Broken ankles -- so hot right now!

Never a dull moment. I injured my ankle running last week; I thought it would get better, but it continued to swell and bruise until I finally gave in and spent a magical Friday evening in the urgent care ward at the hospital. My self-diagnosis going in was, "Uh, this might be a stress fracture, but I'm not sure"; after 2 hours in the hospital, I finally received the official diagnosis of, "Uh, this might be a stress fracture, but I'm not sure." In any case, I got to have an x-ray and see a picture of my own fibula, which was kind of exciting for me. (Isn't it kind of weird that there are bones inside of you?) Anyway, there's no obvious break in my ankle, but stress fractures can't really be seen without an (expensive) MRI, so we'll probably never know. For the next few weeks I have to wear this boot-like ankle brace, which will hopefully mend my ankle well enough that I'll be able to avoid the dreaded full-leg cast. Unfortunately, the brace makes me limp even more noticeably than before. I was even mocked by a group of junior high kids as I walked home from the hospital, which was so ludicrous that I actually laughed out loud when it happened. Why don't you just tie tin cans to my ankles and throw rocks at me already?

bus woe.

Man, I missed the bus again. Why must a 5:42 am bus run 5 minutes early? And why must it speed away as I run after it, yelling? And why did I even run after it, after all we've talked about? So this is what it's come to -- blogging at 6 am.

How are you this morning?

postcards from the edge

Dear Everyone,

Hello. How are you? I am fine. I will update soon. I am in the first stages of carpal tunnel, so I've had to stay off the computer. I have some wrist braces now, they are very elegant. Sometime this week I will post photos from my trip to Los Angeles. You will get to hear all about my sunburnt neck. We will have fun!

your friend,
Amanda

New shoes and nyquil

Happy birthday to my chronic state of malaise, which turns 34 days old today! It seems like only yesterday I was coming down with the flu, which then morphed into a hacking cough and laryngitis, which has now settled into bad cold territory (but not before bringing a second round of laryngitis, much to the delight of my "friends," who thought it was really hilarious to ask me to recite lines from "Ghost" in my smokey early 90's Demi Moore voice). YEAH, OKAY. So, needless to say, I've been rather absent from life and the internet because I have little time for anything other than eating citrus fruits, taking nyquil, and moaning in my sick bed. It actually makes no sense to my why I've been so sick, since my lifestyle is probably the healthiest it ever has been or will be: I'm happy, I exercise regularly, I always get enough sleep, and my diet is based around fruits and vegetables. I eat like, 5 oranges a day. I even replaced my morning coffee with green tea and fruit juices! I think my body just misses eating candy all day at Rentertainment and having 4:00 beers with Geoff.

But anyway, I do have a few pieces of news:

1) I had my 1st review at work, and it went extraordinarily well! My marks were very good, and my boss complimented me on my "calm and in-control" attitude on the job, which I guess means she hasn't heard me crunching loudly on the ubiquitous bag of pistachios that I keep in my desk drawer. I get to buy now, which is sorta fun. And one day I even got to work on poetry books! I have more work to do now, so I rearranged my work schedule to earlier, longer days for most of the week, which means that I usually get to leave pretty early on Thursday and Friday. Leaving work at 3:30 on a sunny, 60 degree day is basically like being handed a sack of gold. And a box of powdered sugar donuts. At the same time!

2) Geoff and Jill visited! We had fun. I won't post photos because they're all terrible, but we spent most of the time eating, drinking, and making fun of people, so you can conjure up your own mental picture of what we looked like. They should move here, don't you think?

3) I almost got a bike ticket!! I met a friend over at Pix Patisserie and was in such a rush to get there that I forgot to put my bike lights on (it was light out at the time). Literally 15 seconds after I left Pix and started to pedal home, I passed a cop car. I saw the cop staring at me, so I immediately pulled over to the sidewalk, got off the bike, and called Ben, trying to make it look like I was just hanging out. The cop car responded by doing a u-turn in the middle of the intersection, parking in the middle of the street with its headlights shining directly on me (nervously leaning against a building and talking on the phone) and sitting there for two full minutes. It then revved its engine, screeched its tires, and zoomed off. Okay, you made your point, Mr. Policeman... I'm a bad girl. Man, it was close.

