5/9/03
Sleeping poorly at night, as the muscle relaxer wears off about 4 hours in, and tension begins shortly after… wake up to an owie, get an icepack, take a pill, and repeat.

I'm very glad that I'm not taking any form of narcotic, despite that. I don't feel like being hooked on any medication, thanks... I have a strong will, but I prefer not to test it on something that can kill me.

Physical therapy went well - they evaluated my range of motion, and the facility is right next door. I should have a full-blown PT done about Wednesday of Next week I'd like to see if I can get a TENS unit

got gems rather than cash prizes in the scavenger hunt in There... I think the other hunters will be envious of our gain, as I gently persuaded Josie to let us have the actual sailor's treasure rather than the $T300 prize at a cost of $T49 (or maybe 12 cents) because it cost her 349 to create the item. We're the toast of There, and I wonder if Whimsy or Chias will be too envious... I suppose if asked nicely, Josie will reproduce the prize offering to them, too.

The search was outstanding. Ldy's Sense of Direction and D's innate knowledge of There (plus, she unscrambled the final answer first, with ldy only a hair's breadth behind) caused us to crawl all over There, each of us in our pirate (or later, genie) garb. I treated myself to a new hoverboard... a sort of Atlantean pod racer, with twin sharks as the pods pulling a giant squid behind. When dressed as a pirate in bunny slippers, it's quite a surreal sight to behold. There has served as a fairly strong time sink lately...visually stimulating, but more so, the people are quite a delight to be around. Sort of similar to the early days of LiveJournal… just a small core, and everyone seems to at least have heard of everyone else. Maybe three degrees of separation at the most there. Actually it has a lot of the macro-social elements of LJ... cliques are formed, different interest groups... people pestering the more artistically accomplished then themselves... but the punks and the whiners are easily dealt with. Press ignore, and they'll never IM you. If you see them in a community or chat area, they become stick figures that speak nothing but "Woodstock Speak" of logical ors- like "|||| |||| | ||| ||| ||| |||| |||||" so you don't have to see them say anything particularly offensive. There is one of those players that I can foresee blocking in the near future... not because he says anything bad, but he's sort of socially retarded, and is a real IM-pest. I'm also glad that my There-stalker has moved on to greener pastures. I'm enjoying the attention of being a spokesmodel for D (and one shirt for Whimsy)... and am quite flattered that sales have been booming. I know I can't take credit for the designs, and wouldn't want to... but being out there and being able to promote for talented folks that really like what they do is a good feeling.

Sort of like my new job. I really enjoy working on my current automation project because the people there are enthusiastic, and realistic about the arrival of it. Telecommuting went very well yesterday, and is even better today, now that I've stopped the dang thing from going into hibernation every 10-15 minutes. I think I'll have a process that's about 80% automated done by the end of next week. (Maybe more so, if the data is only in a subset of different types, instead of a complete crapshoot each time.)