Category: Exertion

Incidentally, Wario Ware is pretty great

April 15, 2004 /

For at least seven years, I’ve had a chronic leg pain that would only ever occur in one leg at a time (but not always the same leg), and only after a night in which I’d stayed up too late and not slept enough. It was fairly rare, never lasted more than a day, and didn’t feel like a sharp pain, so I mostly ignored it. My basic theory on it was that I had suffered some kind of stress fracture in the past; it only hurt, after all, when I was too tired for my muscles to support me properly (keep in mind here that my grasp of anatomy is fairly medieval).

I stayed up forever late the other night, playing Wario Ware Inc and Illuminati with the Tuesday Night Ballers, and yesterday I had my first recurrence of the problem since moving in with Maria in August. It was also worse than usual, probably because I’d sprinted for (and missed) the bus in the afternoon. I planned on ignoring it and treating it with sleep, as usual.

Maria, not a person who is lightly put off a train of thought, decided to treat me with forced couch rest, Advil and an insulated hot towel around my ankle–even though the pain extends through my entire calf. I humored her, and then to my surprise, her doctoring completely worked inside an hour. The pain was completely gone. It was pretty magical; I’ve never had my leg feel better so fast before. Maria is my hero!

Anyway, she says this means the problem is mostly (if not all) mild tendonitis. Interesting. I always wondered when I’d get my first chronic stress injury, but then I also figured it’d be carpal tunnel.

It’s getting to be less “luck” and more “frightening skill”

April 13, 2004 /

Maria won Illuminati again. Sean and I (we were playing teams) were one card away from victory, playing as the Bermuda Triangle and with the Orbital Mind Control Lasers already in our grasp, and we rolled an 11 and she won. I hate the stupid Discordians.

It was still pretty much the best power structure, and the fastest, I’ve ever built. We probably committed the classic error of looking too dangerous early on. Also, Maria wants me to tell you that her brother Michael was her partner, but we all know it was her heathen luck that carried the day.

April 10, 2004 /

Maria and I played the All Cup Tour in Mirror Mode (the longest race on the hardest setting) this morning, and even though I did gently toss the controller around a bit, we finally triumphed. We are officially Double Dash royalty now, crowned and robed, holding the Mushroom Scepter and the Turtle Shell Orb. What’s with orbs, anyway? I mean, the crown is a special hat, everybody needs a special hat, and I guess with the scepter you could point to things or hit somebody. But why do you have to have an orb, too? Maybe you could play garbage can basketball with it on boring days in court?

March 23, 2004 /

This is the second Spring Break Follow-Up Post, and it’s mostly to say that Spring Break Was GREAT! I wasn’t as good about keeping a personal travelogue this time as I was when I went to California, but fortunately I have a roommate and trip companion with a photographic memory. I’ll try to finish that up and patch the holes today or tomorrow.

Notable events that are true:

  • We did get caught in a blizzard, ditch the car, and walk five blocks with only a vague idea of where we were and an increasing chance of hypothermia. We lived, though. As did the car.
  • We did have every intention of seeing Kid Koala and other assorted DJs at a Real Club in New York City.
  • We did learn to appreciate the beauty of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
  • We (this time including Bee and Graham, Maria’s college crew, who are awesome) did stay up until four in the morning for no apparent reason, eventually acting pretty drunk without actually being drunk. This is what grownups do for fun, kids.
  • A cool thing about that night, though, was that Graham and I learned to communicate with gamma rays!
  • We did share our floor of the Days Inn (in Bodily Region) with the entire high-school Asian population of Pennsylvania.

Notable events that are not true:

  • I completely remembered to tell everyone at my job that I was leaving for a week on March 14th–long before, say, March 12th.
  • We did way more in Providence than mostly hanging out on the third floor of the mall.
  • I in no way embarrassed myself on the Dance Dance Revolution machine in the Brown Post Office. (You can take that as “I did play, but did look ridiculous,” or as “I did not play at all,” really. Your pick.)
  • We did actually see Kid Koala, because the show was not sold out.
  • We were extremely nice and careful with your car, Mr. and Mrs. Barnes, and certainly never killed its battery with a cell-phone charger and had to get a recharge from the hotel man. Thank you very kindly for its use. Look! Over there! Behind you! You’re not looking!
  • I came home and, on our self-appointed Monday of Rest, did something more useful than get mad at Prince of Persia all day.

It was a great trip. I can’t say the past month and a half was the most traveling I’ve ever done, but man, it was a lot of traveling. Who knows, I might even grow a beard now!

