Obsession, Fear

Yeah, I know. It's been a while. But really, how many of you are really out there reading this anyway?

It's been a busy month, despite school being done for the summer. Lots of stuff, although my time seems to have been largely devoted to disc, work and nursing injuries. Maybe I'll do a rundown in another post, but I don't think I have the time or energy to go into it right now.

Kind of distracted at work today, what with the current obsession -- Harry Potter. I don't attend midnight Potter parties, pre-order the books or even typically know what the release dates are, but once in hand, I have trouble putting the books down. When the last book came out, the SOOTTAD and I read the book together over the course of a few days. And by together, I really mean TOGETHER. As in: reading the same book, waiting for the other to finish a page before turning it, sometimes asking to go back, snickering at the same jokes (with maybe a delay of a few seconds when one of us is slightly ahead of the other), pointing at entertaining turns of phrase, particularly poignant words or paragraphs, from beginning to end.

It's probably one of the best reading experiences I've ever had. It's a sense of connection -- being able to share something that's normally done alone somehow makes it more intimate. It's almost the opposite of going to a movie, where you often go with friends as a group, but in the end it's you and your friends quietly sitting in a dark room staring at pictures on the wall. You could get the same experience going alone and then talking about it on the phone afterwards... unless there's a sufficient amount of heckling, I suppose.

It's got the nerd-o-meter pegged, I'm sure. But what can I say? We're nerds, it kinda comes with the territory.

So I got the Half-Blood Prince for the SOOTTAD's birthday, but really, it was a gift for both of us. And we read it at the airport, on the flight down to Philly (for a wedding), in the hotel, and after the post-reception party. Unfortunately, we only got about halfway through it before I had to fly back home; and the SOOTTAD had to fly directly back to Chicago for work, and it WAS her birthday present after all. So once back home, and after a few weak attempts to find a friend with another copy -- I bought another copy myself. (Although I'm rationalizing that I'm going to give it to a friend who wants it, but hasn't purchased it yet.) The SOOTTAD and I both finished it by the next evening (her on her flight back to Chicago and me on a flight out to L.A. the next day) and we're able to debrief one another over the phone. Not as good as finishing it together as we had the last one, but as good as it was going to get given the circumstances.

Of course, now that I'm done, I'm in my full-on post-completion obsessive phase where I'm surfing around on line to find out when the next (and last) book will be coming out (currently, sometime in 2007), corroborating personal theories about the characters and the storyline, and rereading the series. I've already finished Sorcerer's Stone and am halfway through Chamber of Secrets. And after finishing Sorcerer's Stone, I wanted to see some of the scenes in the movie, so I watched that last night.

And I have to say -- man, that movie really sucked.

Ok, maybe I'm being a little harsh. It certainly wasn't Van Helsing, which wasn't worth the 4RMB (US$1) I spent on it. But for all it's massive budget, cast, production values and CGI bells and whistles: not impressed. And the self-promotion, oy. I clearly remember watching one of the special features on the Chamber of Secrets DVD with the SOOTTAD when we first got it, and the narrator was talking about the impact of the musical score on a given scene. And they showed a scene with the music, and without it. And I was blown away... by how much the music ruined the scene. Without music, it was touching, personal, heartwarming; with it, it was cheesy, self-aggrandizing... frankly, kind of embarrassing. I was talking to the SOOTTAD about it and she agrees, but didn't think that Prisoner of Azakaban suffered from it, what with having a real director and all.

So anyway, kind of obsessed right now. Which isn't so helpful when I'm trying to get work done.

In other news, I also saw the doctor about my knee again this morning. Different doctor, actually. Same knee, same problem. Although it hasn't really been bothering me so much recently. Maybe a month ago, after trying to go easy on the knee was getting me nowhere except out of shape, I tried a different tack and focused on more strengthening and stretching, hoping that the pain was being caused by the tightening muscles compressing whatever it was that was unhappy. And although I have no idea what was broken (since my primary theory was shot down by the first doctor), things seemed to have improved to the point that I've been able to play without significant discomfort. (although not quite NO discomfort, and still with the pain after not moving for any significant amount of time.) But I was feeling good enough to play in a tournament in Montreal, which was great... except that I hurt my hand.

