Tales from the Steppes

2006-02-08

9:32 a.m.
Wednesday, February 8

Architects may come and architects may go
And never change your point of view
_ Simon and Garfunkel

The weekend was good. Nearly great, but I'll get to that. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't have any "No shit" stories to tell - it's just not that sort of thing. The weather was cold and snowshowers fell for much of the day. We were dressed for it so the snow just added to the beauty of the woods. All things considered, we did well pointwise and next year will do even better. The knee held up and did not actually bother me all that much, probably because of the doses of both ibuprofen and tylenol in me. The area the race is mostly very steep, rocky hills so this was occasionally interesting. On one descent, a guy that was behind me slipped and nearly wiped me out on his way down. This is when I decided to slide down on my butt, as my pants had a thick cover on both the butt and knees. It worked well until I hit a rock, but hey, no blood, no foul.

The only thing that kept the weekend and the race itself from being truly great was the pain that started in my lower left molar on the way out. At some point, it blossomed into something truly attention-getting; hence the heavy doses of painkiller mentioned above. I went to my dentist after getting back and it turns out that I have another abscess. Just like two years ago, though obviously in a different tooth. Unfortunately, he could not drain the infection because 8 shots of lidocaine would not numb the nerve. I did learn something interesting during this experience. It seems that the lidocaine is generally combined with epinephrine to increase it's effectiveness. After the first five shots, I was twitching and basically jumping out of my skin as my heartrate sped up and became a bit irregular. They did a quick EKG to make sure I was not having a serious problem and then gave me the rest of the shots without adding more epinephrine to the mix. So now I am doing antibiotics and narcotics and the dentist will try again either tomorrow or next week. Bleah.

This weekend is Ymir and in theory, I am going. I really don't want to at this point but I made a commitment and I need to follow through on it. The MM is fighting in his first youth combat tourney, so I am driving all three mongols down to the event with me. I am not looking forward to this because a) I feel like shit and b) three mongols to one adult is not my preferred ratio. Even if I felt better, I couldn't fight because I cannot keep track of all three and pay attention to what I am supposed to be doing. I tried that once and it was a bit too much. So we are leaving Friday evening, after the EM's first middle school dance. This is assuming that I get the MM's gorget finished, find garb for all three, and get all our stuff together. I wish I could leave a couple of the mongols here, mostly so I do not have to listen to them argue for 6 hours there and back, but that is not happening - all three are excited about this trip. I just wish I were. I am a tad bit peeved with the SU for not going on this trip. Not really surprised, but still peeved.