PTL! I Have a Bike Again!

You heard right. It took me five or six visits to Asheville Recyclery downtown over the course of 15 days, but last Friday, for the first time in 14.5 years, I rode a bike – and have every day since. I can't really handle more than about a quarter mile right now, but I'm definitely making progress. We've also started bowling every Wednesday afternoon again.

When my pain spiked up again after my surgery last May, I started to lose hope. Apparently the problem was just that the muscles and other tissues that used to have to accommodate my fusion hardware are struggling to adjust to it no longer being there.

But now, after four months of physical therapy, I'm almost completely free from the sharp, stinging pain that used to plague me, and only have to deal with the more diffuse pain that will likely plague me the rest of my life. My therapist is sure I'll be going back to work soon, but I'd rather wait until I've been able to back off my pain meds (I'm still taking three different ones).

I wanted to attach a picture of me riding, but Blogger is being persnickety and won't let me upload it, but those of you on facebook have already seen it anyway. Some of my Picasa configuration files decided not to get backed up off my old laptop, but fixing that is one of my goals for the week. After that I'll upload both pics of me on my bike to my Picasa album and link it here from there.

My New Game Design Blog

I'm finally getting serious about getting my roleplaying and other games finished and published. To that end I have created a second blog, this time devoted strictly to gaming and game design. I may repost some things here, but it will be the only place to download my free trpgs and sign up to playtest my other games, so go check it out.

An Attempt to Play the Pokémon CCG More Like the Videogames

I've been pondering this for a while but haven't had a chance to try it yet out so I'll welcome any input, especially from playtesters, that anyone may have to offer.

You Will Need:

Any six Pokémon, regardless of evolution (for instance, you can play with Butterfree or Caterpie as one of your six Pokémon)

• EXes count as two Pokémon
• Legends count as two Pokémon
• Lvl Xes count as two Pokémon and must be paired with an appropriate non-Lvl X

Each Pokémon can start the game equipped with a tool (except Expert Belt since there are no prize cards)

A stack of 20 Energy.

A stack of 10 videogame-appropriate items like Full Heals, Moo-Moo Milks, and Potions.

Rules That Are the Same:

You may only play one energy a turn.

Abilities and Attacks function normally.

Rules That Are Different:

The only win-condition is KOing all of your opponent's Pokémon.

Pokémon don't evolve or Level Up.

You don't have a hand, deck, or discard pile (discarded energy simply goes back into the stack, discarded Trainers are removed from the game) so Pokémon that affect those will be useless.

You can freely look through your two stacks at any time.

Abilities can't let you lay extra energies since you don't have the race to evolve or level up as a balancing mechanism for the Pokémon that have those abilities.

You may only use one Trainer each turn – just like in the videogames. But unlike in the VGs, using an item doesn't end your turn.

Retreating no longer costs energy but retreating also no longer removes status conditions. Retreating also doesn't end your turn like in the VGs.

Status conditions persist on retreated Pokémon but are only active while the Pokémon is active. For example, a poisoned Pokémon will retain the poisoned status while on the bench but it will not take damage between turns.

A Note on Stadiums:

If both players agree, a stadium may be put into play before the game starts and will remain there for the duration. This simulates two trainers in the VG who are actually battling in that stadium.

Surgery Update

I haven't updated facebook or Twitter in a while 'cause I haven't had anything to update. Until last night I still had stabbing surgery pain across my shoulders but had mostly lost the all-over pain I've been dealing with for the last 13.5 years.

But sitting in a pew for an hour-and-a-half last night then cooking supper and cleaning up afterwards knocked my whole back out-of-whack and it still hurts. So, as long as I take it easy for another few weeks, I think the prognosis is good.

My Upcoming Spine Surgery

The Past – August-September 1997

Tuesday, 26 August 1997 – A typically selfish American driver decided, as usual, that her time was more important than anyone else's safety. She pulled her little red car past the point where there is now a stop sign before checking for traffic so my bike slammed into car before either of us could really see the other (I only remember seeing a flash of red to my left just before impact) and I sailed over it and landed on my helmeted head. I finally came to a stop about 30 feet away.

The force of the impact was enough to shatter my fourth thoracic vertebra. In order to keep my spine in shape while it healed and thus keep me from developing a hump, it was decided to fuse my first six thoracic vertebrae together by screwing two metal rods into them. The surgery took place on Tuesday, 4 September, exactly nine days after the accident.

