Well, that didn't work out as I had intended. Of course, many things don't, so I don't know why I was surprised.

My doctor appointment this morning was supposed to be a go in, have my foot cut open, clean out my foot, sew back up my foot, and I leave sort of ordeal, culminating in my hobbling for a day or two.

Instead, the doctor commented that, despite my attempt to cut out the wart, surgery really is the last option for warts, not the first.

What else did I learn?

Warts don't last 20 years, as the one on the bottom of my foot has. They tend to last months, maybe a year, but the body will reject the wart, which is caused by a virus. Since the wart exists in the skin, the continuous sloughing of skin will usually force the wart out of the body, through natural growth.

A wart that lasted 20 years? Yeah, it's probably not a wart, the doctor told me, but rather a collection of blood vessels that well, essentially just become confused and ball up into a painful lump embedded in the skin. Or, maybe it's a ball of scar tissue from some dig attempts of mine, other than the one last week. Unfortunately, last week was my first attempt at hacking this particular wart, so no, it most likely wasn't scar tissue. Well, he asked, had I during my many years of shaving off the top of the wart, ever noticed any black dots in the wart? Nope, hadn't noticed that either. I really think this is just a wart.

But you know, in the back of my head, I couldn't help but wonder if the wart was something more, something more sinister, because I thought the growth next to my eye was a wart: it looks a lot like the knot of flesh at the bottom of my foot.

The doctor, however, spent a few minutes with a knife, cutting off the top layer of skin, and looking at the lump. It didn't hurt a bit, which sorta told me the lump wasn't a collection of blood vessels balled up into a painful mass. After those few minutes, he declared, nope, looks like a wart, though twenty years? Wow, that's pretty much unheard of. Twenty years?

Yes, twenty years. Look at my chart. It's not that unreasonable to know that you've had a wart since your parent's divorce when you lived in another state, and hey that was twenty years ago, so just move on and accept that yes, this is a freaking twenty year old wart already.

Maybe.

Assuming it's a wart.

So, the doctor offered these steps:

1. Take a lot of vitamin A and zinc to help my immune system. The A will help the skin turn over, and the zinc will just boost the immune system, as if I had a cold.

2. Hold still while this magical blistering potion is dabbed on the wart. The skin will roil, boil, toil and trouble, hopefully ejecting the wart at maximum velocity off of my foot.

3. Keep the band-aid on over the blistering magic potion, until at least tomorrow, minimum four hours if I can't stand it any longer.

I can walk or run or do whatever I want, within my own pain tolerances. Want to go for a run? Have at it.

This guy doesn't exactly understand my pain tolerances very well, was my initial thought.

My current thought, though?

HOLY CRAP! My foot HURTS!

It's a throbbing, knife like pain on the bottom of my foot. Or rather, it's like a magical blister pulsing on the bottom of my foot, just throbbing, throbbing, throbbing, telling me, here I am! Here I am! Yo! Remember me! I'm not going easily.

Right.

Not going easily is still going.

Stupid twenty year old wart.

So, I was at the doctor's office this morning, having the wart of last week profesionally removed, instead of just digging it out myself. I originally planned on walking to the doctor's office, thinking that driving 1200 yards as incredibly wasteful. As I was about to leave the house, 40 minutes earlier than my appointment to give myself plenty of time to walk over, I realized that, well, if I do manage to have done to my foot that I want done, walking back those 1200 yards would be, well, stupid.

So, I drove.

Arriving 30 minutes before my appointment, I pulled out my laptop, which I had packed lightly in my bag, and started working on pounds.

Around me were lots of old people, a few younger people and a couple more toddlers, brothers from the look of it, neither over 3 based on size and grasp of language constructs.

The two kids ran around and ran around and jumped on chairs and climbed over walls and continued to run around. Unsurprisingly, after a few minutes of this, one of the boys, the youger one, tripped and fell over seemingly nothing, maybe his own feet.

Having watched Liza and Maeryn and Mirabelle and Danger and Sophie run around and trip and fall over nothing, and having watched Mike and Kate and Mark and Megan and Keith and Katie and Pickett and Nichole react with a "Ooopsie!" and a bouncy "You're fine! Hop up!" I expected the same from the mother of the kid who had just tripped.

Instead she rushed over to him, as he looked up at her. When he saw her over her, he began to cry and cry and, good lord shut that kid up, cry.

I wonder how that kid is going to grow up. I find Liza and Maeryn and Alex and Mirabelle well adjusted kids (sure, each has "issues," but every kid does right?), able to pick themselves up when they fall and keep going. That kid couldn't stand up when he had an audience. Will he always need one? Or will he learn to pick himself up when falls?

I borrowed Andy's jigsaw from him about three weeks ago. I had intended to have it exactly one day, but, for reasons I really can't explain, I continue to have his jigsaw. Determined to return it today at practice, I pulled out the shelves I was intending to jig, and started cutting away, expecting each shelve to take about 5 minutes, realizing quickly that the 25 minutes I had alloted myself before practice was about ten minutes too short. I'd have to hurry.

