Good afternoon everyone,
It’s a beautiful but chilly Saturday afternoon around here and I’m mostly spending it resting at home.
Well, not this morning. This morning I went to see a bone specialist!
Why? Well, very long story short, when I was a teenager, I had a bone cyst in my left humerus. It was not fun. Over the course of three years, I broke it four times and had to have some major surgery. It’s mostly been fine since (my left arm has always been weaker and even a little shorter because of this, but nothing actually hindering 99.9% of the time). The last time I saw my doctor was 20 years ago, just before moving to Florida, and he told me that I was fine. He just advised against playing American football or going skydiving, just in case. I wasn’t planning on doing either.
Fast forward a few months ago, when my arm started hurting once in a while. Nothing serious, just a tiny pain. Nothing strong, just… there… It started hurting more often and a bit stronger for the past month or so to the point that I got worried. I hadn’t had my arm checked in 21 years, maybe, just maybe, I should have it checked again.
So this is what I did this morning. The doctor isn’t exactly sure why I’m hurting (I haven’t actually felt pain in roughly two weeks), but he was pretty sure that my bone was in the same shape it’s been these past 20+ years. If I really wanted to know the source of the pain, I could go do an MRI, but otherwise, he mostly blamed it on aging.
As the pain is not debilitating and not even present that often, I passed the opportunity for an MRI.
I just wanted to know if my bone was about to break again. It isn’t. All is good. Sort of.
However, it reminded me of what my parents’ old neighbor used to tell me. Almost every time you asked him “How are you?” he used to answer that he was not doing well, that he was hurting somewhere. And he’d always add that it actually meant that he was doing well; as long as he was hurting, it meant that he was alive.
Well, I’m in my late forties now, so I guess I have entered that stage of life when little weird pains are the new normal. It’s a sign that I’m still alive, I guess.
This week I haven’t written or blogged much. I mostly blame my daughter’s school teacher.
Kids at her school had a “class match” on Friday morning (some sort of mini-sport competition), and her teacher seemed to care about it more than most other teachers in the school, as he asked the kids to come 30 minutes earlier to school this week in order to practice for the class match. It meant waking up 30 minutes earlier every day this past week. It meant that I was much sleepier than usual this week. It doesn’t look like much, but I need these 30 minutes of sleep in the morning.
The good news is that it paid off. My daughter’s class won the mini-tournament, and my daughter is very happy, especially because the prize was no homework this weekend.
The bad news is that I was too sleepy most evenings to write anything of interest. I watched a few movies and TV shows instead.
The first episode of Wheel of Time. I’m not sold on it just yet, but I’ll watch a few more (no, I haven’t read the book).
Black Widow. Quite interesting. I liked most of it, except for the final battle that was a bit too over the top. The movie would have worked better as a “spy movie” all along, I think.
The first episode of Hawkeye. Too early to really have an opinion. It didn’t really feel anything special, just the intro of something, which it was. Mini spoiler: the first scene showed the final battle of the first Avengers movie from a normal family’s perspective. I wish we saw such things more often, actually.
I still wrote a little bit.
Setouchi Explorer
Last Saturday, I returned to Shodoshima for the first time in two years (damn virus!). It was a fun day of… kind of tourism, but not actual tourism.
Well, just read the post and you’ll understand:
Mini Guided Tour of Shodoshima
Swamp Media
I didn’t actually write anything in the English version of Swamp Media this week, but one of our co-authors, Joe, posted a very fun video to celebrate his 1000th subscriber on Youtube! You should watch it.
Liminal Web
Have you ever seen an iguana on a piano? Well, here is one!
Alright, that’s all for now.
I hope I’ll get to write more next week.
I wish you all a great weekend and a great coming week.
Stay safe and take care.
Cheers,
David