Hi, remember me? Just when you thought I'd fallen off the planet, I reappear with a new entry and a few site changes.

The car-in-the-alley shot on the index page was getting sort of depressing, so I swapped it for one taken on a beautiful sunny day. About two days after I took the picture, the building visible at the far left of the photo -- the end of the row, with the cool windows -- was surrounded by scaffolding and construction equipment. No, they're not tearing it down. They're renovating it. I love Boston.

I've still been writing in my weblog, although I don't usually use it as a blog. It's an excellent multipurpose tool: I use it for venting, whining, reviewing movies, posting photographs, sharing links, and asking questions, among other uses.

The part about the questions is unbelievably useful; people have given me answers on everything from how to wash a baseball cap to how to get better prints of my digital photos. So you Real Journalers can rag on LiveJournal all you want -- and there are plenty of angsty half-literate teenage goths to shred -- but in the right hands, LiveJournal just plain rocks.

I'm still in something of a holding pattern. I'm waiting for the college advising center to call and tell me I'm approved for an appointment to set up my schedule for spring. I'm waiting for physical therapy to make me better enough to work out. I'm waiting for my passport to come back from the State Department. And therein lies a story.

I haven't been out of the country since 1992, and my passport has expired. I needed to get new passport pictures taken, so I went to a nearby Kinko's; I'd seen them doing passport photos before. The man was apologetic: their camera was broken. But I could go across the street to a little photo lab. They did passport pictures. (Picture at right from 1992 passport.)

I did, and they did, and after shaking my hair out a bit, I faced the camera without a trace of expression. The proprietor, a friendly Irishman named Kieran, gave me the photos (two identical) and said, "Not too bad."

Well, yeah. Bad. Really bad. The only thing missing was the police arrest number hung around my neck: that kind of bad. (My hair, however, looked fantastic.) I paid for them, still looking at them unhappily, and Kieran said, "If you really hate them, I'll do it again." Caught between my vanity and my practicality, I said I'd think about it overnight, thanked him, and split.

I looked at the pictures the next morning and said, out loud, "No way, no day, I can't live with this in my passport for ten years." I called the lab. Kieran was out, but a woman said they were open and she would do the pictures for me. Cool.

I went back and met her; her name was Mathilde, and she was from Portugal (I asked about the accent). I showed her the pictures from the day before and she clucked sympathetically. "No, these are not good. You need just a heent of a smile." I told her I felt vain and silly, and she smiled at me. "We are women. We understand these things. Here is the mirror, put on some leepstick."

I shook out my hair again and faced the camera with a heent of a smile, and she took another set of pictures. We chatted about travel while the photos developed and dried. Then she presented the picture: fine. Not beautiful, but not something I'll be ashamed to show to customs workers. I dug my wallet out of my bag, a smile spreading across my face, and said, "What do I owe you?"

"Nothing," Mathilde said, with a little scrunch of her nose and dismissive wave of her hand. "I don't do this for everyone, or girls would take fifteen passport pictures. But for you, yes." I protested, but she cut me off. "No, no, just take them. And bring me some pictures from your travels."

How sweet is that? Thank you, Mathilde. I'm still smiling.

I've started physical therapy again. No, please keep reading. Thanks.

The problems are primarily my sacroiliac joints, which are very low in the back and work sort of like an axle for the hips. The goal is to straighten out the curve of my lower back (it's extreme, sort of a swayback), lengthen my hip flexors (from the front of the hip to the upper thigh), and strengthen all of the supporting muscles to tilt my pelvis upright a bit more. In other words, I need better posture, and remembering to stand up straight isn't the answer.

Meanwhile, I'm looking for ways to deal with joint instability. I've started to cringe reflexively when I see photos or film of rocky, uneven trails, because I've sprained my ankles so often. I've finally given in to the need for rigid splints for my ankles, or at least for my right ankle. The picture at above left shows how an inversion injury happens. They're probably the most common kind of sprain. That's how my ankles always sprain.

I've stretched and probably torn the supporting ligaments more times than I can remember. Bouncing on a mini-tramp at age twelve. Stepping off a desk chair which rotated. Running across a field at high school field day. Working on jumps with a partner at cheerleading practice. Stepping on a tree root nearly a mile out walking a several-mile riding course through the woods. Crossing a street with uneven pavement, for pete's sake. Everything is dangerous to my ankles.

The Breg Ultra Ankle brace (I did not make that up) at above right is about as inversion-proof as you can get without encasing your ankles in steel. Unfortunately, they only fit in athletic shoes. I don't wear athletic shoes unless I'm working out, and my ankles invert when I'm just walking around. I had a long and friendly e-mail exchange with a rep from Breg -- they're super nice and very efficient -- and will probably end up with a Breg brace when I can do sports again. But for now, I need something I can fit into Docs and loafers.

Try running a search for "ankle brace" or "ankle braces" on Google or Google's Image Search. Unbelievable. I never knew I had so many options I didn't want. "Wrist brace" is also fun. I like the ones with the built-in thumb guard. They make the wearer look like The Eternal Hitchhiker.

At left is one of the possibilities I found for Braces Which Fit Into Human Shoes: the V-Lock High Performance Ankle Stabilizer Brace. (Who names these things and what do they get paid?) The strap on the side is not elastic, so the ankle can't invert. Clever. A strong possibility.

And yet, there is another. Not one photo on the web is clear enough to see the details, but the unsettling diagram of how to put the thing on gives me a better idea of what it looks like in person. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the ASO: Ankle Stabilizing Orthosis:

I don't know, people. I'm having some trouble relating the photo of the brace to the diagram of how to put it on. I mean, where do the side straps go? They look like they're just looped up in the photo of the brace. I don't get it. But the ASO is allegedly excellent and fits in street shoes. Maybe I'll flip a coin, best of five between the two.

Saving the best for last:

The date on the frame is my 27th birthday. The silver frame was a gift from Liz.

The photo is from 1992, a weekend in Nassau. I was 22; Liz was 26. We were both slightly drunk. I was wearing my favorite little black dress, which disappeared some years later in transit from somewhere to somewhere. Behind us, huge windows looked out over the dark marina, and we could hear waves splashing against the docks.

When I look at the photo, I can hear the water and the soft clanging of the bells on the channel buoys out in the dark and the sound of my sister laughing.

It's important to hold on to the good memories. I love you, Lizie.