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Robin and Dan came over last night for dinner (and Robin made this super TASTY macaroni and cheese, mmmm.. thanks Robin!) Anyway, we played Katamari Damacy for a bit.. so fun!

Katamari Damacy is one of those ingenius videogames that could only come from the crazy folks over in Japan.. You’re basically a little dude that’s rolling a ball around the world, and anything that you run over that’s smaller than you sticks to you — which makes you bigger — which means you can then roll up bigger and bigger stuff. It’s a lot simpler than it sounds, but it’s insanely fun and addictive. Anyway, take that and add a little dose of San Francisco Bay To Breakers… and you get.. Katamari Bay To Breakers!! Haha.. if they actually get this thing together, it’d be pretty amusing to see a huge ball of junk rolling down the street.. Grr… I think this year I’ll need to be sitting on the sidelines watching, unless someone wants to roll me around..

[Found at Metroblogging SF although I now recall that Dan mentioned something about it last night]

It’s been 16 days since I broke my ankle now… here’s what’s been goin on, I’m sure you’ve been wondering. The ankle is still painful if it’s not elevated, but nearly not at much pain as before.. I’m down to my last percocet, which is a little sad… waah. It was nice while it lasted, but I guess I’m just supposed to use ibuprofen now if it hurts, which is not nearly as nice.

I finally got to see an xray of that they did to my ankle.. Wow. Frankly, I had no idea that there was that much hardware in my ankle. I was picturing maybe a pin or two.. but there are like six screws (including one huge one that goes all the way across) and one plate. Wowsers. That big screw is just stabilizing the whole thing, so that will come out in a few months. I imagine that’s not gonna tickle.

I got the soft cast off today, the one that they put on after the surgery. It was weird to see my foot (I have a picture of it, but I’ve not posted it, cuz it’s kinda yuck). My foot was slightly swollen, and the incision is quite a nice one, about four inches tall right on the side of my ankle. The wound was stapled shut, and they removed the staples today — that was quite unpleasant. Ouch.

And they put on a proper hard cast, so now I’m ready for people to come and sign it. Maybe I’ll paint something nice on there since I’m gonna have this for the next month or so… The whole time the cast was being put on, I was thinking to myself.. “Oh Jeez.. is this how I want my foot to be for the next month?? Hmm.. wait, no.. maybe a little to the left.. Oh man, it’s setting… umm… hmm.. it’s set? oh. well, I guess that’s it.” Yah, so I hope this is where I want my foot to be since that’s where it’s gonna be for awhile. The doc gave me a walking cast, so at least I’ll be able to hobble around without crutches as soon as I get used to it. Granted, my cast leg is gonna be effectively longer than my other leg, so I’ll either a need big platform shoe to even it out, or I’ll just walk all uneven and stuff.

But.. all being said and done, the doc says that I’m healing up quite nicely and he expects that I’ll have a fully working ankle that I can run on and do everything that I need to do on it.. Wahoo.

So my friend Kane recently bought the Fulton Street Social Club, and has been remodelling it into a new place called Poleng Lounge… Social Club was a great venue with a booming sound system, and we threw our bad ass Holla’ Ween party there last year, so I’m looking forward to seeing what Kane and his crew have done to the place..

For their opening party on Thursday, May 18th, Kane has booked Chromeo!!

Chromeo ROCKS! I first heard of them when I saw their video for Needy Girl at RESFEST, which was one of their “10 Great Music Videos from 2004“…

So yah.. be there.. May 18th.. I’ll still be in my ankle cast, but I’ll be rockin..

UPDATE:

The show isn’t at Poleng yet (I guess there were some delays to get it open, no surprise from my supperclub experiences)… So, it’s at Mighty Now…

Dan’s getting married in June, so Masnick and I took him out for a little bachelor party.. We went to Chick-fil-A in the Fairfield Mall for lunch, where Dan picked up THREE Chicks-fil-A (get it? haha.. man, I’m hilarious). And then the craaaaaaazy fun continued when we stopped off at the Jelly Belly factory.

Woo. We’re wild and crazy. I forgot that you’re not supposed to speak about the crazy shite goes down during bachelor parties, but.. I’m just that reckless. But man.. I didn’t get back home till like.. 4 o’clock!! (PM, that is.)

