Wings

Last night I met an angel.

He gave me wings.

And taught me to fly.

Okay, you don't need wings to fly (although he did give them to me, along with several other pairs to try out), and he didn't really teach me (you just have to push the "fly" button), but I thought it sounded poetic.

I was talking to one of the guys at work the other day about Second Life, and he said that he mostly plays a different game that's very similar, except it's set in, I think, medieval times. I don't remember the name . . . Anyway, he said, "But in Second Life, you can fly!"

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Play with pain

I mentioned awhile ago that I had somehow hurt my knee, eventually went to a doctor about it, and the doctor sent me to physical therapy. I went twice last week, but it hasn't seemed to be getting better. It will feel better for awhile, then start hurting again. I've been taking the anti-inflammatory that the doctor prescribed, and trying to do the exercises that the physical therapist gave me, but not very industriously.

When I made my appointments for this week, the therapist I'd been seeing was available on Monday morning, but I can't do Monday mornings because of our staff meeting, so I made the appointment for Tuesday. The therapist was off that day, so the receptionist, who was scheduling the appointment, asked me if it was okay if I saw someone else. I liked the woman that I was seeing, and didn't particularly want to see someone else, but I said sure.

So, I went this morning, and it was like night and day! Once I saw someone who actually seemed to know what they were doing, and explained to me what he thought had happened to my knee, and why, and how to fix it, it suddenly made a lot more sense.

And potentially a lot scarier.

I'd been sort of feeling like maybe I was being a sissy about it, that I should just "walk it off" or something, but he said that if I don't treat it aggressively now, I'm probably going to end up having surgery. Now, I say that, but I'm pretty sure that I would have to feel a LOT worse in order to have knee surgery, but I got the point.

The other therapist had told me that I should be icing it, but she never really said much, and I'd been icing it about once a day, if I remembered. The guy today said that I need to be icing it every three hours. He taped up my knee really tightly so that it moved my kneecap, kind of, but it enabled me to do the exercises with a normal range of motion without pain. He showed me some other exercises to do, and said I should get some ankle weights. He said I should probably really be on crutches, but I asked him if I could try his suggestions this week and see how I do, and he said that was fine.

When we were finished, I asked him if it would be okay if I stopped seeing the other therapist, and started seeing him, and he said that wouldn't be a problem, so when I made the appointments for next week, I asked for them with the new guy. I think I'll make a lot more progress that way.

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Second Life

I spent most of the weekend in Second Life. I say "in" rather than "playing" because every article I've read stresses the fact that "it's not a game." It feels like a game, but it's a game in the way The Sims is a game, more or less. Bob kept coming downstairs while I was "playing" (there's really no other verb that I can think of at the moment that fits), walking by and laughing and shaking his head. I think every time he came down I was sitting at a cafe table talking with someone.

I also did tai chi, played drums in a drum circle, taught a yoga class, took an aerobics class, did some whale watching, and stood under the ocean and watched fish.

The very intriguing part, to me, is the "real life" (how can you talk about this stuff without overdosing on quotations marks?) companies that have presences there. Not the big companies, really--AOL has a big place, for instance--but the smaller companies who buy a piece of land, put up a building, and basically set up an office there.

I ran across a public relations firm that has an office with a conference table, a conversation area, and a row of "bells" at the front of the office, each one with someone's name on it. You can walk into the office and page someone, send them a message, or pick up a copy of the company brochure. I assume that the employees come in occasionally and have virtual meetings -- I say "come in" in that they log on from wherever they are, and their avatars sit around the table and talk, or sit in the comfy chairs and sofas.

There are places where concerts are held, or movies are shown; there are lectures (I was somewhere yesterday and listened awhile to an interview with one of the founders); there are classes, although I haven't checked those out yet. I've only been doing it for a few days, so I don't know a lot about it, but I think that it's free to go pretty much anywhere, you only have to pay if you want to buy land or build something.

Of course, it's not all lofty -- there's also the possibility of having sex with a raccoon. Not that I did, although I did have a tail for awhile.

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Therapy

One of my knees has been bothering me for a couple of weeks. Okay, probably more like a month. It feels like I twisted it, but I don't have any memory of doing anything specific. If I did, it wasn't significant enough to remember. I kept thinking it would get better, but it just wasn't, so I looked up an orthopedic doctor on my insurance company's website and called them yesterday. She got me in yesterday afternoon, surprisingly, and I went in and filled out a TON of paperwork--more than I ever remember filling out at any other doctor's office--took some x-rays, and met with a doctor.

He said he thought it was probably either bursitis or tendinitis, gave me a prescription for a heavy-duty anti-inflammatory, and said told me to go upstairs to a physical therapy office and make an appointment for an evaluation. If it's an inflammation, I'm not sure why I would need physical therapy, but I didn't think to ask that until after I had left the office. If the prescription works, I'm not sure there would be any point to therapy. To strengthen it, I guess. I don't know. They couldn't get me in until Monday, so I figure I'll make a decision later in the week, and either keep the appointment or call the doctor and ask if he thinks I still need it, assuming my knee feels better by then.

Bob's on his annual fishing trip this week, so it's kind of weird around here. I don't really mind being by myself; what I really miss is being able to talk to him several times a day. He can't get a cellular signal where they're staying, but he's come "into town" a couple of times to get supplies, and called me. He called on Monday, and he called today, but he said that's probably the last time I'll hear from him until they start back on Sunday. I forgot to tell him that I went to the doctor yesterday. Not that it matters, I just don't like not being able to call him up. I miss him, and so do the cats.

Although they don't necessarily show it.

I finished up a redesign of Barbara Bretton's site over the weekend:

Barbara is a knitter, and I was thrilled to find the image of the ball of pink yarn trailing a heart. It was kind of difficult to put together, though, but I finally did, and I'm really pleased with it.

I keep forgetting to mention that Jennifer Stumpf sent me a pair of her wonderful earrings--that she made especially for me--a couple of weeks ago. I really love them--aren't they beautiful?

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Live to Bead

Cello went shopping over the Memorial Day weekend, and on Tuesday he brought in several new pieces of equipment--a few new monitors, a new employee got a new Mac, and he bought me an external hard drive. It was an incredibly busy week for me, so I just set it aside to deal with later. You can see where this is going, right? I was working like crazy on Friday; sometime mid-morning my computer locked up and started making this weird tick-tick-tick sound. I turned it off, let it sit for a few minutes, then turned it back on. Tick-tick-tick.

Lovely. Before long, I had an office full of young men analyzing the problem, trying various things, crawling around under my desk, plugging and unplugging, etc. The eventual verdict was that the hard drive had died.

So Cello went back out to the Apple store and bought me a new, shiny, lovely iMac. And to his credit, he didn't yell at me (not that he ever does, of course) when he asked if I'd had a chance to use the external drive yet . . .

Liora bought a pair of earrings from me, and posted a picture wearing them:

I also sent her a charm, and she's using it attached to her handbag zipper:

I have a bunch of new stuff up in the shop, and I made a few more things this weekend that I need to photograph and post. Taking the photographs, cropping and enhancing them, takes a lot of time. I suppose that's an argument for making multiples of the same design rather than making new things all the time, but that's part of the fun.

When Cello was setting up my new computer, he named it Flower Power, which is what Gard named the first Mac that I had there. He said, "You can change it. Name it anything you want," then he changed it himself and called it "Live to Knit." He said, "Are you still knitting a lot?" and I said that I was knitting less and making jewelry more, and he changed it to "Live to Bead."

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