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We have 21 feeds
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| | Saturday’s Poem |
| In six different ways in this past week
I have told of my love in poet speak.
Now the end of the week is drawing near
There is one last thing you need to hear.
I love you Gerri more than anything.
Being near you makes me just want to sing.
For a week I’ve given my creative best.
But for now [...] |
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| The Morning |
| I wake up each morning and you are there.
I snuggle up to you craving your warmth.
Your softness comforts me. Why can’t this last?
We must get up and start our day. But wait!
Let this moment last just a bit longer.
I love this time lying here beside you. |
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| Joy |
| When we first met I never dreamed
the simple delights in store for me.
You’ve given me years of happiness,
on so many times I just can’t address.
Those early years in St. Augustine,
Our time spent there was so serene.
At Washington Gardens we’d spend the day,
Or a walk up the beach, nothing to pay.
Planning the new kitchen for our [...] |
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| Sleep |
| I wake up anxious.
I hear you softly breathing.
You comfort my sleep. |
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| Sweet Perfume |
| If I compare you to a sweet perfume
I would only know your gentle fragrance,
or the beauty of your fragile bottle.
I would miss the kindness of your sweet voice
and the laughter from your wit and humor.
For a scent alone can not define you.
Should I compare you to a fine, red wine?
I can admire your vibrant, intense [...] |
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| Scott and Scurvy |
| Dan Lyke: I always find circumstances where technology or scientific knowledge is lost fascinating. Maciej Cegłowski looks at how the Brits lost the connection between vitamin C and scurvy that lead to scurvy becoming a huge issue in Scott's expedition to the South Pole.
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| Scam watch |
| meuon: "Supercritical state"?of fuel injection system from
Transonic Combustionoffers 50% milage increase? I smell Steorn droppings. But dang, I am an optimist and hope it's not. Again, time will tell. |
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| M17N |
| meuon: M17N-
A good Linux centric bit on doing multiple language/character stuff in Linux. Made a lot of things easier to understand even if you were not using Linux.
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| Rocket science |
| Dan Lyke: A Brainwagon post on the physics of soda bottle compressed air rocketshad a link to Rocket Science, some musings on the physics of them.
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| Games within games |
| Dan Lyke: So Portal 2is coming, but here's the really cool part: A recent patch to Portal embedded messages, including Morse code and slow-scan images, about the sequel.
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| Whole Foods, organic, and China |
| Dan Lyke: Interesting investigation into what Whole Foods means when they carry products from China claiming to be "organic". Via Genehack |
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| The Far Horizons |
| petronius: From io9: SF book covers by Richard Powers.These Dali-esque designs were standard for the late 1950s SF paperbacks, now I realize it was largely done by one artist. But they were advanced looking, and I guess that's what was called for. I don't read anywhere near as much SF as I did back in school, but the more realistic cover design has taken over. |
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| The way is not clear |
| petronius: Slateis doing an interesting series on signs that direct people from one place to another. One discusses London's attempt to do for walking maps what the famous 1933 Underground Map did for transit systems. This installmentdeals with the bad signage at and around New York's Penn Station. One element is a slide show of how you would find your way (or not) from the subway to the Amtrack platforms, and how a workable system breaks down with the lack of one sign. I remember being in London many years ago, and how impressed I was with a system where every point where you could change directions had a sign explaining the consequences. (go left and you can get to Baker Street, go right and you can get to Oxford Circus)The London installment also makes an interesting point: watch the actual users. The Legible London set up prototype maps of how to walk to various places, but the designers left out the index to create a cleaner look. But the pedestrians couldn't take time to scan the entire map looking for just one spot, so they gave up. |
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| Road Tripping |
| Dan Lyke: Charlene and I have been tooling around the northeast for the past few days. Full report when we get back. We were over in Boston the day before yesterday, and ended up killing two hours walking along Revere Beach. While we were there we watched a police officer (MA State) behaving extremelyunprofessionally, going all drill sargent at a very subservient guy whose car he was towing.Later that evening we got pulled over for license plate lights and a headlight out, and got some attitude.I've had 3 moving violations in my life, and several other interactions with police officers, and these two, one which I witnessed, one which was directed at me (but was way toned down from what I saw earlier in the evening) were the worst I've ever personally seen police officers behaving. The first was bad enough that I considered calling someone about it, but I realized that I'm in a strange town, and the last thing I wanted to do was to be pissing off the police.That right there says something.The other guy let me off with a warning, which is fine, I can suck it up and let him be an asshole for that.Other than that, it's been a pretty cool, if more driving than I'd planned on, trip. From Toledo to Sheffield, MA. Toured quickly through my old stomping grounds, including a stop in Harlemville, NY, where I talked with two people I went to elementary school with, thence up to West Lebanon to look at the old house, then back to Great Barrington for the night. Debra Hydegot word we near her state, and Charlene had a friend over in Boston she thought it'd be fun to drop in on, so we went over there and back down through Mystic, CT. On the way back across we got off the freeway at New Haven to avoid an accident, and ended up spending the afternoon at the Yale museums, then up to Newtown CT, where I went to high school, and across. Tonight we're near Syracuse, tomorrow we're going to hit Niagara Falls, then probably return to Toledo via Canada.
