The other week I made the (mistake?) of logging out of FA for the first time in a year because when I tried to log back in the new CAPTCHA from CloudFlare wouldn't let me back in and errors out--probably due to me still running an old version of Chrome on Windows 7. New tech can kiss my furry red butt (and no I'm not upgrading so stuff it).

YET, more secure and serious websites like E*Trade, Wells Fargo, American Express and tax websites have no problem with my browser so.... ppppt.

I'm using a separate Edge shortcut to access FA now (still using Windows 7) so that's solved, but kinda dumb. Art site blocks me, money sites no problem.

My six-month knee surgery follow-up appointment was today. Everything is good. Only issue I wanted to bring up was after sitting with knee bent, straightening my leg out causes a noticible "pop" of my knee cap you can hear and feel as it slides into position. This started happening during May and can be rather unsettling. Doctor said it's probably scar tissue build-up in the groove the kneecap slides in and to just see if it changes (gets better/worse). Otherwise no more appointments until the 1-year follow-up.

Otherwise my knee is back to 90% of where it was before. At this point it's mainly a psychological thing that makes me hesitate doing some things with it like squatting and running, both of which my doctor said there is no problem with me doing now.

Today is the 2 month anniversary for my ACL surgery. Also just finished with PT. Now it's just me doing stretches and exercises at home and returning to my walks. Still an issue of pain here and there but not really related to the ACL--more on everything else that got wrecked when I twisted my knee + my Runner's Knee from 15 years ago decided to become a part of this.

Getting back to walking and doing normal stuff (prior to the accident I walked AT LEAST a half mile/day so now building back up to that). Steps no longer spook me. Still some bumps from scar tissue from where they went in which does cause some pressure in places. Just have to wait until it heals and goes away over the next months.

Most importantly I am feeling pretty "normal" again. My brain is starting to use my leg like it used to use it back before the fall. It's un-learning what it learned to "baby" the knee. Sometimes I forget completely about the knee altogether when I do things which is right what I need to be doing. Treat it normal. Do normal stuff. Ride things.

I had my first post-op visit with my surgeon today and he agreed with my physical therapist that I don't need my brace anymore unless I feel I need it. My leg is stable and strong and healing well. I can walk almost normally and I can tell I have an ACL again because my leg doesn't want to fly all over the place and be oddly loose like it was before the surgery.

I still have 4 more weeks of physical therapy to go, but it's going to be nice to be able to wear jeans again (have been wearing shorts because of the brace). So, anyway.... YAAAYYY!!

I'd say I'm out of the dark, hazy, mind-funk hole of post-surgery. My mood is back to normal and so is my apatite and plumbing. I even returned to work today to keep my mind busy. I took the wraps and bandage off my leg today for a first look. A few ugly marks and such but it's clean. Doing exercises for bending my knee. They are difficult but my knee feels better afterwards. Also have an ice therapy machine that I use throughout the day.

The most important and uplifting fact that I want to impart to everyone is that my knee is way way WAY better than it was when I first wrecked it. I didn't know how bad the surgery would be or how much it would set my mobility back, but I'm up and walking and putting weight on my leg with no pain (yes, using crutches and always a leg brace). I couldn't even think of walking or putting weight on my leg for over a week when I first wrecked it, and it hurt a LOT more than it does now. This fact, along with all the well wishes from everyone here, really lifts my mood and makes me feel good about choosing the surgery. Thank you everyone for your supportive comments!!

The surgery happened as scheduled. Everything went well. They stayed away from the meniscus and just did the ACL graft which means recovery will be faster. In a nice big leg brace. Still have the pain block on my quad which I guess when it wears off the real pain will start. They gave me like the lowest possible dose of Hydrocodone. Cheapskates. Anyway, I am moving around the house pretty good with the crutches. Actually moving BETTER than I was when I first wrecked my knee.

The brace stays on for 2 weeks except for hygiene and some PT exercises they want me to start tomorrow. I can put weight on the leg but will be using crutches to get around.

