A few things make an update?

[telophase]

KNEE

1. Why, hello knee! I am sorry I twisted you on the ship and I am grateful that you didn't really start hurting until after I got home. It would be better if it wasn't becoming abundantly clear that NSAID anti-inflammatories make my ankles swell up so I have to go on a short course of prednisone instead. Which means that the doctor says STAY OFF YOUR KNEE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE and the prednisone goes BURST OF ENERGY HI! HI! LET'S GO WALKING!

It's not horribly bad; I got to the doc as soon as it was obvious that it wasn't getting better because I'm not going to repeat the years I spent with an effed-up back ligament because I didn't have health insurance.

I b0rked the knee in the shower, of all places: I turned for some reason or other and everything above the knee turned while everything below the knee stayed; I suppose I should be glad that a shower floor in a moving ship is anti-slip enough to reduce the chance of me falling and hitting my head, but it'll be easier to remember that after my knee gets better.

Walking on level surfaces seems to be less of a problem than sloping surfaces, so the parking lot of the middle school nearby seems to be a good option for walking when the prednisone makes me need to move (althoug it just now occurs to me - maybe sitting down and lifting some weights with my upper body might work?). Stairs are absolutely a no-no, especially going down, so it's driving me nuts to take the elevator down ONE FLOOR when I go upstairs to the bistro for tea at work. And it seems that sitting down and not moving for a while ALSO stiffens it up so I JUST CAN'T WIN. The doc wants me back for a follow-up later this week, so we'll go from there if it's the same or better or whatnot.

CRUISE

What's more annoying than anything else is that on the ship I paid for an hour of a personal trainer to teach me proper form for squats and deadlifts and a couple of other exercises, so I was all revved up to get back to lifting (as it had been sidelined when my routine got interrupted by the move, er these many months ago, and the wedding) and NOW I CAN'T SQUAT.

I'd even sat through a sales pitch for this! You see on cruise ships, or at least Carnival cruises and I assume every other one out there, there are various spa and fitness things you can do but their promary goal is to hit you with a sales pitch for expensive products. So you can go and get pampered for forty-five minutes for some sort of exorbitant price and then pay the rest of your bill by sitting there and pretending to look interested while the person pitches a ridiculously expensive beauty routine at you.

Last time on the ship I got a facial and I purchased one thing - a facial exfoliant - in self-defense (it was a good one, I agree! Just not whatever I paid for it good, but that's all beauty products for you) and I was prepared to do the same thing this time when I got a facial (hey, I didn't have zits for two months after it last time! I understand why people pay for these things!), but this time the spa person seemed to be steering me towards the $105 jar of 30-day-supply of some sort of night and day cream pods (their gimmick was to put each individual dose into a tiny colored plastic pod instead of allowing you to use your finger to scoop it out of the jar like the disgusting plebe you are), and my limit for purchasing something in self-defense is $35 or so, so I steeled my loins and stared her down. Well actually, I looked apologetic, took the sheet of recommendations and lied through my teeth that I'd be back to purchase something after I had a chance to look it over.

As I posted about the sales pitch in the poll entry just before this one, I'll post about what it was in a separate entry (I'm surprised if any of you read this far anyway).

I did get useful info out of the session. He corrected my form and my knees and legs feel much less stressed in squats and deadlifts now. He also spent close to an hour and a half with me instead of the hour I'd booked, so that felt slightly better. :)

Was it worth the actual price? If I hadn't already spent the money, $85 for 30 minutes (guesstimate) of sales pitch and 60 minutes of training: no. But we had OMG $475 worth of on-board credit by the time we sailed because the cost of our cabin dropped precipitously earlier this year after we'd paid the bill in full (thank you, captain of the Costa Concordia!), and I'd filled in the forms necessary to get our rate adjusted. So it was a matter of booking whatever we could to use up the credit as we'd already paid it out. :) I got a facial and this training hour, Toby got a shave, we went to the Italian restaurant on board one day instead of the regular dining thing, I got earrings at the gift shop, we bought a friend some booze in the duty-free shop, and we dropped about 25% of the credit on internet access, which meant we could read email and news on board. The wifi was too slow (satellite-based, after all!) to DO much of anything online, but Toby could feed his need for connection to the outside world. Oh, and we patronized the coffee shop on board (you can get free plain coffee and tea as part of your base price, but if you want coffee-shop liquid candy, you pay for it).

ICE CREAM

I'd tossed a fancy ice cream maker on our registry for the hell of it, not expectign anyone to get it for us. Toby's office chipped in and got it for us. O.o This thing ... I swear I could hear Thus Sprach Zarathustra as we hauled it out of the box. It has its own refrigeration unit so you don't have to freeze the inner container for 24 hours before making ice cream.

We have so far made two of David Lebovitz's ice cream recipes: vanilla, and strawberry sour cream. Verdict: yummy! (well, if you like strawberry. I don't really -- I thought the addition of sugar and sour cream would help it, but not really -- but Toby likes it a lot). We've got plans to make 2 more batches of different kinds before the weekend, as we have a couple of friends coming over.

We bought Lebovitz' book after reading various of sleary's posts extolling his recipes last year. Highly recommended!

WHATEVER

I spent so much time typing this out (hello, prednisone!) that I've forgotten what else I was going to put SO YOU ARE SPARED THIS TIME.

I'll post the poll answer later. You can just worry if you got it right until then.