fine art of baking as myself I have some tips which you'll want to keep in mind for your future forays into baking.



Ingredients - Before you get started make sure you have everything you need. Try to imagine my heartbreak yesterday when I discovered midway through concocting my pumpkin pie filling that I was out of ground cloves! My concentration and momentum were completely destroyed during my 45 minute trip to H-E-B. Don't let this happen to you. Make sure you have everything before you start.

Bowl Management - This has nothing to do with college football and everything to do with recognizing the number and logical order of your bowl needs during the baking experience. Don't use your big bowls to mix small amounts of stuff. If you do you'll end up in the unfortunate situation of having to put everything together in the little bowls, and that's not good. I found myself pouring things into plastic Astros cups to free up required bowl space. Again, a significant momentum buster.

Measuring Devices - Pay attention to your implements of measurement. If you don't have the experience of someone like myself it's quite easy to mistake a teaspoon for a tablespoon, or a 3/4 cup for a full cup. Imagine the disaster that could arise from using 1/2 cup of salt instead of 1/2 teaspoon! Don let this happen to you.

Read and Follow the Instructions [No Picture] - This goes without saying, but some of you (especially for those of the male persuasion) you may be tempted to try and speed things up by making inaccurate assumptions, skipping steps, and freelancing with ingredients. This can lead to some unforeseen circumstances, all of them bad, including poor bowl management (see above), not having the proper ingredients (see above again), and pies that taste yukky. Remember, any pie worth making is worth making according to the recipe. Don't try to be hero. Follow the recipe!

Enough lecturing. The following pictures are meant to not instruct, but to inspire. They present a mosaic of the joy that is baking.

When baking from scratch it is of utmost importance to find and use only the finest ingredients. That's why I went to the Fiesta in Rosenberg to find these two gorgeous cooking pumpkins. When selecting these important vegetables it's important to consider their size, texture, firmness and overall visual appeal.

Here's what your pumpkins will look like once you cut them in half and scoop out all the sticky guts and seeds. Put them in a pan and add about an inch of water. Oops! I'm instructing instead of inspiring. Sorry.

Next, cover your pumpkins with foil and place them in the oven (preheated of course!) at 350 degrees for about 90 minutes.

If you have followed all of the instructions, used the proper ingredients, and observed good bowl management you will end up with what is pictured to the right - a perfect pumpkin pie!

Bon appetite!

After successfully completing my pies I turned on the Food Network. Having experienced the actual joy of baking I felt as if I finally belonged. It was awesome. I really related to that short chubby lady with the freckles.

Today Was MRI Day!

Today I had my very first MRI. If you're one of the thousands who follow my blog you know that last Friday I suffered an injury to my left knee when a ladder I was working on slipped from beneath me. Remember - I didn't fall off the ladder. The ladder slipped. After five days of sitting in the same recliner with a gigantic ice pack on my knee watching endless old movies on the Turner Classic Movie channel, I finally got in to see an orthopedic surgeon yesterday afternoon. After some x-rays and range of motion tests his preliminary diagnosis is a torn meniscus, to be verified by an MRI.

INTERESTING ASIDE: During my movie marathon I watched several movies from the 1930's and 1940's. It was amazing to see how many people in these movies were also in either or both the Wizard of Oz and/or It's a Wonderful Life. I'm not talking about the stars, I'm talking about the people who had between one and twenty lines. The reason I probably noticed this is because I've seen each of these movies at least thirty times.

AND NOW BACK TO THE MRI STORY -

I was hoping to get my MRI as early as possible today, but due to a variety of circumstances it didn't happen until 5:30 this evening. The big event took place at the new St. Luke's Hospital in Sugar Land. If you've never been to the new St. Luke's Hospital in Sugar Land you're missing out. This place is a palace! I felt like I was waiting in someone's gigantic upscale living room. I've decided that one reason health care is so outrageously expensive in the this country is at least partially due to places like the new St. Luke's Hospital in Sugar Land. I wonder what percentage of the cost of my $1,12o.oo MRI went to pay for all of the couches, easy chairs, marble tile and fountains in the lobby? I wonder what Obama-care thinks about such frivolous luxuries?

Regardless of the excessive opulence, everyone at St. Luke's was very cordial and helpful. I was dreading being fully inserted into the MRI tube and was extremely relieved when the sliding thing stopped with most of my head still sticking out. I was surprised that before kicking things off the technician gave me some ear plugs because he said the machine was "a little noisy". A little noisy? For thirty minutes it sounded like the opening guitar riff in the Beatles song Revolution, played at volume 95, accompanied by Superman pounding on the side of the tube with a sledge hammer. But, in spite of this I still managed to doze off a few times. I hope I didn't move in my sleep and mess things up.

The next step in my healing process is for the othro doctor to read the MRI and decide if surgery will be required to fix things. If there's no need for surgery he told me that all I'll need will be a cortisone shot to reduce the swelling and get rid of the fluid build up. The possibility of a cortisone shot took me back to a time about twenty years ago when I hurt my shoulder lifting an over stuffed suitcase into the trunk of my car. I got a cortisone shot for that. I remember two things about that shot - 1) it immediately cured the pain almost as if my magic, and 2) it was so painful that it took me about fifteen minutes to fully regain consciousness after I stopped crying.

