Man, what a week it's been! Last week, I hurt my back bad enough to go to the ER and get some muscle relaxers and pain pills, which helped, but still had a nagging back pain that just wouldn't go away...until last night when I got my very first kidney stone while being at work! I'm here to tell you, I can take a pretty good amount of pain, but that was the worst I've ever experienced. It hurt so bad, I couldn't even think as a paramedic to try and ascertain the problem myslef! The guys at my station had to put me in my own ambulance and drive me to the ER. After 2 rounds of dilaudid and finally passing that rock through my ureter, I'm feeling much better now, including my back pain. The bad thing is, though, that the ER doc told me that I would get these again someday. Could be tomorrow, could be in 20 years, but they will return.
In the middle of all that, the insurance adjuster has finally come to adjust for the damage to my roof and interior damage. His words were that when I got the final payout, it would be enough to do the entire roof if I wanted to, but his suggestion was to just fix the portion that was damaged, since the rest of the roof looked fine for another few years yet, and pocket the rest. Yes, he told me to take what was left over and keep it for myself. I love honesty! So, I went out and bought my wife a laptop of her own so that I could get mine back, as well as get my car fixed. I was planning on spending a little over a grand on my car, but it turns out, all it needed was new tires, so I saved $600...which I spent on a new laptop for myself like my wife's! It's a sweet HP with 4GB of memory, 250GB HD, DVD/CD Burner with LightScribe, Windows Media with remote, built in webcam, and a 15.4 monitor. This is one beautiful machine! Now comes the task of trying to import all of my bookmarks and settings from my old laptop to my new one. We'll be keeping my old one as a back-up in case our others go down for any reason, as well as being using it for a shared computer for pictures and music.
As long as my body feels up to it, I HAVE to get out into that yard and get these leaves cleaned up! I remember the nightmare we had this Spring trying to get them all cleaned up from the previous fall, and I don't want to repeat that again!
