100% AI-free half-assed writing hand crafted by Kevin Lawver about programming, life, cooking and random nonsense.
I had a rough night last night. Sleeping with a ten pound ski boot wrapped in a pillowcase on your foot is not easy, even with vicodin. This morning isn’t much easier. I’m trying to concentrate, and listen to music, but I keep thinking about Ireland for some stupid reason, and Athassel Priory in particular (where this picture was taken). I’m not sure why.
That’s probably true of a lot of things. In this case, I’m talking about the sad, sad, saga of my ankle (first post, second post). I went to the doctor this morning, and the news isn’t good. It’s not as bad as it could have been, but it’s bad enough that I’m not happy.\
There’s nothing wrong with my foot (that the MRI showed) other than the nickel sized piece of bone. But, since the boot hasn’t been helping, Doctor Sam isn’t confident that surgery is going to help. So, my options boil down to the following:
One of the only good things about having a really slow metabolism is that pain killers stay in my system for a very long time. Ok, maybe that’s not a good thing. I’m feeling the pain, but I’m still loopy. Writing code while high may work for some folks, but it doesn’t work for me, especially with my constant interruptions (and they are constant – why do you think I’m a winner at AIM Fight).\
The MRI went pretty well yesterday. I looked at the films and I can see the break, and nickel sized chunk of bone hanging out. Well, I could see it before through the skin (it looks like a second ankle down and forward from my “real” ankle). I have a lot of pain on the outside of the ankle, and I couldn’t see anything broken there, but what do I know? I’m no doctor (but I’ve seen enough of my own x-rays, and played enough games with Max to know what’s broken). Oh yeah, and I either have really flat feet, or the bones in my foot are seriously out of place now.\
I can’t wait to see what the good doctor has to say on Monday (and I may try to scan in the best MRI shot so you can see the break before the doctor takes them away from me… it’s cool-lookin’).
I love waiting when I know what the outcome’s going to be. I have to have surgery to repair the navicular bone (near the ankle). Well, not really “repair”, more like “remove”. Then they’ll reinforce the tendon. It’s “serious”, according to my doctor. He told me, “You’re about to do something very difficult.” Yeah, that’s exactly what I want to hear from a doctor.\
Now, I’m waiting around for my insurance company to approve an MRI so we can find out how “difficult” this is going to be. After the MRI, I get to wait a week, then I see the doctor, then I get cut on. Oh, then the fun begins. I’ll be short a bone in my foot, in a cast for a while, then in physical therapy for who knows how long.\
And herein lies the silence. It’s hard to walk in the boot. It’s hard to drive. It’s hard to sit at a computer. It’s hard to sleep. And it’s only going to get harder.\
So, I write my presentations, I help my people, I talk to folks and I take a lot of ibuprofen. Oh, and redesign this site, read up on Ruby and thinking of building something worth trying Rails for. Oh, and I’m working on my very own microformat.\
And tomorrow, it’s time to compile all the comments on the big CSS Question, sort them and start coming up with some concrete proposals.
