Silicon Valley Redneck

I've been stung... I've been stung...

Out walkies this morning, I took a detour to visit a bush.

Suddenly there came a stinging sensation around the back of my left ankle.

Evil vegetation present: poison oak (to which I seldom have a reaction, and the reaction is nowhere near that fast in any case) and blackberries (thorny, but not venomous).

No nettles in view.

Guess I must have trodden on a nest of... I dunno... tiny irritable wasps?  Microscopic flying rattlesnakes?  Forest jellyfish?

Been two and a half hours now; I got home, cleaned the area, and goobered on some hydrocortisone cream.  It's still stinging.

(The title is of course a Moonwulf reference.)

Owwwwww.

Not so productive the past few days, on account of I tried to lift something heavy at an awkward angle and was reminded of the reason for "lift with your legs, not your back!"

Can't spend much time at my desk, at least not in a position to be doing real work.

Getting in and out of a car is problematic (this particular injury makes raising my right leg painful).

It gets better and worse, and this morning is Worse.  But I gotta go forth and launder.

Spent a chunk of yesterday watching Zombies of the Stratosphere, because Leonard Nimoy (I hadn't realized he was in it, playing Second Martian Invader, until Alex Pournelle pointed it out on Facebook).  I'd seen it once before, on Creature Feature, when I was a kid, and basically remembered nothing except Commando Cody (who wasn't even in it; the guy in the flying suit was inexplicably changed).  It's... fantastically cheesy.  Pretty much nothing makes sense.  Random amusement: when the Martian rocket ship makes a hard landing, all the seats fall over.  As in, not in any way attached to the floor.  Oh, and at the end the Martians are suddenly called "zombies" and apparently no longer have a homeworld or anything, perhaps because it was 30 seconds to closing credits and the titular zombies had yet to put in an appearance.

Hey, is anyone distributing collections of Universal serials on USB sticks?

Late yesterday, I did manage to get productive on the toaster front, and actually wrapped up a small cluster of open issues before close of month.

This morning: breakfast, naproxen, laundry.  And the parents' dog will want walkies, oy.

Just call me "Scarface"

In the wee hours of the morning, Huckleberry jumped up on the nightstand and buzzed at me, as he often does.

Then, uncharacteristically, he jumped back down and scampered off.

A moment later, he was back.  In a hurry.  Perhaps even a panic.

I don't know if his target was the nightstand or the headboard, but he botched his leap.

And landed on my face.

With his claws out.

Only drew blood in one place: a great long scratch across temple and forehead.

Not having any really long skinny Band-Aids, I cleaned it up and goobered on some liquid-bandage stuff, hoping to avoid leaking on my pillow.

Maybe I should trim the critters' claws.  And get them used to having them trimmed every week or so.

Because, if they're going to disregard the Four Rules of Claw Handling, they just can't have sharp claws, can they?

Typing one-handed again

Currently resting my left wrist on an ice cube.

See, it's evening, and the time came to close the living-room curtains.

As has happened before, one of the curtain hooks snagged a dangling speaker wire (the front surround-sound speakers are over the window).

So I grabbed a zip-tie, stood on a chair, and... well... apparently my weight exceeds the load rating of that chair when used as a stepstool.  'Cause suddenly I was standing on the floor, and my wrist had collided, hard, with the window handle.

Got a very impressive lump now, and interesting colors getting started.

Ow.

Morning update: The lump has mostly subsided, and the bruise isn't all that conspicuous.  My right foot seems to have gotten a little injured, too; it was getting fairly sore by the end of my usual 4-mile morning walkies.  Should have a fair amount of recuperating time tomorrow (not much on the agenda other than rather a lot of weed-pulling), and the Sunday morning poodle drag isn't terribly hard on feet.

That makes twice today...

I was sitting at my desk - reading the morning or evening Internets, respectively - with Huckleberry sprawled across my chest, as is often the case at such times.

It was time to stand up.  I started to do so... and my elbow rest (one of those fabric-covered-foam wrist rests, only for my left elbow) apparently stuck to my elbow and moved with it.

Huckleberry freaked out, and launched himself in any convenient direction at maximum boost, leaving scratch marks behind on various portions of my anatomy.

In the morning, he went to my right, landing in the wastebasket.

In the evening, he went almost straight up, landing behind my chair.

So I showed him the elbow rest, and explained to him that it was inanimate and harmless.

Then I tied a felt-feathers-and-jingly-ball toy to the dangling ribbon of a leftover birthday balloon, such that it was within leaping range when the balloon was on the ceiling.  He's been having fun chasing it around, in a place where I'm not.

Update: Unable to duplicate problem.  The elbow rest obstinately refuses to follow my elbow around, with or without a pajama sleeve.  I must conclude, therefore, that Huckleberry had been resting his paw on the elbow rest, claws extended, and the scary object moved because he had a claw snagged in the covering.

