So I was just getting around to the end of the year lists when I realized I haven’t said much about the end of December. Not a lot to tell. Classes wrapped up well, the general holidaytimes went just fine. The Solstice Bonfire was great as always. I finally took care of a long-standing sinus issue I’ve been having [since last year] and went in for outpatient endoscopic sinus surgery this Tuesday. I am home and I am fine. I am also superstitious, so I basically didn’t mention it to anyone except a few close friends and my family. It was a non-event but it sort of made me nervous since I simultaneously believe that something terrible will happen at something like this, but also that I am being totally irrational. So I have no useful way to center the reasonableness of my concerns as anything other than this 100% fine/100% dead duality, so I just keep my mouth shut. This is suboptimal but it’s what I’ve got.

Anyhow, I now have a “shaved down” turbinate which, once it’s healed, should allow me to breathe better through half my nose and also maybe not cause me random tooth and eye pain. Also maybe fewer sinus infections. Worst case, it’s about the same. I can already breathe okay through my nose and all the horrible warnings nonwithstanding [“thinking injury” warns the anesthesiology consent form, “blindness” warns the surgery consent form] I feel fine, have abandoned my prescribed pain medication after a day and made up a great chart for when I’m supposed to take all the other stuff [including the nasal rinsing, though no nose-blowing for three more days]. I’m happy I got it done and I should have gotten it done sooner though with all the stuff happening last year, this was about when I was ready to deal with big complicated things. I have to give big props to the Dartmouth Outpatient Surgery Center for not only being full of nice and easy to interact with professionals, but also for not being all Christmassed out on December 27th. This is my surgeon, he was great. He is also growing a goatee.

So I’ve spent the last few days laying low here and watching movies and taking pills and telling everyone I am fine. I wrote up my end of the year reading list over on librarian.net and I’ll be working on the other few lists over the next few days. Hope your holidays brought you peace and well-being. Mine are going okay so far.