Side splitting
I've broken a rib again*. Am I turning into one of those brittle old ladies who can't shake a person's hand without fracturing my hip?
It's the place as last time and I put it down to carrying a very heavy bag on my shoulder all morning yesterday. For some reason I hankered to lug around my laptop - still not at all sure why - which meant last night was painful and sleepless. Very hard to find a comfortable spot to sleep when the 5th rib is cracked.
But this morning I found my cure - half a tube of Voltarin Emugel and a couple of Voltarin tablets. About 30 minutes after applying and taking this inflammation medication I felt a lot better. See, it's not the bone that hurts, it's the reactions of the muscle around the fracture. It swells and heats and emits pain messages to my brain saying "Clean up in aisle seven!". So now I've blocked all that communication, pain may still be there but I'm not feelin' any of it. I'm back to almost pain free and am very pleased to be that way.
Yes, I've learned my lesson. No more over-packed bags slung over my shoulder and this ought to be the last time this happens to me. Takes a while, but I eventually learn my lesson. Mostly.
Adventures
I'm off to Web Directions South in Sydney for three days. I am attending one an all-day workshop on Wednesday before being joined by @foxmwoods and @superhighfives for the conference proper on Thursday and Friday.
The Workshop is about creating and wrangling content with Relly Annett-Baker. She wants us to 'bring' a personal website for strategy development and I just so happen to have prepared one earlier. I hope it will help me think about how to do a better job of being a site owner around here. The proof'll be in the posting :)
The Conference was a lot of fun when I attended it two years ago. The streams are split (by four, I think) so I decide what I'm going to see and who I'm going to listen to by poring over the programme the night before. Hopefully you'll hear from me during the conference. You can follow me on @jamjar in case I don't end up executing my plan of 'live blogging' my experience there.
When I get back from Sydney, rather than going back to the country straight away, I will be housesitting for friends in Melbourne. They're off for three weeks and I have the keys to their front door. Their home is located a short walk from cafes and shops I've not spent much time exploring. I hope to try a couple of restaurants and eateries and will let you know how I get on on this mini-Melbourne break. It feels like a vacation or a treat or something, though I hope I don't miss the country too much.
Project
About 16 months ago, I did a weekend screen printing class to refresh the skills I had learned many years ago at school, and to learn about the newer techniques with photo-sensitive masks etc that all those years in between have brought. While my goal was to create my own fabric, after the course, that's where I stopped - apart from thinking about it, and talking about it, the movement towards the goal lost momentum.
Collected wisdom says that to achieve a goal it needs to:
- be written down;
- have defined parameters;
- meet a deadline.
With that in mind, I am recording here the points of a conversation I had with my cousin Megan towards actually getting this done:
- develop an original artwork and screen print it onto fabric;
- minimum one colour screen printed design on 1 metre of cotton fabric;
- fabric to printed and delivered by end of November 2011.
Given that it's already the second week of October, I really need to get my arse into gear as apart from sorting out a deadline, I have not started the process to get the goal achieved. My major roadblock at this stage is getting my hands on a box to expose the light-sensitive mask to ultra-violet light. I'll keep you in the loop and hope that, come November, I'm not writing a blog post about why it didn't happen!
Survey Results
Thanks for responding to my quick site survey the other week. The results have been reticulated, masticated and regurgitated to be re-tabulated as follows:
- Site Totem: octopus, Hayao Miyazaki character
- Site Content: writing about day to day ordinary stuff, showing personality and insight
- Site Mechanics: upload David's Death Machines, improve the front page and web fonts (loading and size)
* did I even mention it the first time it happened?