Fred Sanford and I packed up the pick up and the Deluxe Luxury New Beetle with the shit we collected since last year.

This year we were prepared. There was a place in the basement were things collected that were more or less intended for the sale. There wasn't the usual running around at the last minute looking for the crap to get rid of.

Sold some of the old vintage (and not that old) light fixtures that I'd removed as I redid the bedrooms and such.

I sold my ancient dual deck Pioneer tape deck for $5. Alas, nobody wants a $5 Pioneer laser disc player.

The 27" heavy as hell TV sold for $25. The art decoish glass top coffee table from the old House of Love III sold. One of my former robot shelves from the Attic of Love sold.

My old Olympus won't read smart media any more so I could no sell it. :-( Lotsa early robot photos and silent movies taken with that.

The T's stopped by.

It was actually quite a successful yard sale. We brought very little back.

I love Day Zero!

32?

I am so f'n old!

Yup. A new Panasonic 42" Plasma HDTV for the bedroom.

Hopefully it will have the level of picture quality I need and will work well without cable TV since we do not have cable upstairs.

I need to call the doctor's office to get the exact scoop since having the NalaMatka regurgitate the doctor's phone conversation to her no doubt left something out.

Well, as close as I can tell:

Floaters
The joint had debris that was floating all around and he cleaned out everything.

Kneecap
He scraped my kneecap of the arthritis it had.

Cartilage
As best as I can relate, they drilled several holes into my remaining cartilage in the hopes that it will produce new growth, and likely lubrication for the joint. I'm not sure if they did this on the medial or lateral sides or both.

Arthritis
The joint is fairy arthritic and was in pretty bad shape. They cleaned up a lot of the arthritis.

ACL
They inspected the scarred up tear of my ACL but beyond that I don't know what else they may have done.

So my joint is in an immobilizer from by ankle to my upper thigh. As far as I can tell I will need to wear this a lot during the next 4 weeks.

I'll be happy when I can get some simple range of motion. Without the immobilizer, and a simple knee bend, I can drive and do many other things without having to put any weight on the joint.

Maybe after the holiday I'll discuss short-term options with the surgeon such as this.

- - -

The part I hate is that it will be very hard to get around for a very long period of time.

Giga will likely have to drive me to and from work every day (starting Dec 30), and getting up and down the stairs will be a real pain in the ass.

I forgot how utterly horrible moving a fat ass such as mine around on crutches can be. I have no idea how long I have to avoid weight-bearing pressure on the joint but trying to pivot and navigate with the knee immobile sucks the balls of nastiness.

Thankfully I'm not in any real pain. I can feel some of the obvious surgery pain but since I can't really bend the knee I can't say for certain if the pain I've been having these past few months is still here.

So.

That's it.

I don't know how bad it'll be to try and get to Glass City for the holidays and all the other things planned for the next few days.

Getting any more decent Christmas shopping is out and I may have to send out Giga to get randomly shitty gifts for others. At least I got his stuff online and it is arriving piecemeal.

In a way that is a lot better and I won't be coming home after 7 but this going without coffee is gonna kill me.

Yes. I know some of the few people who may still read this site that I barely update probably don't know but I'm having knee surgery.

I'm pretty much a physical mess right now due to the back problems of 2008 and then the knee problems since August.

Let's not go into the 60 pounds I put back on because I haven't been able to exercise since July.

Yeah.

Long time no write.

Been hurty and stuff.

Especially hurty now that Pierogi Day is over with and the almost 2 days of standing on a bad knee are confined to history.

There were a lot of people over throughout the day yesterday rolling dough, cutting dough, stuffing pierogies, boiling pierogies, etc.

Jeff had all kinds of issues learning the dough routine. However, the attachment to the Kitchen-Aid make a massive difference.

Flour fighting and other off-color shennanigans were the rule of the day for the kitchen.

The dining room became the center of stuffing activity.

Arjun is now of the age where he can particpate in such activities and he not-so-much made but assisted-in-making several pierogies.

Even though there was probably 10 solid hours of pierogi making going on we didn't make quite as many as last year.

Still... it turned out fun and crazy.

Definitely more insane than in years past.

You can thank the wine for that.

It is freezing and we've not had our first day with actual accumulation.

Winter has arrived in the Cowlands.

Health experts have long known that drinking red wine can have such positive benefits as reducing blood vessel damage, lowering the risk of heart attack, and preventing harmful LDL cholesterol from forming. But researchers at the Northwestern University Department of Preventive Medicine have recently found that the consumption of four to six glasses of red wine, most notably at dinner or a family function, may be linked to totally going off on one's mom...

...The positive effects of wine consumption were seen in as little as three hours, with 86 percent of participants showing greater resistance to unsolicited career advice, 77 percent displaying increased mental function in the area of the brain devoted to reminding you why Dad left you in the first place, and 60 percent demonstrating less concern to "play this little happy-happy game anymore."...

...The Northwestern team is currently in the process of securing funding to determine what ingredient in bourbon enables one to finally wrestle one's stepfather to the ground.

Happy Day After Thanksgiving!