[Spoiler warning: Mildly squicky medical details within. The squeamish may not wish their appetites spoiled.]

I know you've all been waiting breathlessly to hear what's come of my possible kidney stone situation. I just saw my very booked-up urologist, and what he has to say boils down to: "We need to do more tests before we know what's going on."

He cautions me that there could be a myriad of reasons for hematuria (blood in the urine) and stinging urination. The blood (which, incidentally, I've only seen twice) could be coming from the kidneys, the bladder, the urethra, what have you. I need to start out by having an abdominal CT scan and a cystoscopy.

I've never had a CT scan, but I've had a cystoscopy one time before. It Is Not Fun. It involves having a camera shoved up your urethra and into your bladder. Yes, it's done with local anaesthesia, but you still feel it. The only good thing about it is, it couldn't be scheduled until January 18th.

The good news is, my urine is clear of any infection. As long as I was there, they drew blood for PSA testing. (My father died almost four years ago of prostate cancer.) Or rather, they attempted to draw blood. For some reason my veins weren't cooperating. Even when the phlebotomist managed to hit my vein, she was getting a bare spatter of blood in the tube. After two attempts in my right arm and one in my left, she finally struck gold by tapping a vein in the back of my left hand. It's something you feel silly saying to a woman, but I've never had that problem before. Seriously. It must have been her fault.

Okay then. I'll check in again after the (gulp!) cystoscopy.

Yesterday I mentioned a pub in Brooklyn called Mooney's, which sadly no longer exists. It was on Flatbush Avenue near Park Place, right around the corner from the apartment where I lived from 1995 to 2001. My 30th birthday party there was a very memorable occasion, but thinking about Mooney's reminded me of another funny memory from that place.

It was June of either 1997 or 1998, I can't be sure which. I don't usually watch much sports, but I was still a relatively recent transplant from Utah and the Jazz were playing the Chicago Bulls in the NBA Finals. I made a habit of slipping out to Mooney's to have a few beers and watch the games.

Mooney's was a great bar and always drew an eclectic clientele. I got to know a few of the other patrons over the course of the series, simply because they were curious about why I was cheering so loudly for Utah. I had been noticing one other patron in particular, who seemed to know a lot of other folks in the bar. He looked like an Orthodox Jew, with a white dress shirt, black pants, prayer fringe, skullcap, thick beard, and side curls. He always had a lit cigarette in one hand and a pint of beer in the other, and as he watched the games he was more vociferous and profane in his cheering than just about anyone else in the place. He looked to be about my age, and was the biggest bundle of contradictions I think I'd ever seen.

One night late in the series, I was sitting by myself at a high table opposite the bar when this fellow came weaving my way. "Hey," he said to me over the din, jabbing his cigarette at me. "I just heard from some people that you're a Mormon. From Utah."

I shrugged, sipping my Guinness apprehensively. "Yeah, I guess that's true."

"Man," he said, shaking his head, "that is so fucking weird." And he weaved his way back to the bar for another beer.

[Spoiler warning: Mildly squicky medical details within. The squeamish may not wish their appetites spoiled.]

It had been quite some time since Laura or I had visited a doctor, probably too long. Now we're all too familiar with the decor at our physician's new office.

Do I need to tell you how it started? Okay, it burned a little when I peed. (Don't worry—Laura's story and mine are not related.) This went on for a couple of days and I didn't pay much attention to it, but then on Saturday morning it didn't just burn. It felt like a red-hot poker was being jabbed up there when I peed.

Our doctor doesn't have office hours on weekends, so I took myself to a clinic. The doctor there didn't take much of a medical history from me, but he put me on an antibiotic in case it was a urinary tract infection, told me to drink lots of water, and sent me home.

I kept meaning to make an appointment with our regular doctor, especially since the burning, while its intensity fluctuated, never really got any better. On Wednesday, however, something new happened. My urine looked normal at first, but was followed by a bright red stream. When the panic subsided, I called my doctor to see if I could get in that day. I realized that, far from having a UTI (which I already pretty much knew I didn't, since the antibiotic wasn't helping), I probably had stones. I passed a stone once before, in 2006, and the things apparently run in my family. I should have realized what it was sooner, but I guess I didn't want to think about that possibility.

