Nope, Still Not Dead

My interest in keeping this blog updated started waning significantly after I dropped out of the race, which I suppose should not be all that surprising given that the race was the original reason for creating it in the first place. However, I told myself that it was still worthwhile to keep it around and to keep writing here as a general training blog, since I was still going to the gym on a pretty regular basis. Then I blew out my knee. The only training of any sort I'm going to be doing over the next few months is of the physical-therapy kind, and there's really not much to be gained by preserving the number of straight-leg raises I've done for all posterity.

But life itself continues to be interesting, and just as I went back and re-read much of my old LiveJournal a few weeks back, I could see myself coming back to this blog a couple of years in the future to see what kinds of things I'd been up to and what sorts of thoughts had been traversing the synapses of my bird brain during the years of my early 40s. With that in mind, let's have a recap of the last couple of months.

The biggest news is, as I mentioned above, the fact that I blew out my knee while skiing in early April. At the time of the previous entry, I hadn't yet had an MRI, so it was uncertain as to the actual extent of the damage. Today, I can say unequivocally that the damage was extensive (when I get injured, I don't fuck around). In addition to a full tear of my ACL, I also partially tore my MCL and medial meniscus and ended up with a couple of impact fractures in the knee. The impact fractures are no big deal; they were only 2mm, and the orthopedic surgeon said that they're equivalent to small dings in a car door - nothing that can really be done about them and not worth worrying about anyway. My ACL required complete reconstruction; I now have donor tissue from a cadaver in my right knee, something that I affectionately refer to as zombie parts. The damage to my MCL wasn't too bad, insofar as the doctor telling me that it would heal on its own. The state of my meniscus is unknown; the MRI suggested that the location of the tear was in a place near the blood supply, in which case it would likely be possible to sew it up and it, too, would heal on its own. However, if that weren't possible, then they'd have to remove said meniscus. In either case, it wasn't going to be possible to know which outcome I'd be facing until they actually went in with the scope and looked at it. The nurse in the recovery room said that the doctor came and talked to me post-surgery but with the anesthetic-induced amnesia I wouldn't remember it (and indeed, I have no recollection whatsoever of seeing the doctor after talking to him in the pre-op area), so I don't know if he told me that I still have a meniscus or not, and I can't tell one way or the other based on the number of incisions in my knee and the level of pain (my leg is in a brace and completely locked in full extension anyway). I have my first post-op follow-up appointment later today, so I'll find out in about 8 hours whether or not I still have a medial meniscus. AFAIK, the only impact this has to my rehab is that if they were able to do a repair, I think I have to wear the brace one extra week. Whether that means wearing it 24x7 or not for that entire period, I don't know.

So, that's my life for the rest of this year. I had to cancel my trip to Ozora in August; the doc said that I could go and I could sit and listen to the music, but no dancing. In fact, I won't be cleared for dancing until at least 4 months, which means October. I was doing some reading online about rehab for knee reconstruction, and it looks like 6 months is typically the minimum recovery period but that it can take up to a year for the zombie parts to be fully-reintegrated into the body. I do not plan on being sidelined for a year; 6 months is going to be hard enough. I had plans of squatting 500lbs at some point this year; that's obviously not going to happen. I am giving some thought to training for next year's Atacama Crossing; I'd originally wanted to do it because of the sheer absurdity and bad-assery of it all, and now that I'm having to come back from a major knee injury, I feel even more strongly that being able to complete it would legitimately be an accomplishment worth being proud of. Of course, I should focus on the immediate goal first, which is being cleared to put weight on my leg and actually start walking again. It truly is a pain in the ass having to navigate my apartment in a desk chair and crutches.

On the job front, things are going reasonably decently. I'm fortunate enough to work for a company that provides unlimited^[1] PTO and also to have a job that I can do from anywhere, so I plan to resume working more or less full-time next week, but I doubt that I'll be appearing in the office on a regular basis for a couple more weeks. Right now my thought is to work in the office on the days when I have PT, since I'll have to deal with going on and navigating the stairs and all of that bollocks anyway, and work from home on the other days. I suspect that will mean 2 days in the office and 3 days at home, but I'll find out what my therapy regimen is going to look like starting on Thursday. I'm planning to take another crack at promotion this next cycle; my boss is supportive, which he wasn't back in January, and the other senior database engineer is leaving the company in a couple of weeks, which puts them in a bad position and me in a pretty good one as far as leverage and bargaining power are concerned. While "bargaining power" and a "bus factor" of zero don't really count towards anything in the promotion process, what these things do count for is me being able to show "extraordinary individual ownership" of key systems. Hmm, let's see... I manage all the servers which store all of our user data, and there are definitely problems which could occur that nobody else in the company has the technical know-how to solve. That sounds like a good match to me, but we will find out in the fullness of time.

