Health, WPAFW, and curtains

[giza]

So, I'm about 3 weeks into wearing my orthotic shoe inserts. I was hoping I would see straight up improvement, but that hasn't been the case. I've had a couple of flareups since then, but they don't seem to be nearly as severe as they were before I got the orthotics. I've also been walking around a bit more, having done a fitness walk at work last week, and have begun to walk around town in the evenings. It won't make up for my "lost summer", but it's a start.

I saw some improvement on the situation that was causing me nightmares a few weeks back. I've been discussing the matter with the person involved, and while I wouldn't say it's "resolved", I think we were able to at least have a meeting of the minds and make some progress on the issue at hand.

Earlier today, I got my hotel room for The Western PA Furry Weekend, and I plan on registering later in the week. I've never actually attended WPAFW before, so I'm hoping I'll enjoy myself there. Transportation is still up in there air. Worst case scenario, I'll just rent a car and drive out there. (I also found out that AVIS wants $931.47 to rent a Prius for 3 days, but that's a separate rant.)

As mentioned in a previous post, I finally got curtains for my apartment the other weekend, with the help of my mother, who has apparently done this before. :-P



Since I didn't feel like drilling holes in the wall, I made use of some 3M Command hooks that I attached the wall. I found out that the trick to keep them from falling down is to swap the area heavily with rubbing alcohol, let it dry for an hour, attach the adhesive, let it sit for a full 24 hours, and then finally attach the hooks and put load on them. Otherwise, there is a risk of the hooks falling off, usually in the middle of the night. :-)

The curtains in the bedroom are quite awesome, too. They are the heavier kind that blocks out noise and light, and they do a pretty good job at it. My bedroom pretty much turns into a cave when the curtains are drawn, and I've noticed that daylight doesn't wake me up an hour before my alarm does anymore. Now I wake up when my alarm goes off, which means I'm getting more sleep each night. That's a nice win.

I also grabbed a new lamp and a cheap throw carpet (called "circuits", amusingly enough) to replace the ratty old blue one I had underneath my guest desk:



Otherwise, my personal life has been pretty boring lately. Just going to work during the day and coming home in the evening. Having played through all of Half Life 2, Episode One, and Episode Two, I don't have a regular evening activity anymore.

I've felt better, but I've also felt worse, so I guess there's something to be said for that.

Comments

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

My mother sometimes swears she married my Dad because when she asked him to help her put up curtains, they didn't fall down in the middle of the night. Previous attempts by other people had resulted in them staying up for a few days, then falling down unexpectedly. He had superior engineering skills!

[athauglas.livejournal.com]

[Edited for beer]
Glad to hear the orthotics are working, even if they aren't a magical fix. It takes a long time and you have remember that all the while your shoes are slowly breaking down and affecting their performance.

$913 for three days' worth of wheezing econo-box is a lot more expensive than carpooling with the likes of me, and a lot less funny :}

I was gearing up to kill you for even possibly having leopard-print curtains, but you had to go and ruin my plans by getting entirely sensible ones. And functional, too. Damn those photons!

Your adhesive difficulties seem reasonable; the surface always needs to be clean and the alcohol likely disrupted the paint, and maybe there was some kind of curing process too. At least they're staying up. In my own experience with attaching things to other things, I will ramp up the technology as follows:

Clean room tape --> gaffer's tape --> super glue --> gorilla glue --> epoxy --> bolts --> laser welding

Seems to work pretty well ;p

[giza.livejournal.com]

Heh, you and your video playing GPS. :-) Are you going to WPAFW and offering a ride, or just saying?

Nah, I don't think my paint has any sort of curing, it's just regular paint. My problems in the past seem to stem from either not giving the alcohol enough time to dry, or perhaps not letting the adhesive stay on the wall long enough before I apply a load.

That said, I weighed my curtains. The big ones come out to 2-3 pounds in total, and I have 3 hooks, each with a capacity of 5 pounds. So I'd like to think I'll do okay with 20% load. We'll see!

I think you left duct tape out of that chain of escalation there. :-P

[athauglas.livejournal.com]

Not just videos, music videos. 80s hair metal music videos. It's the best GPS ever hacked. :}

I had no idea WPAFW existed until you mentioned it just now, but I do like last minute nonsense. Maybe we could work something out.

And yes, I did skip duct tape. I went straight for the good stuff that doesn't leave a residue no matter how many years it stays up.

[orionvw.livejournal.com]

Thank goodness you had help with the curtains. I've lived in my place since 2002 and still haven't bothered with picking any.

[swift-fox.livejournal.com]

You can always hop Amtrak. I'm pretty sure we can arrange a pick up from Penn Station here.

Swift

[giza.livejournal.com]

Amtrak from Philly to Pittsburgh is pretty terrible.

The trip is like 8 hours, and there's only 2 trains each day, 12 hours apart. Driving, or even FLYING (did that once) is really much more sensible.