Hjälp!

Inspired by my sister's recent acquisition of an affordable, attractive bed frame, I ventured into an Ikea store today for the first time EVER.

My favorite thing was the bin of plush, cuddly giant mealy bugs with big mouths that zipped open, perhaps so that they can devour and/or store small children and pets.

I liked the mac 'n cheese a lot. The meatballs were okay but I should have had the vegetables with my mac 'n cheese instead. Next time. Next time I'm going to take someone with me so I don't get lost and totally overwhelmed by all the stuff, and then maybe I'd be able to consider actually buying something besides the mac 'n cheese and 15 meatball special. At least if you get too lost there you can always just move in to one of the little model apartments / compartments they have set up.

It pays to take a long lunch sometimes.

This is where my truck was parked about 45 minutes earlier...where it's been parked for hours and hours at a stretch...where I nearly always park. I'm glad it wasn't parked there at around 1:30 today. The people who usually work in the offices on that end of the building weren't at work either when branches came right through the roof and into the floor. Lucky day.

On the other foot?

I seem to be wearing mismatched running shoes today. Similar in style and color, but from two different pairs. On Monday I accidentally put on one of each and went to the gym, then I accidentally left them at the gym, so this morning before I went to the gym I had to put on the other two. I then retrieved the original two at the gym, but I forgot to bring other shoes for work (very casual though they likely would have been), and forgot all day to switch my running shoes so that at least I had a matching pair.

I don't think anyone noticed, or even blinked that I came to work wearing running shoes, and I wasn't seeing any clients today. I like my office.

Plus the whole knee thing gets me some extra slack. I wore my brace yesterday because (drumroll...) I Rode My Bike to Work! Otherwise, for general walking around, no brace!

I drove today but I think I'll ride again tomorrow. The doctor said on Monday that it's okay for me to ride a bike, it's just not okay to fall off.

football on my (subconscious) mind

I dreamed a few days ago that I was on the field with Brett Favre. The "old" guy has been on my mind since I saw the Green Bay / Dallas game last week, in which Brett went down with an elbow injury and local boy Aaron Rodgers got to step up. "Young" guy did a decent job even though he looks like he's about twelve years old compared to Brett's grizzled mug. Sadly, though not really unexpectedly, Dallas won. Not by a lot. Anyway, in my dream, I was suited up, and I don't think we were actually playing in a game but I ran up to Brett and chest bumped him a couple times, all the while thinking how I could hardly wait to tell my friends (especially some lifelong Green Bay fans) that I chest-bumped Brett Favre! For those not familiar with all the forms of celebratory behavior among football players (and players of other sports, I've heard), the chest-bump is performed by facing the co-celebrant and jumping up and forward, perhaps even with a small running start, with your shoulders back, so that you hit your numbers together. And yes, women football players do it too, and no, it doesn't hurt. Demonstrated here by some USC Trojans. (This photo is intended for demonstrative purposes only and is not an endorsement of the Trojans.)

For free

Imagine there were a God who did nothing but make the world amazingly beautiful every day, in a variety of short-term and long-term creative projects, even finding interesting ways to incorporate our refuse and exhaust (and dirty / cracked windshields) into some of the set pieces.

Home improvements

Aren't they pretty? I can't stop staring at them, and how nice objects look sitting on them. And I can look at them and think about building them with my dad, and putting them up today with my friend Lisa. Or, more accurately, watching her put them up and offering a third hand here and there. They are the nicest built-in feature of my kitchen. There is a fourth shelf that we...um, Lisa...put up in a corner of the living room, which is also lovely. She asked me if I wanted to do it since I'd watched her do the other three, and it just seemed like by then she was so good at it, it was a more efficient use of resources if I let her do the fourth one. I made her dinner though.

