I'm half way through my physical therapy for my tendon. While the first session seemed to be fairly worthless, the following ones have been good. I really have been noticing the progress I've been making. However, this does not mean that they can't find new ways to embarrass me every week.

"Oh, you can balance on your foot now, that's great, let's try stepping down from a phone book."

"Dammit!"

It's humbling to just not be able to do what seems like a very, very simple thing.

My final appointment with my orthopedic doctor was Friday. He's released me from the boot, and I'm basically done with the whole tendon ordeal. Three long and tedious months. I still have a few weeks of physical therapy left, and I'm not supposed to do anything sporty for the next three months or so. Everything else is back to normal though. Regular shoes, regular routine. It feels fantastic.

Oh, and to preemptively answer: No, looking back on the last three months, they did not 'fly by'. It was long and annoying. I hope to never go through it again.

This weekend Sara and I went down to the Clinton Street theater to see The Rules of the Game. It's apparently one of the most well-regarded classic movies that I've never heard of until yesterday. Thankfully, it really is all it's cracked up to be.

The short version: Set right on the edge of WWII, the movie explores the relationships and societal rules of the French upper (and serving) classes. I classify it as a pure drama, though it's got a veneer of a farce covering it all. It's a fascinating look at people and how they treat each other, how they go about trying to achieve what they think they want, and how generally amoral they can be.

This was apparently a cleaned up and restored print and I'd hate to see a bad one. I'm not sure if it was the film or the Clinton Street, but it was not terribly clean to watch. I'm thinking of picking up the Criterion DVD, just to see if it ends up looking better or not.

Overall, well worth the time to see. A gem I never would have found otherwise.

Regular readers will remember that I recently finished organizing all my digital photos. I made mention that my goal was to revamp the gallery section of the site. I'm happy to announce that goal is complete!

The new gallery section link is still at the top of the page where it's always been. However, the page itself has been re-organized to more easily find categories. I've also condensed the number of galleries, as having 5 pictures in their own gallery seemed a bit silly. In the future I'll be saving pictures up until I have a decent amount to collate into a new gallery. The other thing I'm happy about is that all the galleries now have the same look and feel.

For one-off pictures I'll just embed them into each entry. Hopefully that doesn't cause any problems for rss readers. I'll have to watch the file sizes. I guess I'll find out when I acutally get around to doing one.

I make mention of it on the gallery page, but will mention it here as well. The galleries were all created using the built-in creation tool in Photoshop Elements 6. All of the templates in that program create galleries that are flash based. This means that they will probably load slower than the old ones did. However, the file sizes are smaller in general and there is an option that can be turned on for dail-up connections. I'm not sure how it'll run over the net as I do everything local, but hopefully it's not too terribly bloated.

A double-dose of European influence for me this weekend.

The Portland Opera is just ending it's first show of the season, La Traviata. I missed all of last seasons shows for various reasons, so I was very glad I was able to go. I invited Sara along and even though she was only just recovering from being sick toughed it out and came too. It was nice seeing a show with someone and being able to discuss it afterwords. It's so much more enjoyable to be able to share the experience. The show itself was quite good. The staging and 'acting' were far and away the best of any of the operas I've seen to date. However, I admit that bar is set pretty low. ^_^. The music was average to me, though two of the singers were outstanding (Violetta and Alfredo's father). It's almost too bad that the role of Alfredo's father is basically a disgusting character.

On Sunday Sara took me to the Portland Greek Festival. My folks used to take me there when I was much younger and I have good memories of those trips. To my suprise, the festival has grown tremendously over the years. What used to be a single food tent is now dozens. The crowd was huge and eventually unbearable to be around for long. Fortunately the food is just as good as it every was. There's just something so satisfying about seasoned meat on a stick and honey-dipped donuts. I ended up taking home some coffee cookies and a couple of pastries (baklava). Even with the crowds, it was a fun way to spend a part of the day and a great way to grab lunch.