Holey

[As ever, still trying to figure out what, exactly, this blog is about these days. Recently, I’ve been considering going back to shorter, more personal, more storytelling-focused posts. But, problematically, it’s tough to just hop into the middle of life’s narrative, because so much of what’s happening now requires reference to other stuff that happened recently before, which requires reference to what happened before that, etc.

For example, in the last few days, I’ve wanted to post three or four things related to my recent hernia surgery. But, for that to make any sense, I probably need to write about having had hernia surgery, and before that having had the hernia, and so on.

But, really, if I want to start narrating my life here again at some point, now seems as good a point as any other. So, I’m quickly recapping the hernia thing, skipping everything before that for the moment, and then just rolling forward.]

When I was four years old, I had hernia surgery, to resolve a left-side inguinal hernia I’d apparently been born with.

When I was fifteen, I then had another hernia surgery, to sew up one on the right side.

Not long after, I discovered I also had a minor epigastric hernia, which was similarly almost certainly congenital. But, as it didn’t really cause me problems, I just kind of ignored it for the next twenty-five years.

Last year, however, coming back to the gym after lockdown time off, the hernia started to bulge a bit. I’m not sure whether it was my too quick ramping back up of heavy lifting after the long, relatively sedentary stretch (during which time I hadn’t picked up anything heavier than a 24kg kettlebell), or my chunking up (for me, at least—crossing above the 15% body fat mark) putting additional strain on my already-perforated linea alba. But, whatever it was, the hernia started to cause discomfort in a way that it never had before.

From a read of the research, it looked like a laparoscopic repair was my best bet, especially in terms of preventing recurrence once I returned to my hobby (and arguably vocation) of picking up heavy things. But, it turns out, epigastric hernia surgery is actually relatively rare (at least as compared to the more common inguinal or umbilical hernias). So, finding someone with a bunch of experience doing the surgery—and doing it laparoscopically—was tougher than I’d expected.

Eventually, I realized I needed to find bariatric surgeons, as a gastric bypass or lap band is also often done laprascopically, and at pretty much the same spot in the abdomen as I was looking to get some mesh tacked on internally.

Which is how I ended up, last Friday, in a waiting room at Mt. Sinai, where I definitely didn’t blend with the rest of the patients. (As the surgeon joked, there at least wasn’t much chance of a mix-up with me getting someone else’s procedure by mistake.)

A couple of hours after that, I was back out the door, walking (albeit slowly, and with Jess poised watchfully at my side, just in case) to a taxi home. I’ve now—finally—sealed up all three of the small abdominal wall holes I was born with. (I feel like I should send the hospital bill to my parents, as this is clearly a manufacturing defect.) Though I’ve also now picked up three new little holes—tiny laparoscope insertion-point incisions that are currently covered with enough Dermabond that I’m not entirely sure what they look like. So, I guess, three holes forward, three holes back?

Anyway, at two days out, I haven’t needed anything stronger than Advil, have been walking up a storm to kickstart recovery, and have been supplementing with anything and everything (HMB, Bromelain, Vitamin E, Zinc, etc.) that might help. I wouldn’t exactly recommend the experience as a way to kill a spring weekend. But, in the grand scheme of things, it really hasn’t been bad at all, and, thus far, I’m feeling about as excellent as I could possibly hope.

June 6, 2021

On Paws

It’s been several years since Jess and I had a dog, and we’re now feeling that absence acutely. So, after talking about it abstractly for the last year, we’re now concretely on the search. We’re committed to adopting, though I’m slightly dog-allergic, which means we’re looking for a friend with hair rather than fur. And, given the space constraints (and lack of backyard) of an NYC apartment, we’re trying to stay below 25 pounds. (Though, conversely as I’d like a dog who’s rough and tumble enough to take on adventures, we’re also trying not to go too far below 15.)

