Have a surgeon and a date picked for the neck-needling procedure, it will be after I come back from my conference next month. I should be more worried about the business end that winds up in my right ventricle but the actual procedure doesn't scare me. It's the 'getting the probe in' and the recovery that worry me. Unfortunately, I will be conscious for the procedure. How conscious exactly is hard to say, but the anesthesiologist seems content to err on the side of more drugs rather than less drugs in my case. To quote him 'If it were solely up to me I'd have everybody knocked out for this procedure. When you come up here for yours, given your history, I'll add a little dissociative to your cocktail and keep the ativan on hand in case it's not working like we anticipate.' So, conscious, but likely too zonked to really be aware of being conscious. Yay medical science. He was also very happy with my weight loss, evidently the difference between 225 and 185 is substantial, anesthetically speaking. It widens the margin between 'Enough drugs to make surgery possible' and 'overdose' by a lot.

Choir starts back up next week, and I'm super excited to get back into that pattern. I've missed the routine of rehearsal. We're doing Beethoven this fall, I think. A few collaboration concerts with the Detroit Symphony and possibly the Toledo Symphony again.

My date went swimmingly, we're going to get dinner sometime this week. It's nice to reaffirm that there are kind, intelligent women that I get along with, if nothing else comes of it. Still 'talking to' a few other women too, because that's just the reality of dating, but it feels dishonest to some degree. I'll probably just put the rest politely on hold until I get a better vibe for where things are heading.

I'm going to go to New Orleans for Halloween I decided. I'm going to roadtrip both ways, probably spend a night in Nashville on the way home. I'm going to try and see something spooky, visit the crypt of Marie Laveau, eat copious amounts of spicy food.