The Dwarf, The Hunt and The Arthopaedic Surgeon.. The Conclusion..

I saw my orthopadeic surgeon two weeks ago today. This marked the 1 year anniversary of my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction/replacement surgery. My knees have been hurting for some time now; I think they started to ache a bit just before, or just after we left for England. I described the discomfort I'd been having and he poked and prodded and decided that it would be an easy fix with some minor surgery. When I decided that yes, I will have surgery (called and arthroscopy) I asked about my left knee. He got me back up on the table and examined that one too. He explained to me that he thinks that there is some minor tearing on the inside of my knee (I forgot what it is called exactly) and said that he would be able to repair that with the same procedure.

So long story short, I'm going into hospital this afternoon to have both knees arthroscoposcised. Joy. This will mean I will be on crutches for a short time and will have a lot of trouble getting up and down the stairs that are not only at work, but at home as well.

This isn't the worst part. I haven't been able to eat or drink since 10:30am and I am parched! Gonna be a long day methinks.

Anyway, I'll blog once I get out of hospital, I should have some time up my sleeve then ;)

The Dwarf, The Hunt and The Arthopaedic Surgeon..

A fable by Darkris.

First of all I would like to apologise to those people that I have deprived of my words, I concede I do not blog nearly as much as I should. The following post should explain why I have been absent, but does not excuse absence.

So, Maddy and I have been searching for a car for about 3 weeks now. It started as a mere suggestion by me that she should really look at getting a car if she wants to run her own business, and BAM for 2 weeks solid she was glued to the various carsales websites hunting. We narrowed down the vast field of contenders down to one make: Hyundai, and one model: Excel. What came next was us trying to get the best deal we could for our buck. We were mainly looking at '96 models, as '94 were just a little too old (sorry Tsari) and '98 models just seemed a little out of reach price-wise.

We (I) test drove several, I think it was 3 in total. The first car I didn't really like the way the body wobbled and creaked, and luckily I tried to rape the guy over price and he said 'I have a few more people coming to look at it, soooo I'll call you.. don't call me..'

This was the first Hyundai Excel I'd ever driven, so I decided that I needed more knowledge of the vehicle, so we trekked over to Alicia's house and I drove her '96 model. Based on that drive, I ruled out the first car (which I had dubbed TIDIES after its licence plate which read TID-135) and we continued the hunt.

We then found a car in Altona, another '96 model, which was in poor condition, but the seller was willing to sell the vehicle way below what we had seen equivalent models for. However, she wanted to sell it without a Roadworthy Certificate (RWC) and that was something that I thought would be necessary for the condition of the car. We toed and froed for a little bit with her agent, and in the end we decided to keep looking. The next car we test drove was a SHITE BOX. It shuddered whilst going up hills and kept trying to slip gears. The guy (who was the husband of the woman trying to sell it) tried to use this as a selling point: 'I only service her once a year maybe, so she's really easy to look after.'

You could tell it had been neglected. We told them we would 'get back to them'.

We were starting to lose hope of finding a decent buy, when we stumbled on a '98 model. It was advertised a little higher than we were looking, but not by much. So we organised to have a look at it and we fell in love with it. We test drove it and there is such a significant difference between single and twin cam Excels that it felt like an entirely different car. We toed an froed a little bit and we were able to get the price from $4,500 to $3,800, but we had to pay for the RWC.. So we got it for just over 4.

We're very proud of it, it's a fantastic little buzz box, and I've been driving it since this wednesday to become acquainted with the new member of our family :)

During this period I have been coexed back into the world of lore; a world where dragons blot out the sun and where nymphs frolic seductively in dark forests guarded by vicious Wood Elves. I am talking about the expansive world of Dungeons & Dragons. It is lifestyle I haven't been involved in for about 20 months, so as you can understand, my knowledge of the game has dissipated. I am enjoyed relearning it though :)

The character I have built is a Dwarf with a big fuckoff hammer that smashes shite into paste. Well, at least I hope he is going to be able to. I look forward to playing him, whenever everybody can get together to play.

More soon, I'm taking a break.. :P

Bleh..

You know when you're in one of those moods where you can't seem to formulate what you think you want to say? Just me? OK. Well, it's like I feel that I need to say something meaningful, just to be meaningful, but it's hollow, so is in fact meaningless.

That's what I was dealing with for the title of this particular blog entry. In the end I decided that I would just entitle it how I felt. I feel Bleh. That's Bleh with a capital 'B' and not just a regular bleh, which has an entirely different meaning.

What's it been? Wow. A month! LOL, no, no wait, just 2 weeks, since my last blog entry. OK, a lot has happened since then. Well, not really, but why would telling you that encourage you to read the rest of this post? Apparently I'm a gambling man, so we'll see how this goes.

Maddy and I celebrated our 13 months together on Wednesday :) It was great, the presents and the wine flowed :) and then my uncoordinated figure flowed over the basketball court as, yet again, I injured myself playing the tall man's game. I was in hot pursuit of the ball when an opponent came across me, causing me to trip. Upon catching my footing, I rewarded my ankle for its quick response by bending it way it usually isn't inclined and in doing so, severely sprained it. It's a brilliant black/purple colour now with highlights of yellow. Quite artistic really.

So about 6 minutes after I did it, I decided to take one for the team and get back on the court and 'run' out the rest of the game. We only had 4 players due to unforeseen circumstances and I was the 4th player. As it was we were flogged by 30 or so points, but I maintain that had I not made a reappearance on the court we would have lost by about 50. Needless to say I received no sympathy from Maddy after returning to the court, but I did manage to prise 2 good luck kisses out of her for the remainder of the match, which seemed to do the trick as I don't seem to have hurt myself further. (Maddy insists that had I stopped playing when I hurt myself, my injury would be no where near as bad. She's probably right, but that's not the point.)

So we've been looking at cars for the past couple of weeks. We started off looking at shitboxes under $2,000, but have since been inclined to look at shitboxes up to $4,500 :P

Hyundai Excels seem to be the way to go, and we have plenty of them to look at this coming sunday.

Last week we were sniffing around to see what prices of houses were. That went well, but it might be a while before I can afford anything.

Oh, what a perfect segway.. I just attempted to pay my rent, and it turns out my TransCard has been deactivated. I had to reactivate it as I have 4 months left on my lease, but I'll be fucked if I'm paying anything until I find out why my card was deactivated. Then I try to speak to the guy that deactivated my card, and was intercepted by the receptionist and transferred to the property manager. Ring.. Ring.. Ring.. Message bank. Grrrrrrr.........

I'm just gonna change the subject entirely because.. I don't need to justify myself to you! OK, let's go back to basketball. Last wednesday we played the Anti-Raptors: Shaft. This contains two ex-Raptors players (that tried their best to not fit into the team) and the rest are players that have played A-Grade at one stage or another. A perfectly legal team for B-Grade domestic basketball. It was a fairly benign encounter (despite there being some malice bubbling just below the surface) and Shaft emerged 10 point winners. Congrats to them.

Uhm.. what else.. ooh :) BurningOut is coming along nicely :) The first page of the first issue is complete and is ready to be read. The website is almost completely functional (pending content of course) and reflects the style of the comic. So go check it out. :P

More stuff when I grow some motivation.. I need some caffeine :-/