In addition to many loyal Democrats I encountered, there were, apparently, a lot of converted Republican voters I spoke with, people who were seething to vote against the two-term GOP incumbent Barbara Comstock in a passion that barely disguised its anti-Trump nature in this suburban, barely outside the beltway district. The month-long effort produced a gamut of responses to my knocking on doors, from the household where the occupant threatened to shoot me if I didn't get off his property and assaulted me as I turned to leave to several sincere statements of thank-you-for-coming, with a particularly nostalgic, for me, encounter where an elderly gentleman patiently listened to my verbal windup while studying my sweating visage and kindly said that he was a loyal Republican but would I like a glass of water or a cold soda before I left, the way people in our great country used to treat each other, including the occasional stranger. I was excited and mightily satisfied to see that the Virginian Tenth District was the very first Congressional district in the entire country to be called as flipping by the networks about forty minutes after the polls closed, presaging a mighty blue tsunami of house seats flipping resulting in a forty-seat democratic majority in Congress, including the Virginia congregation going from a 7-4 gerrymandered Republican majority to a 7-4 Democratic majority overnight.
I was scheduled for an operation early in November to remove the oil from my right eye that had been placed there during the second surgery in August to repair my failing retina once the first surgery in July failed in that regard by the insertion a self-decomposing gas bubble, but shortly before the date it was reset to late December because my doctor broke his arm and couldn't perform surgery during his recovery period while he wore a cast. Although sorely disappointed at this, as my eye-filled eye bothered me greatly as I feel that my body intrinsically knew there an important organ with a totally foreign substance within it and wanted it out, this pause at least gave me the opportunity to travel by car to Columbus to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my sister there and her family. During that visit I was also able to visit with my college freshman roommate who was there visiting his ailing uncle.
In December I finally had my third, and hopefully last, eye surgery and it was painless, in stark contrast to the first surgery which was, well, agonizing albeit brief (I was totally out during the second surgery at my insistence, but this wasn't an option for the oil removal procedure for some reason which has never been satisfactorily explained to me) and so far the retina has continued to "adhere" to its wall of rods and cones and the tears in it have fully healed. There has been no period of face-down recovery this go-round, although I am severely limited to a sedate recovery for six more weeks (no lifting anything over five pounds) and then to a less-than-strenuous period (no running) for two months after that, and if that all goes well (my fingers are definitely crossed, I'll be as "fully" recovered as I am going to get with this apparently genetically caused occurrence. I was able to go around the District solo on a bicycle prior to my operation last week on my annual holiday-lights "run."
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