My Aunt is home, though weak and tired.  It's probably the right call, but I wonder if they rushed it.  In any case, she's mostly resting, or should be.  She is hopefully resting.

So far, so good.

- Jim

If all goes well, my Aunt should be leaving the hospital shortly.  If all goes well, she'll recover quickly once she's at home. 

Because most of the increase of my social activities were because of this incident/crisis, I'll be decreasing my activities back to where they were before.  I don't mind being available to help when things like this happen, but I need to get back to work.

Good luck, I continue to post when I can,

- Jim

The good news is that the cause of the problems for my Aunt is relatively easy to fix.  The bad news is that it caused such extreme consequences.  She's doing better, but still not out of the hospital.  She hopes to get out very soon, and I understand the sentiment.  I'm not sure what to expect in that regard. 

Again, high hopes,

- Jim

Alas, I spoke too soon.  My Aunt has had a bit of a setback.  It's not as bad as it could be, but it's certainly not good, especially at her age.  They're working on the problem now, but it will take time to determine the results.

High hopes,

- Jim

I am within just a few pages of finishing the sixth Harry Potter book.  I'm still working on the whole backlog thing, but it's going.  I had to slow down for a few days when my Aunt went in the hospital.  Admittedly, I didn't do anything more than change my sleep schedule, but it allows me to sit by the phone and ease the worries of others.

Yeah, it's kinda pathetic, if you think about it.  Still, it's the least I could do.

Anyway, my Aunt is doing better, though she's still there.  They're running tests and will decide how they want to proceed in a few days.

- Jim

There's not much to talk about, but I figured I'd post before anyone think I died or something.  Everything is pretty close to normal.  I'm still working on the Harry Potter books mostly, though like always I'm ever dabbling in a dozen other things as well.  I want to know everything, read everything, see everything, blah blah blah.  It keeps me busy though.  Downtime is hard for me.

I am still waffling about the toe.  On the one hand, it's a broken toe.  I can't imagine the doctors doing anything if I went to see them and medical care costs money.  On the other, it still hurts like hell.  It's been... what, a month?  More?  It seems like forever, but that might just be because it's the middle of the night and I haven't slept well.  Invariably as I climb into bed I brush my toe against something and it kills me.  It's not like I'm abusing it really, but the toe doesn't think so.

In the meantime, I'm doing some strengthening exercises, but I'm mostly on hold for anything else until the toe situation resolves itself.  Again, I don't want anyone to think I was out running marathons even before the toe thing.  I'm just trying to make it to the end of the block before the knee gives out.  Yeh, it's that bad.  Pathetic. 

Actually, on bad days it's worse than that, but I've dwelt on the knee enough.  Suffice to say, my dreams of becoming a ballerina are over.  Heh.  I'm kidding. 

Well, can't think of anything else. 

- Jim

I had to put the air conditioner back in.  Though my room gets cool at times, it's still hot enough during the day to make the temperature in here above 80° F.  My comfort is important, but not nearly as important as my computers.  Besides, I sleep better with the air on.

I doubt anyone checks as much as me, but if you've noticed my Seti@home numbers dropping, it's not my fault.  Apparently my newer computer wasn't getting all the work it could have because of a problem with the Seti@home servers.  Blah blah, problem was eventually fixed.  Incidentally, that probably increased the temperature in here by another five degrees or so just from that.

Anyway, still reading, toe still broken, blah blah blah. 

Take care of yourselves,

- Jim

- Jim

I've been working on both of these for a while.  Just thought I should share what I'm doing.  I've been working on both for a few days already.  There's no rush on the Tom Clancy book, but I feel the need to read even when I'm taking a break from reading.  Weird.  Anyway, there you go.

- Jim

I just wanted to mention that despite the whole toe thing, my plan is coming together, though more slowly than I'd hoped.  Too late for some things I suppose, if that hope ever had mattered.  Still, my weight is coming down, I'm getting visibly thinner, and my blood pressure is lowering again. 