December 29, 2003 /

Tonight, trying to get to rehearsal, in the dark and the cold and the rain, I walked from Bearno’s to Bellarmine. The other side of Bellarmine.

Anyway, if you understand what that means and you’ve got a minute, I could use some chicken soup.

December 17, 2003 /

The people have wondered. Haven’t you heard them? It started as a murmur, an uneasy question that rippled and spread and grew to a titanic, subvocal collective cry.

“Where?” they asked. “Whenceforth? Whither our hero?”

Yesterday afternoon, they got their answer.

Pounding pavement like a Clydesdale, breathing like a crippled bellows, shaking an MP3-CD player that apparently meant its “40-second ESP” label as a cruel joke: could it be he? There was no graceful form, no cracked bike helmet. But yes–as he came closer, so did certainty: It had to be! Nobody else could have the temerity to wear those tights! Captain Spacedork lives!

Anyway. Yeah, I finally broke out the spandex and inaugurated my winter running season, after what must have been a month of sluglike inactivity. It showed: I stupidly forgot to warm up, so I started feeling shooting pains in the back of my right knee and had to baby that leg to Old Louisville and back. I forgot to hydrate afterwards, too, so I woke up this morning with probably the closest thing I’ll ever have to a hangover. I did manage to do my whole route without turning around early, but it took waaay too long. Maria thought I’d been kidnapped.

I’ve also gotten spoiled, and forgotten what a difference being able to listen to music makes. My standard CD player broke, so I’ve reverted to my slower MP3-CD device, which is evidently not at all suitable for jogging.

But, as I’ve said before and will say again: at least I’m running. I figure if I want to get in shape for next summer, it’s probably best if I start now.

November 30, 2003 /

I really hate remedy medicine. I actually don’t like taking drugs at all, though I make mild use of caffeine and will choke down / vaporize / intravene something if, you know, I’ll die otherwise. But decongestants, antihystamines, painkillers, soporifics… bleagh. I don’t like to think about treating symptoms instead of causes. I can live with symptoms! Fix the root problem!

Nevertheless, living with an iron-willed roommate who happens to be a med student will eventually weaken you on the placebo-effect front. I’ve been taking Robitussin for about 24 hours now, which is why I was functional enough to sit in a VERY COLD ticket booth and run sound for PI Sketch with only one slip-up. It was a good show. The crowd liked it. I touched Yale inappropriately and got to meet Allilea, who differs from most other celebrities in that she’s taller in real life.

Tomorrow I crash hard, and try to get ready for my last homework and last exam on Tuesday. Then Thursday, then finals, and then the semester will be over. This is very weird. Who the hell gets out for finals on December 4th? U of L, that’s who.

Yea, I go to bed to rest my fevered brow, and to cough until the Robitussin kicks in. It’s not like this is unusual, I get sick about once every winter, but I start to worry about my brain health when I notice that I’m subtracting 230 from 1830 and coming up with 1400.

November 14, 2003 /

Work has been a tomb this afternoon–those of the developers who aren’t out with new babies are out watching Master and Commander or just avoiding the gloomy weather. I, as one of those unfortunates who’s still paid by the hour, don’t get to sneak out early, and I can’t do anything else on my project right now until somebody who’s gone gets back to me.

I’m kind of stuck for content on here lately, because it’s a strongly routined November so far–time passes quickly, but there’s not a lot of excitement or danger to be had. At work I run queries, wait on those queries, try to fix those queries so they won’t fail again, and repeat; at school I learn useful things, but they’re about as enthralling as you’d expect from a graduate comp sci schedule that’s heavy on algorithms. (Well, I had fun with string search, but I’m not going to write an entry about it.) And on Wednesdays I play Grand Theft Auto.

When I’m twiddling my thumbs waiting for mean ol’ queries to yell at me, though, I keep finding myself at William Wu’s Riddles (via vitanuova). A lot of the riddles there are the kinds of problems I was given as “fun” challenges at Gifted Student stuff when I was younger, and at which I was completely horrible. I find that now, at 22 (and without a competitive atmosphere), I actually consider them fun and worthwhile. I still expend lots of time and effort on solving even the stuff in the easy section, but it’s a great payoff when I get one. The only letdown is that I immediately want to show this off to somebody, but a) that’s lame, they’re easy and b) that kind of defeats the point of a riddle site.

If I get a little more motivation under me, though, I hopefully will be able to reuse some of this knowledge in the next six weeks, as I insanely try to design an RPG system. Those of you nerds who read this but not Crummy: want in?