I'm sitting at my computer right now because I'm in severe pain. I'm in severe pain most of the time, I have been for 28 years now. Good God, that's nearly 3/4 of my life now. Depressing thought.

It almost killed me a few times, like the time I thought a ruptured appendix was just mild gas for three days, and when I finally went to see a doctor he said that it was unlikely it was my appendix because I was too cheerful, laughing and joking etc. But he said, when somebody has tenderness there, they open them up and whip the appendix out just in case. Not to worry, it will only take 45 minutes or so, and a day in the hospital. 4 hours on the operating table, 9 days in the hospital, 25 days at home recovering with a 15 cm long gash in my stomach, and now I try and notice the little aches and pains that show up above the background level of pain I deal with every day. The surgeon had had to remove part of my stomach because of gangrene. I wonder how bad it would have been if I'd waited any longer.

Right now I'm sitting at my computer because it hurts too much when I lie down. It's not too bad sitting up in my office-type chair. I took at much ibuprophen and acetemino...tylenol as I should, and then took some more. I did the stretches that sometimes help. But based on past experience, my only hope now is to get so tired that I'll sleep through any pain. And then hope I can wake up enough to function tomorrow at work.

It's hard to remember back before the pain started. Well, I had other types of pain back then, like a brother who physically, psychologically and sexually abused me, a mother I only heard from about twice a year, and a father who did nothing to save me from my brother. I'm not sure, but I think this is better.

Year ago I used to say that when the pain got too great, I'd commit suicide and end it. But then I had to go and get family. That put an end to that idea. Suicide doesn't end pain, it merely transfers it to innocent people, and that's fair to anybody. So I'll bear it as best I can. There's nothing else I can do.

The pain has gone down to bearable levels. Maybe I'll try lying down again.

I had "The Talk" with my older daughter yesterday. Actually, I didn't say all the millions of things I meant to say, especially about how sex crazy 16-18 year old boys are and how they trade tips with each other on how to pressure or trick girls into having sex with them. But she says she's already had "The Talk" with my ex-wife and her grandparents, so I guess I'm just gilding the lilly anyway.

I don't know if she was humouring me or not, but she sounds extremely focused on her goals in life, and realizes how much getting pregnant would ruin those goals. Man, I hope she's not just talking a good game, but she has always been pretty good at acheiving her goals.

I didn't focus much on STDs and the like. When I was in high school in Ontario, they covered that stuff pretty thoroughly, and I can't imagine they'd de-emphasize that now in the era of AIDS.

It's her younger sister I'm worried about. Attention span of a gnat, young but looks older, drop dead gorgeous but with a really bad body image, naive, yet trying hard to prove that she's a rebel, and needy. I'm also worried that she's possibly bulemic. People have noticed how she *always* spends a lot of time in the bathroom after dinner.

If there's any readers out there, I'm afraid you're in for a self-indulgent angsty post, just like every other blog or journal out there. Sorry about that.

I'm depressed again. I've been feeling out of sorts and sad for weeks now. I don't think this is a full blown depression (oh, God, please don't let it be that again) this time. Just too many things weighing on me.

• I'm convinced that the George Bush is dragging the entire world into a hell hole, and he's doing it for only two reasons:
  1. He wants to make his rich friends even richer, and more scary,
  2. He thinks he's spreading his brand of Christianity to the Muslim nations
• I'm currently in a boring stage of the project at work.
• The project I'm on hasn't sold a single copy even though we're just about to release version 3.0.
• Thanks to outsourcing, I'm worried that I may never work in tech again, and I don't have any other saleable skills.
• I'm currently without my aviation medical, although I hope to have it back in a while.
• Too many things to do, too little time.
• My on-line community of friends is squabbling and breaking up.

But more important than all of those things put together, is that sometimes it feels like my wife and I are room mates rather than mates. We occupy the same house and the same bed, and sometimes we even talk to each other, but we're both occupied with our own lives and it seems like they don't intersect enough. We keep making plans to spend a weekend away from the computers and the kids and the thousands of interruptions and personal projects and just spend some time connecting with each other, but those plans keep getting cancelled or pushed back. I'm as lonely as I was as a bachelor sometimes. And I feel like it's mostly my fault.

I don't know what the problem is. I still love her, deeply and painfully. I still need her. I still feel loved. But much of the time, what time we have together is more of an annoyance than a blessed opportunity.

The weird thing is that I think part of the problem is the change in our routines. In the mornings, we used to both sit at our computers in the family room checking our email, but now I go to the family room but she sits in the kitchen with her new laptop. We didn't talk that much (I'm barely coherent first thing in the morning) but it was a contact that I miss. So this morning at great risk to my sore knees and hips I sat in the kitchen with my laptop as well. It's not much, but it's a start.

A bigger change in our routines is the evenings. I used to sit in the family room at my computer, while Vicki and the kids watched TV. But it annoyed me that I never got to watch the sort of shows that I wanted to watch, so I got a TiVo for the TV in the bedroom. The plus side is that I get to watch all the shows I want to watch, the downside is that I'm isolated from the family. It probably wouldn't hurt me to spend more time watching crap reality shows and the like instead of Babylon 5 and History Channel shows if it meant that I was out there with them.

