ed_rex

Notes on my health, and the state of the Emergency Department at the Ottawa Civic Hospital (also some footie)

Health-wise, 2018 has not been kind to me. To start, following a long evening sitting in a bad chair at my father's, and my first soccer game of the year, following three weeks off (one actual missed game — about which more, perhaps, in another entry — and two bye weeks for Christmas and New Year's eves), I woke up on Monday the 8th in an agony of lower back pain, something with which I have by this point had far too much familiarity. Used to be, my back went out about every 11 years; nowadays, it's more like every two, with a minor episode between the big ones.

I called in sick, then the next day, and the one after that and the one after that. When I called in the next Monday, my boss suggested I just let him know when I was ready to go again.

Good call; I ended up missing a full two weeks of work along with two more soccer games.

(Allow me a digression. We lost the first of those missed games, and a team-mate texted me the following (I quote verbatim).

We needed you today lol our
dé was all messed up

Lost 4-2 I got the two line goals

(Needless to say, I chose and choose to read the lol in a completely non-ironic way. Onwards.)

At the same time that my back decided to treat me to another round of I dare you to get out of bed without screaming, just try it!, another, perhaps more serious, health issue blossomed suddenly into crisis after what was, in retrospect, a pretty long and gradual gestation period.

Briefly, for some time — maybe as many as two or three months, I've been finding it increasingly difficult — and uncomfortable — to pee. My once-powerful, Niagara-like flow was coming more and more often to resemble the final stretches of the modern Colorado River: slow and inconstant. And suddenly, also painful.

Finally moved to action, I called my GP's office and, using the magic words, It really hurts when I pee, managed to get an appointment on the day of the call, the 11th of January. There I produced a clean urine sample. The Good Doctor prescribed an ultrasound and blood tests, telling me she thought I probably had a bladder infection, adding that she also hoped that was the issue.

That was a Thursday. I duly made an appointment for the ultrasound at a nearby clinic, despite the fact the appointment was eight days away, just this past Friday, the 19th.

Come that day, the clinic called me and left a message saying there was no technician available and, er, my appointment was cancelled. Would I please call them back, etc etc.

Thing is, by this point, the discomfort-verging-on-pain had become fucking agony. I was peeing every hour and a half — or rather, I was trying to pee. Forced to sit rather than stand, so that I need not fear should my mighty efforts to void my bladder also sent issue from my nether region, despite the pain I usually managed to get only a fitful dribble to come out.

Feeling kind of desperate I called the clinic back. They could give me an appointment only the following Thursday. I booked it, but started calling others, and found a place (The Bruyere, south of the Byward Market) that could see me next Tuesday. I took it and hoped I could hold on (as it were) til then.

Come Saturday, I decided I couldn't hold on. The quantity of urine I was able to pass was less than ever, while the amount of pain was entering into agony territory.

I marched myself off to the Ottawa Civic's Emergency Department, arriving around 14:30.

The waiting room in the Civic's Emergency Department is pretty small, seats for maybe 30 or 40 people, I'd guess. There were about a dozen people there when I stepped up to the triage nurse's station. There they took my OHIP card and told me to take a seat and wait to be called.

I settled in for what I thought would be a long while, but I heard my name no more than five or 10 minutes later. The Triage nurse took my particulars and sent me into another waiting area — this one frankly just a hallway lined with chairs — with a samble container for a urine sample. That took about three tries to fill only half-way, but I was told it was enough when I finally saw a doctor.

Finally was a couple of hours after I'd arrived at the hospital. The doctor was a young woman (you know you're getting old when doctors are probably young enough to be your daughter. Le sigh ...) who gave no sign of being rushed. She asked questions and answered them, and took note when I mentioned that the triage nurse had made a mistake: I was suffering from pain in the tip of my penis when I pee, not "abdominal" pain! She took an ultrasound of my abdomen and she even made the rectal probe of my prostate reasonably comfortable.

And then it was back into the waiting hall.

The second ultrasound came around 17:30, and the CT scan, complete with intravenous administration of some kind of dye took place around 19:15 and I was back in the main waiting area at around 21:00. Then another two hours or so to await my results. To wit, a probably bladder infection, no sign of enlarged prostate, but a slightly thickened bladder. At 23:20, I left the hospital with a couple of antibiotics swalled and prescriptions for a two-week course of same, and a 30 day course of Tamsulosin, a muscle relaxant meant to make it easier for me to pee.