I have no idea how it happened, but during a play in our second game of the first day, I had a severe pain in my left thumb. Jammed it, or something. Iced it off and on for the rest of the day and was ended up playing with it later that day, and for the two games we stuck around for on Sunday.

After 3 days without any noticeable improvement -- I ended up scheduling an appointment with my PCP and seeing the attending nurse practitioner. She was convinced I'd fractured my thumb (possibly at the Metacarpo-phalangeal joint), but X-rays were negative. Which was great, except that it still hurt like a bitch. I asked if she thought it might be some kind of connective tissue injury, but she was convinced that it wasn't because I had such good range-of-motion. Which I warily accepted, since that's what I wanted to hear. Except that after checking things more carefully for myself, it seems apparent to me that I actually have almost NO range of motion in the joint in question. The ROM she had observed was in the carpo-metacarpal joint and the interphalangeal joint. (Thank you Anatomy class.) So I'm thinking I need to see yet another doctor. Except that I don't want to have my hand put into a cast or splint -- one that I'll have to keep dry. (I am SO done with the one handed shower with a bag on my other hand game.) And I don't want to hear that I'll need surgery. I don't want to be told that I can't exercise. That I can't play. Right now, it's one of the few things I've got between visits with the SOOTTAD. And I've mentioned before how much I need exercise to keep me sane. (Well, more or less.)

Ok, enough blogging. I have to go finish Chamber of Secrets.

On the knee

Still holding off calling the other doc at this point.

My knee isn't feeling great today, but it's not feeling particularly worse either, and it does seem like it's improved over the last few days. During practice today (yes, I went to practice) I thought I was going to really blow it out once and for all when I did a quick acceleration on one particular point, but it actually seemed to feel much better once I got going and things warmed up. A little TLC for now -- icing after activity and a regular regimen of vitamin-I. I'm going to continue to keep an eye on it, but at this point, I'm going to just play on it and try to be "careful," whatever that means. I'm pretty sure I'm just fooling myself. But hey: stay foolish, do what you love. (Somehow, I don't think that's what he meant by that.)

In other random knee news, it turns out that Mom just recently tore the posterior horn of the lateral meniscus of her left knee. (I may not have mentioned it, but I was pretty much convinced that I had a tear in the posterior horn of the lateral meniscus of my left knee before I saw the doc yesterday.) Maybe I'm just experiencing sympathetic sensation or something. Dunno.

It also turns out that the SOOTTAD has a torn meniscus in her left knee, but it's the medial meniscus, so it's definitely not as much of a freaky coinkydink as with my mom.

Well, ok. Maybe it is.

"Stay hungry. Stay Foolish."

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

(Forwarded to me by my friend Juje)

Summertime treat

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Alpine strawberries -- yum!

(just gotta get to 'em before the critters do.)

Light and Tunnel

I can see an end in sight -- we're in the last week of classes for the first semester, and it's probably just in the nick of time. I'm feeling pretty burnt out. It'll be good to have a break, but we've still got a quiz, two finals and a technique assessment before we're done for the summer.

It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't also have to learn C++ and crank out some code in the next day or so for work. Ugh. I'm actually pretty psyched about having the opportunity to finally learn and use C++, but I've felt so exhausted the last few weeks (and the last few days in particular), that I wish I could take a day or two off to just catch up on my sleep. Sadly, there isn't time for that.

I may have to resort to the nuclear option: after 13 years off the stuff, I may have to recaffeinate. It could get ugly. Hopefully I'll be able to manage without it.