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| WebApp UI |
| meuon: Designing User Interfaces for Business Web Applications- This is a nice overview with good suggestions for business a web based business app, rather than a web design overview. I need to review this weekly. |
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| more power monitoring |
| Dan Lyke: Want: Powerhouse Dynamics eMonitor per-circuit minute-by-minute electrical monitoring. Via this blog entry (they apparently sell it, or will shortly), courtesy of Jaimey Walking Bear. |
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| Why XML and IT staff !@!K |
| meuon: I just got back from a users conference and saw a thing that makes me cringe: an engineer using excel to read in huge very nested XML files, and then use a macro that cut and pasted the data from one sheet, to another, to make it a simple one line per data reading spreadsheet, so that he could export it as a CSV, so the billing system would read it. A little over 10k records, 4 times a day, and it has to be run by a human, at least once a day. The macro takes an hour plus to run. I replaced it in under 100 lines of simple basic perl, gave him the perl code
and a link to ActiveState Perl for Windows. He e-mailed that to his IT staff...
and they won't let him install Perl, and now he's in trouble for even asking to.
His work laptop is locked down hard. The director of IT has e-mailed me legalese to fill out before he'll even talk to me about it and is accusing me of subverting his organization (I am).All because I sat next to this nice guy at the conference while he parsed these files for his employer while in a lecture and I felt his pain. |
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| I don't wanna touch it |
| Dan Lyke: Devil's Panties nails my experience of the past few days.
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| Capitalism on the Edges |
| petronius: An intriguing look at Tokyo from a new angle: Hello Damagehas a picture collection of business establishments in the Yakuza-run Shinjuku district. However, these are not hostess-bars, massage parlors for horny salarymen, or brothels. Instead they are the small businesses that service the vice industry and its workers, including all-night neon sign repairmen, walk-up champagne stands, and tax accountants who will make your return look legit. |
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| Hello Schröddy |
| Dan Lyke: OMG! Want: Debrapointed out the "Hello Schröddy"T-shirt. A pink shirt with a picture of a box on it with the "Hello Kitty"ribbon on it. |
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| | Appropriation Art and Walker Evans |
| Appropriation Art appears to be the topic du jour. Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer devoted two posts to what James Danziger had called “the biggest photographic mystery of the 2008 [US] election”: who took the original photograph that Shepard Fairey used as the source for the Obama HOPE prints? [edited for clarity] Reading the [...] |
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| Cotoneaster Berries |
| Campbelltown, 1984
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| Petals |
| Windsor, 1984
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| Travelling on Foot |
| In my teenage years, desperate to bridge the gap between hope and fear, I would walk long distances. When I “should have been studying”, I would walk for hours. Perhaps, if I had been more willing to participate in team sports, I might have been too sore and weary to be so deeply troubled by [...] |
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| 300 |
| As I sat in the theater a few nights ago with my friends, G and P, desperate for 300 to end, I kept thinking of John Robb’s description of the film as absolutely amazing… So unrelentingly great that it has earned a permanent place in my top 10 movies of all time.
Wherein lay the “greatness”, [...] |
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| Hello world! |
| It’s been two years to the day since my last post.