All that, for an out-of-pocket cost of about nine hours of my time and $0.00 out-of-pocket. (Filling the prescriptions, on the other hand, did cost me, though happily not a lot.)

Raven declared, "Finally, after 9 hours!!" via text, but I wrote back, "I'm not complaining. No appointment, two ultrasounds and a CT scan, all for 'free', for everyone who needs it."

And indeed, that more included another ultrasound this week, and will include follow-ups with my GP, and then, well, who knows. But I suppose as I carry on growing improbably older, I'll have need of more, not less, medicare.

All in all, I was pretty impressed by what I found at the Civic. Yes, having patients wait in a hallway is far from ideal, sign of austerity, no doubt, but still a functioning system.

Pray we organize to keep it that way.

Finally, despite the fact that I missed two weeks of work, all credit to Raven! Despite earning barely more than the new minimum provincial wage and despite having just put two new pairs of glasses (one for driving/cycling &ct, the other a pair of bifocals for reading and computer work; and glass lenses, damnit, no more god damned plastic!), I am still in a position that will see me pay of the credit card before I carry any interest. Thanks to her lessons, the missed work and the extra expenses are drag, but not a problem, never mind a disaster.

Pics, of course, to come when the new specs are delivered. This coming week, I hope!

Thanks for bearing with me. If you read this far, you deserve a little break.

What have I become or, The Devolution of Young Geoffrey!

There are times when looking oneself in even a metaphorical mirror is a sobering thing indeed.

Jesus, god, two written apologies in eight days! What in the world has happened to Young Edifice? Did I somehow turn into that middle-aged white guy? The one whose idea of conversation is to "share" his opinions about this, that and especially the other thing, whether or not anyone has asked for it.

The first incident I might have just chalked up to social awkwardness born of my long hermatose years in Ottawa. Outside of Raven and family, and my weekly soccer games, I could count most years' social interactions on the fingers of one hand. So I suppose a gaffe or two might be in order.

The other two, though, were the sort of explosions of ego that I have always found appalling in others; hearing them in myself is frankly a little nauseating.

That first incident happened two Sundays ago, after a soccer game (we won, thank you very much) which featured a former team-mate as the opposing captain.

Robyn and I last played together two or three years ago, and our sole contact since has been a LinkedIn "friendship", and three or four email exchanges when I've been looking for a sub for one of my teams.

She is an athletic young woman, and one with whom I enjoyed talking when we played together and, yes, I liked the look of her as well. Had I been single, she was someone I might have pursued, if had she wasn't a vegetarian. (I know. Not as big a deal as politics or religion, but still ...) Whether any of that contributed to my behaviour a week-and-a-half ago I leave to the judgment of the reader; for me, I don't think so, but it's possible.

Anyway. As opposing captains we shook hands before the game and then, as fellow cyclists, afterwards we talked on the way to the bike rack, and rode off together, catching up as acquaintances will do.

And then, when there was a brief lull in the conversation, I leaned into my handlebars and said over my shoulder, "Well, and with that I will bid you adieu!" And I stepped hard on my peddles and pulled away as if I was being chased by the devil himself.

Why? Why ever would I be so rude to someone I liked? As best I can recall, I was worried that I was presuming too much, that she might feel I was pursuing her in some unseemly way. That, despite the fact she seemed for all the world happy to see me and to be enjoying our chat. And when I made my sudden departure, her "Okay," came with a distinctly confused tone of voice.

It's one thing to not be an aggressive prick, Young Edifice, but you are actually allowed to talk with women. You used to do it all the time. Hell, there have been long periods in your life when most of your friends were women!

Another incident came on a return trip from Montreal, when one of my passengers directed me to where he had parked his car. A 1970 Thunderbird, all bright red paint job and obviously one that had been lovably restored.

As, in fact, the pilot explained. And he asked for a few appreciative words about his classic automobile. His crew made the appropriate sounds but what I heard coming from my own mouth appalled me, even as I was unable to stop the words from spilling forth. "Well, if I was one who liked sports cars, I guess I'd like it."

Jesus. God. What a fucking ass. Did anybody, I asked myself, actually ask whether you liked sports cars, Young Edifice!?! Just say, "Nice car," would that be so hard?

Then there was this past Sunday, another soccer game. (We lost that one, and I was filling in as keeper. Ten balls got past me. It took me a while longer to process my behaviour because of that.)

