So, I got back about a week and a half ago from SIGGRAPH and SCA. They were both fun, it was exciting to give a talk, it hurt to crutch around downtown LA, but I survived. Since I got back Leslie and I have been very lazy… doing nothing all day, reading, playing video games, and generally being worthless. We decided to call it a vacation from activity.

But today, Leslie is a real student again… she left this morning to go her “math camp,” something that’s supposed to help get her prepared for all the statistics and such she’ll encounter in policy school. I, meanwhile, am starting to study in earnest for my prelim.

The only other thing worth mentioning is that when I visited the doctor last week, he refused to give me a walking cast but did take a week off of my cast time. So a week from today I will be off the cursed crutches nursing my wizened leg back to health.

I hate them. When my six week tenure with them is over, I will crush them, mangle them, smelt them down and reforge them into a mythical sword that I will use to slaughter their maker and his family. I will then fling their bodies and the sword into the sun.

Anyway… the day after the accident I went to a specialist to get a cast. The doctor told me that the ankle dislocation was very rare since I had to tear (but not separate) all three ligaments in my ankle to get the foot to do that. But as bad as that sounds, it could have been a lot worse. There were a couple of chipped bones, but the chips were minor and all the bones ended up in the right place. I’m stuck in the cast for 6 weeks, then I’ll probably have a couple of months of physical therapy to regain the motion in my ankle, but I’ll probably avoid any arthritis or lasting effects. Yay. Also no surgery. And yeah, I’m really fucking tired of crutching around everywhere and I’m only 1/3 done with it. I have bruises on the palms of my hands and pain in my elbows and shoulders, but at least I’m still getting plenty of cardiovascular exercise (I’d say crutching at a walking pace is at least as taxing as jogging at a good clip).

So, Friday was my last day at Apple. Oddly I left handing off the same project that I handed off the last time I left. I think maybe it would have gotten picked up if the whole crazy Intel thing hadn’t happened. Anyway, the money was good but I’m glad to have my freetime back to enjoy Berkeley and start studying more for my prelim.

But that also won’t happen this week, since I’m in LA at SIGGRAPH. It’s overhyped but fun anyway. I had a talk at a little sub-conference called SCA (Symposium on Computer Animation), which has kept me extra-busy over the last few weeks. SIGGRAPH itself is basically continuous schmoozing punctuated by people presenting academic papers where you repeatedly hurl your brain at slides stuffed with double integrals and, invariable, bunnies.

I’m heading home Thursday, where I will sit (for those of you who don’t know, when you sit you’re not on crutches).

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Comments

Callie — 2007-02-24 08:09:54

Omg, I just had the same thing happen to me, my sides hurt so bad from them rubbing on my sides, i hate them so fucking bad!!!!!!!!! so yea, i can relate

bryan — 2007-02-25 11:15:28

i feel your pain. hang in there… soon the crutches will only be a memory.

JZAP — 2009-09-18 08:26:40

i hate them so much, i will burn those things when im done with my 6 weeks… but i was wondering does anybody know how to relieve pain in my foot it hurts everytime i get up… will there be pain all 6 weeks or just the few weeks….. pain meds, endorphin releaving etc. anything

Well, Leslie is off to Thailand and clearly having a grand time. I picked up on packing where Leslie left off. I think we’ve got about 2/3rds of the stuff packed up at this point, mostly stuffed into G5 boxes that I stole from work supplemented with Crate and Barrel boxes from Cameron’s wedding presents. We’ll look like the most well-heeled grad student couple ever when we move in. T-minus two weeks to Berkeley.

The weather here is in full-blown summer mode: perfect every day. Not too hot, nice and cool in the evenings. When, inevitably, we leave California, it’s a virtual guarantee that we’ll bitch about the weather. Because weather is just not supposed to be this good, continuously. Really. You actually start to bitch about how boring the perfect weather is (it reminds me of Blind Melon, sing it with me: “… and I start to complain that there’s no rain…”).

The rest of my spare time has been sunk in to my summer grad student activities. The last week or so I’ve been trying to whip up slides for my SCA presentation, which I’d say are half done now. This is probably the most preparing I’ve ever done for a presentation. It can pay off, though, because talking at conferences seems to be one important way to establish yourself in the incestuous world of academic research. I should be giving some practice talks at Berkeley and Pixar befordhand, which will help.

Well, I’m sitting here in my office at Berkeley waiting to give a presentation of my class project for the only real class I had this semester. This year I’ve managed to show up, weasel my way into being a graphics student, land an advisor, and help write two papers, one of which will be in SIGGRAPH. I also somehow managed to land an NSF fellowship, taking care of money for the next three years. In total I rode BART to and from Berkeley at least 160 times and spent at least $1200 on BART tickets to do so. Will I appreciate the 10-minute walk from our fabulous Berkeley apartment? Oh yes, I will.

This weekend is Bay to Breakers, which I will be taking this year at a more leisurely pace than last in order to better enjoy the chichanery that abounds there. And then, quite suddenly, on Monday I will be back at Apple, working away on some dark and magical task that you will no doubt here about via Apple’s PR team in good time.

In all, life is beautiful.

Friday was the deadline for SCA, so this last week and a half or so has been busy again. Not quite like that time running up to SIGGRAPH, but still busy enough to keep me from doing basically anything with my time other than eating, sleeping, commuting, exercising, and working. I have arrived at this beautiful day and now my free time stretches out in front of me like a vast untapped well of joy.

I’m typing this from Tiger, the new version of OS X, which has even more absurd eye-candy than its predecessors. I don’t see how it will be possible to take other user interfaces seriously at this point.

Speaking of Apple, I just signed my offer letter to go back and work there for the summer. I’m starting frighteningly soon–May 16–and it’s making me realize that this first year of grad school is basically over. It will be good to get the extra money, though I’m not so worried now that I’ve got NSF to lean on. It should be fun too, since Doug will be there and I won’t have to spend a lot of time getting to know new people and processes. Also kind of weird to be in that role again.

Leslie is something like 35 teaching days away from the end of TFA. I guess that’s out of 360 total teaching days… less than 10% left, but it seems like even less than that, really. The little paper chain that I made her has gotten so short. We’re looking around at apartments in Berkeley, and it seems like our budget will be just fine for getting a place right where we want to be. We’ll probably go up next Sunday to see a bunch of places. Even though we don’t actually want to move until mid-July, now seems to be the time to hunt so we’ll probably just have to take the hit of the extra month or two of rent.

Tomorrow: 14 miles. We’ll see.