Word Wars

I just saw this documentary about the Scrabble tournament circuit...which I recommend with the caveat to some viewers that there's some pretty rough "street" language and a bit of illegal drug use. For one thing, it was comforting to see a film about people who are so odd in such a benign way. For another, it made me want to start reading the dictionary. Not necessarily to improve my Scrabble game. I learned that there is at least a 200 point average difference between me and people who do nothing but play Scrabble. Not long ago I had an informal tournament with one of the smartest people I know in the whole world and beat her in very close matches by taking advantage of her nurturing--motherly, if you will--nature (though it's true I was taking narcotic painkillers at the time) so I think that's really as, um, high as I need to climb in the Scrabble world. But in the universe of words known and unknown I'm feeling like I barely know a few that I tend to repeat over and over.

Here's one I learned in the movie: exordia.

I, and many of us, may be a bit more interested in the meanings of the words than a ranked Scrabble player tends to be, apparently. They have to memorize too many words to bother with definitions most of the time. Also there have been relatively few female Scrabble champions and in the film some of the women interviewed speculate that this may be due to the fact that women just can't bring themselves to care about Scrabble with quite the same obsessive intensity of some of the menfolk. I smell a thesis or dissertation here. Anyone? Anyone?

where have all the muscles gone?

Or more importantly, when will they return? They were here last Thanksgiving for this run in the park. Maybe if leave a dish of kibble, or some cookies and milk, on the balcony for them I can entice them back. Heeah, muscle muscle.

Coprinus comatus(?)

aka Shaggy Manes. These are new arrivals and haven't melted into the black goo that gives the Coprines their nickname "inky caps."

Shown here growing along Branscomb Road. Supposedly edible if one catches them early in their lifespan, though anything called an inky cap isn't all that edible-sounding to me. [Reminds me of Shel Silverstein's Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book wherein he asks the children, "What rhymes with Ink? Dr---"]

It's the time of the season for mushrooms

This weekend near Westport, I found some type of Bolete family mushrooms fruiting in the glen...and having looked them up, I'm reasonably sure they are Suillus caerulescens, aka Fat Jacks. I didn't take this picture but it happens to be a picture of Fat Jacks growing elsewhere in Mendocino County near the Frogwood Retreat Center in Boonville. [I'm plugging them in consideration for using their mushroom photo without permission. Sounds like a neat place though. Would be fun to go there some time and tell 'em Fat Jack sent me.]

I haven't found this kind before, though maybe they've been fruiting in that glen by our house year after year and I've just not shown up at the right time to see them. I'm still rather a beginning amateur mycologist and so many of the 'shrooms one encounters are somewhat anonymous, it's a thrill to find one that pretty obviously matches a photo and description. I can't quite explain why it's a thrill. Only once have I eaten something I found, honey mushrooms, after triple checking them in two different books and using the MycoKey web application. Just the easy, free online version of MycoKey seems pretty helpful. Though I just checked and Fat Jacks aren't in there. Mykoweb, the huge database from whence came the scientific description of Suillus linked above, says (in case you didn't quite read all the way through it) that Fat Jacks are "edible, but of inferior quality." Still, it was so fun to find them. I was explaining to a friend how the mushrooms that pop out are just the little fruiting body tips-of-the-iceberg of massive underground networks of mycelium and she found the concept somewhat unnerving. Paul Stamets says that mycelium is the earth's internet. He says quite a lot of things, though. He believes in fungal intelligence.

Week 6 Multimedia Update

Here is one of the clearer drawings I've seen of where the ACL is and what it looks like.

And HERE is the newly installed right ACL of the author, as it appeared six weeks ago Thursday. That shiny pulled-taffy looking bit in the middle.

On the sidebar you'll notice the green Gcast box. I posted a couple updates on the way back to work from the doctor's office today.

Doc says my range of motion looks really good. As you'll hear in my cellphone podcast though, weeks 6 - 12 are actually the weakest time for my ACL graft, even though the rest of me is starting to feel much better like we all ought to be out riding a bicycle soon. What was once a tendon gets somehow changed, by virtue of its relocation and careful reading of its job description, into a ligament. But right now it's at that point where it's tendon personality has been sort of worn down and its ligament personality hasn't been well established yet. So I have to be a bit cautious for six more weeks.

Next victim...Bwahahahaha!