Took today and Wednesday off work. Just sitting around the house doing the ice/elevate thing, watching TV and doing what I can to stay active.

Well, I just got the call this evening. My surgery will be next Monday the 13th. I saw my surgeon again last week and he was pleased with my improvements from physical therapy and put in the order. It is to be a reconstruction of my ACL using a cadaver graft with attention to doing what they can for my turn meniscus.

I think surgeons try to scare you out of surgery. He gave me a very scary leg brace to bring to the surgery and said it could be up to a year to recover fully. I doubt that, but a year of recovery that gives me 10+ more years of full use of my knee? I'll take it. I'm too young to have limited mobility like this.

This weekend I'll be prepping, buying groceries and supplies to last for the first week or so. A friend will be taking me to and from the hospital which is on the opposite end of town (actually not even in town--it's in Rio Rancho). Also I have neighbors who I can call if I need them.

I didn't expect the surgery to be scheduled so quickly. Lots of anxiety but also relief. Anxiety of how much I might be immobilized afterwards, relief that it'll finally be over and it can only get better after. Won't know how immobilized until it's over depending on what they do with the meniscus (doctor's descression). Not particularly worried about the pain--I already went through that when I tore the ACL and meniscus.

That's all, I guess.

Well, the surgeon is a GO for me having surgery to fix my ACL but wants my knee to be as good as it can be first, so in the meantime I've got a month of physical therapy after which time he'll see me again. He gave me some exercises and today I had my first official PT session where I was given a few more exercises to do. I'm lacking about 10 degrees of movement both forward and back. The exercises have been helping.

Turns out a major obstacle keeping me from doing normal activities hasn't been pain, but me and the psychological blocks I put up since my injury. See, I've been so scared of doing certain things even though there's no physical reason I can't do them. I have to un-train myself from what I've been doing to NOT use my knee (if that makes any sense). The therapist assured me, "You've already torn your ACL, you can't do much more damage just by doing normal activity". She suggest I just stay away from swing dancing or basketball.

Yeah, more knee stuff, but I do (or did) have friends here who want to follow my progress.

MRI found a complete tear of the ACL and a radial tear in the medial meniscus. My orthopedic specialist told me that despite being 50 I am a good candidate for surgery because my knee is in such good shape + the fact that I rely on my knee for mobility. I see a surgeon next week and he'll go over the specifics of that, but it shouldn't be a debilitating surgery and I will be able to walk on it soon after.

Other than that my knee has gotten better over the last month. I still can't bend my knee back much but I can do more with it now like steps and going for short walks with a knee brace. Only trouble I have with it is at night when it gets in the wrong position and I'll wake up to it being sore for a few minutes.

So, it's possibly a torn ACL, but we still won't know for sure until my MRI which will happen in a couple weeks (the orthopedic specialist just did a simple physical exam). I can walk a little more normally now but I am moving at half speed. Still cannot bend knee backwards or twist too much. If it is a torn ACL I will definitely be having surgery to fix it because I need my legs at 100% for my mobility.

On the + side I've reached my insurance out-of-pocket deductible for the year so any further procedures are paid for.

Decided it was about time I updated you-all. Back on September 24th I injured my left knee when a wood platform I was standing on gave way under me. No fractures but I messed up the soft tissue pretty good. Won't know the exact details until this coming week when I go to an orthopedic clinic. At first it was really bad and I had to use crutches and a knee brace to get around. Today it's better and I can get around without it hurting, but I can't put weight on the ball of my heel or stand straight on that leg or put any sideways pressure on it. My biggest frustration is I don't know what I should and shouldn't be doing to it to get it better. Been doing some PT exercises and using a heat pad but otherwise I'm in the dark.

I was more pissed off than anything about this because it happened the week I was supposed to help my parents pack for their move to Missouri. That's the other big news: my parents and sister have moved to south-central Missouri to get away from the heat and live in the country in the middle of nowhere. So, now I am back to being alone in Albuquerque and have no plans to move. I love it here.

