SJ-arrrr

Hey all! Today I was featured in a little article in the State Journal-Register, Illinois' main non-chitown news rag. You can find the online version here. Quite the dandy feature, and no offense to the skilled and decidedly entertaining author (should write an article about himself!), but I feel bad not clarifying the occasional ambiguity that might have you scratching your head - particularly if you're one of the few who has kept up with the blog. This also a convenient opportunity for some elaboration. Here goes:

--The car accident was in 2004, the second winter after high school graduation in spring 2003 (and yes, the secret's out, I was the valedictator).

--Ha ha, yes, I did officially name my kitty 289, but he goes by Tommy, as it's a bit more feline-recognizable. Why 289? Well, 17 is irrationally one of my favorite numbers (quite rationally, actually), and 289 is 17 squared. There you go. Nerd alert.

--One of my friends pointed out that the article's wording seems to imply that during the stem cell surgery, they accessed the stem cells in my nose by going up through my neck. eek! The surgery was basically a three-step process once I was in the operating room. First, they opened my neck to inspect and prepare the spinal cord lesion site. Then they left my neck alone and went up through my right nostril to harvest cells from deep in the nasal cavity. Finally, after preparing these cells from my nose, they went back to my neck to transplant the cells at the cleaned-up injury site.

--Just for clarification, I was in Portugal April 7-21, and the surgery took place on the 11th. I was then in Detroit from May 5 through December 18.

--I play (non-bass) guitar lap-style, using splints on both hands to push on the strings like some bizarro piano. Upon returning from Detroit, though, I put just the lowest and highest strings on my favorite bass, such that I can hold it normally and sort of play it that way, splint-free. Maybe there will be pictures sometime.

--Musicians mentioned: Les Claypool, Victor Wooten, Bootsy Collins, Buckethead (and my Bucket concert experience). Too bad you can't put hyperlinks in the newspaper! Also, be on the lookout for more music-themed posts in the near future.

Anyway, xlnt article. Thanks to the SJ-R, and to you for reading both there and here. Rock it.