Mornin' Masters.

Good 3 miles with the biorhythms down, Dave. Good luck avoiding the cliff - I'm glad you are getting some good help with the project. I also wonder where I'll be 6 months from now... What do you think would happen if I used a GF beer in your chili recipe?

Nice 3.02 morning miles at the freezing point, Holly. What a great gesture to buy tickets to your friend's concert. He'll be thrilled, and your DH will have a great birthday.

Good 6.32 morning miles, plus stretching and core work to get you ready for selling chocolate Jlynne.

Nice sunny, comfy 5-miler, Tramps. What a funny/scary visual this suggests:  "Keystone Cops install fiber optic cable." Looking forward to reading how the story ends.

Did you get the lots of leaves that you hoped for, Tet? Nice work on the Northside Hillside. Yes, pain is pretty much gone, so no excuse to keep taking drugs. Steve is right: RA is Cheers in many respects.

So sorry to learn of Carol's rapid decline, Leslie, but it may be the best for her. And congrats to Teonna. I hope the issues at work get resolved in ways that are good for you - stay strong as they evolve.

Welcome home, KSA, and good luck to Ken with his surgery. My take: You can move faster and with more agility on crutches, but using them takes some effort, and you have to be careful to not hurt your armpits or the side of your rib cage from how you are holding/bracing the crutch uppers; a walker is a bit easier on the body, and is more stable with 4 points of contact, but it is also slower going. I'm trying to use the crutches during the day and walker at night.

I'm glad you are giving your banged-up body a bit of a rest, Deeze. Nice 45 minute power ride and 4 mile run with some intervals. Happy Birthday to your DH.

That's a lot of layers, Doug, but all that counts is that they work for you on chilly-weather rides. I hope the burgers & beer was fun.True perspective on project management.

Good thoughts, Quickadder. Nice to have you jump in. Please do that more often.

I hope you get some good workouts in Denver, Norm, but not in those new cowboy boots.

"Recovery is a process that operates on its own timeline" Lot of wisdom there, sub7 - thanks. Glad that you made it through your post-shots, shorty, carpy workout. I hope you feel better today.

Good hour in the park with trailboots, Tomwhite.

I hope the bed, blanket, and book helped, dnaff.

Enke, I posted a cranberry jalopeno dip in the recipe thread, not far up from Dave's chili recipe. We've made it a bunch of times, and it goes over really well.

Good 6 miler in shorts, t shirt, and screw shoes, Wildchild.

Good windless 5 miler, moebo. That is a long way to go for a teeth cleaning. I'll have to take a look at that game.

Good 5.63 RUNNING miles with a gaggle of angry birds, RCG. DW, who is always the last one up in the morning, makes our bed every day.

Good post-work 5K on the TM, Tammy.

Good 19.6 book-finishing ride, Evanflein. Congrats on the upgrade on your flight to Kauai tomorrow. And I hope your mom's foot is OK (and I think you helped manage that appropriately).

Your pool mileage/yardage for the year is amazing, BTY. Great work!

PT went well yesterday. But I got confirmation that I should expect to be non-weight-bearing for the full 6 weeks of recovery - bummer. I also took another crutches walk up and down the driveway yesterday afternoon, and by nighttime, I was sore from so much crutching. 45 minutes of stretching, knee exercises, and a bit of core and upper body work this morning. And now I have to go to my first Zoom meeting of the day, followed by a doc. appointment for a knee check-in.

Have a greta Wednesday.

Jay

Jay - good for you for staying active in your recovery, but like others have said, be careful.

Holly, what do you wear those boots with? I've never had boots like that and wouldn't know what to do with them.   

Erika - I wear these boots with leggings and a long (covers the butt) sweater or shirt.  Alternatively, I wear them with skinny jeans tucked into them and a sweater.  Or with a certain dress/jean jacket combo.  But most often with the leggings and long sweater/shirt.

Here's one option:  (from left to right is Starr, MikeE, me, and the Easy Pacer)

Oh, and in this photo you can't really tell, but Kristin and I are both wearing sweaters with leggings and boots.

That's not a thing where you live?

My DS works for the City of Dayton and his office is less than 5 miles from mine, so I am taking him out to lunch downtown today.

3.1 miles for me today in 36 degrees.

Thanks, Jay, and thanks for the walker/crutches advice.  I need to try to borrow a walker.  I'm sure between neighborhood folks and church folks someone has one sitting in a garage.

Holly- the boot pictures are great.  I, too, wear boots a lot- including cowboy boots.  Leggings, jeans, midi-dresses etc.