At the co-op today they had these cute lettuce, snap pea, and marjoram starts. Some of them in recycled styrofoam cups, which added to their urban garden charm (kind of looked like the cup was lying by the road, and the farmer picked it up and used it to put the starts in, but I've made that story up based on what I'd like to be true, not what necessarily is).

There are quite a few...vacancies...on my balcony of late, you see. Room for one more, honey?

Really though, I've tried to keep the plants alive, but they've not much will, apparently. I hope my NEW plants are of a more stalwart character. heh heh...heh heh heh...

Message from Annie Lennox

This clip is being shown in conjunction with her tour and new album "Songs of Mass Destruction."

inventory

I've been trying to do some things that I've meant to do for a long time, that have been somewhat hanging over me and impeding my forward progress, much like big mean row of defensive linepersons in my head.

So.

I have recently:

• made a list of my expenses and income

• determined that my income really needs to be a bit higher

• taken a flyer to the local law school offering myself for tutoring services (did this Thursday, flyer has to be approved by the Dean, and I'm hoping that when the students get their midterm grades back soon, I'll get a few bites)

• photographed some things for e-bay that I will list this weekend

• made a commitment to sort out some old bills by the end of the day today (though what is the 'end of the day' may be open to interpretation)

• decided to stop avoiding the library and pay my fines today so I can check out books again (though I've not yet left the house today, this is something I'm intending to do)

• taken some things to a jewelry store to find out what the cash value might be

• thought about playing my guitar on the outskirts of the farmers' market, but slept in and stayed in my pajamas half the day instead (so far)

• vacuumed, because you can do this wearing pajamas

• made some payments toward my sleep debt

• decided to make a get well / birthday / el dia de los muertos card for my sister (why send three cards when one really good one will do?)

Not all of these things have felt terribly good to do or to think about, but I think they will all make way toward feeling better.

Wade in the water children

Besides saving a bit on gas, the one other advantage of not driving is that when someone calls to say they're going to the gym, do you want them to pick you up, it's harder to resist than if it were just you offering to drive yourself to the gym. Today I rode a recumbent bike for about 15 minutes and actually worked up a little sweat. Had a sensation of exercise. Then did some upper-body stuff, and some of my PT exercises, and headed for the therapy pool (has a higher temperature than the lap pool, and no lanes).

As I hoped, there was aqua jogging gear in bins by the pool so I strapped some weights to my ankles and put on a styrofoam belt, and tried it out. It felt good to be out in the sun, and to be able to move that freely. I'll ask my PT about it tomorrow. Not sure if it's better to use the ankle weights or not. I liked the resistance and the help keeping myself pointed in the right directions, but from the articles I've read today it sounds like part of the workout comes from trying to maintain your balance and position in the water. I read that it is actually a comparable workout to running on land. I'm not yet fully convinced, but I want to try again. Would be great to start getting some running muscles back. 'Running' in the water feels like trying to run away in a bad dream when you can't get any traction. Apart from that, great fun. My legs move back and forth, but are they running? Doesn't feel like they are. Maybe next time I'll see what it's like to try 'running' in the pool for 30 minutes at a time. I could do a whole mini triathlon, just in a slightly mixed up order. Bike, swim, run.

People ask how long I have to wear my giant brace. If I was actually told this information I don't remember. I will definitely wear it (other than around the house, when I don't) until my next appointment with the doctor on Oct. 22, when he will be ever so impressed by my progress, and perhaps will tell me I can downgrade (upgrade?) from Forrest Gump (it even makes that clickety-clackety sound) to my stealthy sports coupe brace.

What's next

Report from week 3: On Thursday I had to lie down on the floor in my office because my lower back was so sore. All the hobbling around finally got to it. I've been using my cane instead of my crutches for several days, greedily wanting at least one free hand, and I'm wondering if I need the crutches to distribute weight better. If they might have some function other than just stability for my knee.

Heat feels good on the back, though. Still sore but I hitched a ride to the gym last night, where I discovered there is such a thing as a recumbent stair climber, with handles for upper body resistance. Such a device was never on my workout radar before but it seemed like just the thing. Also rode a stationary bike. I can't go fast enough with enough resistance to raise my heart rate much or even break a sweat. But I'm trying to remind myself that the motion and muscle strengthening is the important thing. I get that back, I can have all the cardio I want. I sat in the spa for awhile. All of it felt pretty good on the back.