This little piggy lost a nail

A couple of weeks back, my right little toe developed a sudden affinity for an old UPS that I'd (much earlier) placed on the office floor so as to prevent the wastebasket from tipping over (as had been a problem when Huckleberry was in a playful mood).

After a series of painful and sometimes bloody encounters, I gave up on that particular approach to wastebasket anti-tippery.

Then, yesterday, as I was returning from the shed with an armload of paper goods, my left little toe homed in on the brickwork at the edge of the patio, with the result that I spent the rest of the day hobbling around with the end of my toe held together with a Band-Aid.

Just after I'd bandaged up the left toe, I bonked the right one again, this time on a lightweight plastic fan, which didn't do much damage, but I noticed afterward that the nail is now loose and will likely fall off soon.

Oy.  Not having a good month.

Some critters ya just can't take anywhere.

I needed to make a quick Anchor Electronics run for some odds'n'ends, and figured I'd take Top Hat along, 'cause she hadn't been anywhere in a long time.

She cried - a mournful "meow" sound, and she normally doesn't make any sound that's remotely meowish - the whole way in the car.

In the store, she seemed pretty much OK for the few minutes I was browsing, even looking around and being inquisitive.  When I proceeded to the counter...

First, she peed on my shirt.  Oh, well: so much for stopping by AeroMicro on the way home.

Then she got restless about being on the counter.  Well, that's maybe OK.  I put her on the floor and held her leash so she couldn't crawl under the nearest shelving.

Oopsie!  Another customer tripped over her leash!  Neither of them was injured, but Top Hat went wild.  Running, climbing, thrashing around, hissing and showing her teeth: I hadn't seen her so feral since her blueberry-patch days... and now she's a lot bigger, with big sharp claws.

Yes, my hands got a bit torn up retrieving her.  She was in full panic mode there, and waving her claws around indiscriminately.

So: home, change shirts, wash and disinfect hands, apply liquid-bandage stuff....

Now she's all recovered, and being a cute little buzzy nuisance while I'm trying to type.

On the mend

In a fit of madness, I decided to try short-edition morning walkies on Friday before heading down to the lab, just to see if my leg would hold up.

I ended up going about three and a half miles, so not really all that short.  Pace was not up to my usual, but not all that slow either.

By the time I got back, my leg was somewhat tired, but not spazzy.  Oh, and quite a few people had been wondering where I'd been the last few weeks.

It was, however, important to keep my hands in my pockets, with the left hand pulling the leg of my shorts up & forward so as not to rub against the nerve endings which seem to extend beyond the actual skin just above my knee.  (This condition seems to be reduced this morning, so perhaps it'll go away.)

After walkies, I proceeded to spend several hours in the lab, bouncing between sitting at a card table with my laptop on it and standing up to run tests in the temperature chamber - a gadget which had been apparently working almost-fine at room temperature had turned out, earlier in the week, to fail miserably at modestly different temperatures; Thursday afternoon, I came up with a fix, which was working pretty well.  We still need one key outsourced part made right, and I've just developed a suspicion that some critical components on my PC board were hand-soldered in slightly wonky positions; they really need to be reflow soldered with just the right amount of paste so the position will be consistent.

Anyway, the standing-and-moving-around time didn't seem to do much harm.  I'm still having Issues with one of the large muscles (this'n?), whereof I lack fine control - if I try to apply just a little force it gets twitchy and low-frequency PWM-ish.  Also, the knee is still overly sensitive, so maybe I need to wear extra-short shorts for a while (but not a kilt, sorry) to avoid setting it off.  There's also a bit of stiffness in the front of the knee, but I should be able to work that out.

Update: maybe it's the shifting weather, but now my sinuses are killing me.

Recovering

I finally seem to be on the mend: I can walk around, in moderation, without triggering spasms in any large muscles, my metabolism seems to be more or less back to normal, and the Buttery Pat Syndrome has largely subsided.

Still got the sore knee, and some lower-back and hip pain, but I'm guessing that another few days and judicious exercise will get those under control.

Now, if I can get a proper night's sleep... a few nights in a row... perhaps I can return to normal productivity.  (Having dinner around 2000, so I can take my last pills of the day with food, is maybe not such a good idea.  Got to have dinner at a more normal hour - 1700 or so - and a light snack with the pills.)

Update: just spent about 15 minutes on my feet, in the kitchen... and the large muscles are getting just a little bit spazzy.  So, a ways to go yet.

So anyway:

When I saw my regular doctor two weeks ago, and he figured the problem was more like sciatica than bursitis, he referred me to a physical therapist.

That appointment was this morning at 0900 (giving a date/time combination reminiscent of Herman the Cainster, nein-non-нет and all that).

