Fifty-three days ago, during my workout, I fell off a box and broke my elbow. Since then I’ve had surgery, and started physiotherapy.

Today I went back to the gym for the first time since my accident and worked out.

Coach Cayla adapted the workout, so that I didn’t need to use my affected arm: one-armed deadlifts, one-armed kettle bell swings, and the like.

I was nervous about going, “returning to the scene of the crime,” so to speak.

Partly this was about fear of returning to the space where I’d suffered a trauma; partly this was because I was afraid of confronting myself with diminished physical capabilities.

But, I was happy to find, I do still have physical capabilities.

I have a long road back to two-armed fitness, but I’m happy to have started walking down it.

By the way: Cayla has reconstituted a 9:00 a.m. Tuesday and Thursday morning small group workout. If you’re looking to get a friendly, no-machismo twice-weekly workout, I cannot think of a better opportunity. There are a few places left: see Cayla’s website for details.

We are lucky to have one of the city’s designated food truck parking spots just a block from our house.

The original tenant was the late Street Eats, which was so great that it transitioned to a bricks and mortar restaurant, the great Salt & Sol, at the Charlottetown Yacht Club.

A few weeks ago, the spot got taken over by Curry Up & Eat, serving Indian food.

The menu—posted on the outside of the truck—is simple: three mains, two poutines, two burgers.

My favorite, by far and away, is the Aloo Tikki wrap: it’s hot, spicy, gooey. 

We’ve also had the curry bowl a couple of times, and the butter chicken is delicious.

The couple that runs the place are friendly and welcoming. You will not go wrong to make it a part of your regular routine.

Jeremy got fined €300 for being in a park in Rome after closing time.

Reading this reminded me of a letter I got in the mail this spring from the Commune di Lucca, Italy notifying me that, a year earlier, I’d transgressed into a restricted traffic zone — a ZTL —  while there on a visit.

The infraction had made its way from Lucca to my car rental agency, Sixt, and then back to Lucca, and onward to me. The journey took a long time. 

I have to hand it to them: the completeness of the ZTL-violating bureaucracy was impressive, down to the availability, accessible by logging into a violation website, of a timestamped photo of my offending car snapped by the CCTV:

Paying the fine—which I did because I’d like to visit Lucca again someday, and don’t want to end up in the Italian slammer—cost me $156, complicated international wire transfer fees included.

“Do you have Dr. Pepper?”, the woman at the next table asked.

“Sure”, the server responded.

I caught her eye as she walked by: “Can I trade this ginger ale in for a Dr. Pepper?”

I was cleared to drive by my orthopædic surgeon yesterday. The last time I drove was July 17, to the gym. I didn’t drive home, because I broke my elbow during the workout, and I hadn’t driven since.

Yesterday I got called into service for an unexpected school run. It turns out that I am ready to drive: I’ve got all the flexibility and strength needed. I was happy to have the opportunity to find that out, without overthinking it.

Today, with L. and Lisa both out with friends, I took the opportunity to take my new abilities out for a drive.

First stop: The Blue Goose in Desable, where I hoped to score a Peter Pan Burger Basket, recently resurrected from the dead. 

I was not disappointed:

It was, dare I say, as good or better as the original.

And I washed it down with the aforementioned Dr. Pepper.

Next stop: Island Chocolates in Victoria. 

Long time readers will know that I am an inveterate fan of their Factory Coffee (2020, 2019, 2014, 2006), and having missed one on a Labour Day stop, when they were unexpectedly closed, I was determined to return before the end of the season. 

Again, I was not disappointed:

It was every bit as deliriously good as I remember.

As has been my long habit, I carried my sketchbook with me, and tentatively tried my hand at drawing the front window. It was my first sketch since July 13, and although I felt some twinges in my drawing hand, I was happy with what I was able to do.

Not being able to drive for two months was weird: it’s the longest I’ve ever not been behind the wheel since I was 16. I relied upon Lisa to drive me the places I needed to go by car, and my feet, otherwise.

