beautiful monsters

Lunar eclipse

As seen from our house in Kilbirnie

Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome is a pain in the… knees.

I’m sick of being in pain. It’s not making me stronger, it’s not making me a better person. It’s making me tired and grumpy and miserable.

When I bend my knees, it’s like when someone bends your fingers back further than they are meant to go. That kind of pain. Then it starts to feel like someone is trying to yank off my kneecaps. If I crouch lower, it feels like my knees are being crushed.

Walking up stairs it’s like there is sand in the joints, grinding between the bones.

When I’m sitting it’s a pain like when you hit your thumb with a hammer, when your hands are really cold. That kind of pain, but instead of lasting for a moment it is stretched out over minutes, or hours.

Sometimes at night I wake up with a pain like toothache. Just to the left of my right kneecap.

I'm taking painkillers, going to physio, doing all the exercises... nothing seems to help. It's getting worse.

loveliness

The snail has no hands,
The snail has no feet,
Gently the snail climbs the tree.

- Yoruba Proverb (Nigeria)

Threatened

A list of the common names of a few of the world's endangered species of snails

(mostly from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Wikipedia)

• Cherrystone Drop
• Wing Snaggletooth
• Bruneau hot springsnail
• Occult Vertigo
• Lacy Elimia
• Hidden Pebblesnail
• Rolling Pebblesnail
• Painted rocksnail
• Magazine Mountain Middle-toothed Snail,
• Bliss Rapids Snail
• Flat-spired three-toothed snail
• Noonday snail
• Painted snake coiled forest snail
• Snake River physa snail
• Virginia fringed mountain snail
• Tumbling Creek Cavesnail
• Glutinous snail
• Little whirlpool ram's-horn snail
• Narrow-mouthed whorl snail
• Sandbowl snail
• Banded Dune Snail
• Spiny River Snail
• Pondoland Cannibal Snail
• Short Samoan Tree Snail
• Painted snake coiled forest snail

wheels

There is simply no better way to start the day than to cycle around Wellington’s waterfront. Especially on a morning when the water is smooth and grey as stone, and the clouds are glowing round the edges. Especially when there’s a frost sparkling on the grass and the Zephyrometer is pointing straight up to the sky. Especially on a morning when it’s still dark, and the air is tinged with excitement, like waking up on easter morning. Especially on a morning when the sky is so blue and the hills are so green and everything is in such focus, so detailed, you can see every leaf on the trees, every pebble on the beach… it’s like riding through a Craig Potton calendar. Pretty much every morning except when there’s a northerly gale. Then I don’t love it so much.

The best thing about my new flat is that there’s a whole lot more waterfront between home and work. And cycle lanes almost the whole way.

I’m the slowest cyclist in Wellington. I know this because of the vast numbers of cyclists who go whizzing past me. Compared to the number I pass, which is a number that is fat and round, like me. (Unless you count kids with trainer wheels. Or those crocodile things).

But they say hello as they whiz past. No one ever says hello when I’m driving to work.

I recently listened to a RNZ National programme about the Profound Revelations Of Sunday Afternoon Cycling Church (PROSACC). They have a website here – it’s really funny. My favourite extracts:

Much interest has arisen from the revelation in previous chapters that there is archaeological evidence that Jesus withdrew into the mountains to go mountain biking. Sadly there is not room in this publication to go into detail about that evidence however it has prompted an interesting discussion regarding the origins of the bicycle as God must have provided Jesus with a bicycle ex-nihilo (created from nothing). While contemplating this intriguing possibility one day one SACC member fell into a dream that we would now like to share in detail for your edification.
The dream began with God creating the heavens and the earth, but the earth was void of the ideal leisure activity, and God said “let there be wheels” and there were wheels. Then God separated the wheels calling one the front wheel and one the rear wheel and that was the first day.

...the most biblically founded form of bicycle design yet proposed. .. Ezekiel 1:15-21 contains a remarkable description of cycling as it occurs in heaven (as a sidenote many members of SACC where very encouraged to learn that cycling is an inherent part of the afterlife). In Ezekiel there are four angels getting around on what is essentially a modified unicycle which has a second wheel intersecting the main wheel perpendicularly.