I can't fix everything that's wrong with my life, but I can at least try and fix this. And I suppose that gives me some hope.

I have the computer upgrade blues again. The difference is that, for the first time in my life, the blues aren't because I want an upgrade but can't get it. This time I have an upgrade, but I don't want it, and don't want to spend the time to switch over to it.

It's easy to see why all the hardware manufacturers have declining sales now - the previous generation is fast enough for just about everything, so why spend thousands getting the latest whizzy upgrade when everything you do is limited by the speed of the network rather than the CPU?

Several months ago I was told I had an upgraded machine on order. I said I didn't want it, my current machine is fast enough and I'm too busy to configure it so they should give it to somebody who needs a faster computer. They told me that the sysadmins would take care of installing RedHat 9 and everything else I need, and if I didn't take the upgraded computer, I couldn't get the nice 21" monitor that comes with it, and I'd be stuck on my 17". Ok, I said, I'll take it.

A month or two went by, and they dropped off the computer, but no monitor. I was still busy, so it's been sitting under my desk unplugged since then. We've hit code freeze, so I'm not very busy right now, so I decided to set it up. Only two problems: The other network drop in my cubicle is dead, and the promised 21" monitor is nowhere to be found.

So the upgrade is on hold again. And I don't give a damn.

Currently playing on my iPod: Bob Bossin, Gabriola Island VOR 1X0.

It's the beginning of September, and once again I find myself grounded. I'm a pilot, or at least I was until the end of August. Hopefully I will be one again soon. It all started back in 2001.

I was driving somewhere and letting my mind wander, and I guess I let it wander back to things I hadn't let it wander back to in 25 years. I suddenly found myself pulling onto the shoulder because I was crying about something that had happened to me when I was 15. I went to see a therapist. I worked hard with her to explore how repressing these memories had affected my whole life and personality. Ok, I said "repressing" and I'm sure people are rolling their eyes and thinking "false memory syndrome", but it wasn't technically repression - I always knew those things had happened, I'd just never let myself feel the emotions that came from them.

Anyway, I was in therapy, and while I was feeling too depressed to fly, I never gave up my FAA medical. Until September 11th. On that day, two of my co-workers died, including one whom I'd been working with on a project. It was depressing for everybody, but when you're struggling to make progress in therapy, it felt more like the last straw.

I asked my doctor for anti-depressants and was given Welbutrin. It gave me the mental strength to continue to make progress, but it also instantly invalidated my FAA medical. I had researched the issue before asking, and knew that it would take some work to get my FAA medical back, so it wasn't a decision I took lightly.

Oh, I should also mention that during this period I was diagnosed as borderline diabetic. I tried taking Glucophage to control the blood sugar, but was only having middling success with that.

After 2 or 3 months of the Welbutrin, I decided that I'd gotten over the hurdle, and went off it. I still continued to make good progress on the therapy.

Around about this time, I also started on a low carb diet - not strictly Atkins, but close. It was having amazing results on my blood sugar - I no longer got the shakes every day at lunch time, and I no longer saw my blood glucose readings swinging wildly between 45 and 300 - it was more like 75 before lunch and 95 after.

That spring, I went to the "Sun n Fun" fly-in in Lakeland Florida. It was there that I firmly committed myself to getting my medical back. I talked to a medical examiner there, and he said that after I've been off the Welbutrin for 6 months, I should go to my local Aviation Medical Examiner, take a physical, and send in the results.

So I did, 6 months to the day. I also started training for my instrument rating, since you don't need a medical to take dual instruction, just to solo. It took nearly two months for the FAA to respond that they needed more information, both from my doctor and my therapist. They seemed concerned about both the diabetes and the depression. I got the information and send it in, and *another* two months went by before they sent back a letter requesting more information and a couple of blood tests. I did that, and finally about 8 months after starting the process, I got a medical. A special issuance medical, good for only 6 months instead of the usual 2 years. And with a whole list of further hoops I'd have to jump through before it expired at the end of August to get a normal two year medical.

Ok, I admit it, I screwed up. I waited too long to start the hoop jumping, and so the damn thing expired, and I'm still waiting for the FAA to decide whether my hemoglobin a1c shows that I have the diabetes under control and my doctor and (now former) therapist think I'm not a danger to society.

Part of the reason I waited too long was that I went to Oskhosh, the biggest fly-in in the world. While I was there, they announced that 10% of all the aircraft in the United States were parked at the airfield that day. It was like a visit to Mecca. I borrowed a really good digital camera and took some pictures. But mostly I walked around with a huge grin on my face, because I was *home*.

It's the waiting that's the hardest part. I know how slow the FAA can be. And I won't be able to fly until they get their collective asses in gear and read the letter from my doctor and the lab results, hem and haw over it for several weeks or months, and then finally write a response. I just hope like hell they don't want any more hoop jumping like they did last time.