As many of you know, I have been periodically dislocating my right shoulder since I was 12. It's popped out of the socket probably a half dozen times, and it almost always happens on a tennis court when I try to serve.
Last summer, Chris and I started taking private tennis lessons with super-awesome Coach Rick at the Sunnyvale Tennis Center, and we were having a great time, making great progress especially on ground strokes and volleys. But at some point, we had to start working on serves, and unfortunately, I dislocated it again. Poo. Now, this is the most painful thing I've ever experienced, and it took a long time to slide back in this time. In fact, we'd given up and were on our way to the ER when we drove over a big speed bump that jarred it gruesomely back into place.
So I did some research and found that there's an 80% chance that I would re-dislocate it, even with physical therapy and strengthening exercises. This, of course, sounds totally believable considering my history. I eventually got an MRI, which showed that there was a tear in the labrum, making it much easier for the arm to slip out of the socket. My doctor, Dr. Theodore Bucklin, was nice enough to let me have a CD of the MRI images, and hopefully I can share those at some point. He recommended arthroscopic surgery to repair it. It's called a Bankart repair.
Well, today is the 10th day since I had the surgery, and I'm happy to say that things seem to be going well! I took the sling off, just one day after the surgery, and I could bend my arm at the elbow and let the arm "dangle" limply from the socket. (Yeah, incredible feat of athleticism, go Jenn. Woohoo.)
On Thursday, I started physical therapy, and I got a bunch more exercises to do. There's the "pendulum" where I do more aggressive dangling -- this one's easy. Then there's the one where I use my good arm to lift the bad arm to 90 degrees, straight in front of me, parallel to the ground if I'm standing. That one's pretty easy too, although it gets painful if I haven't taken enough painkillers and there's a lot of swelling.
The REAL bitch is the "external rotation" exercise. Think of the sort of rotation that happens when you're arm wrestling and you're losing. Now, that's uncomfortable even in normal circumstances, but my goal is to make it to a piddly 30 degrees in the next six weeks. (That's 30 degrees from *vertical*, btw.) Sadly, even if I push really hard, I can only make it to 10 degrees, on a *good* day. I guess this is not terrible progress considering how I couldn't even get *vertical* on the first day of therapy. But I have such a long way to go...sigh.
On the brighter side, as a birthday present, I realized I could type with both hands again!! I'm pretty excited about this. One-handed typing is sooooo awful. But Chris is being super nice and helpful. He makes all sorts of yummy food and I'm apparently off the hook for all the chores (yesss!). (Thaaaaank you Chris!)
Hopefully I can just stay motivated enough to keep up with these exercises. I'm watching the Australian Open raptly as an extra reminder of how good it's gonna be when I get my arm back.
Well. Okay. Not that good. But a little closer. :-)
Next milestone: Sutures come out on Thursday!
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Sunday, December 23, 2007
A Christmas Letter (The Lazy Way)
Over the last couple of weeks, we've gotten nice Christmas cards and Christmas letters from various friends and relatives, so Chris and I thought, maybe we should write something too. Of course, tomorrow is Christmas Eve, so it's a little late to send real mail...so we'll settle for making a blog post. :-)
Truth be told, while we feel guilty for not blogging more often, we're also pretty boring these days, so you're not missing too much. We basically spend most of our time at Google, happily eating and/or working. When we're not eating or working, we tend to play video games or play with our crazy sneaky cats.
Here's a picture of us playing with both cats and video games at the same time. In the picture below, Caprice is doing battle with Bowser as we play Super Paper Mario on the Wii):
In other cat news, both Caprice and Honey have figured out how to climb our CD case. This wouldn't be so bad, except that the door frame you see in the background is the door to our bedroom. When we wake up and open the door in the morning, it's...well, a little startling...to have two starving attack cats at head-level <bat bat bat>.
Recently, I caved to Chris's constant pining for an XBox 360 and got him one for his birthday. We finished playing Assassin's Creed and just started playing Mass Effect, which is made by the same people who make Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). (By the way, KOTOR is one of our favorite games, because Chris gets to kill people with a light saber and I at least get a smarmy love story.)
