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As some of you may know, I've been afflicted with Dupuytren's Contracture for about 3 years now. This disease progressed to the point where I could no longer enjoy playing the piano and other day-to-day activities. I had the surgery on December 15, 2011 and on December 20th they removed the bandages and fitted me for a splint. You can follow my progress on my Facebook Album.

Here's a video of my and as I perform some of my "physical therapy." As you can see, the stiffness is improving and I have a much more authoritative range of motion.

This is exactly 4 weeks almost to the hour after surgery. Good range of motion. Still concerned about some nerve damage on the outside of my pinky finger toward the tip, but I have almost full use of the hand at the moment. Getting fitted for a scar conformer tomorrow.

For example. Chopsticks are made from bamboo. Tomato goop is okay on sandwiches as long as there isn't too much of it. Bacon bits can be substituted for actual bacon, and (most importantly) jalapeno Cheetos go really good when placed upon a tuna-fish sandwich. It's a crunchy wonderful challenging taste cornucopia for the pre-teen taste palette.

My wife was coming home today from working really hard in Spokane. I knew we were doing yard work, and I knew her parents were coming over to get some lilac, etc. Now, I'm the first to tell you I'm not a green thumb. I despise yard work. But I knew that we were going to be doing some weeding, I was supposed to do some spraying, and I really wanted to impress her that I was out at least trying to show that I knew what I was doing.

Instead of just doing what I was supposed to do, I decided to pull some "weeds." Now, I use the term "weeds" thusly: any plant-like material that isn't near any other plant-like material planted on purpose. Meaning, if I see something away from the rest of the group, I'm pulling the sumbitch. My wife did the same thing a few weeks earlier... she called them "suckers" or something like that... meaning a plant pee'd into the wind and an offspring sprouted up where we didn't want one.

I'm out there attempting my best, pulling this and that, got the spray stuff down from the garage, and I wanted to look really "husband-like" when she drove up (she's kinda hard to please, you see). As it turns out, I pulled the lilac that she wanted for her family. I didn't know, it was growing 6 feet away from any other plant. I figured it was a straggler, and I was doing my due diligence getting my Herbert Spencer on.

I'm writing this post because I got summarily dismissed to the house lest I fuck something else up. Sigh...

Sometimes I have a hard time articulating how relationships affect me, or how I perceive relations affect everyone. The English language is not exactly rife with colorful ways to lament about such things. So, I usually try to approach things in metaphor. This is what I came up with.

In the paradigm of love, there's yourself, the body that, well, embodies the relationship from your perspective alone; and there's the significant other, the sum of which is a unique "body" as well. The blood is what keeps the body living, growing, etc. Now, I won't go into the food that the body (both of them) need to stay nourished, the exercise, etc. But you can carry this part of the story elsewhere (intellectual stimulation, disease, hygiene, etc.); so, let's focus on just the blood part of keeping the body healthy from a very basic 10,000-foot level.

The blood is love, made up of arguably the main things that love needs, those being

• compassion
• attraction
• empathy
• intimacy
• trust
• communication
• understanding
• tolerance
• patience
• desire
• acceptance
• compromise

and probably other things, but the point is, work with me on the metaphor.

Now, no two people are alike so the percentages of each of the ingredients of the blood (love) mentioned above is different for both partners.

Like all things in life, we bleed when we are wounded, and sometimes the wounds take a long time to heal. It takes varying amounts of time to replenish the amount of blood your body can produce. Circumstances may wound constantly, and we bleed constantly, losing the vital blood that keeps the relationship (the "body") alive.

One may run out of the necessary amount of patience part of the blood faster than the other party in the relationship (who, for their part, may be bone dry (pun intended) of compassion or empathy). Others may have a heaping amount of desire that no matter how deep the wound, they still desire the other person, but may be running very low on understanding and acceptance.

I think it's very rare to be in a relationship with another that has the same percentages of the fundamental ingredients in their blood. If you can find that, good on you, mate.

As my friend Colin Cowherd says, "I try to avoid sketch." My music and thoughts should be centralized to one platform, and that platform has always been this site.

Her father was the epitome of the true Fighter Pilot. A triple-ace (serving in both WW2 and Vietnam).

Robin Olds is probably the greatest aerial warrior America ever produced.  He is the real deal, a fighter pilot's fighter pilot, a consummate military professional, a natural, charismatic leader, and a true, heroic servant of our republic.  His autobiography tells it like it was... and provides written proof why the people who served with him made him a legend.  That men like Olds chose to wear our nation's uniform does high honor to the profession.  I confidently predict that this book will be an instant classic.

I also got to see my late father, Quimby, which was nice. Great to see dad again. He would drive me and a buddy or two Wednesday to the local rink for years when I was a child. I miss that.