Rolling through My Toes

Freedom Tower - South Face (entrance to the memorial)

I am four weeks post op after a chailectomy on my big left toe (Wiggling My Toes).  This week, I got new exercises at PT (standing on one my left foot for 30 seconds at a time (3 times) and toe and heel raises (3 sets of ten).  I also graduated to just an “eensy weensy” little band aid for covering the part of my incision that is not fully healed when wearing a shoe and permission to leave it open to the air when barefoot.  I graduated myself to that about a week ago but was “doctor approved” this past Thursday.  Woo hoo.

For the next two weeks, I’m on a short leash in terms of how much walking I should do -- a mile is the outer limit until I have less pain after coming home from a walk.   When walking, I need to focus on “rolling through my toe” and trying to regain a more normal gait.  This is hard given that the toe does not move so well yet and so rolling through it is a bit painful.  It also requires some concentration on my part as I repeat (silently in my head) the heel toe heel toe mantra.  If I don’t do that, I forget and revert to walking with more weight on the outer left edge of my foot.  Not good for regaining range of motion.

Freedom Tower - South Face from Battery Park City

The mileage limit is just about right for circumnavigating the Freedom Tower and other construction sites that litter downtown New York City which I’ve done twice this week on my way to physical therapy with my trusty Olympus in hand.  As I previously blogged (Freedom Tower), I am most often snapping the Tower with my iPhone and uploading to Facebook or Instagram.  I am once again enjoying Instagram (thank you to the IG team for letting me back in) – there is something about the square format that I find really fun.  I typically take photos with the iPhone camera and edit them in Snapseed as opposed to using Instagram's camera and filters.   

This morning, on my way to the airport, I tried the slo-mo video functionality that iPhone included in the 5S.  I should note that I love the way Apple redesigned the menu and controls for the 5S – so much easier to navigate and saves wear and tear on the home button to boot.  Any redesign that does that is a big advance in my book.   My first effort at shooting a slo-mo video was a rather pedestrian film of a car on the Triboro Bridge.  It’s boring – in the way a long car ride can be boring – but it was a good way to see what slo-mo does.  I think I will need to take a walk at the beach (ugly black wide shoes and all) during this trip to California and try this functionality with the waves or a flock of seagulls.  Hoping the waves will be big!  I am sure the the seagulls will be ever present.

 

City Reflected

I wrote about ordering an OM-D E-M5 camera using my AmEx points in First Steps and New Toys  and how excited I was that I’d be able to use my 4/3rds lenses with this new camera.  Not so fast.  The new Olympus 17MM lens I ordered to go with the EM-5 arrived this past week and the mount is smaller than the ones on the lenses I currently have.  So, I’ll need to research lens adapters (they do exist) for the existing lens set or start to replace them with next generation lenses designed specifically for mirrorless cameras like the E-M5. 

Having gotten the new lens, I am even more excited about the camera!  The lens is tiny yet it feels solid.  It kind of makes me want to just go whole hog and invest in new lenses but that would be a very silly thing to do before finding out if I really like the camera.  So I think that I’ll be spending some time on line researching adapters this coming weekend.

Trinity Church - Detail

When the new camera does arrive, I think that I will switch back to using the Olympus software to download photos to my computer and begin to free myself from the tyranny of Apple’s photo library.   This will have the added advantage of getting RAW images as well as JPEGs which will give me greater control over how the final image looks because there will be less in-camera auto-processing.  This is going to be a gargantuan task (freeing myself from the library) – we’ll see how far I get with that.

In case you haven’t figured it out, I am on a flight to California as I write this.  It’s JetBlue and not only do I have an extra legroom seat, I have a whole row of extra leg room seats to myself.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a flight that is not full.  It’s very nice.  JetBlue comes with TVs and I stumbled on a Vanderpump Rules marathon on Bravo almost as soon as the flight began.  I am a little confused about how the cast (mainly servers and bartenders at Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant) can afford to live the way they do.  Good tips?

And that is as good of a question to close this post on as any!  

Freedom Tower - South Face (from Battery Park City)