* * *

A few random bits and pieces:

• Went to my 15-year college reunion. Always a tough start: I'm wandering around, not really seeing anybody I knew, feeling out of it, and wondering what the hell I'm doing there. I don't like people. I'm socially awkward. I don't chit-chat well. And literally 10 seconds after those thoughts cross my mind, I see 6-7 people that I'm really happy to see.
• The SOOTTAD met me in Ithaca. She had an awful trip out -- up at the crack of dawn, was supposed to arrive around 4pm but because of stupid airport configurations, bad itinerary from Travelocity and a few wayward thunderstorms, she didn't get in until 10pm. And ended up eating something at LaGuardia that took her out for most of the weekend.
• She also drove back home with me, and was back for the week so we could attend a wedding together yesterday afternoon/evening. It's always wonderful to have her back home, but we've both been crazy busy with work and other social/family obligations that we didn't get much quality time together. She'll be back in July -- hopefully things will be a little calmer then.
• My left knee has been bothering me for the last month or so. Finally saw the doctor today. Not the best experience I've had: 3:45pm appointment, arrived at 3:12pm because I was told to arrive 30 minutes early for X-rays, back in the waiting room the next time around 4pm, called in around 4:30pm, saw the doctor at 4:35pm, out at 4:39pm. I guess two hours isn't so bad, but the signal to noise ratio -- oy. The assessment was, well, basically that everything looked fine -- probably a muscle/tendon strain, definitely not a torn meniscus. Which is great, except that it had all the symptoms of one. So, we'll proceed with caution, and maybe after practice tomorrow I'll try to get an appointment with the other doctor who left the organization to start his own practice.

Aftermath

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Doesn't seem like such a big deal, does it?

Sometimes

Sometimes when life is a little rough, you can take a step back and appreciate what you have going for you. You count your blessings. Things may be tough, but you're a lot better off than a lot of people. Sometimes it just takes a little perspective.

Sometimes you can just ride out the bumps. Take things one step at a time. You make adjustments.

And sometimes, when you think: despite the rough spots, everything's going to be ok...

Life will come over and give you a quick kick in the nuts.

And then give you a cookie, just to fuck with you.

* * *

So things seem to be going ok. I'm not overly excited about work, but the latest to-do list is keeping me somewhat engaged. I think I finally found an accountant so I can get all this self-employment/independent contractor stuff taken care of. It's too bad that he's confirmed that I'm going to have to pay 1/3 of my estimated taxes for the year (for what I expect to make on this contract for the full calendar year) by next Wednesday, despite having only been paid for the first 9 days that I've worked -- meaning, I have to pay more in taxes than I've actually been paid. I know that it'll even itself out the next time around, but it still feels wrong. Oh, and there's still something funky going on with my knee, but it only seems to flare up when I'm sprinting hard -- I seem to be able to run at a normal pace without too much trouble. (Too bad it means that whenever we play disc, I seem to tweak it. But practice was great yesterday.) Oh, and there's some nasty critters that are eating the lilies out front, but at least the rest of the garden is looking pretty good.

But, you know -- it feels like summer. Class is almost over. I'm going to see the SOOTTAD in two days. I can make it.

Or at least I thought I could.

Like I said, work has been ok. And the Physiology final this evening wasn't too bad. I would have liked to have gone out with the rest of the class, but I needed to get home and do a practice session and study Anatomy because I'm heading out to my college reunion on Friday, so I won't have any time to study. I figured I'd try and tidy the house up a little before T arrived, since she'd never been to the house before, but I settled on doing the dishes.

And sliced my hand open on a glass that I hadn't noticed was broken.

So much for being good and getting you work done. So much for doing the "right thing." I should have gone out drinking.

Anyway, I've been through this routine before (One day, I may have to write about the cleaver incident) so I was pretty sure I was going to need stitches again. Wash it out with soap and hot water. Direct pressure. Ice.

I call T and tell her we're going to have to cancel today. I call some friends to figure out where the nearest emergency room is since the last one I went to closed its doors a few years ago. Lots of people not answering. I finally get through to RB, (he asks if it's my throwing hand. Uh, yeah. Maybe I can just go long) and it's off to Newton-Wellesley. The bleeding seems to have stopped by the time I get in the car to drive myself to the emergency room (because I don't want to subject any of my friends to the torture of the hours of waiting). It starts bleeding again by the time I get onto 128. Damn, I haven't eaten dinner yet.

F! Not going to be able to practice the arm techniques this week. Final assessment in 2-1/2 weeks. I'm really hoping it'll have healed up enough before then. No disc. Getting even more out of shape. I'm not sad, I'm pissed. Ripshit.

