_www.FantasyLibrary.com [Visit Who Is Joseph Teller?] Synthesis & Synchronicity 030

Synthesis & Synchronicity #30

Life Took A Left Turn on me this week, as I found myself unable to literally open my right eye on Wednesday morning. It had swollen severely for what were unknown reasons, after a minor irritation the night before. Kiralee had to stay home to tend to me thru the day and help me work thru the maze of our HMO to get a medical referral to an optimologist on Thursday (and had to lose half a day of work on Thursday as well to go with me to the doctor).

It turned out I had developed an infection in my eye, or rather in the oil gland of the eyelashes of the lid, which had led to the swelling etc. They put me on anti-biotics, in the form of both pills and eyedrops, and warned me that if things did not clear up in the next week that they would have to do minor surgery to correct the problem.

On top of this Kiralee had, in the interium, also developed severely itchy, watery eyes, and was afriad that she might have also gotten the virius. Lucky for us, her condition proved to be unrelated and easily handled just by an ointment (it was more of an allergic reaction), so both of us didn't end up with being stuck unable to see etc.

I hate being incapacitated in any way, I'm a very independent person and I hate to fail people that depend on me for things. Its now the weekend and I can again use my eyes effectively, but can't over use them (reading or writing for at most an hour at a time, and then resting them for an equal amount of time afterwards). We had to postpone this weekend's roleplaying game, which was to be the start of my Bureau 13 campaign, since I couldn't work on my various preparations for it and would probably have had a few problems with GMing with the read/rest cycle.

I'm also still paniced over the eye surgery thing, which could leave me minue one eye (and some depth perception) for a week or more afterwards. Doctors and surgery scare me, always have, and I'm normally a fairly healthy person (I have NEVER been hospitalized overnight in my life except when I was born). Yes, I have a bunch of hereditary problems and conditions (Double Scoliosis, IBC, Allergies, Arthritis, etc.) . I've also had a few injuries, but never any major diseases, broken bones and only about 12 stitches (not counting dental surgery). I've only had one life-threatening situation to my health (dental related). I even avoided most major childhood diseases (except chicken pox), and only get colds and flu once or twice a year.

So Doctors scare me. Especially the oh-so-calm attitude when they talk about something as delicate as whether one might risk permanent eye injury! I've had friends and relatives who have died under the knife or in recovery from such for various things, and so surgery in general scares me in a nasty way... enough that I was suffering from near blackout reaction after leaving the doctors office at Mount Auburn Hospital. We ended up sitting on a couch in the area outside the coffee shop for a half hour so I could get myself back in shape for traveling after the appointment.

Words Without Paper So while I've been recovering from this medical problem, I've been catching up on listening to my old time radio recordings (mostly the Shadow this time out) and the Doctor Who related audio dramas that are listed in the 'Recently Listened To' box. The Excelis Dawns one is a two disk set, the first of a trilogy, and features Peter Davidson, Katy Manning, and Anthony Stewart Head (better known as Giles on the tv show 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'). It is definitely one of the better of the audio dramas (basically radio plays on CD disk) produced by Big Finish productions. I have the other two sets of the trilogy, each of which features a different doctor who, but all of which feature Anthony Stewart Head, which should prove interesting.

I won't say much about the plot, except that it introduces a very interesting female character, Iris Wildthyme, who adds some interesting twists to the Doctor Who universe.

I've always been a fan of radio drama/audio drama, and I'm glad I had picked these up before my eye infection, so I wouldn't be completely bored and useless to everyone while recovering. Not being able to do my usual cooking, cleaning, errand running, shopping, and household operations work during all this is an extreme annoyance to me. I look anxiously to being returned to normal.

I have a stack of 3 more CDs of Doctor Who related material to enjoy before I run out. My eye will be back to normal before then, if all goes well.

Basement of Doom : We've now been given a new overall cost for the basement of doom project on our condo building by the developer. We're now looking at $140k for the entire thing Choke! of which Kiralee, Cindy & I are expected to come up with 20-30% (depending on where costs end up in regards to time, materials etc.) This will basically eat up nearly our entire home equity loan potential in the process, and is about 40k more than I had originally guestimated (and some 60k more than the other owners had thought it would cost from initial pricing they had been given).

The second stage has begun as of yesterday (Cleanup from Stage 1 where they replaced the main support beam) with a full dumpster of trash now sitting in front of our house. This puts our laundry room offline for a while to come, meaning that its back to hauling stuff to the laundromat (again) for the forseeable future.

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