One of my team-mates is a young journalist (since when are national magazine writers allowed to look like they're barely out of high school? When did Young Edifice get to be so old!) and when she arrived we got to talking, almost as if we were carrying on from a chat we'd had the previous game.

Anyway, she told me that she was covering the NAFTA negotiations — and I fucking cut her off.

Cut her off and — again, almost as if I were listening to some asshole who wasn't me, except that, y'know: it was my mouth that was flapping, my voice that was spouting off.

Because spouting off was what I was doing. "I haven't really been paying much attention to the negotiations," I started off by saying. And then, rather than asking her to fill me in — since she was, y'know, paying a lot of attention to the proceedings — I launched into a mini-rant on how I didn't trust Trudeau &ct &ct &ct.

For some strange reason, that kind of killed the "conversation", though I didn't really notice it in the moment, since we spoke at half-time and it was time to get back out onto the field.

And on the field, I let in another four goals (for a grand total of 10 — not my most shining hour as keeper!), so it wasn't until I was home and recovered from the defeat that I replayed my words and voice in my mind and realized what I must have sounded like: That Guy. That middle-aged white guy whose idea of conversation is to opine, to lecture, and god knows, not to listen — especially not to a younger woman even if she is actually involved in the topic at hand.

Yuck.

I wrote both women letters of apology (the pilot? Well, I don't have his email address anyway), and both graciously said it was fine, but I still don't feel like it's fine. I can only hope that I'll be given the chance to behave better in the future.

I don't think I've always been like this, so what happened? When did I turn into That Guy? Will I soon by loudly proclaiming that all modern music — everything made since I turned 20 or so — is crap? God knows, I keep running into men (and they are usually men, no question) who make such statements with no apparent sense of irony, or awareness that they are surely channelling their own parents, who doubtless said the same about the music they now idolize as The Best of All Time.

Please, Lord: I do not want this to be a taste of my future self. Self-monitoring — intense self-monitoring! — must become the order of the day from now until at last I slide from this mortal coil into eternal darkness.

Emmy the Great describes the type (I don't want to become) with a wonderfully acerbic wit.

You say you're looking for the truth,
Like you got rifles in your books,
But up above your parents' roof
I saw no star tonight,
Only the black from whence you came,
And where they'll send you back again,
And no blue plaque will keep your name
From falling out of sight.

And you can wage this war of one,
And I am still the only one
Who will remember you when you are gone.

Have I mentioned that I love soccer? And also, cycling? And even, winter?

Young Geoffrey sets out for his soccer afternoon in Ottawa.

As the Canucks among you will know, Canada is in the midst of a federal election, one in which the ruling Facists Conservatives have taken off the gloves and are using blatant lies (did you know that marijuana is "infinitely worse" than tobacco? Well, now you do! If a Prime Minister asserts it, it must be true, right?) and out-right racism (anti-Muslim xenophobia dressed up in women's rights lipstick) to divide and conquer. With two weeks to go until election day, the fear-mongering and hate-stirring seems to have moved the necessary 10% or so of voters so that Harper's thugs can taste victory. In a first-past-the-post system, 35% of the vote might be enough to secure a majority in Parliament.

All of which is to say, rage and despair are the primary emotions I'm feeling when I look at the world around me; and that's just in Canada.

Worse (or better?), I still haven't managed to finish that fucking long-promised review of last year's be-damned Doctor Who Christmas Special. That despite having watched the stupid thing at least four times by this point, maybe more. And it's already three episodes into the new series and I have yet to watch a single one of them. And I realized the other day that I'm not missing the show at all.

Sigh ...

On the up-side, I have fully-recovered from the torn hamstring I suffered last spring (that's the ugly pic above and to the right) and in fact finished my latest "season" with the bloody well-organized Ottawa Footy-Sevens yesterday, with a double-header. I'll guestimate that I spend close to an hour-and-a-half of the tours hours on the field — which, I hasten to add, isn't why we lost both games.

But fun was had, and (as I've said before) the fact that I even can more or less hold my own with people who probably average 20 or 25 years younger than I am still thrills me all to all.

That said, soccer does not come without its costs. And in my case, the hamstring aside, the primary payees have been my feet. Specifically, my big toes. In the past few years I've lost four or five tonails, and two more will soon follow.

For reasons I don't fully understand, I feel compelled to show them to you.

But for reasons I do understand (the pictures are gross!; and so are my feet, as I discovered yesterday when I looked at the photos Raven took before I set out for my games), I'm placing them behind a cut so that you will see them only if you actually want to.