Once a month, we find enough motivation to wash some dishes or do some laundry, but I'm sure you don't want to hear about that. (Especially the "once a month" part.) But if you want evidence, here's a picture of me in my Halloween costume, with the kitchen in the background:
Q: Can you guess what I'm trying to be for Halloween? (Hint: My pony tail is trying to have a white tip, which you can see if you look really carefully. The blue clothes are also not an accident.) Answer at the bottom if you really can't guess.
That's about it for our hobbies.
I guess we did do some traveling over the past few months, but nothing too exotic:
Los Angeles: We went to LA twice to visit friends and parents. Here's a picture of a lovely dessert we had on the 3rd Street Promenade (tempura banana split with plum, lychee, and green tea sorbet) -- soooooo delicious:
Folsom, CA: We finally made it out to visit our good friend Shar. (Yay for apple farms!)
San Diego, CA: We visited Chris's best man and saw lots of good stuff (and ate lots of decadent desserts) in SD. We saw the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit and also toured the amazing San Diego Zoo. The pandas were especially awesome. Usually they're just lazing around in their little caves, but we were lucky enough to be there when one of them was literally bouncing off the walls. They're surprisingly clumsy (but ohhh so cute)! Here's a picture of one falling out of a tree:
Here's a sickeningly cute picture of a bunch of meerkats. See the baby in the front? I just couldn't resist sharing it:
More San Diego pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/SanDiegoVisit
Maui, HI: Last but not least, Google sent us to Maui for a few days. Awesome right?! We went on a great hike (which thoroughly convinced me that I need to work out more), we saw some beautiful beautiful fishes at Molokini Crater (clearest water I have EVER gone swimming in, by far), and we had some great Jenga games where every finger tremble and every moment of tower-teetering was snapped a thousand times by the Google paparazzi (i.e. several dozen engineers who have photography and fancy cameras as their primary hobby).
Here's us at a luau:
So, that's most of what we've been doing for the last half of the year. Life is great and we couldn't be happier! We hope to visit more people next year, and already have plans to go to Taiwan (February, for Chinese New Year's), Indian Wells, CA (to see Roger Federer play, fingers crossed), and Providence (to see Jessica graduate). In the meantime happy holidays to everyone, and please ping us if you're ever in the Bay Area!
P.S. The answer for the Halloween costume: Firefox. I know, I'm a dork. :-)
Truth be told, while we feel guilty for not blogging more often, we're also pretty boring these days, so you're not missing too much. We basically spend most of our time at Google, happily eating and/or working. When we're not eating or working, we tend to play video games or play with our crazy sneaky cats.
Here's a picture of us playing with both cats and video games at the same time. In the picture below, Caprice is doing battle with Bowser as we play Super Paper Mario on the Wii):
In other cat news, both Caprice and Honey have figured out how to climb our CD case. This wouldn't be so bad, except that the door frame you see in the background is the door to our bedroom. When we wake up and open the door in the morning, it's...well, a little startling...to have two starving attack cats at head-level <bat bat bat>
Recently, I caved to Chris's constant pining for an XBox 360 and got him one for his birthday. We finished playing Assassin's Creed and just started playing Mass Effect, which is made by the same people who make Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). (By the way, KOTOR is one of our favorite games, because Chris gets to kill people with a light saber and I at least get a smarmy love story.)
Once a month, we find enough motivation to wash some dishes or do some laundry, but I'm sure you don't want to hear about that. (Especially the "once a month" part.) But if you want evidence, here's a picture of me in my Halloween costume, with the kitchen in the background:
Q: Can you guess what I'm trying to be for Halloween? (Hint: My pony tail is trying to have a white tip, which you can see if you look really carefully. The blue clothes are also not an accident.) Answer at the bottom if you really can't guess.That's about it for our hobbies.
