Saturday, December 8, 2001

Well, I broke my foot juggling. Yeah you read that right, I broke my foot juggling.

Here's what happened: We were doing a Shooting Star pattern. That is a 5 person star pattern with only 4 people. When you run out of clubs you run through the middle of the pattern to the gap and start receiving new clubs.

I ran through the pattern one time and as I was turning, my shoe caught on the fabric floor covering-- kind of a heavy burlap like material. My foot rotated 90 degrees to the inside and I put all my weight on it. Pop! Not a delightful sound.

Anyway, after a couple of hours of emergency room waiting, I finally got x-rays and it was obvious even to me that a bone was broken. 5th metatarsil, for the morbidly curious out there.

For the even more morbidly curious, I'm going to take a picture of my foot now that it is turning all black and blue, with a fancy racing stripe down the outside and sandal straps across the ankle. Here are the sporty pics.

Just so you know, it didn't particularly hurt, nor does it hurt much now, though I am living on Advil to try to keep the swelling down. The moral of the story is that you can't tell if a bone is broken unless it pierces skin or you feel grinding. Though the livid markings are probably a big clue. So get an X-ray, darn it!

Saturday, August 4, 2001

Every summer, when I have the house open and the fan drawing air into my bedroom while the light is on, some species of flying creature tries to adopt my room as its habitat.

For some reason, these invasions seem to be generally limited to a single species per year. For example, I've had Miller moths, and the local, spiky beetle, mosquitos, and of course wasps once.

This year a strange, pale green insect something like a lacewing has chosen to be my invader. These beasties are surprisingly hard to kill. A good whack with the fly swatter only seems to stun them momentarily and I'm forced to crush them by hand with a kleenex.

Until this evening: I noticed my invader beating his little brain out in the lampshade. Taking up my weapons, I waited for him to maneuver out of the lamp to a locale where I could get a good swing going. I never got the chance. While I watched, my flying friend landed on the inside of the shade, then appeared to try to take a step, stumbled and fell down, apparently unconscious, to the base of the lamp.

I watched him for about a minute, but he never moved even though he was lying on his back. I applied my standard remedies to make sure of his state, then lay back down to consider the implications.

I considered claiming, for dramatic effect you understand, "fell down, stone dead, to the base of the lamp" but I suffered a sudden bout of intellectual honesty and had to forgo that.

Tuesday, May 1, 2001

I've been blissfully unemployed for 6 months now, living off savings. There really haven't been a lot of significant events worth noting down. But then I remembered that this isn't Dear Diary.

I've been juggling a lot. I mean it. I'm getting juggling callouses. Some of that is about to end since this is the last week of classes at the University of Colorado and the students that populate some of my groups will be winging it for parts unknown after finals. There is a smaller group of grads that I expect will still meet during the summer, so this isn't going to be total withdrawal.

It just means that I will have more time to actually work on some of those projects that I had queued up from the before time when I was employed. Some time in April I discovered that I had recovered my will-to-work, and could now actually take on a project that required me to make informed decisions again.

My biggest concern right now is that it is allergy season. I did a massive amount of work to unjungle my front yard yesterday and paid for it last night with a 4 am, hour-long sneezing and nose blowing fit. The original plan was to do a similar job to unjungle the back yard today, but frankly, though the nasal spigot is turned off, I currently feel as if I have a huge grain of salt under my right eyelid. I wash my face about once an hour and irrigate that puppy. Then it doesn't bother as long as I strictly avoid touching my eye for any reason.

Sunday, February 25, 2001

Sometimes you just gotta go back an fill in a missing something, even if it is trivial.

More than a year ago in my Thoughts from 1999 page, I mentioned in the November 7 entry wishing I had a digicam to take a picture of a brief optical effect.

Well, I have a digicam and the brief optical effect occurred again, so I digi'ed it. (Ok, I guess there is nothing in the term photography that is specific to film, so I'll drop my attempt to make new vocabulary. "I photographed it." There, you happy now?)

Here's the photo.

Monday, February 5, 2001

In case you haven't read any of the rest of my web site, I am a juggler. I've been juggling a few years now. (Since about 1978 or '79.) I do it to entertain myself. It's fun and it is decent upper body exercise.

I like to learn tricks and push myself to master as much as I can with the equipment I have available. I think I have a pretty decent repertoire for someone who doesn't juggle for a living. I can keep 5 balls going for a fair period and I'm trying to learn tricks with 5 balls. I'm close to getting 4 clubs down.

Well, last Wednesday I got a chance to learn a pattern named "Mill's Mess" from someone that I had been practicing club passing patterns. He (Matt) showed me two different drills you need in order to learn the "Mess."

Big mistake! Around 1:30 am that night I was lying in bed moving my hands, trying to figure out how to string together the parts that I'd learned into the whole pattern. Dang it! I had to get up in the middle of the night and practice because I just was not going to get to sleep otherwise. A couple of hours later I was not really any closer to stringing the "Mess" together, but I was tired enough that with a little reading to distract my mind I could get to sleep.

The next day I had another meeting to practice club passing, so I didn't drill the "Mess" very much. Then on Friday I found a way to drill with three balls. A few minutes of this and suddenly I was trying the "Mess" full on and beginning to "feel" the pattern in my hands.

Saturday morning, after breakfast, I was sitting at my computer, but I was feeling "Mill's Mess" in my hands. So I got my juggling balls and there was the "Mess" immediately. I could feel the pattern completely and no longer had to think about it. Now I could concentrate on what was going wrong. By the end of Saturday I could shift back and forth between the regular fountain and "Mill's Mess." That is essentially my definition of "mastery" of a juggling trick.

I've been doing that pattern at odd moments both yesterday and so far today. It's got a great feeling to it and it really goes well with the Mike Oldfield music that I've been listening to. For those of you who might want to learn "Mill's Mess" I am writing up a description of the drills. This is really only suitable for people who already know how to juggle 3 balls.

But if you read over this, you'll see a progression that I've seen in everyone as they learn either basic juggling or add on tricks. You drill and drill and don't really progress very much. Take a break, a long one, a day or more. Come back and drill again and things are suddenly much better. But it seems that all the progress came during the break. You are better today, but you don't seem to get much better. You get tired and start getting worse. Take another break. A couple times of this and something snaps. What you were trying to learn has moved into your limbs and you stop thinking about it and just do it. Now you can think about other things during your drills, like what is really going wrong. Mastery is just around the corner.