I’d intended to come back to weblogging before this–especially since Dave Rogers predicted that I would “post something” before the end of 2006. For, even though I wasn’t writing for my own weblog, I never stopped reading weblogs. In fact, weblogs have been my primary [...] |
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| | Oscar Blogging 2010 |
| Multiple Oscar winners: The Hurt Locker: 6 Avatar: 3 Precious: 2 Crazy Heart: 2 Up: 2 For those who are unfamiliar with me doing this, you can find previous year's Oscarblogging at: 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009... |
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| Avatar, two ways |
| Here's my report of two competing 3D systems, using Avatar as the test subject. First, some preliminary reading: This report from the 3D Vision Blog is a rundown of the three 3D systems in widespread use in the US. Right... |
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| Fixing a bizarre iWork and Pages problem (with the SFWordProcessing plug-in) |
| Earlier today, I was using Pages '09, and I attempted to open a document that I'd opened many times before, though perhaps not since upgrading to either iWork '09 or Snow Leopard. Boom. Pages crashed (that's what happens when programs... |
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| Why the iPad doesn't (yet) have a camera |
| Because the iPad is meant to be held in the hand. The main reason for the iSight cameras on Macs or Apple monitors is to do video iChats (yes, I know about Photo Booth, which people use once, go "Huh."... |
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| My (current) opinions on HTML5 |
| There's been a lot of screaming and ranting lately over the current state of HTML5—what is it, what's in it, who controls it, who will implement it, and so on. There's no shortage of good essays, and here are some... |
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| Very limited time discount on my Macworld Expo MacLab |
| I'm doing a two-hour, hands-on session on iWork's Pages application at Macworld Expo on February 9: Building Better Documents with Pages Pages, part of Apples iWork suite, makes it easy to create great-looking documents, whether for print or electronic distribution.... |
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| Home, Ten Years On |
| Today marks a big milestone for us: we've lived in this house for 10 years. We moved in December 23, 1999 (only four months later than the builder's original promise!). Dori reminded me of the original site we did... |
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| Excellent Thanksgiving dinner, good wines |
| Last night, we had Thanksgiving dinner with friends here in Healdsburg. We were tasked to bring the wine, and I'm pretty pleased with the selection of local wines. I'd recommend them all. I'm doing this post as a record of... |
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| Happy Birthday To Us! |
| Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragontomato/ — cc by-nc-nd 2.0 Somehow, this blog's tenth birthday snuck up on us—and yes, this blog really is ten years old. In Internet years, that makes it what, 70? Which, I guess answers the question as... |
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| Sublime objects of desire |
| Today was Aston Martin day here in Healdsburg. First, I saw a car that I'd seen before in passing, but not close up: a beautifully restored silver DB5 (the Connery Bond car, which was made between 1963-1965). Close up, it... |
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| This weekend: MCE (Be there!) |
| Are you in Northern California? Looking for something to do this Saturday? If so, come and join us at the Mac Computer Expo in Petaluma, put on by NCMUG. It's the best (not-so-)little Mac show since the good ol'days... |
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| Snow Leopard's on its way |
| I know that, oddly enough, there are people who get their tech news from this site. If that's you, here's your heads-up that Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, will be out on Friday. Want to get a copy... |
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| I miss you, Mom. |
| Today is the twentieth anniversary of my mother's death. I can't help but think of all the things she missed in my life. The end of my first marriage. The second marriage that would have brought her a new daughter-in-law... |
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| The health care reform lies begin; and are debunked |
| As Congress goes into recess, the prospects for health care reform look decent. That has spurred the opponents of reform -- who apparently just love the current system -- to use every means at their disposal to fight it. That... |
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| Women "in Tech" |
| A quick quiz for those of you who attend tech conferences. You're organizing a "Women in Tech"panel, and you have the following panelists: Which of the below do you add as the final member of your panel? An expert... |
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| | New “St. Yesterday” video |
| In Explone news: Thor Radford shot a handsome-looking video for “St. Yesterday.” I’m a little startled by the excellent production quality:
Watch the video (in larger size) at YouTube.
Word is that Thor shot the whole thing on a Nikon D300s. Kids these days with their gadgets! Lead singer Patrick has more to say here.
So yeah, things [...] |
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| Gig report: Explone at the Crocodile |
| I’m off to a mythical land called “France” for a few days. In the meantime, please enjoy these photos from Explone’s gig at the Crocodile Cafe last month.
One of the bummers about taking photos at the gig is they’re almost exclusively done onstage, during soundcheck, to an empty room, and I end up searching Flickr [...] |
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| New Kirby Krackle single out today |
| The new single from Kirby Krackle’s sophomore release E For Everyone is out today. It’s called “On And On” and it’s about — wait for it! — Wolverine.
You know, Wolverine. The X-Men guy. Hugh Jackman. With the claws? What, I have to explain everything?
(NB: I don’t play bass on this tune. I play with the [...] |
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| AIC |
| A digression:
If you follow rock/metal at all, you probably know that Alice In Chains, one of the “big four” rock bands to break out of the Seattle scene as part of the whole “grunge” thing in the 90s, has a new lead singer, William DuVall. They’re currently touring with a new album.
I was reading a [...] |
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| Studio Litho, Days Two and Three, in photos and videos |
| Two new songs, a photo shoot, a video shoot, and a website relaunch. Big week for Explone! Gonna be hard to go back to reality tomorrow.
(Feed reader? You may have to visit the post to see these pics and videos.)
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| Studio Litho, Day One, in videos |
| (Feed reader? You may need to visit the post to see these videos.)
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| Looking ahead |
| I love this photo! MOAR AMPS PLZ.
Explone is at Studio Litho this weekend to cut one final song for the new record and finish any overdubbed parts. Mixing starts in March. Yes, we’re already writing tunes for the next one. So?