When I get to the hospital, there's no parking in the emergency lot. Not a good sign. I end up parking on the street. I check in, make nice with the staff. Yeah, I've been through this before. Whaddaya think, 4 hours? More like 14, the receptionist jokes. I really hope I'll be out before midnight. I bring my Anatomy notebook so I can study while I wait. I call the SOOTTAD. It starts to rain. Hard. Thunder and lightning.

The cookie? I don't think I wait more than 40 minutes and I'm called in and see the attending physician. 4 stitches; they can come out in 10 days and things should be back to normal, more or less. Keep it dry for 48 hours; keep an eye on it for signs of infection. (The rain will make that a bit challenging, but whatever.)

I'm out by 9:40pm. Wow, an hour. Despite the waiting area being packed, it's probably the shortest I've ever waited for emergency care. Apparently, not being a severe injury (whew, I was feeling guilty about that), I get sent to a lower priority area which turns out to be less busy. Lucky break. I'm still pissed, but at least I'm home before midnight and I can get dinner, right? ...right?

Small consolation. I suppose I should also be happy that lightning didn't hit the house while I was in the shower and electrocute me. (Not that I can find any record on-line of this ever actually happening, despite all the dire warnings.)

e unum pluribus

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

From one, many. (Well, two.)

Planes, trains and automobiles

Back from Chicago. An interesting trip.

Good to spend time with the SOOTTAD. If you're interested, you can read about a few of our misadventures here. (At least the culinary ones -- everything else went pretty well except that we were both completely exhausted after the last few weeks of craziness. There was a lot of sitting around and napping going on.)

So anyway, I may have mentioned that we were going to drive out to Chicago. I had actually planned to just fly out and visit for the weekend, but it turned out that I had more time off from school than expected which coincided nicely with a sudden need for the SOOTTAD to have her car sooner rather than later. So we drove.

All good intentions aside, we ended up getting on the road after 3pm Thursday afternoon and made it as far as Barkeyville, PA before retiring at a Comfort Inn with free wireless internet from the TA TravelCenter across the street, surprisingly soft sheets and mattress and free waffles for breakfast freshly made from a self-serve waffle iron in the morning. We were pleasantly surprised. (Sadly, the waffle didn't agree with me so much and we had to make a longer-than-planned stop at a rest area in Ohio.)

A few notes on the drive:

• Medium soft serve at DQ off the highway in Pennsylvania: $1.69
  Medium soft serve at DQ off the Indiana Toll Road: $2.49
  (granted, the Indiana wafer cone was actually larger)
• I expect people to slow down around construction areas (especially when there's a lane drop, the speed limit is posted at 40MPH and there are signs making threats about doubled fines every 50 feet). However. Pennsylvania is the only place that I can remember where the average speed of the traffic was 20MPH BELOW the posted construction area speed limit.
• We saw cops practically every 10 miles once we hit the Ohio border. I don't think we saw one after reaching Indiana.
• this is the first time I've ever crossed a time zone in a car.

We got into Chicago around 3pm, local time. Not including the overnight stop, I think we were on the road a total of 17 hours including meal stops and potty breaks, which is pretty close to the google estimate. Not too shabby.

The trip back had it's own share of amusements. Up at 6:30am to grab breakfast and get to the airport via bus and train. Didn't want to risk being late because I feared long delays at security because of my one-way ticket. Surprisingly, no problems. Not sure if it was because they hadn't found anything the last time they went through all on my luggage, piece by piece, after taking a one-way flight on Southwest a mere 5 months ago, or simply because I didn't have any carry-on luggage on this trip. I guess the SOOTTAD will find out when she meets me in Ithaca in a few weeks -- she's flying one-way on another airline.

A brief note of irony before I continue: I may have mentioned that we had a few misadventures in Chicago. We didn't really have a plan of things to see or places to visit. It was fine just hanging out at the apartment and walking around the neighborhood, but whatever. I get on the plane, leaf through this months in-flight magazine and what do I spy with my little eye? An article on cool vintage places to visit in Chicago. An article I would have read if I hadn't changed my original travel plan to fly out. Oh well.

