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Dec. 23rd, 2005 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikSo much I haven't written about.
Solstice was very fine. Not people pouring out of the house, but then the weeknight ones usually are a little quieter. Dessert wines were a very good tasting theme. There was this chocolate port... Next year will be alcoholic eggnogs. I didn't play with the forge, for which I am somewhat regretful, but I was a little sore, and my back was being rubbed. Stayed up well past dawn, I don't know what got into me. Nice group of people, and good conversations, that was certainly a big part of it.
And then I went in to try and donate blood, and my blood iron was too low. Okay, I guess I need to deal with that. (But I ate sushi three times the week before! I suspect I'm not absorbing the iron well from plant sources, however. Or cooking enough in my iron pot.)
Yesterday I put in some time in the lab (note to self: if you know you're going to end up setting up that portion of the net, don't let someone else buy the hardware), went home to grumble to myself about my little fingers being numb and my back being achey, and then was reminded of the Grind. So I went to the Grind, and had probably the most fun I've had there, and learned the important lesson that I like dancing with people more if it's more like sparring. (I'd known that I preferred to dance with martial artists -- well, some martial artists -- but I hadn't made the connection. I thought it was more of a movement thing...)
Will someone please remind me next quarter, after classes get going, that I should go to the Grind occaisionally even if I have an 8:30 class the next morning? And I saw all these people, some of whom I didn't know know went there, and some whom I hadn't seen in ages, and some who I'd never seen before at all.
And then this morning I got up (after too little sleep) and went to break another physical therapist. Alexa will be back next week, for which I am quite thankful. Meanwhile, this guy is nice, and a good manual therapist (couldn't deal with the knot on the right side of my upper thurassic spine, but hey), but... he has a doctorate in physical therapy, and he had just completely given up and expected me to run things. I was being nice. I was not being overbearing at all. But he was all "Well, would you like to do some exercises in the gym, or maybe traction...?" in this vaguely helpless voice. So I said traction would be nice, and then afterwards he was "Well, you could go now, or would you like to use the gym?" And I did, so I went to stretch ("Oh!" says the aide "You're so stretchy!" <= Not making this up) and he watched for a minute or two, and then said "I'll just leave you to this, you obvious know a lot more about this than I do."
This is why I am sometimes reluctant to go back into physical therapy, even when I know I kind of need it. This is also why I have so little interest in getting a DPT, for those of you who've asked. I wouldn't mind apprenticing under Alexa, if I could avoid the prior years of boring training which as far as I can tell are designed to produce mediocre physical therapists. Okay, in his defense, a number of the stretches I was doing at the end were ones I'd made up, and they probably do look odd if you're not used to them.
Then back to the lab, and a lot of boring trying to hack an interface because we don't want to buy the stupid proprietary client and hell we don't have anything better to do to the tune of lengthy discussions of local food, politics, and architecture. At which point K fetched us to go to the pub and just as we were venturing through the department doors D showed up (having been absent from the lab all day) apparently being equipt with flawless "going to the pub" instincts. It was amazing...
And there we split three pitchers of cider between five people, and I was somehow considered to be the best person to consult for gifts for people's mothers. This was not made any easier when D mentioned that his mother was 46... and then seemed to completely fail to understand why I was laughing helplessly. So I took a bus home with a general feeling of contentment and well being.
Body log: My body is being better, but the one spot on the right side of my upper thurassic spine is a bear. I keep on bringing up using tools like chisels and jackhammers, but no one will try them. Which seems silly, as nothing else is working.
I've been taking the new drugs for a month now, and they generally seem to be helping -- I sleep better, I suffer from a bit less residual muscle tension. Not a cure, but an experiment I'm willing to continue with for a while. It also seems to have cut down on some of the weirder metabolic side effects of being in a lot of pain... so I'm not having the blood sugar fluctuations, and I have little appetite most of the time. I've dropped six pounds since I started it... (Of the fifteenish I gained in the past quarter.)
Which is leading me to think that maybe, after all these years, I should track my weight. Because the awful truth of it is that when my body is fucked up, I do gain weight, and when it's not fucked up I've been pretty consistantly becoming firmer and fitter. Sometimes that might be one of the best indicators that whatever is going on isn't just something I can ignore, but something I need to deal with. I really hate the thought, both because I hate the general emphasis weight having to do with health, which is generally stupid, and because my younger siblings have both had problems (though not major problems) with eating disorders, and I've always thought with that kind of familial background it's just better to remove myself from temptation.
Maybe I'll get one of those nifty scales with the body fat indicators (which aren't that great, but are entertaining). More likely, I'll table the idea... or maybe start using a scale at the gym. (Assuming I'm going regularly, which I probably will until the weather gets better, but then not.)
