Surgery #23

(first off, thanks for giving me the links to your blogs. I'm going to get them in my reader and start reading!)

It may not be #23 if some other wacky thing happens to me before then, but I know this surgery is in the future for me.

Long story much shorter in easy to read bullets ...

~ A few months ago, I suddenly got this feeling in my right ear. It felt like it was a bug. Horrible. Doc checked, no bug, ear infection, antibiotics.

~ 2 weeks later, still feels like a bug. Having a few dizzy spells. Hearing almost underwater type sounds. Back to doc. Nothing. Referred to ENT.

~ 2 weeks later, see ENT. Nothing. Even under microscope. Hearing tests show an uncommon type of hearing loss, low-frequency conductive hearing loss. Both audiologist and ENT were a bit suprised. If condition continues, refer to the next level of doctors, the neuro-otolaryngologist.

~ The feeling in ear is happening 25+ times a day.

~ See Neuro-otolaryngologist. First thing he wants hearing test redone, not believing the one ENT sent him. Tested. Same. He then performs all sorts of tests. Seems when a vibration is put on my head behind my ear, my eyes do the wrong movement. Same thing when my ear is pressurized. Sent to get a CT scan.

~ Back to Neuro-otolaryngologist after CT performed. CT confirms I have a "very rare" condition called "superior canal dehiscence syndrome". (bone at top of ear is partially missing, literally wron down by the brain.) Awesome.

~ Fixing would take surgery following these steps:
1. cut a piece out of my skull behind ear
2. break an ear bone. (The pinna? I forget)
3. lift up MY BRAIN.
4. replace missing piece of bone.
5. situate my brain once again.
6. fix the bone they had to break.
7. plug up the whole in my skull.

~ I know it's not technically "brain surgery", but the fact they have to touch it at all freaks me out. Since my symptoms aren't too bad right now, we are giong to skip the surgery. But he said my symptoms will most likely just get worse and when dizziness and/or hearing problems start affecting my quality of life, we'll do the surgery then. Next appt to check symptoms is in Feb.

heh. brain surgery. not too surprising, is it?

The Favor ... (Sticky Post - new ones below!)

(there is a new blog entry under this sticky note!)

I'm going to "sticky" this note here for a little while, hoping to get more comments over a bit of time ...

If you don't want to read me explain ad nauseam about the whys of my favor, just skip to the bottom.

Here it goes. After many empty declarations on my part to start reading blogs again, I have failed to do it. WHY? It's because of the one thing that would seem like THE most helpful aspect of picking up where I left off ... My Reader.

My reader has, let's see, 325 blogs waiting for me. Everytime I try, I not only get overwhelmed, but I don't feel "at home" with the blogs. It takes forever minutes of back reading to determine what the blogger is blogging about. And that's if I even remember the blogger. I was adding so many blogs at the end, I just don't recollect who everyone even is anymore.

And that sucks.

I ~loved~ when I was able to share in the joys and be there for the not-so-joys. And I want to do that again. The best place I can see to start is deleting ~all~ of the blogs within my reader. Start reading blogs based upon your input, and THEN start adding new blogs as I can.

What I obviously need YOU to do is if you would allow ME to read YOUR blog, I would love if you would comment. If your profile (from comments) lists your blog (a single one), you don't need anything to do besides just leaving a comment about anything at all. Tell me your favorite flavor of soup or something. But please, comment. If you have a profile that lists multiple blogs OR it's not available in your profile, list it for me in the comments section? (If you want your comment deleted after I get the blog url, just let me know).

I really want to start reading the blogs of those who I am lucky enough to have swing by my blog to start with. Then, I'll get more blogs like I used to - just by reading reading comments on my friend's blogs and liking their word style. This is so I can add a title comment in my reader as to who I "met" this person from.


if you skipped this post because you didn't want to read my ramblings, start reading again! ~wink~

PLEASE! Leave me a comment with your blog URL so I can add you to my reader!

Thank you.


note ... if your blog is private and I used to be one of your readers, I would love to read you again (like little miss emily!). Can you pretty-please send me an invite or the password to nleisher@yahoo.com?

Bloggemies and Faking It:

How to seem like a better person without actually improving yourself.