My social life (aka "dating") has been fairly quiet of late. This has been more by my choice than anything else; after the knee injury and in the weeks leading up to my surgery, I'd been feeling generally anti-social and not really in the mood to deal with anyone. I'm not one for throwing myself a pity-party or anything like that, but sometimes I just need to retreat into the birdcage and focus on myself, and that's what the month of May largely was. I don't have the energy to start up any new "adventures" and I want to really evaluate the ones that are in progress and cut out those that don't have a positive rate of return, because I need to be able to devote all available resources to healing the leg. What that actually looks like in practice, I don't know, as I would like to keep some of my new acquaintances as friends, because a) they are cool people in their own right, and b) I really need more than just N and C as my only friends here in the city, especially since N just managed to get himself off my shit-list, and C is more than busy enough with her month-old daughter. At least I know this state of affairs is good with both J and TC; they are my karaoke / scrabble friends and there's no expectation when we hang out of anything more than some conversation, a few drinks, and a few songs, skillfully (or not) sung.

As to the rest, there's one in particular, who I shall denote as RAWR (because there are already too many people in my life and mentioned on this blog who share her first initial) that I am most interested in pursuing the possibility of a full-on serious relationship with. Why RAWR? Because, she's ... RAWR! To give some idea... kisses from TC, back when we were dating, were of the sort that could take your breath away. Totally amazing and passionate and wow - I compared her kissing skills to those of a Russian spy (y'know, think totally hot Soviet babe seducing state secrets out of some unsuspecting embassy worker). Not too shabby, right? I would have easily rated TC in the top 3 of all the people I'd ever kissed. But RAWR is a supernova of pure, unbridled interstellar FIRE. Yeah. It's that good.

But wait, there's more. There has to be, because as we all know, blackbirds require much more than physical stimulation to become or remain interested, and it wouldn't really matter how good her kisses are in the absence of serious gray-matter stimulation. RAWR is smart, cute, and funny, and she has colored hair, all of which are good things. She's a cat person, which I think is effectively a requirement for me given Priss and Shiznit and their importance in my life (love me, love my cats). I could go on with an assortment of other traits that are somewhat mundane to list off yet hold a non-trivial degree of importance, but the one other thing that really stands out is that when I am with her, it feels like home. For someone who has rarely felt that sense of belonging or community or, well, homeyness, throughout my life, this is a big deal.

So am I falling in love with RAWR? No. She and I haven't known each other anywhere near long enough for me to make that assessment, and if there's one thing true about blackbirds everywhere, it's that we have massive suits of armor around our hearts (which makes you wonder how we can even fly when wearing all that plate mail - but we can, and we do - it's all part of what makes us indestructible) and we are not quick to take them off or use the "L" word unless we truly mean it. That said, while I may not be currently falling in love with her, I can see the path to that possibility, which is not something I could have said about anyone else that I have been on a date with this year. So, we will see what happens. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hopeful, though, and a blackbird with hope is a dangerous thing indeed (typically dangerous to himself most of the time).

One last thing before we close out this entry. Roughly a week and a half ago I got to see Jean-Michel Jarre in concert at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. It is no exaggeration to say that I had been waiting 30 years for this opportunity. I first discovered his music in the mid-80s by happenstance, when the Phoenix classical station was playing his Oxygene album late at night one evening when I was unable to sleep and flipping through the radio dial. I was 11 years old when JMJ served as my introduction to electronic music; given my current passion for psytrance and my time as a raver, I have to wonder if those things would have still come about had it not been for that fateful bout of insomnia. Oh, and the show was, as I knew it would be, FUCKING AMAZING. I am thrilled to be able to cross this item off my bucket list, but I would absolutely go see him again if the opportunity ever presents itself.