I think I have an addiction to Coke Zero.
This has nothing to do with my ankle except perhaps if I poured Coke Zero on the ankle maybe it would magically heal it. Or just burn through the skin and leave a scar. I don’t know, I’m not a scientist or colagist or whatever it is they call soft drink smart people.
Writing about my ankle for 84 days may be difficult.
Today I offer an ankle haiku:
Oh ankle down there
Why did you injure yourself?
You stupid ankle
Difficult indeed.
In less than two hours National Novel Writing Month 2011 begins. My profile can be found here.
I have a vague idea for my novel this year and expect panic/hysteria to follow as I desperately try to wing it. Stay tuned for more!
It was sunny for Halloween today. Not that people actually Trick or Treat when it’s sunny but at least The Rains did not ruin the evening for the wee ones.
Nothing new to report on the fitness front today but more possibly soon™.
Tonight Nic and I ventured to Commercial Drive in East Van to check out all the freaks in costume. Lots of people were dressed up for Halloween, too.
Ho ho.
As with last year we had come to experience the Parade of Lost Souls. The 2020 version — my first — was a nifty tour along several blocks through dark and spooky alleys where most ofthe neighborhood had dressed up yards and garages in appropriate Halloween trimmings (or drippings).
Upon arrival at the park near Templeton there were masses of people already gathered. We spotted The Line and took our places in it, ready for the spooky tour.
A pair of bulldogs dressed as a bumblebee and a hot dog were in the line ahead of us (along with a couple of guys) and collectively they provided a
visual distraction as the line slowly crept forward.
The line weaved around and through the park, which featured a band andorher sundry booths and exhibits. Then the line ended, we were back where we started and we wondered what the heck just happened besides a whole lot of nothing.
Answer: nothing. No street tour this year, apparently. We wandered the park a bit (which didn’t require bring in the line to begin with) and the only thing of note was a tent filled eith a bunch of organs — the kind used to creepy effect for the music in musty horto classics. With random members of the public madhing the keys of eight organs simultaneously and none of these people possessing any apparent musical talent you get something equally or posdibly even more horrifying than a movie filled with monsters or vampires. We left.
Nic suggested checking out a fake haunted house perhaps but I figured our luck on the evening had rnded eith the rain holding off so we watched The Twilight Zone and ate popcorn instead.
Had we stayed half an hour later we eould have sern the actual parade as it turned out but them’s the breaks.
At least Nic was seriously stylin’ in his pimp suit. I went dressed in my usual straight guy outfit. Fools almost everyone!
No crunches today and a torrential downpour put the kibosh (it’s been far too long since I’ve used that word) on the initial bike ride, as my cycling jacket and pants are not handy and riding an unfamiliar bike (with hydraulic brakes, which sound industrial and scary) on streets slicked with rain seems like a good way to maybe screw up my other ankle.
But I’ll be working on something exercise-wise this week, even if it’s just rigorous gnashing of my teeth.
Doing some extended walking tonight I have to admit I could feel my ankle. Not hurting but there, like an itch in the part of your back you can’t quite reach.
Bummer. But not unexpected.
Stupid ankle.
I think I’ll try a few crunches tomorrow, just to get something started. I’m referring to the exercise, not the delicious mouth-shredding breakfast cereal of the Cap’n variety.
It’s raining today. Boo!
I am actually getting mildly excited over the prospect of cycling. It’s been a long while since I rode my bike to work and it’s been longer still since I just plain rode for recreational. I look forward to making all those seldom-used leg muscles cry out for a day or two.
Walking at a brisk clip continues to present no discomfort at all. I am glad. 80 days to go.
It’s sunny today. Hooray!
I can now walk briskly and my ankle does not hurt anymore. Hooray again! I am fairly positive now that the bone is not fractured but bruised. My plan is to feel it up on Day 28 and see if there is any pain when applying pressure. I suspect it won’t pass the test but I remain hopeful.
After stating my disinterest in all things vampire I found myself reading my third vampire novel this year. Clearly I have gone mad. After The Passage and the classic Dracula I got a hankering for vintage Stephen King so I took down the 30+ (!) year old copy of Salem’s Lot I bought but had never read and tore through it like Barlow on a bloody bender.
Unlike some of King’s later books, Salem’s Lot is fairly lean and the ending, though predictable, is satisfying and doesn’t leave you scratching your head or perhaps turning the book upside down to see if it makes more sense that way.
The vampires in this tale of a small Maine town gone horribly wrong are classic King supporting characters — by turns vulgar, dimwitted, fat, abusive. But there are also innocent kids and girlfriends mixed in, all shepherded over by a drunken priest and a sheriff who calmly skips town when things get weird.
My favorite aspect of the story is the way King slowly then with rapidly increasing speed unravels Jerusalem’s Lot and how it’s undoing goes largely unnoticed by the world around it. The townfolk start out fairly rattled by the disappearance of the boy Ralph Glick and end up either feasting on each other or hiding away at night as out-of-towners drive through and wonder why the place is so…dead.
It’s dated in ways you’d expect a 1975 novel to be — everyone’s using party lines and people phone doctors instead of 911, the specter of Vietnam hangs over several characters and the populace generally doesn’t cotton to them ‘faggots’ and ‘queers’ (like Barlow and Straker — two men working together, they must be queer. Turns out they’re just monsters). But the dated bits don’t detract from the story.
Although I found the main characters were handled well, the transition of Mark Petrie from kid-who-has-his-stuff-together to someone more simpering felt a bit off. Sure, he goes through the wringer but he ultimately comes off as kind of a wimp, undercutting his earlier scenes of strength.
The writing is fairly tight, though King indulges in a few poetic passages that don’t quite mesh with the overall tone of the story. Perhaps these were epistolary experiments that got watered down to better fit the overall narrative. There’s only a few and they don’t go on so their presence isn’t off-putting. They do act to leaven the crudity and gore that is otherwise throughout the book.
Bottom line: Salem’s Lot holds up nicely 36 years later. It’s a far grimmer tale than Dracula and the bodies pile up like cord wood but if you like a good vampire story I think you’d enjoy this.
Here on Day 2 I find that I no longer feel any pain or discomfort when walking at a more leisurely pace. It still feels a bit tweaked when I pick up to my usual stride.
The weather is drizzly and cool — 6ºC when I checked a thermometer. For the first time this fall I wore my winter jacket and it felt good — which is bad, because it means winter and The Rains are not far off. The sun is also setting at like 3 p.m., too.
I have three trajectories planned for my non-running exercise:
Twelve weeks is 84 days.
The 84th day from today is January 16th, 2012. January 17th is when the doctor at the clinic officially cleared me for running again. I have vowed to blog for at least the next 84 consecutive days as a result. That will show my ankle who’s boss! Or something.
He didn’t want to send me for an x-ray because he said his treatment would be the same and why irradiate your body if you don’t need to? On the plus side I didn’t have to pee in a cup.
Since the ankle has been improving noticeably each day since my last run I don’t believe any bone is fractured because this kind of healing simply doesn’t jibe with that. Even my laughably bad Internet self-diagnostic skills have me feeling confident about that.
On the other hand it might be a bone bruise and clearly four weeks off was not sufficient for it to heal up fully. I can very clearly feel the discomfort/pain by applying pressure to the affected area so I’ll be checking periodically on the ankle to see if I can perhaps shave a few weeks off because 12 weeks is a freaking long time.
Meanwhile, I may have to learn how to swim to get some exercise and that went really well last time.