Sliding in just under a month from the last post, I’ll try to catch things up:
1. Had my third knee surgery just under two weeks ago. This was to remove the screws from the surgery a year and a half ago. They also scoped out the underside of the patella, cleaned up some cartilege, and verified that I don’t actually have any bone exposed in the joint. That’s good, but I’m still a bit worried that the knee may not heal as completely as I’d like. I guess we’ll see if the crunching-popping badness returns. In any case, I’m almost as mobile now as I was before the surgery and should be able to return to training, working, and home (de)construction in the next few days.
2. Kitchen – It’s been about a month-and-a-half since we put the base cabinets in. This required a bit of patience and ingenuity, since we needed the extra counter and cabinet space afforded by a “peninsula”, but didn’t have room enough for full 24″-width base cabinets. John suggested using 12″ wall cabinets instead. This would have worked perfectly if it weren’t for the fact that the regular base cabinets are 35″ high and the tallest wall cabinets are 30″ high. Fortunately, 2×4s aren’t really 2″x4″… they’re more like 1.5″x3.5″, meaning that building a supporting frame, consisting of an upright 2×4 on top of a flat 2×4, under the wall cabinets, brought them up to exactly the right height. Groovy. Other obstacles were overcome… such as Lowe’s changing the stock of cabinets between our purchase of wall cabinets and our purchase of base cabinets, and the lack of a suitable blind-base cabinet. So I built a corner cabinet out of scrap (it’s mostly unexposed anyhow) and discovered that I apparently don’t really know how to build a square box. Hmm.
Finally, the cabinets were all secured in place, and today the countertops were delivered and installed. Marie called to say that they look awesome, and I can’t wait to get home to see it. I think we may have to spend the evening just hanging out in the new kitchen.
3. Radios – With the knee not quite healed, I’ve been picking up more hours in dispatch and have finally moved to the central operations radio. This was mostly the goal of working in there in the first place… to see if I could get my brain around the chaos and do as good of a job or better than some of the veteran dispatchers. (ie. Put my money where my mouth is.) So far, it’s frustrating, challenging, and actually… fun. With upwards of twenty ambulances distributed around three-ish counties, responding to emergent and non-emergent calls, moves and assignments have to be planned out like a chess game. The fact that these chess pieces are all too eager to let you know whether or not they approve of your decisions adds an interesting dimension to the process.
4. I got my birthday present. The Digital Rebel XT arrived about two weeks ago and I’ve been using it a ton lately. With autumn in full swing, I expect it’ll see quite a bit more use over the next few weeks.
Hmm… I should update the current Flickr photo… There. Also, see my Flickr page for a number of the pics from the new camera.
