Tuesday. Lights out at ten followed by an uneven night's sleep, from my memory of it, to awaken at quarter to six. Just like that.

Mood good. Checked the window and it was clear, the ground dry, and so off to walk to breakfast bundled up against the cold in sweater and winter jacket, the head seemingly screwed on fairly tight.

The plain waffle with sliced strawberries and bananas for breakfast, nothing else on the menu appealed. Took my time and read the papers, heading home finally with the sun showing through from between the moving clouds.

Scheduled the Protime blood thinner test on the web for tomorrow at ten-thirty. The Protime test along with three other tests added after the annual physical I had last week. One of them requires fasting, so no breakfast tomorrow until it's been done. Should have scheduled the lab appointment earlier, but totally forgot Thursday was Thanksgiving. Well, remembered Thursday was Thanksgiving, but didn't associate the lab test and Thanksgiving together in my head.

Like not being able to entertain two thoughts at the same time?

No complaints, I might well have done the same thing when I was younger.

Later. A walk over to the lake, deciding finally to go by the burger drive-in and take home a sandwich, but after entering, waiting for the order to be taken, thought more about it and just left, returning home. So much for an afternoon walk. Took a dose of the pain meds when I returned to see if it wouldn't give just enough of a lift to make the day more comfortable. Did it help? Who knows? Time passes and you feel, if not better, then different. More time on the tablet.

Evening. Half listened to Democracy Now as it played in the living room while I was futzing around on the computer, running across a photography site showing a photographer's series of fifteen photographs titled “Tramadol”, describing it as a much abused synthetic opioid, the photographs of users and dealers in Gaza.

Tramadol is the pain med I've been taking now for these ten years. Not as much as when they first started me on the stuff, two of the 50mg doses daily, taken eight hours apart, and now, with time, cut down to maybe a single dose every couple of days, but this led me to look again at the “side effects” listed on web sites I've checked in the past and they did stress it would/could create dependence. And stuff.

I keep saying I'm not sure it works and the web sites do say it often stops working over time leading users to need larger and larger doses to feel its effect. OK. It's November. I've gone off the stuff before for short periods of a week or so to test if it has an effect, lets see how we feel going off it for a month. Maybe it itself is the cause of the crap I keep complaining about, all the while assuming it's caused by the botched sinuses, but maybe it's related to the drug. We'll find out. Soon enough.