4.6 miles- sunny and a beautiful 50 degree fall morning (hope Sub7 is warm enough....).  Legs tired from yesterday, but I got it done.

We had a good (meaning Vanderbilt won) basketball game last night, so some of the Twitter/X loud mouths are silenced for a bit.  Hot dog and half a beer for dinner at the game.

okay, here's Wednesday.

That's interesting about the genetic link, Leslie.  But it seemed there had to be some sort of gene that was a carrier for several in the same nuclear family to get that. Kind of like my friend Hayley, who both she and her brother died of very similar cancers. Again, there must be a genetic link and not just chance.

Sorry to hear you are coming down with something, so maybe now in hindsight, it's a good thing your trip to Portland is kiboshed. The last thing you'd want to do is spread it to Carole's family during your brief visit. 

Will get in a run this afternoon after work, then run with the weekly brew crew at 6 pm.

When I woke up at 5:30 a.m., but laid in bed until 6:20, I started thinking about Christmas and David's bday (12/11) and how I haven't even begun to think of gifts for anyone and I have no idea what things David might need/want.  We are keeping gift giving minimal this year and there are only 5 of us, but I'm having a hard time thinking of gifts for anyone this year!

I have a pair of boots like that also Holly. They are pretty versatile. I usually wear mine with leggings and a shorter skirt.

Thanks for the start, Jay. Six weeks seems like a long time. Oy!

Being a caretaker to a nonagenarian is a lot of work.

Good NYT piece this week on--among other things-- the toll elder-care takes on families.

At last, I’m writing via speedy FIOS internet service!  We’ve gone from about 2 mbps service on our old copper-line DSL to 300 mbps via fiber optic…and at less than half the cost. Go figure. (We can get up to 1 gbps for a higher cost but we figure 150 times faster is probably plenty for now.   Our whole neighborhood is “migrating” from the old, copper DSL line, leap-frogging over cable (which was never available here), to fiber optic. Each installation was supposed to take 2 days: one day for burying the fiber optic cable, the second day to do the actual connection and testing.  There’s lots of installation activity going on, so you’d think this process would be routine by now. You’d be wrong. (Feel free to skip all the nonsense below; First World problems.)

Here’s the short version (no, really; there’s much more)

