Last Night in Brussels

This is possibly my last or one of my last posts on this blog. The blog is about my adventures in "Euroland," and tomorrow I am moving to Washington, DC, to live in my cousin Brendon's house. I may have a couple of follow-up posts, but I want to keep this blog about a definite segment of my life and won't continue with stories from DC.

It's been a busy week of goodbye parties and farewells. It's been hard, but for some reason it doesn't feel like goodbye for me. The world is, of course, becoming more interconnected, and Brussels will continue to be an important node in the world of international politics that I am trying to break into. The plan right now is to get setup in DC, find a job, and double down on the French lessons. I want to be marketable to send back into the "field."

I leave this country 20 pounds lighter, with a fixed knee and a greatly enhanced sense of fashion. And of course a master's degree and the skills and contacts to make it in the realm of political science. For that I am grateful to my school, the University of Kent at Brussels. It has been a fantastic opportunity that I hope I have taken advantage of to the fullest of my abilities.

I want to thank Cátia and Claudia for hosting me for the past two weeks. It was a lot of fun to be a daily part of your lives. Thanks to all of the friends who I said goodbye to this week, and all of those who have said goodbye earlier. And thank you to you who have been reading this blog.

"A journey is best measured in friends, not in miles." - Tim Cahill

Last Party at Home

I lived in such a beautiful apartment, but it was located a bit outside of the cluster of where my friends lived. So I really didn't have a lot of friends over, usually preferring to go to where they were instead. But before I moved out I had a party at the house. Fahim, Salvador, and Lara came with their instruments, and we sat around playing songs for other friends. It was a good time.

I have completely moved out of the apartment, and am staying on the couch of Cátia and Claudia, who have yet again graciously allowed me to stay with them. When I came to Brussels, I brought a backpack and a large suitcase. I will be taking those two pieces of luggage home, plus another suitcase. As I was packing I unironically wondered how I accumulated so much stuff. It made me realize how I have basically lived with just a handful of clothes, a laptop, and a guitar (which I will sell before leaving) for the past 20 months.

There will be more time to be sentimental as the day comes closer. So here are some photos:

Salvador, Yasmin, Yulia, and me.

Clockwise from left: Me taking myself too seriously, roommates Anneska and Camille, friends Sevil and Natalia.

Roommate Thierry, Anneska, Camille, and Anneska's friend whose name I don't remember but she seemed very nice.

Fahim laying the funk.

The End of the Road

It's official.

The appeals to get a work permit have failed. I went to the Maison Communal once they had summoned me with their decision. I waited in line. Once called, the guy took awhile running around the office before finally finding my papers. In true Belgian style he began by giving the decision from the Ministry of the Interior, before looking at the documents and saying that they were all screwed up and that they would need to be redone, and that they would call me when they were ready. I said OK, and walked away and never heard back from them again. Touché, Belgique.

I have purchased a one-way ticket for Washington D.C. for September 13th. I have asked my cousin Brendon if I can stay at his house, and he has graciously gave the green light. So, more excitement to come, but I have a couple weeks left in Brussels.

Leaving Belgium will be strange. Last week, someone asked me how it felt to be living in a foreign country, and I told them honestly that Belgium really isn't a foreign country to me anymore. It certainly was foreign when I arrived. It was foreign for a long time, but it got me thinking about when this country stopped feeling foreign and felt normal, or even like 'home.' I traced this feeling to last September, right after I broke my knee and got my wallet stolen within 24 hours of each other. Maybe it was the shift in focus that a substantial injury brings, and maybe it was the outpouring of support that my friends gave to me in my time of need. Or maybe it was the fact that I was now mooching off of the socialized health care. Whatever it was, Belgium became home.

Not having a job for the past few months has given me a lot of time to think. Maybe too much time to think. They say that time alone give you time to get to know yourself, but I already know myself very well, and me and myself get tired of each other. Myself tells the same boring stories over and over and sometimes I wish he would just shut up. But the other day I was talking with a friend about D.C., and she was asking about friends there, and she said that it didn't seem like it was very difficult for me to make friends, and that got me thinking. 

For whatever reason, I have found it much easier to make friends in Europe than in the U.S. I think back to my time in the States, and realize that while I made several lifelong friendships, I didn't have a lot of friends in the states. I look back, and notice that I spent a lot of time by myself in Denver and Portland.

