(no subject)

BOOT COMIN OFF

I went to the doctor's today for my three-week checkup with the boot and he says I am freakishly fast-healing, so at the end of this week I can officially stop wearing the boot. I start physical therapy tomorrow.

At the end of the week is also when I am taking the day off to go on AN ADVENTURE, so it's a very exciting Friday! I'm going to Ikea and Mitsuwa and Five Guys Burgers and Bleeding Heart Bakery and the thrift store. And this time I will not end up in Glencoe on my way to Schaumberg. For those of you who do not know Chicago geography, that's a little like ending up in New York when you were aiming for the moon.

I am not, however, allowed to get sick this week, because I've already taken this morning off for the doctor's appointment, and I'm taking tomorrow afternoon off for physical therapy, and Thursday afternoon for chiropractic, and Friday for THE ADVENTURE. And BossBoss has threatened to replace me with a cardboard cutout of David Tennant if I send him one more email about when I'm not going to be here.

ON THE OTHER HAND the Norbo table arrived today, for great ikeyay, and so did many socks.

(no subject)

I haven't been posting much lately, in part because I've felt very sort of flighty and scattered, so I've been concentrating on just keeping my shit together and making sure the bills are paid and such. Much easier, btw, now that I've managed to make the Chase Bank online billpay system work...

I keep meaning to talk about the difference between breaking an arm and breaking a leg, which are not emotionally stressful differences particularly but are definitely there. In a personal sense, it's a completely different kind of inconvenience, not being able to walk properly versus not having a functional hand. It was much harder to have my left arm in a cast, whether because I couldn't remove the cast or whether because not being able to use the hand was intense and difficult. With a removable boot, there just wasn't the trauma I associated with the broken wrist from last year.

Socially, people are much more likely to look at you and help you if you're in an arm cast, I think. For one thing, we're used to looking "up", at peoples' bodies and faces, so it's easier to study someone's injury furtively if it's above the waist. For another, a broken arm is instantly visible as such -- there's not a lot of doubt when you look at a cast that there's a broken bone underneath it. People used to stand up for me on the El all the time, which is kind of hilarious given it was a broken ARM. But they did, and on the street people would look at the arm and see me and then move on.

With the boot, it's different. People don't want to look at it because it's harder to do it in secret, and part of the hilarity of the steamboot was people sneaking a look, looking away, and then double-taking back because does that guy have rivets on his boot? WTF, is that a watch chain?

It also doesn't necessarily immediately imply a quick heal. With a boot like that, it could be a permanent prosthetic for all most people know, or a brace that I'm unable to walk without. Staring at someone who is eventually going to be "normal" again is socially okay; staring at someone who's disabled for life is not.

But people still see you, so it's not just not-looking, it's "don't look don't look don't look" and they write you out of existence and then run into you. I'm fairly sure we have some people in the cafe who are in permanent prosthetics -- do you guys get this? One day, in the five minute walk from the elevators to the cafeteria, three people ran into me and two more would have if I hadn't dodged. I don't think it's the deliberate "you're young, you can't really be injured" thing that some of the Cafe have mentioned, where people just don't make adjustments for your presence (though I'm sure that's real and does happen); it seems more like they have chosen to ignore me so completely that I've become invisible.

I don't mind it, particularly, aside from the annoyance of having to dodge morons, but it's fascinating to see. And I suspect if I didn't know I would be healed again fairly soon I would mind it, quite a lot.

Anyway, I haven't suffered nearly as much as I did with the wrist, for which grace many thanks, but there has been a lot more physical pain than I had with the wrist. I imagine a lot of the intellectual disorder of late has come from working all day on a few doses of naproxen sodium, then coming home and taking a glorious but seriously impairment-causing prescription pill. I think the pain will actually go down a lot when I lose the boot, because a lot of it now seems to be muscular.

And that is what I have learned from my broken fibula. Thanks a lot, fibula.

(Also, if you say you broke your leg in Texas, people will automatically assume you were thrown from a horse.)

(no subject)

IN OTHER LOLARIOUS NEWS, I found wank over pizza today.

Apparently nobody snobs about pizza like New Yorkers snob over pizza, unless it's Chicagoans. Take a bunch of New Yorkers, drop them into a Chicago review site on a quest for New York style pizza in Chicago, and watch the RAGE EXPLODE.

"I hate Chicago pizza." "Which kind? There are two kinds of Chicago pizza!" "No, Three!" "WTF THREE, I have never heard of cracker crust!" "Then you're not really from Chicago." "NO U, there are actually FIVE!" "Two of those aren't Chicago!" "I don't want Chicago, I want New York style!" "You can't get REAL NY style pizza in Chicago." "IAWTC, All Chicago pizza is shit." "U TAKE THAT BACK. New York pizza is greasy!" "WE LIKE IT THAT WAY, Chicago pizza is soggy!" "WE LIKE IT THAT WAY!" "EAT SHIT FARMBOY." "DIAF, YUPPIE!"

Regional pies: SRS BZNSS.

I admit to some bias, because I really think you have to be raised on Chicago pizza to love it. I toyed with the idea of sampling every pizza place on GrubHub until I found one I liked, but I couldn't face eating that much terrible food.

I did find a place that does both good fresh sushi and edible crab rangoon, so I'm happy.

I'm not allowed to order sushi twice in three days, huh.