I'm Alive!

So I made it through the surgery okay today. I was never really worried about it, even while going through the physical and talking to the anesthesiologist. When I finally got into the operating room, everything happened so fast. There were about four residents in there, everyone was doing something to me - wrapping my head, sticking me with IVs (I had two, but the second one was put in after I passed out), putting this blow-up thing around my legs, etc. The anesthesiologist said that he was starting the first stuff, which would be "like I just drank a martini" and he put an oxygen mask on me. A few minutes went by, and then I woke up in the recovery room a few hours later.

I was convulsing becuase I was shivering so hard, so the nurses who were there wrapped me up with a heating blanket while I settled down. Some point after that, Summer came in and I think I scared her away pretty quick because my mouth was all bloody following the surgery. I just remember being really thirsty and my mouth and lips felt super dry. The nurse there was really nice and I must have been feeling the effects of the drugs when I sat there contemplating a career change and becoming a nurse :). I dunno, I never really considered it, but the idea is definitely interesting. I don't know how I do with blood and stuff though, never really thought about it.

So I came home and slept for a few hours after drinking some yogurt smoothies and popping painkillers. The Vicadin isn't really making me loopy, but it seems to make me tired, which is fine with me. My face looks like a chipmonk and I don't even recognize me in the mirror!

J. Riley, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Peace Out

I look forward to getting this thing over with, but it is also kind of adventurous for me. What is life like eating food like a normal person? I find myself staring at people eating all the time now, wondering what it must feel like to take a bite of a sandwich and have it actually be cut at that point and being able to chew. My palette may be refined (or was before this arch expander was put in ;o), but my teeth definitely needed some work and tomorrow is a big step in that direction...

Justinho, dreaming of sleeping with my mouth closed and the simple things like losing my lisp and eating a slice of pizza!

Different Strokes

Saturday afternoon I began the second phase of masochistic actions to my jaws by
getting an arch expander installed by my orthondontist. I had had one of these
gizmos when I was a kid, but this one looks a little different and will be used
after the surgeon cracks my face open on Wednesday. I remember this thing not
being very comfortable to wear, but I was not expecting it to be THIS bad!

Other than the fact that it hurt like a mother when he put the thing inside up
upper jaw and secured the bands around my teeth, the thing is just plain
uncomfortable. It fits somewhat like a retainer on my pallete (however that's
spelled) with a little keyhold in the middle that I crank twice a day after
surgery, which will expand my arch. The fact that I have something new covering
my pallete means that 1.) my mouth is constantly drooling (that's hot), 2.) I
can't taste food anymore, 3.) the food that I can taste means that it's stuck
between this arch expander and my pallete and isn't coming out without a fight
(I guess it's good that I can't taste food, I'll just stay home every night and
eat plain rice and save my money), and 4.) I have a *major* speech impediment.
Those of you who thought I had a minor speech impediment before (well, I guess
that's just me and my ortho, since he's the only one that has validated what
I've thought all along) will definitely agree that I can hardly be understood
anymore. It was so bad that when I went to Paul and Cathy's going away party, a
friend of their's who I see a few times a year whispered to them and asked if I
was okay and if I'd had a stroke or something. How awesome is that :-| ....

Despite my personal oral drama, D threw a great going away party for Paul and
Cathy on Saturday night. I felt bad because she had so much food there and I
couldn't help eat the schmorgasbourg of finger foods that she had brought. I
did, however, manage to spill a nearly full cup of Bacardi Lemone and Coke all
over her filing cabinet when my hand got shocked from static electrity when I
was sitting it down to work on her iPod setup on her new computer. Yes, I have
technical support obligations around the clock!

Sunday I pretty much ran some errands and did a ton of laundry after waking up
late. I did some minor cleanup and some IT maintenance on my new PowerMac and
then headed up to the Bronx to help Melissa put together some Ikea pieces she
had bought. I've never actually assembled Ikea stuff before (I think I'm the
only person in my age group who can say that), but it was kinda fun working
with screwdrivers and hammers again. I don't do much of that stuff anymore...