You're welcome!

And now I must be off to the day-job. exeunt

So that's what it feels like to pull one's hamstring. (Hint: Not Good.)

After a week off since my old team won our consolation game (against a team that had previously beaten us 6-1), today was a beautiful day to switch from the fetid air of a dome to a field under the big sky — at Carleton University, as it happens.

Warm, sunny and with just enough wind to make things interesting, I met my new team of more-or-less randomly-assigned individuals. Five girls and six (or was it seven?) guys — a pretty big squad and I think more women on it than I've previously experienced.

On the whole, this team is not going to be a world-beater. There's not a ringer in the bunch and I definitely consider myself among the top half in terms of skillz and energy. Which means that, if winning was the primary objective, this would look like being a really long season.

But rec soccer is, thank god, primarily meant to be recreational, and everyone on the field seemed to be more worried about having fun than in whether or not we were going to win. In fact, the half-time pep-talk consisted mostly of a general agreement that we should try to keep the ball away from the other team as much as possible.

And we did considerably better in the second half. I believe the final score was 5-2 against, which is better than the Montreal Canadiens did against the fucking Lightning later on this evening.

But that hamstring. That fucking hamstring. Came with only a minute or two left in the game, and I was playing centre D. I'd pinched a little and suddenly found myself running like hell — sprinting, in truth, and not for the first time that game (so happy I can do that!) — to catch the opposing forward. I managed it, too, but as we jostled one of my cleats caught something in the turf and I felt a sudden, searing pain shoot up the inside of my right thigh.

I went down like I'd been shot, and I stayed down. Wasn't quiet about it, either. Jesus god, but that hurt!

Still, after probably two minutes, I was (with two people supporting me) I able to get to my feet and off the field. And a little while later, managed to hobble to my venerable bicycle and clamber aboard the saddle, to gingerly and slowly pedal my way back to Centretown and home.

Will I be able to play next week? Dunno. In fact, I don't even know if I'll be able to drive a van at work on Tuesday, though I'm hopeful on both counts. I'll have a better sense of things tomorrow, no doubt.

I'm not complaining. It's been a at least a good three years or more since I've managed to hurt myself on the pitch, and a pulled muscle is a hell of a lot less serious than a stretched tendon or (got help me) a blown-out knee.

So, cheers! Raven and I are going to catch up on an episode or two of Scott and Bailey and then I'll see how and whether I'll be able to sleep.

	This is what obsity looks like? Young Geoffrey takes a break on the sidelines of the pitch, summer 2013. Photo by the Phantom Photographer.

I know it's been said many times before, at length and probably with greater eloquence, but sweet Jesus don't we make a fetish of numbers! Give some phenomenon a number with a decimal point — say, for instance, 30.2 — and we leap to embrace it as a Significant Truth, as Science, no matter how shaky its foundation nor how often that particular scale has been debunked.

I'd meant, some three or four weeks ago now, to update my personal blog with a little bragging amid a more general report on the State of Young Geoffrey's Corpus.

Y'see, I've been cycling quite a lot again, since the snow melted, and when I went out for my first soccer game in a couple of months — and a 90-minute game it was, not a mere 60! — I was really pleased to note the improvement in my fitness. I not only jogged across the field at half-time to find the bathroom (and jogged back), but was surprised when the game was over.

"That's it?" I called out, "I thought there was another 20 minutes to go!"

"You've got the energy for another 20 minutes?" one of my team-mates, a 20-something named Paul, asked me. And when I said, "Yeah, I think so," I realized I was pretty sure that I did.

It was, to put it mildly, an awesome feeling for a once-heavy smoker, and I whooped and hollered as I cycled my way home for the sheer joy of movement.

I wanted, too, to discuss the fact that the psoriatic arthritis I first mentioned a couple of years ago seems to be in remission. Concerned some enzymes in my liver were a little high (I hadn't cut back quite as much on the beer as I'd been supposed to, I admit it), my specialist told me to take a week's break from the Scary Powerful Drug he'd put me on, Methotrexate. So I did. And, when I felt no sign of pain returning, I took another week off. And another after that, and so. Six months later I still hadn't taken another dose and, when I saw said specialist for a follow-up, he shrugged and said to keep on keeping on, so long as I felt okay. "Start taking again and call for an appointment if the pain comes back. Otherwise, come back in year."