For an afternoon of driving for the first time, I can’t imagine a better solo expedition.

Lisa’s show, Beautiful. As I am., opened at The Gallery in Charlottetown this week. It is, dare I say, spectacular, and best viewed in person.

The concept for the show is one that Lisa has been mulling over all summer long; she pulled the prints in a concentrated five day session at summer’s end. She held fast to the vision in her head, persevered through all manner of technical challenges, and what’s on the wall is something she’s justifiably proud of.

Here are some visual hints at what you’ll see:

The Gallery is open 8:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m., at 82 Great George Street, right in front of Province House.

All the prints are available for sale. The heart of exhibition is a varied edition of 34 relief prints ($150); there’s also an edition of 5 trial proofs ($75) that give insight into Lisa’s process. 

I had my second physiotherapy appointment yesterday at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. In the two weeks since the last appointment two weeks ago I’ve gained 7º of extension in my elbow, from -42º to -35º. I came away with a new program of movements, several of which focus on holding low weights for a long time.

This morning I was back at the QEH first thing for my 4-week followup with my surgeon, Dr. Wotherspoon. The appointment started with an X-ray of my elbow, which gave me a chance to get a good look at the titanium radial head replacement:

My arm is healing up well, I learned; no concerns. The road ahead, as it was at the 2-week appointment, is to just do the physio, regularly and relentlessly, to build range of motion and, eventually, to rebuild strength.

From Drinking with Skeletons, Ditching Spotify (emphasis mine):

For now, I decided to switch to Apple Music – mainly because they gave me three months for free and they finally added an auto library transfer from Spotify. 

Part of the reason that I’ve continued to pay for both an Apple Music and Spotify subscription is because I didn’t want to lose my music history in Spotify. This new feature solves that.

The easiest way I found to use this feature is to log into music.apple.com on the web, click on your avatar in the top-right, and select “Transfer Music”:

You’ll be prompted for the service you want to transfer music from—Amazon Music, Deezer, Spotify, TIDAL, YouTube—asked to authenticate, and then given the option to set what you want to transfer. The whole process then takes less than a minute.

One caveat: Spotify’s “Like Songs” playlist isn’t actually a “playlist,” so it won’t transfer when you do this. To work around this, create a new playlist in Spotify, and drag everything from Liked Songs into it. You can then, in Apple Music, mark everything in this imported playlist as a “Favourite.”

My interaction with my laptop and phone since I broke my elbow has been primarily by voice. I’ve done a lot of searches for the term “radial head replacement,” which is, most of the time, interpreted as “Radiohead replacement.” A worthy question, but not the one I’m asking.

When I last checked in, 5 days ago, I’d managed to tie my own shoes for the first time in more than a month. Since that time I’ve added some more skills:

• Wrote a legible sentence with a pen, with my right hand.
• Pulled up my jeans with two hands.
• Fed myself a couple of mouthfuls of food with my right hand.
• Typed an entire blog post two-handed.
• Made breakfast, lunch, and supper, every day.

That last one was necessitated by a household end-of-summer bonus: Lisa tested positive for COVID. We didn’t see that coming.

I tested negative immediately thereafter and have continued to test negative since. With L. away at camp for the week, Lisa and I were able to isolate from each other in the house; we slept apart, ate apart, read apart. It was hard being together-but-separated, given that we’re almost always together-and-together.

It was also hard because, since mid-July, Lisa had been doing everything for the household: driving, cleaning, cooking. To mitigate the infection vector, I took over the cooking for both of us, in an awkward ballet that involved opening jars with my knees, opening bags with my teeth, and cursing the food packaging industry for making products that surely must wreak havoc on the daily lives of millions of people.

Although it was hard, it was also helpful. In addition to my thrice daily 20 minute physio sessions, my kitchen physio has undoubtedly helped improve my range of motion. It also gave a boost of much-needed  confidence.

