giza: Giza White Mage (Default)
I drove out to Pittsburgh this past weekend for the Western PA Furry Weekend, a small gathering of furs from the Pittsburgh and surrounding areas. Despite being in existence for 10 years, I never attended before, and since I missed a few cons last spring, I decided to change things up a little and visit this one. I'm glad I did!

Group photo 6 fursuit heads Fursuiter in a giant hamster ball

I spent most of Friday evening helping out [livejournal.com profile] firefoxbc at registration. It was quite a change to work reg at a con where 116 attendees in total is less than the number of folks waiting in the on-site registration line at Anthrocon. In other words, it was rather relaxing and a pleasant change of pace.

Dinner! Kasi goes for the last piece of cake Finnish and Kojac

Saturday afternoon was the picnic at Fireman's park. I got to spend several hours hanging out and socializing with friends, taking lots of pictures. I ended up bumping into [livejournal.com profile] lildobe and chatting about photography. He showed me how to use a flash in outdoor photography to "fill in" shadows cast by the sun, as well as how to tweak my camera settings to properly meter pictures. Here's a picture taken without flash fill and the same picture taken with flash fill. The second picture looks much closer to how the scene looked in person.

Finnish Fox plays with static electricity Fursuiters on the swings Cooking dinner

After dinner, the charity auction was held, and I ended up winning the pile of feline-related things:

I won something in the charity raffle

One innovative thing that I saw WPAFW do was to put their all of their programming, plus their sponsor art onto a 2 GB USB stick and include it with their sponsorships. That was a pretty neat idea, and with 1.99 GB left on the USB stick, I now have something that I can use in the future.

Fursuiters Fursuiter with Dorsai ear tags Chalk drawings

Healthwise, my feet held up fine most of the weekend. They started to hurt after being on my feet for about 6 hours straight on Saturday, at which point I sat down for about 10 minutes, then was able to walk around some more. In other words: better than they've been in months!

Naturally, I took lots of pictures. The full archive can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmuth/sets/72157625097235542/

Overall, I had a rather good time this weekend. I'm going to try and make WPAFW next year. You should, too!
giza: Giza White Mage (Default)
I saw this over on Twitter courtesy of [livejournal.com profile] nikvulper:



It was highly relevant to me because it is directly related to some recent events in my life.

And the advice in the video is too true. If you have feelings for someone, tell them. They might just have similar feelings for you.


In other news, the medication for my feet has helped a little. And I've been hiting my feet with a heating pad several times a day to try and relax the muscles a bit.

Tomorrow I'm driving out to Pittsburgh for Western PA Furry Weekend. I hope to see many folks there.
giza: Giza White Mage (Default)
For the first time in about 6 months of knee/foot problems, I finally got a diagnosis, at least on my feet.

I saw my pawdiatrist (Dr. T) today, 6 weeks after getting my orthotics. I told him that I was still in pain, with several flareups having happened since I started wearing the orthotics, which otherwise have felt just fine.

He did another examination and told that I have something called "Cuboid Band Syndrome" [2], or muscle spasms in the outer part of my feet. It can be caused by overuse, and in my case: by walking around without arch support for 33 years. This is the pain that started at Anthrocon and continues through today. The orthotics didn't make it any worse (and in fact are still medically necessary for me), but I had enough issues going on with those muscles that they did not heal even with the orthotics.

The treatment for this consists to two things. First, a muscle relaxer (Cyclobenzaprine) to relieve the symptoms. Second, physical therapy to strengthen the muscle. I was fortunate to get the same physical therapy place as before, and even get assigned to the same specialist. Since she gave me knee exercises to do earlier in the year (exercises that I still do every night), adding in some foot exercises shouldn't be much of a problem either.

The Cyclobenzaprine could be interesting, though. My pawdiatrist said that it will "knock you out", and not to even think of driving a car or drinking booze after taking my dose. So this means I will probably not be consuming any alcohol while at WPAFW this coming weekend, but hopefully in less pain too.
giza: Giza White Mage (Default)
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

Curtains Curtains Heavy Curtains

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:

New carpet New lamp

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.

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giza: Giza White Mage (Default)
Douglas Muth

April 2012

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