Yesterday, we took Bailey to the vet and got her spayed.. We took her to Avenues Pet Hospital on the recommendation of the Intern — he had trained with one of the vets there, so I figured he knew them well.. When we were at the hospital, Pius looks up at the wall, and sees a picture of Leia on the wall (Mike & Zuad’s dog) — man, what a coincidence..

I walked in with my crutches and broken ankle, and one woman exclaims.. “ha! you’re here to see the vet? Well, I guess it’s cheaper!”.. Very funny, lady.

Bailey came home all groggy from the operation, and is recovering now here at home.. To Pius’ dismay, they didn’t give her one of those big cones around her head, but she’s still pretty unhappy. Poor pup, but within a few weeks, she’ll be able to be back and running around like new! She had a ton of fun at Masnick’s passover seder this weekend, playing with Ditto and Sugar..

More pics of the day taken by Pius at Flickr..

Oooo.. Vintage Chinese propaganda posters are neat.. But, customized propaganda posters are cooler.. Just send in a picture of yourself, and in two weeks, your very own painted poster (featuring YOU) arrives, having been painted by a REAL Chinese artist!

I looked through their poster choices, hoping that one of the default posters would already look like me (cuz, you know, asian people all look same), but.. no, there wasn’t one. Oh well. Guess $200 for a custom painting isn’t too bad, ya?

[found at MeFi]

I first found Penelope Trunk’s column, Brazen Careerist back in the dotcom heyday when it was published by Business 2.0– her column focuses mainly on career type issues. Since then it’s moved from B2.0 to Bankrate.com (an odd fit, I thought, but whatever since it kept her writing), and now she sends out her column via email… Hmm.. looks like that Bankrate archive of her column doesn’t work, and I can’t seem to find any good links to her B2.0 stuff… She also writes a bi-weekly column for the Boston Globe called Climb, but honestly, I never really read that one (Why? There’s no RSS feed and I’m too lazy to code one up..) Anyway, I’ve always really liked her smart, straight-forward, no-nonsense style of telling a story, so it’s sad that all of her old work is lost somewhere in the ether..

A while back, in exchanging a few emails with her about one of her columns, I mentioned to her that I really thought that she should blog, and even set up a blog for her on my site so that she could log in and take a look around…

So, I was happy today to get an email from her announcing that she’s finally started blogging, and even gave me a shout out on her first post!

Welcome to the world of blogging, Penelope, I’ve added you to my RSS reader, and I look forward to reading more..

Wooohoo.. so it’s been three days that I’ve been dealing with this broken ankle now. I can’t believe it’s only been three days, it honestly feels like forever. I’m learning how to do things all over again, since apparently this world isn’t really designed for people with one leg and two arms operating crutches. Simple things like.. um, carrying things. My friend Alex told me that her sister had devised a “magic basket” filled with everything that she needed as she hobbled around during her period of one-footedness. In it were her medication, water, chapstick, and a phone.

So, I’ve turned my circa 1999 manpurse into my magic basket… And, as a bonus, I found my chinese chop, which was lost for the past year!! I remember exactly how I lost it last year… I kept the chop at my office at CNET, and when I was moving my stuff out, I wanted to make sure to put it somewhere “safe” since it was really important to me not to lose it. So, in the manbag it went… and there it stayed for the past year. ha. It’s crazy how it’s impossible to find stuff when you’re actually looking for it.

Anyway… Percocet has been a fantastic help in dealing with the pain. It’s much nicer than Vicodin, I think… I find that Percocet seems to just deal with the pain in my ankle, whereas Vicodin seems to dull *everything*. I mean, yes, Percocet also makes you kind of dizzy and happy all over, but it doesn’t seem as dumbing as Vicodin. But yah.. Percocet is good stuff man. I can totally see why this is like schedule 2 narcotics. Wee.

So… yesterday I played in our third baseball game, a scrimmage with the Grizzlies.. In my first at-bat, I walked, and was then batted over to second on a fielder’s choice (avoiding the double play, I slid hard into second). So far so good.

I took a good sized lead-off from second, saw the catcher bobble a pitch, and I took off towards third. I saw out of the corner of my eye that the catcher had quickly gotten control of the ball so there was gonna be a play at the bag, so I ran hard, and slid hard into third base, just under the tag..

