Notes from a Monday.

Personal tidbits from today…

Mom is back in the hospital again. She’s suddenly got a lot of pain again and can’t bear to walk or be upright. The orthopedic surgeon is not sure what the problem is, but thinks it might be a nerve pinched in the new hardware in her back. She was supposed to get an MRI today, but it’s looking like it won’t happen until the wee hours at this point. They’ll be keeping her for another day or two after that, we’re pretty certain.

I went to the dentist and got a tiny filling in a molar. The dentist was in a bit of a hurry I think, because he didn’t let the topical anaesthetic set in as much as usual, and the novocaine injection was less than pleasant. Soon enough though, the lower left quadrant of my mouth went totally numb, and the filling went on without a problem. I was finally back to normal a little before 8:00 and had some (soft!) dinner.

Everything electronic in the house seems to be taking a beating recently. My beloved iPod — the one I recently hacked to put in a 32 GB CompactFlash card to replace the busted hard disk — stopped working suddenly. Everything I was reading pointed to the battery being the culprit, and I knew the 5th gen models were known to have this sort of problem.

I found a great deal at ipodjuice.com and ordered a replacement kit, including a new and superior opener tool, because the ones I had were close to useless after being used once. (Ugh.) When it arrived, I opened the iPod — which, like an imbecile, mind you, I hadn’t bothered to do previously — and found the problem — the CF card had come loose. At that point I remembered dropping it while returning home, which probably knocked it loose. So now I have a spare battery which I’ll just hold on to for a while.

Not so easily fixed is the “kick drum” foot pedal for our Wii Rock Star game, which snapped in two the other day. And I swear I’m not a leadfoot, really! I found a nice replacement which SupaWife is trying to talk me into getting, since she’s observed drums are my favorite instrument to not-quite-play. (I’ve always wanted to learn drums so I could be a one-man band like Jon Brion.) There are cheaper alternatives but they all have substantial downsides or suffer from equally ugly problems. The Rock Pedal is apparently the pro model of choice these days, so bully! Guess I’ll order one so I can play again this weekend once I’m done catching up with work.

The kids are off school tomorrow, but I’ll be on duty per normal. Thursday and Friday I’ll be in Raleigh, getting back late Friday night.