Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

It’s the shoes. Or, rather, the socks.

When I bought the shoes I customarily wear, I was in the habit of buying Dockers™ socks. They were generally thicker than most other “dress” socks, and if I was lucky I could find the padded dress socks (ones with extra fabric on the soles – heaven if you’ve ever worked retail, trust me). Well, either they’ve stopped making them or Hechts/May/Macy’s stopped carrying them because it’s been exceedingly difficult to find the things, or something comparable. So, I’ve been buying more conventional, thin dress socks the past year or two. Which has meant that my feet tend to slide just enough inside the shoes. Annoying, but not something I thought much of.

Then two days ago I went from wearing an old pair of the thicker socks at work to changing into the thinner ones. Right after I got up to Metro, the heel started throbbing again. Yesterday, dug up thicker socks, no problems. Today, the same – thick socks, no problem. Mo-ther-fuck-er.

Follow-up with the podiatrist tomorrow to confirm (was pre-set, before the revelation), and I sense a lot of sock shopping for me this weekend. Oy.

Saturday I was told online that I was “pretty cute for an older guy”. (he was 19)

Yesterday I got carded at a restaurant when I ordered a beer.

These both amused me.

Ah, the day of the annual physical. Such fun.

First, though, the dermatologist looked me over and said he saw no signs of melanoma. Yay. But because my brother’s had one, yearly visits from here on out to get checked. Boo. Pet peeve: Once again, Dr. Hyper, while thorough, was not in the room for very long, and while there was not quite bouncing off the walls. I think he needs to switch to decaf.

On the actual physical, everything looked and tested out normal (as expected). 105/70 BP, no immediately glaring abnormalities on the EKG (which was new this year – baseline test this time), heart rate’s still low despite the lack of regular exercise, and everything else he prodded and poked seemed satisfactory.

While out & about I popped into the jeweler where I got the necklace that matches my steel ring, as the necklace itself had come out of the clasp (the rubber was pulling away). They didn’t have them in stock, so it’s been ordered in, but they did have the matching watch, so I was bad and got it. Looks quite nice, though I think is more “jewelry” and less “actual timepiece” as the face/hands are small. Like I check a watch more than I check my cell phone, anyway.

Dismal, grey, rainy day here in DC. The rain held off until after the appointments, but has been going on and off since. I came home to nap and catch up on some other things (not work, unfortunately, but I’ll skim that after dinner). Headed out again to catch up with a friend for dinner here in a bit, then it’s back out of that mess for me.

The cupcakes went over well last night. ‘Twas a fun evening, and I enjoyed getting to see the various folks who were there.

Waiting for coffee to finish steeping here in the french press this morning, then I’m getting cleaned up and heading out to brunch at Asylum with Stephen and Kevin. I’ve found ’tis better to get to Asylum right at 11 when they open because they’ll actually have the daily specials available (and they’re generally worth it), and you can find seating with a minimum of fuss. 2 pm? Good luck. Haven’t been in a couple of months, so am looking forward to the good food. And time on the Metro to knit, of course. Then I’m going to be stuck reviewing a document for work for a bit, and hoping I don’t get the same reaction I got last year when I pointed out typos in it (“Wait, you can’t change the text now!” Then why have me review it, you wankers? Honestly).

Have my annual physical tomorrow, as well as a dermatologist visit to get checked out. Don’t expect anything earth shattering will be found, but given the family history it’s better to check than not. The worst part is the fasting for the blood tests. No, wait, I take that back, the worst part is the prostate exam, but the fasting comes in a close second. But we do what we must.

Picking JT up from the airport this evening on his way back from London and grabbing dinner with him. Sunday dinners with him seems to be becoming a regular habit, and it’s one I’m glad we’re getting into. He’s one of my longest known friends in the area, and I enjoy the extra time with him now.

The computer arrived and is now all set up. Oh, I need to back up.

Ordered a new MacBook last week. The iBook was completely out of memory, and things were running noticeably slower as newer protocols came out, so it was time to move up. A late birthday present to myself.

Anyway, so it arrived yesterday, and after much gnashing of teeth and scrambling to find an extra ethernet cable, all of my settings and files transferred over and everything is all well and good and nice. The screen is wider than the 14″ iBook, at least in appearance (the screen resolution is better, 1280×800 versus 1024×768), even though it’s a smaller screen (13″). It feels more “widescreen” than the iBook did, and I’ve had fun stretching the winders out to match the edges.

