I know you are all just dying to know how the uvulopalatopharyngoplasty worked out for me, aren’t you?

Well… they did what they had to do. They put me under general anesthetic and cut out the extra flesh in the back of my throat. (By the way, call me paranoid, but I’ll never accept an invitation for stir fry dinner at an ENT surgeon’s house.) Although my hospital stay was brief, the result was painful and uncomfortable.

Eating has been difficult to say the least. My diet during the first two weeks after my surgery consisted of liquids, cream of wheat, oatmeal, soup, noodles, ice cream and pudding. I lost almost 15 pounds. The last three of four days I’ve been venturing further and further into food that must be chewed and have been enjoying relative success. It’s still a little hard on the throat, but it’s not unbearable.

I mentioned in my previous post that my snoring would get worse for the first three weeks. Well, it did. Trust me, it did. My family thought Moncton had relocated its airport to the street behind us. For our own sanity, my wife and I had taken turns sleeping on the couch. Last Wednesday and Thursday nights, my wife mentioned that she hadn’t heard me snore, so since Friday we decided to give sleeping in the same room a go. I’m happy to report that for three nights running, I haven’t snored. Now my wife lies awake at night wondering if I’m going to snore, but that’s a whole other issue. Post traumatic stress or something.

So. I’m cured. (I hope!) I’d like to thank those of you who sent me notes, called the house, or otherwise expressed your concern over my progress over the last two weeks or so… It’s nice to know folks are thoughtful enough to check. This coming Thursday will mark three weeks since the operation and, according to the doctor, the end of the worst part of the recovery. It’s all uphill from here… or downhill, depending on which way you consider to be a good thing.

For anyone out there suffering from something similar, I recommend this procedure. It seems extreme and it is quite a difficult thing to endure, but it’s worth it.

Until someone loses a foot.

Picture this. Last weekend; block party; booze; music; booze; trampoline; booze; my wife’s twin sister. No, it’s not what you are thinking… (I didn’t realize how that last sentence would read until I wrote it.)

My sister-in-law decided that it would be fun to regress thirty or forty years and bounce around on a trampoline. Ladies out there, (I never thought I’d say this, but I will) don’t drink and bounce. It’s not safe.

The picture of Deb’s foot was not; I repeat NOT; digitally enhanced. This is what the elephant man’s foot looked like. It was painful. It was embarrassing. It was hilarious.

But that’s not the funny part.

Deb went to the hospital, got the broken bones set in a cast, and returned to the party. She attempted to go to work after the weekend and couldn’t handle it. She returned to the hospital and they decided that they needed to operate to set the bones (notice the plural) surgically. So, after staying overnight, getting surgery, staying overnight again, they decided they were going to release her. So, she gets dressed, packs her stuff and is ready to go. She simply needs to wait for her release papers. Now, this sister-in-law of mine, the same sister-in-law who, under the influence of alcohol and peer pressure thought it would be a good idea to try out a trampoline, got bored waiting for the hospital staff to administer her release papers. She decides that she would pass the time away by tidying up around her hospital bed. She takes a water glass, hops on one foot to the sink to dump it, decides that the nurse might think it was a bad idea for her to hop around without her crutches, turns around to get her crutches, loses her balance and falls down, injuring her other foot.

(Pause while readers roar with laughter.)

It’s not funny. Ahem… I mean really… it’s NOT funny. Sorry Deb, I can’t say it with a straight face.

Get well soon.

Samual Johnson, an 18th century author, is quoted as saying, “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”

Dr. Johnson has gotten inside my head. To summarize so succinctly my angst in being the author of this blog from more than 2 centuries in the past is truly mind boggling. But what he doesn’t elaborate upon is that sometimes the effort itself is a hindrance to the creation of the written word in the first place. It would be easy to spew drivel about the humdrum of daily life simply for the sake of journalizing it. If this blog-o-mine wasn’t put on public display, perhaps it would be a diary of the monotony of daily life spattered with the occasional highlight interesting only to myself and those directly connected with my life’s events.

But it is put on public display. For that reason, there is a certain pressure to provide something worth reading. This pressure translates into effort. This effort is what, according to Johnson, allows me to write something pleasurable to read. But this pressure can also be paralyzing. This pressure can cause a performance anxiety of sorts. This pressure to perform, to entertain, to appear competent can be self destructive. The world will see this. Actually, only about 1 billionth of the world’s population will actually read it, but the pressure is there nonetheless.