The above is the book I picked up yesterday when I was out xmas shopping. It cracked me up so hard that it only took a matter of a second before i determined it to be mine.

A lame thing about slowing down to sloth speed in blogging efforts? You no longer have haters. I always knew I was blogging often enough when I had bloggemies. A few years ago, I'd of posted this book title and instead of eliciting laughs (hopefully), I'd get a bunch of comment "How ironic because you are MOST in need of improving yourself!" But, alas, all my bloggemies have found newer, better bloggers to hate.

"Bloggemies". That's a pretty cool word. I hereby declare bloggemies to be my newest, and most favorite at the moment, made up words.

whoa dude. not cool coincidences.

Last week here in town, a woman's body was found burning at a local trail head. It was found out to be an 87 year old local woman. She wasn't your typical 87 yr old granny. She was still very active and enjoyed things like facebook, which she was on a lot.

Anywho, it seems it was a burglary gone awry. (well, i guess her death may have been planned, i have no idea yet.) It looks like a random burglary because houses next to hers were found to have been tried to get broken into. There were screens removed and windows tried with no luck. For 87 yr old Kit Grazioli, her window was found accessible. Using fingerprints the police found on scene, they went and picked up 21 year old suspect, Marcus Allen Smith.

Here's where the coincidences get a little weird ...
---> The victim's house was reported as in the "1100 block of Samuel Point Drive".
~ Our great grandmother lived just down the street, but had moved right before her passing.
~ We know the owner of one of the tried-to-but-couldn't-get-in houses.
~ We have friends who know the victim quite well. One of our closer friends just attended a meeting and the victim sat right next to her and they chatted throughout the meeting.

---> The suspect was reported to have been picked up on the "1300 block of Suncrest Way"
~ Our great grandmother, mentioned above, moved out of her home on Samuel Point and moved in with her daughter (our Aunt) into a house at 1345 Suncrest Way (they recently moved, which is why I'm not worried about giving out such details).
~ Our Aunt's next door neighbor, at 1353 Suncrest Way, had a son of the same age as the suspect.
~ The police were called multiple times by concerned neighbors when the father of the boy living at 1353 would presumably "beat on" the son and the mother.
~ The suspect's name is Marcus Allen Smith. Using the public property search for the homes neighboring our Aunt's house. The house immediately next door is said to be owned by "Allen Smith".

It all really sucks.

(In)Fertility statistics.

I was watching GWLBWLB tonight and I heard one girl say "25% of couples will get pregnant on their first try".

And after rolling my eyes, I tried to access my infertility stats section of my memory vault and realized that someone had broken in and stole everything of value.

There are a TON of general and very detailed statistics out there regarding fertility and infertility. Help me out and comment with any you happen to remember.

Please?

i like big butts and i cannot lie

and I know you other brothers can't deny.

quick blog post here. I'm on a vinyl kick and running through my collections. It's not a ~huge~ selection, but let's say is isn't a tiny bit either. I have a couple of hundred records - lp and 7".

My comment today is - there isn't really any great vinyl selection here in my town. It used to be stinkweeks and eastside records, but not anymore. (heh - I still have my Tower Records badge with my name filled out as "bubbles". All I now have to chose from is the locally owned record store which only carries one aisle of new records and only 2 tiny bins for their 7"s.

I know i can buy anything off the internet, but half the fun was going on my weekly mission to the record store and slowly flip through each record. On more than a few outtings I would buy a record that just looked good. Or maybe came from a label I was familiar with the types of bands they signed.

It makes me sad. Does anyone else out there shop for vinyl? Any recomendations on searching in the absence of a good record store? Or am I denstined to make trips to the big cities for a ~real~ record store?

11 years old. Whoa. And have you seen francis bean?

I've been playing some really old music lately, delving into a lot of things I grew up listening to. The violent femmes, as you can tell from my last post, is one of those bands. I was at a stop light, looking at the cd itself. And then I saw it. 1983. Holy shit. I was ELEVEN. That's a long time ago for me, I'm not a spring chicken. Although I didn't listen to them until I was 14. I distinctly remember sharing the headphones of Cindy's walkman (so cool!) in typing class. (yes, typing. i sucked at it at the time. I used to wait until someone was done with their assignment and then I'd take their paper to the library on a "bathroom break" and photocopy it, slap my name on top and turn it in.) Anywho - I was enthralled by "add it up". It was the very first time I heard the f bomb in music. It changed my life. I scraped together some money and went and bought the tape myself.