Around a month ago, on the advice of a neighbor, I dove into the sci-fi world of author Robert A. Heinlein with A Stranger In A Strange Land (still reading it--no spoilers!!!). There are two versions of this novel: the original 1961 release, and a 1991 release. The 1961 release was a cut-down by version due to his publisher saying the original was too long and wordy. I, however, chose to read the full, uncut version released in 1991 which is around 1/3 longer. And, oh man it is wordy in spots. Paragraphs and almost entire chapters of nothing.

Reading this has caused me to re-examine my own works and pen out a couple full paragraphs where I over-explain or provide excessive detail where the reader can deduce for themselves the idea. I know it's a nothing act as these are my own personal printed copies of my fanfics that no one will see, but it does make me feel a bit better to do a little trimming of the fat.

I think the reason I added some of that "fat" was to increase the length of my fanfics so they could be justified as proper-length stories and increase the page count. This is, indeed, a falsehood one should not pursue as a primary goal when writing.

Those of you who have been reading my journals know I have my opinions about the new TTL series. I am an Old School Tiny Toons fan and am NOT thrilled about many things with the new series. HOWEVER, after recently re-watching some of the original series I have decided that, even though her initial appearance in the new series made me want to hit myself with a 2x4, the new Sweetie Bird... well, I'll take her hand-over-paw over the original Sweetie who (still) makes me want to gag and throw heavy blunt objects at the television. I guess it took me a while to get over the change (and I'd forgotten how horrible she was in the original).

The new Sweetie THUNDER Bird is okay in my book.

p.s. This has absolutely NOTHING to do with what she may or may not have said in the Spring Break episode this weekend.

So I just set myself up on Telegram again (complete bastard of a process compared to 10 years ago when you could just use the desktop app without having to install anything on your smartphone).

Needless to say I've lost all my contacts and stickers and everything, so if we use to chat, or you want to chat, you'll need to reach out to me again. My Telegram contact info is in my bio here. Same phone number and username as before.

Cheers.

Anyone remember this submission of mine?
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/9624732/

In order to make the 3D text on that submission I ended up digging out my copy of CorelDRAW 2.0 on 3 1/2 inch floppies and installing it (which ended up crashing Windows XP but that's another story). Anyway, once I made the text I removed the software for the good of all mankind (unfortunately I lost the work file over time).

Well, I still do from time to time wish I could manipulate text like that, so yesterday I decided to bite the bullet and buy CorelDRAW Essentials 2021 and re-discover the world of CorelDRAW. This is proving to be an uphill battle for me despite the sell that the Essentials version is for beginners and very intuitive and easy to learn. I guess I'm just not born with graphic designer intuition. Haha. Anyhow, I am SLOWLY learning again how I did what I did ten years ago.

So I just watched "Slappy's Return" which I only today found out about (Animaniacs 2020 ep 36). She grumpy. Look nice. I like. No complaints. Thank you, Sherri Stoner. Now more please! Time for Slappy to get her own series since Animaniacs wasn't picked up for another season.

Pensacola.

Oh, and I will give props to Tiny Toons Looniversity for two things: 1) its depiction of the Looniversity campus and most buildings (dorm buildings aside since that's all BS) is much more in line with its actual look and design (the 90's versions were rather simplified and stylized), and 2) Sweetie's wings are always going whenever she's not grounded. Thank you for acknowledging proper physics. None of that magic hovering crap you sometimes see.

I got into this fandom as a writer--a fan fiction writer, but a writer none-the-less (nobody's perfect). I was cranking stuff out left and right up until around 2004 when I finished my second "book" and my data feed for the toon world dried up. I haven't written anything official since.

I didn't realize how much I missed writing until just the other day when I got a new data feed burst on, of all boring things, improvements to the science lab division at the company Andy Fox works at. I don't plan to bore anyone by releasing it though--no matter how well written it might be. It's purely scene description with no dialog, but it really feels good to WRITE something again.

Bonus points if you get the reference for the title of this journal.

