Today was the nail in the coffin. Over the past few weeks my body has been coming apart and now it’s finished. It started around the time I went back to school with just general fatigue when running. That grew into a calf strain which canned my workouts. A week later the calf strain had improved but while out one morning my left knee exploded in a loud pop. The pain and swelling reduced over the past two weeks and it’s felt better every day. That was the left knee. I think I started putting more pressure on the other leg since the left one was bothering me which led to the IT band problem I’ve got now. The IT band issue on the right leg started gradually about a week ago but I thought nothing of it until the past few days when it got really bad. Today I felt fine for about five minutes with no pain at all and then – boom – it became unbearable and I just walked back to my room.
Now I’m not sure what to do since I’ve never had an IT band injury before. I have had some soreness in the area previously, but it always moves up my leg over a few days and then goes away. I’ll probably take most of the week off completely and maybe try biking after a few days. I’ve heard that biking can bother the IT band so I don’t know if I’ll be doing that for long. I may be reduced to the pool if I want to do any exercise, but I’ll see. I hate the pool. I’ve heard so many horror stories about people with IT band pain that will never go away. They take months off and feel no pain, but as soon as they run a few minutes it comes right back. My sister had what was probably an IT band injury about the time we went back to school and I’ve seen her running since then, so long term suffering isn’t the case for everyone. I hope that’s not the case with me, but it seems that this is a hard injury to get over. I usually have a higher probability of getting screwed with stuff like this than the average person.
For the past few months I’ve been trying to train as I did in high school and college, but maybe this is the end. Maybe I just can’t do it anymore, but I have a hard time believing that.
The gastroenterologist said I don’t have Celiac disease, which means I can eat all the pasta, bread, and cereal I want without worrying that I’m hurting myself in some way. Not that I was surprised by this, but it’s good to know for sure. The tests indicated iron deficiency, and that was not a surprise. Despite taking a daily iron supplement, the crappy school food just isn’t enough. Their antics have nearly turned me into a vegetarian thanks to their terrible meats. I’m thinking I’ll switch back to cooking my own dinners again starting this summer.
The IBM/Lenovo T61 I ordered through the department came on Friday, which was faster than the original ship date. I’ve only messed around with it a little and took off as much of the crapware as I could. It seems to be a solid machine and weighs a lot less than you would think for its size (which isn’t very big). The Macbook is thinner but about the same dimensions otherwise and seems a fair amount heavier. Right now the new laptop is running XP, but I may install the TinyOS XUbuntu live CD so that I don’t have to screw with installing and configuring TinyOS. Now I’ve got four computers that I have regular access to and each seems suited to only a specific purpose. I wish I had something that did everything well. My Mac is great, but it has a crappy internal graphics card so I can’t play games very well with it. There are a lot of compatibility issues as well (problems with installing parts of TinyOS). My desktop is good for games, but that’s about it since I prefer using Linux/Mac for all my school work. My desktop in the office runs Linux, which is good for most school work, but I don’t have permissions to install any new programs and of course I can’t play any games on that machine, either. The new laptop has a stand alone graphics card but it’s probably not very good (Quadro 140M) and I’m supposed to be using it just for school anyways.
I’ve watched the first two episodes of Lost — the first one sucked but the last one was pretty good. It appears as though the writers are finally making an effort to move the story along. The last season was pretty stagnant. There are only a handful of completed episodes because of the strike, so I hope they are all good. I really don’t have an interest in any other TV shows right now.
I haven’t received my absentee ballot so I guess I won’t be voting in the primary on Tuesday. I would have to mail it by tomorrow for it to get to the registrar in time.
I’ve also looked at apartments for this summer and beyond. I’ve about had it with roommates and living in the graduate complex. These past two years I have had terrible roommates that I either don’t get along with or are complete slobs and leave trash everywhere (or both). On top of that are the maintenance people who seem to have weekly intrusions into the apartment to inspect something. They also drive around the courtyard in their vans like it’s the Daytona 500. Then they get out and bang away all day with saws and hammers and leaf blowers. It’s time to put a stop to that. Unfortunately, the offerings are pretty limited if you want something that’s one bedroom. My other requirement is laundry facilities. No way in heck am I going to a laundromat. So, with those two criteria, I found a few places that seem to start at around $700 – $900 per month. With my meager PhD stipend, I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford that. All of the places aren’t exactly close to campus, either, so I would definitely have to drive in every day, but it isn’t too much different from what I’m doing now.
So the planets have come out of alignment and there is a disturbance in the force. All is not well, but I will have to accept things for what they are and do the best I can until (hopefully) they improve.
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