Feetist Attitudes
Well, there's nothing like excruciating pain to bring your readers out of the woodwork, it seems. Several people wrote with comments on yesterday's entry about my leg cramps.
The consensus seems to be that it has something to do with lack of potassium and that basically I need to eat a banana and maybe stretch some more. The vitamins I take contain 10 mg of potassium per tablet. The label says this is less than 1% of the US RDA of potassium, but as far as I've been able to tell, US RDA is a bunch of hooey, so I have no idea how much that actually is, in useful terms. However, I have been very spotty taking my vitamins over the last few months - after about five years of taking them pretty regularly - so maybe it does make a difference.
Of course, I did eat some bananas about a month and a half ago, which is more bananas than I usually eat in the course of a year. (I find bananas to be average. I need to be in the mood for them. Actually, I did have a chocolate-covered frozen banana at UGM a couple of weeks ago, and what a weird taste sensation that was!)
One reader (should I mention names? Better not, unless they've specifically told me they don't mind) says she, too, gets these cramps late at night. She also associates them with periods when she's starting to exercise again after a long absence (which isn't really the case for me, but that doesn't mean I can't get 'em at other times).
Another reader says she gets the same feelings in the arch of her foot, which must be really weird. She also says that her foot goes back to normal after a little while, which is different for me since I still have a vestigial soreness in my calf, more than 24 hours later. (The soreness reminds me of the time I dislocated my shoulder in grad school. It popped right back into the socket, but was sore for about a day thereafter.)
A third reader says it has something to do with pointing my toes; he suggests sleeping with my feet pressed against a wall (unfortunately not very practical given that I'm a stomach sleeper and a very active one), suggests not pointing my toes, and suggests turning my feet upwards (to the extent that they can point that way) to reduce the strength and length of pain. This is not as silly as it may sound, since I dimly recall doing Stupid Foot Tricks when I got the cramp yesterday, and this jibes with my sensation that climbing stairs helps, given how the act of climbing stairs affects the foot mechanically.
Finally, Jim Rittenhouse - who gets to be mentioned by name because he's a good friend and because of the ray of sunshine which I'm about to repeat here - mentions the potassium thing, and adds, "Get used to your body acting up on you; more of that to come."
So I guess the bottom line is "Eat bananas, and point your feet at the stars." Which sounds like a pretty good motto for everything in life, some to think of it.
(Please note that pain also brings out a really sarcastic attitude in me. As if my sarcastic attitude needs any encouragement.)
Every so often I seem to run into some random woman in the street, at night, with no one else around, who seems to find me a safe person to ask a question of or talk to, out of the blue.
Tonight I was about two blocks from my apartment when a woman in a jogging outfit asked me how to get to Monroe St., a major street about a mile from here, on the other side of campus. I presume she's a freshman, since otherwise she'd probably know how to get there (it being a major commercial street and all); she also seemed rather young and was very small (short, thin, just basically small). I gave her the simple directions, told her it would be about 15 blocks, and she said, "a good run", put on her headphones and off she went.
I don't live in a heavily-trafficked district - especially late at night - and there was basically no one in sight as far as I could tell. This reminds me of an encounter in the dead of winter about two years ago. I was walking back from the coffee shop - it was about zero degrees out - and a woman turning onto the street I was walking on asked if she could walk with me, saying that having someone to talk to helped make it easier to deal with (or maybe ignore) the cold. We chatted for a little while, she got to her apartment, and I walked another six blocks to mine. I never saw her again. It was rather odd, although I did appreciate the company.
Maybe I just lived in New Orleans too long (where pretty much everyone was extremely cautious at night), but it seems strange to me that women would find a stranger like me trustworthy at night. Although it's also been pointed out to me that women feel safer if they're the ones doing the approaching. Maybe my generally oblivious attitude when walking around outside (I spend most of my time lost in thought) makes me seem safe.
I dunno. Somehow I don't feel different in any way. Of course, maybe most men have an equal number of women come up to them out of the blue like that. I don't know for sure. Plus, of course, I live in a college town with a very low crime rate. So, who knows.
Unfortunately, two of my mid-range-point games were misses, as the Jets beat Miami and (in what I thought was a really big surprise) Atlanta beat Carolina (the Panthers are starting to look like the most overrated team of the season, as they have yet to win). If I had picked either of those games correctly, I would have won the week, which ensures that I break even for the season. Well, at least I'm getting a little better each week.
Meanwhile, as I write this I see that the Vikings are beating the Packers big - in Lambeau Field - which must count as one of the biggest upsets of the season. It will end the Packers' multi-season home winning streak and perhaps vault the Vikings into the most favored team in their conference.
We have both Vikings and Packers fans at work. It should be an interesting day tomorrow.
It's scary how I know all this stuff and I've watched about one-and-a-half football games so far this season. I suspect this is mainly a testament to (1) How well I can absorb and assimilate information, and (2) My ability to bullshit eloquently about the details I don't know.
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