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

Our new political leadership, at the urging of certain offices who have an axe to grind, has decided that the lawyers in the BGA are the source and instigators of all delay or other ills affecting the BGA. I actually had one political tell me to my face, in regard to some impossible language coming our way in the upcoming appropriation, that we collectively were being “insufficiently creative.” As if all there is to lawyering is to wave our hands and declare that red is green to suit the immediate political desires of the leadership. As I recall the last administration had their attorneys do some “creative” lawyering, and that turned out just swimmingly (not). Little twerp.

Needless to say, this has not made working terribly pleasant at the moment, especially in the face of the extraordinary demands on us under the stimulus act.

Adding to the difficulties are the normal issues with any transition, getting the politicals on board and up to speed, and also just getting our senate-confirmed folks nominated and through the senate vetting process. The tax woes of earlier nominees have caused an increased scrutiny of all nominees by the white house, thus further slowing the process (plus the desire to have cabinet secretaries all in place before lower appointees are nominated).

We’ll get through this, but it would be nice to have more, and less hostile, political leadership in place in the face of these extraordinary needs.

I had a follow up with my podiatrist this morning. Result: he carved a corn off my little toe (unrelated to anything else going on), and released me from follow up appointments on the plantar fasciitis. There was almost no pain when he pressed on the heel, and I’ve been able to walk around town and do some short sprints (a la running for an elevator or the Metro) without paying for it afterward, so there was no more need to go in and see him. I have the brace to wear if I feel the need to stretch out the tendons, and I’m cleared to start running when I feel ready to do so, with the caveat that I have to build up very slowly with any running I might do.

I should be relieved, but I’m more scared than anything else. Scared that starting up will mean the return of pain. That this will somehow end up being an even longer process because I’ll screw up the foot by doing too much.

Yuck.

I’m going to have to play it by ear. First step will be sleeping without the blinkin’ brace on my foot to see how that goes. Then maybe some running, on a dreadmill treadmill, in case something isn’t right with it. Keep your fingers crossed.

In many, many ways this past year stunk on ice (the break up and my foot injury being the most notable). As many others are, I’m hoping that 2009 will be a better one for me and for those I know and love.

I’m working on an Uberlist now for 2009. I didn’t do one the past two years, after doing them the 2 or so years prior to that, and I think I miss the structure it imposed upon me, to think about where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. Having something written just helps, so I’m at it again. Hopefully it’ll be complete by the weekend and I’ll get it up once it’s done.

Until then, have a safe and happy new year.

Took a sleep aid last night, and for the first time had a bad reaction to it. Woke up groggy this morning, went in late, and by noon I hadn’t really woken up, despite coffee, so I went home and napped. Oh, and while on the way to work I managed to leave my badge at home, so I returned to get it rather than go through the rigmarole that work inflicts upon you when you forget it. Nothing like walking back and forth to Metro twice. Totally not my day today.

Once I got up, I did go swim this evening, doing a mile once all was said and done. Felt good to get moving again, and I think it worked the last of the stuff out of my system. What a mess. Won’t be using that again any time soon, which is a shame, because it had worked okay before.

On an unrelated note, if clementines were more readily available, I’d eat more fruit on a regular basis. Love those things, was happy to see them at Safeway on the way home from the pool.

All in all a very good Thanksgiving day. Was nice and quiet for most of it. The store this morning was uncrowded and uncharacteristically quick to get out of. The cooking went well, and I took the better of the two batches of cupcakes with me (made 2 dozen). Unfortunately I’ve broken a ring on my icing piper, so it was slathered on by spreader rather than piped nicely, but they did fine.

Side note: I really, really want to make the margarita cupcakes I found in the cookbook while flipping back to the buttercreme frosting recipe.

The dinner itself was fantastic. I took a zucchini risotto as well as the cupcakes (the mushroom selection stunk, so zucchini it was). The bird came out perfect, which the host was rightly proud of. He also thoughtfully saved me a batch of potatoes sans butter/milk, which was much appreciated. The other selections were equally tasty, with lots of good vegetables.

Some Wii was played, and I set Jon’s Wii up (he hadn’t played with it since he’d moved – in June). Next thing you know he’s going to be getting messages via the Wii from a certain someone who will have him registered here shortly. Bwhahahaha. We did warn him what the blinky blue light on the front means now, too.

