Uncle Leona's Day Camp

A happy and healthy 2007 to all!

The day has come

As of Friday afternoon, I no longer am a solo practitioner. I start with my new group on Tuesday. I have one thing to say:

I can't wait!

Things have been off and on tense around the office, but as the staff started getting new jobs, things seem to have calmed down a bit. Right now, it's a matter of getting all the busy work done to close down a business. Address changes, tax stuff, pager, answering service, internet....yada yada yada. Tomorrow, I talk to AT&T.

Yep. Saved the best for last. I figure that with me being on call this weekend, it was best to give the phone gurus as little chance as possible to screw up the phone shutdown. This way, I tell them, "I want that 'this number has been changed' message to start on January 2," and Rasheesh (aka "Todd") on the other end doesn't have the chance to turn it off while we're still seeing patients in the office.

I'm foreseeing a phone catastrophe. Hopefully, I'm wrong.

OK, so much for the stress of my job. Let's move on to the stress of my kidney stone. I had mentioned that I had a follow-up scheduled with Doogie last week. Well, there was good news and bad news. The good news: that damn stent was removed--cystoscopes are more fun than a human should be allowed to have. The bad news: I still have stones; they're just smaller and caught in the lower pole of my kidney. Doogie is hopeful that I'll pass them eventually. If not, he has all sorts of diabolical plans for removal if that has to happen. He did say that if I hung my head off of the side of my bed for 15 minutes a night, gravity might actually help move the stones out of the bottom of the kidney and into the ureter.

15 minutes? I'm ready to puke after 15 seconds!! We'll see how the x-ray looks next month; hopefully, the little chunks will be heading south.

Oh, and the grand total submitted to my insurance so far? $20,000. That stone is worth more than a freaking sapphire.

OK, on to the knitting portion of our show. After finishing up the cabled pullover, I decided to work on this:

It's a Reynolds Lopi pattern, but I'm using the cochineal dyed yarn instead. So far, I'm about 8 rows from the shoulder decreases on the back:

That border is a pain in the ass. The pattern is impossible to follow, there is no rhyme or reason to it. And lord help you if you screw up one of those slanted stitch sections; ripping out REALLY screws things up. Not to mention that after about 20 rows, the pattern tells you to "follow established pattern including decreases until 11 decreases each side are complete." This is impossible without writing the damn thing out--each row starts with either a K1 or K2, every other RS row has a decrease, and the slants don't make numerical sense.

OK, so now I'm not making sense. Just trust me when I say the pattern blows.

The edge does look nice, though:

Now I only have to do it on the fronts and sleeves, too. Ugh. And did I mention that all of the dye isn't out of this stuff yet even after I rinsed it? The sweater is getting a Sythrapol bath when it's done. To be safe, I may just wear it with a black turtleneck. No need to ruin a light one.

Yes, this project has me grumpy. I'm not the only one.

I'm also fiddling around with some roving I got off of eBay recently. What was this:

is now this:

I'm thinking this will knit up nice and heathery. It's my latest contribution to the stash I'm going to knit from in 2007. It's a large stash. I'll be busy.

Merry Christmas!!

More Christmas joy

Joy to me, anyhow. In anticipation of my first real paycheck in six years, I treated myself to a little something:

It's a Jura Capresso superautomatic coffee/espresso machine. One push of a button, and a perfect cup of coffee is ground and brewed into the cup. The wand to the right will froth milk if I'm feeling frisky. Not only is the coffee hot and tasty, but making it is actually a little fun.

I may never sleep again.

Merry Christmas to me!

Another UFO bites the dust!

This is the long-languishing cabled pullover made from the wool I bought up in Nova Scotia two summers ago. Dampened, it now smells hauntingly like this guy:

The one on the left.

Regardless of the scent, it's a beautiful thing. Nice and bulky; perfect for winter in Ohio. Now, if only winter would show up. Not that I'm complaing, mind you. I just like snow for Christmas, and it's looking like we're just going to get more rain.

