Bring me the thong of Lisa Cuddy

House comes out with some top lines ...

I'm watching House now after growing a new character for a D&D game starting Monday. This one is a sorceror called Molochas, who will hopefully last longer than my first sorceror :-) He was fun to play but I started making him go insane (in-character thing), so the fella didn't have much of a life expectancy after that.

I have two new characters lined up, with one being a fighter to replace Keela the cleric who got eaten by a troll last week ... At least it was a heroic end as she held up the troll for long enough for her buddies to get away. Except for the barbarian who also ended up as troll-food.

Badminton was a little bit of a struggle again last night. I've got two major things to sort out there :
1 - Psychological conditioning stopping me from pulling the trigger on smashes (more later)
2 - I need to build a new serve action from scratch

I've always used the simple learner serve, as it allows me to send the shuttle to the back of the court but also to the front as a surprise with little or no change in the action. Trouble is, it isn't that useful against better players because the long ones feed their smashes, quickly leading to end of rally. I'm needing to learn the serve type you'll see if you catch the rare sight of badminton on telly. However, I may be limited there if it puts too much strain on the shoulder. I'll work something out :-)

The first one (psychological conditioning) got beat on the night. Unfortunately ;-) I managed to nearly do a jump smash early on, I almost got it through but didn't commit fully. Missed opportunity on that one but I did get the chance to go for one again later. Result ? OW ! My shoulder seems mechanically sound for 95% of what I want to do with it but when I go for the more violent stuff (like jump smashes!), it tells me it was a bad idea.

I thought it could be bad last night in the aftermath of a shoulder going crunch, with pain coming when I went for overheads. Things seem to have settled down overnight though, so I just have the soreness of muscles that have got a shock due to change from not doing very much. So - very low point last night but doing better today.

The other symptom that comes out from a bad, chronic injury is that the sufferer tends to develop a complex about it. Like me with the shoulder, I go tentative when using it or back off completely from certain activities. Some of the reasons for the backing off are good, like being concerned for the safety of the person I'm bowling to. Some are bad, like not pulling the trigger on smashes because you think you're going to break something. Another symptom is that when you get a little setback you immediately think the worst. Things like believing that you're not going to get any cricket at all in this year because you reckon that one bad smash has caused 1-2 months of forced inactivity on the shoulder.

I'll be taking it easy on my right arm for a few days but I don't think it's as bad as the knee jerk complex makes one think it could have been. Looking forward to next week's game again :-)

PS I'm actually more worried about my knee than my shoulder at present. That's another long term thing I struggle with - there's a big list !