About two months ago, I did something that caused a good deal of pain in my right knee. I don’t know what I did or exactly when/how it occurred but the next day my knee was swollen and hurt a lot. So I began icing it frequently, taking a lot of Ibuprofen and have tried to not put too much stress on it. (Yes, thank you Roger, I have been taking the Ibuprofen with food.)

Well, the pain hasn’t really let up at all, so about two weeks ago I finally got in to see a professional. He prescribed an MRI which I had done last week. The Dr. looked at the MRI today and told me I have a tear in my lateral meniscus and may have damaged some of the articulate cartilage at the base of my femur. Surgery is pretty much the only course of action.

Below is a side view of my knee, from the MRI. The dark area where the green arrow is pointing, is what the entire meniscus is supposed to look like. The damaged area of the meniscus is pointed out with the red arrow.

This image is from the front of the knee. That little tiny black spot amid the charcoal-colored stuff could be an indication of damaged cartilage, but the Dr. won’t know until he can go in and take a look.

So, surgery is scheduled for June 16th. It’s outpatient and, since I pretty much sit at a computer all day, I shouldn’t need to miss more than a day or two of work.

Karen and I fell into Cubs tickets for last night’s game against the Pirates. I would not have been interested at all except that the seats were four rows off home plate, just to the right of the Cubs dugout. After a very hectic two hours of driving to Des Plaines from Elgin to get the tickets, and then from Des Plaines into the city, we ended up getting there just in time for the first pitch.

A pan of the stadium from where we were sitting:

Some other photos from the game:

I just learned that one of my photos has been short-listed by Schmap, a “leading publisher of digital travel guides for 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.” Apparently they’ll be making their final selection some time after May 27th but I’m not sure of the exact date. If chosen, my photo would be included in the seventh edition of their Schmap San Francisco Guide, to be published mid-June 2009.

Here’s the photo that’s under consideration:

Click here to view the whole set on Flickr. Click here to view the Alcatraz set.

On the way up to Acadia, we stopped at Red’s Eats in Wiscasset. Red’s is famous for their lobster roll. This was simply amazing. Probably like most midwesterners, I thought Red Lobster was good lobster. I never really liked it but I thought that was because I didn’t like lobster. Boy, was I wrong. I feel insulted now, like some kind of fool, for thinking that what Red Lobster calls “lobster” was good lobster.

Anyway. It was really good. It’s over a pound of lobster served on a perfectly toasted buttery bun, with butter on the side. It was expensive (just under $20) but Karen and I split it and were satisfied.

A couple of days later, while driving out to Lubec, we just happened to be driving past Crazy Dave’s BBQ trailer. This place was not on the agenda like Red’s was, but we both like BBQ and we both had a hankerin’ for it. It was okay at best. I wouldn’t rank it up there anywhere near Clem’s in Port Matilda, PA, but I’d give it another shot if I had the chance. We each had a pulled pork sandwich and we also got a sampling of the ribs and beef tenderloin. The pork was a little dry, which surprised me. I thought it was really hard to dry out pork. But what do I know? I didn’t care for the sauce either; too sweet for me. Everything had a good smoky flavor though, which sorta made up for the texture problems and the lack of good sauce. That night we warmed the ribs over the camp fire which added a good crusty char. Yum!

We were fortunate last week to be able to take a trip out to the northeast coast. Specifically, Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine. The photo below links to the set on Flickr. We camped for four days at Blackwoods Campground in Otter Creek.

The weather decided to be all gray and rainy on Friday, so we headed out on a mini roadtrip. Lubec is as far east as you can go in the United States. West Quoddy Head Lighthouse in Lubec is billed as “the beginning of America”. My dinky point and shoot just wasn’t happy at all with the dense fog and clouds but I did the best I could.