The Inaugural Injured Tony Award

Congratulations to Alison Stailey for dominating the injured Tony visitation competition, proving she's a better friend than Ken Schwerd, Andy Row, and especially Sean Shadid (who thinks he deserves a thank you card for texting me).

Alison has gone above and beyond the duty of a friend. Not only did she drop by to say hello on more occasions than anyone else, she also ran both Brooke and Spunky. She is most deserving of this coveted trophy. However, she probably didn't deserve a picture of me and my blood blistered toes on the Internet.

As you can see, the trophy is extremely shiny and sparkles day and night. You can also see I'm low on water in my water jug and that I need to throw away a cardboard box.

Of course, the award is only for the 2009 - 2010 season. Much to my parents' and wife's dismay, I plan on continuing to snowboard at the expert level as long as possible.

There's always that chance we'll need a new trophy for a new season. I just need to figure out if it's better to re-injury the right ankle or to try for the left next time.

Finally, for those of you surprised that I made a custom trophy for my stupid injury, this isn't my first trophy rodeo. I live nearby a trophy shop. I think this is the seventh trophy I've made so far.

Visitation Competition Update

Here's an update on the visitation competition. We're starting to run out of junk food! So my original goal of getting all of this food out of here is almost complete.

Alison is still dominating. I'm almost ready to call it.

My friend Ed received a half point last night for talking to me online for about an hour. You need to be over 40 years old or have a family to qualify for these special points.

Visitation Competition Update

We had a number of friends come by this last week! It was a great alternative to what I do normally, which we all know by now is nothing.

As you can see, several friends are gaining up on our leader, Alison.

We had several visitors this week. Chris and Joe came by and made some awesome queso dip. We played some cards and had a good time. Ed from work and Lindsay from Nebraska came by to do their part to cheer me up. Ed even brought me some interesting gifts.

Among the many interesting gifts were some puzzles. Now, I've been away from work for a while, so maybe Ed forgot. I'm an idiot. I hit a tree snowboarding. How will I be able to solve a complex puzzle like this?

Thanks for the gifts, Ed!

We also had Crystal and Troy drop by to say hello. They couldn't stay long, both are in school and had homework to do.

What I'm about to tell you is fact. Troy's project tonight is to get one of our friends to drink 40 shots of beer and determine which shot is fresh beer and which shot is old (from Christmas) beer. Something tells me that after 30 shots, it won't matter. Most of our friend's faculties will be gone.

That's his statistics project. Approved -- no, endorsed by his professor.

Oh, wow. Rabbit ears. That's hilarious, Troy. Is Crystal flexing?

The Visitation Competition

As I mentioned in Visitation Hours, we have somewhat of a competition on our hands.  Not surprisingly, it's being dominated by a certain friend of ours known for her desire to win at every competition known to man -- even if it hasn't been thought of yet.

Before I display the current standings, let's go over the rules.  Family members are disqualified from participating in the visitation competition.  It's an unfair advantage.

Rule 1: If a visitor stays at our apartment one or more nights consecutively, the visitor is still only awarded one point.

Rule 2: In order for a visitation point to be valid, the visitor must consume at least one treat or gift food item.

Rule 3: Finally, only one visitation point can be earned during one day.  This means if a friend visits three times on a Tuesday, he or she is still only awarded one point.

And before I continue onto the standings, I'd just like to thank again The Breckenridge Team for their multiple visits in Frisco, Colorado.  You guys are awesome and gave both Brooke and me an uplifting and mustache-filled visit. 

You guys rock! You helped me get my recovery started on the right foot (I will continue to use this pun for at least one year).

Because you're all in Tulsa, I'm sorry you can't participate in the visitation competition up here in our nation's capital. But, you totally won the Colorado Visitation Competition hands down!  Congratulations!

Now on to the D.C. standings.

You'll probably need to click on the image to get a larger view of the other people, but I think we can all see that Alison has a substantial lead without clicking.

Now, I won't give away anything, but I will mention that multiple plans are in motion on the part of various competition players.  It's still anyone's game.

The game ends on my first day back to work, which at this point is still undecided.  It now looks like it will be sometime in April.

Please continue to respect our need to maintain scheduled visits.  Email works best.  This is necessary due to all of the doctors appointments I have and Brooke's schedule.

Now let the best man or woman win!

Visitation Hours!

As an immobile and drugged up tree-hitter, I've recently become a big fan of people dropping by. I prefer friends and family, but delivery people and strangers are accepted. Since I've been home, we've had some great visits. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone that's gone out of their way to come by and say hello to gimpy.