For this reason alone, I have a level of respect for anyone that attempts to do this. I admire anyone who attempts to publicly display their thoughts, their words, their feelings, their sense of humour, their goals, and even their vulnerabilities.

My nephew entered the blogosphere today. He did so without fanfare. He didn’t publicly announce it. But as wonderfully vast as the web can be, it is impossible to hide. You are out there Ronnie, and now I’m telling others! I admire your courage as you publicly display your wares. Good luck, and welcome aboard. You are now one of us. I hope Flip or Fantasy becomes a regular watering hole for those of us thirsty for a pleasurable read. If your first post is any indication (cleverly titled by the way), good ol’ Sam Johnson has some good readin’ to look forward to. And so do I.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Anitdisestablishmentarianism.

Alex, the question is: what are the three longest freakin’ words I thought I’d never use, especially not all in the same post?

Yesterday I was the victim of a uvulopalatopharyngoplasty, also playfully known as UPPP. This, simply put, is a medical procedure for removing excess tissue from the back of the throat. About 4 or 5 years ago I started to develop a very loud, persistent snore; loud and persistent enough that I feared that some night my darling wife might decide to use my own pillow as a murder weapon against me. Apparently, while I sleep away, she lies awake contemplating and planning ways to make my death look like an accident. No, I’m not being paranoid, she has come right out and told me that while she loves me by day, she hates me by night.

So, I agreed to go see a doctor about it. After weighing several options, including wearing contraptions on my head that keep a positive air pressure in my mouth and nose, keeping a device in my mouth to push my jaw forward, separate bedrooms, death, divorce or surgery, we decided that I would brave the knife and have a hunk of flesh removed from the back of my throat. The piece of flesh is the flesh around that dangly thingy at the back of the throat. (Incidentally, this was my second favourite dangly thingy. If my first favourite starts making too much noise, I’m afraid I’ll have to choose death or divorce.) Several potential side effects include a change of my voice (more nasal), snoring that actually gets worse, trouble getting food down the right pipe, or simply going through a lot of pain and suffering for no noticeable improvement. The doctor told me that over the next three weeks my snoring will appear worse due to swelling and the true end result won’t be known until six weeks has passed.

So, for now, all I can do is drink my shooters (an elixir concocted of grape flavoured liquid Tylenol, mint flavoured codeine, and banana flavoured antibiotic). Yawn… I’m tired. I think I’ll snooze on the couch. ZZZZZZZZZZ.

I have no riches and fame & fortune have never come my way. But I have had my share of brushes with fame. Nothing major, I mean, I haven’t rubbed elbows (much) with the rich and famous, but my path has crossed the paths of some folks of varying spotlight brightness.

When I was a kid, I went to school with someone who is now a member of the very successful Newfoundland folk band Great Big Sea. Sean McCann was in my class from grades 2 through 5, played on my cousins’ hockey teams, and his mom taught me in elementary school. I was also once on a flight with the guys from GBS. They were in business class and I was back in cattle class. I didn’t have the nerve to go up to them googly-eyed, “Hi Sean, remember me?”

Then, there’s Anna McGoldrick. In grade six, I think, I was in the glee club. Our class was asked to play backup for her in a show at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John’s. Val de reeee, val de raaah, val de reeee, val de ra ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Sometime after that there was a show at the Memorial Stadium in St. John’s. They had a couple of soap opera stars there, Mitch Blake played by William Gray Espy and Kitt Holloway played by Bradley Bliss, both on Another World. Mitch was the sexy hunk of the show at the time having an affair with Rachel, and Kitt was the pretty blonde married to Joey Perrini, played by Ray Liotta. My mother and Aunt Jean went down there and brought a few of us kids along. Well, during question and answer period people lined up at the mics to ask questions or make comments. There was a fairly steady stream of star-stuck women saying “Can I come up and give Mitch a kiss.” Of course he obliged. Then one brave soul got to the mic and in his deepest, thickest Newfoundland accent said, “Is Kitt givin’ out any o’ dem kisses?” She was not quite so willing as Mitch to expose herself to public mauling so she said, “Only if you are 12 or under.” Although I was 14 at the time, I allowed my aunt and mother to coax me to the mic. “H-h-how about a f-f-fourteen year old?” “C’mon up here, I’ll kiss you!” So, I got to kiss Kitt Holloway! Move over Ray Liotta!

