![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillor is that kneecap?
I am currently at home, tending to my wounds. It certainly was an eventful day; I hope some of those events are not repeated.
It started with getting a nasty upper back cramp at 4:30 in the morning. I relaxed that enough to rest for a half hour, then got up at 6. I stayed here until about 6:45, figuring that it takes about 10-15 minutes to get to the train station, and I still had some leeway. I needed it, as there was an accident slowing things down, but I still got there with two minutes to spare.
Only to see my train pull out as I parked. I went to check, and that was indeed my train -- despite my watch and my phone both saying that it had only struck 7:19 as I stood at the counter, the time that my train was supposed to leave. (It turns out that no, Amtrak wasn't running early -- my phone, which is supposed to be satellite-corrected for time, was running six minutes behind, matching my watch. Have I mentioned yet how eagerly I await getting a new phone in December?)
So, okay, time to drive. Not so bad. Got up there at 8:15, 45 minutes before my class. ....except that there is no all-day public parking in Davis which is not on campus. Even the garages have an absolute limit of three hours. It was something I hadn't thought to check, because hey, there were a couple of lovely garages, and at least one of them had to be a paid one, and paid garages will take your money all day long. I hadn't remembered that Davis is a totally different country.
I grabbed my bike from the Amtrak station, stuffed it into my trunk, and parked on campus. Fine. Still not late for class. Took a wrong turn on the way to Bainer, went to make a U-turn -- and overbalanced due to the weight of my bookbag on the back of the bike. Went down, bam.
Got back up, rode the rest of the way to Bainer with numb hands and handlebars at a 45-degree angle. Still not late. Went to use the bathroom and realized my skinned elbow was bleeding on me (I don't quite look like a massacre victim, but I do have some stylish finger-painting effects on my pants leg). My knee was numb, and getting number all the time, which was not a good sign. Hands were fine, though. Got to class on time.
I have been forcibly reminded that my last class about botany was a second-rate community college course a year and a half ago, where I didn't do well in lab anyway because I was fighting my way through a heavy dose of life at the time. I really have to read the glossary in my old bio book again, and remember some of these terms. If I do that, and start drilling on vocabulary regularly, I'll do okay in Plant Anatomy. The teacher seems sane, unthreatening, and fair, and the TA is okay.
After class I straightened out my handlebars (mostly; they were screwed down almost too tightly for me to loosen them at all) and biked carefully to Cowell Student Health Center. All I wanted was an icepack, but I got an urgent care nurse, who seemed unthrilled by my cavalier "it all works, so it's probably okay" attitude. She sold me a cold pack for a couple of bucks, though, and I cruised across campus to Plant Prop. Where the cold pack gave out after a half hour of mild chilliness. Sigh.
Plant Prop looks to be the muck-about easy class I had hoped for, with a typical propagation geek at the helm. I can live with that. I'll see how the greenhouses are tomorrow.
Lunch. I ate at the CoHo in the Union because they had tacos I could eat; it was passable and quite solid, not bad for a couple dollars apiece. Thus fortified, I tried out the Union's computer lab, then unloaded some things at my locker and headed to Plant Anatomy lab. I got lost, but I still had a few minutes to spare -- it was 1:03 before I rounded the corner, parked my bike, walked up two flights of stairs and found the lab. As I walked in the door it was 1:16. I have no idea how that happened; time was being weird all day. At least the teacher remembered me from the morning, and wasn't surprised to see me show up.
I was doing okay until we pulled out the compound 'scopes. Then I just boggled. I hadn't fully registered that this is The Big Time -- I have never seen a scope that cost that much before. It has twice the controls of any other microscope I've encountered, and a few nifty little design tricks that just don't happen with the $150 models. Between that and the fact that I was told to take more specimen dishes if I needed them (I was conserving resources and trying to get by with one, until I was urged to take five) I was feeling kind of odd. I hadn't realized how thoroughly I'd been conditioned by community college, where the ochem labs couldn't even afford gloves. Sure, I need to buy my own razor blades and slides this quarter, but the lab equipment is top-notch and plentiful.
I was also frustrated, as I'm still trying to get the hang of slicing free-hand sections for slides, and fine motor control at that point in my day was not what I would have chosen to do. But I muddled through okay.
Forty minutes to go before biochem. I hit the computer lab again, skimmed my LJ friends list, and got a snack before I found the enormous lecture hall. It isn't as big as some at Berkeley, or even some which I suspect are right next door to Young, but Young 198 is big enough at about 300 chairs, almost all taken. Lecture ran short, conducted by a plump, kinetic woman who promised to be fair as long as we didn't slack on the class... and I was out. About forty minutes early. Whew.
