What We've Been Doing

Been quite awhile since we've blogged here. Our Facebook and Twitter statuses tell the story. To sum up: we've been busy, and micro-status updates are easier and more convenient to post than a lengthy, friendly blog update.

Back in September of 2009, Rubi got a job she'd been wanting for quite some time. She's now a writer for Massively - blogging about massive multi-player online games (MMORPGs). With the kids' schedules, the holidays, my crazy work schedule the last few months of last year, and the kids' winter break, it took Rubi quite awhile to settle in to a routine with her new job. She did, though, and is doing an amazing job - and even got her own column writing about Guild Wars, one of her favorite games.

Along with Rubi's new job comes new opportunities - we'll be traveling to Boston at the end of March to attend PAX East, a convention for computer games, board games, role playing games, dice games, card games, console games - basically any and all kinds of games are represented at this convention. Rubi will be working practically all of the time, interviewing people from the different PC gaming companies about their games. I'll be attending as her gopher, and also to have some fun of my own while she's busy (and to go to all the cool parties with her). We're also planning on attending the West Coast version of this convention over the Labor Day weekend.

At the start of the new year, I moved from my normal second shift hours of 3pm-11pm to a much more family friendly dayshift hours of 7am-3pm - which also has taken the family some getting used to.

Then mid-February (about 10 days ago), I slipped on the ice on the walk in front of our house, apparently did a mid-air flip to avoid my head or back hitting the concrete steps and concrete molding near me, heard a loud pop from my right ankle and was in quite some pain as I writhed on the snowy ground. Rubi called my coworkers (lucky me, "working at" 9-1-1) to ask for an ambulance for me. I griped at her during the call and made her hang up. I did not want to be the guy who took an ambulance to the ER for a sprained ankle (I had sprained the same ankle in high school, resulting in the need for crutches and a then cane and then a severe limp for several weeks). Shortly after I got her to hang up, I asked her to call back and go ahead and get me an ambulance. I figured I'd get seen, in and out of the ER, much quicker if I came in by ambulance than if I drove in and went through standard triage. While she was on the phone with the ambulance, they asked her their standard questions, including "Is he conscious and breathing?" to which she replied, "Oh yeah, he's awake and crabby!".

I did get right in to a room at the ER, saw a nurse (or three) pretty quickly and got to X-ray. Shortly after getting my ankle x-rayed three times, one nurse (who recognized me from high school) came in and told me I had broken my ankle and would probable need surgery to get screws put in, but she wasn't sure about the surgery part and the doctor would have to confirm that.

She came back a little later and confirmed I would need surgery and told me to go see the orthopedic surgeon the next day and would probably have surgery the day after that.

Sure enough, after seeing the orthodoc, he scheduled me for surgery the next day. I broke my ankle Monday afternoon, saw the doc Tuesday morning, and was in the hospital for surgery at 8am Wednesday. Getting into the hospital and prepped for the surgery took probably a couple three hours, the surgery was scheduled for 10:30am. The surgery lasted maybe 10-15 minutes - had 2 5mm screws put in to reattach my inner ankle bone pieces together - and I was in recovery until, I think, almost 5pm. Lortabs and an empty stomach didn't agree with me; I got a bit queasy. They put something in my IV (not phenergan, which is what I expected) to stop the nausea and it worked. By the time it had taken affect, I was ready to get up and walk out there I had been there so long. But they eventually wheeled me out in a wheelchair to my darling bride waiting with the van at the curb.

I've got a follow up appointment next week, where I hope to get this over-large, overly heavy splint off my leg and something smaller and more compact put on in place of it that's easier to dress around and easier to wrap so I can take a shower more easily. I asked the doc about the con in Boston, and he said I should be using a cane by then.

I ended up taking 3 sick days off of work, and a personal day to try and get used to having a broken ankle and dealing with it. I actually had 6 days off before I had to be back (those 4 days, plus two normal days for my weekend). My first day back, I only worked half a day - went home early. Worked the next day, when my boss brought me a nice wooden can wrapped in gold-colored ribbon and bow as a gift (the cane had been hers). Took another sick day to deal with continuing pain in my ankle, lack of sleep, and an upset stomach from taking pain killers on an empty stomach (when will I learn?!). And I'm back today working 12 hours overnight from 7pm to 7am.

In additon to my and Rubi's craziness, Alexander has had wrestling practice twice a week and/or wrestling matches, and Lizzy has art club and speech team; all after school, keeping us jumping all afternoon/evening some days picking up kids from school at different times, because none of those events ever end at the same time as each other.

And I think Lizzy has given up blogging here in favor of blogging at her Stuck in 7th Grade blog.

I've been writing book reviews sporadically over on my book review blog, and as mentioned earlier, Rubi and I have been facebooking and tweeting more often, and she and I started our own podcast. We have two episodes posted and hope to find the time to record more soon.

That's what the Bayer Family has been up to.

What We've Been Doing