I've always been a night owl (except for those couple years when I tried to be an early bird), but this New Year's was the first year I really had trouble staying up 'till midnight. I mean it was difficult. Definitely do not like getting old.

It makes me remember back like 10 years when I'd regularly be awake until past 1 AM at MFF or other fur cons, or Disney theme parks where Downtown Disney didn't really get going until 11 PM. Now I wonder if I'd even make it. I feel fine physically, maybe I move a little slower than I use to, but come on, Fox! Where's your pep? Maybe I need some Testofen LOL.

Kinda forgot most of you probably don't follow my Twitter but yeah I am only now seeing these episodes and my 2 cents (on which I am not alone)...

1) High Shrill Voices. Like fingernails on a chalkboard. It's hard to listen to--except for Shirley's voice which is kinda cool.
2) "Why the *@&# are they siblings" -- that's a direct (censored) quote from the tweet I retweeted.
3) The creepy lower eyelid thing. I don't care for this animation style at all for the Tiny Toons universe. Reminds me of Gumball. The only time you'd typically EVER see a Loony Tune/Tiny Toon's lower eyelid is when they blinked.

Story-wise it's full of inconsistencies between the original series, while at the same time retaining other elements faithfully, so it's horribly conflicted for us old timer fans. But, it is an interesting take on the actual lives of the students and not just their class time/lessons.

I feel it's more of an obligation to watch the series than something to watch for fun. Need to see how weird weird gets.

After a year and over $1000 later I finally have 1 pair of glasses I can use. They still can't make lenses the way they could 25 years ago--apparently it's a lost art now--but at least the new glasses I have aren't distorted as hell.

Come to find out a good deal of the troubles have been due to what we thought was my "current" prescription (+14.00). It wasn't. It was really an experiment I had done back at my place in Minnesota in the early 2000's to try and make me a pair of "computer glasses" with an increased prescription. That experiment didn't work--even back then. The glasses were unusable, but since they were the last ones I had made the doctor down here thought that was the prescription I'd been using all this time.

Nope.

I know this because I found those computer glasses last month and tried them. They were nearly identical to the pair I had made here that I couldn't use.

So, what we'd been calling my "new" prescription was really the one I'd been wearing for the last 20 years: +12.50.

Of course I didn't know this weeks ago when I had them go ahead and make a second pair with my "new" prescription. They came today and I'm wearing them now. They aren't perfect but they are better than nothing. They are good distance glasses but not goot for close-up or reading because they can't make +6.5 bifocals anymore. Another lost art. wtf.

I can hear you asking: "Why didn't you have them use your new prescription anyway? Why get glasses with your current prescription?" Basically, I didn't trust my prescription changing that much and with the crap glasses I'd been getting down here I wanted them to start with a known, good prescription (eliminate variables). Also I wanted a backup pair of glasses with my current prescription because I've become very paranoid about never being able to get another pair of glasses.

Well, that's enough of me ranting. It's done and over and I'm putting it out of my mind where it's been living rent-free for over a year. It is what it is--like my dad's $2000 dentures sitting in a container on the kitchen counter for 3 years.

Due to the FA... thing... I took down a couple submissions. I don't do much mature art here but there were a couple pieces that might have been borderline. I donno. They were from years ago and best forgotten anyway

This is kind-of a rant, but there's a lesson and warning here for those people out there who have thick lenses in their glasses. Read on.......

If you haven't seen me in person, I wear glasses--thick, high index glasses. Been wearing them since I was like 2 years old. My prescription is +14. To put that in perspective, the highest index you can typically get at a drug store is typically +2 or +3.

All my life I never worried about getting glasses because all the good labs were familiar with the kind of lenses I need for my glasses. Well, I got the rug pulled out from under me last summer when I decided to get new glasses for the first time since 2004. Went to the best eye glasses place in the city. Paid $$$ for a new pair. They came back. Lenticular lenses. Wrong kind of lenses. These are flat lenses with a "bubble" in the middle that has the actual prescription. Told them no good. They tried again. Two-sided Super-modular lenses. Completely horrible pincushion distortion and useless. Told them no good. They said that was the best their lab could do. I got half my money back. They tried to blame the prescription my doctor gave me so I had him re-do it. Same result. Now we're up to October.