And all of that changed when I got to Brussels. I don't know if it was me and my approach that changed, or that the world around me was more interested in me than Americans had been. But it was nice, whatever it was. I got used to it, and it will be hard to let that go.

The night before I broke my knee I was at a friend's house, and we were talking and I told him "I can't go back to the States." At the time I was genuinely afraid that it would be crushing to leave this lifestyle behind me. And now, while I would honestly like to stay a bit longer, I'm not afraid of the U.S. At some point I stopped thinking of this as a year off, or a fluke in my life. I look at it as my lifestyle, even if I need to return to the States from time to time I don't think this will be the last stretch of time that I live in Europe. I will double-down on the French lessons, keep my head in foreign affairs circles, and check the costs of overseas flights.

And now, I have to go because a friend of mine wants to go for a walk, and I need to enjoy this time while it lasts.

Stateless

I'm in a period of limbo right now with Brussels. Ever since the NATO gig fell through, I have had no idea what country I will be living in two months in the future.

It seems like getting a job in Brussels will be difficult. With a flood of new college graduates combing the jobs, most of them with EU work eligibility in place and knowing many more languages than me, I'm a bit outgunned in the job market. The German company that I interned with last summer offered me work as a freelance consultant, but getting the work permit and an extension on my visa has been impossible without a fixed contract.

My primary residency in Belgium expired at the end of April, about a week after NATO pulled the plug on the internship. At that time, other Americans and myself understood ourselves to be on an automatic three month tourist visa. However, after consultations with bureaucrats and lawyer-types this does not seem to be the case. The tourist visa can only be activated by leaving Europe and reentering, something I didn't do until I went to Dan's wedding in Connecticut in June. So for May and half of June I was technically an illegal resident of Belgium. The good news is that now I have a tourist visa, to expire in September.

I am in communication with the authorities about getting the permanent visa and work permit, but the period of illegal residency seems to work against me, as well as the fact that the job is freelance and not salaried. No decision has been made yet though, and they have processed documentation relating to my address change to the new house. 

Last week, I had a meeting with the police relating to my address change. The entire interview was done in French, with me still struggling to understand spoken French and having difficulty with constructing sentences on the spot, but I made it through. The police didn't seem to worried about my former illegal presence; actually no one seems to think I am trying to live here illegally. I know that this would not be the case if I was from another country, and I don't know how I feel about that after watching friends from Russia and Kenya being chased out.

The failure to speak French well was frustrating. I feel like I've been here long enough that I should have a reasonable grasp of the language. I also feel that my knee is not healing as fast as I think it should be. Clearly some changes have to be made. I was thinking about this, and remembered my physical therapist who I haven't gone to in months. She doesn't speak English, and I ended up practicing quite a bit of French when I had sessions. I think I will start going back to PT, and viewing it as a sort of medically-subsidized French lesson. The sessions aren't free, but I should get my money's worth.

I'm starting to apply to places in DC, and actually applied to a job in Oslo, Norway that sounded very interesting. But I don't know where I am going to land. I think I will need to be out of here by mid-September. But who knows anymore.

Mom, Dad and Lara, along with cousin-by-marriage Stephanie came to visit a few weeks ago. It was nice to see everyone and show them around Brussels, and go with them to Paris and Amsterdam. Also I went to Rome in June with a friend I grew up with.

~~ Photos ~~

Uploading pictures to this blog takes kind of a lot of doing, and they are the same pictures I put on Facebook, so I think non-Facebook people can click on these links to see the pictures. If this is too annoying I can try to post some.

~~ Rome ~~

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.421892421187823.93468.100001012052747&type=3&l=a00f1a9bf8

~~ Paris ~~

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.421896027854129.93472.100001012052747&type=3&l=4a39d290d6

~~ Photos with the Roommates ~~

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.421903731186692.93476.100001012052747&type=3&l=48c0158f9e

Well, that's about it right now. Back to applying for jobs.

French

I really have a ton of these little stories, and can't seem to find the words to write them down right now. So I'm hoping that people will forgive a drop in quality in exchange for a higher output.