A trip to the bookstore (pokers and slides and forceps, and I'll get more razor blades and a brush) and 20 minutes on the phone, unwinding... then to my locker again to load up, and a trip across campus to the car. Reverse the events of the morning, without the suckitude, and here I am home again.
My knee is swollen and still numb, though it functions without complaint (as long as I don't try to touch it). I'm not worried about the extent of the injury, as I think I'd know by now if there were any torn ligaments or other such. It is a curious quirk of my physiology that if there is sufficient trauma to cause any significant swelling to an area, the surface nerves cut out entirely; it's one element of my high pain tolerance, as I have essentially built-in anesthetic. My knee is saying nothing unless I provoke it -- the scrape on my elbow is the greatest irritation I have right now. The bruises on my thigh from the handlebars are somewhere in between.
(The built-in anesthetic is the reason I can't handle external anesthetic -- my hindbrain equates trauma with numbness, and also numbness with trauma. If it's numb, it must be damaged severely, even if it's only numb because I've had an ice cube on it for a few seconds. Poking at the numb area makes it feel like someone's messing with the shredded remains of my flesh, which, put mildly, sets my teeth on edge. I'd rather be put completely under at the dentist's than get a shot of Novocain, and that's taking into account my aversion to any sort of drug that alters my consciousness without my control. I do without anesthetic entirely most of the time.)
I'll do what I can to get my knee operational tomorrow. I will also set my watch by the server's NTP-corrected date command, since I can't rely on my phone to be accurate. (It's gained six minutes since this morning.) I'll take the train tomorrow, since $8.40 for a ticket beats $6 in parking plus $3 toll, not counting gas and wear. I have to make my way all the way to the other end of campus to get to the greenhouses, but if I can ride at all I should be able to manage it.
Other than being bruised and tired, I'm in pretty good shape. The quarter doesn't look too scary -- a bit of a challenge, perhaps, but it should be. Not overwhelming. And I hope it gets less tiring. School does tend to agree with me; I eat small amounts more often, and exercise far more, so I get a bit leaner and my stamina goes up. I wouldn't complain if it happens again this year.
I am currently at home, tending to my wounds. It certainly was an eventful day; I hope some of those events are not repeated.
It started with getting a nasty upper back cramp at 4:30 in the morning. I relaxed that enough to rest for a half hour, then got up at 6. I stayed here until about 6:45, figuring that it takes about 10-15 minutes to get to the train station, and I still had some leeway. I needed it, as there was an accident slowing things down, but I still got there with two minutes to spare.
Only to see my train pull out as I parked. I went to check, and that was indeed my train -- despite my watch and my phone both saying that it had only struck 7:19 as I stood at the counter, the time that my train was supposed to leave. (It turns out that no, Amtrak wasn't running early -- my phone, which is supposed to be satellite-corrected for time, was running six minutes behind, matching my watch. Have I mentioned yet how eagerly I await getting a new phone in December?)
So, okay, time to drive. Not so bad. Got up there at 8:15, 45 minutes before my class. ....except that there is no all-day public parking in Davis which is not on campus. Even the garages have an absolute limit of three hours. It was something I hadn't thought to check, because hey, there were a couple of lovely garages, and at least one of them had to be a paid one, and paid garages will take your money all day long. I hadn't remembered that Davis is a totally different country.
I grabbed my bike from the Amtrak station, stuffed it into my trunk, and parked on campus. Fine. Still not late for class. Took a wrong turn on the way to Bainer, went to make a U-turn -- and overbalanced due to the weight of my bookbag on the back of the bike. Went down, bam.
Got back up, rode the rest of the way to Bainer with numb hands and handlebars at a 45-degree angle. Still not late. Went to use the bathroom and realized my skinned elbow was bleeding on me (I don't quite look like a massacre victim, but I do have some stylish finger-painting effects on my pants leg). My knee was numb, and getting number all the time, which was not a good sign. Hands were fine, though. Got to class on time.
I have been forcibly reminded that my last class about botany was a second-rate community college course a year and a half ago, where I didn't do well in lab anyway because I was fighting my way through a heavy dose of life at the time. I really have to read the glossary in my old bio book again, and remember some of these terms. If I do that, and start drilling on vocabulary regularly, I'll do okay in Plant Anatomy. The teacher seems sane, unthreatening, and fair, and the TA is okay.
