preparing for a comeback

well, on monday i called to try and set up an appointment with a “regular” doctor’s office. unfortunately, i’m a new patient anywhere and new patients are second class citizens with doctor’s offices. so when i called they said the earliest they’d be able to see me was probably early next week. my response: “uh…i could be dead by then.” i was sort of joking, but the unexplained sudden dizziness did not make me feel comfortable. i get colds or fevers every now and then, but anything outside of that and i worry that my body has something horribly wrong with it since i generally don’t have odd transient problems. she offered me an appointment for friday morning. even though it was days away, i went ahead and took it because i figured with recent events, it’s probably good to go ahead and be established at some doctor’s office so you aren’t treated like a new patient everywhere if you really do need to see a doctor.
the dizziness continued to subside though, and by late tuesday it was mostly gone. i had decided to stop taking anything since i didn’t know what was causing it, so i wasn’t even taking ibuprofen or acetaminophen. i decided on wednesday i felt well enough to go to the radio show, so dwight came by once again and picked me up. i went ahead and took a couple of acetaminophen since i decided that probably wasn’t causing the problem. things at the show went okay.
at some point sue came by and i went to ikea with her and the kids. it was sort of a dry run to see how my leg would do being up and around for awhile. i didn’t walk the second floor, and we cut through a lot of the first, but i was out and up and moving around for maybe about 3 hours from the time i left my house until i got back. i bought a couple of semi-opaque white glass candle holders (one to replace one i’d chipped a month or two ago). after sue brought me back home i laid down and put my leg up for awhile.
friday morning jack came by and took me to the clinic. the doctor checked me over by doing various tests to see if it was my brain or my inner ear that was messed up, and decided i have benign vertigo or some term i’m forgetting. anyway, she said it’s pretty common. basically, there are small particles in the fluid in your inner ear (the inner ear is what is used to determine your orientation and movement). normally these particles are i guess in a reservoir kind of area, but sometimes one or more of these particles will end up in one of the three loops of your inner ear that provide orientation and movement information to the brain. normally a slight movement of the fluid moves some small hairs in the loop that tell your brain how much you are moving and in what direction. with the particle in there, it really pushes on the hairs when the fluid moves, which causes your inner ear to send bogus info to your brain that tells it your are moving/rotating like crazy, but your brain trusts it and is trying to compensate. anyway, she said it normally lessens and goes away on its own within a couple of weeks. there are some exercises you can do (called simont maneuvers or something), which attempts to rotate the fluid in the loops to wash the particles out of the loop. it’s kind of like trying to rotate a garden hose to get all of the water out of it, except it’s in your head. *laugh*
things managed to finish up right around lunch time, so a co-worker came and got me and i ate with him and a few other co-workers at goode company bbq. from there i went ahead and had him take me back to work. i hadn’t been there in basically three weeks. a lot of people came by to see me and ask me what had happened, how i was doing, etc. i didn’t really do much work, but i did manage to hang around and then get a ride home with a co-worker when he left for the day. he’s going to be out next week, so i got him to give me his parking card to use in case i end up deciding i can drive myself to work this coming week.
my leg has continued to get better. it’s actually been noticeable to me. i’m still limping some; still have loss of feeling on the front of my leg; still have swelling and some pain in my knee, ankle, and between; and still don’t have very good range of motion with my knee. but over the last few days i’ve been able to be up and about and/or sitting for several hours at a time without ending up in a lot of pain. hopefully none of the damage will be permanent, other than what i assume will become scars on the front of my leg. (and scars are cool, so that’s okay.)
over this last week i really started wanting to get another motorcycle. not just get one, but get one and go on a trip somewhere. i’m not sure if it’s because i’ve been stuck at home so much, because i know i don’t have a motorcycle right now, because i feel like i want to “get back on the horse” so to speak, or what. i spent some time looking at some websites for a couple of companies, but i can’t really tell much until i see some in person.
i got the bill for the ambulance ride: $487.50. that’s $415.00 for basic life support (i guess that means for having me on a stretcher), $50.00 for miscellaneous supplies (some tape and a neck brace?), and $22.50 mileage ($7.50/mile). i’ll be submitting the bill to my insurance company. i’m guessing they’ll be wanting to find out who the jokers were who caused the accident and then took off, since i’m sure they’d like to be reimbursed. (i still need to get a copy of the police report to see if the cops have done anything.)
the last couple of days i finally felt good enough sitting for awhile that i was able to start messing with some of my old hardware, which i am trying to build into an xp box to do some exchange lab stuff with. my asus motherboard continued to have problems building an os on a hard drive. i tried different hard drives, i tried different ide cables, i tried only using one ide connection and then only the other — no luck. i’m not sure what’s bad, but something isn’t right. i feel bad ditching it because it’s got some pretty nice features, but i don’t know what’s wrong with it. i pulled it out of the case and put in another motherboard i got my hand on about 4 years ago. it’s a gigabyte dual pentium 3 (1.26 ghz) board with 2 gig of memory on it. it’s a server class motherboard, and it actually came out of a 1u server enclosure. it’s a non-standard gigabyte build, so it’s got an extra lan port, no built-in audio, only one pci slot, heat sinks but no fans on the processors, etc. but it’s atx format so i was able to just swap out the motherboards and re-use everything else. after playing around with it some, i finally managed to get xp pro installed on it today. i am downloading and installing updates on it as i write this.
i also finally got a couple of offers for credit cards with 0% interest for 1+ years in the mail. so i’m hoping to get one or both of those and have enough credit on them to put most or all of a new engine for the bel air on it/them. then i’ll use the cash i’ve got in the bank to pay for the installation, and pay off the credit card(s) before the 0% is over. it’ll be nice to get the bel air on the road again. *sigh* i’m still trying to decide how much engine i want to put in it. the last engine was a 350 v-8, so i think i’ll stay with that. it’s just a matter of whether i buy a stock crate or something with more oomph (and how much more). i want to keep it a 3-on-the-tree manual shifter, just because they’re somewhat rare and i think they’re cool, but that means it’s not really a racer. (i can do first to second fairly fast, but it’s not simple, smooth, and fast like a straight shifter or something.) anyway, that’s also going to be in the works for me here pretty soon hopefully.