I'm enrolled in school! Well, in a way.

Every so often I notice that a snippet I wrote did not get its point across. Sometimes it's a piece I thought I wrote clearly, and other times it's something I wrote in haste. About half the times, I look at my words and the responses and I simply cannot figure out how the point got missed.

I do believe communication takes two (or more) interested parties, but I also strongly believe that if it's *me* who wants to get an idea across, the majority of the burden is on *me* to make that happen.

I was musing about all this this morning, and I came up with the idea of "writing comprehensibility training". That's what I need, right? Making my writing more clear would help, right? Maybe there's a course, I thought.

So I envisioned a school where I would be asked to write many separate pieces per week, ranging in length from a few lines to a well-thought-out multipage essay. The benefit of this course would be the readers. For most if not all of the things I wrote I'd get feedback from multiple readers as to what THEY thought the piece was about. As readers' feedback mentioned more and more the point(s) I had set out to make, I'd know my writing was becoming clearer and less likely to be misunderstood.

Then I thought: CJ, you have an account on LiveJournal.

Injections of DOOOOM

Last set of alcohol injections for the left foot this morning. Zombie foot didn't need a band-aid.

sunnydale47, I did try to breathe out through them! I didn't count seconds, but I think they take eight to ten seconds of fluid-pushing. That's a bit long. But these were the least painful ones anyhow, because the nerves are already so weak.

Not that it's a BIG amount of pain anyway. Who cares about ten seconds of ouch? I'll run again! The doctor asked me to come back for an evaluation in a month; I extended it to a month and a half because I'll be in Osaka in a month. But after that evaluation, maybe I can run again! I am soooooooo excited.


Next in this series: Couch Potato CJ builds up fitness from her current slow-moving state. :-)

O the tangy smell of algae on a cool December morning

I forgot to make an entry about the pool. Yesterday we had our pool emptied. Its ecosystem was thriving, and the best treatment was to scrub it out.

Last night I came home and looked at it. Pools look decidedly weird when they're empty. The expected visual effects from the water are all missing. Walking beside the pool, I was hyperaware of the fact that if I fell in I'd be very unhappy. Somehow, a full pool doesn't seem like a giant pit in the ground, but an empty one, well, there's no disguising that a giant pit in the ground is exactly what it is. Odd visuals, odd feeling.

Both of those were nothing compared to the SMELL. We have an entire seafood market in our backyard, I swear. A disreputable, stinky seafood market.

This morning I tried to take a picture. I pushed the shutter release, and the shutter opened...

...and that's it. My camera's shutter is still open. I had a doctor's appointment to get to, so I tossed the poor thing in a drawer and left.

Fortunately Rob took a picture. The normal color of the pool's inner surface can be seen just below the brown row of tiles beneath the diving board. That green all over everything else is algae, the source of the smell. The pool will be pressure-washed before it is refilled.

KITTIES!

Rob posted another wonderful picture. From foreground (slightly left) to background (slightly right), you can see Little Girl, jackiecat, and Duchess.

I like how each one has her own patch of sunlight. :-)