For Fuck's Sake - WHY!?!?!? (annoyed)

[cold before sunrise]

Haha! Do you own shoes?

[Bernard]

I think he means fashion crime.

[Bernard]

What part of 'breast is best' do people not understand.

[alex]

So Saturday evening, the organiser of a symposium where I'll be giving a talk in a little less than two weeks' time sent out an email with some more practical issues. One of the things it says is that everyone should send the text of their talk to them until this Sunday, so that they could pass them on to the moderators for them to prepare. Now, I like the idea of a moderator who actually comes prepared for the talk, but what the fuck?! First of all, I haven't written out a talk in about 7 years, I just try them out verbally again and again, changing a thing or two in each go, until I end up with something that I'm happy with and that has the right length, at which point I'll give one or two more rehearsals to make sure I don't forget my text during the talk. Secondly, I have about a million other things to do in the next week and a half, so I doubt that the talk will be ready a week before I actually have to give it. Thirdly, all of that might not have been an issue, if they had informed me about it just a little bit earlier, but seriously, on a week's notification?! (I guess I shouldn't be surprised: The first invitation was in the form of a phone call on my private number on a Sunday afternoon, saying "oh, but you'd have to decide and send us a title by tonight", and then the next thing I heard was an email a few weeks ago saying "hey, we got funding for this now, please send us your abstract by the end of this week".) Fuck this.

[edison]

This is definitely not cool from them, but I assume explaining that you don't actually have the time to send an entire text on such short notice and sending whatever short outline you can manage until Sunday would do the trick?

[alex]

Yeah, that's sort of the plan. Even then it's annoying because I'd planned on starting to think about the outline of my talk Sunday night, and now I'll probably have to think about it earlier than that. Either that or just decide to use the exact same outline and so on that I did for my talk in Tuebingen in November, which I hadn't planned to do originally.

[DCDave]

The lady's grandma died last week, and the funeral is Tuesday.  I was supposed to be flying up to NYC that afternoon, but the funeral is that morning and timing would be tight.  My company is refusing to make the change in flights because the cost of the change exceeds the cost of the original ticket and it's for a personal reason, not a work reason.  A bit annoying.

[slow west vultures]

a house full of screaming children is not fun to be in, especially if you're sick

[donblood]

Annoying thing from yesterday.  I was standing on 1st Ave and 5th street, trying to get a cab.  It was shift change time, which is when every cabbie is off-duty and finding a cab is way more difficult than normal.

Stood on the corner for a good fifteen minutes.  Eventually I became dimly aware of a couple standing behind me, idly chattering.

Finally an available cab appeared, stopped one block away, at which point the dude behind me jogged up the street and hailed it.  I turned to look at his girlfriend, who was looking the sheepishest, and said "Thanks a lot.  Your man's a great guy."  She didn't know what to say;  she followed her boyfriend to the cab and tried to talk to him for a second, before getting in and giving me a shrug.

When was the last time I gave anyone the finger in earnest?  I can't remember, but I smiled sweetly yesterday as I gave them the elbow-crook variation.

[cold before sunrise]

I think he means fashion crime.

It's a utilitarian basic. Mine's cheap, the price of a good one is criminal...



$852?! Oh, for fuck's sake.

You know, it's like my entire life has been like that feeling where you're about to sneeze and then don't. Which is funny because I can't stop sneezing today... it's the last night my new little lesbian friend is in town, who invited me to a hot tub party with some other friends, but now my nose won't stop running and throat has gotten swollen. Another failure to launch.

[alex]

Annoying thing from yesterday.  I was standing on 1st Ave and 5th street, trying to get a cab.  It was shift change time, which is when every cabbie is off-duty and finding a cab is way more difficult than normal.

Stood on the corner for a good fifteen minutes.  Eventually I became dimly aware of a couple standing behind me, idly chattering.

Finally an available cab appeared, stopped one block away, at which point the dude behind me jogged up the street and hailed it.  I turned to look at his girlfriend, who was looking the sheepishest, and said "Thanks a lot.  Your man's a great guy."  She didn't know what to say;  she followed her boyfriend to the cab and tried to talk to him for a second, before getting in and giving me a shrug.

When was the last time I gave anyone the finger in earnest?  I can't remember, but I smiled sweetly yesterday as I gave them the elbow-crook variation.

That's really nice, yeah.

My own cab-related annoyances from yesterday: We had a snowstorm in the late afternoon/early evening yesterday, so there was no way of cycling out to my piano lessons, like I usually do. I would have called them off, but I missed them last week too and will be gone for half of this month, so it wasn't really an option. So I decided to just go out there by bus. My one previous attempt of doing so, last summer, wasn't much of a success and resulted in me walking the 9km home because the bus never showed, but I thought "hey, what are the odds of this happening again?"

