I always wondered how a mechanical watch works. I've read explanations, but even with still photos it was kind of cryptic. Behold, video!

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I was feeling strong yesterday, so I got my crash-damaged bike onto the bike rack… barely. I got to the bike shop where I bought it only a half hour before they closed, explained the problems, and told them I'd be back on Tuesday (as the shop was closed Monday for Labor Day.) The mechanic insisted I stay, so I did. They closed the door and were vacuuming up by the time it was finished, but I have to give Campus Wheelworks some major love for working late to get a job done.

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The weather we've got right now, I could make s'mores by pouring a marshmallow straight out of the bag and on to a graham cracker. It is just roasting. But Friday there is supposed to be a 30 degree swing. I expect some kind of serious winds.

The heat has forced me to break tradition. Since I came back to school, I've been dressing up for the first day of classes. But Monday I put on a tie, walked outside, then decided it wasn't worth dying from heatstroke. I've been doing polo shirts so far this semester, which is dressy as I can manage without feeling in danger of a heat injury.

Amusingly, for my Monday class, the professor started off by apologizing for her attire, saying it was unprofessional. (She had on Bermuda shorts and a casual blouse.) Apparently before class she'd gone to the pool to pick up her 10-year-old daughter, as local schools don't open for another week. Somehow she dropped the dress she was going to ware for class, into the pool.

Seeing as how I'd dressed down for the day, I wasn't going to criticize. Also, one of my favorite professors dresses down every day. The first class I had with Doc T, when I walked in he was sitting in the front row of the lecture hall, wearing tattered jeans, sandals, and a t-shirt. I assumed he was a non-traditional student until he checked his watch, stood up, walked to the front, and started lecturing!

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Friday evening my mother arrived at my place and spent the night on a air mattress. Saturday morning, we hopped into my car and zoomed off to a timbersports competition west of Rochester. I think of Rochester as being an hour away, but this trip took an hour and twenty minutes. My mental model involves riding along the highway, while the competition was in a small town quite a bit north of the interstate.

Anyway, my sister and brother-in-law were competing. I'm not sure if they had much fun, because they were plagued with misfortune and equipment problems. I suppose "a bad day golfing is better than a good day working," but I've always felt a good day golfing would be better still.

I did get to see both of my parents and one of my nieces, which was nice. Also, last year this competition was cold and rainy. This year is was in the mid-80s with an almost cloudless sky. I ended up a little sunburned and a lot dehydrated.

Today, I decided to try bicycling, even though my doctor hasn't cleared me yet. I didn't get far. I blame the bike- I was on a borrowed mountain bike, with an aggressive tucked posture (that transfers weight onto the arms) and with very very knobby offroad tires, give a very vibratory ride on the pavement. I only made it about a half mile before I gave up. The worse-broken wrist didn't hurt at all, but the supposedly better-healed radius was burning like fire. My theory: there are lots of other wrist bones to provide support, while the radius has just the ulna to share the strain.

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Today I went shopping for some things I wanted for my apartment. It had completely escaped my memory that today was when the dorms opened up for the incoming freshmen. Thus stores selling household goods near campus were mobbed with parents and new college kids. You would not believe the whining. Plus the new students were annoying too.

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Now I want one.

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My father's house is my official address, as I'm still living in an apartment. He passes me mail whenever I see him. At one of the weddings over the summer, one of the envelopes contained official orders from the Marine Corps.

I'm still part of the Individual Ready Reserve, consisting of former military members that, while not drilling every month like members of the Selected Reserve, are still eligible to be called back to service. And I was now being called back.

But, not to worry! I was summoned to a one-day muster, so they could make sure I was still healthy, possessed of all my limbs, etc. They also wanted to get updated information on marital status, dependents, and so forth. Uniform of the day was "proper civilian attire" (which actually has a formal definition: nothing ragged or with holes, nothing characteristically worn for exercise, if trouser have belt loops one must wear a belt, etc.) That wasn't a problem, as I just about always wear "proper civilian attire" anyway. The mobilization order also specified that "shaving and hair grooming standards will not be enforced," which is nice, because I've recently regrown my beard. It's not that I missed my beard, it's that with two bad limbs it was very difficult to shave.