I just wanted to tell the story of hanging out with my roommates last night, making crepes. It was an impromptu party; I had plans of job searching in the evening but one of my roommates, the French girl, will be moving out soon and wanted to hang out with us for a bit. So we cooked and drank red wine and laughed and talked. At the moment, I can understand what they are saying anywhere from 20% to 60% of the time when they speak to each other in French. When they talk to me directly, and they dumb it down a bit, it's usually 60% to 70%. I still have a hard time expressing myself, lacking the vocabulary and the practice to form sentences in French, so I often have to shift the conversation back to English when I want to explain something.

But a funny thing happened last night, when we were having a conversation that was shifting between French and English and one of them told me something, and I forgot which language they had used to speak to me. It's exciting to be listening to the ideas that they are conveying rather than focusing on decoding the language itself. I've never had that happen before, and it was exciting to me.

I just got back from a meeting with my old boss, where he expressed interest in hiring me as a contractor. I'm not sure that I will be able to do this because of visa issues, but it's nice to know that my skills and awesome personality are still in demand. I will have to do some research and make some calls regarding the feasibility of it. But I feel that the only way to get a job in Brussels (especially when you lack EU citizenship and fluency in three languages, like my competition) is to know somebody.

Tomorrow, I am going to Rome to visit and old friend who is working as a military contractor in Italy. I will just be there for 45 hours or so, so I will try to make the most of it, and will try to post some pictures when I get back.

New Windows

Just a quick blog post, one of those so I can look back and remember how life was in mid-2012. My apartment is having the windows replaced so I am staying with friends. We are all looking for jobs in their apartment, very European with high ceilings and white walls, no future, and a currency that is on the verge of collapse. Weirdly romantic. I told them stories of dropping out of college and having no money and doing part-time construction work, and they asked if it was horrible and I don't remember it that way, but it must have been difficult at the time. We are all panicking, but they don't seem to understand why I am enjoying the panic so much. Because I've noticed that the memories are very different than the reality, and the memories are all that you will have at some point, and I'm already enjoying these.

Jobless (Again)

So, it's all over. No internship at NATO. No security clearance. Note that it wasn't exactly declined; the Department of Defence merely stated that they were "unable or unwilling" to adjudicate the matter and sent the application to another department, playing games with it until NATO had to fill the position already and retracted their offer. So, it was pretty much the dating equivalent of taking me out to dinner and then never calling me again despite assurances that they really had a good time, then never responding to texts so that I can't ask what the deal was. Which is kind of a chickenshit thing to do, in my opinion.

I don't exactly get a lot of sympathy from my non-American friends. "So you got f***ed by the US Government, huh? Big deal, my country gets f***ed by the US Government every day." Europeans just don't understand these things. Or maybe they understand and I really don't....

So this was the beginning and the end of my career in government. It was real, and it was fun, but it wasn't real fun, as they say. I am considering narrowing my career options and making myself permanently unemployable by the feds by registering as a member of the Communist Party in Oregon. Kind of the equivalent of throwing pennies in the trash.

The worst part of this is that now I have no idea what I'm doing, career-wise. So if anybody has any hot tips you know where to find me. I'm a little disappointed in myself that "military waterboy with a master's degree" was the best plan I had. 

Moving This Page

Some changes. Sorry I've been less inclined to post here, but it's been more difficult. Back in the fall I applied for a security clearance, and I've been reluctant to share so much about my life. Applying for the clearance has apparently made me less able to see the humor in life, and I don't want to post here if it isn't enjoyable for someone to read. And I suppose I don't want the federal government to think that I'm some sort of loudmouth who cannot keep a secret.

So, I am changing some things. The URL that I originally gave people (www.paultuthill.com) won't automatically redirect to this blog anymore. The redirected URL (http://belgianpaul.blogspot.com/) will still work, and the blog will still be here for now. I am making this change in the next couple of days, so I'm sorry if you were looking for this blog and you got rerouted somewhere else.

Also, I have posted a copy of my dissertation online because I am including it in the resume package I have been sending out. It is at http://www.paultuthill.com/dissertation. I'm only including it here because some people asked if they could have it. Please don't read it because you think I'm going to ask you if you read it, because it is quite long and boring and I'm sure there are better things on TV, honestly.

So, sorry for another unfunny blog post. But I love you all and will talk to you soon.

