This just in, Lincoln may have been a smoker.

Ashlee, Jen, Cameron, I can relate.

I have had schnoz surgery. If the good doctor did his job, I will look exactly like I did before I walked in.

Before this, my entire experience with surgery was limited to having my wisdom teeth removed, which I will admit, doesn't really count. But after an increasingly common recurring sinus infection, zee doctor recommended surgery to correct what the good lord couldn't.

Endoscopic sinus surgery is where we are at from a medical advancement standpoint. This means that there are no external incisions and without getting too graphic, everything goes through the nostrils. This is a great departure from what Dr. Kramppp described to me, which involved an incision from ear to ear over the top of the skull, and a peeling back of the entire top half of the face, in order to access the sinuses. Solid piece of mind from the-only-med-student-i-know. Evidently beside manner is a later course.

The whole surgery took a little over 2 and 1/2 hours and has been surprisingly uneventful. I admit I had growing trepidation about an elective surgery where the two most common complications (which are extremely UNcommon) are leaking spinal fluid from the brain and blindness caused by an inadvertently severed optic nerve. Let's see, I went in for a sniffly nose and walked out blind and with a BRAIN-LEAK. Excellent decision making Oswald.

But everything has gone very well. After a Tuesday morning surgery I am feeling about 80% better on Saturday morning. I have a sniffly nose that requires a little irrigation (gross) and take about a half a pain pill a day (weeee!).

The first couple nights were difficult because the surgery left me with two splints and some packing in my nose rendering it useless for breathing, and a constant source of what I will tactfully refer to a "ick" and "yuck-nasty" (both very different). The flow was stemmed by a sexy "schnoz-sling" which hooks around the ears and hold a piece of gauze, or six, againt my newly-generous nostrils. This required sleeping upright and with the chance of errant ick and yuck-nasty, Dagny and I decided to bunk on the basement sectional, where I can look all Hannibal-ish on the chaise-lounge end, while she curls up on the couch. She didn't have to do this, but I was eternally grateful.

Returning to the doctor on Thursday gave him the wonderful opportunity to reclaim the splints in my nose as well as the packing. I don't know exactly what they look like because my eyes where tearing up like a weepy old wench and he had me do some deep breathing but suffice to say, I now know exactly what it's like to give birth. Take that ladies! As an aside, nasal packing looks almost identical to pickled beets. Don't ask me where this comes from.

So now I'm beginning to reclaim my ability to talk at a full volume, but anything above "inside voices" still reverbrates my pallette more than I can stand. I can't claim to feel a tremendous increase in breathability yet, but there is still quite a bit of swelling that has not subsided yet and I don't expect to have a good idea of what the finished product will be like until next week.

I have no complaints in general because I had no external bruising (common), no nausea (almost unavoidable) and no vomiting (practically assured).

Combine this with the fact that I have never broken a major bone and I am beginning to gather enough evidence that I have somehow developed Wolverine-like super self-healing ability. I will be further testing this theory by shooting myself in the foot with a small-caliber pistol next weekend and will post the results here. I figure that we are already stocked-up on pain pills and gauze so there really will never be a better time.

Pillow Talk

Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't play competitively, fantasize.

I have been playing on-line fantasy sports for about eight years. Starting with our pledge-class league of "Small World Fantasy Basketball", which cleverly included a stock-market like system of player values back when the Internets was new around 1999. Since then it has become a great way of following a given sport (most consistently the NBA), keeping in touch with friends, and providing an outlet for a nasty competitive streak.

Not satisfied with one league, I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. My girlfriend and I share a love of basketball, both inherited from our families. The families hadn't met yet, but given the impending conjoining of living space, the time was well nigh. Why not create a family Fantasy Basketball league? The benefits seemed innumerable. A draft would be a great, informal way for people to meet. People could stay in touch and interact. And hopefully my girlfriend would understand when I spend hours going comparing the stats of Chucky Atkins with John Salmons and might sympathize when a shooting guard for the Hornets that no one in their right mind has heard of goes down with a torn ligament.

I had no idea whether people would play past the first week, understand the esoteric scoring system, suggest trades, adjust their lineups, and in general get in the spirit.

Which brings me to last night. I have been recovering from surgery, my girlfriend has been a wonderful nurse, which has left both of us exhausted. At roughly 2am in the morning, I am repositioning my tired bones in the bed and she grabs my arm:

"Baby, I've been thinking"

"What's wrong" I reply.

"I think I should just trade you Vince Carter for a nobody and try to take down my mom. It's our only shot. Since Dwyane Wade went down, my team is sunk."

"Really baby? That makes sense, I was kind of thinking the same...."

This is when I realized we are talking about Fantasy Basketball in bed. And she brought it up. This tears down so many assumptions of what I think is going on in her head at any given time. I assume that it is mostly new living room arrangments, but now, all bets are off. Speaking of bets, do I even dare mention on-line sports-books?

I ask if we can talk about it in the morning and she relents.

Thus ends the opening volley in my argument as Fantasy Sports being the most addictive scourge in our modern times.