And that, more or less, would have been that. Young Geoffrey feels pretty good, he's playing soccer with 20-somethings, thank you very much, and he feels both vaguely grateful for (and maybe just a little bit smug about) his good fortune.

Detail of photo of Taylor Townsend at U.S. Open Juniors on Sunday, September 4, 2011. Original photo by Robbie Mendelson, courtesy of Wikimedia.org.

Unfortunately (or not) for the state of said personal blog, I came across a couple of items that combined to complicate my report. Three or four weeks later, I don't remember which came first, but I don't suppose that really matters much. One was personal, the aforementioned 30.2, a number that applies to me. The other an item I read about a young, female, African American tennis player called Taylor Townsend.

Though I am by no means a professional athlete, nor a woman, nor black, nor (if the truth be told at all) even all that young any more, Taylor and do share something in common. We are both, at least according to some standards, fat.

In fact, though my blood pressure is excellent and my resting heart rate typically clocks in at just over 50 beats a minute, I carry some extra flesh on me. If there is a 6-pack to be found on my abdomen, it is well-insulated, or perhaps, as my sweetie puts it, it is disguised as a one-pack.

To add insult to injury, the internet, via a 150 year-old measurement that is still, apparently, accorded a not insignificant diagnostic respect by laymen and medical professionals alike, has informed me that I not only jiggle a little, but that I am, in truth, obese.

Not pleasantly plump, not chubby, not carrying around "a few extra pounds", but obese. A big fatso, a lardass, a Homer J ...

And presumably, so is Taylor Townsend, who (by the way) made it to the third round at the French Open a few weeks back.

Would my knees thank me if I dropped 20 or 30 (or even 40) pounds? Presumably. At one point in my 20s I got myself down to about 145 pounds and if I still felt like the chubby kid whose clothes all came from the Husky racks, photographic evidence from that era shows I was pretty close to lean. If I'd been playing soccer and cycling 2 or 3 thousand kilometres a year, I probably would have been.

Would Taylor Townsend's knees thank her if she dropped a 10 or 20 or 30 pounds? Presumably. But would dropping that weight make a better tennis player? Maybe not: Teen Tennis Prodigy Taylor Townsend: 'My Body Is A Total Gift'.

Despite the subject's own answer, my instinct is to say yes in answer to that last question, but really, what do I know about the best "fighting weight" for a particular 18 year-old African-American woman called Taylor Townsend? Presumably knees are always calling for a lighter load to lug around, but the rest of the body is, or at least can be, a hell of a lot more complicated.

What isn't complicated, and the reason I'm going on so god damned long about this, is that far too many of us and, I believe, too many doctors and other ostensible health professionals who ought to know better, look at a person's BMI, at the number and presume it means something, all by itself. Because ... number! With decimal point!

By all means, check heart rate and blood pressure; measure body fat; maybe see if you can pinch an inch ... But don't look at a height/weight ratio and think it means something! It might, for those who have a typical European's body type and who carry an average amount of muscle tissue and have average length arms and legs. For the rest of us: for real athletes and chubby weekend warriors, for the naturally skinny and new mothers alike, it isn't even useful as a ball-park figure. It's worse than useless, in truth, because it's liable to be mis-interpreted and to create all manner of useless anxiety — or unwarranted self-confidence.

If your doctor looks at your BMI number and not at you, find another doctor.

This isn't, by the way, intended to by some fat-positive message either. To be honest, though my sweetie thinks my "roundness" is "cute" (and thank god for that!), I don't. I don't much like the figure I see in the mirror and would love to trim down some. But all the real indications are that any weight problem I have right now is aesthetic and cultural, not medical.

So, come Sunday afternoon, I (and my belly) are going to "bounce across the field" in all our enthusiastic glory after a little round soccer ball. Wish us luck!

Right. It's nearly 04:00 and I need to be at work for a 12-hour shift by 13:00 hours. Time for something really offensive to take us into that good night ... Take it away, Bruce McCulloch!

Despite appearances, I am not about to be beaten to a bloody pulp by fellow inmates of a correctional institution in the photo shown above. The photo was in fact taken on the soccer pitch at Carleton University on the 27th of July 2013, during a lull in a 7-on-7 match. And I am most likely gasping for air, not hurling invective at opposing players.

Yes, it's been a long time since I've posted here. A long time since I've posted much of anything anywhere, pretty much, beyond the delay blurts on Twitter and occasional comments here, on Livejournal or Facebook.

