Short and Simple

Tuesday, May 31 2005

I don't think I can avoid starting off with a bit of Chiari stuff this morning. Otherwise, I might forget and I need to remember this for doctors. After having a series of bizarre dreams, I woke up as badly or worse than ever before. My head hurt like I'd managed to sleep on it. My chest felt tight like I'd been lying face down on a very hard surface for a while. All in all, I think I was holding my breath for a very long time.

While I was part way through my wake up routine, Dad called. He was returning my call from when I missed him over the weekend. For once, I didn't protest his observations about how I sounded. In fact, I let him know that it was actually worse than it sounded but I also hadn't gotten to drink any coffee yet.

In case I haven't mentioned it yet, I have my new computer after years of mere lust. This meant transfering all of my important data on little floppy disks. I could fit almost a year of journal entries on one disk. It was about 11 months per disk. It took a lot longer to install "Diablo II", "Lord of Destruction" and to download the proper patches for each. I was exceptionally happy to succeed in transfering over the character files even though that took forever.

I'm properly caffeinated now and I'm feeling much better. I'm going to have to do something about some of my newer symptoms soon. I believe that I'm grinding my teeth in my sleep and that can actually cause damage that can increase tooth decay. Hopefully, fixing this won't involve a confrontation with a dentist.

Most of the time, I get along with doctors and fear their staff. I fear dentists, their hygienists, their staff and plain old pain. Even when I knew I had healthy teeth, I was intimidated by dentist humor. My childhood dentist would get my mouth all the way open and then say bad things about Democrats. He was probably just kidding even though I figured him for a Republican. My only course of revenge was to talk back and that involved the occasional accidental bite. No, I never bit him intentionally and I never injured him.

At a time not too far off, I am going to have more "surgery." I'm not talking about the serious stuff that I had before. I'm talking about testing that involves an extended hospital stay and is done in the OR. Therefore, it is surgery to me even though it may not be to others. One test will measure the pressure in my head or my ICP. The second will see how my symptoms respond to cervical traction. This involves screws in my skull and will lead to inevitable jokes and bad puns. I hope it will, anyway.

At this point, I'm going to sign off with an explanation. This journal was started to help fill an excess of free time. That excess no longer exists but I will continue to write here. Entries will likely be shorter and less rambling although neither part of that is a promise. I need more relaxation than I get on my heavy writing days and less than I get on days I completely skip. Therefore, I'm going to try to keep it simple.

Weblog

My return to the journalling world has come at a good time. Josh Marshall has expanded Talking Points Memo into TPM Cafe. The idea is to get a group of political weblogs together in one place where there is already an audience. This will likely mean more juicy links for me to give you. I'd rather be able to read the original source material but that would be unlikely for the non-professional and impossible for the cognitively impaired. It looks like this site will be an excellent starting point for researching any topic.

I found all sorts of interesting material there today but I know better than to dive back into something like this head first. One of my usual entries can take the better part of a day so I'll probably cover less and try to write more often. The fact that so many of my usual reads will be writing at TPM Cafe should make this a lot easier although I'll feel worse for cheating even more.