Friday, November 21, 2008

General news

Which probably no one cares about, but o well...

(1) Our heat, which has been broken for who knows how long, we only found out it was broken when we tried to turn it on last week, and have been freezing in the dark since, is finally fixed again.  Yay!

(2) My bad shoulder is scheduled to be mended, by out-patient surgery, on December 3rd, about which procedure I have mixed feelings.  The guy in my class who just had the same procedure done says ow-ow-ow, and boy if I think it hurts NOW.  OTOH, boy does it hurt now.  On the third hand, December 3rd is right before the semester ends, and how will I write on the board for the last week of class?  Fume, fume.

(3) The kid is studying evolution, on her own.  Well, I will admit I craftily left a couple of kids' books about evolution lying about on the table in the living room where we all do our school work...then when she read the first one and came to me saying, yo, this is cool, I responded with just the right touch of idle oh, yeah, it is, huh? which one must use with the ten-year-old kid if one is to get her solidly on the hook...but man, I am so pleased.  I was twelve when I started reading about evolution, and it started me down the track to my general love of science that has never gone away. (If I could only do math, you know, maybe I'd be an actual scientist.  Instead, I just write about them.)  She's read all (which means three) the books the Pork Smith Public library had for kids on evolution -- they have no books for adolescents, huh, imagine that -- and I found one book at the local bookstore that wasn't an OOOO-Evolution-is-EEEEEvil book (Evolving Planet, it's pretty good) and got her that.  Now I'm waiting for the books PZ recommended over on his site, many of which I scored on Paperback Swap, to come in the mail.

(4) How did the end of the semester get so close? Must be all the Vicodin I've been doing.

(5) Now that the semester is drawing to a close, I need more books to read.  Who has suggestions?


9 comments:

sugaredharpy said...

Well, I just procured for my partner's daughter a lot of books on Dr. Seuss. I kept trying to read them at red lights. One, in particular, I can't wait to get my hands back on after she's done writing a paper that's a collection of essays about the man:

http://www.amazon.com/Sneetches-Whos-Good-Dr-Seuss/dp/0786403888

As for your shoulder and heat, Oh noes! I hope they give you all the Vicodin you need!

tonkelu said...

What are you having done to your shoulder? Is it the rotator cuff surgery?

delagar said...

It's sort of rotator cuff surgery -- my shoulder guy, who is about 12, says he can't see a tear on the MRI; but he says that tears don't always show up on the MRI. He says I have a "bumpy" clavicle, and that my tendons are "crappy," so he's going to go in with the arthoscope and "shave down" the bumps on my wicked clavicle and have a look at the rotator cuff from the inside. He says the bumps might be causing the pain, and if so this might help. Or it might be a tear that the MRI didn't catch, in which case they can fix it when they see it. My own personal consultant (Hi, Zelda!) thinks it might be bone spurs: that's why my clavicle is bumpy. Anyway, once they get in there, I'm hoping they can figure out how to fix it, because as much fun as eating all this Vicodin has been, it's not been enough to deal with how fucking much my shoulder is hurting these days.

Which leads to another question: why WON'T doctors give you enough pain medication to deal with how much things actually hurt?

And yes, I do know the answer. Fucking War on Drugs.

Anonymous said...

Germaine Greer's *Shakespeare's Wife*
Bill Bryson, *Shakespeare: the World as Stage"
Geraldine Brooks, *March* and *The People of the Book*
Lighter but still smart? Anything by Elinor Lipman; I'm reading her two most recent but of course can't remember their titles at the moment. *The Inn at Lake Devine* is her best, but I also love *Isabel's Bed.*

zelda1 said...

Cooper Sun is real good. Also, if ya want to read what the young girls are reading, there's the Twilight series. Oh, and Speak is pretty good.

zelda1 said...

Expect something from the other liberal professor real soon, like Monday.

Anonymous said...

So sorry about your painful shoulder situation. Maybe your doctor prescribes "not quite enough" painkillers out of puritanism or "the war on drugs," but there could be other reasons.

Assuming that your vicodin is really hydrocodone, you are taking acetominophen in every pill. The opioid is great, but you can only take so much acetominophen without damaging your liver. You'll be on this stuff for weeks, very likely, which is plenty of time to do yourself harm at high enough doses. Why they compound opioids with that nasty stuff, I have no idea.

Also, if you really take enough to stop hurting, you probably can't function in the world as you need to. If you take enough of it long enough, you can develop a tolerance that requires you to take more and more, and even start developing some allergic reactions or other unpleasant effects.

It's bizarre that the puritans out there are so concerned with "addiction" that they ignore the problems that really might come of long-term painkiller use. I think it must be very difficult to become addicted to vicodin though, and I doubt if you have enough to accomplish it.

I share your desire for a painkiller that actually kills the pain without undesirable side effects, but after years of living with a chronic illness, I don't think there is any such thing. Your doctor probably deliberately prescribed you enough to take the edge off but not make you pain-free for your own good, as aggravating as that might seem.

Hope you heal quickly. As for reading, I finally broke down and bought several of Syd Field's screenwriting guides. They are inspirational.

--L

Sarasvati Fautheree said...

Freaking Twilight grrrrrrrr....

1) should--owie! here's hoping for help...

2) heat isn't that necessary. what's wrong with you? didn't you notice that blue is a really flattering color for the tips of your fingers and nose?

3) book recommends...i'm currently slowly (becuase of fucking work) making my way through Chuck Palahniuk's "Rant." For pomo zaniness, amazing characters, and sheer fun, you can't beat Palahniuk with a stick, yo.

zelda1 said...

The thing about Vicodin: they mix it with tylenol because tylenol isn't as likely to upset the stomach as say asprin and it isn't as addictive as some think. The thing about drug addiction is that those who really need the pain meds rarely use them to get high; therefore, there is less likely a chance that the drug will cause an addiction. How do I know this? Well, glad you should ask. I've been taking vicodin for ten or more years and can go weeks without taking one pill but when I hurt, I take them and long before the pain becomes too severe. This all comes to me through information from my pain management doctor. So, fucking don't worry about the pills, take them--just follow the doctor's order. And Sara, ya know that reading twilight has more to do with literacy than pleasure. So it's overwritten and predictable and filled with very obvious metaphors...well, it is written for young girls. I would rather see them read the entire series of twilight than not read. My god, have ya seen how big these books are and kids are reading them; actually, they are devouring them. Enough said.