As those of you checking in on my Facebook or Twitter postings might know, I've been cycling a hell of a lot and holding my own (see above) in 7-on-7 soccer with and against players who are mostly 20 or so years younger than I am. And yes, I'm feeling good about that, even if my belly seems to show little or no signs of changing in response to the workouts my body's been getting.

I've also been working quite a lot, both at the Transportation Job and on various word and word-related projects. But not enough with the latter. In truth, when it comes to actually sitting down to write, I've been blocking more often than not; and when not blocking, my long-overdue ghost-writing project has been taking priority.

I'd like to change much of that (really I would!) and as a bit of self-encouragement, I am writing this post to re-introduce myself to whoever among those listed here and on LJ still have me on their reading lists. To that end, "A Memeish Thing", freely modified from one posted by LJ's earlier this month.

_____

Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out.

FIRST NAME: Geoffrey, but answers to Geoff quite willingly. Some who know me well might have other appellations, but I prefer those remain between you and me.

AGE: 48. I know, I find it nearly impossible to believe also. But, as some wag once put it, getting older is better than the alternative. And yes, I realize that calling myself Young Geoffrey might strike you as hubristic, or worse. But I'm happy with it still and I figure that's what matters most.

LOCATION: The nation's Capital, not much more than a bom — stone's throw from Parliament Hill. Speaking of which, if you've never been, take the tour of the Library of Parliament; it is a remarkably beautiful building and well worth an hour acting like an actual tourist.

OCCUPATION: No thank you, I believe in personal, local, and national autonomy and self-determination.

Ahem. Driver, editor, writer and fledgling small-press publisher.

PARTNER: A wonderful woman who values her privacy. I am permitted to refer to her only as Raven, to admit that she hails from the Orient and that I have a few years on her. I count myself lucky to have that much dispensation.

KIDS: Not yet, but we're contemplating. And I like to think I've had some good influence on my brilliant, now 20-something, niece.

SIBLINGS: Two, a younger brother and older half-brother via my mother.

PARENTS: Both turning 80, both still alive and kicking. I help Dad with his online newsmagazine and Mum is about to go back on air with CBC Radio doing once-a-week commentaries.

PETS: Not just now.

Politics: In my blood, going back generations. Best described, perhaps, as an anarcho-socialist cynic who dreams of peaceful transition even as the psychotic thugs running our world seem hell-bent on provoking a global bloodbath. Normally an astute observer, I sometimes get taken in by soaring rhetoric; I was briefly fooled by Obama, among others.

3-5 BIGGEST THINGS GOING ON IN YOUR LIFE: (1) My relationship with Raven. (2) All this exercise; slap me if I turn into one of those ex-smokers who can't ever shut the fuck up about how awesome it is to get healthy ad nauseum (slap me if I'm already there). (3) The aforementioned ghost-writing project. (4) Getting my hands on the proof copy of The Old Man's Last Sauna, which I hope will be the first of many works of fiction published by the BumblePuppy Press. (5) Finding a way to influence the world, rather than just bitch about it to the quire.

Right. Let's see if that jumpstarts anything here — or even elsewhere. Meanwhile, how 'bout another hit of Montreal's Grimes?

I can't remember the last time I wrote a preview of some popular entertainment. I'm tempted to say "never", but that's a hell of a long time.

That said, I guess I'm kind of offering a preview of the 5th season of Breaking Bad, by way of a very (for me: circa 800 words) brief review of its first four.

I feel kind of dirty for so looking forward to last night's episode (no, I've not yet watched it), but looking forward to it I am. Breaking Bad is an awesome guilty pleasure.

The Wire meets Wile E. Coyote (not much in the way of spoilers.

( Cut because some of you might be having lunch (or supper, or breakfast). Soccer is hard. And gross. )

On the upside, Team 7 is getting better and better. We won the first game of tonight's double-header, 3 to 2. (Nevermind what happened in the second game, smart-ass; the point of recreational soccer is to have fun. And anyway, the second game doesn't count against us in the standings.

/End lame excuses/

I know, I know, I promised photos and regular reports, but they have not arrived.

In truth, my soccer/football season died a premature death and this afternoon's game was it's capstone — and one I missed. The fourth in a row, in fact.

My sixth match saw me play what I thought was my best. I was running fast and hard, blocking shots and stealing the ball more than once from players (somewhat) strong and (much) younger than I.

When I came home, I was sweaty and tired and very, very happy.