Prior to my MRI adventure Vicki and I spent about four hours at Second Mile stuffing 1,500 envelopes with their annual end of the year appeal for money. If you've contributed to Second Mile in the past you can expect your letter in the next day or two!

Tomorrow we have big day planned, which will include a gourmet breakfast at Bob's Taco Station, followed by a visit to the $1.00 store in Richmond, followed by seeing the movie The Blind Side. Tomorrow will be huge!

Today I Started Rehab

After sitting on the couch watching TV for almost three days I finally got started on rehabbing my injured left knee. First thing this morning I went to Ondrusek Sports Medicine. I started off with for some serious icing - with an inflatable ice pack that zipped around my leg and then was pumped full of air. It looks like a puffy cast when it's all charged up. After the icing I was instructed in five exercises that will keep my undamaged muscles in shape. I have an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon on Wednesday afternoon, at which time I'll find out if surgery will be necessary.

I spent today back on the couch, doing my exercises and icing every two hours. It figures that on the coldest day of the year I'd be in a giant ice pack for most of the day. Vicki heightened the experience by leaving the windows up in the house most of the day to take advantage of the cool, fresh air. By about 3:00 we were both frozen. The windows are now in the down position.

I'm looking forward (not) to two more days on the couch. I don't present the aura of an overly energetic person, but I typically enjoy being busy, so I expect that the next few days will be fairly trying for me. Maybe I'll read a book.

Speaking of books, there's a movie coming out this Friday called The Blind Side, which is based on the book of the same name. Lance passed this book on to me last summer after he finished it. If the movie is half as good as the book it should be good. FYI, the theme of the book/movie is football, but the real story is about an unprivileged kid who is taken in by an upper class family and makes a success of himself. I expect the movie will be a semi-chick flick hiding inside a football story. Something for everybody.

Nothing much happening on the job front. I remember posting a comment back on Memorial Day about finding a job by Labor Day. On Labor Day I envisioned gainful employment by Thanksgiving. I've revised my expectations to next Memorial Day.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, Vicki and I made the big decision today that we won't be bothering with a turkey this year. This year's holiday rotation call for both Bethany and Kayla to be with their in-laws, so putting together the usual gigantic Thanksgiving dinner seems a little pointless. We're planning to go out to dinner with Vicki's sister and brother-in-law (Cheryl and Bob for those of you who know them).

Tales of Near Death Experiences

Greetings everyone. We've had an interesting week since returning from our Lubbock trip on Monday afternoon. I met with a new headhunter who was recommended by a former Transocean colleague. This lady and her organization were very professional and I was quite impressed with them. She asked me quite a few questions about myself and my experience, and she seemed to have a good grasp of the current market (which still ain't too good). I was also very impressed that she had actually taken the time to read my resume before our meeting, which was a first among all of my other recruiter contacts.

On Thursday Vicki and I did our usual gigs down at Second Mile Mission Center. I could barely contain my excitement when Tom gave me my latest assignment - to organize the medical equipment/supply area of the warehouse! I'm not being facetious here, this was a dream come true. I have been eyeing that area for the last three months. It has been a jumble of walkers, wheelchairs, bandages, expired drugs and all sorts of other medical stuff. The driver behind the clean up is that we'll soon be needing as much space as possible to handle the donations that will arrive for the Christmas toy drive. In the past Second Mile has been able to utilize some offsite warehouse space, but none will be available this year. I jumped into my clean up role unsupervised, which meant I was free to make my own decisions regarding what got to stay and what had to go. I filled up the dumpster with stuff that had been there for a long time. There was some kind of old piece of dental equipment that had at least two inches of dust and cobwebs on it. There were also about 1,000 bottles (not an exaggeration) of expired vitamins, several boxes old shoe insoles, 100's of fliers about how to use a Sonicare electric toothbrush (I'm sure most Second Mile clients have $100 electric toothbrushes), and bunches of other miscellaneous stuff.

Vicki and I returned to Second Mile on Friday for a rare second appearance of the week. The son of one of the ladies who works there died a few days ago and they had a memorial service for him on Friday. Because the entire staff was attending the service they asked if Vicki and I could come in and help mind the store for a few hours. Vicki took care of the food pantry and the clothing room and I was in charge of the warehouse. Friday was a slow day for clients, so I of course was drawn back to my reorganization project in the medical section. Unfortunately, while working on the top of a ladder placing items on the upper level of shelves the ladder slipped and I managed to fall about ten feet to the concrete floor below, landing on my hands and knees. It was like a very short roller coaster ride with a very abrupt stop. After making a perfect four-point landing I lay semi-stunned on the floor for a minute or so, hoping that if I didn't move I wouldn't discover any broken body parts. After finally moving everything at least once and determining that nothing seemed to be broken, I managed to get to my feet. I was panicked to discover that everything was blur and that my vision had been affected by the fall. And then I realized that I had lost my glasses. I returned to the floor and crawled around for a minute or so until I located them. As of today it seems that my only injury is a non-functioning left knee. Based on her Internet research, Vicki has diagnosed my problem as a torn meniscus. Tomorrow morning I'll try to get an appointment to see someone for a second opinion.

Speaking of Second Mile, below is the new leader for the most worthless donation of all time. Many thanks to the generous person who dropped off this piece of junk.

Remember - Friends don't let friends drop off this kind of junk to well meaning faith-based community service organizations.