Let's start with two of our best friends Troy and Crystal. They win the trophy for driving up all the way from Arlington, Virginia to pick us and our car up from the Baltimore airport. A quick check on Google Maps indicates that the ride is over 34 miles and should take about an hour.

One way.

They drove up to meet us at almost midnight on Tuesday, February 16th! A work night! That right there is friendship. Thank you guys so much. Oh, and I'm serious about the trophy.

Now, because we had just arrived home, and we were all a flutter with trying to get around, we weren't really prepared with the camera. Fortunately, we have plenty of pictures of Troy and Crystal. Here's a good one.

Not surprisingly, they look like this most of the time, except when Troy is blocking Crystal's layup with his left and then his right hand. I believe in this picture, we were at Cape Cod fixing to eat some lobster! They are one genuinely happy couple. You guys rock and we are truly lucky to have you as friends.

Now my Mom and Dad win the record for being the most helpful! They flew up from Tulsa the day after we landed. They've been a giant help. My Dad played with the dog, Spunky, and my Mom has kept us well fed. We absolutely love you guys! My Dad had to take off last weekend due to work, but my Mom is still here. More food for us!

My first appointment with Dr. Buchanan was the morning I turned 28. Later that night, Mom and Dad (mostly Mom) made me a cake and we had a sweet 28th B-Day par-tay! It was awesome, you should have been there. That's how cool my parents are. I challenge anyone to a parent-off!

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of our friends Scott, Joe, Chris, and Jeff, the next group of friends that surprised us with a visit within a week of us getting back. We really appreciated the visit, and we're terribly sorry we didn't grab a picture together. Instead, here's a picture of Dog the Bounty Hunter in his SUV.

Stay away from drugs and crime, kids. You don't want this guy after you.

Next up is another one of our best friends, Alison! She too was quick to visit, getting here within the first week. Really, I think she just wanted to see how bad the leg was and to play with our dog, Spunky.

This wasn't taken the first time she dropped by, I think it was taken last Thursday. But it captures the fun these two have together. I mean, look at how much fun Spunky is having!

Our friend Tyler had originally asked us several months ago if he could stay with us during the weekend of February 19th through the 21st while he attended a conference. We had a full house for a few days with Brooke, Mom, Dad, Tyler, and myself all in our apartment. But we had a great time!

Tyler's staying at the Hotel Meehan again this weekend for another conference. You should check out some of the awesome pictures he takes when he travels. We're looking forward to another great time.

Here's a picture we took from Tyler's first stay at Hotel Meehan. This is Alison's visit number three, if you're keeping count. I'm sure Alison is.

Another friend of ours, Lindsay, came out to watch the USA vs. Canada hockey game for Olympic Gold, the day just before my second surgery. Troy, with all the school work he had, took some time and came out as well.

It was an amazing game, if you didn't catch it. Unfortunately, Crosby, one of the world's most hated hockey players, ruined it for America in overtime.

But Lindsay, thank you for coming out and giving us some support the day before surgery two. You too, Troy. We didn't take a group photo, which is extremely surprising! So here's a picture of Lindsay from our Sonoma, California trip.

Lindsay is in a Brooke and Crystal sandwich (she's the beautiful lady in the middle).

Our friend, Binoy, is also a competitive friend. We're actually surrounded by competitive friends. I'm betting he realized he was way behind in the gimp visitation game. My parents are obviously in the lead, but they're family and are not qualified to participate in the competition.

So I believe Alison is currently in first place, by a landslide. Binoy, well, he hadn't seen me since before my accident. So on Thursday, Binoy dropped by, for visit number one, after he left work. Alison was already on visit number four. We were watching Tulsa lose horribly to UTEP. Horribly.

Again, we didn't grab a photo, so here's a random one of Binoy I found.

I'm pretty sure that's his fake smile. It's a pretty good fake smile, though. For all of our friends out there, $20 says he asks me to take it down when he gets back from Philadelphia.

Today, I had a visit from some friends from work, Dave, Doug, his wife Katie, and their son, Ben. Here you can see Ben investigating one of my external fixator rods. He's pretty happy about it, which is funny. I, too, was pretty happy about it.

I tried to explain to him that it felt awful wearing it, and that it was probably something you wouldn't want in your mouth. I don't think I was successful communicating this to him. He continued to examine the fixator with his mouth.

That toy elephant on the inside of my left leg isn't Ben's. It's mine. You might also notice that I'm wearing the exact same shirt as I'm wearing in the Tyler & Alison picture. That's because I'm down to about a three shirt rotation right now.

Surprisingly, before everyone left, we had the wherewithal to take a group picture.

Ben apparently enjoys eye glasses.