A couple of hours after that return, however, I was also very nearly crippled. I could barely bend my right knee, spent literally a couple of minutes just getting into bed. I limped badly for a couple of days, then the healing began, and has continued, but not fast enough.

I've missed four games, have had to stop the tennis and the badminton and even the jogging. Very frustrating, as my body had finally begun to respond, to grow noticeably stronger, in response to a regimen the likes of which I had not put it through in probably a quarter of a century (dear god! That's a long time!).

And so, no photos. There was always "next week" — until there wasn't.

I think I'm ready to try a run again, tomorrow or Tuesday, but only making the effort will actually tell.

But still, the same league has a fall season, and there's hockey to look forward to, if I can find a game to meet my (limited) skills.

And the cycling, of course — oh wait. After waiting out a downpour beneath the Bronson Street overpass by the canal this afternoon, Raven and I rounded Dow's Lake until I felt something ... no right with my 25 year-old machine.

I dismounted and realized my centre bar is no longer connected to the frame! Where it metal (should) meet metal, just over the crankshaft, is now a shifting gap, which is rather disconcerting (though also, I think, it's rather impressive the machine will still go at all).

I'll be taking it into a shop tomorrow to inquire whether some welding will be of any use, but I reather suspect it's time to strip the beast for parts, discard the noble frame and see about resureccting the nearly 50-year old beast I have in the basement.

Or maybe, I should take Raven's advice and look for some on Kijiji.

Despite the travails, I'm busy and pretty happy. How's your summer been?

I felt like I played my best game of the season on Sunday. I was running hard, I took a decent turn in goal, and was aggressive against the opposing teams best players.

I even managed to make it home without any blood flowing for a small wonder.

But maybe two hours after I'd showered, I realized that my right knee was starting to bother me — no, to hurt — quite a lot. Indeed, by the time I'd finished supper, maybe four hours after the game, I could barely bend my at all. Just sitting down in a chair required me to carefully position my left leg, sink to the seat, then manually swing /em> my right leg over and (more or less) into place. I could make it up stairs only with difficulty and down was painful indeed.

By the time I was ready for bed, I found it difficult to pull of my slippers and getting into bed required an elaborate maneouver that finally included Raven lifting and (slowly!) swinging the recalcitrant leg onto a cushion. She also, bless her, spent quite some time rubbing some kind of liniment into the joint and she barely complained when I swallowed a couple of ibuprofen.

Weird thing is, I couldn't tell you when the injury occurred. I didn't limp during the game, nor did I immediately afterward. Was it a twist? Did I get kicked? No idea, though a twist or sprain was my best guess, going on the assumption that I would have noticed a kick to the knee.

Regardless, though I didn't think it was a serious injury, I know that soft-tissue damage can take a very long time to heal. I was seriously concerned that I wouldn't be able to play this coming Sunday and the thought that I might miss the rest of the season worried at the back of my mind.

More depressing still was the thought that I was only just starting to get into some kind of decent shape and that this would be a huge set-back on that score.

All of which is to say that I am thrilled — thrilled! I tells ya — by the pace of the recovery.

Monday saw me still limping but in considerably less pain and, by days end, I was climbing the stairs almost normally and was able to get into bed knees first. Raven did the liniment rubbing again and this morning I awoke without a limp and barely even a twinge.

Suggesting a round of badminton tonight would probably be begging for trouble, but tomorrow ...? We'll see.

To say that I'm relieved is to put it very mildly indeed.

* * *

On the other hand, Livejournal has been down for at least 24 hours and I find myself jonesing quite badly for my reading list there. The Dreamwidth technology is just fine (more than fine in some ways), but the critical mass certainly is not.

I signed up here as a precautionary measure, a year or two back when LJ peremptorily canceled a number of accounts for what, on freedom-of-speech grounds, seemed worrisome reasons, so DW's explicitly pro-free-speech philosophy was extremely appealing, as was (and is) its non-profit, cooperative business model and its very sensible, slow-growth planning. But I nevertheless find myself missing LJ badly on a personal level and also on a political one, since I learned, during the last denial of service attack, that LJ is one of the major remaining popular arenas for free speech in Russia, a country in sore need of same.

In truth, at least in terms of my own "friends" list, few are posting any more and fewer still (I think) are reading my posts, but I miss it and I miss the various feeds and communities I read there as well.

So here's hoping that LJ's recovery from whatever it is that currently ails it be as speedy as was my knee's.