The thing that has surprised me the most about the move over was that it moved all of my programs over as well – not just the user data associated with them. So I did not have to go buy a new copy of MS Office, I didn’t have to redownload all of the chat programs, though I have had to upgrade some of the programs as I’ve run across them because this is on the newer Mac OS (10.5), and it’s intel chips versus powerpc chips.

Enough of that for now.

Work was, wow. Had a meeting with another BGA where, after much invoking of the names of senior officials of the other BGA, we got ourselves to where we needed to be (namely, getting the fucking money out of their little paws – hence my involvement). It was fun to get over to a different BGA, see their security procedures, etc. The building reminded me of my co-op, lots of aluminium and glass, very mid-century. Fun stuff.

Then, another agency was getting snippy with us over some policy calls, so I ended up hunting down crap for the political head of our office to go over and give them the smack down. That actually started before I even left home, and I ended up stopping in with our budget office and telling them I didn’t care what a budget analyst at the other agency thought about our legal authorities, and that we weren’t going to play telephone if her counsel’s office had a problem they needed to contact us directly. Which was partially aimed at my own budget office, because they have a ton of new hires, and we might as well set them straight from the beginning, otherwise my head deputy will jump down their throat the first time one of them dares to utter (or even worse, repeat) a legal opinion from a non-lawyer (he’s really touchy about our office’s prerogative there – I’ve seen him summarily dismiss opinions from non-lawyer peons from other agencies and ban them from future meetings, and he gets his way there. Yowch).

So, was running around like mad on those and a couple of other things, which was both fun and exhausting. I like it when we’re that busy, it’s so much more engaging and satisfying.

Overdid the walking a bit today, wandering in old town over in Alexandria, so the heel’s a bit sore this evening. Overall the heel seems to be doing a little better these days, but I’ve been staying off of it, too, which I’m sure helps.

Pain aside, I managed to pick up some needed yarn (for baby stuff) and some needles (for another project for which the yarn arrived yesterday) at a different LYS down there. Finished a couple more rows on the right fingerless glove while on and waiting for Metro today as well. Otherwise I didn’t do much else as far as knitting, or a whole hell of a lot of other things, either. Did get to hang out with a couple friends over the course of it, and generally enjoyed a mostly unscripted weekend.

In other news™, I ordered a new MacBook this evening, which hopefully will arrive early to mid-week next week. The current computer is completely out of hard disk space, despite my best efforts to transfer unneeded backup files over to my portable drive. So, it was time to upgrade from the iBook to a MacBook. It’s sad but I think I’m more excited about the fact that the new one will have backlit keys than anything else.

Hadn’t upgraded the iBook to the newest version of Mac OS, either, so that should be interesting to get used to. Debating dumping a paid account I keep in favor of a MobileMe account, too. While I do most of my email through my domain, it is necessary at times to have an email which is independent of that, and given how mac-centric I already am, it would seem to make sense to go that way (and go ahead and get push email for the phone). We’ll see.

Well, that was fun, and needed. And we’ll leave it at that.

This past weekend sucked. I finally got productive around Sunday afternoon when I had a cleaning/laundry fit, but prior to that it was a lot of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, avoiding walking, and playing on the Wii. My usual “leave me alone until I feel better” attitude gets compounded when it’s semi-painful to walk as well; doesn’t encourage me to leave the house for a lot when it can potentially hurt to do so.

Did get out Sunday morning to use a gift certificate my newbies had given me at the end of their tri program, picked up some cross-training implements to help with that process. Was a good excuse to get out of the house, but even the walk to and from Metro ended up making my heel sore.

Then, today, not a ton of pain. Wandering around the office was fine, no real pain. The bike ride there and back was fine, of course (biking hasn’t irritated it at all, thankfully). So bizarre, pain the one day at minor stuff, none the next at a more normal course. Wish it would just heal up already, this is long past the point where it got old.

Working on some fingerless gloves. Despite the name you still have to do a rudimentary thumb for the thing, and I’m hoping to get some help on that tomorrow night at the DC men’s knitting group. In the meantime, here is is, sans thumb (left glove):