In 1984, Pope John Paul II came to St. John’s, Newfoundland. That was a big deal there. They anticipated that 250,000 people would show up at the park grounds around Quidi Vidi lake. That’s impressive given that there was only about ½ million people in the province at the time! Now, just because I was in the crowd I don’t think that it was a brush with fame, otherwise I’d be mentioning every concert I ever went to. But this was the Pope! Besides that, one day while walking downtown a news crew stopped me and asked what I thought of the Pope coming to St. John’s. “Well, I t’inks it’s great, right. I mean, it’s not all dat often we gets someone like da Pope comin’ to St. John’s. I definitely be dere, fer sure.” I made the 6:00 news with that eloquently stringed together group of words. Keeping with the religious figure theme, a few years earlier, I had met the Archbishop Alphonsis Penney when he did mass the 25th anniversary of the church we went to, St. Joseph’s. I was an alter boy at that mass. Little did I know at the time that Monsignor Jim Hickey, who also served as a special guest at that mass, would earn infamy in Newfoundland for being one of the most aggressive sexual predators of young boys in the history of the archdiocese. Don’t worry… I wasn’t a victim. Lucky or ugly, I guess.

Shortly after that, when I was 17, I was able to sneak backstage at a concert featuring two Canadian bands Harlequin and The Tenants. The girl I was dating at the time had been to the concert the night before and she and her friend had gotten back stage passes. After the concert, the three of us went backstage. The girls flashed their passes and I just kind of walked in with them. When I walked in, both bands were there sitting around drinking beer, putting their guitars away etc. The bassist for The Tenants points his finger at me and says “Hey you!”. My heart stopped. “You want a beer?” So, I sat backstage and had a beer with the bands. Later, I walked downtown with that same guy, Lewis Mele, to show him where Garbo’s bar was. It was on my way, and it was cool to walk along with a member of the band. He asked me to go in to the bar, but I was too young and broke to tag along. What a wimp, wha?

In and around that same time I managed to hook a summer job as Buster the Brookfield Ice Cream Bear. They hired two of us for the gig, but the other person’s father died suddenly and I wound up being the only one. So, all summer long, I rode around town with radio DeeJays, dressed in a polar bear suit going to corner stores and events giving out coupons for free ice cream. That suit weighed a freakin’ ton and was hot as hell! It was a pretty good gig and it paid well. I’m allowed to use the word “gig” for a job because I have such an affiliation with the musical community, you know… To make things interesting, one of the DJs, Ken Venus (yes, that was his REAL name) told the kids, on the air, that Buster was the world’s only moon-walking polar bear. Be sure to ask Buster to moonwalk for you! Asshole. However, that during those months, I was the celebrity. My fifteen minutes!

Several years later, I was doing a lot of traveling for work. During those travels, I crossed paths with two stars. While in New York City in November of 1999, I decided to walk through Macy’s department store. There, stood at an elevator, was William Hurt waiting for an elevator. I just kind of gawked at him with the same jaw-dropped expression I had the first time I walked down Broadway looking up at the skyscrapers. On another occasion, I was bumped from a flight in Halifax. As a result, the airline gave me access to the executive lounge. In there I sat next to a very upset Anne Murray. She apparently had left her eyeglasses in her hotel room or something and was quite distraught. She was complaining to the guy with her (husband? manager?) so I just sat back and pretended not to let it show that I recognized her.

There you have it… the summation of my celebrity sightings. You folks out there… what brushes with greatness have you experienced?

Almost a year ago (one week shy of a year actually) I had a problem with my 1992 Camry.  At that time, the power steering lines broke and while it was in the shop they told me it needed power steering lines, two rear struts and some other minor things.  That repair totaled $900.

Now, this morning I went to Tim Horton’s drive-thru for a coffee;  I pressed the button to put my window down but when I pressed it again to put the window up…. nothing.  Besides the giggling of my two teenage passengers, I could hear a buzzing/humming like the window was going up, but no actual window showing up between me and the outside world.  Shit.

The car is due for an inspection too.  I suspect I have problems with my radiator, CV joints, and a strut mount.  Oh, maybe the handbrake too.  Add the window thing to the mix and I’ll bet I’m gonna run up an decent tally again this year.  Shit.  Shit!

I’m going to try to fix the window myself tonight.   I think the glass just fell off a track or something.  (Unless it fell out through the bottom of the door and it’s sitting in the drive-thru at Tim Hortons….)

Grrr…