I guess we did do some traveling over the past few months, but nothing too exotic:
Los Angeles: We went to LA twice to visit friends and parents. Here's a picture of a lovely dessert we had on the 3rd Street Promenade (tempura banana split with plum, lychee, and green tea sorbet) -- soooooo delicious:
Folsom, CA: We finally made it out to visit our good friend Shar. (Yay for apple farms!)San Diego, CA: We visited Chris's best man and saw lots of good stuff (and ate lots of decadent desserts) in SD. We saw the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit and also toured the amazing San Diego Zoo. The pandas were especially awesome. Usually they're just lazing around in their little caves, but we were lucky enough to be there when one of them was literally bouncing off the walls. They're surprisingly clumsy (but ohhh so cute)! Here's a picture of one falling out of a tree:
Here's a sickeningly cute picture of a bunch of meerkats. See the baby in the front? I just couldn't resist sharing it:
More San Diego pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/SanDiegoVisitMaui, HI: Last but not least, Google sent us to Maui for a few days. Awesome right?! We went on a great hike (which thoroughly convinced me that I need to work out more), we saw some beautiful beautiful fishes at Molokini Crater (clearest water I have EVER gone swimming in, by far), and we had some great Jenga games where every finger tremble and every moment of tower-teetering was snapped a thousand times by the Google paparazzi (i.e. several dozen engineers who have photography and fancy cameras as their primary hobby).
Here's us at a luau:
So, that's most of what we've been doing for the last half of the year. Life is great and we couldn't be happier! We hope to visit more people next year, and already have plans to go to Taiwan (February, for Chinese New Year's), Indian Wells, CA (to see Roger Federer play, fingers crossed), and Providence (to see Jessica graduate). In the meantime happy holidays to everyone, and please ping us if you're ever in the Bay Area!P.S. The answer for the Halloween costume: Firefox. I know, I'm a dork. :-)
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
Last week, my teammates and I woke up at the crack of dawn to go kayaking in Tomales Bay. Having only ventured north of the Golden Gate Bridge once (to visit the Chandon Winery), I was definitely eager to see the much-acclaimed Point Reyes. Apparently the hiking is spectacular beyond words, plus there are even rumors of baby seals to be cuddled!
Knowing that it would probably be a beautiful day (weather forecast was predicting 85 degrees and sunny with a breeze), and also knowing that I would, in all likelihood, drop my cute Canon Powershot to the bottom of the ocean if I brought it along, I opted to get one of those waterproof disposable cameras. It even floats! But the annoying thing is that you have to *develop* the film. I think I mentioned to someone that I don't think I've *developed* film since 1999, and I was totally surprised to find that there are still so many places still in business that develop film for you. I mean, who uses film cameras anymore (except fancy-pants photographers who probably develop their own photos)?
Anyways, it was surprisingly easy to do. I went to a store called Foto Shop in Sunnyvale, and not only did they finish it in an hour, but they didn't even charge *money*! At least not for the digital copies. The prints ended up costing something like $3.40 total. I had no idea it was so easy. They're not as sharp as pictures from my normal digital camera, but that could also be attributed to human factors:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/TomalesBayKayaking
I was going to do some snazziness with the Maps API to plot out our various stops on a satellite map, but then I noticed that Picasa has a feature to do exactly that. Note that for the pictures on the water, "placement on the map is approximate"...but alas, there are no floatyball icons to be had! Also, I'm not positive where that nifty cove full of mussels was, but I'm pretty sure I got the other parts right. Can anyone see the teepees? ;-) (According to www.parks.ca.gov, they are "reconstructed Miwok bark houses".)
In the end, we didn't cuddle any baby seals, but we did see a bunch of jellyfish floating around!
Knowing that it would probably be a beautiful day (weather forecast was predicting 85 degrees and sunny with a breeze), and also knowing that I would, in all likelihood, drop my cute Canon Powershot to the bottom of the ocean if I brought it along, I opted to get one of those waterproof disposable cameras. It even floats! But the annoying thing is that you have to *develop* the film. I think I mentioned to someone that I don't think I've *developed* film since 1999, and I was totally surprised to find that there are still so many places still in business that develop film for you. I mean, who uses film cameras anymore (except fancy-pants photographers who probably develop their own photos)?
