Ask For the X-men, Get Micky Mouse
I don't remember much of last night after we had dinner. I fell asleep just before seven and slept all the way through to five in the morning. Sluggard that I am, I turned over and snoozed until 6:30.

And a funny thing happened. When I got up I felt like myself, more than I have for a couple of weeks.

I got a B12 shot yesterday, and when it was over the nurse said, "I have to cover that spot with a bandage, but all we have is little cartoon ones. Will Mickey Mouse be okay?"

Thinking of my macho image I said: "Do you have any X-men?" Cuz you know, cartoon X-men are ever so much more cool than Mickey Mouse.

The nurse laughed and said, "Sorry, but you're stuck with Mickey."

So, whether it was the shot or the sleep, I feel better today than I have for a long time. For the past few days, I've felt like I've been carrying a big water balloon of pain and liquid around on my hips.

Today, I have a little pain but my head is clear and I feel like I can do anything I want to. This is the person I like being -- capable, competent, and silly. My sense of humor must have been hiding under my pillow.

Ginger, Lovey and I pounced each other around the house as I gathered up the laundry. Today feels like a normal day.

Birthday Birthday
Yesterday, I turned 45 years old. Most Patient Wife took me out to dinner, and baked me a delicious cake. (It was lemon, which I asked for.) She also got me a nice carrying case for my iPod.

It was a quiet day, mostly.

Today is my son Chris' 23rd birthday. We are sending e-mail back and forth, but mostly are still trying to figure out where we fit with each other.

Chris, I hope you have a year full of promise and hope, and maybe a hint that one of your dreams will come true.

Not Quite Angry, Fueled By Coffee
I worked last night, which was a mistake. I was snappish to a couple of the customers (they were rude, but normally I can shake it off) because when I feel as nasty as I do at the moment, I have no patience and no humor.

I've decided to leave the job I worked last night. There are a million reasons why, but the latest one is: instead of being home in a vicodin-induced coma, I was sort of forced to work all night and now I can't really go home to rest until about 2 this afternoon. It's just too much.

This morning, I had a doctor's appointment and a job interview. This afternoon I have another doctor's appointment, so I'm not going home until after I get my Vitamin B12 shot. Since I live 24 miles from the clinic I get the shot at, it just seems stupid to make the trip home only to come back again in a couple of hours.

So no I'm sitting in one of my favorite coffee houses, sipping a two-shot breve and typing on a rented computer.

If I had more energy, I'd be angry, but mostly I just feel like a deflated balloon. My interview went well, and I'm pretty sure that they are going to offer me a position.

The problem is that the job may be more trouble than it's worth. If I take it, I'm going to have to shake things up at my 'regular' job in regards to my schedule. This new job pays a very high wage, but it's only for one day per week, with the requirement that I have to make myself available to cover other shifts as needed.

If I stay with it for a while, I can move to a more lucrative schedule and eventually be full time with excellent benefits. The downside is that I have no guarantees for at least a year.

In the big picture, that doesn't sound like a long time, but taking this job will seriously impact my other (full time) work. While there's a delicious piece of Gouda cheese waiting for me at the end of the maze, just being in that maze means that I have to let go of the Velveeta I already have.

But the wheels of this job move slowly, and I have at least a month to figure things out while they do a thorough background check on me, including criminal, credit, and driving records. Drug tests, personality tests and who knows what else have to be done before I have any idea if they are really interested in me at all.

Just about anything can happen in that time.

Back In The Saddle ... Sort Of
Well, I'm going back to work today, even though I don't really feel like it. I feel like I have caught up with my sleep, so that's good.

I have a couple of stories to write for the paper. I did the interviews before, but I have not had the energy to actually write the story. I'll get one out today, and hopefully the other one tomorrow or Sunday.

I can't wait to get whatever is wrong with me taken care of. I hate feeling worn down all the time. And my humor of late has taken a vacation without me.

At Least A Partial Answer
So today I had a CAT scan done, and this afternoon, I met with a specialist who thinks he knows what the cause of my current health stuff is.

I worked last night, and I have been up all day, having spent much of that day in the hospital or at the clinic. So I'm not exactly happy.

But I have at least a partial answer to what's going on with me. It's called a Horseshoe Kidney.

Now, there are a lot worse things that could be wrong, and frankly I'm a little relieved. And as I noted yesterday, I'm no longer fighting a fever and in general I feel okay.

I'm just really tired. And low on energy. But I don't work tonight, and tomorrow is an easy day with just a couple of hours of training in the morning.

The specialist is thinking I need to have a couple of procedures done to determine if I need some fiddling around done inside my innards. Chances are that everything is fine, and once I kick this infection completely, I may be able to just forget everything else.

The Power of Suggestion

One of my favorite movies ever is Airplane!. And one of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Captain Oveur is overhearing someone describe all the terrible symptoms of the food poisoning that has incapacitated the crew and most of the passengers.

As Oveur hears each symptom, he shows that he has them. I'm kind of like that. I've never really noticed before, but in the past week, doctors and nurses have been asking me if I hurt here or there, or if I notice this or that symptom.

And of course, now I have them all. I'm sure that I don't really have every symptom they've asked me about, but darned if every so often I feel like I do.

Let's Make A Deal
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Or, Please Don't Get Naked In The Sauna At The Health Club
Hi, Big Guy.

Yeah, I'm talking to you. When I go to The World's Least Intimidating Health Club, I like to work out a little, swim a little, soak in the hot tub and top it all off with a few minutes in the sauna before hitting the shower.

I don't mind the company; I like to hear people visit back and forth in the various places in the club, and I've had a couple of nice conversations in the past few months.

But I have a deal to make with you. Would you like to hear it?

