Hoppy Halloween!

So, here's our jack-o-lantern this year, carved by Bunny. He was goofy and bought a bunch of Halloween decorations, so we have orange and black paper streamer things, candles and fake spider webs (to supplement the real ones) all over the living room. I'm cooking a second pumpkin (cut up in slices) to make something like pumpkin bar cookies. I know they'll probably suck because these pumpkins aren't the "pie" variety, but I'm trying it anyway. And roasting the seeds, of course. I love pumpkin seeds.

Here's an interesting article from Der Spiegel (in English) about Halloween in Germany (Pumpkin Profits: The Man Who Brought Halloween to Germany). Seems that Germans didn't know a thing about it before the mid-1990's and the introduction was just a plot to make more profits from the folks in the decoration & costume industry. And now you can see why they don't "get" it. I'm curious if anyone else out there actually gets trick-or-treaters here. We haven't. The last couple of years I was out and about on Halloween and didn't even see one person in costume.


Knee Update

I certainly won't be going anywhere this year, though. After the cortisone shot my knee got a bit better and I could almost walk with semi-human motions yesterday (that is, a few steps, like from the kitchen to the bathroom), but overnight it suddenly began hurting just as bad if not worse than before (that would be 3 1/2 days post-cortisone... wtf?). I'm already on a prescription NSAID (anti-inflammatory pain killer) that's just murder on the stomach, so I'm really scared now. Like I said, I can't have an MRI to find out what's really going on (won't go into that here) and surgery is almost as scary right now as not being able to walk for a month. Agh!

If only we knew WHAT was wrong. This is frickin' crazy. My entire joint under the kneecap is extremely painful and stiffens up in a matter of minutes in any position. When I attempt to walk the pain is absolute hell and I feel this massive pressure sensation just below the knee, like at the very top of the shin and slightly to the outside. Sometimes the pain radiates into my calf and ankle when I move my leg side to side, like something is pulling deep down inside (kind of like nerve pain). The sports medicine doc seems to think it's 'just' patellor-femoral pain (which I've been diagnosed with in the past, but I was able to WALK with that!), because it's worst when I flex my thigh muscles (sitting down) and the knee itself seems completely stable. He said "overuse injury".

Now, how does it get "overused" when I had barely even left the house for a couple of weeks prior (had a cold). My knee was FINE one minute (totally fine... completely normal), then I sat on the floor (very unusual for me and I had my leg in a weird and slightly painful position), I got up and then it started to swell, next morning I was unable to even walk. Overuse? In one minute?! That sounds like an injury to me. But, as I said... "no MRI for you!" F*ck. F*ck. F*ck.