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

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.

While today was about quiet contemplation and recovery, tomorrow has to be about cleaning. Ick! Place is a mess, and I need to do beau coup laundry. My massage table hasn’t moved from the front hallway yet because I need to vacuum its normal resting spot before it goes back. Oy.

I think I’m headed to an LYS tomorrow, too. Friend of mine has expressed an interest in starting knitting, and far be it for me to refuse help there. Probably pick up some 7s and some simple yarn and start him on a scarf.

I finished all but the thumb on the first of the pair of gloves I’m doing for our secretary at work. They look really good – I purposefully loosened my style versus the ones I did for myself and I’m quite pleased at the results.

Speaking of mine, I’m wearing them tonight as I head up to the Eagle for Flogging 101, and it’s nice to have some warmth but still be able to tap this out on the phone. I did discover an end I’m going to have to work back in tomorrow, but that shouldn’t present too much of a difficulty.

* * *

Okay, flogging 101 was a lot of fun. Ran into one of my buddies from CBE this past weekend. Turns out he’s on the board of SIGMA, which (along with seeing the new schedule of play dates) was enough to convince me to renew my membership. Will have to send them a check this week.

The flogging itself was interesting. Learning how to hold yourself, how to hold the flogger, where to strike, how to vary your striking, etc. Started hitting newspaper, moved up to someone’s back. Definitely can see the attraction of it, from both sides. Might have to add a flogger to my repertoire come MAL this January. One guy recommended one particular vendor who should be there. Will have to check them out. I could see getting to like doing this.

And, slight change of plans for the evening and into tomorrow. Kento is heading through DC and crashing at my place this evening when he gets here. It will be good to see him, even if it was unexpected.

My name is Moose, I’m from Washington DC, and I’m aware of a feeling of calm and peace.

Celebrate the Body Erotic was, as always, a fantastic experience. Slightly smaller group, I think (28, including the staff), but the energy was fantastic. My impression was that while there were, as always, some men with wounds to explore, there seemed to be less crying and more laughter this time around on Sunday (for those who haven’t been, on the final day there’s a long, focused massage that frequently is a very strong emotional experience for those being massaged).

For my own part, I did laugh again on Sunday, but not quite as much as I did the previous two times I’ve done this workshop. The laughter started earlier in the session, but it died down and the feeling I got was more one of energy building up inside, like the qi (probably more specifically jing qi) kept accumulating until the end when I had to gather and release it upward (away from other participants). I repeatedly had to throw the energy off – it was too much to hold onto for long. But while I had it and could play with it? Wow. Even now the thought makes me tingle.

The time spent down, with good food, friendly men, fresh air, good sleep, and lots and lots of touch was exactly what I needed. With this foot injury I have been withdrawn from my body, ignoring it while it healed, and not living inside of it. Not a healthy thing to do. So getting back to that, and reconnecting with it was precisely what I needed right now (though my “you-haven’t-been-running” calves are now telling me how much I haven’t been using them today!). I’m very glad I had made the decision to do this session this year. I think I’d like to do one of the week-long ones this upcoming year.

I highly recommend these to anyone and everyone (and yes, they have them for straight folks and couples, too). It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I have found it very useful in my life.

So today I’m just sort of lounging and processing. I’ll do some errands later, but in the meantime I’m enjoying just being.

Did much shopping this weekend, and picked up several pair of socks, the first of which did the trick today at work – no heel pain. We’ll see how they do tomorrow after waiting in line to vote. But so far so good, and definitely better than the old thinner ones. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

My plan is to get up early tomorrow morning to get to the polls first thing and be done with it. Not that there’s a question as to which way DC will go, but there are local races I’m interested in voting in, so I’d like to just be done with it first thing. Plus I’m supposed to get into the office slightly before my normal reporting time because for some odd reason my boss scheduled an early meeting the morning of election day. Don’t know what she was thinking.

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.

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.

Never schedule a podiatrist appointment on your birthday.

He poked some at the foot. It’s a good sign that there’s no sharp pains, just dull ones that fluctuate. That said, it could be another 2-3 months before I’m fully healed. Ugh.

Got my (expired today) drivers license renewed for another eight years. Good new pic.

My local yarn shop had: a) a sale; b) a full selection of Addi turbos; and b) guy-colored hand-dyed merinos. Heaven.

Dropped off 2/3 of my shirts at the dry cleaners.

After the poking of the heel to determine the level of pain, it started to really, really throb, so the dry cleaners were by bike, and the yarn shop was by car. Otherwise I stayed in and rested the foot.

This past year was not what I thought it was going to be. Between the breakup and the foot injury pretty much nothing that I’d planned has gone right. But, as Dad likes to say, “You drive ’em, you ding ’em.” Or, to quote the Princess Bride, “Life is pain, Highness; anyone who says otherwise is selling something.” I’ll recover, eventually. But for now, I’m just biding my time. And enjoying a nice, quite birthday.