What I think is crazy is it is almost 28 years old and I don't think it sounds that old. Like it could still be played, as is, on any 'alternative' radio station. Or am I just getting old too? Does it sound like classic (punk)rock to a 20 year old today?

Nirvana too. Nevermind is fucking 20 years old. And it IS played on regular rotation by many of the rock radio stations. Are they just that immortal? (ouch.)

I'm a huge nirvana fan. Always was. I got bleach in 1989, not long after it was released. I saw them in a handful of shows - starting with a tiny bar in 91 when i had my fake id (the real reason i had one was to get into shows when my favorite bands were playing in bars) for $5. Saw them play at another very small bar when word leaked out they were showing up for a non advertised show when one of the bands they were friends with from the northwest was playing (the melvins? or mudhoney? I think the latter) the same night they were playing the arizona state fair. And then he killed himself. It broke my heart so much that I stopped listening to nirvana all together for years and years. It broke my heart to play anything. It still does.

Tangent here ... I finally got over my questions about why he killed himself. This is just my own conclusion, but it's one I can accept. Kurt Cobain was a tortured soul all of his life. And then he got ~everything~ the average artist could ever want handed to him on a platinum platter in the space of just a few years. Fame. Money. Adoration. A wife. A daughter. I think he tried to appreciated it and tried to be happy but his own mentality wouldn't join in. He was ~still~ tortured. Could you imagine how horrific it would be to you if you came to the conclusion that even after getting ~everything~ you could ever imagine to hope to get, your brain STILL kept you tortured? That realization would drive me to suicide. To find out no matter what you did, no matter what the world gave you in return, you would NEVER gain happiness? And then to fear your unhappiness would touch upon his beautiful daughter, frances bean? I understand how he must felt. And I understand his decision to go. Am I glad he did it? No. Have I made peace with the "why"? yes. yes i have.

Tangent 2 here ... Have you seen that recent photo session with francis bean cobain? Holy shit. She. is. gorgeous. She looks so much like her mom and so much like her dad at the same time. It's got to be hard to live your life under the shadow of her father's career and her mother's nuttiness. Which, by the way, I love courtney love. She'd fucking bat shit crazy - yes. But that's what I love about her.

Circling back to my music choices, just a few more things to say. I bought some old albums I was nosalgic over listening to in my formative years. One album was Public Image Limited. You know, Johnny Rotten's post sex pistols band? I used to LOVE this one album. So I listened to it. And I'll never listen to it ever again. It's just plain terrible. The next one was Pop Will Eat Itself. How do i even describe it? A electronic/techno/alternative/'rap' style? It's like nine inch nails and the beastie boys has a bastard son.

Vanity Plates

First off, I hate that customized plates are called vanity plates. I'm not wanting a plate that says "I'm awesome".

But I did just send in for a set. First request "punkroc", second is "overfed".

I love the first one, but the second one? oh man, it makes me laugh everytime I see it. Everytime there is a car behind me at a fast food drive thru line, they'll be all "great. this is giong to take forever".

i'm so easily amused.

You can just kiss off

I take one, one, one cause you left me and
Two, two, two for my family and
3, 3, 3 for my heartache and
4, 4, 4 for my headaches and
5, 5, 5 for my lonely and
6, 6, 6 for my sorrow and
7, 7, for no tomorrow and
8, 8, I forget what 8 was for and
9, 9, 9 for a lost god and
10, 10, 10, 10 for everything!

Oh yeah well don't get so distressed
Did I happen to mention that I'm impressed?

Yes, In fact I ~did~ order fries with my shake.

And give me a hot apple pie with my value meal ...



I downloaded fat booth and I can't stop laughing. These pictures are fucking awesome.

(I'm sorry if this is offensive to anyone. I know it's wrong, I willfully admit I have a character flaw.)


Just for proof, this is a pre-booth pic ...