Quick surfacing for a status report:

Rehabilitating: Saw orthopedist, saw physical therapist. Received and am doing my stretches (finally). MRI with big honking needle next Thursday the sixth, surgical consult May 2nd.

Riding: Am building a bike. Bought a cheap frame, have degreased the headset, bought a rear wheel, acquired a set of cranks, bottom bracket, derailleur and shifter. Top priorities are a sprocket and chain, along with the rest of the wheels. Brakes and seating come later.

Translating: Finished Burner of Corpses 3.0, a revision that actually includes comments from native English speakers. My old professor has apparently already used version 2.3 in one of her seminars. But it seems to have gone over well. My audience is now no longer exclusively hypothetical. The other stuff is mostly sitting around in notebooks, awaiting me coming up with the energy to type up thirty thousand words or so. (Less likely now that the weather's improving, but I have hopes for April.

Watching: Am watched out of the Buster Keaton, having seen nineteen shorts and ten features (ten DVDs worth of stuff) this month. But he's still a fave. I need to find some of his early stuff with Arbuckle and the early MGM stuff (I'm thinking The Cameraman here. Also less likely as the weather improves.)

Traveling: pending my checking my paid time off status (used up a bunch of the stuff with my shoulder) and plane tickets to Europe coming down in price a bit.

I have impressively low pain levels and high functionality, apprently, given what my arm's endured over the years. And some physical therapy referrals. Yay.

And an arthrogram in the works for the end of April or so. I get to have a big-ass needle jam dye into my shoulder joint, then have an MRI taken. And then I talk to a surgeon and see whether I need to have him cut me up a treat. It's good to be insured, I guess.

Everyone's still nice at work--one of the women in marketing gave me a Harley-Davidson bandanna with "Broken Wing" emblazoned across it, which I wore tied around my arm all day. I also happened to bring my X-rays with me, as I wasn't going home before the ortho appointment today, and let's just say we have a scanner.

Oh, good. I finally have some time to think and reflect. This, though, is thanks to a seventh shoulder dislocation, caused in a drunken piggyback-type situation gone somewhat awry. This then caused four hours in the ER, incompetent needle insertion, much screaming, morphine, and Versed. Going into work with the ER note the next day with a bloody face and sling the next day was fun in an extremely shaken way. And let's just say that people who I've seen massively altered on a variety of substances on a number of occasions "trying to talk to you about your drinking" is less than helpful. Nevertheless, though I don't think the drinking caused this per se (I'm inclined to blame the height--it makes piggyback rides seem like a good idea in the first place, and makes the subsequent fall that much worse), I'm taking a bit of a pause on the imbibing for the next while.

Yeah. So, orthopedics on Monday. I'm missing quite a bit of work, which may affect the vacation time I'd planned to use to go to Europe, and I broke my glasses, which necessitated a return to contact lenses (for the first time in twenty months!) That'll probably eat into the savings, too,but as I keep saying, at least I'm insured, have savings, and did nothing to my eyes or teeth.

So I'm chainsmoking ibuprofen, making German flashcards and trying to psyche myself up for some one-handed editing.

Ars longa, vita breva and all that.

Some modest accomplishments today:

Got up before ten on a day off.
Voted. Even through in an exit poll for good measure.
Gave blood. Got a (retroactive) first-gallon pin, as I've given the Red Cross eleven pints. (sssh, don't tell them about the eight or nine I gave to the Rhode Island Blood Center)
Bought a pack, used (a Lafuma Directissime 55-liter) that apparently is only for sale in France and the UK for (what amounts to) somewhat more than I paid for it. Made plans for using it. Marveled at all the gusseting and waterproof-zippering and oh my the pockets.
Watched two Buster Keaton features (The Saphead, Go West) and three or four shorts.
Am getting to bed before midnight.

It's my last week at the part-time job. The next three days will not be fun at all. But hell, it's going to be nice to have some more time available. Especially with spring and summer coming up.

I think Buster Keaton remains a sentimental favorite, and for the first two-thirds of City Lights, I was amused, but not overwhelmed. I couldn't or didn't necessarily want to see what all the fuss was about.

Then, at the end, Charlie Chaplin just had to go and make me cry.

Last night in the housesitting gig.

What better way to celebrate than by sitting and pondering a foot and a half of freshly fallen powder with a beer? Why, in an outdoor hot tub, of course.

A snow angel has never been so brisk, I might add. I so rarely get to do mostly-undressed snow angels sober.

Someone on the bus next to me on the way home from Providence was watching "Modern Times" on his laptop. I caught bits, it was funny. I decided to see what our local library had for silent-era films.

Not much Chaplin, but I'm now apparently a Buster Keaton fanatic. Have seen two features (The General, College) and four shorts (Cops, The Playhouse, The Balloonatic, The Electric House) in like the last thirty-six hours. And we got ourselves two more features and about four more shorts here at the house I'm sittin'.

Good times.