Wow, it's been 7 months since I posted last.  A lot has happened since then.  I've done about a dozen conventions.  The company who did three very lucrative sister conventions in Dallas got sold to a Canadian company, who has gone and mucked it all up (doubled vendor fees, among other things), so I've lost those three events.  I also didn't make it into my biggest convention this year - it would've been my 10th year.  I wouldn't be so sore about it except they changed their entrance requirements without telling anyone in advance.  There's an event in November that I have done for more than 10 years, that I'm not doing, because there's another one that's about 25% better in terms of sales that I'm doing instead.  Can't find someone to work the other event for me.

So I've been picking up other events.  I got into a big (relatively; it just opened this year but apparently all the dealers went home very happy, and the people running it know what they're doing) convention in Pensacola, so unless I get a job that doesn't let me have vacation around then, I'll be doing that and visiting family and friends at the same time.  There's another I just got in on in February in Dallas, which makes up for one of the events lost to the Canadian company, and probably another in Houston in May that might make up for a second.  And so on.

Going after some tech-related jobs at a company for whom two of my friends work; the company is willing to hire people with a bachelor's degree in anything, and who also pass an IQ test, and train them.  Salary, benefits, good company culture, the whole shebang.  Fingers crossed.

Halfway home from Oklahoma in the middle of July, my left foot exploded in pain.  I gritted my teeth and worked the clutch pedal with my heel the rest of the way home.  There has been a 2-month-plus saga of remissions and relapses, a podiatrist who left his practice in the middle of my treatment, me having to ask my housemates for help with basic things like doing laundry and getting groceries out of the car, crutches, painkillers, side effects, sleepless nights, exhaustion, watering my garden and pots while shuffling around on my hands and knees (with knee pads), finding a different car (thanks Dad! Could not have done it without you!), etc etc.

There was no injury associated with this and it's pretty obviously nerve pain (felt like my entire arch was on fire).  Possibly sciatic in origin; my only real relief was to either take hydrocodone and go to bed (I know the internet says regular painkillers don't work on nerve pain, but I guess that stuff just makes me happy enough that I don't care?), or wiggle my butt / back around until I got in just the right position... and then the pain would vanish.  Took me awhile to figure that out.  Move, even just tensing muscles in preparation for sitting up from slouching in a chair, and the pain would come back.

A new podiatrist showed up at the office, and I was probably the second or third patient she saw on her very first day.  She's nice, I like her, and she's proactive.  She gave me a shot of something (alcohol?) directly into a nerve center on the bottom of my foot.  The only two good things I can say about it are that 1) it was short and 2) it seems to be working.  I cussed with increasing volume and then just lost it and screamed; I think the closest I've gotten to that level of pain was when I tripped on the stairs and drove the nerve in my elbow down on the sharp end of a wooden banister.

Being lamed for more than 2 months appears to have activated my northern European stockpiling genes - I think my grocery bills have been double what they usually are.  There were plenty of times when the slog from the car on crutches just to get inside the store to where the electric carts are was exhausting.  Walking at normal speed on crutches is the caloric equivalent of sprinting, I think.

And I will only mention in passing the incompetent moron nurse at my PCP's office who did not understand the criteria or procedure for issuing a handicap parking tag, causing me to do an entire convention without access to handicap parking.  It was a nightmare.  When my first podiatrist said he would give me a handicap tag when I mentioned it, I could've hugged him.  It's the only thing that has made it remotely possible for me to go to the grocery store and do conventions (don't even get me started on the jackholes who park in handicap parking without a permit, nor on the numerous businesses who have only the minimum number of handicap spots required by law, which is almost never enough).

Like I said, I think the shot is working (I hope so, because going back for another one is too horrible to contemplate for long), and I'm also trying to remember to incorporate some hamstring / glute stretches into my daily routine, in case it is sciatica and it's the kind that can be fixed by loosening muscles.