I was half way through my first fig when I paused and went into the kitchen to get something. As I entered the kitchen from the garage, I realized that someone was rattling on the front door, following our open door policy: just walk in. If the front door is unlocked, we're not having sex on the living room floor, and all friends are welcome to walk straight into the house, no doorbell or knocking needed. Andy has a similar policy, and honestly, even when he's expecting us, it's still hard to just walk in without knocking. However, it keeps the dog barking to a dull roar when visitors don't knock. Sometimes said visitors can actually manage to enter the house without a dog noticing. Said visitors are rare and usually named "Megan" or "Mike."

My visitor was having little luck with the front door, however, as I hadn't unlocked it after the morning tryst on the living room rug. I looked to see it was Mark, and hurried to unlock the door for him.

A few hours earlier, Megan had called our home phone, the one I rarely answer since the only people who call the number these days are telemarketers, political auto-dialers and people with whom I have a professional relationship but who mistakenly believe calling my home number is okay. Well, and people I really like to talk with, like Megan, Jessica, Mike and Andy. Which, honestly, is why I keep answering that phone in the first place.

So, Megan called, asking if the new medical facility over by our house had emergency care. I told her it wasn't emergency, but rather walk-in, urgent care, open from like 9 to 9, but yeah, it had walk-in health care, what was up?

Turned out, Mark had possibly broken his hand and needed it x-rayed, could I recommend the new facility? Except for the devastating environmental impact of the facility and the overwhelming inconvenient traffic patterns the infrastructure created, yeah, I could recommend the facility. So off Mark went.

After his xrays and cast and paperwork adventure, Mark stopped by to visit with us. He had, indeed, broken his hand, his fourth metacarpal bone with both a break and spiral fracture, caused by the power tool that had caught when Mark was doing electrical work on his house, spun his hand around and slammed it against the nearest wall. He might need surgery, but was out of commission for at least two weeks.

Oh, and he hadn't eaten today, could I feed him?

Uh...

Minor panic, sure.

We don't exactly have "snack" food in our house. I haven't been eating many wheat products as of late, having neither the particular desire for large amounts of bread or posta, much less bought any wheat products, as loaves of bread will go stale or moldy before we finish it. Kris has his own crackers, but I haven't bought any in over a year or so. Uh... what could I feed him?

Apple and peanut butter? That's been my snack for a while now, more so now that I can walk outside and pull an apple off the tree to eat.

How about yogurt? Plain or vanilla?

A glass of juice! Yes, that will get sugar into your blood stream quickly.

I then remembered that Mark likes avocado, so I pulled out the second half of the one I had started for breakfast that morning, sliced it up and poured balsamic vinegar over it.

After about 10 minutes of eating and chatting (only brieftly with Kris, who hadn't gotten up from his WarHammer game, WarHammer, the new World of Warcraft), Mark turned to me and declared, "Ahhhhhh... I feel human again."

Except the broken hand thing, I think.

Shirley and I took off today to drive to Davis for, surprisingly, NOT an ultimate tournament. She offered to rosham to drive, but I quickly realized that my V8 was going to suck up a lot more gas than her sprite car, and so quickly lost the rosham by not playing. We were heading off to UC Davis' Good Life Garden event "Grow our food." Traffic sucked on the way up, with our pulling a U-turn on the 101 (okay, not really, but close enough) and went up the 880. Traffic was sucky suck going into the City. We were, fortunately, heading out, once we managed to escape 101.

One of the advantages of driving two hours to an event is that you have two hours to talk on the drive. Of course, it helps if you like the person you're driving with for those two hours. And Shirley? Most definitely.

There were three speakers at the event: Georgeanne Brennan, Ethne Clark, and David Howard: an author, an author, and Prince Charles' former head gardener. We listened to the first two speakers, then sampled a whole bunch of foods from local artisans and shops (where "local" means "Davis" and "Vacaville" and "Sacramento").

Georgeanne Brennan had, back in the late sixties, bought a small house in Provence and moved to France to live there. She described to us how everyone had a continuous kitchen garden: planting and harvesting at the same time, and always having something for the garden at dinner. Some houses had more than just a kitchen garden, they had a market garden, where they would grow more vegetables than they could eat and sell the excess at the local market. Georgeanne had several stories about her American adventures in France, and let us know about her book, a Pig in Provence.

Ethne Clark had lived in London, and also had American living in a foreign country experience, and gave a presentation about gardens through the ages. Ethne's presentation was, although informative and entertaining, shaky. She seemed nervous but still presented fairly well. I've certainly been in the "I'm fine, just let me talk, ignore my shaky voice" presentation situation.

There were about 150 people at the presentation. All of us filed out of the lecture hall and wandered out to the lawn to taste the various local foods. I really liked the smoked fish from Laszlo’s Gourmet Smoked Fish. Shirley had the smoked prawns, and said it was good, too. I had only the salmon and trout. I did, however, break from my vegetarian diet (for the second time this week, and also had a couple slices of sausages from Morant’s Old Fashioned Sausage which were really good, too.

