I saw a doctor today about my elbow

He agreed with my 'diagnosis'--tennis elbow/tendonitis. He gave me a brace to wear on my wrist. Apparently bending back the wrist is a major cause of elbow tendonitis. The brace keeps my hand in neutral position and should take pressure off the tendon near my elbow. I'm also supposed to give it a rest, but not try to do everything with my left arm because I'll just get it there. So I have to make a decision about the Habitat house. I'm signed up for two full days of painting, which is one of the worst things you can do with tennis elbow. I'm betting hammering's up there. Last Thursday we did framing for the house. I built a wall to a utility room and toted and sorted wood. I was careful to take breaks and hydrate. But the next day my elbow hurt, even with the ibuprofen, and I had to ice it throughout the day about 15 minutes apart. So we'll see. Maybe this will help and I can continue, but I suspect I'll have to drop out.

:(

Wish me luck

I'm going to the Habitat for Humanity site in a little while and starting work. Tonight's scheduled task is siding. YKWIA is no doubt laughing--he's done this before. Let's see if I can manage to use a claw hammer without loss to life or limb. Actually, I have some mechanical ability, but I'm also clumsy, so that's the concern.

All the people from the hospital who are doing the build were given powder blue shirts with our logo on it. I'm wearing that and my khaki convertible pants (they convert from regular length to capri, but I'm keeping them normal). I found my boots and put my inserts into them. I stopped by Walgreens to pick up some medication and invested in some sunblock as well, since I had no idea where mine was (actually, I just looked down from the computer and it's on the shelf below my table in front of the window) and sunscreen's supposed to only last about a year anyway--and my old one is 2-3 years old. This came with a keyring version for taking along with you. It's SPF 70 for the regular one and 30 for the keychain, so that should protect my Irish skin. I put my hair up in braids rather than using a scrunchy in case of needing to wear hard hats. I think I'm ready.

Gods, I'm going to be tired tonight, I suspect. Then there's the final coat of paint on the wainscotting to do and notes. Agh. But I'm not checking in the truck at the store tonight. :) (The actual check in is rather a bunny job; it's putting away the boxes that involves lifting and sweating.)

On top of that I have to get up early because I'm an hour and fifteen minutes behind on my time at work, so I need to go in at 9 am rather than 10. Plus I need to straighten up a bit since they're looking for leaks and will be coming into the apartment to turn the water off, so that also means I have to take a shower tonight or early tomorrow before they do that.

Okay, here goes nothing. :)

Good things

I:

1. Got home before midnight. Yay!
   
2. Have only one more coat of paint left on the seemingly neverending painting project.
   
3. Am starting the Habitat for Humanity build tomorrow.
   
4. Am going to bed at a reasonable hour.
   

PS I'm trying to find a decent program that will help me transcribe dictation from a .wma file rather than a .wav. My recorder creates .wma files, and when I've tried to convert to a .wav for Express Scribe and other programs, I run out of space on the computer/disk I'm saving it to. (Well, I can do it on my computer, but a six-hour session creates a 4 gigabyte file that I can't get onto flash drives and the computer I use for the notes doesn't have a DVD-ROM drive.) Express Scribe is supposed to open .wma's but doesn't seem to recognise the one I have. Right now I'm using Windows Media Player and the slide bar is not particularly sensitive; I need to be able to rewind just a bit rather than to the beginning of recording, etc. Everything I've tried so far, even with a .wav, thinks it's 6 minutes rather than 6 hours long. Any suggestions?

PPS Actually, the version of Windows Media Player that I have on my computer allows for holding down the rewind or fast forward buttons to go back or advance a short amount. The question is whether I can get a version with that feature to work on a machine running Windows ME. (What can I say, I'm doing notes on an old clunker, and I can't bring them home and do them here, unfortunately.) Hmmm...Microsoft suggests WMP 9 for ME. It's supposed to have a rewind feature. The one that came with the machine just goes to the beginning or end of the file. It's worth a try.

A little news story about the house I'm helping build in the next few weeks

UK Joins Habitat’s Good Health Build

Note that our hospital is in the listing as well. We start next Thursday and continue through July building a house through Habitat for Humanity.