Still working on reading though.  That list has gotten insanely long.  I honestly think that if I lost internet access, my library card was stolen, my legs were cut off, and I could live forever, I'd still never run out of things to read.  Or at least, not for many, many lifetimes. 

I'd better hurry along then.

- Jim

Contrary to popular belief, I will be fine.  I'm not happy about current circumstances, but as there's nothing I can do change them, I'll just go on.

- Jim

From now on, if someone I'm debating doesn't understand the square peg/round hole concept, I'm going to let them win.  The forces of truth and justice can never defeat ignorance of that magnitude.  Seriously, what Kindergarten did these people attend? 

- Jim

OW MY TOE HURTS!  ARRRRGGGHHH!

Okay, I'm done.  That's all the toe-related stuff I have.  I think it's healing, but one way or another it takes time to do so.  In the meantime, though I try to limit using it or aggravating it, there are a hundred different ways we use our toes that we never realize until it hurts to do so.

According to my handy countdown clock on my iGoogle page, there are just 93 days until the end of the year.  Yes, this is THAT post.  Time is running out and I'm trying to get things done.  Just wanted to mention that I'm cutting down on many other things in order to finish what I can.  It's a losing battle, of course, but it's a battle I'm used to waging.  It's not that I don't work hard the rest of the year (though I suppose one might argue that), it's that I always bite off more than I can chew. 

I also make everything harder than it needs to be when I do so.  Half of what I do pertains to process and it's amazing how much time I waste trying to perfect a process that is nearly pointless to the end product. 

Back when I was a Gamemaster for MERP (or Dungeon Master if you prefer), there was a... deadline for getting adventure sites done.  It was a hard deadline, since we had to play the next day or whenever, but it was typically more of an outline for suggested sites rather than a totally finished product.  The problem was that if I sketched the left hand side in detail, the players would invariably choose to go right just because they secretly knew how to mess with my mind.  The other part of that is that if I worked inhumanly hard and finished everything, the players would invariably fight each other outside of the adventure site and thus ruin all of the work.  Artifacts and adventure sites rarely repeated in multiple locations, else they wouldn't be called artifacts or adventure sites.

Still, it's the process that rankled me the most.  Looking at it, I saw where the holes were, even if the players accidentally forgot to find them.  The problem is that there are always holes.  The universe keeps expanding and there are always things and places that aren't sketched to completion.  Indeed, the whole "sketch" part is part of the problem.

Ah well.  This post ended up being longer than I wanted it to be.  Must be the OCD thing kicking up again.  Anyway, it's time to get to work.

- Jim

I know I'm weird, but I am insane about books.  When I get any extra money, I try and buy books.  When I create those to-do lists, half of them are books.  I like to read.

Well, when my Sister's house burned during the summer, they lost all of their books.  The ones that survived the fire were destroyed by water and mold damage.  I don't have the money to replace anything as yet, but since I'd planned on reading the Harry Potter series before the end of the year, I decided to give them my books when I'm done with them.  They got the first three, plus the fifth book already, since I had two copies of them.  The rest are waiting for me to finish them.

It's also good because somehow I've managed to hurt my back.  It may be because of the fall, either directly or indirectly.  I hit my toe while I sleep, which seems to cause me to contort into weird positions during sleep.  I've caught myself doing it.  Between the two, my back is killing me.  Every single day for the past... week, at least.  One day or even a couple days isn't enough for me to mention in a post, but this is crazy.

The toe continues to look messed up.  I'll give it time, mostly because I consider most doctors worthless, but the toe looks... deviated.  Not just broken, but possibly broken in a couple places and not healing straight/right.  It's like a road they built from two ends, but when they met, they discovered their measurements were off by ten or twenty feet. 

Anyway, that's about it.  Physical activities are even more severely curtailed because of this.  Damn them.

So Yahoo! reported my email had been hacked.  Conveniently, they upgraded my email from classic to the new crap they have now.  That's it, and the change can't be undone.  Yahoo! wants everyone to change to their new version anyway.  Did I mention that was very convenient?

- Jim

This isn't really the post you think it will be.  I hope.