Life went back mostly to usual for the first couple of years but I started to decline quickly when I went back to work in November of '99. During the BSU Spring Break Mission Trip to Chicago, Illinois in March 2000, we got to spend Thursday being tourists instead of working. My then-girlfriend (and now wife of more than eight years) and I wander around checking out museums (we're both history geeks) and generally having a great time. But being on my feet for most of the day made my pain levels sky rocket and they haven't gone down since.

In the fall of 2006, after being forced to shut down our game store because I could no longer physically do the job and because our savings had long since run dry, I took a job answering phones at ClientLogic (now known as Sitel). It was a fun job that I did fairly well. I really enjoyed helping people. But even talking to people via a phone headset while using a computer to answer their questions proved to be too much for me and I finally had to quit in October, before I even finished training. It was then that I decided that I finally needed to file for Disability.

The Present – April-May 2011

I've been living with those rods for nearly fourteen years now and the pain has become so excruciating that I can barely function. A couple of months ago I started asking around to see if Medicare/Medicaid would pay to have my rods removed and was told that, as long as the surgery was medically necessary and likely to help, Medicare would cover most of it and Medicaid the rest.

So, a few weeks ago, I told my nurse practitioner all of that and he referred me to Carolina Spine and Neurosurgery. They were very prompt – very. Since then I've met with the surgeon twice, had a CT scan, and am scheduled for surgery at 07:30 on Wednesday, 11 May 2011 at Mission Hospital in Asheville. That's right; in six days.

Any surgery, of course, poses risks ranging from unsightly scars to death from a stroke caused by a blood clot but this surgery has some other issues of its own. From the CT scan, Dr. Gooch is fairly certain that the fusion is in good shape but he can't know for certain until he actually looks at my spine. He cautioned me that if he does find a problem with the fusion then he'll have to put in new rods after removing the old ones but that the new ones will be smaller because they'll need to correct a smaller section of spine.

Because the vertebrae will have grown around the pedicle screws, he'll have to carve out the bone in order to extract the screws. Depending on how much bone he needs to remove, he may need to graft some marrow out of my hip.

Even if absolutely nothing goes wrong, there is still the chance that the surgery won't actually help and my pain will continue on as it has for the past thirteen years.

With all of that in mind, I'm still holding out hope that I'll be back to my old self in only a few months and might even reclaim my old job at Sitel. Your prayers will be greatly appreciated both for me and for Lura and everyone else who will be helping me during my recovery.

I'm also quite fond of greeting cards and still have all of the ones I was sent during the three months of my last convalescence. I probably won't know my room number until I get there on Wednesday but you can always send them to our home or pass them on to anyone in my family. Those of you who know me from Hillside Games can probably leave them there but I'll have to check with Nate and Amanda to make sure it's okay first.

I found this via my lovely wife's blog of randomness and she found it on Shiloh Walker's blog who found it at The Bookaholic Zone who got it from Storytime With Tonya & Friends which, as far as we can tell, seems to be the originator.

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Rules:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
* Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

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Every year since we were very young, Dad has gotten us each at least one book for Christmas.  They are rarely books we would buy for ourselves but are always books we enjoy.  One of those, from many years ago, is The Complete Murhpy's Law: A Definitive Collection, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.  As an example, here's sentence five from page 56:

DOW'S LAW: In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion.

The Friday 56

I found this via my lovely wife's blog of randomness and she found it on Shiloh Walker's blog who found it at The Bookaholic Zone who got it from Storytime With Tonya & Friends which, as far as we can tell, seems to be the originator.

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Rules:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
* Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

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Since most of reading is done on the Sony PRS-505 my wife got me two Christmases ago, I don't always have a physical book on hand for this.  But one of my near-future projects is to apply the bookmarks from my well-worn copy of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (my favorite of his books) that Memaw bought for me many years ago to my digital copy so I can quickly find my favorite quotes.  Thus I actually have a non-electronic non-gaming book close at hand for a change.  So without further ado, here is my Friday 56 of Connecticut Yankee:

I could have given my own sect the preference and made everybody a Presbyterian without any trouble, but that would have been to affront a law of human nature: spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as are physical appetites, complexions, and features, and man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it; and besides I was afraid of the united Church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty, and paralysis to human thought.

Wow.  And I thought my sentences were long.  It just makes it that much funnier later when he comments on Sandy's "horizonless transcontinental sentences" (page 148 in my unabridged Aerie edition).