Too Long For Twitter

Three or so weeks this time. . .things have been good. And not so good, but the not so good is really not so bad.

For years now I've been getting this recurring pain in my feet, usually when the weather changes significantly. I've always attributed this to joint pain/arthritis from complications coming out of the many ankle injuries I've had from when I played volleyball. It turns out that I've been partly right all along--it has been an arthritis of sorts. The past two weeks I was suffering some incredible foot pain, often so bad that it made me physically ill as I tried to tough it out as I usually do. Eventually it grew so great that I decided to go to the emergency room right after work (at 2a.m.); my McMinion and buddy Lex did me a massive solid by coming with me (a solid that proved necessary once the pain meds they gave me in the e.r. made it quite impossible for me to drive). It turns out I suffer from gout. Look it up on Wikipedia. Foot still hurts, but being tended to properly and feels much better.

On the moving front. . .Denise and I eventually grew so frustrated and tired of the search that we decided to put the move off at least another year, waiting to see how other things pan out before making the ultimate decision as to when and where to move for the long term. The positive in this is that we then took the money we had saved for the move and did some much needed home refurbishing. It actually almost feels like we have a new home anyway.

This week has a trip to San Francisco that, while necessary, I'm really not looking all that forward to (and a pre-emptive massive thanks to our friends for both helping with childcare and the loan/swap of transportation. Neither of our cars have air conditioning and that alone would make the journey misery); with a repeat trip later in August.

Oh, and a quick shout out congratulations to one of my favorite people, Adrienne, for the birth of her second child!

That's enough brain dump for now.

Petting Zoo

Four of my last five posts were about television. I promise I actually have a life--it just isn't always all that exciting. Snippets of now and the future:

We've begun the slow process of packing. Anyone who has a lengthy relationship and has kids I'm sure can sympathize with just how monumentally more difficult it is to change living situation. For us, our current lease ends this summer and we've decided that, for the money we pay we would prefer a home that isn't surrounded by screaming college kids most nights of the week. Hopefully something with more yard for the kids. At any rate, packing takes forever, and we've only just begun. Hopefully we'll find something that meets our needs and our desires as much as possible.

This week Rael's preschool decided to surprise all the kids with the gift of a goldfish. A word of advice--if you plan to enter the teaching field, or to work with kids, do not give a child a pet, no matter how low-maintenance (ha! Shel can attest to how not low-maintenance fish actually are), without first making sure it's ok with the child's parent. Rael was ecstatic at his new fish and had it named and loved before he even left the classroom (he named it Goldy). I, on the other hand, not so happy that my kid now has a life to care for, and an extremely fragile life at that. I think it requires a certain level of audacity I just can't quite fathom, like cutting someone else's kid's hair without making sure the kid's parent is cool with it. Sadly, Goldy survived a bare 24 hours and Rael had to experience his first, and for a long time last, Funeral For A Fish.