Got the kitchen cleaned up just now after getting home, so no mess in the morning. Off work early tomorrow, and will plan to stop by the gym after that, swim, and hand in my receipt for the new shoes & lock. Wonder how they’ll do the credit.

Got the news that early registration for the Nation’s Tri opened for DC Tri Club folks, so signed up for that tonight. Hopefully with the stretching I’ve started doing on my feet will keep the PF under control, and keep it from recurring, and I’ll be able to do the race this time around.

Picked up replacement shoes (shower and gym), as well as a new lock this evening. Both pair were on sale, which is always good even when someone else is paying. Still, the replacement costs is going to be almost as much as they make from me for a year’s worth of locker rental fees.

Quiet night. There are happenings around town, but I got home from the shopping, laid down for a quick nap and woke up an hour later feeling pretty cold (for no apparent reason), so I stayed in and behaved myself. Earlyish morning tomorrow to pick up some last minute food needs for tomorrow night’s dinner, then it’s some cooking and some time spent in Crobuzon (aka my town in Animal Crossing: City Folk) before I zip down to Alexandria.

Friday in the office should be nice and quiet (I hope!). I’d like to get filing done and clear a ton of shit off my desk.

Partial success – they’re going to reimburse me for the items lost. When I take the receipts (and new items) in, I’ll give them some suggestions on how they can avoid this in the future (i.e., mark the rented lockers so when they do a “sweep” of lockers they can tell who’s paying and who’s not). Ludicrous that it would’ve gotten swept in the first place since I pay them, but at least they’re owning up to the goof and reimbursing me for the lost stuff.

Did get in a short (1/2 hour) swim. Probably should have done more drills, but it went pretty well, considering I’ve been off for three months. The new nipple piercings did well, too, which was a relief. Felt a slight tug on one push-off, but otherwise they weren’t noticeable (to me) at all.

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.

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.

Let me preface my remarks here by saying that I use gay.com (and other chat programs) a lot to keep up with friends online. I’m on regularly 4-6 nights a week, and I happily pay gay.com for full access to their site. But I am incredibly displeased with this new implementation they’ve brought up this week. Unhappy enough to consider dumping the subscription if they don’t get it fixed.

I think I spent a grand total of 40 minutes on “the new gay.com” this evening in two different installments, after it seemed like I spent about the same amount of time trying to convince the web site that no, really, I didn’t have a pop-up blocker stopping their wretched pop-ups from popping up. Verdict: It sucks elephant butt.

Let’s catalog the deficiencies:

• It runs too slow (to be expected with a new system).
• There’s no way to ignore bots in the chat room now.
• There’s no way to turn off the entrance and exit alerts, so you frequently end up with a screen full of “so-and-so entered,” “so and so left” crap that you don’t need.
• You can’t zip through the list to find folks easily by hitting the first letter of their screen name – you’re forced to scroll through the entire thing.
• It takes forever to bring up a screen name when you want to click on their profile or view their photos.
• No clicking through to links in chat, you’re forced to cut & paste.
• Because it’s run through the browser, if someone sends you a link in another program (AIM/Yahoo/MSN/etc.), chat ends up getting shut down if you click on the link in the other program because the new page opens in your chat browser window (or whatever window you have open).
• There’s too much wasted space in the windows – they take up too much screen real estate.
• Even after full disabling the pop-up blocker and getting their pop-ups to work, Every Single Window that popped up continued to display the “you need to turn your pop-up blocker off” message, blocking the screen that I was trying to see until I could hunt down the tiny little “X” that would turn the message off.

In other words, the thing sucks elephant butt.

I’ve left feedback with them, and will continue to do so. The stand-alone chat program worked so, so much better than any browser based crap they could throw up there. I can understand that perhaps they wanted more ad revenue by bringing users back onto their site, but there are ways to do that (force users to go to the profile page on their site to see pictures – more ad revenue/hits right there, without breaking up the other features that made the program work so much better) and still make the experience user-friendly. I realize the company is (probably still) losing money like mad, but driving away core, long-time users by making the site unusable is not the way to fix that.