applebee's is evil. someone remind me to never go there again, please.
big opening night tonight. not quite excited, definitely starting to get nervous, though.
February 2008 Archives
sometimes, i just get tired of sharing the planet with other people.
i love my massage therapist.
that is all.
standing in the gallery, just about to hand over my framed photo for the exhibition, there is a loud and gut-wrenching *CRASH* as it falls to the concrete floor.
oops.
earlier this week i attempted to post something via imified, but it kept erroring out. i never found out if it was a problem with their stuff or my stuff, but it was annoying, so forgot to post it when i got home that night. then, i thought about posting it today, but upon reading it, i realized it was woefully out of date -- scary that three days can have such an impact.
one of the items in the post was me talking about how i'd reached a dangerous part of my CFC journey. i had started to feel really good physically. i'd dropped a few pounds, but mostly i was experiencing a re-connection with the strength my body hasn't felt in many years... and i was enjoying it. that part of my fitness experiences is dangerous because it's when i tend to stop trying to progress. why bother when i already feel results? isn't that enough?
the very same day i wanted to tell you about the potential motivational hurdle, i encountered a very different obstacle in my journey: knee injury.
i'd done my very sweaty thirty minutes on the elliptical. i'd stretched out. i'd done my upper body free weights. i was on the floor working my core when a mis-placed foot during a bridge pose caused too much torque on my left knee and SNAP! i was injured.
as soon as i felt that snap i knew what had occurred. it'd happened to me 11 years ago on a plane to Boston for Heather's wedding. i couldn't extend or bend my knee fully and any lateral movement was quite unstable. i was beyond upset.
i hobbled home, applied ice and took some naproxen for the swelling and went to bed. i kept waking up in the middle of the night as i rolled over, fearful of twisting something more out of place. silly me, i went to work the next day. silly, because the elevator doesn't go to the floor my office is on, access is only by stairs. silly, because my work involves a lot of different locations and ambulation is fairly mandatory. i smartened up enough to call the doctor and make an appointment for that afternoon. i wanted to get any treatment needed underway as soon as possible. i had CFC to get back to!
the doctor pushed up my pant legs, poked, pulled, yanked and wiggled my leg for a few minutes all the while looking up at me waiting for me to wince or cry out in pain. the lack thereof was determined to be a very good sign. the diagnosis: twisted tendons, resulting in inflammation. the treatment: more anti-inflammatories and ice packs. the prognosis: full range of motion will return, give it 10 days.
the latter was the most important news. i was so happy to hear it.
i've spent the last two days at home, avoiding all those work stairs and required hobbling. my boyfriend has been incredibly sweet and attentive, quite overprotective and adorable, actually. range of motion has improved 50% already and i hope i won't limp too much when i go to drop off my photo for the gallery show this afternoon.
slow and steady will have to be my mantra when i return to CFC. proper form, don't exceed my body's limitations, take it easy or i won't be able to do anything at all.
while this could have been a Very Bad Thing, i believe it's actually a Very Good Lesson. i just have to remember it in a month when i'm feeling cocky and strong again. over-confidence is the mother of all disasters.
i've had a photo accepted to be part of this group exhibition at a downtown gallery. i can't express to you the intense combination of excitement and disbelief i'm experiencing.
if you're local, i certainly hope you'll be able to come to the opening on the 29th. if not, do take some time to visit the show on a quieter day. it should be lovely.
back in November, which is like three lifetimes ago to someone who can barely remember what she had for lunch, Darren the world-traveler put out the call for bloggers who were interested in taking a Brother laser printer for a test drive. being a blogger and someone who hasn't had a printer of her own in over ten years, i jumped at the chance to support deforestation.
a few weeks later, UPS left one of those annoying sticky notes on the front door of my apartment building. after four phone calls and three more days of sticky notes, i had taken delivery of a very large (and very heavy) box containing the Brother HL-4050CDN Colour Laser Printer. did you know that a colour laser printer just barely fits in the back door of a 1991 Volkswagen Golf? neither did i, but i sure was glad considering i hadn't yet removed the baby seat bar thing in the hatchback, so there was no way to get it home that way.