Then I heard a disgusting CRUNCH. Uh oh. Not good. I look down, pick up my leg, and my foot is hanging kind of down and to the left — I get that sinking feeling in my stomach that I’ve just done something really bad to myself. Crap. It didn’t really hurt that much though. It was just the sound and the realization that you’ve done something really bad to yourself that was the sucky part.

So my teammate Bruce drives me over to the hospital, where I’m hoping that I’ve only just sprained my ankle. We go into the ER, which is empty and everyone seems incredibly calm and relaxed — I guess real world ERs aren’t crazy and dramatic places like they are on TV. Like, nobody really seemed to be in a rush like they seem like on TV, but maybe that’s a good thing. They were calm and friendly and just kind of progressed about their tasks like it was their everyday job. Oh wait, it IS their everyday job. I suppose if they ran around like crazy people like they do on TV they’d go crazy and stick themselves with needles in all of the panic and stuff. And I suppose the calm ER doesn’t make for good television.

Anyway, the ankle is swelling up quite a bit, which is a bad sign, but when the doctor takes an initial look, she doesn’t seem to feel anything broken… good good.. there’s hope. I’m in good spirits and take a pic of my swollen ankle (it looks really gross, so don’t click over unless you’re cool with that).

But, we need to be sure, so off to the xray I go…

Yah.. so, I guess that’s not how a healthy ankle should look. I hear mumblings that it’s maybe just dislocated, and that makes me happy.. and then I hear that the emergency room doctor needs to get a second opinion. Uh oh.

And then two doctors come into my room with somber looks on their faces. My heart sinks.

“Yes, it’s broken.”

Crap. And, there’s more — I need to go in today to get surgery to put pins and screws into my ankle so that it’s sufficiently stablized during the healing process. Hooray. Oh, and my ankle was still dislocated, so they needed to pop it back into place. The nice doctor asks me if I’d like some drugs for the pain while they pop it back, and at that point, I’m like hells yah I want some drugs… So, the friendly nurse pushes in the happy drugs.. Weeeeee. I don’t really remember what really happened next, except the room looked really wobbly and the doctor said to relax so I did. My body felt like jello. Ooopy goopey jello. Wee. Where am I?

I kind of come to and there’s a cast around my ankle now, which is getting really hot from the plaster setting. The warmth feels nice around my poor ankle, and the happy drugs are starting to wear off, so the pain is coming back. Not so good.

So yah.. now I’m resting at home (hooray Percocet!) before I head back into the hospital for the surgery.

Yah.. so that was my Sunday.. Woo.. Apparently Coco Crisp also broke a bone while stealing third base yesterday. He broke his left ring finger but apparently he’s still gonna play in the season home opener. Yah, there’s no need for me to play on this broken ankle, and luckily I can still work (thank goodness the commute isn’t that bad). Granted, living in a 3-story place isn’t the most ideal of situations, but I have been thinking about getting a mini fridge for my room for awhile…

So.. no more dancing for me for a few months. Looks like I’ll have to be like Lisa from Saved by the Bell and just dance “The Sprain“. I really just hope I didn’t do anything permanently bad to myself. Apparently I’m 30 now and not “young” anymore or something.

Bailey has been growing lots over the past few months.. (hmm.. I wonder what the dog equivalent to marking your height on the door jamb is) When we first brought her home she was only about 8 pounds, and she’s since doubled in size to about 15 now. Her housebreaking is going well and today I got a brand new dog door for my room so she can let herself out.

It’s pretty neat — it just fits right into the patio door, and matches quite well. There’s a tiny little gap that could potentially make things drafty, but i’ll see what I can do to seal that up.

So I’ve been working to train Bailey how to use the door door, and I think she understands it now — as my pal mcc predicted, she’s definitely better at using the door to come in from the outside than to use it to go outside. But, time will tell.. Bailey is definitely proving to be a smart little pup — yesterday she figured out how to open my bedroom door. I’ve been leaving her by herself in my room when I leave the house, instead of the crate, and I returned from lunch yesterday to find her sitting on the couch in the living room. There’s no easy way to latch my bedroom door — it’s a sliding pocket door, with the lock on the inside — so maybe I’ll flip the lock so that I can easily lock it from the outside or something. It’s not like I ever lock my bedroom door or anything.

Good dog.