So as alluded in the heading of this blog, I have some announcements. After much deliberation and cost-benefit analysis, I have decided to retire from playing tackle football. But I am hoping to try out for the position of Official Minstrel in addition to Rage Groupie, and avid team proponent, short of donating further limbs. I just can't do this again. 'This' meaning not only the colorful photos in the preceding posts but everything that goes with them; that it is a stunningly gorgeous autumn day and I'm staring at my bike and can't ride it. And I'd like to still be riding a bike in my crone years, which (whatever some people say about me) I've not reached just yet, and I'll need at least a little knee joint function left to do that. The bit of arthritis Doc cleaned up in my knee is probably more to do with all my pre-football running, but getting more beat up won't help it. And I'd still like to be able to run when I feel like it. I have talked to teammates for whom the opportunity to tear 'em down on the field is so satisfying as to be worth the risks. Maybe if I were a bit more aggressive in spirit and burly of build, that would be true for me too. If I need a combat sport outlet, and I might, I think jiujitsu might be a better choice. Something where relative momentum and mass are less important details. Meanwhile, I want to ride my bicycle.

Which brings me to the next big thing. In May 2008 I will be riding my bike in the NorCal AIDS Challenge, a 325 mile / 4 day loop of the northern Sacramento valley, to raise funds for HIV / AIDS programs. Just seemed like a great way to get my knee rehabbed and the rest of me back in shape, keep my spirits up, and do something helpful, all at the same time. The organizations benefiting from the funds are local / Sacramento area and are oriented toward keeping people housed, fed and cared for. Despite my periodic whining about sore this or that or having to ask people to drive me around for a few weeks, I know that my temporary slight disability is really quite luxurious in the scope of health problems a person can experience. So here is my official Donation Page for the ride. Feel free to visit early and often.

Superfriends

Just had an interesting conversation with a fellow Co-op board member who drove me home from Sac about how culture can be manipulated to great effect by companies or political movements trying to sell their products / canditates...e.g. Nestle creating a market for coffee in Japan by marketing coffee-flavored candies with cartoon characters to kids 30 years ago...now coffee has an enormous market share where it was previously unsuccessful because there was no cultural imprint for it there. Same with the Republican party / far right and the focus-group research done on what buzzwords are the most powerful, etc., working to create a culture that could embrace its manifest destiny agenda.

This is stuff I'd like to look into a bit, not having yet read the books my colleague was talking about and being unable to cite check him at the moment, but it makes me think that true liberals need to be much more pragmatic about these things. I don't mean that individual "liberal" political candidates need to be more pragmatic. I trust at least some of the current ones to be absolutely that. We don't want to just copy what the Empire does. This would be a much more grassroots, local kind of pragmatism, in which activists work to create a bigger cultural space for things like co-operative and /or locally owned / operated businesses (for example). We talked about how we might create a better cultural imprint for the Co-op in our town which is still completely off the radar of too many people, or is viewed as some kind of hippie fringe establishment by many others. Suddenly the importance of events like "Freaky Food Fun Fest" that we have every year around Halloween have more meaning. We are imprinting the little children to believe that the Co-op is fun. It's not just about generating more sales on that particular day or even just about encouraging more (grownups) to join the Co-op right away. It's ensuring future generations of co-op member-owners. This is perhaps obvious, but I Since somebody in a board room is trying to do this to us just about every minute of every day of our lives, why not adopt these principles to things we really like and care about and would like to see more of in the world. We want to be a board room that uses our (limited) powers and budget for good.

