Thursday, August 12, 2010

Not What I Had Planned

Monday afternoon I pedaled my bike on to campus to pick something up and was planning on returning the Dresden book I had recently finished to the library on my way home. The ride onto campus was fairly uneventful and the ride back seemed like it was going to be uneventful as well. I was crossing the last street with a light and dreading the push up the hill to my house when I decided to stand up and pedal to get across the street faster. Bad decision.


As I pushed down hard on the left pedal it decided that that was a good time to come off. Luckily, I had enough momentum to carry me the rest of the way across the street before I crashed to the concrete. There wasn't much pain at first, more just a harsh impact, confusedly wondering how that just happened, and feeble attempts to untangle myself from my bike. A nice pedestrian came over while I was floundering about to help extricate me from the bike and see if I needed help. Of course, by this time my injuries were making themselves known, scrapes, bruises and all. Also, my body was letting me know via ringing ears and dizziness that if I didn't sit back down I was going to pass out and fall down. Annoyingly, that happens to me sometimes when heat and injury are combined. A woman from a nearby realty office then hurried across the street with gauze pads, saying she'd seen me crash from her desk, and helped me over to where she worked. I sat in the back of the office for a while, sipping water, holding a paper towel to my bleeding elbow, and taking stock of all the pains. I then called a friend to come pick me up and take me to the doctor to get cleaned up and looked at.


At the doctor's office I went through having my elbow cleaned and having my aching ankle prodded at. Upon examining my ankle and finding that it was making a funny popping sound when moved around, the doctor ordered x-rays taken of it. I got to then ride around in a wheelchair to the x-ray room since they didn't want me walking on my ankle. Fortunately, my ankle wasn't broken, just mildly sprained. All told, none of my injuries were very serious. The worst ones were my scraped and bloodied elbow, a sprained ankle, blood blisters on my hands, and a bruise about the size of my palm on my side. And of course some really sore muscles the next morning.
As of now, I'm out of the ankle brace, the blood blisters are healing nicely, and the bruise is turning some horrendous shades of green, yellow, and blue. I'm also having to change the dressing on my elbow a couple times a day, which is an exercise in aggravation. As for the bike, it's sitting outside my apartment with only one pedal, waiting for me to fix it and get a bike helmet.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Lughnasadh and cooking adventures!

I hope everyone had a good Lughnasadh on Sunday. I certainly did. Since baking bread is part of celebrating Lughnasadh, I decided to try my hand at it for the first time. Happily, the bread turned out pretty good, except both loaves were slightly burned on the bottom because my oven apparently cooks way too high. I also made a batch of Crockpot Apple Venison to go with it, since it is an easy recipe and doesn't require much attention after you put in the ingredients. So, I spent the entire day happily puttering around cooking.













Everything was quite tasty and I still have leftovers!