Return of the Gimp Limp

Look at that, it's been almost a month since my last post. I went to a wedding at Bucknell two weekends ago for my friends Sarah and Aaron's wedding. Not only did I get to see a number of good friends, I also got to see some people that I knew fairly well and hadn't kept in good touch with. To say I had a wonderful time would be a huge understatement. For all of us to be in the same room - dancing, drinking, laughing - was really a nice feeling. I was sad on Sunday when I had to leave. On the drive home (yes I rented a car and it was thrilling to drive again) I started thinking about how I would really like to live closer to my good friends. Not that I don't love my friends in the city, but I really miss my college friends. When I graduate, I don't want to move to a place where I don't know anybody. I did it for college and I did it when I came to graduate school. Of course it worked out fine both times, but I find myself wondering, do I really need to make more friends? I'm not opposed to the idea certainly, but I don't feel the drive to go out and meet people. I'm content with the friends I have and I just want to be around them more often. I am really going to take that into consideration a few years down the road.

Last Thursday I had knee surgery. It was originally just going to be exploratory, but the surgeon found some inflamed tissue behind my knee cap and cut it out. Apparently it will grow back on its own over time. I start physical therapy in a few weeks. The doctor said that he can't be sure that the inflammation was the source of my pain. I pray to God that it was. If all goes well, I will hopefully be up and running in a few months. The idea of running without pain makes me happier than I can express. The past year I've been living vicariously through the races of my friends.

One interesting note about the surgery. A few hours beforehand I had a pulse of 42 bpm. When I came out of the surgery, I was hooked up to machines and all of my stats were monitored. An alarm was set to go off if my pulse dropped below 50 bpm. It went off immediately, so the nurse set it to 40 bpm. Again, it went off right away. She set it to 35, same thing...30, same thing. My pulse was 27 bpm! Granted, the anesthetics do lower it, but this was crazy. She got nervous and called a doctor over who sat with me for a while and told me to flail my arms around every time the alarm went off to get my pulse up. I was so sleepy and I rememeber thinking that these people were really annoying me. Anyways, now I can lower my previous record to 27 bpm. Ha!