Because of the inflammation I’ve been experiencing on my face and jaw lately I had to remove my left hearing aid for a few days, so I could only hear out of one ear.  Not…  Cool…

“Hey Linc, is your face any better?”

“WHAT?” I said loudly.

A rolling of the eyes.  “Guess not.”

I got some advice from Mom.  “Put a few drops of oregano oil in your ear.  That will help reduce the infection.”

So I put a few drops in, which eventually got trapped in my ear and for almost a week I was a walking Italian restaurant.  Then it started leaking out unexpectedly one day and for a minute I thought my brain finally liquidated itself and was oozing out of my ears.

My jaw finally started feeling better though, so I plugged my hearing aid in and everything was right as rain for about an hour.  Evidently though I was a bit premature because the added pressure from the aid caused my jaw to swell up in pain again.  Ugh.  I had to take it out and start all over with the Motrin, muscle ache cream and warm compress to help reduce the inflammation.

“Hey Linc, guess you’re feeling better now?”

“WHAT?”

“Sigh.  Go see a doctor, dimwit.”

Heh.  I am feeling better though, but I’m just going to have to put up with leaving my aid out for a few more days until I know for sure it’s safe to put it back in without causing any painful relapses.

Thank God I don’t have a social life, or this would have really been a problem. 

You’ll have to go to the front page of my blog to see them, but I’d like to know what you think so far, particularly if you’re a long time reader who visits my blog directly instead of subscribing to my feed.  I was wondering if I should go for a digest format instead, where each random thought I post is grouped into a normal post at the end of the day.  What do you think, digest or individual?

Either way I’m definitely gonna stick with it.  It’s great fill-in content for between regular posts, keeps my blog more up to date and closer to “real time,” and takes only seconds to write one.  I think overall my blogging will be much improved as a result of it (assuming you don’t find my asides as dull and boring as paint peeling off the walls that is.) 

It’s getting to be that the only news I’m willing to read are the latest DVD releases from Netflix.  Because everytime I flip on a TV or check the Drudge Report I see exactly the kind of nightmarish things I never want to see even if it was being safely played out in some cheap pulp fiction novel.

And what’s the point really?  Am I going to somehow make the world a better place just by being cognizant of the fact that Stuart Smalley could be a U.S. senator?  And I’ll tell you something too, if Satan was gay, he’d look just like Al Franken.

And what about Israel’s counterattack on Gaza for what seems like the bazoolionth time, which is all their fault of course, because those darned Israelis just won’t let Hamas enjoy the fun of repeatedly firing rockets at them.

Then there’s the pending Obamunist Administration already mired in scandal and corruption about to take over and do God only knows what to this country for the next four years.

Meanwhile the media is preoccupied with Obama’s daughter and her first day at school, because you know, that’s the most important thing happening in the world right now.

I’m done with the news.  Seriously.  Ignorance is bliss after all, and I”ll be much happier sticking my fingers in my ears and playing Nancy Drew games until the Rapture comes.

So how is 2009 working out for me so far you ask?  Well aside from the knifing sensation I’ve been feeling on my left face that had me screaming at the top of my lungs like a 6 year old girl in sheer agony for the past few days, 2009 is going just swimmingly. 

Right before New Year’s Eve I started feeling a dull ache near my left ear, which eventually turned into a full blown horror show of aches and pains that reduced me to a whimpering ball of misery.  I was in the bathroom when 2008 turned to 2009, (you could say I literally crapped for a year), then came out and cried for a while in my bed with a heat pad on my face until sleep mercifully brought me some relief.  Once again there would be no midnight kisses for this little wussy boy.  I hadn’t been able to eat for the past two days either.

It seems fitting that 2008 would go out like this, since it had been the year that saw me crippled with a garden variety of health problems that made me utterly miserable, and I’m only beginning to come out of the woods now.  My jaw ache (which I think was due to TMJ syndrome) finally began to dissipate yesterday, and even though I was in severe pain before, I still managed to clear a month’s load of work at my job so I could get a fresh start for the new year.  I left early on Friday and was able to recuperate for the rest of the weekend.

I even found time to add a new feature here called “Asides.”    There were many occasions when I wanted to express a thought or two on my blog, but it didn’t justify taking up an entire post for since these thoughts were never more than a sentence or two long.  Usually I reserve this kind of “micro-blogging” for Twitter instead, but I was never comfortable seeing all my brilliant one-liners disappear into the Twitterverse without a record of it being on my blog.

So… with a little bit of tweaking and the help of a few plugins, now every tweet I make will also be posted to my blog in a vanilla “Aside” format.  I’m even able to exclude them from my newsfeed so it doesn’t get inappropriately mixed in with my normal blog posts as well.  Am I awesome or what? 

This setup should be really good for filling the gap between blog posts, as well as please loyal readers who don’t use Twitter.

Now if you’ll excuse me, since I never had my midnight kiss, I’m treating myself to a glass of choco milk and a bowl of Hershey’s Kisses.