Other local providers included Grateful Bread Company, whose bread was tasty, and Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates who had some of the most delicious chocolates. Ginger Elizabeth commented to me that chocolate and tea go together flavor-wise, and are a great alternative to chocolate and coffee, if you don't like coffee. She was way right, and the truffles she offered were amazing.

Shirley was way braver than I was when it came to the caviar from Sterling Caviar. I don't particularly like roe, so I didn't try any myself, She commented that, although it was tasty, she couldn't really taste the caviar much, with all the other flavors in the sample (which included special baked bread and a dip of some sort).

The mini-cupcakes from Babycakes Bakery were, uh, odd. When I was taking one from the table, I asked the woman behind the table if she had a business card, as I really felt I was going to like the chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting. Her reply? "I couldn't be bothered to get any for this." Uh, okay. I guess.

The cupcake had a surprise in the middle for me: unmixed batter. I think I'll go to Hannah's bakery first.

I really liked the cheese from the Nugget Supermarket, though I couldn't say it was anything that I would order online and ship to the Dillers to try. I'm still looking for some cheese that makes me feel like sharing with them. And the olive oil from UC Davis, manufactured from olive trees on campus? Avoid the one on the right, it's way bitter.

Neither Shirley nor I bothered with the wines or beers. I'm not sure exactly why she didn't, but, well, if it's not great whiskey or Oreana, well, I'm not really interested. And beer? Yeah, WAY not interested.

After pretty much getting our fill of tasty food, we wandered back into the lecture hall, where I talked to a woman who had asked for gardening resources before the food break. She had just started gardening and was excited about the experience. I told her about the Master Gardening program, and told her to contact them.

Last up in the evening was David Howard, who, in a fabulous English accent, told us about his life story. He told us about his wanting to be a gardener at age six, his working for the Queen at 16, his becoming an organic garden and his eventual becoming head gardener for Prince Charles. The presentation was fabulous, entertaining and interesting. As Shirley asked me as we left, "Are all Englishmen good story tellers?"

I think all the ones who have left England might be.

The drive home was as good as the drive up: full of interesting conversation with Shirley. The longest topic on the way back was Shirley's post-graduate plans, in all of their many-numbered glory. Shirley currently has the curse of choice: so many options that

Having spent the last few months spinning my wheels with projects I could start, stalled by the indecision of which one to actually do (and FINALLY choosing pounds), I could completely relate to Shirley's dilemma. I, unfortunately, gave her conflicting advice, which I wasn't sure I should do. I told Shirley that, hey, you know, there really isn't a wrong decision in life: try something out, if it doesn't work, change it, but all of the choices she had were fine choices. Except that isn't quite true if you have a goal, then some options would be bad choices if they don't lead to the goal.

I also told her to pick the choice that makes her happy. I told her how I thought just out of college that, hey, it would be okay to sacrifice the next ten years working hard, in order to make enough money so that I didn't have to work as much. Except that it didn't quite work out that way, and I ended up sacrificing those ten years working hard, missing out on a lot of life. Missing out in a way that I couldn't recover.

Except.

Except.

Except that you have to take those paths yourself. It doesn't matter that someone else learned those lessons, they don't really translate. If you had told me when I was 23 to choose the work that made me happy, I would have had no idea what that job was. I'm at good place because of the pain I went through when I was younger. Having the financial means to order whatever is on the menu without worrying about the price (a goal I recall of Allyse Manoff's when she and I were working together way back when), as an example, has pretty much always been important to me, but not for the sake of keeping up with the Jones. Instead, I've liked to have the financial means to do what I want to do (ultimate tournaments, work on projects, garden, etc.), without worrying about making next month's rent.

I couldn't figure out how to convey that to her, without sounding cliche.

I still don't know how to say it.

I do know that I very much enjoyed spending four hours on a Saturday hanging out with Shirley. Friends are an important part of that "good place" I'm in.

This morning's workout was three rounds of:

20 kettleball swings
40 one-armed kettleball swings, 20 each side
40 lateral box jumps, 20 each side
20 box jumps

Given that I've been feeling sick for the last day, I wasn't too excited about anything other than the warmup at the workout, and even that was difficult. I'm trying to recover from the quad pull from practice a week ago, and I forgot my properly cut-up running shoes that don't jam my achilles, and this whole workout was a recipe for disaster.

I started with the lateral jumps, jumping up sideways to the second lowest box. On the regular box jumps, I moved up to the next box height, but didn't start looking up (instead of watching my feet) until the second round.

The first 20 kettleball swings, no problem. The one-armed kettleball swings? Problem. I had to drop down to a 10# weight from the 17# kettleball for that one.

At round 2 or so I was moving so slowly that by round 3 my lateral box jumps became stepups. Slowly. Yeah, understatement. Everyone cleaned up the weights before I could finish my workout. No, THAT's not discouraging, why do you ask?