after squeezing it in and out of the car and then hoofing it up the Very Steep Stairs, my boyfriend and i went about the task of unpacking and setting up. my first impression was that it was much larger than i had expected. the dimensions of the box had me a little worried, but i lucked out and the unit fit almost perfectly in it's designated spot in my "office".
unlike the hype Darren advertised, the printer did not quite come with everything i needed for a two month trial. the major lack was any kind of printer cable. i was panicking, especially considering my printerless status of the past ten years. luckily, even without a spare parallel or USB cable, the printer supports connection via network cable (which i happened to have plenty of).
setting up the machine was a yummy piece of cake. the poster-sized getting started guide was easy to interpret and all components in the box were well-labeled. the biggest obstacle was our own inability to get the front door of the printer open. that sucker ain't going nowhere without a lot of kinetic force, let me tell you! once we accomplished that task, i was quite impressed with the slide out toner tray into which you put each of the four cartridges. everything is colour-coded and easy enough for my mom to assemble on her own. after the physical pieces were put together, it was time to stick the CD in my computer. there were absolutely zero hiccoughs in installing the drivers and getting the Brother set up as my new default printer using Windows XP Pro. no more than 3 minutes later, i was all set to start printing... except i had no paper!
the next day, after procuring some dead trees, i was all set to print to my heart's delight; and i did. recipes, knitting patterns, New York Times articles, there was more printing going on than at Gutenberg's! double-sided, landscape, colour, black & white... you name it, i printed it in that first week.
then i got my electricity bill, which had a 600% spike in energy usage for the month of November and i immediately blamed the fancy new printer, unplugged it and stopped using it for well over a month. two utility bills later, there was a large credit to my account, so i've forgiven the printer and plugged it back in again.
it's relatively fast to warm up, printing is fast and hassle-free, yet all is not perfect. one of the reasons i was looking forward to the test-drive was to utilize it to jump start my button-making empire. i've tried on several occasions, but i could never get the colour profile right. i can send digital images to photo labs both down the street and across the planet, but i couldn't for the life of me get the printer at my elbow to render colours correctly. i don't know if it's my inexperience with colour profiling or a lack in the printer drivers, but i gave up my quest for photo-quality colour reproduction very early in the experiment. and it made me sad.
in my inexpert opinion, the Brother HL-4050CDN would be a fantastic printer for a small or home office, or maybe a student who tends towards the verbose in their essays. it's definitely not for someone such as myself who has happily survived an entire decade without one and mostly wants to print photo-quality colour images.
update: unbeknownst to me, during the review period Brother decided that the reviewers could keep the printers after they'd written their reviews. thanks, Brother!
- i'm not hobbling nearly so badly *crosses fingers*
- think i've caught the plague i'd deftly avoided so far
- visited with friendly neighbour cat this morning in the snow
- really have to get a fuzzy rug for the livingroom
- spending far too much time looking at yummy knitting patterns
well, that didn't take long at all.
i was feeling a lot better with my crazy, sweaty cardio workouts where i turned a lovely shade of purple and was panting like a sheepdog in the sahara. i was accomplishing more reps with weights and getting a little stretchier each day.
now i'm limping.
yeah, sometime between the elliptical and the bike last night, something snapped in my left heel and i'm hobbled like james caan. bleh. i really hoped that a good night's sleep would find me prancing around my apartment this morning, but it wasn't to be. i'm gimpy spice for the time being and it sucks!
i don't know what i'm going to do for cardio tomorrow night. i hate hate hate the bike and we have plans afterwards, so i'm not going to swim and get all wet and chlorine-y. this is the suck.
anybody have a left foot i can borrow three nights a week?
hopefully, you'll be able to see this. if not, it means imified isn't as good as i hoped it would be.
anyway, i'm beyond grateful i only have to work until 11:30 today and my departure is immediately followed by pho and a little bit of shopping (even if it is for safety footwear for work).
after that... i think i'll go fall down and pass out for a while. celebrity fit club kicked my ass last night. it was probably made worse because i skipped tuesday due to snow/commuting issues. ugh. my ass, my thighs, my knees... the pain!!
meh, it's not so bad. it's a good hurt, right?
