RICEing like a Good Asian

Every week I come up with all sorts of things to blog about, but 99% of those ideas inevitably travel out of my head and over to la la land, never to surface again. What you see on this blog is the remaining 1%: a medley of randomness. This entry is no different.

The process of blogging for me is akin to running a marathon in a bear suit with a sack of bricks attached to my ass. That is to say, slow and painful but with an occasional sprinkle of amusements to myself and others.

On the topic of slow and painful, a few days after I sprained my ankle, I made an appointment to see a doctor and take an x-ray. The morning before the appointment, I hobbled past the reception desk at my office. The receptionist noticed my limp and asked what had happened to my foot. When I told her about rolling it while playing Ultimate, she responded by saying, "I have a friend whose daughter sprained her ankle. She went to the hospital to get it checked out. She developed a blood clot from the sprain. And died."

Well, that pretty much killed the conversation. In addition to hoping that it was not a break or fracture, I added to my list of desired outcomes: not die.

Fortunately, my injury was a sprain and not a break or fracture. In addition to the usual RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) treatment, my doctor wrapped my ankle and prescribed 60 tablets of 600mg ibuprofen before sending me on my way. When I picked up my medication from the pharmacy, I almost asked the guy behind the counter if he had made a mistake by giving me pills meant for a horse.

One of these tablets can substitute for a whole meal.

My ankle injury has forced me to stop playing Ultimate and disengage from most forms of physical activity. The most physical effort I've exerted in the last couple of weeks was to scurry across the street in a deformed and panicked fashion to avoid getting hit by oncoming traffic.

In addition to my awkward gait, all this inactivity has had an inflating effect on my paunch. Here's a picture of me current as of today:

I really need to get better soon.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

While deeply enmeshed in a seemingly futile research task for work, I suddenly realized that two years ago today, I published the first post on this infamous blog to herald my foray into grad school in Australia. This is quite the milestone for me, so of course I dropped everything I was doing in order to inform my readership of three of this happiness.

So a big YAY for the blog whose number of name changes rivals the number of entries on it!

And here's hoping to many more birthdays!

"Just Call Me a Freakazoid"

-- says my niece whose face and body are all splotchy from a reaction to an antibiotic she was taking to get rid of strep throat. My poor little leprotic-looking niece. It's too bad; this might lower the price we can fetch for her on eBay.

Just kidding.

On to more serious matters.

Today, I "caught" a disc with my chin at club practice, which I don't recommend as an effective catching technique. And later, during a semi-final match for B league playoffs, I badly rolled my ankle in the fourth point that took me out of the rest of the game. Frustrated, I watched my team get spanked and handed our first, last, and only loss of the season, while I sat helpless on the sideline with a swollen ankle that is now the size of a golf ball. To add insult to injury, I am sunburned (where? on my face, Deb) with a prominent backwards-trucker-hat-band tan line across my forehead. It's a really hot look, let me tell you.

Limping to work this week will be so much fun!