J. Riley, 48-hours until blast-off....

Backblogs

Wow, I haven't seen this screen in a while! A couple small things, like the fact that it's been holiday season and I travelled to the West Coast for Christmas (not a good excuse), I had a friend in town for a week at New Year's time (not a good excuse), I no longer have access to Blogger.com at work (relatively not a good excuse), and I've just been really unmotivated at night lately (lack of yoga? Lack of gym? Not sure why). In any case, I'm back for now and need to update the masses on recent events.

First, while it's pre-occupying my mind, I went and saw my mouth surgeon today to talk about the surgery. Not only did I find out that I might possibly have to have three surgeries, but I also learned that my insurance only covers 70% of the first surgery after I pay my deductible ($500). I mean, that's certainly better than nothing, but for some crazy reason I had it in my mind that it was 100% covered. I knew I shoulda called to ask exactly how much they were covering. With the first surgery costing around $12K...well, do the math. Yea, I'm poor. I'm not as worried about this one though. I'm more worried about the surgery(ies) down the road, the major ones that require me to stay in a hospital overnight vs. this couple-of-hours-until-I-wake-up-and-start-popping-Vicadin minor surgery. Oh boy, this is gonna put a dent in my lifestyle....

Speaking of lifestyle, here are a few of the major events from the past month:

1. Just two days after returning from Brazil, D had her birthday and decided she wanted to do dinner at....Churrascaria Plataforma, a Brazilian BBQ restaurant! Talk about crazy coincidence. I found that the meat was better there than at the place we went in Brazil (as it should be for 3x the price!), but the salad bar was much smaller and not nearly as good as down in Fortaleza. For example, the hearts-of-palm were rather mushy rather than solid like they are down in the Southern Hemisphere
2. Cathy and I got invited up to the Bronx to eat at our friend Melissa's place. We have a bit of a dinner circle going on, and she was up for our visit. She has a real nice apartment about a half hour from my apartment via the subway that she paid about $110K to purchase. Two bedroom, full bath, lots of space, view of the city in the distance. Wow, that was enough to make me consider doing something similar - until my meeting with the surgeon today. In any case, she made us chili and rice that was awesome - lots of cilantro and flavor. She did her Mexican roots proud with that meal!
3. At some point last month, I did dinner with Cathy, D, and Cathy's friend Tracy at a fun Italian small-plate restaurant called 'noteca. They had a huge wine collection and amazing, out of the world cheeses to choose from. We also indulged in some Italian tapas that were fantastic. Good stuff, but you better get there early if you want a spot at the corner of Hip and Style St. down in the LES!
4. Since Sean signed up for it as well, I decided to try out match.com again for a month with similar results as the first time I signed up - no winks, no emails, no responses whatsoever with it. I am such a social ditz that it took me three major re-writes before my female friends gave me the thumbs up on my profile. Even some of my foreign friends who signed up as a joke got more winks than I did! And Sean has gotten emails from girls in Russia and Liberia who are looking for greencard-material men in the US :)
5. Cathy, thanks to spending 4+ hours on the phone, got us reservations for one of the hottest places in the city - Nobu. Breathtaking sushi meal that was simply indescribable. I'm gonna take my parents there when they come - if I have any money left :o)
6. Christmas! Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year because, no matter who shows up, it's a very peaceful time at our house. Everyone just gets along so well it seems, and this year was no exception even with ~547 people staying at our house. I spent four quality days in town with my family and cherished it all. We had a huge Christmas Eve crab feed (my dad got up to Palo Alto at 6:15am on Saturday to buy crab at Fish Market's half price only to find out they sold out already since they only got 1/10th of their order from their supplier), tons of food on Sunday (lamb, a steel-cut oatmeal breakfast, and tons of other stuff), tons more food on Monday (Christmas day #2 at Grandma Georgia's with my dad's half of the family), and then a Mongolian BBQ for my sister's birthday on Tuesday before I flew home.
7. I got an older PowerMac from my brother that is tons of fun to play with. I've already dropped too much cash into making it compatible and will drop some more to get it up to snuff. Anyone wanna buy my Dell PC??
   