My doctor confirmed that was likely the case when I saw her that afternoon. She put me on a different antibiotic, Cipro, just as a precaution, told me to drink lots and lots of water, told me to make an appointment with my urologist, and told me to go to an emergency room immediately if I started having pain in my sides or developed a fever.

That was thirteen days ago, November 9th. I still haven't seen my urologist because the earliest appointment I could get was November 30th. The blood in my urine has only recurred once since then, but the pain during urination fluctuates between pretty intense and nonexistent. I think I've passed at least one small stone, which felt very strange but not at all painful, but I can't be sure that was the case. All I can say for sure is that urinating felt completely normal for the rest of that day, but that it was back to burning to next day.

Still eight days to go before I can see my urologist, at which point I imagine he will stick a camera up my urethra and take a peek around inside my bladder. Fun times. It's happened to me before.

Meanwhile, my left eye had been bothering me a little, but I didn't really pay much attention to it since all my energy was focused on my quarter-hourly trips to the bathroom. But on Tuesday last week Laura told me that my eye looked really terrible, all red and a bit puffy. Like I said, I hadn't been paying much attention. My glasses have thick rims and narrow lenses, which has the effect of casting a shadow onto my eye when I look in the mirror, so I hadn't noticed how red the eye had become.

By now our doctor was on vacation, but I dragged myself over to the office the next morning during walk-in hours and saw one of the other doctors. Probably conjuctivitis, she said, though if, as I told her, it had really been bothering me for almost a week, I should have been waking up with a lot of crust around my eye, which I wasn't. "Maybe the Cipro tablets you've been taking have kept the conjunctivitis from worsening, like it normally would," she said. "I'm going to give you Cipro eyedrops. Hopefully you'll start to see improvement within a day or two."

I did, and I'm happy to report that my eye is pretty back to normal. If only my damn knee would stop hurting now when I'm going up and down stairs.

Since everything seems to happen at once, Laura has been in and out of doctor's offices at the same time. It was a little over a month ago that we made a trip to New York City. Because of a work commitment that came up, she ended up leaving Chicago a day later than I did. As she tells the story, that first night that I was in New York, she was riding the subway home from work when the train banked hard around a curve. A woman standing near her, texting, was not holding onto anything and fell onto Laura, smashing her hand. When the woman straightened up again, Laura's left pinky finger was sticking out at a funny angle at the second knuckle.

Laura looked at the finger, as did the shocked woman. Then Laura took her right hand (which, you may or may not know, consists of only two opposing digits, thanks to a birth defect, and is nicknamed The Claw) and popped the left pinky back into place. The woman turned ashen—though Laura says she doesn't know whether it was because of the finger-popping or because of the unexpected appearance of The Claw itself—and fled through the crowd to the far end of the train car.

(I told Laura she should have held her hands up accusingly and shouted, "I'm a hand model!!!" She does guard her fingers jealously since, as she says, she doesn't have any phalanges to spare.)

Anyway, the finger ached for a while, and it felt stiff, but Laura thought it was actually getting better. Finally, though, the knuckle swelled up and she went in to see the doctor. An X-ray confirmed that there was a hairline fracture in there. She visited an orthopedic surgeon in case surgery was going to be necessary, but he said he didn't think it would be, that it looked like it was going to heal right on its own. He did, however, pull out a gigantic needle and administer two injections of an anti-inflammatory directly into her finger joint. Laura says the surgeon asked her first how well she dealt with pain. Pretty well, Laura said. No, said the surgeon, as in do you pass out?

She didn't, but that's how much the injections hurt.

Laura's finger does seem to be improving, but that's not all that's been going on. Ella recently visited the doctor because of a limp in her left hind leg. She was diagnosed with a probable partial rupture of her cranial cruciate ligament, or CCL, which is the canine equivalent of the ACL. This knee injury meant we had to prevent Ella from running for an entire week, though walking was prescribed as "very good for her." Question: Have you ever tried to walk a dog and prevent it from running at all? It was a long week. Also, Bart (our Honda Accord) has been to the doctor to have a brake light fixed and a new set of tires installed.