In the midst of this pandemic, it seems we’re not unique. In what’s excellent news for all the dogs involved, nearby shelters have all been pretty much adopted clean. From our end, however, that’s sent us both searching further abreast for pups who might be transportable here, and refreshing shelters’ sites daily, hoping to pounce fast on a four-legged friend.

Hopefully, update soon. Though if any eagle-eyed (and rescue-connected) readers have leads, we’d love to hear about it. We have plenty of love – and treats – to go around. 🐶

June 25, 2020

Quarantine Slide

I wouldn’t say I’ve been doing a great job of sticking to my habits in the pandemic, though I think things finally may have slid far enough for me to hop into action. Back to it – health, hobby, work, and otherwise.

May 26, 2020

Beyond the Bounty

When Disney+ first launched, Jess and I, like millions of other people, immediately watched “The Mandalorian.” And, also like millions of other people, Jess fell instantly and completely in love with Baby Yoda. (Yes, he’s technically ‘The Child,” but he’s clearly a baby Yoda, so whatever.)

Thereafter, as she repeatedly declared, all she wanted for Christmas was a Baby Yoda. But the initial run of official toys were not only substantially delayed (until at least February or March), the “plush” stuffed ones were also partly made of a rubbery vinyl, and therefore not at all the sort of cuddle-able friend she had envisioned.

Still, I kept searching for options over the subsequent months, and just before her birthday managed to put my name down for the initial run of Build-a-Bear stuffed Baby Yodas, which looked pretty much perfect. Those hadn’t been released yet, either, but I at least printed out a color picture and wrapped that up, and she was completely thrilled nonetheless.

A few weeks later, as the global manufacturing supply chain started to collapse under the weight of COVID-19 lockdowns, I began to assume Yoda’s arrival would be even more substantially delayed. But, as I was working out one morning earlier this month, an email popped up on my Apple Watch saying that a few Baby Yodas were indeed currently available. So, mid-set, I dropped everything, ran to my laptop, and quickly bought one.

It seems I was wise to hustle, as the initial small run sold out within minutes, and there’s no indication when more might be arriving. So while Jess was ecstatic when hers arrived yesterday – she spent the next hour carrying it around cradled in her arms – a slew of other fast purchasers instead parlayed their haste into profits: currently, those Baby Yodas are selling on eBay for as much as $300.

That said, there’s zero chance we’re selling. Which, funny enough, leaves our real life imitating “The Mandalorian” itself: most of the first season revolves around the title character, an otherwise heartless, money-driven bounty hunter, deciding that there are things (or, at least, Yodas) to love more than money.

Clearly, he was right.

April 26, 2020

Pavlovian

As I mentioned a week or two back, I’ve been struggling to break the habit of double-spacing post-period. But the muscle memory seems rather deeply ingrained, and I can definitively say the effort hasn’t been a roaring success. In nearly all my blog posts since, though I’ve removed the second spaces automatically after drafting, it appears I still inadvertently put them in initially at least 50% of the time. And, as I don’t similarly check most of my outgoing emails, nor the majority of what I draft as internal notes for work, I’m sure the problem is even worse when I’m less directly focused on it.

So, two days back, I opted for something more dramatic: I set up a TextExpander snippet to automatically replace “[period][space][space]” with “[period][space]okboomer.” Here’s hoping a little self-directed operant conditioning works where mere effort hasn’t.

April 24, 2020

Après Nous, le Déluge

When I was a kid, my mother often called me her absent-minded professor. Because, while I’m a sponge for information I find fascinating, I’m absolute garbage at wrangling in my head all the concrete details of daily life.  So, since my early teens, I’ve deeply ingrained the habit of writing everything down, and have built up elaborate systems for keeping on top of my notes – whether as daily to-do’s, longer-term projects and goals, or just interesting ideas and theories and resources I want to keep noodling around or might refer back to down the line.  

