Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

Prescription goggles seem to be a hit or miss proposition. Most of them at my approximate prescription are fine, but the one which listed itself merely as “strong” and a pretty broad range of prescriptions seems pretty damned useless. With the others I can see, even on land, almost as well as with my glasses. These, well, might as well be regular goggles for all the good they do. Which is, of course, why I ordered multiple pairs to try them out, both for vision and for fit. Two more to try tomorrow (excluding the bad ones). I really liked the first ones, so these have a lot to live up to.

Spent some time adding people to the Wii and the two games there (see my LJ for the codes). BC and I spent most of yesterday together, over at his place. Bought some Birkenstocks so I have shoes to wear inside the house, as well as outside for pre-race/post-race wear. Damned podiatrist and his sensible orders not to go barefoot. Not pleased with it, but wearing them inside does seem to be helping. Which is even more annoying, that he was right, and that walking around barefoot inside was somehow a bad thing. Blasted flat feet. Did the mom’s day brunch thing with BC’s family. Came home mid-afternoon in the rain (ugh), played some, made some dinner & lunches for the next couple of days. Just chatting and being a bum here tonight before I crash.

Have to take the Mini in at some point. It’s got this neat trick where if I accelerate too quickly, the run-flat tires’ pressure sensor thinks the tires have just gone down by more than 10% pressure, so the warning light cuts on, which then cuts out the ABS brakes and several other lights come on, the car dings at me, and it’s altogether incredible annoying. I know it’s not that the tires are actually going flat, because Dad gave me a plug-in pump that I’ve checked them all with. So it’s a bad sensor. Grrr. It did manage not to do the trick until I got onto the bridge over the Potomac on the way home this evening, thankfully.

Of course, I mention this to Dad and his reaction was to tell me about the other trick it has of cutting off the AC if you accelerate too quickly with the AC on. That, thankfully, resets when you stop the car and turn off the engine, but not until then. Gotta love it when your car’s computer has to reboot itself.

Anyway, off to bed so I can run & swim tomorrow. Taper week, with the race next Sunday, but it’s still got to be done.

Started the day relatively early, at least early for me these days. After an early breakfast and putzing around the house, I hauled myself up to upper NorthWhite Northwest DC to get myself tested. Specifically, I was getting a VO2Max test. This involved getting a Hannibal Lector-esque mask strapped over my nose and mouth and then running myself ragged.

It actually isn’t as bad as it sounds. They just strap you in, hook you up to a detector, then start you walking at a moderate pace on a treadmill. The pace picks up until you get to a preset one (set by the tester after talking about your pace), then they start increasing the incline. All of this happens slowly over the course of 15 minutes, until you get up to your upper limits, which I presume they could tell by the VO2 feedback. I hit 200 beats per minute before we went into cooldown mode.

I’ve not gotten the full results back yet (they’re being emailed to me), but the tester did confirm something which I’d suspected for several years now – I burn high when it comes to heart rate in exercise. I look forward to seeing what the tests show for where my heart rates are supposed to be now, as it’ll help me train more intelligently. I’ve wanted to do one of these tests for a while, but the timing never worked before now. I’m planning to follow up with another test in a month to see how training affects the numbers.

And it was wonderful getting to run after a full month down from the vertigo, even to that level of effort. Perhaps especially to that level of effort.

After coming home to clean up I zipped out to my local yarn shop to pick up some longer circular needles for the scarf I’m working on (the 16″ was getting annoying – kept catching on the cable). Their selection waxes and wanes, so I picked up several pair while I was at it, for future projects. Switching the scarf over was easily done, and the longer cable’s been much easier to knit with. Not quite halfway done with the first skein. Posted a pic on Flickr today of the progress as of this afternoon when I updated the status over on Ravelry.

Haven’t seen much of BC lately. He’s dealing with his company’s annual audit this past week and next (plus all the prep the week before last). Headed out to the movies with him tomorrow, after a run in the afternoon, I hope. Depends on his work load, but it should work. I just picked up an EZ-Pass for the mini, so I don’t have to keep popping change on the toll road to get out to his place. His parents have accepted an offer on some property to turn into a winery, and he’s going to purchase their house from them, so for the foreseeable future I’ll be driving to Herndon on a semi-regular basis. The EZ-Pass just makes it that much easier to get out there.