Anyway, uneventful flight... to Providence. More residue from the original itinerary -- my car would have been at the airport because I was originally going to drive down to Providence to fly out to Chicago. (Lower fares with parking cheaper than what it would cost to catch a cab into OR out of Boston.) But that wasn't really a problem because I figured I could just catch the Bonanza bus back to Boston.

Except that they no longer run busses out of the airport. Bah.

Of course, we had figured this out in Chicago, so my actual plan was to catch a RIPTA bus to the Kennedy Plaza (as recommended by the Bonanza rep I got on the phone) and then catch a Bonanzer from there.

So I get into the Providence airport and go to the information booth to figure out where to find the bus, and they end up steering me to a shuttle to the train station. Train? Cool -- trains are cool. Completely forgot about the RIPTA plan. Minor snafu: the info people tell me the shuttle leaves at 1pm and will get me to the train station around 20 minutes before the 1:42pm commuter rail up to Boston. And if I miss that, there's a (more expensive) Amtrak train that leaves at 2:20pm. I go to the shuttle folks and the first thing they do is warn me that it'll take 35 minutes, at best, to get to the train station. 1:35. 1:42 train. Well, I've got a backup so I try my luck.

On the shuttle, I meet a few other people who are going through the same issues that I am. When did the Bonanza bus stop leaving from the airport? What do you mean it doesn't take 15 minutes to get to the train station? I get to talking to the woman next to me and it turns out she's catching the 2:20pm train. Cool. "So what are you doing up in Boston?" I ask. Actually, she's heading back down to New York. Hmm. Interesting. A 2:20 train to New York... I find it hard to believe that there are two trains leaving Providence at *exactly* the same time, going in opposite directions, on the same track. (just checked the schedules, there's no 2:20 train to Boston)

So. We get to the station at 1:41pm. I briefly consider waiting in line and then decide to bust a move to the track. Thankfully, I make it and don't have to find out what else the T. F. Green people didn't know. Quiet ride into South Station, T over to Kenmore to catch a ride back to the house from my friend 'Bar.

Closing note: the shuttle cost me nine bucks to get me from the Providence airport to the Providence train station. It only cost me seven to get from Providence to South Station in Boston on the commuter rail; another buck and a quarter for the T ride. Cheaper to go the 50 miles from Providence to Boston than the 9 miles between the airport and the train station within Providence. Typical.

Total travel time Chicago to Boston, door to door: 9 hours.

Oy, tired.

coming and going

The SOOTTAD is in town. Yay.

She's packing up some stuff today and then we're driving her car out to Chicago tomorrow morning.

Things are feeling a little crazy and hectic right now. Her flight got in late last night, and we're trying to squeeze some quality time between packing and her trying to get some work done. But we did get to sleep in this morning (I'm really glad I hadn't planned on going into work today) and we're going to catch Episode III tonight. We're still thinking we'll get on the road early tomorrow, but I haven't even packed yet. Did I mentioned crazy and hectic?

Hopefully, once we get to Chicago, we'll have some time to chill out -- I'm planning on staying over the long weekend and then flying back early next week.

Regardless, it's good to be, and feel, together again.

Judicial nominees -- we lose

"Stakes still high after Senate makes deal"

MoveOn was claiming a victory in the judicial nominee showdown in the Senate today. But it didn't look much like a victory from where I was sitting. A victory would have been Frist putting the "nuclear option" to a vote, and having it fail, because enough Republican senators had the backbone to stand up for the right thing.

I keep hearing that "we saved the right to filibuster," but did we really? And exactly how useful was that if the Republicans still got what they wanted -- their nominees put on the bench? Seems to me they just bullied the minority and got their way. And now that they know that they can get away with it, what's to stop them from doing it again?

We won, but we lost.

It's like a teacher who gets the bully to stop beating up the other kids for their lunch money by making them give the bully their lunch money. Great, so you didn't get beat up, but you're still not going to have anything to eat.

The radical court nominees are still going to get confirmed. And if push comes to shove the next time around, say for a nominee to the Supreme Court, what's to stop them from voting to make the changes then?