My sources tell me we’re also going to record some sort of performance video thingy [...] |
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| New demo: “Note To Self” |
| Here’s a quick demo of “Note To Self” (I posted a video of this song a few weeks back):
[See post to listen and download song]
One guitar, one shaker, a few overdubs, some flurbled chords and the roughest of rough vocals. And a hippie guitar solo I spent all of five minutes composing. Also, my first [...] |
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| Explone at the Crocodile (!!!OMG!!!) |
| Here is news: my band Explone is playing the famously famous Crocodile Cafe tomorrow night (that’s Thursday 1/7) with a stellar lineup of fresh local bands. (I’m especially keen to see all-girl prog rock outfit Eighteen Individual Eyes.) It’s one of KEXP’s Recommended Events this week.
The Croc has long been on my list of A-list [...] |
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| DADGAD |
| Last week I tweeted about rediscovering some song ideas I had written in DADGAD tuning almost ten years ago. I first learned about DADGAD when Megan forwarded me a page of alternate tunings used by Richard Shindell. Since then I’ve tried to work DADGAD into my own songs:
Cut The Wire: DADGAD, capo 5th fret
In Harm’s [...] |
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| Useit.Com: The Power of Defaults. Users rely on defaults in many other areas of user interface design. For example, they rarely utilize fancy customization features, making it important to optimize the default user experience, since that's what most users stick to. |
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http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/03/04/renewedEvangelismBloggerco.htmlAlso, you can forward this email to anyone you like, as long as you personally feel they will make a contribution to the discussion on Thursday.This is all about everyone participating and taking responsibility. If we get around the table with everyone feeling they've been heard, no matter what they're speaking about, and if you feel you really heard from a dozen or more people, that may be more than you accomplish at all the conferences you go to this year. Maybe all the conferences you've been to in your life.Big hugs, and looking forward to seeing you all on Thursday! :-)DavePS: If you have comments or question, I'll cross-post this email at http://unberkeley.com/ -- and there's a place to comment there. Better to post there where others can see it. :-)">Notes for Thursday March 11 meetup at NYUGood morning everybody! :-)We will have our second Thursday evening meetup at 7PM on March 11.20 Cooper Sq, 7th Floor. RSVP by 3PM on Thursday. No exceptions.Here's the deal. This week we'll have a special format. We'll go around the table clockwise starting with the person to my left. Each person will speak for a couple of minutes, say who you are, and talk about whatever you want to talk about.For a few minutes we are all ears. We have to listen to whatever you want to say. But there are some groundrules. If you don't read them you will be embarrassed, and you don't want that -- so read them! :-)1. You may not talk about yourself.2. You may not talk about a product you sell or the organization you work for. In other words -- no pitches, we are not part of a business model for you. We will groan loudly if you start promoting something commercial, so please don't do it.3. Give us a nugget. Tell a story. Something with a moral. Some way the world sucks. Some way the world is great. Make us laugh. Reach our hearts. Inspire.4. Think of it as an intellectual potluck. You bring an idea, we all taste it. (Don't worry about whether we like it. Even if we don't we'll say we do.)The groundrules for the other people.1. We listen to the person speaking. Listening is a lot harder than most people think it is.2. You can read your email if you want, but think about the person speaking and how they feel. Here they are pouring their heart out. If you can listen to them and really hear what they're saying *and* tweet something or read Facebook or whatever, go for it.This is consistent with the first rule of BloggerCon format -- there is no audience, no panel, no speaker. The room is the story. Only this time, we're going to keep the role of the Discussion Leader to a minimum. Each of you is responsible for leading your own discussion. Be mindful not to take too much time, because there's only 1.5 hours. Divide by the number of people there.Now -- what to do about people who either don't read the guidelines, or show up late and didn't hear the opening schpiel (which I promise to keep very short). I don't know the answer. Let's look to the room to make a decision about what to do, in real time, as it's happening. I'm not going to say what we'll do, other than it's almost certain to come up.In the meantime, I wrote up a new updated version of the BloggerCon rules, believe me, you're going to get a lot of links to this piece. If you want to skip ahead you can read the whole thing now. :-)http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/03/04/renewedEvangelismBloggerco.htmlAlso, you can forward this email to anyone you like, as long as you personally feel they will make a contribution to the discussion on Thursday.This is all about everyone participating and taking responsibility. If we get around the table with everyone feeling they've been heard, no matter what they're speaking about, and if you feel you really heard from a dozen or more people, that may be more than you accomplish at all the conferences you go to this year. Maybe all the conferences you've been to in your life.Big hugs, and looking forward to seeing you all on Thursday! :-)DavePS: If you have comments or question, I'll cross-post this email at http://unberkeley.com/ -- and there's a place to comment there. Better to post there where others can see it. :-) |
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| Wristly Update |