New Home

I am sitting at my new desk, in the 4th place I have called home in 65 days, not counting the hospital. My long househunting quest has been finally settled. Just to recap, I left my old apartment in late December, the place where I had stayed since shortly after moving to Brussels. I moved into the Ward in preparation of the knee surgery, and stayed there for another month afterwards while I healed. However, I was unable to find another place to live by the time I had to leave the Ward, so I moved into my friend Cátia's house in Place Jourdan, right across the street from Holly's apartment where I originally stayed when I landed in Brussels before I found my first apartment. 

It was nice to be back in the old neighborhood. Place (pronouced "Ploss") Jourdan is possibly my favorite place in Brussels, and other friends have moved into the neighborhood since those times, so it is always a fun place to visit. It was great staying with Cátia; we got along very well. I worked on my dissertation at the library during the day (a change from my usual vampiric writing schedule) and chatted and watched movies with her in the evening. Admittedly, it was nice saving money on rent, and the savings was enough to justify some lavish dinners and brunches. The two weeks were basically a mini-vacation.

The only downside was that I couldn't live on a couch forever and I had to find a place to live. It was hard to find a place that was accessible to NATO, with a reasonable cost. Also, the roommates had to be compatible (I had to decline living with 22-year old art college students at this time in my life). But I eventually found this place, only about 1 kilometer from my old apartment.

I am now living with 3 other people: a Belgian man and woman (both single professionals) and a younger French girl who is finishing her masters. Which means that all of my roommates speak French natively, which is quite a bonus. I moved in last week, and the next night we had dinner as a group. We all seem to get along quite well. They all know English, but speak French to each other quite a bit. I am already learning more French, and it gives me new motivation to practice what I have already learned.

The apartment is quite beatiful (I will post pictures later). The building is maybe 100 years old, and built like a bank with a marble entrance way and staircase. There is also an old-timey elevator, the kind where you close the cage-type door by hand. The inside has been recently redone by the Belgian man (the owner) with fancy Star Trek appliances and a big dining room area and sitting room. There is no TV, but classy places like this one don't necessarily need one.

This may be odd, but there are three smells that this apartment has that give me instant deja vu. The first is that the kitchen smells like my cousin's house in Boise in the North End. I think it's the mix of an old structure that has been remodeled. The second is that my room smells like my parent's house right after it was built, when all of the wood smelled new. The last is that one of the bathrooms smells like Grandma Hartigan's house. Strange, I know.

So, things are getting settled. I have two more weeks of writing my dissertation and then hopefully I will start the next week at NATO. It's nice to be fully unpacked for the first time in awhile. I will send out my new mailing address when I get the post box set up.

The Pillars of Creation

I find myself pondering the "Pillars of Creation," a collection of matter and gasses in space, thousands of times bigger than the sun. The Hubble telescope captured brilliant and virant images of these bodies that are 7,000 light years away from us. I should say that they used to be there. Based on data of other objects in the area, scientists have determined that the Pillars were destroyed by massive explosion about 6,000 years ago. Which means that we will be able to see them in the sky for another 1,000 years before the light witnessing their fantastic demise reaches us.

I am writing my dissertation, and am homeless. While house hunting, I am staying on the couch of my friend Catia, from Portugal. She is younger than I am but very talented, still on her upward climb in this world, sometimes nervous about where the future will take her. I tell her that she will be a 'someone' some day, that I have already seen this happen, but, like the Pillars of Creation, sometimes there is a delay between what we know to be true and what we immediately observe. She does not believe me.

Composite image from the Hubble telescope.

Leaving the Ward

It’s moving time again. I’ve only been living in this studio since the end of December, but my lease here ends next week. I’ve been looking at apartments, and made some calls and appointments, but it’s been slow going. House hunting is not my thing.

There has been some stress, not knowing where I am going to live next week. I haven’t been finalized for NATO yet, so I’ve been dragging my feet making any long term decisions until that gets worked out (long term meaning the next six months - after that, I still don’t know).

This apartment has been good, but this isn’t the first time that I’ve lived by myself in a studio. In January 2006 when I was living in Denver, I moved out of the apartment I shared with a roommate because I wanted to be alone; I wanted to think. I was working at the bank at the time, my third shitty job since I had arrived as a recent college graduate in Denver, and my life wasn’t working out the way I had hoped. I really didn’t have any friends in Denver, and wasn’t meeting people that I especially wanted to be friends with. I had dreams of starting a band, but the music scene was bland.