4) I cut my own hair (at 6:00 in the morning, without contacts in) and ended up looking like the mom from "The Family Circus." This is not the look that I was going for.



It's also the day that I decided to wear my new shoes to work without breaking them in first. I knew it was a mistake after about 10 seconds, but I was running to catch the bus and didn't have time to change; I have to walk a few miles every morning to get from bus stop to bus stop, and by the time I got to work, my feet were bascially giant lumps of ground hamburger. My solution to this was to fashion half-socks from a pair of fingerless gloves I keep at my desk, which also involved stapling the thumb opening to the rest of the "sock" after it freed itself and flapped open in the breeze, making me look like a total idiot. Did I mention that this was also the day the CEO of the company was visiting? I'm sure no one even noticed (I was wearing pants that covered up my terrible secret), but it's surprisingly hard to feel professional when you're wearing gloves on your feet and dragging them behind you like Quasimodo. The punchline to the entire day came when one of my coworkers complimented me on my shoes, then asked if they were comfortable. I said that they were.

5) I'm going to visit Ben in LA in a few weeks! It's the first Spring Break trip I've ever taken. Then, the weekend after I get back, I think I'm going up to Mt. Hood and staying in a cabin with some friends! They're going skiing, but I don't have any ski clothes here, so I'll probably just hang out and wander in the woods while they do that. I'm excited!

#1 Most Adorablest Crime

Awhile back, I posted about about the ghost bikes that are set up to memorialize bikers killed in Portland. Well, apparently someone stole one of them last week! BUT HOLD ON! In a twist ending that could only happen in Portland (or the Care Bears cloud castle), the thief was seized with such guilt over the theft that he returned the bike to its rightful place, along with a handwritten note of apology.

You can find the (highly recommended) story here.

This makes me miss home.

Yes, even Lincoln Square Mall! (home of Tim Johnson)

(EDIT: This was filmed in Champaign-Urbana, for you out-of-towners. And the band is Headlights!)

I swam and walked and read and ate sparingly.

I'm back!

Apologies for not updating, but it's been a busy (and lovely!) 2008 so far -- Shadie moved in, so we've been busy running around the city, finding the best happy hours, and hosting visitors galore. Our internet has also been quite spotty, and for the past week I've had a terrible case of the flu (unfortunately I still had to work, which made for some pathetically hilarious situations). But here I am, look!

Jacob, Me, Mitch, Shadie

Here's a poem I discovered the other day. You might like it:

The Origin of Myth

That summer I was drinking
apple cider vinegar because I read
in an obscure book it was good

for my health. A tablespoon or two
in a glass of spring water, with a bit
of honey or raw sugar. Controls weight,
the book said, flushes harmful toxins
from joints, tissues and organs.
"Doctor George Blodgett drank it
every day, and remained vigorous
until his death at age 94."

One reads
and perhaps believes almost anything
when one has lived alone for a while.
I felt good, doing it, though perhaps
that was because I walked on the beach
every day, swam, then walked again,
collected beach glass smoothed by the waves.
Pale blue and green, like solidified air,
dark green like emeralds, very rarely
sapphire blue and once a tiny piece
of red round as the pupil of an eye.
No one was on the beach because it was
September, and I had a white cabin
to myself. I swam and walked and read
and ate sparingly. I had come there
to be alone, and to think things through.
Every morning I drank my vinegar.
I read that the soldier who gave Jesus
vinegar on a sponge did so not in mockery
but in pity, to offer a restorative.
After a week I set the "red eye" on my desk
so we could watch one another. At dusk
the mist far out over the water looked like
distant hills, and I understood how
an earlier inhabitant might have though
these were mountains that rose at nightfall
and disappeared with the dawn.

-Ed Ochester

I'm feeling good about where this year is headed, how about you? Here's hoping that 2008 is filled with simple happiness for all of us!

A Christmas Story

Merry Christmas from pretty Portland!

I didn't take this photo (the giveaway should be that it's actually in focus). Interestingly enough, I walked across this bridge a few days ago, after Ben and I were going back downtown after seeing Superbad (which was stupid! Sorry, America) and there was no "Merry Christmas" sign to be seen. There was, however, a deserted construction site, which I guess didn't make the cut for this particular photo.

