Parking Pass Ponderings: Getting in Touch with my Inner Slug

I finally got a permit to park close to the chem department. This is a huge deal. Parking is tightly enforced and many spots are off limits even on nights and weekends. Due to construction they were only letting faculty purchase the better parking permits. As a result I was parking in the free lot, which was about 3/4 mile away. I liked the walk, which is quite pretty but hated the inconvenience, both not having my car close by and also having my overall commute time be about an hour per day (more in winter). The unexpected outcome was that it wrecked havoc with my exercise schedule and I gained weight. Why? I'm still not entirely sure. As far as I can tell it's a lot of little things. The gym was on my way to the parking lot, so that should've been good. The 1 1/2 mile walk every day certainly did help mitigate the fact that I wasn't working out, but it had the side effect of making me very hungry, more so than could be attributed to the walk itself. To go to the gym it became a question of lugging my gym bag, backpack, and lunch bag to and fro, and what to do with my wallet and computer when I was at the gym, and by 7 pm I'm usually cranky and hungry and want to go home. The preferred option was to go around 6:30, right before I turned into an evil hungry slug, and then come back to lab, finish stuff up, and then go home. However, making a separate trip, then coming back to lab, then going home, meant that I was walking almost 2 1/2 miles not even including my workout. Regardless of whether I worked out or not, I was crazy hungry by the time I got home, and usually long before then. Although I knew that these things were playing a role, most of the time I assumed that it was my work schedule or general laziness and old age that were making me not want to go to the gym.
The construction was finished and they started letting people on the wait list buy passes. I did not hesitate and got mine immediately. As if by magic, all of a sudden I started going to the gym again. I don't get crazy hungry late in the day, either, although it's only been a few days so it may be coincidental.
If I had been able to buy a permit when I first got here, I'm sure I wouldn't even be questioning my motives, but the irony of buying an expensive parking pass and replacing my daily walk with a somewhat more intense workout 3 or 4 times a week doesn't escape me. But whatever - honey badger don't care.

old biddy + soccer = torn meniscus

In three weeks I'll have knee surgery to repair my torn meniscus. I am a bit nervous, but am looking forward to being more mobile again.
I hurt it while playing soccer, of course. I wish I could say that I did some extreme athletic maneuver or got tackled really hard, but this was my Monday night pickup game, and that kind of stuff doesn't happen there. No, I was nowhere near the ball or any other players. I changed direction and felt the tiniest little sensation in the back of my knee. It felt like I had just tweaked it. A second later it felt fine again.
After soccer it got very stiff and swelled up. The next morning it felt worse and clicked every time I took a step. Nonetheless, I wasn't too worried. I'd had something sort of similar happen a few weeks before in my other knee, and it went away in a few days. This time, however, after a week it wasn't getting any better so I went to the doctor. She saw the swelling and thought it was bursitis, since i had been doing a lot of kneeling during the bathroom remodel.
She told me to stop kneeling on hard surfaces and to continue playing soccer. Unfortunately, that didn't help. It got worse after I played soccer again. Eventually I got an appointment in the sports medicine department and a MRI. The diagnosis, which came a few days after my 40th birthday, was that I had a meniscus tear in the right knee and patellofemoral syndrome and a little bit of arthritis in both knees. Welcome to old biddyhood!
So now I'm waiting for arthroscopic surgery. My appointment is on St Patrick's day. I will definitely not be doing any jigs, step dancing, or Irish waltzes that night. In the meantime I'm supposed to ride the exercise bike with no resistance, swim, and lift weights. I was told not to walk on the treadmill. Soccer, biking, hiking, using the stairmaster and running are out. So are any exercises involving lunges or sideways twisting. The swimming and weightlifting aren't a problem. The exercise bike is more problematic. It made my knee feel worse and I lost a lot of leg strength. I went back to walking on the treadmill. Nonetheless, I've lost a lot of muscle and core strength and between that and the knee itself, it threw everything slightly out of kilter. I've heard that this is normal. At this point I'm just trying not to gain any weight.
I'm not sure if I'm going to go back to playing soccer or not. I enjoy it a lot, but sometimes I think it's not worth it. I stopped playing competitively about a year ago, when I landed hard on my tailbone and hurt my back. I'm going to do my best to get in shape for running and hiking and strengthen my legs. If I feel like I'm stronger than I was before I was injured, I may go back to playing in the Monday night pickup games, but I'm not going to rush it. More than the soccer itself, I miss the camaraderie.
Anyway, it's a pain but in the grand scheme of things it's pretty minor. I try to keep it in perspective. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don't.