8. My college roommate Ryan came out for a week the day I got home from California for New Year's Eve and to check out the city. He ran me ragged over town as we spent some time in pretty much every neighborhood. I finally tried out a hole-in-the-wall French place called Zucco: Le French Diner, which prides itself on serving French food that you would find at a French trucker's stop in a teeny, tiny restaurant that fits about 15 people . Zucco, the owner, was quite a character. He smoked about a whole pack of cigarettes outside while we ate and looked all grisly with his black beard and baseball hat and the cut-off leather gloves on his hands. But he had some great food! For New Year's, we went downtown and did a pub crawl around to some places that weren't charging entrance. Poor Paul was sick so he couldn't join us. But we found some new places that were fun and I did some dancing, swinging and twirling the girls :o).
   

So, that brings me roughly up to today. I just made some lentil soup - enough to feed me for a month - and brought Paul and Cathy over for a meal. They are leaving to live in Cyprus for an internal project at Cathy's company - all expenses paid of course - on Thursday, so there's going to be a big party for them tomorrow night at D's house. Should be fun!

Justinho, yes I did get Vicadin prescriptions for next Wednesday's adventure :o)

Wait For It...

I realize that I have a backblog of blogs. I have visitors in town at the
moment, so it might be a few days before I get to it. Surgery is one week from
tomorrow, so I should have some time to write while I'm recovering from that.
Vicadin- or Codine-inspired blogs, now that sounds interesting...

Justinho

Strange how time seems out

Strange how time seems out of control and I often lack motivation at night. Coincides with not going to yoga. Hmm...

Swing-and-a-miss...Strike Three!

HE struck-him-out (said in a Bill King voice)! Finally, the strike is over with.
I have to admit that it was a little bit fun, but I was getting tired of it
yesterday when I had to walk both to and from work in the frigid morning and
evening. The exercise was nice, but when I stop feeling my face, it's not quite
as much fun. And I was worried about how I was going to get to the airport today
without the $5 airtrain trip. That could have been a really expensive trip, if I
could even find a car to take me there!

I'm heading back to California for Christmas and my sister's birthday and I look
forward to seeing everyone. I wish everyone happy holidays!

J. Riley, the subway was nice and peaceful today

Swing-and-a-miss...Strike Two!

The end of the first day of the strike came and I had to decide what route I was
going to take home. Do I dare try the buses again? Do I walk to midtown and try
to catch a different bus there? I left at about 4:00, an hour after most other
people left because they wanted to get on the buses early since they started
running again at 3:00. I went downstairs to catch one at 4:00 and people in
line said that no buses had showed up yet, so I guess the wrinkles hadn't been
ironed out yet. I was annoyed and fed up, so I decided to try walking home. It
turns out that it only took me an hour to walk home! That's roughly twice as
long as my commute, but that's still not too bad in my opinion. It was actually
kinda nice to get out and stretch my legs at the end of the shortened day and
listen to everyone on the street talk about the whole event. It made it
somewhat adventurous.

Day two of the strike came and again I had decisions to make. Rollerblades?
Buses? Walking? I was going to rollerblade, but the idea of going up a few
steep hills before arriving at work didn't sound hygenically friendly, so I
decided to try some permutations of my plans and headed up to 96th Street,
where cars were being checked to make sure they had four people in the car
before being allowed to enter the city. I heard that people were offering free
rides to other people if they would get in the car so that they would have the
four people necessary to pass. I thought this would be an easy way to get to
the bridge and I could make the 1/2 hour walk from there. As I got closer, I
noticed that there was a giant bus from my employer there, so that was even
better. I climbed aboard and thought maybe everything was running smoothly and
I could get a ride all the way to the office after making a bus connection in
mid-town. Things were going well until I hit 70th St. (I live on 91st) and the
traffic <b>stopped</b>. I dozed off a few times and woke up for good when we
neared the bridge at 59th St. It had taken an <b>hour</b> just to get there
because the traffic was so bad. I coulda been at work if I had walked! Some of
the other employees convinced the driver to let us off and it was another 1/2
walk over the bridge. But still much better than the previous day.