| I take it back, I don't think it's broken.Here's the deal. Monday night I went to a core-pump class that I really enjoyed as it included kicking and punching a bag as well as some of the standard crunches and push-ups and such. With some of the exercises I'd try it and realize it hurt the wrist and ask for an alternate option, but some that put pressure on the injured areas didn't seem to hurt too much, so I did them anyway. Tuesday, It hurt again. Same with Wednesday, so I didn't go back to the class as at least half the exercises were going to put pressure on the wrist again. Today, it aches some, but there is noticeable improvement. This tells me I tried to do too much on Monday and set my healing back a few days. I'll give it another week and, if it's still a problem I'll worry about it. So, for the remaining week, I'll not try to ride a bike, I'll not try to do push-ups etc, and I'll give it a little longer to heal up.Meanwhile, I'll RUN. |
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| I'm on the way back.. |
| Yes, my urge to push myself is coming back. How do I know? By my choices in direction for my running.There's this really steep hill just down the road. I've found myself huffing and puffing just walking up it, but it would provide an excellent direction for a weekly challenge as my run time increases. So, yesterday I reached crest of the hill leading to that road (also a steep grade, but for only a hundred feet or so. At the beginning of the week, running to that crest was enough to leave me gasping desperately. Yesterday, I realized I was gasping, but not desperately, so I turned up instead of taking the slight slope down to Dayton where I'd turn and turn again to take a shallow uphill grade for the end of my short run. I didn't run up for long, but I made a deal with myself that to reach the first telephone pole. I did it, and turned gasping to head back and take Dayton for the final few minutes as reward. Today, I turned upwards again, but this time made a deal with myself and went to the second telephone pole. After that, the grade turns up even more, but I turned and headed back down, this time pushing my pace on the flattened Dayton, determined to not walk any of that road. When I turned back towards my place, I was happy to know that despite my extra push up that hill, I'd hit the same mark for starting to walk that I hit yesterday. A slight bit more distance covered up a challenging hill in the same amount of time. Good. A good way to head into the weekend. I've one more short run and then triple that distance to close out the party, and I expect by rest day that I'll feel well wrung out, but it's a good thing.Now to decide what trail I should run on for my long run tomorrow. I'd join the crowd on Sunday morning, but it looks like I've a volunteer to help me move my washer and dryer Sunday morning. I'd rather do that. I am sick to death of the laundromat. |
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| Wristly Update |
| I think it really is broken.Doc said to give it a couple weeks and if it's still a problem to come back in. It's been 1.5 weeks and I still wake up with my thumb feeling numb and the middle of the wrist throbbing. It's not screaming agony, but it's certainly not comfortable. Through the course of each day I'll think "it's getting better"only to find that the exact same things are still a problem. It still hurts like hell to try to grasp and open or use my left hand to zip something. It still hurts in specific points, right below the thumb knuckle (the first one closest to the hand) and the wrist closest to the pinky. It's an ache that honestly reminds me of my ankle.I'll still give it to the end of the week, but I suspect on Monday I'll be calling the doctor for another appointment. |
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| Cheaha, revisited |
| This past Saturday was the date for yet another 50K I was signed up for but couldn't run. After all, I just got released to start running again a few days ago and thirty-one miles is a bit much to ask after a few months without training. I planned on staying home, but one of my buddies asked me to come and cheer, so I decided I would. Strega and I joined Carl, Dreama, Charlene and Nik at the pet-friendly chalet in Cheaha State Park Friday night and dug into a nice, relaxed mood. Saturday morning, Strega and I walked the others to the bus to see them off. Later we took a nice hike down the trail the runners would be coming up to the last aid station at the bottom of the mountain and back, and after a shower we headed to the finish line. The race had been going on for almost four and and a half hours, and the course record was around 4:30hrs so I figured I'd be there to see the first finisher/race winner cross the line.I was wrong.The course record was blown away with a 4:00:25hr finish, a blistering pace for so tough a course. No one expected him that soon. I did see the second place finisher though, and soon found myself parked at a good vantage to see the runners coming in and hanging with the race announcer. I got out my binoculars and gave him race numbers while they were still a ways away, making it easier for him to get their names. We had fun, he and I, cracking jokes between runners and chatting easily. Strega spent his time being his usual hot self and attracting attention from young and old alike. He had three to four children surround him and pet him, runners passing after their finish came to remark on him and give him cuddles and affection... he soaked it up like a champ. It was a fun, relaxing and rewarding way to spend the day, and I'm glad I went. |
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| Running again! |
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| wrist |