Christmas actually started for me on Friday morning, when I saw my #1 Portland enemy (a high school kid who likes to yell obscenities in a Cartman voice on the 7:25 am bus) run face first into a telephone pole and knock himself out. Ho ho ho! I also saw a construction worker give cookies to a homeless man, which is probably a more acceptable thing to be excited about. At work we had our bagel brunch, which was fun, and then Ben flew in at about midnight. We've just been slothing around, cooking some food, and walking about. Yesterday Ben made a rosemary pork roast, which went so excellently with the rosemary cheese that Geoff and Jill sent (if you send a box of cheese, you too can be mentioned by name in this blog!). We then spent awhile watching "Yule Log 2002" on Oregon Public Broadcasting, which is a 3-hour shot of a fireplace. Every so often, a hand would come in to poke at the fire with a stick, or throw another log on, which was very exciting for us.

Fire: now in HD!

This morning, we got up, made some coffee, and watched FOUR judge shows in a row (Judge David, People's Court, Judge Mathis, and Judge Hatchette). Luckily, during Judge Hatchette it started to snow, so we had an excuse to leave the house and go for a walk.

Ben was excited.

The view from my balcony

A pile of old Coke bottles we saw

An alley near my house

Man, we turned off the judge shows for this?


Brr.

Portland's hottest ride

This is probably my favorite present of the year -- a "Tabby" pocket puzzle that Ben found at his parents' house. It's like when you spend $100 on an Erector set for your kid, and then he takes the box and plays with it all afternoon instead.

And finally, this is what happens when you try to take a self-portrait above a steaming pot. It's probably for the best that you can't really see our faces.

Good Grief

Today I worked on German books for a long, long, long time. Normally, I like this, but unfortunately today's batch consisted mainly of professional law books, which... well, let's just say that for some reason we didn't cover international water-use law vocabulary in any of my German classes, so by the end of the day I felt like my head was imploding in on itself. My only coherent thought as I left the building was "Gwarrgh, pizza! Me want!" (you'll be happy to know that my wish was later fulfilled). I then managed to miss the bus TWICE downtown; after the first miss, I walked down the street to get more transit tickets, then hurried back to see it pulling away without me again. Both times I ran down the street yelling something like, "NoooooOOOOooo HEYYYY!!!!!" and flailing my arms. Since I do this roughly three or four times a week, I probably no longer have any chance of impressing any of the really unattractive people that habitually ride my bus, which is too bad. I'm not sure why I keep running after the bus, since it's never once stopped for me, but this never seems to occur to me at the time. It's sort of like Charlie Brown and the football, I guess.

More Breaking News: Birthday Edition

Today's my mom's birthday! I hear it's cold and snowy back in Illinois, so send good thoughts of sun and happiness! Meanwhile, I'm in Portland, eating cake and thinking about her:

Happy Birthday, Mommy! I love you.

Today I unearthed a pile of old mix cd's, including one that Anna made me right before I left. Somehow she managed to segue from a Decemberists song directly into that Canned Heat song that used to be on a Pepsi commercial. Brilliant! My friends are better than everybody else's friends.

Last night I went to a nickel arcade with my pal Walt. I'm not sure if it was quite as good as Skateland (no skate-up concession stand, for one) but there WERE skeeball machines and a Star Trek: Voyager shooting game that I failed miserably at. We ended up winning a pile of tickets, so I got a skull keychain (complete with faux-jewel eyes, just like real skulls!) and he got some plastic army men. Also, my arm is nearly dead today because I injured it playing air hockey. How pathetic am I? (Answer: infinity.)

This week promises to be exciting. We've been getting treat boxes from publishers every day recently, so all I do at work is wander over to the table and claw through all the piles of candy. On Friday we have our department holiday party, which is some sort of "bagel brunch." Apparently I've been fully assimilated into office culture, because I'm actually really excited about this. FREE BAGELS!! THIS IS GREAT. And then Ben on Friday night! Aaheeeeha! I went Christmas shopping on Mississippi the other day, where all the stores were so festive and happy that it made the task a treat instead of a burden. One shop was giving out free champagne, another had hot cider, and a third had some pet zebra finches that were chirping happily over by a rack of dresses. Downtown is all lit up, and I love walking through it every evening on my way home. And then New Year's Eve!!! Sorry, I appear to be really excited about everything ever lately. Next up: Why I Love Circles, and The Story of How I Ate a Really Good Orange.