• The conduit was laid in our area this Spring and we were told we'd have service within days but apparently Verizon and the CSX railroad argued over needed access rights to a railroad underpass delaying actual cable installation for months.
• When service did become available, communication was non-existent; we were never notified and only learned about availability when a neighbor (who has a relative that works for Verizon) got service installed. In fact, it was so hard to get any info from Verizon about anything that Tribee took to getting in the car to find a Verizon van (they’re doing lots of work in the area) and asking a real-live person there for info!  We took to calling them the “mobile customer service vans.”
• TriBee’s father is part owner of a small company that lays fiber optic cable for the big telecom firms so we got tips from him in advance, including: (1) don’t let them cross your gravel driveway without putting the line in conduit, the Kevlar cable casing will very likely get pierced by the gravel in just a few months. Besides, the first time you grade or add gravel, you’ll be in for trouble and (2) never let them just lay the cable on the ground “temporarily”; it may well be months before anyone shows up to bury it because a working connection becomes the lowest priority. We felt prepared.
• Day 1. Verizon contracts with a company to actually lay the cable from the conduit to individual homes but that company actually subcontracts the work to a third company. (What could possibly go wrong?) After several days delay, a crew finally turns up to lay cable. They don’t want to cross our driveway without conduit (as my FIL warned against), they want to run the entire line right down our driveway without conduit! That’s some 200+ yards of trouble just waiting to happen. Since they have very limited English skills—and TriBee’s high-school Spanish is worse—we all agree getting the supervisor out to investigate was the best course of action. Turns out, he’s not available today; crew leaves.
• Day 2. Supervisor from the contracting company (not the sub-contractor) shows up and immediately understands our concerns. He explains this installation really should be hung from the phone pole but Verizon won’t pay the rental fee to the power company for doing so. They also won’t pay for conduit, so we walk the area to find a route that won’t go down or cross our gravel drive. Fortunately, our neighbor—who’s house is between us and the road--readily agrees to let us cross their property and we end up with a long, convoluted route across the edge of their yard, through the woods to our house that doesn’t involve gravel driveways. The supervisor lays out the flags and says the crew is on its way to install. He leaves; the crew never shows up.
• Day 3. Verizon tech shows up to do the actual connection but, of course, there’s no cable. He offers to lay cable on the ground “temporarily.” We decline. He records our preference and says the crew will turn up tomorrow to lay cable, they’ll notify Verizon it’s been done, and then a technician will automatically be rescheduled to do the connection. We don’t need to do anything.
• Day 4. No one shows up.
• Day 5. No one shows up by late afternoon so we call. Verizon says they have no record of any of this, just that our installation is on “hold.” Did I mention every call to them involves at least 45 minutes of waiting, Muzak, transfers, waiting, Muzak,…etc.?  We’re told a crew will show up “first thing” the next morning.
• Day 6. No one shows up. We call again and again are told a crew is scheduled for the next day.
• Day 7. Crew actually shows up! They are not happy campers when they see the long, convoluted route through the woods and claim their trencher won’t be able to work there. We tell them to contact their supervisor, since he laid the route. This involves many hand gestures since this is the original limited-English crew from a week ago. Eventually, they relent and, miraculously, the trencher apparently works fine through the woods.  We have cable in the ground!
• Day 8. Given their track record, we call Verizon to make sure a tech is scheduled to come out again, now that we have cable. He is not. Again, no one seems to have a record of anything except that our installation is on “hold.” After much too much Muzak, we eventually get a tech scheduled for a couple days from now.
• Day 10. Tech shows up. He’s an old-timer ready for retirement. A bit crusty but seems knowledgeable and competent. He gets things hooked up and tested. We chat and, unsurprised, he rolls his eyes at our tale. “It’s all about money these days,” he says. Indeed.
• Day 11. With working service, we now start the ordeal of getting our bill squared away. We've been billed for both our old service (which no longer exists) and our new service. In addition, because we have a Verizon wireless account for cell phones, we’re eligible for a discount on our home internet service (bringing the charge down to just $25/month). But Verizon Wireless is technically a different company from Verizon proper and they do not appear to be on speaking terms. Needless to say, more excessive Muzak sessions are required to finally have one side of Verizon (mobile) communicate with the other side (home) to get the accounts linked, discount applied, etc. I'm no quite done yet, but hile waiting, I get to write this post.
• A post-script: In college, Tribee and I lived one year in a big run-down house populated by mostly international students. A couple of them were from Eastern bloc (then Soviet satellite) countries and they had hilariously dark comic Kafkaesque tales about the inefficiencies and ineptitude of the communist bureaucracies. It took forever to get anything done. No one could give you any correct information. Departments didn’t communicate with each other. Only those with insider contacts could learn about what was actually going on. The workers tried their best but the system was a mess designed only to enrich those apparatchiks at the top, etc. etc. It occurred to us that, 40 years later, contemporary capitalism has finally caught up with Soviet-era communism. 

Oh, I rode for about 24 miles today.  (And Deez, yeah, all my miles are outside.)

Hello everybody!

On Monday, I took Ryan’s dog with me on my run.  About 1/2 mile into it, I tripped on his leash and went down hard.  My ribs landed right on my right elbow.  My elbow is scrapped, bruised, and swollen, but doesn’t hurt at all.  My ribs, though—oh man, do they hurt! I did finish my run on Monday—6 miles.  Yesterday, was a day off and I think I might try running, tonight.  If I don’t cough, sneeze, or get the hiccups, it’s not too bad.  I considered going to Urgent Care to see if anything is cracked but decided just to wait and see how it feels in a couple days.  They don’t do anything with them, anyway, except tell you not to do anything for 6 weeks, or so.  

Okay—lunch is over—back to work.  See ya!

Tramps - 

Jay -  Crutches always killed my armpits the first few days.

Boots - I've tried boots, but have never found a pair that were comfortable.  I don't do a heel or any shoes that are narrow in the toe box.

Beds - Basically, the covers get pulled up - mostly neatly.

Well . . . I have CV.  Who's the *&%^ who gave it to me?  I can't go back to work until Monday, so since I was planning on being off work Thursday and Friday anyway - no harm, no foul, I guess.  The really bad part is I had cancel my hair appointment for today! 

Leslie- ugh.  Have you had it before?  I hope it isn't too bad.

Mike- I've had the bruised and possibly cracked ribs from falls before and it is so painful- especially turning over in bed.  The main reason to get xrays is to make sure there isn't a bad enough crack where something is sticking out and could puncture a lung.  As you noted, they don't do anything for ribs anyway.  I was able to run through my last one which was about 5 years ago, but starting up on the run was terrible.  Once I got going I was mainly ok.  I slipped on some dog slobber on our tiled bathroom floor which caused that fall.  It was right on the heels of a stress fracture and I think the orthopedist thought someone was beating me up!