My apologies to all out in the Denver area. You seem to have some of our snow.

Let the dessert making commence!

I'm in Christmas dessert mode at the moment. The house smells of two pans of gingerbread and four cups of vanilla pudding that will eventually be part of a trifle. I am now preparing to chop up a little bit of chocolate:

MMMMMMMMMMMM......

The recipe has an added bonus ingredient:

Eventually, you're looking at Baileys Milk Chocolate Truffles.

They may make it to Christmas Eve. May.

Now I'm off to Trader Joe's to get some frozen mangos. Funny, but the fresh ones here in Ohio aren't quite as ripe as they should be. What a shock.

Recuperation is a good thing

Well, despite my enduring the joy of straining my urine, I've pretty much recovered from Friday's little procedure. No pain whatsoever, and the dust particles that were once a stone are slowly leaving my body. We'll see how much fun the stent wants to be when I'm on my feet all day tomorrow, but for now, even it is behaving. Keep your fingers crossed that this whole sordid episode comes to a close on Wednesday when I see Doogie in his office to take that damn piece of latex out of my body.

No drugs this time. Good thing. I'm tiring of them.

While recuperating, I have managed to finish up all of the knitting for my gift exchanges. My cousin's bag was felted again this morning, and I'm pretty pleased with the result:

All I need to do is attach the handles to the bags, and they're done. However, I decided that the bags needed something inside them to complete the whole gift thing. So, since I had nothing better to do except strain my urine, I decided to add some bonus items. My aunt is going to be the coolest dame around in these:

Thrummed mitts from the stash of yarn and fiber. Sweet. And my cousin, who is one of the prettiest blonde haired, blue eyed women you'd ever want to see, will be wrapping this around her neck soon:

The colors didn't quite reproduce, but the scarf is in subtle shades of blue, gray, purple, and pink. It's made from a laceweight Colinette yarn (25 grams, over 200 yards...yep, just a bit fine) that I think is mohair and silk, but I didn't take notes. It's positively stunning, if I do say so myself. And SOOOOOO easy! Look here: http://www.canknit.com/free/kos.html .

So now, I'm done. It's time to head back to the drudgery of knitting for myself. Darn. Wendy has come up with a little challenge for those of us with the stash to do it. Something like this:

The rules, paraphrased, basically state that from January 1, 2007 through September 30, 2007, one is not allowed to knit from any yarn but their stash (sock yarn, gift yarn, and spinning fiber not yet spun are excluded, as are knitted gifts requested by others). I think I will try this. Lord knows Ikealand could use the cleaning out.

Any guesses on how long I'll last? I'm setting the over/under at April.

All done. Except for that damned stent

I'm alive, well, and haven't been blown up by Doogie the Urologist. The stone is now in millions of tiny little pieces that I now have to catch somehow.

It's a fun project. Everyone should try it.

The stent, however, is still in place. It goes bye-bye next week. Good riddance. At the moment, however, it isn't talking to me, so I'm doing my best to forget its presence.

My worst problem right now is the scratches in my mouth and throat. I think they intubated me with a garden hose. The coffee does soothe things, though. I would be far better soothed with a Baileys on ice, but Doogie put the stops to my ethanol consumption for 24 hours. Bastage! :lol:

I'm home and getting ready to hunker down to knit. Life is good.

Use the force, Luke...

By tomorrow evening, I should be home knitting after recovering from something that should look like this:

That's the artist's rendering of Luke Skywalker, aka Doogie, taking out the Death Star, aka my kidney stone. At this point, I'm not so excited about the death of the stone but the hopeful removal of this damned stent. At some point this week, I believe that little piece of spaghetti shifted a bit in my bladder, which has created the urge in me to pee 24/7 unless I'm sitting in one spot for several hours.

Good thing I knit. Otherwise, I'm out buying Depends.