So there you go. We've now been to doctor's offices more often in the past two weeks than in the past two years. The lesson here, kids, is to go visit your doctor at the first sign of any problem. Don't put it off! Also, stop that damn texting, unless you can do it one-handed.

So there's this meme going around on Facebook where you give someone an age and they write about their life that year. I was given 29.

Laura: [waving across street] Hi, Russ!

Russ: [waving] Hi! How's Ella?

Laura: Great! Where's Marty?

Russ: With his other dad. Gay joint custody! Yay!

Friends of ours often ask me to remind them what it is that Laura does for a living. It's a little hard to explain, but this article from yesterday's New York Times does a pretty good job of spelling it out:

(Go ahead and read it now. I'll wait.)

A Push to Promote Familiar Brands Online

(Done? Okay, cool.)

Though Laura's name doesn't appear in the article, she's the one who spearheaded most of that effort at General Mills. That's what she does—comes up with digital strategies for her clients, and then gets the work done. The stuff for General Mills happened while she was at her old job. She's now doing similar sorts of things for clients at her new employer, MSL Chicago, where she is Senior Vice President, Director of Digital.

She works damn hard, and works damn smart. I couldn't be more proud of her.

Laura and I were in San Diego a coupla three weeks ago for the World Fantasy Convention. (Yes, it was awesome to see you there too!) When we arrived, she was immediately captivated by the natural beauty of the area, and by the weather. "Ooooh, do you think they have a good business community here?" she asked. "Maybe we can move here."

You have to understand that neither of us is entirely sold on Chicago, still, though it's hard to pin down a precise source of dissatisfaction. We moved here four years ago from New York City. Laura got a great job right off the bat, and recently she started an even better one. We have a great apartment. And, I host a monthly reading series at a nearby bar, which means I meet a lot of local writers.

True, we've been slow to make close friends here, and our close-friend roster is still weighted heavily with New Yorkers, but that's starting to come along. For a while it was the case that we would make a very close friend here and then they would move out of Chicago, very far away, but that trend seems to be reversing. Now people we know are moving to Chicago, which is an encouraging development. And Worldcon is here next year!

Nevertheless, there's some undefinable thing that still nags at us, so I said to Laura, "You should talk to gregvaneekhout this weekend and see what he thinks of living in San Diego."

It so happened that I ran into Greg first that weekend, at a bar (natch). I said to him, "Hey, Laura's thinking San Diego might be a nice place to live. If you see her, she wants to bend your ear about it."

I thought Greg might say something like Hey, that's great or Awesome, man, but instead he looked a little pained. "I don't know," he said. "It's great here, but I see you on Twitter. You guys are always out doing something cool in Chicago. All the time. I honestly don't think there's enough going on here for you."

My first reaction was, hmm, we're not out doing cool stuff that often. But on Monday this week I was thinking about it. On the preceding Tuesday night, I'd gone to the University of Chicago with some friends to see a panel discussion about the place of the Chicago Manual of Style in the internet era, which included two editors of the manual plus Ben Zimmer and Jason Riggle. (I might have annoyed you with all my tweeting that night.) On Wednesday night, I'd gone to a screening of Jodi Lennon's short film Marc Maron: The Voice of Something, about Maron trying to find a way to do worthwhile standup comedy the week after 9/11. On Thursday night, I'd met with my writing group at a local bar and brainstormed ideas for Holly McDowell's novel. On Friday night, Laura and I had gone to a housewarming party at the apartment of some friends who had finally managed to unload their old condo. On Saturday night, Laura and I had gone to the fifth anniversary party for the Writers Workspace, which is where I do a lot of my writing away from home. And on Sunday night we'd gone to Grant Achatz's Aviary, site of our tenth wedding anniversary outing, for a release party for the new cookbook from Eleven Madison Park (my second favorite restaurant in New York, behind only Kabab Cafe). (Chef Daniel Humm personalized our copy!)

Six nights of cool stuff in a row. Hmm. Maybe Greg was right.

Don't worry, Chicago. No matter what happens, we wouldn't be in a position to leave anytime soon. In the meantime, I should probably learn to accept the fact that this really is my kind of town.

