Parts is Parts

It seemed like a good time to inventory the various and sundries of the going-on-63-year old original equipment I've been issued. Working from the bottom up:

Legs. More leg singular, really. I've had a periodic problem with sciatica in my left leg for about a year now. It's not all that painful (maybe a 2 to 3 on the smiley/frowny Get The Good Drugs at the ER scale), and it's not constant, Until recently, it was mostly an issue overnight when just lying in bed seemed to set it off. Lately, though, I've been getting it about an hour into any long-distance drive. Again, that's when the left leg isn't doing anything for an extended period, but once I get past Batavia and start hitting Rochester exits (or Pembroke on the way home), I start to feel it. Once out of the car, it's gone in minutes.  This coming weekend will be a test of it, since the 7-hour trip to Citi Field will be my first of more than 150 miles at a time in almost three years. (Well, the there-and-back-times-two to Jamestown in May was more than that, but I had stops every 70 miles or so.)

I've had to change my plans about the upcoming plans slightly; I'd had it in my head that the Mets game on the 9th was a 7:10 p.m. start, which would have meant being there by about 4:30 to be sure of dealing with parking and security to get in for the pregame ceremony and the limited-quantity Keith Hernandez bobblehead. I checked yesterday and the time is showing as 4:10.  That means being there no later than 2 in the afternoon, which would not be possible in a straight shot from home even without stopping.  I probably can make it all the way home after the game is over, though. I'll have to see how this coming workweek starts out before finalizing when I'm leaving home and when/where I'm stopping on the way. There's also the question of whether the weather will muck up the plans:



This is always a risk when planning out-of-town outdoor events, but it gets more complicated when it's a special event like Opening Day or, here, a team ceremony. They will typically reschedule it to the next available day and make the rainout tickets good for it. So here, the Mets are scheduled for 1:10 Sunday afternoon, so I'd get home three hours earlier but just before Monday morning, when I have two scheduled and contested court appearances.  The other rainout option is to just save the ticket for any other available home date (except Yankees).  That could even be a gameday decision so I'd know for sure(r) what the weather looked like.  Hopefully, though, that 50% chance will go down or at least not get worse, and I'll be able to join friends and a famed Met on a very special day.

And then there are always baseball opportunties elsewhere. Our gym is sponsoring an outing at the end of the month here in Buffalo between the Bisons and Red Wings, neither of whom I've seen all year.  Meanwhile, Binghamton was quite the hopping place when injured Mets star pitcher Max Scherzer started a game there as part of his rehab.  Friends from Rochester made the trip, the place had its biggest crowd ever, and his fellow-for-a-day Rumble Ponies got quite the treat out of the deal:



Now I'm wondering where in Binghamton he got the spread from.

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Hands and torso.  This was more a one-day ache and pain experience, tied directly to the mindless project I mentioned having to do last Thursday while working in my view(wwww)ing of the latest Doctor Strange. I filed a document for a Chapter 11 client earlier in the month, which resulted in a directive to serve it no later than June 30th, along with a copy of the directive and an additional form, on all the creditors in the case. I'd held off until the final day in hopes I would receive updated figures for one of the forms that I'd asked for multiple times, but they never came and I had to send out what I had.

The document itself was only eight pages including exhibits, the other two merely two additional sheets, but "all the creditors in the case" numbered in the low hundreds.  That meant close to 10 hours of shuttling, sitting, standing, sorting and stuffing- between two copiers, a postage meter, my own desk with the "entertainment" and the conference room table where I did my manspreading.  By the time I finished, my wrists and fingers were numb from all the shoveling around of things, and my torso felt like I'd done hundreds of sit-ups- which, essentially, I had from all the upping and downing.  Then there were the non-physical hiccups, like our postage meter being low on ink to begin with and bailing on me about 50 envelopes short of the goal line. THAT required a trip to the post office, where an automated machine sold me the needed "stamps"-printing them one at a time, each one needing to be peeled, cut in half and then stuck on.  I could barely roll over once I got into bed, but fortunately it was mostly gone by morning and no ill effects seem to have carried until today.  The same leg as the sciatica is bugging me, but we've been doing quite a haul of bricks and other heavy shit for the new patio, and I did a workout yesterday which probably aggravated it.

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Finally, the head. Nothing new here, better or worse. We finally gave up on ever hearing from the neuroligist I was first put in touch with, the main shame of which is that her office is very close to mine. I got a second referral to a guy who works out of the Medical Campus near downtown, and I at least got a callback from his secretary very quickly, so we're hopeful of getting something set up after the holiday.

And that's as far north as I can go;)