More Details & Other Stuff

Ok...I'm back with the details I promised. :D

1. Off and on (for a really long time now) Renaissance Man's right knee will give out without any warning. It just refuses to hold his weight. Once it gives out, it will keep giving out for hours. There have been times when he has actually fallen completely to the ground. It hasn't ever been painful, just really frustrating (and occasionally embarrassing when he falls in public). Well, it has been steadily becoming more frequent. Then, on Sunday, he was in the kitchen helping me clean up a spill on the counter when his knee popped. He was instantly in so much pain he couldn't walk. I helped him to a chair and we immediately iced his knee.

Monday he went to the campus clinic to have his knee looked at. They took x-rays and gave him a brace and crutches. They think it is a torn meniscus. He was told to ice it at night, take 800mg of ibuprofen three times a day and use his crutches until it stops being painful. If he is still in pain in 3 weeks, he's supposed to go back and they'll do an MRI. They are hopeful that it will heal without surgery, because sometimes they can. However, it sounds like surgery is quite common as well.

So, if you are a praying type person and you happen to remember, would you please pray for us that RM's knee will heal without surgery? Thanks!

2. I was reading diligently last night to finish The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow.



I really enjoyed this book. I felt there were some really remarkable insights and some great quotations to be had. It's a quick read and not much of a downer considering you know from the get-go that it was written by a man with terminal cancer. I thought he did a great job celebrating his accomplishments and sharing the lessons learned from them. However, I know one friend who felt like the author was arrogant. :) I guess I can see that, but it didn't bother me. I'd definitely recommend this one. ****

3. I had a friend call me to day to check up on my NaNoWriMo progress. You see, I was the one who got a couple of my friends to sign up. Of course, they are now both significantly ahead of my word count. I haven't even reached the first day's objective yet. Sigh. Truthfully, I wish I cared just a little bit more. My October was so outrageously busy that I still haven't recovered. It's just a bit strange to be in a position that I'd rather clean than write. :P Still, I've been writing at least a little bit every day on my blog for NaBloPoMo and finding that rather fulfilling. I'll be curious to see by the end of November how many words I've written for my blog as opposed to how many I've written for a novel. I'm not giving up on NaNoWriMo, but I'm also not fretting about it.

Other Stuff:

I'm canning again. I know, you thought I was done. Nope. I'm just now getting to the 7 boxes of apples that have been living in my garage ever since they were picked the first weekend in October. I just haven't been able to get to them until now. (See the aforementioned outrageously busy October.) There area few advantages to having my canning delayed this long.

1. My tart Granny Smiths have managed to sweeten a bit over time. I didn't have to put any sugar into the applesauce. It was darn close to what store bought unsweetened applesauce tastes like.

2. No fruit flies. They have all disappeared for the year. Yay!! No need to set fly traps. :)

3. I think my furnace has turned on a whole lot less than my AC would have. :)

I still have way too many boxes to use up, but hey, at least most of them stayed perfectly good until now.

I'm still hoping to find some pumpkins somewhere because I still really, really want to try canning pumpkin this year.