It was a good thing I had those moles removed, as it turns out the funny looking mole on my foot was a melanoma in situ. From what I can tell, this essentially means that while it is cancer, its completely contained and can be cured by a simple removal of the affected site.

The only problem with that is its on a funny spot on my toe where there isn't exactly a whole lot of extra skin laying around. The initial surgery was complicated enough to sedate me, and my doctor isn't sure there's going to be enough room in order to get everything out. He's even bringing in a plastic surgeon to help. Should that be true, it may turn out that they'll take my entire toe off. Thus, Peter Ninetoes.

Not that I'm hoping for this conclusion, but it will definitely allow me all sorts of fantastical tales to tell when I'm lounging about the pool with the family. Right now the #1 explanation will be that I lost it during my days an an international spy, or perhaps that time I was bitten by a barracuda when I was doing some undersea exploring. While I may lose a toe, just think of opportunity gained!

Happy Birthday to my beautiful wife and soon to be mother! Remember a year ago, when it looked like this outside? That certainly wasn't a fun birthday weekend. Sure, this weekend wasn't too exciting either, what with me stuck in a lay-z-boy all weekend nursing my foot. But at least I successfully made an angel food cake for you!

Happy Birthday! You'll always be 23 years old in my eyes.

Yesterday I spent most of the day at the hospital getting 2 suspicious moles removed. The doctor decided that it would be best if I was under a light sedation along with local anesthetic. He initially thought that local anesthetic would be enough, but I guess he figured the surgery was going to be harder or longer than he originally thought.

After dressing in a buttocks-exposing gown, and in a robe over that I was put in a holding room with Laura. They tried putting an IV in my left hand, but failed miserably (and painfully!). Giving up on that for the moment, I was moved into a bed in the "Preoperative Holding Area", this time without Laura. This time another doctor managed to get an IV into my right elbow. Usually I have such prominent veins, I can only imagine that the difficulty was due to a lack of water, or something. Now, after a 40 minute wait, everything happened all at once. My surgeon came out and initialed the location of the moles to be removed, a nurse anesthetist gave me a dose of knockout, and they began to wheel me into the OR.

I felt woozy almost immediately. And now, thinking back on it, I don't actually remember going from the bed onto the operating table. I have this fuzzy idea that I did it myself (and exposing my butt in the process!), but the memory isn't really in there.

The surgery itself was painless, and seemed to go by really fast. In reality I was in there for about an hour, and each incision required 10 stitches or so. There was one slightly freaky moment when I woke up in the middle and felt really really nauseous. I had an oxygen mask on at the time, and I couldn't figure out how to signal to the people in the room that something was wrong. I think I eventually twitched my hand, although I'm not sure anybody noticed. In the end, I just swallowed the rapidly pooling saliva, and went back to sleep.

(Yes, I'm a drooler when it comes to vomiting. In fact a few months ago, I was sitting in my easy chair watching TV when all of a sudden my mouth started salivating like crazy. I ran into the bathroom expecting to vomit, but eventually everything calmed down. The weirdest thing was I never felt nauseous.)

Anyway, once it was done, I was wheeled into the recovery room where I slept for another 20 minutes or so. Finally they felt I was ready for a few ice chips, and then some cranberry juice and saltines. The whole time I was still under the influence of the local anesthetic, I didn't really feel a thing. It wasn't until I put my shoes on to leave that I finally felt a little pain in my food.

Then, on the way home, with Laura graciously driving, a new wave of nausea hit. Luckily the hospital isn't so far away. Really only about 10 minutes with no traffic. I've been hopped up on darvocet ever since. I have a prescription for percocet, but I can't really justify it given the low amount of pain that I'm in. Its really nothing to complain about, unless you expect me to actually be up and walking around. I'm sure by the time monday rolls around, Tylenol will be sufficient. I hope so anyway, otherwise I won't make it into work!

