On a personal note... ouuuch. An old knee injury, the result of a long-ago event in my life as an Amateur Crash Test Dummy, flared up over the weekend. "Lift with the knees" -- gah! Yesterday I was limping and today things have degenerated to the point where I had to haul out the crutches. This thing flares up on a semi-annual basis; in the winter it's usually due to a combination of overly-enthusiastic knee-bending and creeping arthritis; in the summer it's brought on by the half-marathon training I insist on doing despite being warned against it by doctor after doctor (but I'll keep asking different doctors until I get a the answer I want, duh!). When my knee finally snaps and it's suddenly taking me 5 minutes just to get to the coffee maker, that's 5 minutes I'm forced to spend reflecting on how this sonofabitch happened in the first place.
Me (and my left knee), Yonge Street, an evil Honda Civic: BOOM, flying. As knee injuries go, it was pretty complex -- contact with the Civic's bumper not only shattered my kneecap, but jammed some of the broken bits down into my tibia (that's a lower leg bone, perverts) and split it wide open in the process. The subsequent surgery left me with 2 stainless steel screws holding everything together and a killer-looking scar on the outside of my knee: about 6 inches long, jagged and ugly, one of those things that looks like it was done with a broken beer bottle. If nothing else, it's a great conversation piece -- "Shrapnel, 'Nam, '68", etc. Hahaha.
It's all fun and games until the malevolent ghost of the injury comes screaming back to life, then it's Advil, crutches, and "Aww, crap". Well, things could be worse -- at least I know this will go away in a few days. At this point in time, anyway.
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