For the ride home, again, more permutations. There was a bus waiting out front
going to mid-town that I figured I'd take. Should be a quick ride over the
bridge, right? Wrong. The bus, for some unknown reason, decided the fastest way
to get to 53rd St. was to drive to the other side of Queens and take the Midtown
tunnel across the river to 34th St. and then drive up in massive congestion to
53rd St. rather than driving two blocks to the bridge, crossing it, and
entering Manhattan at 59th St, just a few blocks from 53rd! Good lord. So I
wasted about 30-40 minutes on that trip and ended up getting off early on 42nd
St. and walking home from there, which took me another hour. At this point, I
wasn't going to mess with traffic or the streets, my legs be damned! It was
coooold last night, too, which didn't make things too fun...

J. Riley, This is still an adventurous experience, but I'm getting worried about
finding my way to the airport on Friday....

Swing-and-a-miss...Strike One!

Today New York's public transit came to a halt, creating chaos and madness everywhere. I left my apartment at 8:20 this morning and didn't get to work until 10:45. My client, a large bank, had rented buses and vans and had routes around the city to pick people up and drop them off at the large buildings that we work in, including the one I'm at in Queens, across the river.

So, with the temperatures hovering around 20 degrees (not including the wind chill), I walked down to the pickup location (not far from my apartment). After waiting in the weather for 20 minutes, a small van with our logo pulled up. Uhh...what about the huge coach buses that were supposedly going to pick us up? There were about twice as many people waiting for this bus as there was space for, so half of us, myself included, had to wait. Another ten minutes went by, and with no sign of another van or bus coming (they stopped running at 9:30), I decided to get a ride with some nice people that were taking the day off work and driving people around, asking only for gas money. 15 minutes later, I was at my next connection point at 53rd and 3rd Avenue (one of the offices), where we had buses and vans that were taking people into Queens. Or so I thought.

15 minutes of waiting there went by and the 100 people that were waiting were grumbling because they had only seen small vans coming by, and they were all full from people at the mass transit pickup spots, especially Penn Station (where New Jersey trains and buses come in. They were still running). Still no giant buses! Word on the street was that all the buses were stuck in Queens. In order to get into Manhattan, every vehicle had to have at least 4 people on board. Well, someone screwed up on our logistics and all the buses were stuck in Queens because after dropping everyone off, they didn't have the required people to get back into the city to get more people! Arrgghhh....

With no options really available, a coworker and I decided it would be faster to walk to work. So we left 53rd Street and walked up to 59th, crossed the Queensborough Bridge and got to work. It took about 40 minutes to walk and the weather was very nice and warm on the bridge (surprisingly enough).

I am not sure yet how I'm going to get home, but hopefully they have something figured out by then. And tomorrow? I might have to bust out the rollerblades and arrive at work all sweaty and freezing cold....

J. Riley, very few people at work today....

Mass Transit

You gotta love mass transit - until the greedy unions decide that they want more money and go on strike. If they don't resolve their differences with the government organization that runs NYC's mass transit by midnight tonight, they will go on strike and life as I know it will stop. Not only will it inconvenience me, but it will also inconvenience the millions of other people in the city as well as people from outside the city that come in to work. People like grocery cashiers, laundry operators, etc. etc. All of this just because the union thinks that the starting salary of $50k per year is too low and that their workers deserve a raise of 8% per year for the next three years....

J. Riley, Guess I should stock up on food tonight.