On Injured Reserve

The plan was to start the prep work on the exterior front of the house today. I really want to get back to painting. Can you believe that tomorrow is July 1st?!?! Where the heck is the summer going? Anyway, those plans have been put on hold because of a minor mishap I had when I fell down and went boom. It is minor and it actually happened a few weeks ago. I thought I was all better, but I seem to have re-injured it.

What happened was this. I was at work (Yes, I do have a job) carrying a box that weighed about 30 pounds and I lost my footing. I smashed my right shoulder – my scraping shoulder - right in to the sharp corner of a very large and very immovable stainless steel refrigerator. I smashed it good. I was a good 4 feet away from the refrigerator when I tripped so all of my weight, plus the extra 30 pounds of the box, along with the momentum of falling, crushed my shoulder in to the sharp metal edge. It hurt. It hurt bad.

For a few days it was really sore but not enough to really slow me down. This was when I was painting the second story above the porch so I did a lot of scraping and sanding with what is normally referred to as my non-scraping shoulder. I was also eating ibuprofen like they were M&Ms and icing my shoulder every night (As a side note: I think I’m going to be covered with IbuTumors in 20 or 30 years because of all the ibuprofen I’ve eaten over the last 10 years). Several days later there was still this crease of pain right at the spot where I made contact with the fridge, but it was healing nicely.

If you would have asked me last Friday how my shoulder was I would have said it was fine. Then on Saturday (As another aside, I’ll point out that last Saturday I was supposed to be laying on the couch eating junk food, drinking red wine, and watching rented movies) I was working on the marble in the kitchen. When I drilled the 5/8th inch pilot hole for the router bit I had to bare down on the drill for about 10 minutes to get the hole drilled. My shoulder didn’t like this at all. I’ve pretty much been in constant pain ever since. In fact, even writing this blog entry hurts.

I made an official mention of this at work but I didn’t want to do a workman’s comp thing. Mainly because I hate standing around waiting to be poked and prodded in the Dr. Office, but also because if I was on workman’s comp I really couldn’t work on my house while I’m supposed to be on workman’s comp. Instead, I just go in and do a really half-assed job at work, while I continue to work on my house. Well, that plan is sort of failing me. My shoulder is absolutely screaming at me now and the more I use it the more I’m in pain. Not only does the pain increase, but it moves down my arm. It sounds worse than it is, but it’s to the point that I need to stop working. And even worse, I need to stop blogging until it gets better.

Despite all this, I actually have some good news to report. If you recall several weeks ago I wrote about a little windfall I had from an old software deal I made in a previous life. The company had lost contact with me, and I thought the deal had soured, so I had forgotten about them. Anyway, sales picked up and they tracked me down saying they had some money for me. Bring it on!

I was told the amount was “well over a $1,000”. I didn’t write about it at the time, but my natural pessimism kicked in and I’ve always had this feeling in the back of my head that he was mistaken. I just knew it would turn out to be “well over $100” and he had made a type-o or something. I’m mean really, it was too good to be true. How often does a houseblogger strapped for cash get an email out of the blue from someone telling you they have a $1,000 they want to give you. Sure there is the Nigerian businessman with wads of cash to give you, but this was bonafide.

Regardless of how much money there really was coming to me, it was free money. I wasn’t going to look a gift check in the mouth so I kept my pessimism to myself. As these things work in the corporate world, cutting a check for any amount takes an act of Parliament (they are a Canadian Co.) and so I only just received the check today. Well, it was over a thousand dollars all right. In fact, it was “well over” a thousand dollars. That was no type-o and my pessimism was all for nothing. The check was for $3,452.00 US Currency! Woo-Hooo! The best part is, about a third of the funds where generated in the first quarter of 2006. That means that more quarterly checks might be coming!

It’s funny how my mind works when it comes to money. The first thing I thought of when I saw the check was, “Man, I can pay off some bills”. In reality, though, even though I do have some bills they’re not so big that I need to waste all this money paying them off. I do need some consumer goods. A real refrigerator would be nice. About 18 months ago one of the refrigerators in one of the apartments over the garage died. This was just before I was going to start the big kitchen remodel in my house. I knew I was going to be without a kitchen for a while and not doing much cooking, so I took my almost new fridge and put it in the apartment. I then went out and bought a little fridge for me to use, like the kind you might find in a hotel room.

It’s amazing that I’ve gotten used to having this tiny fridge, but I do need a full size fridge for the house. The small fridge is especially bothersome when I have guests over. Two weeks ago when I hosted the Splinter Group I had to eat all my food so I would have enough room to chill beverages for 20 guests. Kind of a pain. So most of the money will go to pay down my few bills I have but I will be buying a new refrigerator. The timings good. I’m in pain and unable to work on the house, and there might be a few Forth of July Sale-Abrations going on. Let the shopping begin.