Saturday was the day, so I left my house at 0600 to make the drive to the muster in Canandaigua, NY. Show time was 0800, and I made it just in time. We were meeting at the Canandaigua VA Center, which is a mix of old and new brick buildings. My first suspicion was that it was a post-Civil War army base, but some internet research has led me to suspect it really started as an insane asylum incorporated in 1859. The date is about right for the older architecture, and an asylum would certainly explain the military look of the buildings, as well as the impressive stone perimeter fence.

Driving through the town, at an intersection near the VA there were a dozen people gathered, waving flags and cheering every passing car, with a "Thank you Marines!" banner. I got a little sumtin' in my eye. Must have been the glare from the rising sun.

Having made it on time and checked in, I was butt-in-chair near the front of the rather old auditorium. I was right next to a door, which was nice, because as the room heated up I received the benefit of a cooling breeze.

We had a unit formation, in brief, which consisted of a detachment of the state police marching on the colors, then a brief talk by a full-bird colonel standing in for the commander of Marine Corps Mobilization Command (which is the command that all IRR Marines belong to), then a brief talk by the MCMC's Sergeant Major, then the colors marched off. That was enough to make it all official, and then we got about two hours worth of briefings on (a) benefits to which we were entitled, and how to get them; (b) post-military mental issues and how to get help for them ("Getting counseling isn't like wimping out. If you're having trouble with your baseball swing, you talk to your coach. That's what we provide– coaching to help you get your life back on track!"), and (c) a briefing on the reserves, including how we could volunteer for temporary duty while remaining part of the IRR. (That is, so we could do some reservist work and get some reservist pay, without having to sign up for monthly drills). Mostly good info, although the people not fortunate enough to be sitting by an open door were dying from the heat.

At 10:30 the briefs were done, and we were released to go out and check out three big tents outside, which contained companies looking to hire us, colleges looking to recruit us, and organizations looking to help us. I collected a huge bag of swag, including some job leads for friends of mine. I was wearing a UB t-shirt, so the college people didn't try to hard to get me. And I didn't need help from the volunteer organizations, although I did get a form to sign up for the VA just in case I ever need them, although I don't think I qualify. But it never hurts to check.

Done with all that by noon, I ate one of their delicious hot dogs and left as the afternoon session was arriving. I was jealous, I'll admit that: the afternoon guys sure didn't have to get up at 0500 to arrive on time. But it meant I got to drive around scenic Upstate New York in the afternoon, while those guys were sweltering inside a pre-air conditioning auditorium.

I drove down to Big Flats along State Route 14, a terribly scenic route that runs along the western shore of Seneca Lake. That's the heart of wine country, and on a Saturday afternoon every winery was open for tours. There were also dozens of bicyclists along the shoulder, many of them doing the round-the-lake circuit run.

After a bit of confusion in Horseheads, where the roads have been rearranged, I made it to Big Flats where I could take a nap. I did about four hours of driving in total, which was much more than my healing left arm was happy with. All's well that ends well, though.

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My bones are healing on schedule. The cast is off my left arm, as I need to be flexing it to restore the elbow's full range of motion. The wrist is healing too, although not as quickly, perhaps because of the bone chips floating around in there.

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It turns out that the bones in the wrist are hard to image in a traditional x-ray. Through the magic of CT scans, though, I know know I managed to break both of my forelimbs. I shan't be brachiating for a while.

Specifically, I've got a fracture in my left radius right at the neck, which is the thin part right before the bone's head by the elbow. On the dextral side, I broke my triquetral, which is part of the wrist.

My orthopedist says the left should heal very well. The right side has some bone fragments floating around, but they are much too small to reattach, and one doesn't want to do surgery unless one really has to. So we shall see if they get reabsorbed, and if not, we shall drop 15 and punt. He says he expects that they shall be cooperative.

So that's my status. I've got a splint on my left arm for the next three weeks or so, then we'll step down to just a cloth sling. I've got a removable brace on my right wrist; it won't heal as quickly as if it was a full cast, but I can take it off to wash myself, which I'm sure my classmates appriciate. The pain is mostly gone as the swelling abates, so now I just wait while my osteoblasts do their thing.

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I had a little incident on my bike today. It led to a broken left radius and a sprained right wrist. This has made typing quite difficult.

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