Wednesday

I had an appointment with my family doc today to check out my shoulder. I had self-diagnosed myself with a torn rotator cuff since I had been unable to raise my left arm above my shoulder for the last month or so. There wasn't an injury, but when I made a quick move, or needed to reach high and left, I had a problem. I was already trying to figure out when I could find 6-8 weeks for surgery and rehab.

The great news is that I would flunk out of medical school. My doc confirmed my problem as some kind of a "locking-up" of some longer muscles on the outside of my shoulder blade. A cortisone shot and some stretching exercises and I'm already 300% better. (He did say that if the condition were allowed to persist, the shoulder would have essentially frozen in the limited position, and surgery would have been required to correct it at that time.) Makes you wonder what the gladiators and frontiersmen did with nagging injuries. Gives a whole new perspective to "playing hurt".

I did three of the "outside the box" NYT puzzles last night, one after the other, completely, as I laid down to sleep. Strange. I'm usually lucky to do one, 85% or so, in the same time frame. It's not like I ate some special brain food before bed, or had a particularly successful evening. The synapses were just popping off in the proper sequence, I guess.

I stopped off to visit 2 and Winnie on my way home from the office this evening. They are both on a learning curve. Cute dog.

Congrats to the Twins for last night's huge victory. A really good game. Now they need to steal Friday's game in the Big Apple.

So I'm headed to bed to test the synapses.

BCOT