Here’s an unfortunate India story for you.\
Our first day of work in India, someone had forgotten to tell the driver that we needed to be picked up, so we took a cab. The cab let us off across the street from the office, which meant we had to run for our lives across the chaotic three lanes (approximate… they do not believe in lanes in Bangalore) of traffic. Wait, that’s six lanes because it was three lanes going each way. There was a grassy median in the middle of the street offering some sanctuary to the poor bastards (those bastards being us) who couldn’t run fast enough to make it across all six lanes during one red light (which maybe Carl Lewis could do, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else do it).\
You had to wait for a red light before trying to make the dash, and the red lights are short. We waited for the left-hand turning people to go, the right turn folks, and then had about 15 seconds to cross the three lanes before the go-straight folks took off in a rush of dust, fumes, and most importantly, heavy machinery. I almost didn’t make it. In order to dodge the first intrepid motor rickshaw that was about to run me down, I jumped onto the sidewalk…\
And right into a pothole. I rolled my ankle inward, so I could see the bottom of my shoe when I looked down. I stumbled, caught myself and then swore. It didn’t hurt all that much, but it was definitely weird. It had that wooden feeling of a freshly sprained ankle. It didn’t swell up, and the bruising was minimal, but it felt sprained all week.\
I spent the next week putting two or three extra socks on it, and walking carefully. By the end of the week, it didn’t hurt too bad, but still felt weird, and I had a noticeable limp. Then I came home. The first week, it started hurting. The second, my limp got worse, as did the pain. I went to see the doctor who ordered x-rays. This morning, I went to the same practice that fixed my ACL five years ago, and they said that definitely something is weird. I have an inflamed tendon that’s pulling a bone out of place (and that really hurts. On top of that, I have (before now undiagnosed) plantar fasciitis which is just now coming out because it’s being aggravated by this other thing. And, all of that is aggravating me.\
So, to sum up: I’m stuck in a boot that I can’t take off except when I’m driving, which I’m supposed to limit, for four weeks. If I’m not all better in four weeks, I spent four more weeks in the boot. After that, if it’s not better, I get to have surgery. Have a happy summer everyone!
People who share my birthday (thanks, Cheryl!):
People who died on my birthday (kind of depressing, but interesting, eh?):
You’d think the day would feel different, it being the anniversary of my birth and all. It really doesn’t. I did get a celebratory omelette this morning from the cafeteria. It was good, but it wasn’t an R2-D2 cake.
I feel like taking it easy today. I want to play some UT, work on something fun, blow off the one meeting I have scheduled… I should have taken the day off, huh? But no, as soon as I tried to do that something would come up and I would have to come in anyway.
Yeah, can you tell I have nothing to say today? It’s my birthday though, and I don’t hafta if I don’t wanna.
Yes, you heard it here first. I’m pale and I’m okay with that. I joined a bowling league last night. I wore rented shoes and threw heavy orbs at unsuspecting wooden shapes, in the hopes of knocking all the them down so I could receive high-fives and well-meant congratulations. I’m a middle-class white guy who now has “bowling league member” on my resume. I even did ok for not having bowled in several years (I’m having a hard time pinning down when exactly I bowled last…). I bowled a 90 my first game, a 109 the second, and after working out most of the kinks, rolled a 147 in the last game. That’s respectable, I think.
The other thing I noticed about bowling leagues is how accurate The Big Lebowski is. I saw several people wearing DudePants™: Brightly colored, elastic-waisted, not quite warm-up pants, pants. If you check out the cover of the DVD, you can make out the kind I’m talking about. There was even one older genteman in a purple polo shirt and purple and black zebra DudePants™. They were amazing, on top of the fact that he looked like Captain Kangeroo. He was Captain KangerDude, bowling on the Greenjeans Hardware and Appliance Team. I can’t wait till next week… I never knew people watching at the bowling alley would be so much fun.
In geeky news, I wrote a full-text indexer and search engine for our intranet yesterday. I love it when an idea that just comes to me actually works. I was trying to get to sleep Saturday night and just couldn’t stop thinking about it. So, I came in yesterday morning, finished up everything I had to do work-wise and then spent several hours writing, tweaking, testing and laughing as I saw pages go in,and orderly lists of unique words and counts came out. It was the most fun I’ve had at work in a long time.
I was offered a job today. Not formally, but I was definitely offered one. I didn’t apply for the job, or give any signals that I wanted the job, but it was offered. I’m extremely excited. It’s within the company, and pretty much the job of my dreams. It will involve more than just building things, but software design, concepts and developing strategy, which is a lot more than I do know. It’s a new challenge. I think I’m ready for it. I’ve been kind of coasting lately, and feeling a little stagnant. This new job will give me the opportunity to get more involved in all facets of Searchin’ for stuff, and man, that’s fun. Can’t wait till I can give you more details…