bad4u's blog: "Just a Swinging"

The surgery turned out to be bigger than the doctor had thought, so instead of staying out of work for one week I'm supposed to be out of work two weeks. There's a lot of pain, even with the pain pills. Thank you all for your good thoughts :)

Apparently sometime in the last few months I lifted something that was too heavy, so I'm going in tomorrow for hernia repair surgery. It's an outpatient thing: they operate on me, and then they send me home. I'll be out of work, and probably on pain meds, until at least Monday of next week, maybe until Wednesday, we'll see. Wish me luck!

I'm in a contest:

I'm limping today. My knee is in horrible pain whenever I bend it. It's not gout because it's not swollen enough, and the pain isn't at that intolerable gout level. But it hurts. We're having our annual Halloween party in about a month. We're already buying decorations. This is one of my favorite holidays. We still haven't decided what costumes we're going for, maybe a cowboy and a saloon girl, or a devil and angel. Any suggestions? It's rainy, dark and drab, and I'm in pain. I hope your Saturday is going better

We bought a 1999 Pontiac Montana minivan on Friday, so today we decided to take a road trip. We've lived in southwest Indiana for a couple of years, about 30 miles from the Illinois border, but we've never gone to Illinois, so we drove out I-64 west. The drive was pretty nice, a lot of flat country. At least I think it was nice, I slept a lot of the way. Our first stop was at Genkota winery. It was a rustic wood building, and inside we got to try samples of their various wines. They were out of the one I really wanted to try, Thunder Chicken, an apple wine. We bought a bottle of Catawba, a rose that was semi-sweet. I guess I should say that I'm not a wine snob. I hate 'dry' wines. That just means they're not sweet. Sweet is better. The first winery had a brochure that listed South Illinois wineries, and there was another winery, Pheasant Hollow, that was only 30 or 40 miles down the road, south on I-57. So off we went. We kept driving and didn't see it, but we did see a sign for an Adult superstore. We said that if we didn't find the winery we'd go to the Adult store, where they had a 'buy 2, get 1 free' deal on DVDs. A little while later we saw a sign for the winery, so the Adult store woud have to wait for another weekend. This one was even further off the road, and more rustic. We drove down a narrow gravel road about 100 yards and came to a clearing where an old wooden building stood. We went inside, and it was open. There was a rack of t-shirts, with a design with a bunch of grapes, and the words, "Pick Me, Squeeze Me, Make Me Wine!". I bought one for my wife. We sampled their blackberry/blueberry wine, and their raspberry wine, and bought a bottle of both. We drove back, going north to I-64, then east until we crossed the Indiana state line. A little ways in I decided to head south, so we took some of the back roads back to Evansville. Back in Evansville, we ate at the Golden Corral, a buffet chain restaurant. We ran into a friend from the swinger's club we go to about 30 miles north of here. She's a stripper at a local strip club. Small world. It's been a good Sunday. I can see the van is going to do well on trips, so we'll have to take some weekend trips to St Louis and Louisville and Indianapolis. I can't wait.