I’ve been waiting a lot lately. Thursday after work I waited for three hours for the train to arrive—in the rain—while they attended to “track work” 45 minutes earlier up the line. Eventually I got sick of being cold and uncomfortable so I called Nik to come pick me up. We had dinner while we waited for the traffic to finish clearing.

Friday we had to be at the hospital for Nik’s surgery at 5:15 am so we hurried over there and the staff there proceeded to separate Nik and I for as long as humanly possible until just before they wheeled her off to another part of the building I was not allowed to go. I shuffled from waiting room to waiting room trading one uncomfortable chair for another, exhausted and wanting sleep but not getting any unless you count my rear end going all numb and pins-and-needles from the “cushions” on the seats.

I tried to keep myself occupied with books and various computing activities such as watching Battlestar Galactica on my laptop but nothing was interesting enough to suffer through the discomfort for very long. Eventually the doctor came and told me Nik had done just fine and I’d be able to see her in a little while which turned out to be an hour and a half.

Fortunately Nik was fine and in good spirits when I came in to see her and it wasn’t very long at all before she was getting up out of bed (albeit slowly and with some understandable effort) walking herself to the bathroom and so on. It was pretty clear by about 1:00 pm that she was doing fine, eating before she was scheduled to, mobile before she was scheduled to and clearheaded before she was expected to be. They had originally said that she would have to stay the night but I was thinking pretty early on that she might as well just go home.

Here’s the thing: I’m no doctor so I don’t know squat. It would certainly be tragic if a patient were rushed out of the hospital before they were ready and had a setback which required them to come screaming back in via ambulance or something shortly after getting home. But generally speaking I think that there needs to be some kind of mechanism in place to evaluate patients based on their indicidual progress. A nurse actively denied Nikki some solid food because she said she didn’t want her to throw up. Anyone who knows Nik knows that she’d rather have performed the surgery on herself minus the anaesthetic than vomit even a little bit so her asking for food was pretty much a 100% guarantee that she was ready for it. Of course when she finally did eat she kept it down fine.

Sometime after dozens of lame TV shows a nurse finally noticed around 6:00 that Nik was doing fine and suggested that they try to talk to the doctor about discharging her early. (Digression: I’m a fan of TiVo, the product. I think people should buy and use TiVo and for the most part I like TiVo the company, too. There are many, many upsides to TiVo but there is one pretty major downside which isn’t expressly obvious at first but gradually becomes clear: Once you get used to watching TV on TiVo, it absolutely positively sucks trying to watch TV without it. I’m not even talking about commercial skipping exclusively here, either, although that is a major appeal to TiVo. I’m also talking about the fact that in the three plus years we’ve had and used TiVo, I can remember maybe one or two at the most times where I’ve felt like watching TV, sat down to watch it and found nothing to watch. If you configure TiVo properly, there should almost always be something you’re interested in waiting for you. Watching the hospital TV with it’s abridged cable channel selection and dodgy remote during peak daytime TV hours was probably the most painful thing Nik had to endure the entire stay. I know it felt like I was getting a lobotomy.)

Of course they couldn’t find the doctor to authorize the discharge so we waited. And waited. Technically visiting hours are over at 8:30 pm. When that came and went I started to wonder how this was to be handled. On one hand the hospital isn’t exactly a hop skip and jump from our apartment or even our home town. We’re talking about a solid thirty to forty minute drive and that’s for a guy who’s working on not much sleep and a long exhausting day of being completely useless. It’s rather amazing how tired literally doing nothing can be. I’d almost have rather worked a whole day truth be told. I’m glad I was able to be there for Nik but my actual value aside from providing Nik reassurance and the occasional display of sympathy (expressed via a complex facial expression that takes literally seconds to fabricate) could have been measured in nanoliters.

At around 10:30 the doctor finally bumbled in (getting out of his last surgery of the day which if you calculate means that he had been cutting people open and toying with their insides for about 17 or 18 hours which is somewhat disconcerting) and looked at Nik and said, “Want to go home?” She nodded. “Okay!” he replied cheerfully. And that was it.

I thought if that was all it took I was pretty sure there had to have been someone that could have done that six or seven hours earlier. But I think Nik was just glad to get to sleep in her own bed. She and I had both been worried up until right before he walked in that I might have to take off without her and leave her overnight regardless of any doctor permission because my ability to safely drive home was rapidly diminishing. Fortunately I had enough left in the tank to push through the discharge procedure and make it home in time to crash and spend the rest of the weekend working.

Fin

If you’ve asked me for help, assistance, contact or have invited me to something, presented me with a project idea or offered me any kind of opportunity in the last three months let me extend my humble apologies to you. I’ve been working two taxing jobs since December one being my day job and the other being a long contract assignment. Well I think I finally finished the contract assignment over the weekend so all those things I’ve procrastinated on might actually get some attention now.

I mean, I’m still a Level 14 Procrastinator so don’t start holding your breath or anything, I’m just saying I don’t have to actively procrastinate something else to procrastinate your deal.

Point Shot With Commentary

• As mentioned above I finished my contract assignment and I think I’m going to take the opportunity Bosslady offered me to go on a contract work hiatus. My new job has been more intense than even my pessimistic initial projections predicted. Because of this trying to balance everything has gotten me pretty wiped. Anyway, my final spoils from this last job should be something pretty nice since I’ve put so much time into it. Having maxed out my old iPod, I was thinking about doing the upgrade thing. It is interesting to me that I was concerned when I first got it that I might not use it enough to warrant the price. I think I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of it and probably fivefold. I use it all the time. Incessantly, you might say. The new black 60GB model looks pretty sweet but then today I see this Engadget bit and it just makes me grumpy. To wait or not to wait?
• I know I mentioned Dr. Mac’s blog previously and perhaps in passing let slip that Mrs. Mac also has a blog. I should point out that she updates far more often than he and her refreshingly frank comments about new motherhood are funny and fascinating at the same time. Highly recommended.
• I was griping about not getting sports scores on Netvibes the way I can with My Yahoo! Ryan seems to have made it his mission to correct this oversight and I think he’s found something that will work from Fox Sports.
• After my rant about MMORPGs the other day I ran across one that apparently is not only letting people play for free, but also supports Macs. If anyone out there is interested in playing, I’m willing to give a free game a shot but I’m not going in alone. I’m scared.
• Have you seen this gizmo? It lets you point it up in the sky and get information about what constellation you’re looking at. Spiffy! Not shipping for another couple of months and no indication what they’ll run you when they are available, but pretty cool nonetheless.
• Mark Rosewater is a designer for Magic: The Gathering. I haven’t played Magic in a long time primarily because I can’t afford to stay in the game and I already have an excessively expensive gaming hobby picked out but I still observe the game in a detached yet pseudo-interested way. Mr. Rosewater writes regular columns that are fascinating glimpses of the life of a game designer and he occasionally crosses his observations about design pitfalls with life lessons, as in the link above. Good reading.
• Last up today is a link I’m hestitant to post. First thing you should know is that it’s uproariously funny and had my eyes watering with laughter on several occasions. The close second thing you should know is that the humor found herein can be pretty blue so if you’re a young’un or sensitive to that sort of thing, steer clear. Also, if you don’t like comic books you probably won’t get it or care anyway so you’re off the hook as well. If that doesn’t elminate everyone, the rest can check out this site describing how Superman is really a big jerk.