This weekend I spent a lot of time reading, watching movies, and buying more books to read. As if I have nothing else to do, I decided that I should waste a good bit of time reading and watching movies instead of doing something more productive.

As you know, the other night Kim and I headed over to the Lagoon and checked out Music Within and on Friday I rented We Are Marshall and Knocked Up. On Saturday after bowling and another visit to Rudy’s Redeye Grill, I picked up Transformers. I didn’t care for Knocked Up or Transformers. Knocked Up was supposed to be “hysterical” and while it had some sophomoric humor, it wasn’t anything above what comes out of my mouth on any given day. Transformers was just a pile of raving shit that, while better than Gigli, was still worthless aside from a single fight scene near the end of the movie. We Are Marshall was surprisingly decent and I pretty much enjoyed that one although it could have used more football action.

A co-worker had told me to read Angels & Demons a couple of months ago and I had pretty much refused because The Divinci Code sucked so fucking bad and proves why American readers are so clueless when it comes to novels. This book, while far better than The Divinci Code, still wouldn’t even be in the top 100 books I have read in the last five years. *Shrug*, that’s why there are so many out there I guess.

Today, while wandering through the Mall of America while waiting for Kim’s salon appointment, I picked up The Third Reich In Power by Richard J. Evans. While I’m not normally a huge Hitler’s Germany fan or WWII fan, I am interested in the ties of the current rise in nationalism, fascism and corporatism to what occurred during Hitler’s conversion of Germany to Nazi fascism during the 1930s. So much can change in so few years under the nose of so many.

While I have no real plans to finish this lengthy piece before Christmas, depending on the quality of the read, it may be done before then. I would like to finish all of the work I have for a class I’m taking prior to the holidays, so I have a feeling that this book will take a back seat to that.

If you have any suggestions on other books I might be interested in, have at it below. I’m always looking for something a bit different to delve into — especially stuff that isn’t digested by the mainstream.

This weekend I did a lot of shopping. I mentioned that yesterday I went out and did some Christmas shopping for Kim and picked up some stuff for myself. Well, today we went out and did some more shopping and I got some ideas for more stuff to get for Kimmy ;)

Anyway, first we stopped at K-Mart in Burnsville to look at this Christmas crap. I want to emphasis *crap* because the entire store is full of it. How Martha Stewart puts her name alongside theirs, I’ll never know. I think jail did it to her.

Anyway, after K-Mart we headed over to Burnsville Center and walked around. For the Holiday Season, the place was *empty*. We stopped in several stores including the Dollar Store (which Kim demanded we leave because it “smelled” and was “giving her a headache”), The $10 Spot (which was full of shit that should have been in the $1 store but wasn’t and Spencer’s which has the most perfect gift for me:

After much more wandering and douchebag watching we stopped for dinner and came home.

I really didn’t see anything else that caught my eye but I did take the time to update my Amazon Wish List which I haven’t used since college but felt it was time to update. If anything, it’s for Kim to buy me stuff ;)

See all the pictures from today here.

Last night around 10:15 or so I ended up injuring myself enough that I had to go to the ER. I have a fairly rigid schedule of these events — about once every 6 or 7 years.

We’ve had the fireplace fall on me, the first needle in the foot, the hernia, Mono, the broken beer bottle fight (I was an innocent bystander), and now the second needle in the foot. There were others but it’s 9AM and I am running on only about 3.5 hours of sleep ;)

The first needle in the foot incident was in the summer when I was 8. My grandmother and my aunt had planned on taking me to Wildwood, NJ on Wednesday so that I could get a couple more days in before my parents showed up for the weekend. Wildwood was an expensive trip — $700+ for three days, even back then, and my parents weren’t in the position to be spending a week there — it was nice to be able to spend a few extra days walking the Boardwalk and body surfing.

I was watching ALF on Tuesday night in my parents bedroom; we didn’t have a TV in the living room and we didn’t have a family room. I think that this was my parents’ attempt at ensuring that they were closely governing what I was watching. Anyway, I was eating marshmellows (no, I don’t know how I remember this shit in exact detail) and was coming back from my second trip to the marshmellow holds and felt something itching the bottom of my foot.

I sat down on the corner of the bed and stared at the green carpet. Imbedded in the pile was a broken sewing needle. I absentmindedly pulled at the red string on the bottom of my foot while staring at the needle in the floor. It only took a few moments to realize that the red string wasn’t going to come out and where the other half of that needle lay.

My mother had been on a huge stationary bike kick. She would go into the basement and ride the yellow contraption with her 80’s imitation Walkman blaring (how odd is it to call music players something other than an iPod?) stuff like Rod Stewart, Kenny G, and Lionel Richie.

I called out to her from the top of the steps that I refused to descend. After three tries to no avail, I had to take drastic measures… I furiously flipped the light on and off to get her attention. After 30 seconds of this she finally decided that whatever I wanted was important enough to yell, “what do you want Bill?” My feeble reply was, “come here.”

The look on her face as she stood at the foot of the stairs gazing in horror at the string, pulled taught by my fingers, coming out of the bottom of my foot is probably why I remember this entire incident in graphic detail to this day…

Well, to make that long story short — it required several hours in the emergency room, minor surgery under general anesthesia, several weeks on crutches, and no Wildwood, NJ early :(

Last night wasn’t exactly the same. I felt something go in, my foot hurt, and I had a bad feeling that three days from then I’d be under general anesthesia with a torniquet on my leg to stop the blood while they extracted the foreign object.

Well, luckily for our bank account, modern medicine has changed — a lot. In addition to the document imaging of X-rays, making them available instantaneously in every room, they have portable machines that make the ones they used 20 years ago seem like ENIAC.

The excellent ER doctors at Regions took several turns at trying to extract the needle by searching in the wound made larger with their tools. The comment that it is like “searching for a needle in a haystack in the dark” definitely stuck with me and based on my memories of the ER the first time this happened fresh in my mind, I was fairly certain I wouldn’t be walking out of the ER with one less piece of metal.

But after 4 hours in the ER the doctor announced that he was given a fluoroscope to use on me. I was quite impressed by the tenacity of this team of doctors. They weren’t your typical “get ‘em in, get ‘em out” ER doctors. Nope, this needle was a challenge and one they were going to win.

After wheeling me into the XRay room one final time, they took some photos of my foot w/the fluoroscope and within seconds had a bloody needle in a jar for me to take home. While the needle stayed in the ER, we didn’t and now I’m fairly certain that I’ll make a full recovery with very little pain :)

My thanks go out to the three ER doctors who took their time in making certain they did their job to the fullest. We appreciate it!

See all the pictures from today here (mobile).