The Week (so far) in Brief

It's been simply wonderful having Danae here. As we spend time together, talking, eating, studying, walking, it feels as though we were never apart. We've had many conversations, both light and deep. I'm sure I'll write about some sooner or later. I increasingly hope that, once I'm done at Syracuse, we will live together for the long term. Her being here makes me even more conscious of how happy I am when she is, and how much I miss her when she's not.

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I just got back from my early morning appointment with the orthopedic surgeon, who examined my CT scan images. It looks like the screw may be in the joint space and should probably come out. He talked about the surgical procedure as he felt my wrist and moved my hand around again. While he worked, I moved my wrist in the particular way that makes it go c-r-r-r-r-ack. He looked pained. 'I suspect it's not supposed to do that," I commented. He agreed and had me do it again while he felt the joint. Then he told me I shouldn't do that if I can avoid it; it might be causing arthritis.

I have an appointment for arthroscopy and removal of the screw on the 20th of January, after I get back from winter break. I'll be going under general anesthetic, which makes me a little nervous. I've been under before a couple times and I know it's pretty safe, but I recognize that there is a trivial, but non-zero, chance of serious complications or death. Trivial enough for the risk to be worth it, like flying. But real enough to make me anxious, like flying.

Yesterday, I saw a dermatologist who removed a couple of skin tags that have been annoying me for a while. The dermatologist was, I think, a somewhat butch lesbian with a vaguely punk haircut. She's a serious bicyclist too, and we talked about bikes and riding in Syracuse while she worked. She reminded me of the archivist at Parkside. I felt immediately comfortable with her and hoped that she saw the HRC sticker on my bike helmet. The removal was simple; she injected an anesthetic and just shaved them off. It's nice to have that done; it wasn't really a high priority, but the one on my arm, particularly, got caught on things from time to time and looked kind of ugly peeking out from under the edge of my shirt sleeve. But the strongest motivation to get rid of it was that Danae feels more comfortable really digging her fingernails in to me if she's not worried about tearing it. What can I say? Sex sells.

Sells is the appropriate word, since buying health care here in the US is pricey even with good insurance. With four office visits this month, I've maxed out a signed 8-bit integer denominated in dollars in health care costs this week. The copay for my outpatient surgery should be another $200, if I'm reading my benefits info correctly, and I'll have a urology referral coming up which will be another $40 office visit. This is difficult on a grad student budget, but I'll manage. I'm glad to be getting all this stuff taken care of, finally.

I'm out another $50 right now, at least for the moment, on a cell phone. I bought a Republic Wireless phone on Ebay last week that I thought had a Wednesday delivery date. I looked at the tracking yesterday and saw that it was delivered on Saturday. The person I called at the post office said he'd check with the carrier and call back. Not having heard, I called again today. The guy there assured me that the carrier had put it in my mailbox. I assured him that it never showed up. I looked all around my apartment yesterday in case I was wrong, but no luck. The carrier will check the other mailboxes in the apartment today, but if it's not there, I'm going to have to follow up with the seller and have them process the insurance claim. This is extra frustrating because my current cell phone provider is ridiculously crappy and I've been putting off replacing my phone and service for months because I didn't want to spend the money on it. I was really looking forward to improving that situation. I guess it'll be a little while longer.

I got the studded tires I bought onto my bike yesterday. They behaved pretty well on my ride to the doctor today. They're heavier and slower, but I was expecting that. It should be more than worth it once Syracuse's many hills are covered in ice and snow. I also got the brakes adjusted nicely and recalibrated the gear shift; it's riding quite well, which pleases me. Getting the tires installed took much longer than I expected, as these things always do. The rear wheel is complicated, with it's roller brake and internally-geared hub. It also had a Schraeder-valve inner tube that I wanted to switch to Presta. (Schrader valves are the kind you typically see on car tires. They are bigger around and require bigger holes in the rim. Presta are much easier to work with, but using them on Schraeder-drilled rims requires a spacing adapter.) That was easy, with the adapter I'd bought some time back for that purpose. The front tube, though, gave me issue. It already had an adapter from before, but it was hopelessly corroded to the valve. I went at it hammer and tongs (actually makeshift hammer and lineman's pliers) and ended up breaking it entirely. I instead had to take the front wheel of my other bike and scavenge the adapter from it. Said wheel is now sitting on the floor next to that bike, waiting for me to buy another adapter. I think, though, that I might just put a Shcraeder tube back in it, since I have a good one still, and keep using that until it fails. It gets me two working bikes now, and saves a little money too.

So that's my week so far. I'm going to get back to trying to work on a paper.

Holiday Greetings

It's the time of year for there to be a bunch of discussion (and probably even more of that pale imitation thereof, memes) about what is and isn't ok as an expression of positive holiday sentiment to someone whose religion and/or cultural background you don't know.

I used to be firmly in the 'as long as the intent is positive, the form doesn't really matter' camp. However, having talked about it a lot with my partner Danae, who is from a culturally Jewish background, I've come to realize that there is a certain level of cultural privilege that's hiding in that attitude. "Merry Christmas" as a default greeting is a small reinforcing of hegemonic Christian culture. It's like AD and BC attached to calendar years to indicate some nebulous relationship to the birth of a Christian relgious figure; it forces people who are not a part of that culture into passively validating cultural imperialism. Sure, it's 'just a little thing.' I don't plan to start policing other people's usage of it outside my own space. But it's something that I can keep consciously in mind to to help fight some largely unexamined cultural privilege. The most lasting and transformative insight I've had from talking with her came from me saying that Christmas feels to me like a largely secular holiday. Her response, that it's almost always people from a Christian background who have that attitude, was both something I'd never considered and something I immediately saw the validity of. It's easy to think that these things don't matter that much when the default way of things validates your own assumptions and experiences.

Danae commented on this elsewhere herself, and doesn't mind if I include her thoughts with mine:

"I absolutely hate it when people wish me a Merry Christmas. I know that those who do so do it with the best of intentions, but I think they'd benefit from considering the possibility that not everyone they encounter is Christian or prefers to be constantly reminded that the dominant religious culture in our society is Christian. Part of being in a majority is the obligation to try to understand the feelings and perspective of the minority, not to run slipshod over them. Coming from a Christian background -- even a secular one -- is a place of privilege. You CAN'T know what it was like to grow up in this culture as a non-Christian just as I can't know what it is like to grow up black. For most of my life, I've silently stewed about this. But last winter I decided to take a new tack. When people wish me a merry christmas, I'll respond by saying, "Thanks, but I'm not Christian." I don't want to be combative. I just want to remind them that not everyone is Christian, and that those of us who are not actually have a much bigger emotional stake in this issue than those who are."

New Phone!

Oh; and my new phone was in someone else's mail box. Now it's in my hands. People can actually hear me on it when I talk. I am nearly ecstatic at the thought of no longer being with FreedomPop. Who, by the way, I noticed had double-billed me for my account last month as I looked up information for my number transfer. I called them and got them to refund me. On my new phone. They could hear me!