If I just stipulate that your package is bigger, more manly and just so much more impressive than mine is, could we just skip the part where you parade around naked in the sauna?

I don't mind the naked part so much. I'm 45, been in the army, been in my share of locker rooms and have seen a lot of naked bodies. While I don't exactly look forward to the flash of the flesh, I'm hardly horrified by it, either.

But man, I hate it when you come into the sauna, all naked and sweaty, pouring cold water on the hot stones to make sure you get even sweatier -- and then you sit your naked ass down on the raw wooden bench!

Okay, here's the difference between getting naked in the shower and sitting naked in the sauna. That sauna is a dark, tiny room filled with sweaty bodies and nowhere to sit but on the wooden seats with the recessed metal screws that hold them together. That wood is untreated, my friend, which means that it absorbs moisture -- especially when it get heated up.

In a shower, there's a lot of room. There's tile everywhere, with drains that take the water (and the stuff that comes off of your body) away. The shower is a big breezy place with lots of good lighting to show off your Incredibly Impressive Package.

Maybe if I stipulate as to your superiority and say something complimentary in the shower, you could then avoid the sitting of your naked self down in the sauna? Could you at least sit on a towel or something?

I try not to think about it, really. But you know how it is: I'm in there, with my shorts or swimsuit on, reading or just relaxing, and you enter naked as the day you come out of your momma. You pause a moment or two and take in the heat -- sometimes you even stretch a little just to make sure you work up a sweat! So far, I'll admit that I'm a little uncomfortable, but I can live with it.

But it's when you decide to sit down, with your sweaty butt on that raw wood that I start to lose it. And you sit there, sweating out your butt crack juice and sharing it with the world -- or at least those of us who venture to the sauna at the World's Least Intimidating Health Club -- and I am at a loss.

I've tried glaring at you, but so far that has accomplished nothing. In fact, maybe you're thinking that I'm awfully impressed with your package or something.

I've tried to use my mind powers to make you feel cold, or uncomfortable, or even ashamed that your soaking the bench beneath you with fluids that should remain yours and yours alone. But that hasn't worked so far.

So now I'm up to bribery. What do you say? I don't need to see the evidence, your honor: I'll just stipulate for the record that whatever you have in your pants is so much more than I could ever dream of having in mine. So you don't have to prove it by getting naked in the sauna and sharing anything with anyone else.

What do you say?

Another eerie connection between Mike Sawin and James Tiberius Kirk
I've been to the doctor's office five times in the last seven days. I've been prodded, poked, probed and examined to within an inch of my life.

They don't know what's wrong with me yet. I had an infection that has been taken care of, but there is still the matter of shooting pains that make me whimper like a dog that's been kicked.

I had some terrible fevers, the shakes, exhaustion and the feeling that my brain shrunk a little and was rolling around loose inside my skull. But all of that is gone. I'm still tired a lot, but that's normal when I reach the end of my seven-day work cycle. I'll catch up on sleep in a day or two, and hopefully that will be that.

Tomorrow I go in for a CAT scan. Hopefully, they'll find whatever it is that is causing the pain and I can get rid of it.

Or maybe just live with it. I don't know.

But I'll know more tomorrow, and at least my mind will be at ease a little.

----

Remember on the original Star Trek where Kirk would be fighting an alien or something and Bones would shoot him up with a Vitamin B12 shot to revive him and give him some energy?

Well, just like that, I'm getting those exact same shots. It turns out that like a lot of people who've had the bypass surgery, I'm going to need those shots -- as well as a iron supplement -- so I don't get anemic.

Apparently, this is part of the health problems I've been having lately. Low on iron, super low on B12.

Another eerie connection between me and Captain Kirk.

Domestic Spying -- Or Job Security?
With all this talk of the US operating secret bases overseas where enemy combatants are held and tortured by our foreign allies, it occurs to me that several of our well-trained (and eager!) men and women who were trained for such duty might be afraid of losing their jobs.

But President George Bush (that "W" should maybe stand for "Wiley!") has come up with a plan that will keep American spying jobs right here on American soil!

Yup, what with the tapping of phones, and taping of cell phone conversations, monitoring of our library records, video store rentals and even search engine requests on the internet, President Bush has given our people enough work to keep them busy for a long, long time.

I have to hand to the President. He's looking out for our men and women in uniform. The interrogation and torture of enemy combatants can best be handled by other folks, but only American agents can be trusted with this sacred duty to spy and collect information on law-abiding citizens.

That's some great forward thinking that I voted for when I cast my vote in 2004. Way to go, President Bush!

According to AP, President Geroge W. Bush lost more American jobs a couple of months ago when captives were sent overseas to various foreign countries and in effect, the US 'outsourced' torture."

Okay. This is has gone on long enough. The Ford Motor Company cut more than thirty thousand jobs the other day. The Winchester Rifle, once a proud American product, is now being produced in Belgium and Portugal, for Pete's sake.

But ... torture? We're now outsourcing torture? Come on! Where is the pride? Don't our enemy combatants deserve the very best? Are you telling me that the good of U S of A is taking a backseat to a couple of penny-ante Eastern European countries?

What's next, I ask you? Will Harley Davidson leave Wisconsin and start up production in Hong Kong or Bagdad? Will Hostess Cupcakes be baked in Maracaibo? Or will Winston Cigarettes start coming from Havana?

Bad News From Technical Department
Grrr.

Of all the times for things to go wrong with our desktop!!!

It's been deteriorating for a while now, but now the thing won't upload images from my digital camera. Without the camera, I can't do my newspaper work, and that won't do. I ran off to the public library, and borrowed a computer that will take images from my camera...if I were a network administrator.

So now I have to scramble to find a computer to use for a few minutes to unload and send pictures for my editor, who was expecting them yesterday.

Grrr.