| Ok, so here's the story. Saturday was beautiful. Too beautiful to not get my dog some exercise, so I got out the bike after a nice kayak trip (wood ducks, pileated woodpecker and snapping turtle sightings oh my)and my belt-leash and off we went. Strega was thrilled and behaving well, but he really was ready to stretch into a run, so as we turned right onto McCahill, our speed increased. Now, at this point I had his leash attached to my seat post so he would have enough length to run in the grass along the road. There was only one problem with that plan. The street sign. I didn't have time to even try grabbing it and pulling him to the inside of it, or to slow much, when he ran to the wrong side of it and suddenly my bike stopped, but I didn't. In a truly amazing imitation of Superwoman, I flew through the air. My landing however, lacked grace and style. What it did have was impact on my left hand and wrist. I groaned, rolled onto my back and got up, legs shaking. "Dammit, Strega..."but he was slinking up and looking so upset anyway, so I just told him to sit while I checked the bike. Then I got on and realized my left hand and wrist hurt. I couldn't grip. No use of the left hand for more than a prop. O KWell, I went ahead and took a slower pace to finish the route, got home and went to the emergency room. Last time I did home remedy for a joint... well I'm still paying for that, so I figured I'd just go ahead and get x-rays and be sure. The doctor didn't see a fracture though, so it's a sprain with a stone bruise on the meat of my thumb. That's why I have no grip. The thumb muscles are too bruised to work. Typing hasn't been my strong suit either.Anyway, that's the story. I'm sure at this point that by week's end I'll be able to at least hold things again if not grip with real strength. |
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| Broken |
| Crap, wrote a nice entry about how I sprained my wrist and lost it. I'm typing one handed, so no I am not going to retype it now.Suffice to say its not broken per the emergency room doc. |
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| Ankle issues |
| Will I ever run again?Today was another PT appointment, and that meant getting to discuss the problems I experienced trying to use an elliptical. Ten minutes on it and I spent the rest of the day and into the morning limping with pain on the lateral side... and I don't mean muscle ache. In theory, I should be ok on an elliptical. The PT's reaction goes with my own thoughts. It doesn't bode well. I see the MD on Thursday and have two more PT appointments between now and then, the last one being the test so he has something to tell the MD. The reality is though, that pain on the elliptical suggests that the ligament damage is not healing and will require surgery.Here's the thing. I'm willing to do what it takes to get back out there, but if I do require surgery that will mean time I won't be so much as able to walk. This becomes a major issue when I have a large dog that requires walks three times a day, and I'm not talking little 5 minute potty breaks. On average, I walk him 1.5 hrs a day, sometimes more. If I'm unable to do that, I'll have to find someone to take him during my recovery, and I can't afford a boarding kennel. Nothing is certain yet though. Nothing. |
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| Conventional Wisdom |
| According to conventional wisdom, a man or woman who hasn't been married by my age has something seriously wrong with them that should act as a red flag to anyone considering dating them to back away, quickly.Argue all you like, make all the excuses you want, but that's the conventional wisdom. |
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| Yesterday's mail brought me a Valentine. My daddy loves me enough to make a Valentines card by hand. I have the best Dad in the world. |
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| Valentine |
| The Valentines hype is reaching a crescendo, and I find myself thinking of the one man who sent me a Valentines with an amazing consistency.Hey Grandpa, will you be my sweet ballou? I miss you. |
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| Aches |
| My ankle has started to ache. It starts soon after my first round of PT exercise, and as the day wears on just aches more. The problem isn't in a load bearing part of the joint, so it isn't hard getting up and down, it's just a dull ache. My rehab requires that I do no activities that include pointing the toes down or in. Doing so would stretch the torn ligament and hinder healing. I've added a lot of citrus to my diet to support collagen production, key to healing ligaments and tendons. I wish I could get out and run or ride, but it's rainy and cold anyway. If I'm going to have an injury to heal from, might as well be during down time, right? Did I explain the injury here? Well, here's the deal. I have a fractured distal fibula with torn ligament. The location of the fracture, in other words, is the very bottom of the smaller bone in the lower leg. That bone attaches to the side of the ankle with three ligaments attaching it to the foot and locking the joint in place. My torn ligament means the joint is structurally unstable. I do not lack muscle strength there, it's a structural issue. I am currently a surgical candidate to repair the ligament, but we're going to see if we can avoid surgery first. It may be that I have to wear an ankle brace when running from here out to add stability where I torqued the ligaments so badly, but we'll see. I miss my activities. I feel like I'm in hibernation. |
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| Strega has kindly taken up Ms. Howler's duty of eating my apple cores. Up to recently, he wasn't interested. Suddenly, he's all about eating that apple core when I'm done.I wonder if he's turning into a horse? He's awful small for a horse. |
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| Broken |