I had this vague idea of being able to increase mobility.  I don't know how successful I might have been, but there are things I wanted to do.  Unfortunately, the broken toe has prevented that for the time being.  I really don't think it's permanent, but for the time being it means plans are put on hold.

Unfortunately, the timing could have been better.  There was a Suicide Prevention Walk going on that I would have liked to attend.  Despite what people think, I'm not really as anti-social as I seem to be.  Even so, it wasn't about being social - too many of my friends and peers have chosen that way out.  I'm being somewhat hypocritical here, but that's what I do best.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to go.  I probably wouldn't have been able to do the whole thing with my knee anyway, but there's just no way I'd make it past the car ride there now.  Walking sucks, but the whole wearing a shoe with this thing is what really gets it.  Sheesh.

I just want to say that I would have been there if I could have.  I'm not entirely sure it would have been for the right reasons, but some of those people lost were friends. 

- Jim

Mentor397 - The Toe Blog.

It's not meant to be this way, but this is what it seems to be.  Sorry about that.

It's been a couple weeks since I fell.  It's been a week since I cracked the toe again, or at least, it made a cracking noise when I abused it.  Over the last couple of days, it has mysteriously swollen and gotten darker.  Did I do something while I slept?  Is it something more nefarious?  I have no idea.  I'll give it a couple days and if I don't go insane from lack of sleep, I will probably head to the doctor. 

Ooops.

- Jim

Now that I've scared everyone away, I may have changed my mind about this blog.  I certainly like the idea more than I like the idea of Facebook.  People come here if they want to know things.  It's not like I'm shouting to get their attention.

The toe was injured again.  If it wasn't broken before, it certainly is now.  I'll be limiting my exercise for a while, I guess.

- Jim

As a follow up to the last post, I am nearly fine now.  The muscles don't really ache any more, the knee is a little sore, but I'm sure it's just a bruise now.  The toe is probably broken, but the one next to it is likely only bruised as well.  So, I'll be on light duty - well, I've not really been anything but light for years, but I'll be on lighter duty for a week or two, but I expect I'll be back to normal after that.

- Jim

I don't know if this is a reason enough to write, but some people actually follow events in my life.  This post then is for them.

Blah blah, I injured myself six years ago.  Hurt my knee at work.  The surgery to fix it didn't really fix it and as a result, I am legally disabled.  It's lame (well nearly so), but it's what it is.  I've been trying to change that over time, with mixed results.  I'm not ever going to run again or do jumping jacks, but I thought that perhaps with exercise and effort, I could at least get around on my own. 

Now, six years of effort sounds like a lot, and at times it was, but I'm not active by any means.  I am more active than I was, I suppose.  Or I was more active than I was, if that makes sense.

Blah blah, this story takes too long.  I went out on Wednesday evening to roll up the windows in the car.  This shouldn't be a big thing and it wasn't really meant to be.  I didn't wear shoes though and in addition to walking weird because of my injured knee, I walked funny because I have sensitive feet.  The stones in the path leading to the car aren't well-seated, and one was loose.  I tripped when the stone flipped over, stumbled when my toe caught on the stone and landed on the cement driveway.

I thought I died.  For a minute I was sure I would.  I've always said that I had just one fall in me left, and apparently I was wrong.  At the moment though, I'm even more positive the next one will kill me.  I landed on my "good" knee and twisted/hyperextended a couple of the toes on that foot as well.  The rest of the injuries - skinned knee and elbow, bruised shoulder, are really inconsequential.  At least one toe is probably broken, the other one is probably just bruised.  The "good" knee is probably just bruised as well, but being the good knee, it's put more pressure on the bad knee.

So, in short, I'm probably not going to be a ballerina any time soon.

All in all, I'm fine.  I walk a little more unsteadily.  I sleep even less as there don't seem to be any sleeping positions that don't aggravate something somewhere.   Climbing into bed is an adventure and may lead to me killing myself right there.  Anyway, as I said, some people have heard things and I wanted to lay things to rest before people got too worried.

- Jim