The one thing that hasn’t improved is my sleep: it’s been horrible for almost every night of the 29 days since my surgery. I’m not in pain, but I’m in discomfort, enough discomfort that it’s difficult to find a position to sleep in that’s comfortable for more than 30 minutes. 

This is, apparently, not uncommon after surgery, and most resources I’ve found suggest constructing some variation of a pillow kingdom, which I continue to iterate on.

Lisa, meanwhile, is now COVID-free, and so we’ve ended our isolation, and life is returning to less-abnormal abnormal.

I have my next appointment with my physiotherapist at the hospital on Thursday, and the next follow up with my orthopædic surgeon the day after. I am perversely looking forward to both of these: a good dose of “keep up the good work!” Is what I’m hoping for.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for virtual orthopædic fun, check out this interactive 3D model of the human skeleton. Here’s a screen shot:

I’ve isolated the radius bone on the right arm. That nobbly bit on top is what got replaced with a titanium upgrade in mine.

Our neighbour on Queens Square, the Charlottetown Boulder Park, in the backyard of the Coles Building, quietly sat there, mostly unnoticed, for more than 50 years.

I did my part, as the son of a geologist, and fan of eccentric memorials, to shine light on it: I created a Wikipedia page, and published a brochure. But, by and large, it was just there.

That is, until the spring, when, in weird-seeming charitable giving scheme, the City of Charlottetown bought the boulder park‬ from the Confederation Centre of the Arts, for $4.8 million.

As if that wasn’t weird enough, it seems the city, perhaps, wasn’t aware that it wasn’t allowed to do whatever it wanted with the parcel of land it had just purchased:

Some Charlottetown councillors are questioning the decision to spend $4.8 million to buy Boulder Park from the Confederation Centre of the Arts, in a move that was meant to help fund the centre’s renovation efforts, given the restrictions on how the city can use it.

“To discover that city council and city administration doesn’t have the final say as to what the future usage of this property is … we should have known that information from the onset,” said Coun. Mitchell Tweel.

“You can’t make a major investment and spend taxpayer dollars at that magnitude and not know what the parameters are.”

Suddenly, the 10 boulders are in the spotlight.

In today’s edition of The Guardian, Managing Editor Jocelyn Lloyd weighed in:

In her piece, Lloyd mentions this website, and my light-shining efforts:

If anyone was holding a gathering here of any kind, they used to refer to it as the park by the memorial fountain or near the cenotaph. I’m not sure when I first saw it referred to as Boulder Park, but I suspect it was in 2018 when Charlottetown blogger Peter Rukavina – who generously shares his enthusiasm for his surroundings on ruk.ca – sought to “revivicate” the space, putting together a brochure downloadable from his blog and printed and distributed at the park.

Rukavina wrote, “The brochure extends from my summertime project to elevate the Charlottetown Boulder Park, and it happens to have come just at the right time, as the park is enjoying a renaissance, partly due the closure of Province House, partly due the presence of two food trucks on its edges, and partly due the shade offered by its towering trees in this summer’s oppressive heat.”

I suggest you take a look at his blog post and map for some history behind the park and what the eponymous boulders represent (hint: 10 boulders for 10 provinces).

I’m fairly certain that my Boulder Park advocacy found its root in the writing of Mita Williams, librarian at the University of Windsor, and advocate for Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons.

In this particular case, there was, essentially, no information gathered together online about the past and present of the Boulder Park, and I’m proud to have done the work to assemble it. 

Having done so, the page can now contribute to an understanding of the park, in the context of the current issue.

I encourage you, in this spirit, to look around your own neighbourhood, find something significant that’s under-represented online, and create a page in Wikipedia about it. You will learn something in the process, and perhaps, sometime in the future, people will suddenly become interested in your thing and want to know more about it.

(Thanks to Thelma Phillips, Foxley River’s friend of the blog, and diligent newspaper reader, for the lead)

Our neighbour KINLEY is out with a new track today, New Light.

It’s the song we all need, at the moment we all need it.