One last appointment with the podiatrist in a week, then I should be cleared entirely from his care, which is the last bit of anything going on. The plantar fasciitis is gone, and has been gone for several weeks now, but this is just one last appointment to milk my insurance company ensure it’s well and truly 100% gone. Until then I can still run, so that starts up tomorrow with BC, and then swimming again come Monday. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this was it, because the long-term goal is focused on the IM now.

BC and I had a nice, low-key NYE, over at a friend’s house with a few other folks. Much fun was had playing Godzilla Unleashed on his Wii, and aside from a single glass of champagne at midnight I didn’t touch a drop (I drove up there so we didn’t have to deal with taxis or Metro). Driving home was the most challenging part – drunken people popping out in the road at random intervals, all trying to flag down any taxi they could. What. A. Mess.

No new year’s day run this year – we got up too late, and then had to zip off to another get-together at Richard’s place in the afternoon. No matter, we got in a nice 4 miles today which, while cold, wasn’t bad. The cold symptoms are calming somewhat finally, but aren’t completely gone quite yet. Rest, relaxation, lots of water, and no drinking. Am going to begin exercising again, though. I just can’t wait any longer.

Speaking of which, signed up for my third and final triathlon for this year, the Nation’s Triathlon here in DC. So I’m doing Columbia in May (Olympic distance), Nation’s Tri in September (Olympic again), and Ironman Arizona (aka IMZ) in November. And a couple of other running events, I’m sure, sprinkled in between (Lawyers Have Heart 10k in June, the National Press Club 5k in September, etc.). Aside from IMZ, they’re all local things, so not a ton of travel for races this year, which should be a bit easier, especially if I’m transitioning jobs later this year.

We did a little shopping today, and I picked up some extra controllers for the two gaming systems, as well as recharging stations for both – no more disposable batteries.

So, a nice quiet beginning to the year, which I hope bodes well for the rest of it.

Work has been torture today – it’s my last day in the office until next week, and on top of that our email went down for most of the day (after the firedrill at 10, that is). The network is still hosed for getting at documents, so trying to work on a lot of things isn’t the easiest thing today.

Since my last serious update I’ve run a 5k with BC & his family (local turkey trot this past weekend), made progress in both Super Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess, picked up a couple more games on sale, found out my year-end bonus is coming (hello, new oven), had a soup & bad movies party, and have been otherwise occupied with life. BC & I are doing well. I’m headed down to see my folks for Thanksgiving, partially to see them before they take off for Florida for the winter, and partially so I don’t force the whole vegan thing on BC’s mother on the first major holiday she’s known me. She and her husband are doing well with it, but I am a bit sensitive to such things.

Back on the subject of games, what nimrod at Nintendo thought fishing would be fun? I spent a good 10-20 minutes yelling at the screen (“This is not fun! This is not entertaining!”) while trying to fish in the damned Ordon village before I gave up and googled the answer – you have to wiggle both controllers side to side, not up and down as Nintendo tells you to do. Once I switched I caught the requisite fish easily, but that was decidedly Not Fun, unlike the rest of the game. They’re lucky its not a larger part of the plot or I’d have been tempted to sell the game. My time is too precious to me for un-entertaining games.

And I beat Puzzle Quest on the DS finally. BC’s envious, he’s still working on it. I saw they ported it to the Wii as well, but I don’t see how the game would be much fun without the stylus and touch screen of the DS.

[…]

I love trying to explain legal citations to folks. Case in point, I was just telling one of my budget folks about 3 provisions of law she needs for footnotes, and for each one there at least 4 different ways to cite it – the amendment which gave us the funds acceptance authority (section XXX of public law YYY-YYY), the original section which was amended (section AAA of public law BBB-BBB, as amended), the US Code cite (cc USC dddd, note), and a statutes at large cite (eee STAT ffff), and all four were useable depending on her audience (Tre*sury, for example, only wants cites to the Statutes at Large). I told her to go with the code cites for our internal reference – they’re easier for non-lawyers to find, in my experience.

Anyway, haircut & laundry & playing on the Wii tonight, then driving to Tidewater tomorrow for the holiday. Hopefully will be a nice, quiet time.