Anyways, it was surprisingly easy to do. I went to a store called Foto Shop in Sunnyvale, and not only did they finish it in an hour, but they didn't even charge *money*! At least not for the digital copies. The prints ended up costing something like $3.40 total. I had no idea it was so easy. They're not as sharp as pictures from my normal digital camera, but that could also be attributed to human factors:
- Us chucking it around in the water to test its buoyancy.
- Having the lens encrusted with salt and other sea minerals.
- Me accidentally kicking it, when I temporarily forgot that kicking doesn't make you go faster in a kayak (unlike in a scull).
- And finally, letting it roast in the car. (Apparently film is heat-sensitive? I'd forgotten that.)
http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/TomalesBayKayaking
I was going to do some snazziness with the Maps API to plot out our various stops on a satellite map, but then I noticed that Picasa has a feature to do exactly that. Note that for the pictures on the water, "placement on the map is approximate"...but alas, there are no floatyball icons to be had! Also, I'm not positive where that nifty cove full of mussels was, but I'm pretty sure I got the other parts right. Can anyone see the teepees? ;-) (According to www.parks.ca.gov, they are "reconstructed Miwok bark houses".)
In the end, we didn't cuddle any baby seals, but we did see a bunch of jellyfish floating around!
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Let's Go Funballing!
Two weeks ago, twelve of us (known as Team Hummucks) us participated in the first annual Google Puzzle Hunt. Both Microsoft and MIT host events like this, but if you're not familiar with those, it's two days full of solving logic puzzles. Each puzzle/task leads to more puzzles/tasks, and the goal is to find out where some ultimate prize is hidden and find it before all the other teams. Here's one of the puzzles I worked on. (Sadly, it's the only picture I took!) We had to twist up a Rubick's Snake according to some instructions, and eventually the various snake configurations spelled a word:
My personal favorite was the "Mathematician" puzzle. Hopefully the organizers publish the puzzles at some point so I can show you! The instructions for the puzzle simply said "Math is hard! Ego is imaginary! Let's go funballing!" I, of course, had been hoping since I joined Google that I would have some excuse to jump into our ball pit (you know, like the ball pits they have at McDonald's?), and I didn't need any further prompting than "Let's go funballing!". Best of all, there turned out to be crucial clues in the ball pit!
Unfortunately, once we made all the tough logical leaps, I screwed up the math. (Where by "screw up" I mean that not only could I not remember how to find ln -i, but I didn't even think to just enter it into the Google Calculator, which knows the answer.) Ah well, we got there eventually, and finished a respectable 11th out of 21 teams. That's exactly average -- which is not bad considering how many (practically) professional teams of puzzlers were competing. So, I didn't come out feeling like a total retard, which is always great after a weekend of thinking really really hard, and I hope there's another one next year!
My personal favorite was the "Mathematician" puzzle. Hopefully the organizers publish the puzzles at some point so I can show you! The instructions for the puzzle simply said "Math is hard! Ego is imaginary! Let's go funballing!" I, of course, had been hoping since I joined Google that I would have some excuse to jump into our ball pit (you know, like the ball pits they have at McDonald's?), and I didn't need any further prompting than "Let's go funballing!". Best of all, there turned out to be crucial clues in the ball pit!
Unfortunately, once we made all the tough logical leaps, I screwed up the math. (Where by "screw up" I mean that not only could I not remember how to find ln -i, but I didn't even think to just enter it into the Google Calculator, which knows the answer.) Ah well, we got there eventually, and finished a respectable 11th out of 21 teams. That's exactly average -- which is not bad considering how many (practically) professional teams of puzzlers were competing. So, I didn't come out feeling like a total retard, which is always great after a weekend of thinking really really hard, and I hope there's another one next year!
Ivy and Jeremiah's Wedding
Yet another really beautiful and fun wedding, this time in Manhattan Beach, CA. My brother was an usher, and we saw plenty of people that we haven't seen since...well, high school! Both the famous Matt Gould and my 10th grade English teacher, Mr. Hertzog, performed during the ceremony, and we got delicious little mouse-truffles from Burdick's!
Congrats again to you both, and here are some pics!
Congrats again to you both, and here are some pics!
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