Happy New Year, everyone!

Since the last time I've posted - late December, if I remember correctly - things have been pretty hectic. We've moved into our new place in Wisconsin, I had a job interview yesterday, and I maimed myself.

One thing at a time, though.

We're in our new place, and we love it. Had a few of the initial move-in glitches that you might expect when first moving into anywhere (the main one being that the jets in the bathtub kept shooting sediment into the water, but that's pretty much cleaned out now), but we're slowly but surely unpacking. The other major snag - we've got crates of books sitting in the loft. We've got four bookshelves just waiting for those books to be put on them.

And we have no idea where the pegs that the shelves rest on ended up.

On the plus side, we've got high-speed internet again - the person from Time Warner Cable just left after installing our cable modem (faster than our old DSL - woo!). After having DSL for years, having to use dial-up for a week was just excruciatingly painful. Yep, I'm spoiled that way.

I had a face to face interview with Aurora Healthcare yesterday for a Risk Management Systems Analyst position - they're installing new software to track risks and incidents (patient falls, prescription errors, etc.) and are looking for someone to help administer the data section of it. Which, hopefully, will be me.

As for maiming myself, I ended up in the Emergenmcy Room about a week or so ago. I fell asleep in the back of the car when driving out to Jen's mom's house, and woke up with a still neck. Not uncommon, and it usually goes away after a few hours to a day. This one got worse. It started behind my right ear, then travelled across my shoulder and into my upper arm. Around 3 in the morning last week I woke up in an obscene amount of pain. The stiff neck turned into a full on muscle spasm in my trapezius, and it felt like I was being stabbed repeatedly and was absolutely unable to move my right arm. An ambulance took me to the ER in Galena, where I was given a few shots, prescribed some Valium and a steroid to help with it. The pain is pretty much gone now, save for a few occasional twinges when I overwork it or don't take the medicine on time, but the frustrating part if the absolute lack of range of motion of my right arm.

It's driving me batty. Everything from my elbow to my fingertips works perfectly. Everything from my shoulder to my elbow is shot. I can't raise my arm in front of me straight out above eye level, and when I use my left hand to pick it up above that height, it limply falls back down. The doctor said that when everything seized up in my neck and shoulder, it may have temporarily mashed a few of the nerves that control the shoulder, but should improve over time.

For now, though, it's an exercise in frustration, doubly so because I'm right-handed. I have to have it in a sling at times to rest the shoulder. Showering is a neat trick, because I can't actually get my right hand on top of my head to shampoo (I have to pull it up there with my left hand). I used to be able to do 50 push-ups in a row. Now, I can't even manage one - my right shoulder just collapses. When I'm working and fully insured again (I'm on COBRA now), I may look into physical therapy if it hasn't healed to my satisfaction then.

Hopefully no more body parts of mine will cease functioning in 2007.