Biodiesel classes in Wilmington, North Carolina:
Introduction to Biodiesel Production April 4, 9-5
Biodiesel Production System Tricks, April 5-6, 10-4
for more information about these two classes- www.girlmark.com/tour
‘I thought you’d retired’ said one of my students today after my class host announced that we’d just scheduled an Advanced Topics class for the end of April. Drat, I thought I had too. It’s not looking so good for my impending quitting of my job. We’re even scheduling an October class at another student’s site near Tampa also.
Anyway, I’m unable to get my other laptop online and so can’t put up a registration link on my webpage, but here’ s the advance notice:
Advanced Topics in Biodiesel class
April 26-27
Brooksville, FL
www.girlmark.com/tour (registration link and more information about this class will be up shortly)
Ack. I’m still losing it with my arm injury.
Last week I felt pretty smug about the fact that I have finally had enough experience with arm/hand injuries that are exacerbated by typing/mouse use, to have gotten over RSI denial and just stay away from the computer completely when these things flare up. I actually did a bit of work with tools last week- I started a bunch of work on my van, and installed a water heater(yes, for heating shower water, not making biodiesel) at my volunteer janitor ‘job’, went to kung fu class all week and beat the crap out of a punching bag, and none of this set off the elbow injury. Every time I get injuried, I find myself begging and praying to some kind of the medical Gods is that I recover enough arm to handle tools daily. I swear I think I can live without email as long as I can run a wood shop.
I was feeling like I’d made the right decision by shelving the computer and putting my life on ’suspend’ for two months when I ran into Lyle Estill who didn’t stop typing when a similar injury hit, and is now suffering a typical RSI inability to use his arms for the same reason- too much bad-posture typing at the kitchen table, and not being able to stop doing so. He has just submitted a book manuscript. Meaning it’s probably too late for his injury, as all of his book was typed, injuries and all, rather than dictated. In other words, he’s probably 100% fucked. In celebration of this, he’s FINALLY agreed to let me help him figure out how to use his buggy voice recognition software so it can finally learn how to recognize the word biodiesel (as opposed to ‘buy a diesel’, which is what the software thinks you’re saying if you haven’t first read the software’s manual and don’t know that there’s a provision for training the program to understand the odd or technical terms you use)
Lyle calls my fight with the injury ‘the arms race’. Last week I thought I’d won the arms race, and was flaunting my tools-using while he rubbed his elbows and admitted that voice recognition might have a future after all. Last time I got an injury, it was on the other arm, had started as a sports injury, and didn’t clear up for 18 months, until I stopped using the computer or my hands completely for over two months and let everything go to hell while I waited for my hand to heal. It’s been almost this long this time and it isn’t working. Crap.
of course, I haven’t gotten voice recognition, or anything else, set up yet either- according to the dates on this blog, I got online on the 9th and I believe the computers, both of them, have been off ever since, when my arms started twanging. Last night, I re-started the painful process of transferring my files, trying to untangle the mess I have in my email filters and downloading updated software for the new machine. An hour or two into this, I hadn’t even done any typing, and my elbow had already started sending me warning shots just from using a mouse (with the opposite hand) and apparently sitting with my arms up on the keyboard. Today I wrote exactly one very short Lyme forum post and one very long meeting-notes email, and my arm instantly reverted back to a Square One of pain.
This is going to suck. I am doing a lot of traveling in Febuary, which means that I won’t have the luxury of having a quiet room to myself to do voice recognition dictation in (the program doesn’t work in noisy environments, and my brain doesn’t dictate with others around). Virtually everything I need to do is on hold because of this.
I returned from my Long Island class to a new laptop (can you spell ‘generating e-waste’?), and a massive amount of work configuring it, loading up new software, taking the opportunity to get re-organized, and transferring my old stuff over (can’t just do it via a backup as that’s one of the many things that wasn’t working on the old machine). I can’t wait to get back to voice-recognition-based writing.
On top of everything, I lost my phone on the trip as well, so I’m continuing to be in unreachable neverland till I get that resolved also (thank God for Palm-based PDA phones, and insurance- everything’s backed up so I didn’t lose any contacts, and a more evolved phone is coming in the mail).
I should be back online for real by Friday, and should be reachable by phone around then too.
my most boring blog entry ever…
Something nasty got me sick on the way back from Fiji, and I took weeks getting over it, and kept trying to figure out what was keeping me feeling under the weather. I kept getting ’sorta-sick’ all December. After too much typing while I was working in Fiji, my computer and my most recent elbow injury/typing arm went kaput around the same time (new computer on the way, arm still avoiding typing as much as possible), so I avoided all tools and typing while waiting for the arm to get better, laid around getting to know My Friend The Explosive Cough, got zero done, and had the most unproductive month I’ve had in months.
A few days ago, still wondering what had me feeling sick, I finally had a full-scale Lyme relapse, which explains what’s been happening all of December. Drat, I was trying to be in denial about it the past couple of weeks. It’s been a really miserable few days while I down drugs to get it under control, and chug excessive amounts of caffeine to keep my energy semi-functional, and try to not look like an accident-prone idiot with dyslexia and zero short-term memory to everyone around me.
I’m back on antibiotics after having had almost three months with no symptoms. I could look at it two ways- either be upset that I’m sick again or be happy that I got through for this long with zero symptoms. I don’t think I"m nearly as ill as during the last serious relapse in early July. Throughout my treatment, my improvements have generally been a series of ups and downs but with a general improvement over time after each relapse, so I’m hoping this is just more of the same trend. Bad timing, though, I"m going to NYC to teach a class this weekend.
I think something turned for the better today, or at least I’m hoping that’s what I’m feeling.
Tom’s visiting at the moment and will do the drive with me, so I pawned off a bunch of the serious trip prep work on him- which adds up to finding out that the PCM (ie the main computer) on my van is malfunctioning.
Looking back it seems that I’ve gotten extra-sick with Lyme symptoms for the past 4 years around this time- since I don’t get depressed and doubt I’m somehow getting winter depression without me feeling depressed, the only explanation I can think of is food-related, something about binging on too much sugary crap over the holidays. I see a pretty intense connection between when I eat low-carb and feeling symptom-free, which seems to be something some Lyme doctors have noticed, so I think that I just brought this on myself. It’d suck if that means no sugars for the next couple of years.
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