Catching Up

I just spent a block of time configuring the look of my LJ, using some of the new stuff that's available... and realized at the end of it that I'm the only one who'll ever even notice it. I mean, 99% of the people reading this read it in their own Livejournals, and therefore in their own configurations. There are a few who read this like they would the old online journals (Hi Ardellis! Hi husband of Ardellis! Hi Dad!), but for the most part it's the content people are getting, not the form.

There's something nice about that. Something pure. Something that goes back to the pre-web days here on the network. Back when it really was what you said, not how you said it.

On the other hand, I miss the power of the old Journal. It was a lot more cumbersome to update, but the look and feel and ancillary junk on each page was your own. It was a solid thing you made yourself, not something remade for every reader. That was nice.

I suppose I could do something with Movable Type and get back to that point. It's what Bill did, and it seems to work beautifully for him. I know some others who did the same thing (the yarnhead textile blog and Piranha's Tank leaps to mind), and I got some Movable Type experience setting up my writing page (e-mail me for access)... but it's not the same.

Besides, Movable Type supports RSS, and RSS means people would be reading via their Friends pages anyway. It's what I do with many of the above. So forget it. The days of diary pages and online journals are over. Content is king, and Livejournalling, Blogging and other quick fix, simple solution paths rule the roost. We learn to live with it.

So how the Hell am I?

Not bad.

Work has been astoundingly stressful. The kids get back Monday, and we hand computers to them. But, at this point in the year that's always the case. Hopefully this year (unlike last year) work will even out, improve and become fun again. We can dream, right? Otherwise, the divot taken out of me surgically has almost completely healed (it went from over an inch long, half an inch wide and over an inch deep to just about thumbnail sized with no appreciable depth. Given a few more days, they'll slap a bandaid on it and tell me it'll just get better). And, more importantly, I had my first appointment at Dartmouth-Hitchcock for the Gastric Bypass surgery.

It was first thing in the morning, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock is over two hours away, so I was on the road by five in the morning last Thursday. It was pouring rain, which wasn't pleasant, and I hadn't had much sleep all told. But I got up there.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital is freaking huge. It's got a lot of green glass in it, and includes several banks and a food court, near to a bookstore, a general store, two clothing boutiques and a travel agency. In a hospital. A primary response hospital, no less. A critical care facility, and a teaching hospital connected to a medical school itself connected to an Ivy League college. It is the best in the world, and knows it, and challenges pitiful contenders like the Mayo Clinic to dispute it. It is Mecca for those who need the powerful medicine, and I have made the start of my pilgrimage.

The nurse practitioner and the dietician both had their cracks at me, and they were very good at what they did. They made sure I understood what was being considered, what it could do, what it could not, what I had tried in the past, and what I wanted for the future. The nurse practitioner in particular had a good way of checking the depth of my interest -- she made me describe the procedure to her, pointing to a mockup of the digestive tract while I did it, and then made me explain the risks to her in detail, showing my knowledge of what could go wrong. She was amused I rated 'death' significantly lower than 'does not eliminate the chance of recidivism.' But really, of the two, I'd rather die than go through all this and have it fail, so there.

It went well. It went very well. I was an extremely strong candidate they felt. They further felt that the HMO will come into line. Their understanding is there's a technicality in my way -- that I haven't shown a recent six month block of weigh-ins and efforts to do this o my own. Only, I've spent the summer trying to lose weight and being weighed in by my Doctor (since he has a scale I can use), so I'm well on my way to eliminating this requirement in the worst case scenario.

Note that I do not need to lose weight in this. Further, if I do lose weight, it won't count against me. Go figure.

So we're proceeding, and it all looks good. There is cause for hope.

Otherwise... I've watched a lot of West Wing and I've played a lot of Soulcalibur II. And I've tried to get rest and deal with work stress.

Like I said, there is cause for hope. We keep trying.

A couple of writing tchotchkes

It's been a night to do a little bookkeeping and move some of my older writing into accessible places. For one, I put Chapter Three of The Old Ways on my writing page. It's still not new writing, but it needed to be done.

Secondly, I created an LJ Community called visc_historical. This is a character journal for a Nobilis character I originally created for compassrose. I wanted to continue telling stories from his point of view without referencing Compassrose in the process, so this seemed like a good idea. As part of this, I reclaimed the post I'd done in his voice and reposted it here.

Enjoy!

Watch *this.*

:: how jedi are you? ::

Wuff

Sudden, unexplained anxiety attack, just this side of panic.

Yay.