She asked a lot of questions, poked and prodded, and figures the symptoms aren't really consistent with a nerve thing (so, not sciatica), but probably just some muscles are getting all crampy from always being used in exactly the same way.  So, a set of recommended stretching exercises (which, initially, seem to be of some help, though I can't stretch the afflicted areas very much just now).

If she's right, adding some stretchies to my daily routine should be a long-term solution, hurray!

Ongoing misery

The sciatica continues.

I'm relegating the narcotic painkillers to bedtime use, as they don't seem to have much effect on the pain per se (and if they did, it would maybe enable me to damage myself further without noticing).

The last couple of days, I've been needed at a client site, but unable to venture beyond my front door.

It's also got my metabolism cranked way up, basically burning all available calories; food input produces a spike in heat output.  Body temperature regulation is working fine, but I'm drenched in sweat as I maintain my usual 98.4°F.  Oh, well... I'm not blimping out due to lack of exercise this time.

I sure hope this clears up by Tuesday, so's I can go to the client site where I'm needed, and heroically solve the mysterious problem (which I suspect involves a ground loop, though there appear to be other issues too).

Meanwhile, certain errands have become Urgent, and I'll be needing to stagger forth today, all dosed up on ibuprofen and cyclobenzaprine, to deal with Absolutely Necessary Stuff.

Also: I've been occupying my waking-but-nonfunctional time re-reading the works of Larry Niven, with the result that when I doze off for a moment I typically have a dreamlet that would kinda-sorta make sense in a Known Space context, only it doesn't really make sense even that way.  Kinda puts me in mind of one time in college when I was sick and wasted a block of time by (1) re-reading Childhood's End and (2) listening to Der Ring des Nibelungen straight through; by the end of this, I was in a very peculiar mental state indeed.

So I went to my regular doctor today...

Revised diagnosis: probably sciatica rather than bursitis.

Which makes sense, given that most of the current symptoms (as opposed to a week ago) seem like pinched-nerve stuff.

It also ties together this episode with the occasional episode of lower-back pain that's somehow tied to the left leg; that sort of thing has been happening an average of maybe once a year, the past decade.

Short-term treatment is the same.  Long term... I'm supposed to be making connections with a physical therapist.  Work on the back, and maybe the problem won't happen again, or as often anyway.

Meanwhile, I'm still in a great deal of pain despite a fresh supply of narcotics.  Also kinda incoherent because of a fresh supply of narcotics (well, that on top of sleep deprivation).

Now I know how Barney felt...

...after he stepped in the puddle of Dehominant B.

While the actual bursitis seems to have subsided, I now have more or less nonstop muscle spasms in the left thigh.  Back in '10, when the doctor told me to rest and gobble ibuprofen, I also talked him into prescribing a muscle relaxant... which I've since used up, so there's none on hand now.

Having neither atropine nor 2-pyridine aldoxime methiodide available (besides which, I don't think I've been exposed to any topical cholinesterase inhibitors, so neither of those would really be appropriate), I guess it's time to go see the doctor... presumably Monday.

Getting from the parking lot to the check-in desk to the second check-in desk to the examining room to the pharmacy promises to be a new adventure in pain.

Meanwhile, I have it on good authority* that beer is a muscle relaxant.  Not that I keep beer around (rotten grain and herbs, yuck).

Update: Just got off the phone with Kaiser; I should be able to get my hands on some cyclobenzaprine by lunchtime, hurray!

Update 2: Got the cyclobenzaprine (100 tablets!  I should have plenty left for next time!) about noon; took one immediately.  Felt much better until late afternoon, when spasms returned.  Took another at early bedtime; slept for a while, then woke up just after midnight with, again, leg spasms.  Directions say "3 times a day", but the effect only lasts about 4 hours.  Supposed to be seeing my regular doctor this morning....

 

* Ford Prefect, of course.

Progress, maybe. A little.

Well, I got one little project delivered yesterday... basically a half-day project that took a week, only a half-day of which was billable (much of the remainder having been spent out on the porch with some light reading).

There's a bunch more work in the queue, a fair amount of it increasingly urgent, but what with the bursitis still being in full swing and most of the high-priority work requiring workbench time and lots of moving around, I don't think I'll get much of it done in the next few days.

So: time to dust off a non-revenue project on which one of the behind-schedule revenue projects depends: a sort of fieldbus protocol for AGROS, initially using UART/RS-485 as the bottom layers.  I just need maybe half an hour of workbench time to hook up two boards and a USB dongle, after which I can be productive from the comfy chair at my desk.

Additional workbench time this morning: installing four little SMT trimpots, and taking a few measurements of mechanical doohickies that should fit together exactly but don't, quite.

Helpful hint

If you're having aches & pains in the upper-leg area...

...and using one of those methyl salicylate / menthol pain-relieving goober-on preparations...

