New Commercial from Oliver's work

This is a funny commercial that debuted at our large company meeting last week. It is now playing on TV. Pretty hilarious seeing as there is no such thing as the character Mr. T is describing... It was made to look especially like him by BLIZZARD.

Thanksgiving inLA

We had a really nice Thanksgiving together. It was our first one together because Emily has had to work holiday shifts at the U of U hospital every previous Thanksgiving. We missed our families, but enjoyed spoiling ourselves at a nice restaurant with a famous 'rock'n'roll' chef. I made reservations and told Emily we weren't going to have to do any work ( cooking, dishes, etc. )

The restaurant was really artsy and fun, but the turkey dinner made it feel just like Thanksgiving should.

(PS: Click on the pictures to view them larger!)

The Surgery!

For those of you who don't know, Wednesday the 14th I went in for a small surgery. Its called a microdiscectomy. Basically the micro part means that its done with very small scope like instruments and the discectomy part means that the bulging part of my L5 Disc was cut off to relieve pressure it had been applying to my spinal cord and sciatic nerve.

The surgery was exciting, Emily had a test right before it, but was able to make it into the hospital to see me off. I was given the anesthesia and WOW that felt like being suddenly forced beneath a thousand pounds of warm water! The room got really loud and then I was out.

The next thing I recall was waking up and everything was very dark and somewhere far away I heard my doctor saying the surgery was a success. With all of my strength I lifted my hand to shake his. The next few hours were definitely the worst. Emily was told my recovery time would be about 1 and a half hours. Lets just say it was 4 hours. My body decided to have a lot of reaction to being sliced open and drugged. After all of that we took about 15 minutes to get out the the car (in a wheel chair) and started the drive home.

We stopped at Albertsons to fill a perscription and Emily slowly fed me crackers and water. I couldn't eat more than 1/2 of a saltine at a time, and she had to pour water in my mouth as I didn't have any saliva of my own yet. She was so nice to me. I should mention that the entire hospital staff were all very sweet also. They were glad Em was a nurse so they didn't have to go into tons of details upon my release.

Long story short - I took lots of drugs and healed for the next 4 days. Now I'm able to walk around and even bend a little without too much pain. Emily has been an amazing support - doing everything for me. She deserves all the credit.

I attached a couple images of the procedure. After which are one of me having a really hard time :) and one of my back. (they wrote yes on it to make sure they did the correct side!)