It wasn’t long before my frustration spilled over into my job, and pennies had to get thrown away. I’ve told that story enough times to anyone who would listen, so I don’t need to repeat it, but by March I had no job. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, I spent about 23 hours a day in my apartment (save 1 hour to go for a long walk every day). The apartment’s nickname became “the cell”, and I started to think about the life I wanted to live.

I decided at this point that I wanted to leave the U.S. If I was going to have a shitty job, I reasoned, I should at least be picking up a new language along the way. But I couldn’t find a way to get a job overseas. I even seriously considered the Peace Corps, ultimately deciding against it for a handful of reasons. Usually, I’m not much of a reader. But I started reading books to distract me from my thinking. It was while I was reading the tragic biography of Portland musician Elliot Smith that I had a dream one night. It was a lucid dream, rare for me, where I saw people my age flocking to Portland. (It turns out that the actual location of the place in the dream was SW 4^th and Burnside, specifically the big billboard there. I had no way of knowing that at the time.) The people told me to come to Portland. The next day when I awoke, I made plans to move out west.

I planned to stay in Portland for 3 to 4 years, then leave the U.S. Basically from the day I arrived I was planning my exit, hanging out at Chinese restaurants trying to pick up some Mandarin. And then after 4 years I did leave.

 Sometimes the plans we make come true. I haven’t had any prophetic dreams so far in the new studio, which I call the “recovery ward.” But I am not in need of any right now. Life in the ward is quite different than life in the cell. I have friends that come to visit, and have brought me dinners when it was hard to get out of bed. Friends have gone shopping for me, and helped me with laundry. I am reading, not biographies of musicians but international relations theory as I write my master’s dissertation. I have no five year plans but I trust myself to land on my feet, whatever is thrown at me in the coming months. As difficult as the six months in the cell were, looking back it turned out to be valuable time.

So that’s what’s going on right now. The knee is strong, maybe stronger than before the surgery. But stronger than the knee is the spirit, and the optimism for the future.

Knee brace.

This was taken a week ago, and the swelling has gone down a lot since. Probably because I'm constantly icing it. Probably because Brussels hasn't gotten above freezing in 2 weeks.

Surgery

Well, I'm back. It was a strange 30 hours, even though I probably slept through 15 of them.

The hospital story begins as I left my apartment at 6:20 AM, after staying up all night working on my papers, turning them in, and then cleaning my apartment in preparation for crippledness. I've been staying up pretty late the past few weeks, as I tend to write better in the early morning hours and I've been drinking a lot of red bull. But there was no red bull on Sunday, since I had to fast for the anesthesia and I didn't want the taurine interfering anyway.

So I was a little sleepy as I took the metro to the hospital. When I got there a little before 7, the hospital was closed. I mean, the doors were open and you could walk in, but nobody was working. That's not something that I'm used to seeing. So after waiting for the help to arrive, I checked in and headed for my room, on floor 2, section U24.

I assumed they meant floor -2 (2 floors below the entrance, in Europe the ground floor is "0") since that's where all of my appointments had been. I took the elevator down and there was indeed a section U, which was the surgery section. I followed the signs looking for room 24, which it said was next to the surgery theater. "Cutting to the chase" I was thinking "I like that." There was no receptionist at the station so I headed in, walking past people in wheely beds prepped for surgery.

I was walking down the hall when a woman in scrubs started yelling at me in French. The only parts I could understand were "you can't be in here" and "you have to leave now." I didn't think much of it, as I'm used to making such mistakes so I went back to the reception and waited for the receptionist to show up, who informed me that there was indeed a floor 2 in a different bank of elevators.

So I found my real section and found a nurse who showed me the room I would be sharing with another man (later introduced to me as Angel from Peru). My surgery was at 9 so they had me change into the hospital gown right away and take a shower with some disinfectant, then the nurse shaved me knee. I got into my hospital bed and an orderly wheeled me down to the same section I had barged into before, only this time I was prepped for surgery in my wheely bed like the others.

I stayed there for quite awhile, as other patients were wheeled in and left, and I started to think that 9am on a Monday morning isn't the best time to schedule surgery and maybe my doctor was hungover or stuck in Ibiza. It was pretty close to 10 when a group of doctors came and got me, and started asking me questions in French as they wheeled me into the theater, which I didn't understand so I just nodded my head, which made them mad because they were asking me how much I weighed, which is not a yes or no question.

