Minus a spleen

It's official, I met with the surgeon this morning and have been penciled in his appointment book on November 21st, the day before Thanksgiving. So when the rest of America is gorging on turkey and pumpkin pie, I'll be in recovery. Amazing thing is that its pretty cool, its laparoscopic splenectomy. They make 3 incision for tubes with video cameras and lasers, its kind of amazing. Plus I'll be able to ski before the New Year. My mother is coming to stay with me for 2 weeks, honestly that stresses me out more. Most amazing after all is done, I'll probably no longer be a feather weight drinker, I'll have way more energy, so I'll be able to ski faster and harder, climb more mountains and have all around less worries. More to come for now I have to do the 101 things on my list before Nov 21st.

other great ideas that required effort

1. going back to school to become a doctor, as if 8 yrs without a paycheck would be easy

2. sewing

3. backpacking trip to india, apparently you need a visa

please feel free to send me more of my great ideas

Blame it on Pete

I spent the weekend home remodeling, okay, so I don’t even know if you can call it that, I, we, Pat (being the only nice person in all of SLC) and I spent all Saturday afternoon scrubbing each individual brick with wire brushes and rags and drinking beers. We like to believe that we completed 1/3 of the project, though I think that is a highly optimistic evaluation. Though to my credit because Pat doubted the whole project and doubted me, yeah he hasn’t learned yet to never doubt me, the cleaned part looks so incredibly cool that for a very short moment I wanted to have more exposed brick.

I’m a procrastinator or more like I have all these great ideas but when I actually start executing them they always require a lot more effort and time than in my plans. So when Pete was living with me he nicked one of the walls with his countless bikes. A rational person would have patched it up and it would have been perhaps a 2 hr project with paint matching. But I am not a rational person, not even close; I decided to tear all the plaster off the wall and to make it an even bigger project the adjacent wall, with a rubber mallet and a crow bar. All the exterior walls at my place have the potential to be exposed brick; the problem is it’s harder than you think. So when Julie and Zac were here, they helped finish taking off the plaster and carried the heavy buckets of concrete to the dumpster that was last March. To make it worse Julie and Zac didn’t have a choice in the matter, as they were staying in the guest bedroom and it was under construction, though they are good people too and I bet they would have helped if it wasn’t an eminent situation.

I talked to the people at Ace and they said that I would need to have lots of ventilation when I actually sealed the brick, okay fair enough a good excuse to put it off till the summer. But in the summer it was way to hot to do anything but take road trips to the Uintas. Last Friday I get an email from my friend Charlie, he lives in London. He and his girlfriend are booking flights to come ski the greatest snow on earth, they aren’t coming until the end of January, but once again everything takes longer than you think its going to. So I decided that I have to finish the spare bedroom. I was even thinking of going to Home Depot and hiring a Mexican or 2. Once Pat heard my brilliant idea, he decided to help thinking that its not the safest thought in the world, remember Elizabeth Smart, that was here.

Decisions...

So, how did the trend for pointed-toe shoes start?

Manolo who? Long before they ever made an appearance on the TV show "Sex and the City," pointed shoes were favored by Polish nobles, who introduced the fashion to England on a diplomatic visit in the 1300s.
The shoes, dubbed "crackowes" or "poulaines" -- after Kraków, Poland -- were so long that a chain running from the toe to the knee was often required to keep them from dragging.
In 1363 the English attempted to rein in the look by law, assigning shoe spans to social classes. Commoners could sport footwear with toes of up to six inches, while those in the royal ranks were allowed a full two feet in length.

I thought it was appropriate, since I am Polish and am in an internal debate right now.

So ignoring prices, because that way both shoes become ridiculous. Should I keep these,

http://www.zappos.com/n/p/p/7270305.html , in the brown, staying true to my roots.

Or should I get these, since they are more practical. Since when do I consider cowboy boots practical? But honestly they totally are.

http://www.sundancecatalog.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=199&itemType=PRODUCT&iMainCat=6&iSubCat=46&iProductID=199

Gin and Tonic?

