I still haven’t got the ability to crosppost between this blog, Twitter and FaceBook. It;s not that it isn’t possible, quite a few people do it. It’s that I don’t know what I’m doing.

Not the first time this situation has ever come up.

Facebook has been killing my blogging, so I have decided to add a plug-in that will allow me to crosspost my stuff.  This is a test of that.

I’m a doer.  And borderline ADD.  So normally I’m flitting from one thing to the next and staying busy, even if that doesn’t generally translate into getting alot of things done.  Sitting around the house and not working on it are driving me ever so slightly mad.  It is, of course, getting worse by the day so in a week or so (which would be Christmas Day), I should be a raving lunatic.  I can obviously type and mess around on the computer, but my 4 second attention span is a serious impediment to getting tons done there, either.  Though I have been racking up some pretty serious scores on my brother’s nemesis , Bejeweled Blitz.  The various and sundry painkillers, muscle relaxers and crap that I’m taking make concentrating even harder, so the online poker stuff is increasingly difficult, too. 

I’m getting a little stir crazy.  I’m gonna try to read something which means, essentially, that I’m about to take a nap.  Feel free to call, email, text or drop by whenever you have a second.  I can use the interaction.

My back still hurts from the surgery.  I am cautiously calling the whole thing a success because the pain down my legs is lessened to a certain degree, but I still get some pain.  I’m pretty sure that the current pain is a result of the surgery and may lessen as I heal up.  That’s what I’m hoping.  Emily informed me this morning that I have 14 staples in my back.  I knew that there were a bunch, but 14 is more than I would have guessed.

My Mom just got another knee replacement and has been laid up since Monday.  She came through pretty good and I’m sure she will be up and about and jetsetting the world again soon.

Emily talks so much that I am shocked (!) that there are words left for me to write down.  If there is a finite number of them, she will use them all up at some point.  Jonathan is the exact opposite.  He is just starting to use sentences to communicate, but his progress is remarkable and distinct, so I am very optimistic about him reaching age-appropriate communication skills in the future.  We have long worried about his speech development, but he is plenty clever, so I don’t think he has any delays past his speech.  He runs DVDs and computers at 4 years old, he’s no slouch.

As I said in the last post, I’ve opened up an online T-shirt shop at www.pokertease.biz.  It has clever (IMO) sayings about poker and I think many players will enjoy the sentiments.  Well, the ones wearing the shirts will enjoy it, their opponents, not so much. 

I have guys working outside my house replacing bad fascia and soffits and painting and scraping and generally sprucing things up a bit.  It’s not particularly shocking about how much needs to be done, the house was vacant for some time and quite neglected even prior to it’s vacancy, so nature does take over fairly quickly.  I’m excited about the facelift, it just feels weird watching someone else work on my house.  I’m supposed to be that dude.  A few months from now, I will be right back at it.  Can’t wait.

Poker, poker, poker, poker.  That’s what I’m doing while I’m off.  I’ve already set the bar at profiting 2k during my off time.  I didn’t really base the number on anything, I just pulled it out of my …, ya know.  But now it has been said and that is what I’m going for.  Wish me luck.

I hope that this catches most people back up to my current state of affairs.  See you at the tables, if you play.  If you have anything you want to talk about feel fre to call, email, or comment.  I’ve got time.

I have opened up an online t-shirt shop, catering to the poker world.  Check it out at www.PokerTease.biz

The back surgery was Wednesday and I can still walk and feel my feet, so we’ve eliminated the worst-case scenarios.  There is still quite a bit of pain and discomfort from the surgery itself, but that is not unexpected.  The goal of the operation was to eliminate the sciatic nerve pain and that part has mixed, but optimistic, reviews.  My legs and butt are still painful (though to a lesser degree than pre-op) and some of it might just be the fact that these nerves had been firing away for a year and it might take some time for them to get back to normal.  The extreme number of staples running down my back in two parallel lines at the base look like something out of a cheap horror movie, but nobody said that this would be a looks enhancer.  The scars are going to be pretty nasty.

I’ve already been told by my wife several times that I am a horrible patient.  The doctor told me to not sit around and feel sorry for myself, so I’ve shuffled about and did some small things that my wife still thinks is too much.  I got a severe tongue-lashing last night for putting a dish in the dishwasher.  How is that for ironic?  She’s been trying to get me to do that for over a decade and now that I did it, she fusses at me.

She and I and we will be just fine.  I expect the aches and pains to lessen over the next few weeks and to be back to some sort of normalcy by Spring of next year.  I may not be doing anything extreme, but back to my normal type of grind will be great.

They are ripping the shingles off of my sunporch as I type this.  The water leak that I repaired awhile back had done more damage than I suspected.  Time to rip it off and start over.  They are going to replace the plywood in several spots and reflash and reshingle the sunporch.  This started out as replacing a bit of bad soffitt.  I wish my back didn’t hurt so bad, as I would like to be the one doing this.

It’s sad when you stop going to your own eponymous blog.

Over the past month I’ve lost little bits of myself, both literally and figuratively.  On August 1st I had an appendicitis and had my appendix removed on the same day.  So that was the first little bit.  Honestly, I didn’t mind losing it.  It had become a huge irritation.

On the 6th floor of University Hospital (the surgical recovery floor) they insist you leave any sense of modesty in the elevator.  I got my first sponge bath ever.  I hope it is my last sponge bath ever.  The rather large and matter-of-fact nurse in charge of doing such things really had no time for me to attempt to cling to the last bits of my dignity.  She had other bottoms to clean.

Luckily my appendicitis was caught quickly and handled efficiently so it was done laparoscopically and I was out of the hospital within about 30 hours.  It’s good that I was because one more meal of hospital food would have meant once again eating something that tasted like the paste used to do paper mache projects.  One dish on every tray always had this taste.  In the mornings it would be the oatmeal.  At lunch it would be the dessert.  In the evenings, the soup.  Ick.

The 4 week recovery period has had me sitting around the house more than I like.  We are in the middle of some pretty major renovations to the house and my not being able to be involved has meant putting off and paying extra.  Being behind schedule and over budget are never good things.  Ever.

Many of the things I had planned to do haven’t gotten done.  One thing was to write a ton of posts on the old blog.  Catching everyone up on all the little things that I have failed to share was my top priority.  If you are reading this, you know how that one turned out.  I would write post after post in my head, but when my butt was in the chair it just didn’t happen.  I started to become comfortable with the silence on the blog and that’s probably not a good thing.  It would be best for me to write more and express myself.  However, “best” and “what is really going to happen” rarely collide in my world.  I’m not sure I have the wherewithal to make it happen.

So in lieu of productivity I’ve played poker. Lots of poker. I’m sure there are pros that haven’t played as much as I have in the past month.  It has been a blast.  I’ve played so much that I have taken afternoon naps and dreamed about poker.  I calculate pot odds on things that don’t have a pot or odds.  I’ve forgotten what day it is only to be brought back the schedule of upcoming tournaments.  In other words, I’ve lost myself in the world of online poker.  I liked it.  I’m going to hate coming back out of it.

My goddaughter, Taylor, is in town visiting for a few weeks and we got the chance to meet up with her Monday night.

I really can’t go on enough about what a delightful, smart, beautiful young lady she has become.  I’m so proud of her.