At this time I should say that the hospital I have been going to is a teaching hospital. The doctors sometimes have assistants that are medical students who do some of the easy work. There were probably 10 people in the operating theater when we got there, and I new that half of them where there to observe by the way they were trying to look busy. I am an expert of knowing how to look busy, so these gomers couldn't fool me. One plucky young lad, with a "real" doctor's assistance (maybe my anesthesiologist?) starting jabbing a needle into my hand for the IV. He missed several veins, gave a Rick Perry "oops" and then pulled the needle out and went for a third time. I silently prayed that Dr. Butterfingers wouldn't be near my knee to make a salad out of it.

Next they put a plastic holder for my left leg to prop it up, and they put a mask on me which they said was oxygen. At this point, one of the doctors (or maybe a gomer?) asked me which knee they were operating on. I wanted to say "how about we start with the one that's shaved and in the plastic holder" but I just laughed. I don't know if I was laughing because there was some kind of anesthetic in the mask or if it was because I had been up for almost 24 hours. Mercifully, at that point the anesthesiologist told me it was go time, and I nodded and then the sounds of the operating room got very strange and then I was out.

When I woke up I was in the post-op, which made sense. It had only been under for 2 hours. My left knee was in a lot of pain, which considering what was going on before the surgery made me somewhat relieved. They shot me full of painkillers and then wheeled me back up to my room. I think I slept a lot that afternoon. When I woke up there were people speaking spanish in the other half of the room. Angel's family introduced themselves, the daughter started speaking to me in English. "The nurses tell me you only speak English," she said. "That's not true," I corrected her, "I speak un poco de espanol and I can understand sometimes when people yell at me in French." She didn't seem impressed, but she was polite anyways.

I spent the evening alternating between reading and sleeping. There was a bottle with a snap cap by the side of my bed. "It's for pee" one of the nurses had said when I first arrived. Around ten o'clock another nurse came in "Il fait pee pee? (Does it make pee pee)?" she asked. "Non." Then I heard her asking Angel, and when she left I hear her asking the same question people in other rooms down the hall. Nurse Pee Pee, as I came to call her, came back every hour asking if I made a pee pee, and every time the answer was no. Finally, at about 4am  I did have to go. But I have spent 31 years conditioning my body to not make a pee pee when I'm lying on my back. Plus the whole gravity thing was wrong. So Nurse Pee Pee helped me wheel my IV while I hobbled on crutches into the bathroom. She asked "Il fait pee pee?" as I came out. "Yes." "Bon!" she replied, and I never saw her again, making me wonder if she was part of some opium dream.

This morning was easy, just sleeping and watching some TV. Around noon they brought lunch, and Angel and I had a pretty good half-hour chat in Spanish. I could understand maybe 70% of what he said, if you count hand gestures. Usually people get bored talking to me in Spanish, but he seemed to enjoy it. He told me stories about being a professional soccer playing in Peru, back in the day. Then the doctor came and checked me out and told me I could go home. Fahim drove out and picked me up and took me back home, where I am now eating burned frozen pizza in bed.

That's where the story ends. Now I have people coming over to play guitar. I hope you have enjoyed my story about surgery.

Off to Surgery

I've been pretty busy working on my final essays for school, which are due tomorrow. It's 1:41 in the morning and I have to be at the hospital at 7 to get my ACL repaired. I was planning on working all night, but I think these papers are about as good as they're gonna get. I can't eat anything more until after the surgery, and I don't think I can go to sleep since I've been staying up until 6 pretty regularly for the past few weeks, and I don't want to oversleep. So maybe a nap, I don't know...

I don't have much to say right now, hopefully I'll have some down time soon to catch up on some older stories, and also have something new to talk about as I sit later today in a communal hospital room with people speaking languages I don't understand. Honestly, I've been pretty relaxed today, considering all of the deadlines coming up. I think in a weird way the stress of the paper deadlines and the anxiety of the surgery have cancelled each other out, each one keeping me from dwelling too hard on the other. I'm all moved into my new studio apartment on the ground floor and have a bunch of frozen pizzas and cans of soup to last a week or so, and my friend Fahim will drive me home from the hospital tomorrow.

So, cheers to my last night of having one ACL.