Well, OF COURSE it happened again. This time, I did not feel up to walking all the way, and in any case decided that if I walked to the neighbouring town where I would have to switch buses, I might still catch my connection, since there was quite some waiting time involved in between. Which was almost true - when I got there, it turned out I had missed it by 10 minutes. And it was the last bus, so there was that. I talked to two different drivers of other buses, both of whom told me that there were quite a few delayed and even cancelled busses all day because of the weather conditions, but one mentioned that there should still be one last bus to Maastricht coming and told me to wait another 15 minutes. It never came. I cried a little, and then I walked back to the nearest bar and asked whether there were any taxi services in this town. They called one for me, which came within a few minutes. Friendly driver, too, though he made no secret of the fact that he would have preferred not to have to go out for another drive that night (and also told me that if the weather had been even a tiny little bit worse than it was, it would have been at the point where they turn down all requests and say "sorry guys, you're on your own here, we're not driving under these conditions"). Was cheaper than I would have expected (even after a more generous than usual tip), at least, so that's good. But man, fuck De Lijn and their stupid bus services.

[Anne the Man]

My RSI is getting real bad. I am fucking terrified that this will ruin my life. I would seriously cut off a leg if it would ensure this didn't happen. I need my arm for here, music, functioning normally, writing, fuck if I have to give up WRITING it'll fucking kill me. Sorry for emo post, I'm mid-panic about it.

[milesofsparks]

that sucks, Anne.  I had really terrible RSI when I worked as a temp.  at one point I couldn't use chopsticks or brush my hair on bad days (even days I wasn't working sometimes).

I learned a lot of stuff to manage it, and now it hardly ever bothers me at all.  lemme know if you need any advice.

[Anne the Man]

Please let me know, any way that I don't have to give up the internet or anything else fun entirely. I gotta go to work now, which is gonna make it even worse for little benefit. Fuuuuck 

[milesofsparks]

OK, let's see how much I remember.  caveat, I am not a doctor &etc.

I learned a lot from this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Repetitive-Strain-Injury-Computer-Users/dp/0471595330/ref=pd_sim_b_3
that was awhile ago, though, so I don't know if there's a better book out now.

I spent a lot of time paying very close attention to what did and did not make my hands hurt, and spent hours adjusting things (it was a 24-hour center, so we didn't have assigned seats). I discovered that a totally flat keyboard helps me a lot (though I know it doesn't work for everyone), and I need a high chair with just enough space for my legs between it and the desk, because I have ridiculously long arms. using piano playing posture for typing (wrists more or less straight, elbows more or less at 90 degrees) helped a lot, as well as not being too rigid about it.

during the worst of the pain warming my hands and wrists (even just in warm water in the sink) when I had to use them and icing when I could rest them was helpful.  taking breaks before pain started was key (and not easy to do at that dreadful job).  building up all hand, arm, and upper back muscles a bit helped, too, and that hand exercise clay stuff helped with that.  I also still do a lot of hand, arm, and neck stretches throughout the day. I also still compulsively massage my hands when they're not feeling great, and I wear fingerless gloves at work when it's cold there. 

erm, I hope that helps. oh, and really be careful of big strains until your hands heal up a bit--lift heavy things carefully, be careful opening jars, get a good oxo vegetable peeler, etc. try not to put too much strain on the small muscles in your hands and wrists, but use your whole arm when possible.  I'll try to think what else helped me.

edit:  I also did yoga for awhile, which helped me get rid of some tension and be flexible & strong.

[Good Intentions]

I had a patch of a few months where I got RSI, but then I started getting careful about how I did things, and it cleared up entirely. There's hope, you know.

[G.C.R]

Start looking super hard for a new job! I would think that what you do would be the largest contributor to you getting RSI. I'm real sorry, that sounds generally scary and painful.

[elpollodiablo]

Wow I can barely keep my eyes open. I haven't had a decent night's sleep yet this week.

[jm]

Wow I can barely keep my eyes open. I haven't had a decent night's sleep yet this week.

Man, me either.  I've stayed up slightly later a couple of nights, but not enough to warrant this level of tiredness.  Don't know what's up, but my body feels about eight hundred pounds heavier during the getting-out-of-bed process.

[Ignatius]

I had the opposit experience. I went to bed at a decent hour, but woke up in the middle of the night and absolutely could not stop thinking about Tim Duncan. I must have been dreaming about him. By the time it was 5:00 or so, I was wide awake. I feel fine now, but I will pay later. I'm almost more comfortable when I'm tired getting out of bed.

[Captain]

woke up in the middle of the night and absolutely could not stop thinking about Tim Duncan.

Do you often wake in cold sweat, flashes of posting up with this great defender, keeping the ball just out of his extensive reach?

[Captain]

Well, whatever, I guess.

Still better than dreaming about Drew Gooden.

[Ignatius]

I think I was trying to come up with a promo spot featuring him and DeJuan Blair or something. Offcourt stuff.

[Captain]

I mean, I might buy their oatmeal or something...

Maybe socks.

Can they do an athletic socks tie-in?

[jm]

In addition to the sleep thing, my mattress-based back pain (from mattress that I just recently acquired a few months ago) has been replaced by headaches, which I have had every day for the last week or so.