| It's official. Up until now, I was able to say I'd never broken a bone, but per the xrays I have a distal fracture in my fibula. Yup, I broke myself running.Mind you, it was probably that really bad ankle twist a while back that did it. I probably should have gotten xrays then to be sure. I'm so used to twisting though that I just figured it was a sprain and went to the PT and did some rest and got back running. Either that or since then I got a stress fracture. The doctor couldn't say one way or the other, just that he wished he'd seen me sooner. Of course, I had to wait a week and a half before seeing him from when I KNEW something was wrong. I didn't really have the money for the co-pay before then. The upshot though, is no running for a while. No brace or boot or anything either though. He said at this point it would be strength and body therapy. It's already healing, just needs the chance to finish the job. In the meantime, he wants me seeing his ankle guy to make sure my mind-body connection heals too. His theory is that after this break, my brain won't get the signals from the ankle in time, won't really know where it is like it would normally, so it'll be easier to re-injure. Well, that may be. I guess that means I'll be doing more "stand on one foot"and "stand on this unstable surface"exercises for a while. |
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| Dog Park blues |
| Yet again... a problem at the dog park. My heart sank when I saw there were about five other dogs in there, but I decided to see if things would go ok. Strega is quite content to ignore other dogs if they don't push it. Sadly, this time there was a dog that decided to push it. Naturally it started with him getting mobbed. I tried to keep him moving, but the other owners were far away and not bothering to help. This caused some trouble with Strega trying to back them off him and me trying to get between him and five other dogs. The owners finally called them back and we were able to move to an under-populated section of the park. There, Strega chased his ball and all went ok, till the white, intact boxer named Max came to try getting Strega's ball instead of his own. Strega growled at Max, then snarled and Max ignored him. So in an escalation as inevitable as the sun rising, Strega twisted around and snapped in Max's face. Rather than backing down, Max pushed it just enough for Strega to nip him and jump at him. I heard Max give one cry out but rather than trying to back away when I got between then, he kept trying to get to Strega around me. I yelled at him, I growled at him, I pushed at him with the ball chucker, I stopped short of trying to hit Max knowing the owner would make matters even worse if I did but... I just kept dancing around to keep between Max and Strega. When Max's owner finally came along, I told him "If you don't get your dog I won't be able to stop the fight."His answer? "We didn't have any trouble here till you showed up."Now, just because everyone else on the playground is willing to be bullied, does that mean the kid isn't a bully? No. It just means the rest of the kids are too wussy to react. If the human equivalent of what Max was up to had been going on with me, no one would question my right to kick the crap out of the idiot. |
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| Ankle issues |
| Since I seem to be having issues with my ankle, I made an appointment to see a doctor and get it checked. That's Thursday. Till then I'm facing week two without running and decided that I might as well try to improve *something*. So, I'm working at a little table and rather than sitting on a chair, I'm sitting on my exercise ball. From time to time I straddle it and try to balance with my feet tucked up like a jockey. It's not easy, and I'm feeling it on my inner thighs and calf muscles. Makes me think I'll have to start wearing sweat pants and doing crunches on it from time to time. I still feel pretty lazy though. |
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| Work has kept me busy, and the inability to run has shut my mouth of joys to talk about. Today it's chilly and overcast, but I am contemplating pulling out my bike gear and riding before I head to the barn for some lesson time. It's been so long since I rode a bike that the chilly air intimidates me a bit.I bet I'd feel better though. I can just go out right from here and do the old Tuesday Night Chattanooga route. It's a tad rolling and there's an optional mountain climb, but perhaps a little challenge is just what my body needs. Endorphins to keep the blues at bay.Guess I'll go see if I can find my gear. |
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| I feel rudderless. Cast adrift, and alone. I keep hoping that eventually, it'll even out but so far, it's just getting worse.Being piss broke doesn't help. |
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| Haiti |
| When I watch the news and see the images from Haiti, I cannot help but recognize how very fortunate I am. There are so many things I take for granted that are blessings. Clean water, access to food, indeed the infrastructure we have of roads, supply lines and everything. There, the people within a mile walk of the airport are dead in the street or dying. Lack of water, food and shelter. No tools to try rescuing those buried alive and no quick way to get the tools there. The horror is astounding. |
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| Crap. I went to set up my printer so I could get some work done and out the door tomorrow only to discover I've lost the printer cable. CRAPTASTIC! If I can't replace it, I'll just have to print everything at Kinko's and expense it.In other news, I think I'll head back to the barn tomorrow for some ride time. Also, I'm now ready to move my washer/dryer and get the mattress. I just need a truck and a helper. Hmmm... |
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| They finally came back. The neighbor's puppy has been barking for quite a while in his desperation. They were gone all day, and he's only 10 months old. I wish I had a way to get to him to let him out for a pee break, I'm pretty sure that's what he needed so desperately. I could hear him whining as they walked in the door. I really feel for that puppy. |
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| Friday already? |