We are so fucked.

Attack of the...

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a small bulge in the asphalt of the driveway. I didn't think anything of it and promptly forgot about it. Some time later I noticed it again, except that it looked like it had risen several inches and was almost a foot across in diameter.

Eventually I got around to peeling some of the cracking asphalt away to reveal... GIANT MUSHROOMS attacking from below.

Scary stuff.

waxing philosophic

the Skills and Dynamics curriculum, despite being a touchy-feely subject, has proven to be pretty challenging. Today it was really "storming," with some of the discussion really putting my sympathetic nervous system into overdrive -- starting innocently enough on the topic of diversity and finding ourselves (or maybe just me, at least) deep in the mire of conflicting belief systems and world views. That's diversity for you, I guess.

But I didn't really want to talk about class. It was just the starting point for a conversation which fed into some web surfing that sparked a semi-random thought process which brings me back here. Thinking. And wanting to write some of it down.

There's an undercurrent of national politics that I've been trying to hide from since November, but I'm feeling like I'm being slowly dragged back into it again, awareness creeping in around the corners. You can't avoid hearing about radical activist legislators trying to brute-force their judicial nominees; I take a peek at the Downing Street Memo after seeing a reference on WWdN. There's always more if you really want to look for it. I don't, but I poke into the Huffington Post anyway; I read something about Warren Beatty versus the Governator, find myself drawn to the headline: "Darwin's theory evolves into culture war." Memories of the PBS series that had one show dedicated to discussing the relationship between religion and the theory of evolution.

And I think to myself: I may not believe in the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent (and let's not forget jealous and demanding) Judeo-Christian God (or His apparently intolerant and megalomaniacal contemporary American counterpart), but I do feel like you can see something of the divine in all the things in the world around us, in the simplest processes of basic life.

We may be able to build machines that can manipulate individual atoms, but even if we could configure the carbon and hydrogen atoms perfectly, the amino acids, all the necessary pieces parts, we still couldn't truly create life -- create the systems that make a leaf grow with all it's beautifully complex structures or even simply make a cell divide. You can call it God and I can just leave it as the mystery of Nature and we can call it even.

I'd be cool with that. Just sayin'.

Ok, bedtime.

check in

Gonna try to keep this short due to both time pressures and fears that Blogger is just going to eat the post again.

Feeling... like something just wasn't right today, but couldn't put my finger on it. Maybe I was just tired, but it didn't really feel like, well, being tired. (Even if I was a little tired.) More out of sync, or something off kilter, like on a metaphysical level or something.

I've noticed that I'm not feeling quite as emotionally raw as I did a few weeks ago, but I'm pretty sure it's still there, just barely skinned over, ever so slightly outside of my perception.

Little things seem to take me down. I'm feeling hypersensitive. Feeling overly needy and then isolating myself because I don't want to bleed my neediness all over my friends and acquaintances.

Thank god the SOOTTAD will be back in town in less than a week.

Unproductive

Not the dreaded ZPD (zero-productivity day), but this morning was the first time at the new job where I've felt listless and wholly unproductive. Managed to get back into the swing of things, relatively speaking, by early afternoon, but it wasn't one of my better days.

I'm going to chalk this one up to missing the SOOTTAD (didn't get a chance to talk to her last night, and didn't get any email from her until after lunch), insufficient sleep, and not taking my vitamins.

Disc makes it better, sometimes

Disc is my therapy.

I've been trying to write about this for a couple of weeks but life has not only been getting in the way, it's been body-slamming me to the mat and leaving me for dead. I tried to take some time to write over the weekend but Blogger ate my post multiple times so I finally gave up, hours and sleep lost. But here I go again -- hopefully it doesn't prove to be yet another exercise that I'm going to regret I didn't spend studying or trying to get some more sleep.

Things have been pretty rough the last few weeks, but I think I'm finally acclimating to things. Either that or it's just a calm between storms. The race is done, as are this past week's quizzes in physiology and anatomy and papers for school. And work. Which is, well, work. Going to have to get mentally prepared for going into the office tomorrow, but things still seem to be operating within normal-ish parameters.