I'm having these deep (and perhaps just slightly creepy) thoughts due to today having attended a workshop on Co-op Board governance, presented by the co-op network (a co-op made of co-ops) to which we belong. It allows member stores can pool buying power and thus stay more viable than individual little grocery stores might be. Also makes me think that even though there's now a giant Walmart in my poor old hometown, it was very very important for the message to get out that not everyone thought it was a fine idea, that quite a few people would rather it not be there. Bless all of you who have the will to say no, or even no thank you, right out loud, to whatever cultural steamroller may come rolling by. Good assumptions should withstand questioning just fine, and bad ones too often win by no contest. Getting steamrolled by a bad assumption can ruin your whole day but I think it feels better if you yell a bit (or whatever level of dissent with which one is comfortable and deems appropriate to the situation). So at the very least, they (steamroller operators) won't follow their initial bad assumption with the additional bad assumption that nobody cared / everybody agreed.

I'm all made of hinges...

...'Cause everything [sort of] bends. Good day at physical therapy yesterday.
Jeff (my PT) "stretched" me which meant that he bent my leg until, and considerably after, I hollered and / or gave him the grimacing of a lifetime. I remarked that apparently he hadn't yet broken it off which seemed to encourage him. But then he said "How about you sit on the stationary bike and just swing your foot back and forth--don't force it to go all the way around, but if it wants to, that's fine." So I did that for awhile, and after awhile it seemed like maybe I could go all the way 'round after all. No resistance. Just motion. After that we (he) did more stretching and my flexibility was greatly improved. He must know what he's doing.
Check out the degrees of flexion here!

Compare this
to the post-surgery photo. Just shy of two weeks since surgery and it looks quite a bit like a knee again.

Bad thoughts

It's really not nice to imagine running over someone with my bike, and I surely want Karla (and myself) to use our powers (generally) for good, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't ultimately help this woman change her perspective for the good of our nation. I think something that can run your dumb a** down in addition to taking people to work and school every day merits the label "transportation." This article is more than a month old and has probably already been thoroughly discussed in numerous other fora, but my profound hostility feels quite fresh. Who hired this imbecile? hmm. Well that probably explains it. GRRRRRRRR. They are so lucky that I can't ride right now.

Okay. For the sake of good research I looked up the original PBS article from whence came the obviously "spun" Treehugger.com piece. However, I think it's a fair spin. While she didn't utter the words "bicycles are not transportation," she twice stated that a good chunk of transportation funds are spent on non-transportation uses, including, inter alia, "...bike paths..." Maybe I shouldn't be too ruffled about this after all. When the oil empire crumbles and almost nobody can afford to drive, there will suddenly be bike paths all over the place, with clever names like Main Street, Broadway, Route 66, I-5, I-80, I-15...

Run, Forrest, Run!

I'm definitely not running right now. Still walking pretty slowly with assorted props. I'm already more than a bit weary of wearing this brace. The novelty of it has worn off and I'm feeling a bit like poor little Forrest Gump. (Special thanks to somebody who recently suggested there was a resemblance, too.) My goal for the coming week is to be able to unlock (i.e. bend) the brace when I walk. I'm not supposed to do that yet, nor does it feel like I should. My leg muscles can't quite hold me steady. Before my second physical therapy session last week I was lamenting the sudden dramatic loss of muscle strength in my right quad and hamstring. Amazing how quick it goes. But then the PT gave me quite a boost in pointing out that, unlike many people a week out of knee surgery, I actually have visible muscle tone (at least in my quad--my hamstring muscle currently just sort of flops, but it's then it's been through a lot). He also said I'm on or ahead of schedule with my range of motion.

So the moral of the story, if anybody reading this is anticipating knee surgery, is: get on your bike and ride. As much as you can. Up the biggest hills you can manage (understanding that not everybody has a 'Karla'). I don't think I realized how helpful it would turn out to be. Not just good fun exercise.

I made it through a whole day yesterday without any Norco. Before that I was down to half a pill every 24 hours. Looks like I can manage alright with just Vitamin I and ice at this point. Good progress. I also have a fridge and freezer loaded with ready-to-eat food. Mom left me with a big pot of chili frozen into meal-sized portions, which I'm enjoying for lunch with my Sunday football today, and my friend H left a lasagna I'm going to bake for dinner...wanna come over?

Going to work tomorrow. Don't know if I'll stay the whole day but I'm ready to give it a try. Our office manager will pick me up bright and early at 8:30.