So, I go in at 1 PM tomorrow to have the procedure done. Apparently, I get the good drugs that knock me out again so that I don't have to sense that sound wave pommelling me about 1000 times.

Living better through chemicals. That's my motto.

I just want to drink beer again without having to guess which urge to go is the correct urge to go. It's cramping my style. And the holidays are coming!

Rock on, dude

I like this guy.

It's December 10

And my Christmas shopping is done! That's right. Done. Finito. Toast. I am feeling so empowered it's silly. Now I'm at the mercy of UPS, but according to my records, everything should be in my hot little hands this week. Woo hoooooooooo!!!!

I still have to finish up the Christmas knitting, but that shouldn't take too long. I'm on the second side of my cousin's tote:

It's looking pretty nice--I'm hoping by going up a needle size that the wool will felt a bit better. I'm also going to check the water heater to see if the temperature can be gunned up a tad. And maybe I'll throw a tennis shoe into the mix for added agitation. Stay tuned.

As for my niece's gift, here's the before:

And the after:

Yes, it's a hedgehog. A really obnoxious fuschia hedgehog with rainbow fuzz. She'll love it. I'll finish him up later this week as well--thanks to my teddy bear making supplies, I have great eyes; if I feel like it, I may just wax the nose, too. Depends on how I'm feeling. And how much of this stuff I manage to sip:

Found that yesterday while I was looking for wine for my sister-in-law. It hasn't been sipped yet, but that will change shortly. Chocolate Mint Bailey's. What possibly could be bad about that?

Once all the knitting is done, and I finish up the stuff for me that's on my living room floor waiting patiently, I have yet another pile of yumminess to decide to use next:

The Artfibers Basque arrived not too long ago from San Francisco. It's a silk/mohair blend that doesn't feel like silk to me (I hate the feel of silk...hate it...too crunchy). It will wind up being a pullover, but I'm guessing it won't be the next on the needles once my cabled pullover is done. I think I'm leaning toward the bug-dyed stuff I got in Michigan.

I think. We'll see if Santa changes my mind.

No, I haven't dropped dead

It's just that Christmas knitting isn't always the most exciting stuff to report on, and my life of late has revolved around working, Christmas knitting, Christmas shopping, and sleeping.

Yep. Living large. That's me.

I did get my aunt's tote felted up. Just need to add the handles and it's done.

My cousin's in on the needles as we speak. It's a bit different. I also went up a size in needle in hopes that the wool felts a bit better. I think I knitted a little tighter than I should have, so the felting wasn't as perfect as I hoped. We'll see how the looser knit works; it should help.

Speaking of felting, the mystery project for my niece has been altered a bit after the first go 'round. Here's the second incarnation:

I already like it better.

The last month of solo practice is also underway. I met with the hospital last week to discuss progress, and it looks like the business side of things should be in pretty decent shape when everything switches over on January 2. I also managed to stuff, lick, and stamp 800 letters last weekend to alert the patients (although a good chunk of them know thanks to the sign I put up in the office a month ago). Now, all I need to do is close up shop, and hopefully the hospital will find me a medical assistant in a reasonable amount of time.

That's right. Neither of my nurses is coming along. They claim it's because they don't want to work for a hospital (which is such a stupid statement it's comical). I'm not worrying about it; ultimately, I'm doing what is right for me. None of the patients I have talked to seem too upset--they just want to make sure I take the same insurance and that they'll still get me as their doc (which has to be irking my insurance gal, who is convinced I'm going to lose a chunk of patients by moving down the hall--yeah, right...).

Yep. I've developed a bit of an attitude. It's the Scrooge in me. Very helpful in times of trouble.

T minus 9 days until I say farewell to Stoney. I got the bill for my overnight stay in the hospital today: $11,000+ has been submitted to my insurance. Good grief!! That's before Doogie, the Urologist sends me his bill!

Thank goodness for health insurance. Amazing what one popcorn kernel can do to your wallet.