For a while there, AMC was a network that could do no wrong when it came to original scripted series. First there was Mad Men. (I don't watch it, but people I respect love it.) Then came Breaking Bad (which just closed out a stellar fourth season and is still my favorite show on television). And then there was Rubicon, a slow-building but hypnotic show about the lives of intelligence analysts that crescendoed into one of the most gripping shows of 2010. I was devastated when it wasn't renewed for a second season.

But AMC is losing me with its new crop of programs. The Walking Dead started out okay, but this second season is testing my patience. For a show that has the word "Walking" in its title, there sure doesn't seem to be any sense of forward momentum. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that I'm sick to death of everybody being stuck at the damn farmhouse. It's more like The Walking-in-Circles Dead. Yes, I'm sure we're building to something, but is it too much to ask that the characters exhibit some personality in the meantime, or that the pacing doesn't flag like a sailing ship in the doldrums? The show only comes alive anymore when there are dead people on the screen, and that doesn't happen nearly enough. Frank Darabont's episodes last year had their problems, but he is nonetheless sorely missed. The zombie apocalypse should be more exciting than this.

And AMC's newest show, Hell on Wheels, isn't exactly bowling me over yet. The characters on this please-call-us-gritty western at least have the advantage of being far more colorful than any on The Walking Dead, but I haven't yet gotten the sense of much humanity beneath the surface of any of them. There's something a bit remote about the acting. I feel a great distance between myself and most of the characters. Colm Meaney is the exception, but his railroad baron is so over-the-top that I really can't buy him, especially in the way that he cheerfully explains his evil plans to anyone who will listen. If you're going to have such a loquacious villain, it helps to fill his mouth with great dialog, like Ian McShane's on Deadwood. But no one on Hell on Wheels, cast or crew, is operating at that level. Not that that would matter if they didn't seem to be cribbing everything down to the seams and themes from David Milch. This show literally looks like a low-rent traveling production of Deadwood. But maybe they'll find their way. (I really hope they give Common something more interesting to do than just look angry.)

Anyway, AMC used to get the automatic benefit of the doubt from me, but those are days gone bye.

I'm not usually home when our dogwalker comes to take Ella out at midday, but yesterday I was. Once a day, Ella gets a treat called an Oinkie, which is basically tube of a smoked pig skin wrapped around a sweet potato center. Because of how they look, Laura and I call them Ella's "cigars."

Anyway, I was working in the study yesterday afternoon when I heard Paul opening the back door. Ella heard him too, of course, and came trotting into my office with her cigar in her mouth. She stopped by my chair, looked up at me, and set the cigar carefully down on the floor. Then she looked up at me again and scooted out the door to greet Paul. The implication was clear: Will you please watch my treat while I'm gone?

Or, as Laura put it in a text message when I told her what had happened: You are the keeper of her most precious items!!!

It's eerie how clearly Ella sometimes manages to communicate her intentions. It's obvious what she wants when she brings a tennis ball to one of us and wags her tail, but some more complex messages are just as easy to parse. Early one morning a couple of weeks ago, Ella came to find me in the study once again. She stood looking up at me and wagging her tail until I took notice of her, then turned and trotted to the door. She looked back. Okay, she wanted me to follow her, so I did.

She led me through the kitchen and out the back door, which was open. (We had left it open for her. She didn't do that herself!) She very deliberately bent her nose to the surface of the back deck, sniffed around for a second or two, pointed her face here and there, then looked up at me, wagging her tail.

Now, I happened to know that Ella had been chewing one of her cigars there on the back deck the evening before, so I knew what it was she was looking for. But even if I hadn't, I would have understood perfectly that something she had left in that spot was missing, and she wanted my help finding it. So, thus recruited into service, Laura and I spent the next five minutes scouring the apartment for Ella's missing cigar. When we found it, Ella grabbed it from me and ran out the door. She hasn't figured out yet how to put across the concept of "thank you."

For all that her intentions are sometimes so clear, there are many other times when she's trying to tell me something and I have absolutely no idea what. I often think of Ella as a furry little person instead of a dog, but on those occasions I'm reminded that it's an alien creature living in the house with us. I wonder if she's as confused and curious about all the odd things her alien housemates do and say.