...be careful when applying it in the groinal region.  Certain bits in that area are highly sensitive to such chemicals.

Argh.

Supposed to be working at actual work today, getting a test station put together and delivered.

As of waking-up time this morning, I can barely walk from one end of the house to the other, not exactly a great distance.

I hate bursitis.

Update: What's more, I keep having to retrieve the little brown bag of parts I bought yesterday afternoon for finishing the test station.  The kittens think it's a toy.

Update 2: I more or less made it through the day, though with one thing and another we didn't get the test station ready to deliver yet.  By 1400 the leg pain had developed into leg muscle spasms, which then (as three years ago) developed into lower-back muscle spasms.  Made for a less-than-productive afternoon.  And there was already an urgent project I should be getting done over the weekend, and a new (albeit small) chunk of urgent (and paying!) work came over the transom while I was tied up....

Owwww

Apart from a nasty allergy attack the past several days... it seems my bursitis is back.

Couple years ago, when my hip/thigh area started hurting like this, I ignored it the first few days, continued with morning walkies, and made it a bunch worse.  Then, before there was any opportunity for recuperation, I had a string of Family Stuff that involved yet more walking.

This time I'll be sensible.  Gobble dried frog pills ibuprofen and avoid aggravating the afflicted area until it gets better.  Which I hope will only be a few days....

Update: Second morning, still owie, and worser.  Gotta run some errands this morning (apart from anything else, I'm down to my last ibuprofen), and do some work, but should mostly be able to stay off my feet.  Consulting the archives, I find that the last time was October, 2010.  The entire month of October, 2010.  Ow.  Well, maybe taking appropriate measures early on will keep this outbreak from eating my entire August.

Medic!

The kittens are getting big, and strong, and have Very Definite Opinions on certain subjects.

One of which is: bathtime.

They'd all been showing signs of being past-due for a trip to the kitty laundry: feeling and smelling kinda grubby, scratching more'n usual, and sitting in the laundry tub looking expectant.

So: out to the garage.  Laundry-tub faucet in warm-shower mode.  Water and puppy&kitten shampoo in dishpan, nicely sudsified.  Towel handy.  Grab Southmoon. who's sitting there watching me.  Into the sink!  Um.  In?  Like, all four legs?  Pleeeeease?

Much struggle and some nasty scratches on my right wrist later, Southmoon hasn't exactly been shampooed, but at least she's had a bit of a rinse.  Quick towel-off, then it's time to interrupt Huckleberry's nap.

For someone who almost jumped in the shower with me this morning, Huckleberry is remarkably uncooperative.  I manage to get a little shampoo on him, and rinse him off... and now I've got nasty scratches on my left wrist.

Having no remaining unscratched wrists, I decide not to argue the point when I pick up Top Hat and she commences struggling.

Well, I guess they're not totally mad at me; a damp Southmoon just came and sat in my lap.

Maybe next time I'll use the bathtub.  And maybe leather wrist protectors, or just make sure all claws have been safely trimmed a couple of days ahead of time.

Another reason to beware of wild rodents

This morning, near the beginning of walkies, I spotted a fuzzy tan object in a parking turnout.

Stepping over the low fence, I got close enough to confirm that it was, indeed, a dead (and uneaten) woodrat.  One of the docents stopped at the same time, and spoke of tossing it in the freezer, on general principles.

Stepping back over the fence to the trail, I clonked my little toe on the top rail.  Five-Fingerses provide little protection against toe-clonkage.  Now I've got a purple toe.

Well, at least it doesn't seem to be broken this time.  Didn't get notably worse as I continued for another 3½ miles or thereabouts, and it's not terribly sensitive.  Just kinda sore, and very purple indeed.

I keep thinking I should install a set of steel toe caps on the old pair of foot gloves.  One cap per toe, of course.  Maybe with claws, like those things Die Fledermaus wears.  (Yeah, probably a bad idea: with the extra leverage, that fence likely would have broken my toe.)

Eye. Mote. Blunt instrument with rough edges.

Assembly not recommended.

At least this one didn't (yet...) end up with Yet Another Trip To The Emergency Room, though it sure felt like it for a while there.

I woke up a bit past midnight with considerable pain in my left eye, as if there were something in it.  After splashing water on it, I still couldn't see properly, though the pain was fading quickly.  That eye just wouldn't focus.

An hour later, my vision was nearly back to normal - whew!

Since, when I woke up, I had the vague sense that I'd been rubbing my eye with the back of my hand, my best guess is that I'd been rubbing it with the cast... maybe to remove a bit of dust or a stray eyelash, or maybe the hand and eye had just ended up in the same location.  Funny how a wrist injury can lead to eye damage....

Anyway, to prevent further eyeball scratchery, I've just carved up an old sock to make a nighttime cast cover.  No more exposed rough edges!