hurry up and wait

Today I had an appointment with the plastic surgery section of the local hospital. I have been in their queue since October, when the psychologist section decided that I could skip that step in the queuing process, based on what the local health practitioner said when she wrote me the referral there. The appointment was for 08:50, so I didn't bother to go to the office first.. Indeed, I could have slept in, since I didn't need to leave the house till after 08:00 to be there in good time, but clearly my body didn't want to risk oversleeping, as I woke at 06:30.

The appointment itself cost nothing. (I truly love living in Sweden, and the fact that we have health care!) The doc was an older man (or at least he looked older to me, but recently I have noticed that some people that I would guess as older turn out to be younger than I am). He asked me to explain to him exactly what procedure I want done (remove the breasts--all of them, including the nipples), wanted to know if there is a history of breast cancer in the family (not that I know of, but I would like to donate my breast tissue to science, if we can find a researcher who has a use for healthy tissue for experiments or comparison purposes), double checked to be certain that I understand that there is no going back, that once this is done they are gone forever, I can't change my mind later (yes, please! I will be forever grateful to whomever can get these things off of my chest and out of my way and also increase blood flow to my arms by banishing those elastic bands). Then we briefly discussed where to put the seam. I commented that I thought it would look good to have the seam running diagonally from the shoulder to the middle. He said that they used to do that, back in the 1920's, but found that sometimes the scar tissue would thicken and interfere with arm movement, which is why they switched to horizontal. that makes sense to me, I like the idea of full arm movement. I also asked about recovery time, and he said that it is up to the patient how long to wait before resuming workouts--use common sense and listen to the body, but a week to 10 days is good to avoid working out. I can live with that.

Then he sent me to the nurses to fill in a health history quiz and have blood drawn for some sort of testing. I asked the nurse who drew the blood if she knows how long the queue would likely be between this appointment and getting called for surgery, and she said that it can take months, perhaps even nearly a year, but it is impossible to really predict, though they try to work as fast as they can. But I understand, these things still take time. I can wait.I have put up with them for decades, a few more months can be endured.

After the appointment I went to the office, where I managed to accomplish more than 5.5 hours of work for LTU, during which I finally updated my spreadsheet of hours worked vs how many the uni thinks I should work, so now I know that I had managed to get completely caught up in hours by the end of March, but am now about 6 hours behind for April. Oops. Then I opted to skip the Phire annual general meeting and just go home and relax (since there wouldn't be any acroyoga at the meeting anyway). Much to my surprise, as I was curled up on the couch with a book they called me from the meeting to let me know that I had been nominated to serve on the Phire board as the officer in charge of guiding people in making costumes and props, and would I be willing to accept the nomination? I double checked to be certain that they wanted someone to help and advise on costumes and not be the one making them, and with the warning that I don't have so much time, agreed to accept the nomination. Luckily, some hours later I got a message that during the voting they decided that since my time is in short supply they wouldn't put me on the board (that position is an optional one anyway), and I am not expected to attend the weekly board meetings.

However, the phone call was enough to remind me that I should put my book down and be useful, so I then did several hours of thesis work. One of the things I did was import the spreadsheet I have been filling in with the location of the steatite artifacts from the Swedish Historical Museum's database, plus the various "keywords" I have been adding to the card for each, into the graphing program I am so fond of, so I could try playing with the data there. One of the keyword categories I have been using is assigning a colour word based on the photograph (when there is one), and so far have several variants on pink and several on green. It turns out that of the 50 samples in the spreadsheet so far the pinks tend to be inland, getting close to the Norwegian border, while the greens tend to be more coastal. However, that is only about 1/7th of the samples in the database, so that pattern may well change. Even so, it was interesting to note, and I took the time to type up a summary of what I was seeing, including a photo, and share it with my advisors in my "supervision blog" (only visible to the two of them).

Sadly, right after I sat down to the computer this evening I got a message from my sister saying that she and mom were at the emergency room again. They don't yet have any idea what the problem is this time, but she has just gone for more tests, and it is nearly 02:00 my time, so I think I will go do my yoga and get to bed, and hope that there is good news on that front in the morning.

fun work distractions

I had had plans for what to do at work today. Instead there was an email from Lydia, my Master's student and SCA friend who moved back to the States in the autumn (missing Norrskensfesten so that she could be at her brother's wedding). She has finally gotten her thesis pretty much written and sent it to me for comment. It turned out to be so well written and organized that I am actually reading it (and making comments, of course), and learning all kinds of things I never knew about orogenic gold deposits. This ate all of the time between arriving at the office around 11:00 (these things happen when one stays up till 03:00) and time to head to Parkour.

This was my first time back at Parkour in three weeks, and this time there were only three of us. Therefore, while I did try some of the vaults and jumps that were the day's official plan, I also got help on technique for handstands, cartwheels, backwards somersaults, etc. It felt good to move again after not much all week (well, other than short yoga sessions and pedaling to and from work). Yes, indeed, it is bikeable weather here in the north. While the snow is still waist deep in the yard, they had done a good job on plowing the bike paths, and we have had 16 days in a row where it was above freezing during the day (and below freezing at night), so the bike path is totally clear. Well, there is some gravel, but it was such a good snow year, and so little above zero temps (until the past two weeks) that they didn't need to put much gravel on the path at all, so it is easy to pedal. Of course, the street in my neighbourhood, being a dirt road, is rather muddy, but that is why they invented rain-pants.

When I sat down to the computer this evening, again with a plan of what to do for thesis work, I discovered a letter from my colleague at the Nidaros Cathedral restoration project in Trondheim. He has now packaged up a number of samples from different quarries they work with, and is sending them to me so that I can analyze them and compare the composition with the archaeological objects I will also analyze. He emailed me the list of quarries, so I spent this evening happily playing with google maps to see if I could find the quarries just from their names and looking for quarry like features in that area. I managed to find five of the eight, and have sent photos to him to have my guesses confirmed or denied. He also reiterated his invitation to come visit their workshop, so I asked on FB to see if anyone wants to join me.