I made these cookies for the Kovixen's sorority. I hadn't made sugar cookies since I was a little kid. As it turns out, they're ridiculously easy. That is, until I got to frosting them. I was using a mixture of beaten egg whites, vanilla, confectioner's sugar and a little red food-coloring. The recipe called for about 3 egg whites and 4 cups of sugar. I only made half a batch of cookies, so I decided to halve the frosting. Boy was that a big mistake. The egg whites didn't quite beat up the way they were supposed to. However, the real problems came when I transfered the frosting into a piping bag -- a zip lock freezer bag with a piping tip in the corner. At some point a little hole was punctured in the bag and the frosting came out of that instead of the tip. I did manage to pipe out some frosting on a few of them before I gave up and started spreading thick layers on everything in sight.

I was due for an utter failure on the cooking front. I tried to make a lemon meringue pie for the football game on Saturday, but instead I ended up with meringue on top of lemon soup. It was still very good, but not very pie like. I looked over the recipe again, and I can't figure out what I did wrong. Next time, I guess, I'll just have to try a different recipe.

To make matters worse, I also screwed up my attempt at a pie crust. I had to pre-bake the crust for the first time, and so I put a piece of parchment paper in it, and filled it with black beans (since I have no pie weights). I cooked it for 10 minutes, then when I attempted to remove the weights, a huge chunk of the crust came with it. Yeah, that sucked. Luckily, Wild Oats had plenty of pie crusts for me (and frankly they weren't so bad either). I'm not ready to give up completely on pie crust making, but I'm definitely one step closer.

What's the opposite of a high-chair?

Yep, this here is the turning point of the game; a blown call by the refs. Apparently Asante Samuel interferes with the guy behind him while trying to catch the football.

It was a great season. The Patriots did much better than anybody thought they could. This is certainly a tough way to end the year, and with the Redskins loss earlier today, I have nobody left to root for. I guess whoever is playing against Denver or Indy. Boy that matchup would suck in the AFC Championship. Is it possible to root for meteor strikes?

I always find CNNs polls outrageously oversimplified. But this one seems to miss the point entirely. I don't think anybody, well most people anyway, would take away the governments right to wiretap, or read international mail, or even read people's email. All we're asking is that the government gets a warrant first! Is it so much to ask that you convince a judge up to 72 hours after the fact (in the case of a FISA warrant).

Anyway, you never know what's going to happen when CNN throws up a poll like this, and at the time of reading, the No's had it 63% to 37%!

Does your house ever make unexplained noises? I'm not talking about the usual creaks or moans, but rather commercial jingles, and loud buzzing noises? I, of course, don't believe in anything as ridiculous as ghosts, but every now and then strange things happen at home that make me reconsider that disbelief.

For example, the other night, Laura and I had just turned off the light to go to bed when we hear what sounds like a commercial jingle playing in the adjacent room. After listening to the whole thing and getting suitably freaked out, I managed to get up the nerve to explore the house, and of course found nothing. It was the strangest thing. It was a new commercial for Jello Jigglers. The one with all the weird dancers. The only thing I can think is that it was our upstairs neighbors, but Laura and I both heard it coming from the room next door. The only other explanation that I could come up with was a computer played the ad when a webpage automatically reloaded.

Okay, as if that wasn't weird enough, the night before we went on vacation last October there was this really loud buzzing noise at like 3 AM. This time it sounded like it could've been the smoke detector that's right outside the bedroom door. Of course, why on earth did the smoke detector freak out like that?! All I know is it scared the bejeebus out of both of us.

Happy New Year everybody. I could take this chance to reassess the past 12 months, but we don't do that here at kovax.org. Always looking ahead, we are. However, I will take a moment to tell everybody about my fun New Years celebrations.

We played this cool game called Celebrity. I haven't played this since New Years Eve two years ago. Basically everybody writes down 5 people or characters (fictional or otherwise) and puts them in a hat. Then 2 teams take alternating 1 minute turns where you can say anything but what's written on the paper in order to get your team to guess the person. You get 1 point for a correct answer, and you lose a point for every one you pass on. After you go through all the slips of paper, you start the second round, where you can say exactly one word. Of course, everybody is somewhat familiar with what's in the hat and so "Paris Hilton" becomes "Ho" instead of "Heiress". Finally, in the third round you have to act it out without using any words.

Also, I have to say, toast and honey is a great hangover remedy. I'm not sure where I read it first, but it worked like a charm this morning. Something about honey replacing lots of necessary nutrients. Not only is it tasty, but my headache disappeared right away. Although, the cup of coffee certainly helped as well.