| Somehow, it's already Friday despite feeling like a Monday. It doesn't feel like a Monday from a lack of activity the past few work days, but more because the past few days I didn't really get out much. Except for Wednesday evening. I meant to run with a group on trail, but I got there a bit early and, rather than hang around in the cold, got Strega out of the car and got an early start. I let him off leash as soon as we were on the trail, since it was still light out and he's always been good on our trail runs. Well, this time he must have gotten to digging after something. When he does that, all else disappears from his world, he becomes completely focused on digging out whatever ground dwelling beastie he thinks is there. The result was that about 20 minutes into my run I realized that half of that time I'd not heard nor seen hide nor hair of my dog. This... is unusual to say the least so I called for him. When this did not elicit his appearance, I stopped and turned around. I called again, but no dog. So, I started on my back trail, figuring he was digging still in the last place I'd seen him and that I'd just leash him and be done with it. I ran my better pace back, calling out occasionally, but no dog. I didn't find him where I'd last seen him either. Now I was really starting to worry. I ran a little harder. I saw a couple guys I know heading the other way and asked if they'd seen my dog. They had. He was running back along the trail. I thanked them and ran just as fast as I could reasonably go and still be able to call for him every now and then (which is a fine line before going anaerobic). Gasping a bit, I saw the group I'd planned to run with and asked if they'd seen my dog. Yup, he was back at the car acting a little jumpy. They'd tried to get him to come with them, but he obviously hadn't. I ran on, still calling out from time to time. I found him at a full run at the trail head, he was running to me from the car. He cried in joy, wriggling around, bouncing up to kiss my face and leaning against me before running in a tight circle, only to come back and leap up to me again still half crying. My dog did what any parent would want their child to do if lost. Return to a known point of origin (the car) and remain there till found. Do not go with strangers. In his case, running to meet me at the trail head was acceptable, I'd been calling him anyway. Today, I hung what may be the ugliest curtains I've ever had. They're not really that bad, they're just not what I'd normally get. I may get more, just to spite myself. |
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| Cold Weather Running |
| You may have noticed that my icon has changed to the running tiger. I'm thinking this year, at least till it get's too hot, I'll concentrate even more on running. Actually, I need to start concentrating on not eating like a pig too, but running and eating seem to go hand in hand. I need to slow down on the latter just a tad though, I can tell I've put a few pounds back on and it's making my run less pleasant.Today was a mid-length run that felt like a long run. It's about 17 degrees out, I was layered for bear and still my legs were chilled. Maybe when it's a little less frozen it won't hurt so much. To say the least, till it's a tad warmer I'm not planning on trying to ride a horse either. |
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| Moved In |
| I got my stuff in. It's by no means unpacked, but I have my stuff in at least. Today I'm pretty much just taking it slow and easy. Every once in a while I'll get a little from my car and bring it inside, but it's the dregs. The last few items. Now that I'm in, I'm seeing all the things I'd like to do to make this place a bit more homey. Curtains, some paint on the walls and a few spots to insulate. For now, I'm just ready to stay around for a while and be done with moving. |
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| Dreams |
| I had a very disturbing dream last night. The kind that woke me up (though in fairness, it may have been my bladder that woke me) in the middle of the night. What was it about you ask?I'm not sure, exactly. What I remember was being in a large group of people trying to escape from a building. I can't remember why, but it was a large building of the sort that houses hundreds of people and it was kinda round and on a hill. I remember starting out of it with a friend but hesitating because there were also dangers outside. I remember seeing a group running out of the building with rifles and thinking "they'll deal with the dangers, let them go and after they've had a chance to deal with the enemy, then we'll go."I remember watching them run out past the hedge fence line, then turn. A group of men, women and children had followed them out about 50'behind. The men with rifles turned, let the other group get to them, and then rather unexpectedly used the butts of their rifles to club them in the heads. I remember hearing the sickening crack of skulls breaking. When all the second group was dead, me and my friend hiding in the shadows close to the building we'd just escaped, the men disappeared into the woods. I didn't trust them to be gone. I hoped, but didn't trust them. My friend and I slunk down to the hedge line and laid down in the shadows against the hedge near the opening out to the rest of the world and watched and waited. She crawled across as dusk approached to the opposite side of the opening, still inside the compound, so we could between us watch each others backs as well as outside the compound. She had a rifle. I didn't. Then a mother and child came out. The mother believing all danger passed wasn't paying close attention, she stopped to pick something up as the eight year old girl went out of the compound and headed left, not going into the woods yet. One of the riflemen ran out of the woods angled behind her so she'd not see him coming and clubbed her to death. I wanted to scream, I wanted to warn her, I wanted to do something but was frozen immobile knowing I had no weapons and would only draw death to myself. This was the point I woke.I've not had a war dream in a looong time. I take it to indicate a higher stress level. |
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