Oh.. I love trivia. So I found myself picking up tonic water and limes at the grocery store this week. Melissa(my downstairs neighbor) and I have decided to go on a diet, so we figured we would substitute red wine/beer with gin and diet tonic with lots of lime, cuz its cold season and you have to get your vitamin C somewhere. That’s about the extent of our diet, I added doing sit ups during commercials but Melissa has TIVO so she will be exercising her index finger.

The label on the bottle caught my attention, Contains QUININE. I’m not a doctor, though I wouldn’t mind marrying one. Anyway quinine is used to treat malaria, I know this because it’s also a blood thinner and if I were ever to get malaria I’d die, either from the quinine use to relieve its symptoms or the parasites in my body. Malaria is spread by mosquitoes, but only female mosquitoes bite. What I can’t figure out, is how do male mosquitoes survive if they can’t suck some refreshing blood?

Quinine comes from the bark of some tree that grows in the Andes, it also gives tonic its bitter. Tonic as we know it was invented by the British when they decided to colonize India and Africa, gin and tonic was used as a prophylactic against malaria. Those British are clever.

a little gross..

Last night I had the TV on, I was kind of watching Criminal Justice: SVU. The SVU stands for Special Victims Unit and its a show about sex crimes. I think the whole world is secretly a little dirty minded. Anyway I have ADD so the show, even though its mildly perverted, didn't keep my attention. What did was the herpe med commercials during it. Why are they always so hot and happy, if I had herpes I wouldn't be smiley. What does is say about the folks who regularly watch that show. I think I heard/read a statistic somewhere sometime that said 1 in 4 people have herpes. I've never seen it. So I'm hanging out with the other 3 everytime, or the stat is wrong. If any of you are informed let me know. I think the reason that I'm intrigued is because dating in your 30's is hard, its all the riff raff so its only a matter of time that I come across it, right? By the way, I'm so not like the people in the commercials, it would definately be a deal breaker to me.

Okay now its five minutes later..

From the Center of Disease Control and Prevention

How common is genital herpes?

Results of a nationally representative study show that genital herpes infection is common in the United States. Nationwide, at least 45 million people ages 12 and older, or one out of five adolescents and adults, have had genital HSV infection. Between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, the number of Americans with genital herpes infection increased 30 percent.
Genital HSV-2 infection is more common in women (approximately one out of four women) than in men (almost one out of five). This may be due to male-to-female transmissions being more likely than female-to-male transmission.

How do people get genital herpes?

HSV-1 and HSV-2 can be found in and released from the sores that the viruses cause, but they also are released between outbreaks from skin that does not appear to be broken or to have a sore. Generally, a person can only get HSV-2 infection during sexual contact with someone who has a genital HSV-2 infection. Transmission can occur from an infected partner who does not have a visible sore and may not know that he or she is infected.
HSV-1 can cause genital herpes, but it more commonly causes infections of the mouth and lips, so-called "fever blisters." HSV-1 infection of the genitals can be caused by oral-genital or genital-genital contact with a person who has HSV-1 infection. Genital HSV-1 outbreaks recur less regularly than genital HSV-2 outbreaks.

fall cleaning....

Weekend was kind of nasty, it was definitely an indoor weekend. Supposedly they turned the heat on in my building but Daisy was shivering this morning. I’m okay, since Jen worked at Patagucci last year I’ve got all the latest and greatest in poly tech layers. After -23 degree weekend digging snow pits this morning was balmy, its my dog that was shivering, apparently fur doesn’t keep you as warm as capilene.

I set up my sewing machine in the nursery, so now the nursery is a closet/sewing/financial planning room. I also kind of decided that I really want one of these

http://www.potterybarn.com/products/p8812/index.cfm?pkey=gTHMBRT

(as soon as I learn to post pictures I will)

I think that it would look fabulous with my woodwork and most importantly I think I would feel way more princess if that was the bed I was getting out of. Not only that but there would be the excitement of who would be the first guy that I would have sex with in my new bed.