And, mostly, it all works.  But, at least several times a week, I come across a note I made to myself – whether earlier in the day, or five years back – with far too little detail.  “Angry dinosaur?” one will say.  Or, “moat marketing connections list.”  Or “expand to long-form version.”  And I will think, what in god’s name does that possibly mean?  

On very rare occasion, with additional puzzling, I can sometimes recreate enough of the context around the note, or my thought process leading up to it, to figure out the deeply encoded secret meaning.  But, the vast majority of the time, I just stare at the words for a few minutes, shrug, and move on with life.  While I’m sure I’ve dropped endless balls, forfeited countless opportunities, and generally short-changed my prior insights and current self in the process, c’est la vie.

So, speaking of French idioms, this afternoon, I was updating the back-end of this (creaky, and clearly in need of a redesign) site, and came across a several-years-old draft blog post – this one, in fact – with no content except the title. Après nous, le déluge.

And, seriously, what?

February 5, 2020

Sign Me Up

For years I’ve joked that, as I’m born on July 16th, I’m a Cancer, which supposedly means I’m quiet and withdrawn, and therefore also means I don’t believe in astrology.

However, as was recently explained to me, while a sun sign may determine the core of your identity, it’s actually your ascendant sign that drives your outward-facing personality in the world, while your moon sign explains the soul behind that identity.

I bring this all up because my parents recently found my original birth certificate in their garage, and mailed it off to me. So, newly armed with my time of birth (2:30pm), I was able to figure out my whole ‘star chart’ (thanks, Cafe Astrology!) rather than just my birthdate-driven sun sign.

And, it appears, I’m a Cancer with Scorpio rising and the moon in Aries.

From my end, I don’t actually have a clue what any of that means. But Jess, at least, thinks this new revelation tells you pretty much everything you’d need to know about me. And while I still don’t believe in astrology, and therefore shouldn’t care much either way, I’m still oddly glad to learn my full sign is a far better fit.

August 14, 2019

Inky?

Fifteen years back, while shooting a game for the Israeli soccer documentary I was producing at the time, I got a henna tattoo of one of the teams’ logos stenciled onto the inside of my forearm.

And I kind of loved it. But I was also pretty sure I wouldn’t be getting a real tattoo any time soon, as there were very few things I thought were excellent ideas ten years before that I still thought were excellent then, and I definitely didn’t want to get stuck for a lifetime with permanent body art I’d later come to regret.

But, at the same time, I also noted that if I did get a tattoo, it would just be the text ‘Amor Fati‘ on that same inner forearm spot.

Over the last year, Jess made good on her own long-held desire to get a few tattoos. And, frankly, I’ve been jealous. They look amazing (and, on her, super hot). And they’ve reminded me that, actually, my concern about whether I’d be happy with any choice over the long haul increasingly seems incorrect. Fifteen years later, I still feel certain that, if I did get a tattoo, it would indeed be that inner forearm ‘Amor Fati.’ I’ve even regularly looked back at a favorite Nietzsche quote about the phrase at least monthly in all the years since:

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it, but love it.”

So, increasingly, I’m thinking maybe I should get the tattoo. I’m holding out at least until the fall to further contemplate. But, as of right now, I’d say the odds of going for it look pretty good.

May 2, 2019

Word Up

My whole life, I’ve loved words.  Enough so that, when I was just four or five, whenever I learned a new one, I’d walk around for the subsequent week trying to wedge it into as many sentences as I possibly could.  A voracious reader from even that age, I stumbled across most of my new words in books.  And, each time I did, I was assiduous about looking it up.

But, over the decades, I ran into fewer and fewer words that I didn’t know.  Until, eventually, I had fallen out of the definition-hunting habit.  When I did find something new, stopping my reading, even just to make note of the word, seemed an undue hassle.  And I could almost always roughly grasp the word from context.  So, instead of pausing to Google, I’d just plow ahead.

Back in November, however, I came across a surprising use of ‘salient’ in an Economist article.  And, as I happened to be sitting next to a physical dictionary, I paused to look the word up, discovering a second definition I had never known: an outwardly projecting part of a fortification or line of defense.

