Monday, June 30, 2014

An Announcement

Hello! I am still alive! (And doing pretty well. More about the state of me later, maybe.) But, more importantly -- or at least, important to a much larger number of people -- the BBC has announced when the new season of Doctor Who will start. Mark your calendars for August 23! It looks like BBC America will be continuing to show them the same day as they air in the UK, which is not remotely surprising. I'm pretty sure if they stopped doing that now, they'd have a Whovian riot on their hands. And nobody wants that. People'd be getting strangled with 12-ft. scarves, you'd have impassioned speeches being yelled at you involving phrases like "unlimited rice pudding," sonic screwdrivers would be shoved everywhere. It'd be chaos.

Anyway. Until then, I will continue avoiding spoilers and attempting not to die of impatience. It's gonna be tough...

Thursday, June 19, 2014

An Offer

Hey, look, it's a post that has absolutely nothing to do with me having or recovering from surgery!

Here's the thing: I have this coupon code for a free two-month subscription to Oyster. This is a new-ish service that seems pretty nifty for those who are into eBooks. It's been described as something like Netflix for books: you pay a flat monthly fee, and you get access to any of the eBooks in their catalog, which looks like it has a pretty good selection. I'm not going to use it myself, though, partly because I don't have an electronic device I enjoy reading on, and partly because, well, I have already accumulated 700-plus paper books that I have yet to read, and I'm pretty sure once I start on eBooks, I am doomed.

So, if anybody is interested, let me know! The first person to request it, either by commenting here or e-mailing me, can have the code for the free trial subscription.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Post-Surgical Currentlies

Hey, look, I managed to do this only a little belatedly!

Current clothes: Blue pajama pants, gray pocket t-shirt, fuzzy blue slippers. I'm mostly not bothering with actual clothes these days. Especially as my belly is swollen enough that even my comfy sweats are uncomfortably snug.

Current mood: Not too bad this morning. I gotta say, though, that my morale is starting to flag a bit. I am ready to be done with this "healing" crap and to get back to my life. It's still going to be quite a while yet, though. And probably much, much longer than that before I'm 100%. Sigh.

Current music: Nothing, really. Instead of listening to music, I'm still slowly catching up on years' worth of Radiolab podcasts.

Current annoyance: Three weeks ago, someone sliced me open and cut out an internal organ. Whatever the long-term benefits of that might be, there is nothing -- nothing about the short-term effects that is not annoying. But I think the grand prize for annoyance has to go to my current inability to get comfortable in any position, anywhere. Gaaah.

Current thing: Attempting to see how many books I can read before I go back to work. Current tally is fifteen.

Current desktop picture: It's still the same bookish image as last month. I really like this one; I think I'm going to keep it around for a while.

Current book: I just finished Terry Pratchett's new Discworld novel, Raising Steam, which unfortunately left me feeling a bit "meh." Next up is Starman: The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony.

Current song in head: "Travelling by Steam" by Fairport Convention, thanks to Terry Pratchett.

Current refreshment: I have lemon-ginger tea brewing. Gotta stay hydrated!

Current DVD in player: Nothing at the moment. I can't find a comfortable position to watch TV in, either. Bah. But I did recently finish watching season 2 of Archer via Netflix streaming.

Current worry: As you can imagine, my current situation is a fertile breeding ground for hypochondria. I have to keep firmly telling myself things like, "Yes, I'm pretty sure the scar is supposed to look like that" and "No, one wrong move in the process of getting off the couch is probably not going to ensure you never heal properly."

Current thought: I actually am showing real signs of improvement. Aforementioned getting-off-the-couch is a lot easier than it was, and I've reached the point where, with great care a little help from my knees, I can reach down and pick things up off the floor. Still, it is all very sloooooow. Where are my tissue-repair nanobots?!

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Heal Faster, Dammit!

Hello! I am still here! However sporadically I may be communicating.

I had my two-week follow-up appointment with my doctor, who says that my surgical incision is healing very nicely indeed. It's all taking a while, of course, but that is to be expected. Still, I'm getting there, I guess, however slowly. My mother, having stayed for a little over two weeks taking care of me (and picking up all kinds of things I accidentally dropped on the floor), is finally on her way home, having been at least mostly convinced that I will be able to feed myself and the cats in her absence. (Which I will be, although there are a lot of frozen entrees in my future, I fear.)

Number of books read so far since my surgery: nine and a half. Which is respectable enough, I think. Although I have discovered the flaw in my plan to "read like it's my full-time job" during my convalescence, which is that, well, there are good reasons why I'm not doing my actual full-time job at the moment, and one of them is that healing this kind of damage takes a ridiculous amount of energy. So everything goes very slowly, even more so than it would otherwise, and come the afternoon, more often than not, I need to stop and "rest my eyes" for an hour or so. Still, I at least feel vindicated for all those shelves full of unread books I've accumulated, because when I am awake and not engaged in the basic maintenance tasks of feeding and cleaning myself, lying around losing myself in a book is practically the only thing I want to do.

I fear it's all going to get old fast from here on out, though. Yes, time to lie around and read is great, but, man, I'd trade significant sums of money just to be able to sleep comfortably on my side again. And to be able to reach every part of myself in the shower. And to be able to get up off the sofa without engaging in several minutes' worth of careful gymnastics to avoid using my abdominal muscles as much as possible. Man, you don't realize just how much you use your abdominal muscles for until they're not available! Then again, you don't realize just how much you can do with your feet until you need to.

But the number one biggest thing I think I've learned from this whole experience is that, despite everybody's dire warnings not to because it WILL BE STOLEN OMG!, bringing an mp3 player to the hospital is the best idea ever. I think those back episodes of Radiolab saved my sanity when I wasn't quite up to reading. Because, even when I'm on morphine, I will never, ever be desperate enough for daytime television.