Minor Surgery of a Foot Kind

While I was at Desert Orthopedics yesterday to have my knee looked at, I made an appointment for some outpatient surgery. They were able to take me this morning. 

Several months ago I was out wandering about the garage in my bare feet -- never a good idea -- and picked up a splinter of something in my heel. One generally deals with splinters in one of two ways: pick it out, or let the body take care of it, either by absorbing it or pushing it out.

Being on the bottom of my heel, I couldn't get to it to pick it out, and since it's walked on daily there was no chance it could get pushed out. And after a couple months it became clear that it would never be absorbed.

I asked Mrs Elliott that if I were to give her an X-Acto knife and a bottle of Bactine would she be willing to dig the thing out. She looked faintly queasy and passed on the offer.

Clearly I was going to have to go to a professional. While I was seeing my primary care doc about this and that a couple weeks ago I mentioned it, and they took an X-ray. But there was nothing visible on the film. That ruled out metal. Wood was already ruled out as it would have been absorbed by the body. This left glass or maybe a splinter of plastic.

This morning, Dr. Askew, the same guy that fused my right ankle in 2009, numbed the bottom of my heel with Freon or something, jabbed me with some Lidocaine ("Here -- bite on this piece of leather."), and dug around with a scalpel. He found a whitish length of callus with maybe something white and tough within. No telling what it was. I looked at it and couldn't figure out what it was. Wasn't glass, anyway. Probably plastic.

He put in a couple stitches, and sent me on my way.

I have to walk on my tippy-toes on that foot for a week or so, and take antibiotics, but the problem should be gone.

All in all it seems like a stupid thing to have to see a doctor about but I reckon I ran out of ideas.

Enjoy Cross-country Skiing

My left knee was replaced with a titanium and plastic model 15 years ago. This due to an auto accident that destroyed it ten years prior to that. They pasted the real knee together well enough to get by on but it wore out in 1988. Thus the metal knee.

Before that auto accident I was just getting into ski touring and backcountry camping on X-C skiis. But my legs were so trashed that I had to give it up. There really wasn't a whole lot of opportunity for X-C skiing in San Diego, Calif. anyway.

We moved here in '08 and I asked Jim Hall, a knee doc at The Center, whether I could risk X-C skiing. "No," he said after looking at the X-rays.

But Ted Shoenborn and Bob Woodward here in Bend told me that they know folk with artificial knees who X-C ski, so I figured I'd get another opinion. My doc referred me to Mike Ryan, at Desert Orthopedics, but Ryan only knows real knees, not artificial knees. The people over there said that Erin Finter was who I wanted to see. She skis and knows from knee replacements.

So I saw her this morning. They took new pictures, she looked at the new pictures. "Complicated knee replacement here," she said. Yeah, this was not your garden-variety knee replacement. There is a metal shaft going about a foot up the inside of the femur and all the baling wire they wrapped around my splintered femur to hold it together while it was healing is clearly visible.

She pointed out these and other interesting features. The plastic bearing surface shows sign of wearing out, gonna need to take another look in a couple years.

"Enjoy cross-country skiing," she said. Shook my hand, sent me on my way.

Odd Craigslist Posts, Pt. 1

Setting aside the usual misspellings ("refridgerator") and overhyped press-board rubbish ("Awesome bedside table bought at Target for $50"), there are some bend.craigslist posts that I find amusing.

For example, this one: "Glass coffee table in good condition. Central Oregon only."

Central Oregon only? The seller is very fussy about who gets the table. Maybe they hope to visit it every so often.

Or how about this mountain bike: "Bought brand new for Christmas and nephew only used it a few times before moving away. Comes with brand new solid rubber tires."

If someone bought me a bike with solid rubber tires I'd probably take the hint, too.

"Coffee table and two in-tables very nice shape $50.00"  Okay, I already broke my promise not to overlook misspellings. In my defence, it took me a few moments to figure out what "in-tables" are.

These are only a few that caught my eye this evening. I may make this a running feature.

What Airstream is this?

(SOLVED, see bottom of post)

A friend has an Airstream trailer that she wants to sell. She'd like to know what it is before she posts an ad. She says that it is about 22' from end-to-end. Here are some pictures she emailed us in hopes that some kind soul can identify it.

SOLVED. A guy on the Airstream forum has identified this as a 1954 "Safari." He provides this link: http://vintageairstream.com/photo-archives/1954-safari-22/

Many thanks to my reader for working on this puzzle.

Man Plates

A few friends came over earlier this month to watch a game on the teevee. Like a good host (but also because I like to cook) I made food.

Before that, Mrs Elliott had some of her friends come over a few nights earlier to watch a movie.

"You're invited," she said.

"Great! What's for food?"

"Salad."

Um. Okay. 

I appreciate that she invited me, and I enjoyed the film and her friends -- lively and bright company -- but, really, salad is barely a food, amirite? One endures salad, one does not thrive on salad. One resigns oneself to salad. It's like getting a flu shot: you tolerate it. Salad is something to be forborne. One does not look forward to salad. Oh good, they said, we're having salad tonight. No -- no one in the history of time has ever said such a thing.

Anyways, for my man-gathering, I made man food: Red beans and ham hocks. And also some baby back ribs. The former were cooked overnight in a Dutch oven and finished off in the crock-pot, the latter were cooked in the used-but-perfectly-good propane smoker I bought off craigslist from some guy in NE Bend in December. "Perfectly good," of course, once I steam-cleaned all the parts -- you can't be too careful about the hygiene habits of eastsiders.

When it came time to put out the plates and bowls for my friends, I realized that I didn't have decent tableware for a man-gathering. Of course Mrs Elliott and I have perfectly acceptable dinnerware for most occasions here in casa Elliott: I prefer nice white plates and bowls for most meals. Mrs Elliott has these odd square plates with bold patterns on them that confuse me -- I once completely overlooked a perfectly fine filet mignon because it was hidden in the pattern.

Neither seemed appropriate for men sprawled out in the living room, eating ribs and red beans with ham hocks in front of the teevee. I didn't trust them with my plates, and Mrs Elliott's plates were too -- well, fussy.

So I made do with random bits of unmatched crockery and some paper plates -- and it was fine, of course.

But this week I decided to patronize one of Bend's finer emporiums of fancy house- and kitchen-ware: Goodwill. Here I found exceptional (read: cheap) plates and bowls that any man would be proud to display on his sideboard.

Herewith I show you my choice:

Plate with moose.

It has moose. What's not to like?

We Done Moved Here Already

I'm retiring my previous blog, "Jack and Mrs Elliott Move to Bend" because I started it in 2008 as we were planning our move here, but we've been here for five years now, so we done moved here already. The title is out of date.

I played with Facebook for a while, but the signal to noise ratio, as we engineers put it, is poor. Very little information, a lot of noise. It's well-suited for people who like small talk, but I'm not one of those folk.

My Facebook page is still there, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time hanging out on Facebook.

So here I am.