I have a longstanding weakness for secondary meanings – ‘pedestrian,’ in the sense of ‘commonplace,’ being a favorite – so I wrote the new definition of salient down in my journal.  And then, a few weeks later, I stumbled across ‘anatine’ in a short story, looked it up, and wrote that down, too.

From there, a new habit was born – or, more accurately, an old one rebirthed.  In the few months since, I’ve already picked up otiose, rachitic, oneiric, diluents, vitrine.  And I’ve reminded myself of words I knew, but that were parked too far in the recesses of my brain to be called up for conversational use: parvenu, febrile, palimpsest.

Much like my five year old self, I am now truly smitten with those discoveries and re-discoveries.  Though, unlike the words I was excited about 35 years back, these I’m sadly forced to largely keep to myself.  Use ‘anatine’ or ‘oneiric’ in conversation with all but the nerdiest and wordiest of fellow readers, and I’d likely get nothing but a confused stare in response.

Even so, I’ll be back to looking up new words as I discover them, and will continue to expand my list.  If nothing else, it makes me awfully happy just to read them over, to roll them around in my head, to see how they feel coming to life on my tongue.

February 12, 2019

Somnambulant

For most of the last fifteen years, I’ve averaged about six, maybe six and a half hours of sleep a night.  And, honestly, that always seemed like enough.  I woke up before my alarm clock, and felt like I was functioning totally fine.

With each year, I read more and more research about the negative impact of insufficient sleep, the countless adverse consequences that slowly accrue if you don’t hold to seven and a half or eight hours nightly.  But, as I said, I felt okay, so I tended to shrug all that research off.

Then, eventually, I came across a study on the cognitive effects – as well as the perceived cognitive effects – of lack of sleep.  The researchers started out by getting a group of people caught up on sleep/well rested.  Then, for one night, they had the subjects cut back, sleeping six hours rather than eight, and assessed them with a battery of cognitive tests the following day.  Further, they then asked the subjects how they thought they had done on the tests.

After that first night of short sleep, the people reported feeling tired, and assumed they had performed worse on the tests than when they were sharp and rested.  And, indeed, they were correct.

Then, a second night in a row, they slept for just six hours.  Once again, they thought their scores had further declined, and once again, they were right.

Third night, third day, same thing.

But then, the fourth day!  For yet another night, the people slept six hours, and for yet another day, they took a battery of tests.  Except, this time, the people felt totally fine.  As they explained to the researchers, they had finally adjusted to the shorter nights of sleep.  They were back to feeling good, and they knew their scores were back up, too.

Problem was, they were completely wrong.  Just as before, their scores continued to decline with each day of sleep deprivation.  But after the fourth day or so, they simply lost the ability to recognize as much any longer.

That study definitely gave me pause, made me question my own self-assessment of how well I was functioning on my standard six hours and change.  Enough so that, despite a decade and a half of habit to the contrary, I decided it was worth some self-experimentation.  I made some serious lifestyle shifts, and started sleeping a full seven and a half or eight hours every single night.

And, actually, for the most part, I felt pretty much exactly the same as I did before.  But then, every so often, I ended up once again short-sleeping, and I felt terrible enough to realize the necessity of the shift.

I was thinking about that today, because for the past two nights I stayed up way past my bedtime, unable to put down a good book.  And while I don’t really regret that (in the words of Lincoln, “it’s been my experience that those with no vices have very few virtues”), I now definitely feel the effects of those two six-ish hour nights.  I’m sluggish, foggy, cranky, craving sweets, and ready for a nap.  In short, I feel like crap.

And, at the same time, I don’t mind at all.  As ever, it’s a good reminder that those extra hours snoozing aren’t wasted.  Despite years of convincing myself to the contrary, I really do need seven and a half or eight hours of sleep to be at my best.

With that, I’m off to bed.

January 29, 2019