After class I straightened out my handlebars (mostly; they were screwed down almost too tightly for me to loosen them at all) and biked carefully to Cowell Student Health Center. All I wanted was an icepack, but I got an urgent care nurse, who seemed unthrilled by my cavalier "it all works, so it's probably okay" attitude. She sold me a cold pack for a couple of bucks, though, and I cruised across campus to Plant Prop. Where the cold pack gave out after a half hour of mild chilliness. Sigh.
Plant Prop looks to be the muck-about easy class I had hoped for, with a typical propagation geek at the helm. I can live with that. I'll see how the greenhouses are tomorrow.
Lunch. I ate at the CoHo in the Union because they had tacos I could eat; it was passable and quite solid, not bad for a couple dollars apiece. Thus fortified, I tried out the Union's computer lab, then unloaded some things at my locker and headed to Plant Anatomy lab. I got lost, but I still had a few minutes to spare -- it was 1:03 before I rounded the corner, parked my bike, walked up two flights of stairs and found the lab. As I walked in the door it was 1:16. I have no idea how that happened; time was being weird all day. At least the teacher remembered me from the morning, and wasn't surprised to see me show up.
I was doing okay until we pulled out the compound 'scopes. Then I just boggled. I hadn't fully registered that this is The Big Time -- I have never seen a scope that cost that much before. It has twice the controls of any other microscope I've encountered, and a few nifty little design tricks that just don't happen with the $150 models. Between that and the fact that I was told to take more specimen dishes if I needed them (I was conserving resources and trying to get by with one, until I was urged to take five) I was feeling kind of odd. I hadn't realized how thoroughly I'd been conditioned by community college, where the ochem labs couldn't even afford gloves. Sure, I need to buy my own razor blades and slides this quarter, but the lab equipment is top-notch and plentiful.
I was also frustrated, as I'm still trying to get the hang of slicing free-hand sections for slides, and fine motor control at that point in my day was not what I would have chosen to do. But I muddled through okay.
Forty minutes to go before biochem. I hit the computer lab again, skimmed my LJ friends list, and got a snack before I found the enormous lecture hall. It isn't as big as some at Berkeley, or even some which I suspect are right next door to Young, but Young 198 is big enough at about 300 chairs, almost all taken. Lecture ran short, conducted by a plump, kinetic woman who promised to be fair as long as we didn't slack on the class... and I was out. About forty minutes early. Whew.
A trip to the bookstore (pokers and slides and forceps, and I'll get more razor blades and a brush) and 20 minutes on the phone, unwinding... then to my locker again to load up, and a trip across campus to the car. Reverse the events of the morning, without the suckitude, and here I am home again.
My knee is swollen and still numb, though it functions without complaint (as long as I don't try to touch it). I'm not worried about the extent of the injury, as I think I'd know by now if there were any torn ligaments or other such. It is a curious quirk of my physiology that if there is sufficient trauma to cause any significant swelling to an area, the surface nerves cut out entirely; it's one element of my high pain tolerance, as I have essentially built-in anesthetic. My knee is saying nothing unless I provoke it -- the scrape on my elbow is the greatest irritation I have right now. The bruises on my thigh from the handlebars are somewhere in between.
(The built-in anesthetic is the reason I can't handle external anesthetic -- my hindbrain equates trauma with numbness, and also numbness with trauma. If it's numb, it must be damaged severely, even if it's only numb because I've had an ice cube on it for a few seconds. Poking at the numb area makes it feel like someone's messing with the shredded remains of my flesh, which, put mildly, sets my teeth on edge. I'd rather be put completely under at the dentist's than get a shot of Novocain, and that's taking into account my aversion to any sort of drug that alters my consciousness without my control. I do without anesthetic entirely most of the time.)
I'll do what I can to get my knee operational tomorrow. I will also set my watch by the server's NTP-corrected date command, since I can't rely on my phone to be accurate. (It's gained six minutes since this morning.) I'll take the train tomorrow, since $8.40 for a ticket beats $6 in parking plus $3 toll, not counting gas and wear. I have to make my way all the way to the other end of campus to get to the greenhouses, but if I can ride at all I should be able to manage it.
Other than being bruised and tired, I'm in pretty good shape. The quarter doesn't look too scary -- a bit of a challenge, perhaps, but it should be. Not overwhelming. And I hope it gets less tiring. School does tend to agree with me; I eat small amounts more often, and exercise far more, so I get a bit leaner and my stamina goes up. I wouldn't complain if it happens again this year.
Dissection kit
Date: 2006-09-30 00:24 (UTC)-Meredith
Re: Dissection kit
Date: 2006-09-30 05:42 (UTC)It's okay, they're $10 apiece, and I'll need mine for Tuesday.