This was when I started doing research and found out that my kind of lens stopped being common around 2007. See, my kind of lenses are/were popular for people who had cataract surgery and had their natural lens removed. Well, medical science has advanced and now surgeries are better and artificial lenses replace the natural ones that were removed, so people didn't need those thick lenses anymore.... EXCEPT ALL OF US OVER 40 WHO HAD CATARACTS AND DO NOT HAVE NATURAL LENSES and can't have artificial lenses due to complications.

In my frustration I even went back to my old eye glass place in Minnesota during a visit and tried to find out if they could get me new glasses. Oh, but my last order was in 2004 and so of course they had thrown out all my records so they didn't know me from Joe Diddly--even though I'd been getting my glasses there FOR FOURTY YEARS!! Argh! At this point I threw my hands up and accepted that I am doomed to never get new glasses, and one day these will break and I'll be fuck out of luck. That was December.

Fast forward to about a month ago where I had gotten over my depression on this to try again. I ended up at a local place that was a referral from a referral. Told them the whole story. They took one look at my glasses and said a phrase that broke my brain: "Oh, we've done these before--we've even done stronger than this." There was still some back-and-fourth on if they could actually do my type of lens and they said some words I didn't like (super-modular). This time though I was ready to try my trump card. I had a spare lens from an older pair of glasses. We would send it to their lab so that there would absolutely be NO QUESTION if they could make that kind of lens or not.

This week I got the word. The lab got it. They said they can make it. I went in and ordered frames and lenses.

Now comes the waiting. Will the lenses be good or will this be another fuck-around? Did they write the order correctly, cross all the t's and dot all the i's? Did they disregard that note about the press-on my doctor neglected to remove from my prescription sheet that was a carryover from an experiment we tried last summer? I hate being a Negative Nancy on this but after all I've been through I don't trust anything and doubt everything.

I guess I'll find out in about 3 weeks.

Sooooo, yeah. If you have thick lenses in your glasses, better check your place to see if you can still get lenses.

It appears my Telegram account has been deleted due to inactivity (last used it in late 2020). Kinda mad about this as I had some good chats going that I would have liked to save, and people who I don't know if I'll ever find again.

Not planning on re-doing my account there. If you did happen to chat with me there you can find me on Twitter and reconnect. Or, there's always SMS and Email (hahahaha--old).

I am back from the land of the frigid! And looks like this time I escaped Minneapolis BEFORE the big deep chill blast that I got stuck with last time. It was another work trip with a side-task of visiting my old optometrist and glasses place. See, there's been a minor fracus down here since this summer when I tried to get new glasses made. After months of run-around the place down here failed to make lenses the way I need them to be (and cost me $300 in the effort for nothing). Long story short I now know the name of the shape of lens I need (hyper aspheric), as well as the shapes of the lenses that do NOT work. Unfortunately, it looks like hyper aspheric lens haven't been available since about 2007 (last time I got glasses was 2004-ish). Well, that's fun! But enough of that talk.

I came back to a computer with a dying CPU fan so I am very closely monitoring my PC until I get a new fan after Christmas.

This will be a rather somber Christmas here. First time in forever I am not putting up decorations or Christmas lights or even my ornament tree. Just don't feel like it. The health of some of my family has kinda been dampening the mood for several weeks (no, no COVID is involved, just old age), and just the general vibe of the city this year isn't as festive as in the past. Some snow would probably help bring up the mood but we're dry this year. Anyone want to ship their excess snow to Albuquerque?

I'm sorry to all the folks who I made read my horrible TTA fanfics. Looking back I was clearly just writing self-indulgent tripe. I mean some of it still holds up as pretty good, but a lot of it is just me blabbing about riding stuff. If it mattered I'd re-release some of it with big chunks removed or re-written, but that would be dredging up the past--something I really need to stop doing.