I don't want to get too sidetracked, so I'll just say that work was weird on a couple of levels. There's the usual stuff I suspect about reentering the working world after a five month layoff, but it's also the first time I'm working as an independent contractor and some stuff specific to this job in particular that makes it not really like contracting which just makes the whole thing much more complicated in my head than it should be, and much more complicated than something that I'd be able to write about here.

And I wanted to talk about disc.

So things have been a bit rough the past few weeks, not just because I've suddenly found myself busier than I can ever really remember, but also because of the whole thing with the SOOTTAD moving to Chicago (still sucks, BTW), and well, yeah, actually I think it does have a lot to do with being busy. But let me get to the disc stuff, before this thing gets too long and Blogger eats my post again.

Anyway, as I was saying: I've been using disc as therapy. It hadn't been a conscious thing until a few weeks ago when I was having a particularly bad week. It was the first Monday after the SOOTTAD, and the




FUCK!

blogger just ate my post. Again. This has to be the fifth or sixth time now.

I swear I've been trying to write this fucking post for the better part of 3 weeks.

I could have been studying. Or sleeping.

FUCK.

Ok, I give up. The nutshell: this is about my Monday night BUDA games in JP.

Disc has been been good for me. It's been helping a lot. It makes me feel better.

Life has been sucking. I've been busy. I've been stressed about school. I've been stressed about starting a new job. I've been tired. I've been overtired. I've missed the SOOTTAD terribly.

I've felt depressed, it made me feel better. I had heartburn. It made me feel better. I was exhausted. I still felt exhausted, but it gave me some indications that I WAS exhausted and should try to get more rest. I was depressed and really looking forward to disc and my game got cut short and my emotions went beserk and I felt really stupid about it. It seemed a lot like addiction. I question my overreliance and dependency on any external THING that I use to make things better. THE END.

Fucking Blogger.

Ass Warming

Car equipped with ass-warmers (heated seats): GOOD.

Needing to engage ass-warmers in May: BAD.

Stupid weather.

Big Lake

Just finished the Big Lake half-marathon in Alton, New Hamster, by Lake Winnipesauke.

Run observations:

• After being in the low 60s and at least partly sunny for most of the past week, on race day it's in the low 40s, rainy and windy. F'ing wet and cold. At the end of the race, I couldn't untie my shoelace to remove the timing chip because my fingers had gone completely numb.

• I found it amusing to see the stream of runners (slowly working up the first of the big inclines) passing the "SPEED LIMIT 50" sign. I realize that this is probably only amusing to me.

• The race sponsors a "Big Lake Battle" where there's a competition between the Water stations for the group that is the most spirited. Rain kept most of the fiddlers, banjo and acoustic guitar players playing out of the back of their trucks, which sadly made them hard to hear until you were just passing them.
  Most memorable: scary clown woman juggling to the macarena (and earlier, that weird techno version of Cotton-Eye Joe).
  Most enjoyable: barbershop quartet, around mile 8, singing in the light rain on a quiet stretch of road.

• Speaking of music, for practically the entire race, I had the "horns" from the Ben Folds' song Army going through my head:
  

  Baaaaaahhhh---- ba ba bah-baaah---- ba ba bah-baaah---- bah-ba BAH
  Ba ba baaaaahhhh---- bah-bah ba ba ba bah-- ba da bah-bah ba ba ba-da-dah
  (in concert, the entire crowd will sing the two parts)

  The whole race. Much less annoying than you might expect.
  Actually, kinda cool. Certainly, better than the macarena.
  Although I did try to do the macarena as I passed the scary clown woman.

• Thankful that I bought new shoes before this race. There were a few nasty downhills that would have totally wrecked my knees, I think.

• Despite the hilly course, and the crappy weather, and being stressed with school and the new job, I still finished with a better time than the Boston race. (although I was getting sick at the time.) Chip time: 1:40:33

Ok, now I have to go and write a stupid paper for class.

Bleeding Heart

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

busy, tired

hopefully i'll finally have some time to write within the next week or so.

but right now, sleep is the first priority.

i hope there's time for it soon.

sleep, that is.