Two Good Legs

That wasn't so bad.  It was a creepy but not so painful process.  I was concerned the other day when my surgeon told me that my ACL looked funky in the MRI and he wouldn't know for sure until he got in there.  Well, today on the phone he told me that he "really wailed" on my knee and it seemed tight.  I cringe at the thought of him wailing on my poor knee while I am out, cold.  I told him to try it while I am awake and see what happens.

He also said that he found a piece of ligament floating around in there and he couldn't figure out from where it came.  Did it drip down from my old shoulder? Was it planted there by someone? I remember digging through full bags of garbage looking for a tiny, missing  piece of 18th Century veneer that disappeared from a chair I was working on.  I would like to think that my surgeon would take similar measures.  I don't know what to think about that.  I think I just won't think about that.

They don't say anything on the label about mixing Vicodin and high test, single bean selection, gravity  flow,  Criollo chocolate but they should.  I feel funny.  This is when I start doing regrettable blog posts.  Who reads this drivel anyway?

driv·el

   [driv-uhl]  Show IPA noun, verb,-eled, -el·ing or(especially British) -elled, -el·ling.

–noun

1.

saliva flowing from the mouth, or mucus from the nose; slaver.

2.

childish, silly, or meaningless talk or thinking; nonsense; twaddle.

A Good Leg

I had an MRI yesterday and an operation today!  My meniscus was breached, its integrity compromised, some mechanical breakdown occurred but now, hopefully it is fixed.  It took about half an hour.  

I had my kids mark up my good knee so the blub blubs in the OR didn't operate on the wrong knee.  It worked.

The couch part of my rehab will be all about chocolate research.

Charleyland, OR

I live in a fantasy world. Here is the proof. This is my house today. How could I justify a bad mood?

The MOGmobile is back. It has been on a 4500 mile tour and is ready for an interior makeover. Lounge is the word I have been given. I will keep you posted.

Wine Update

My goal is to put Merlot back on the map. I know, that is a bold statement coming from a guy who drools at pop tarts but the movie Sideways wrecked Merlot for a lot of people and I'm not going to stand by and let this unwarranted alienation of a perfectly good varietal continue, uncontested. I'm going to do something about it. Especially after tasting a '98 Petrus Pomerol last Fall. I really just dripped a drop out of an empty bottle onto my palm and licked it. It tasted like hand with notes of things I had been doing and I will never forget it.

The Nectar Vats

Here is the Merlot I am making with my pal Joe and a highly qualified peanut gallery of real winemakers. It is working while I sleep. Every day in the barrel it is getting a rounder, fuller mouthfeel and a buttery cherry flavor as it muscles through malolactic fermentation, allegedly. I need to stick some toasty oak in the barrels because the ones I used are neutral (aka: old and cheap, like... super cheap). I actually just stripped the barrels off the soapbox car and epoxied the holes. The addition of some good oak will make the wine a little more dynamic. It will taste like it was aged in a nice barrel. Fake the oak.

This is the results of a chromatography test. I like the way it looks.

My plan is to ask a few of my ultra talented pals to design labels for the wine in return for some of the wine. Maybe I will send them a bottle and they can drink it, name it and make a label for it. That way I will feel like I have a bunch of different wines in my cellar because they will all have different labels. But really it will just be a giant stock of minky Merlot that I can give away, bring around and barter with. Black market fun tickets. Tax That!

These are the Merlot grapes that will set things straight.

Chocoloflop

Sometimes having a bad temper can produce some nice results. At least, that was the case today when my beautiful wife and I attempted to temper 2 kilos of chocolate. Although our efforts yielded undesirable returns as far as well tempered chocolate goes, the medium has grabbed us both by the short hairs.

Woofing down chocolate has been a passion of ours for-almost-ever, so we decided to take the plunge and learn more about it. Chocolate is like firefighters, you just can't say anything bad about em.

Below are some pictures from the day. Don't be fooled. We totally flopped. Ironically, when we figure out how to do it right, the pictures will probably become more boring. Hopefully there will be a long drawn out learning curve.

medical supplies

I am nursing a wounded knee. Something is not working very well down there. So much so that I had to locate a rental pair of crutches. Luckily Portland has a great place to rent medical equipment. Shamrock Medical supplies has everything you need. Either of those look like they would be pretty helpful.