Solstice was very fine. Not people pouring out of the house, but then the weeknight ones usually are a little quieter. Dessert wines were a very good tasting theme. There was this chocolate port... Next year will be alcoholic eggnogs. I didn't play with the forge, for which I am somewhat regretful, but I was a little sore, and my back was being rubbed. Stayed up well past dawn, I don't know what got into me. Nice group of people, and good conversations, that was certainly a big part of it.
And then I went in to try and donate blood, and my blood iron was too low. Okay, I guess I need to deal with that. (But I ate sushi three times the week before! I suspect I'm not absorbing the iron well from plant sources, however. Or cooking enough in my iron pot.)
Yesterday I put in some time in the lab (note to self: if you know you're going to end up setting up that portion of the net, don't let someone else buy the hardware), went home to grumble to myself about my little fingers being numb and my back being achey, and then was reminded of the Grind. So I went to the Grind, and had probably the most fun I've had there, and learned the important lesson that I like dancing with people more if it's more like sparring. (I'd known that I preferred to dance with martial artists -- well, some martial artists -- but I hadn't made the connection. I thought it was more of a movement thing...)
Will someone please remind me next quarter, after classes get going, that I should go to the Grind occaisionally even if I have an 8:30 class the next morning? And I saw all these people, some of whom I didn't know know went there, and some whom I hadn't seen in ages, and some who I'd never seen before at all.
And then this morning I got up (after too little sleep) and went to break another physical therapist. Alexa will be back next week, for which I am quite thankful. Meanwhile, this guy is nice, and a good manual therapist (couldn't deal with the knot on the right side of my upper thurassic spine, but hey), but... he has a doctorate in physical therapy, and he had just completely given up and expected me to run things. I was being nice. I was not being overbearing at all. But he was all "Well, would you like to do some exercises in the gym, or maybe traction...?" in this vaguely helpless voice. So I said traction would be nice, and then afterwards he was "Well, you could go now, or would you like to use the gym?" And I did, so I went to stretch ("Oh!" says the aide "You're so stretchy!" <= Not making this up) and he watched for a minute or two, and then said "I'll just leave you to this, you obvious know a lot more about this than I do."
This is why I am sometimes reluctant to go back into physical therapy, even when I know I kind of need it. This is also why I have so little interest in getting a DPT, for those of you who've asked. I wouldn't mind apprenticing under Alexa, if I could avoid the prior years of boring training which as far as I can tell are designed to produce mediocre physical therapists. Okay, in his defense, a number of the stretches I was doing at the end were ones I'd made up, and they probably do look odd if you're not used to them.
Then back to the lab, and a lot of boring trying to hack an interface because we don't want to buy the stupid proprietary client and hell we don't have anything better to do to the tune of lengthy discussions of local food, politics, and architecture. At which point K fetched us to go to the pub and just as we were venturing through the department doors D showed up (having been absent from the lab all day) apparently being equipt with flawless "going to the pub" instincts. It was amazing...
And there we split three pitchers of cider between five people, and I was somehow considered to be the best person to consult for gifts for people's mothers. This was not made any easier when D mentioned that his mother was 46... and then seemed to completely fail to understand why I was laughing helplessly. So I took a bus home with a general feeling of contentment and well being.
Body log: My body is being better, but the one spot on the right side of my upper thurassic spine is a bear. I keep on bringing up using tools like chisels and jackhammers, but no one will try them. Which seems silly, as nothing else is working.
I've been taking the new drugs for a month now, and they generally seem to be helping -- I sleep better, I suffer from a bit less residual muscle tension. Not a cure, but an experiment I'm willing to continue with for a while. It also seems to have cut down on some of the weirder metabolic side effects of being in a lot of pain... so I'm not having the blood sugar fluctuations, and I have little appetite most of the time. I've dropped six pounds since I started it... (Of the fifteenish I gained in the past quarter.)
Which is leading me to think that maybe, after all these years, I should track my weight. Because the awful truth of it is that when my body is fucked up, I do gain weight, and when it's not fucked up I've been pretty consistantly becoming firmer and fitter. Sometimes that might be one of the best indicators that whatever is going on isn't just something I can ignore, but something I need to deal with. I really hate the thought, both because I hate the general emphasis weight having to do with health, which is generally stupid, and because my younger siblings have both had problems (though not major problems) with eating disorders, and I've always thought with that kind of familial background it's just better to remove myself from temptation.
Maybe I'll get one of those nifty scales with the body fat indicators (which aren't that great, but are entertaining). More likely, I'll table the idea... or maybe start using a scale at the gym. (Assuming I'm going regularly, which I probably will until the weather gets better, but then not.)
