Brandee

KNEE SURGERY

2008-04-03T07:11:40Z

In January 2008, I slipped in the snow and injured my left knee. After a painful couple of months, I ended up having surgery on it. I even had a temporary placard for handicap parking from the DMV.

I had to be there at 6:30 in the morning ("there" being the Slocum Center on Coburg Road near where the Goodwill used to be.) Surgery was at 7:30 and whatever they gave me to put me out took effect very fast. It was much easier to wake up after this than it was when I had my wisdom teeth out.

I woke up with ace bandages wrapped around both legs. It's especially tight on the injured leg. I am supposed to keep them on til I go back for a follow-up appointment on Friday morning and I am already anxious to get them off.

No significant pain yet. They said lots of people experience virtually no pain on the 2nd day but then lots on the 3rd day because they over-do on the 2nd day think they are better than they are. I haven't seen the knee yet so I don't know if it was 2 cuts or 3, just that they were small ones instead of one long one. They removed 15% of cartilage and 5% of the ACL ligament.

testifying in Canadian court

2007-11-19T02:04:35Z

I think anyone who takes the time to read this will already know that I work at a security company and frequently send police when a business or home has their burglary alarm go off. Back in January or February 2006 something I had sent the police on resulted in the arrest of 3 people. Two of these people plead guilty but the 3rd person said he was not there. They wanted me to testify to what I heard over the speaker. Of course that long ago I had no idea, luckily it was logged on the account and once I read it, it did refresh my memory. Anyway they wanted me to testify but the court was up in Canada so we were going to it by video conferencing and it turned out to be a bit of a pain.

I went with the vice president of my company (Tim) to a building that is part of the UofO but not actually on campus. He had been under the impression that it would start at 09:30 and last about ten minutes. Which was perfect because I was due to take my kitten (Phoebe) to the vet for booster shots at 10:40.

But noooooo... apparently when video conferencing, they have to make practice phone calls to other people, to make sure that they can connect to the person they have an appointment with to call. I guess we were set up for the Canada side to do a practice call at 9:30 and the real call at 10:00 (we didn't find this out til 9:45) anyway, they never called for the practice call... turns out the defendant never showed up and they never bothered to tell us, so we were sitting there twiddling our thumbs not knowing what was going on.

Finally around 10:25 they connect with us and tell us that the defendant never showed up and if he didn't show within 5 minutes they were going to issue a warrant for his arrest. Within seconds of the judge agreeing to do that, the defense lawyer realized he had a voicemail. Just in case it was related to this case, he steps out of the room to listen to it. Of course it turns out that his receptionist had left him a message ten minutes earlier that the defendant called and said that he had overslept and would be there as soon as he could.

The video conferencing room was reserved til Noon and since we didn't know how far away the defendant was coming from, they let us return to Sonitrol and would call us if the guy showed up quickly then we would drive back over. So I ended up hanging around the office for about an hour on Wednesday. He had not shown up by noon and we didn't have the room reserved anymore, so I was free to go home so I got paid for 3 hours of my time when I didn't do anything.

Unfortunately I had to cancel my vet appointment (for the 2nd time -- Phoebe was missing during the 1st one). I was really nervous about it right before and during all the waiting, it was making me sick to my stomach. The next day Tim sent me an email saying that the guy finally did show up that day for court and changed his mind -- he plead guilty so now I don't have to go back. YEA!!

death of a cell phone

2007-03-02T22:26:47Z

I just washed my cell phone. Yes, through a full cycle in the washing machine. I had come home and changed clothes, adding the clothes I had been wearing to the basket before heading off to the laundry room -- totally having forgotten that my phone was in my pants pocket. I forgot that was paying extra each month for insurance, I have to pay a $50 deductible but they will send me a new phone. Don't know why the store couldn't just give me one, but whatever...

burglary

2007-03-02T22:22:01Z

OK, I’ve been putting this off long enough. What I'm about to post about happened on January 10 but today is actually January 31. The bad news I mentioned to some of you is that my apartment was burglarized. It happened around 5:30 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. I never thought to lock the doors while I was home. I guess that comes from growing up in the country.

I had been sleeping in the recliner in the living room and woke up to what I thought sounded like a cat getting into something she shouldn’t but when I stood up, there was a guy in the kitchen going through a box of my stuff. I said “what the hell” and he looked at me, totally surprised, said “oh shit” and ran out the door. I was just wearing a thin nightgown so I didn’t think to follow him out the door to see which way he went and it was really dark so I didn’t get a good look at him. I wasn’t much help to the police. I found a power strip (still in the box) out on the patio that he’d dropped when I startled him and my bottle of percoset on the kitchen floor. I thought I had discovered him after he had not been inside very long. I was wrong.

I called 911 within a minute or two and while talking to the dispatcher, realized my laptop was gone. It had been on a tray table about 3 feet away from where I was sleeping in the chair so I’m really surprised that he didn’t see me. After the officer arrived, I remembered that the power strip I’d found on the patio had been in my bedroom, not the kitchen so I checked and he had taken 2 VCRs and the DVD player. Not only that, my two laundry baskets were gone. He had dumped half my clothes onto the floor and presumably used the laundry baskets to carry out the electronics. He also took the small CD player from my bathroom. He took the remote for a VCR that he did not take and left behind the remote for the DVD player that he did take.

What is perhaps the most irritating is that the clothes he took were mostly new and they were hard to find in my size so it’s been a total pain trying to replace them and so far some of them I haven’t been able to replace. It was bad enough that it happened at all but to be woke up from it did not make for good sleep the next several days afterward and I still can’t bring myself to go to bed with all the lights off.

The maintenance guy came over to install the dead-bolt and his hand got hurt at the beginning of the project. Now I have a circle on the door where he started to cut the hole. I found out later that he was more than just injured, his had was broken in multiple places and they are waiting to hear if he will need surgery.

Also stolen was the black bag I always take to work, which had one of my checkbooks in it. So I had to close the account and open a new one.

I've chosen my mood for this day as "indescribable" because there are so many feelings I have when thinking about that day: anger at the thief of course, anger at myself for not locking the door, sadness that I lost stuff, irritation that a lot of the stuff was also really new, shock (you know the old "it will never happen to me" feeling) and tiredness because I hadn't been asleep long when it happened and then afterward I was too freaked out to sleep for many hours...