I’m helping another staff with interviews they’re doing for a position which will have a focus on the type of law that I do, so today I wore a suit so I’d look presentable for the interview. My boss walked into the office early in the morning and asked why I was in a suit (I normally don’t even bother with a tie). “Oh, I have an interview,” I replied. Her eyes got really, really big. “You know, I’m helping [the other office] with vetting and there’s an interview today,” I continued. She was quite relieved to hear that. And then accused me of being cheeky, which I suppose I was. But one does have to have some fun with the boss on occasion, no?

Short run this morning. First morning I’ve needed to haul out cold weather gear (tights, gloves, heavier top layer). Very short run, less than two miles, about twenty minutes, focusing on keeping the heart rate down rather than pace (though I do glance at the pace thing from time to time).

Fantastic weekend with BC. Went out drinking with he and Brian and Mikey on Friday, made risotto for dinner Saturday, home fries and tofu scramble for brunch Sunday, carved pumpkins with his family on Sunday afternoon. Lots of good food, lots of fun. ‘Twas nice to spend the entirety of the weekend with him, with no real plans to have to go or be anywhere if we didn’t want to. Very good time.

I have to get to serious cleaning this week in anticipation of the weekend after next. More a matter of putting things away than anything else, but it’s a necessity if I’m to have folks in here. And laundry must be done, and done soon. Had planned on it tonight, but didn’t have the energy for it, especially after zipping up to check on the cats at Richard’s place (thank heavens I have the mini for such trips now). Tomorrow or Wednesday, then. No plans to go out on Halloween, not for lack of an invite or two, just for lack of motivation to get all dressed up. I couldn’t care less about costuming, and there won’t be trick or treaters in the high rise. All my candy is at work anyway.

Looks like my site it down, so I’m going to leave this up on the laptop and try to post it in the morning. At least the building turned the heat on three days earlier than they planned to (I hope they got the new valves in!), so it’s not frigid in here tonight.

That was an interesting trip ‘home.’ I went down to Tidewater this weekend to see my parents, and my grandparents, and help my brother and his family move their stuff out of their old apartment. Oh, and pick up Mom & Dad’s Cooper Mini to drive back to DC ‘on loan’ from the parental units.

The parents were chipper (though I despair of Mom’s occasional racist outburst – they’re couched in code, but I know what they are. Ugh). My brother was doing much better. At one point I rubbed his fuzzy little head (he’d shaved his head before the latest bout of madness – a sure sign he’s about to go over the deep end – and it’s just growing back) and told him I’d never be able to take him to a bear bar because they’d just keep rubbing the fuzz there. Thankfully he’s quite cool with the queer thing, and wouldn’t freak out at it.

Did not see the oldest niece, but did see the younger two. The youngest was much, much more animated than the last time I was down, which was right after she’d had some eye surgery. The middle one is a trip and a half. Will babble like crazy at you, making no sense (that we can tell), but as long as you are attentive, she’s happy. Must be nice to be 19 months old that way.

The grandparents were, well, a bit sad to see. Granddaddy has terrible balance now, and is starting to lose his hearing. Grandmother’s balance is better, but still a trifle shaky. And thank heavens I’m thin or I’d have been hearing ‘fat’ comments all afternoon like my brother got an earful of. But not within Mom’s earshot – she’s let her father know she does not appreciate such comments and that he needs to quit it, in no uncertain terms. Saw many recent pictures of cousins and their kids, and was greatly saddened that they all seem to be, well, fat. Or at least on the pudgy side of average. One aunt is just plain morbidly obese. Oy. And the family wonders why I do triathlons.

Oh, and in among the pictures was one of the president and first lady. Evidently the grandparents sent his campaign money. I still wore my earrings down there, though.

And appropos of nothing, there was absolutely no cell signal to be had down there. I started feeling like the little geek god from American Gods when they were in the nowhere place.

Traded in my DS for a DS Lite while down there (among other spending) and gave the DS to Dad. He’s had this Brain Age game for a bit, and could only use it when the eldest niece came over with her DS, so now he’s good to go. He also got some vision training game for it when I was getting the Lite (or, rather, I got it for him, though he picked it out). The reviews were right – the Lite’s screen is much nicer, though I’m not completely sold on the feel of the thing yet. The rumble pack sticks out of the front of the Lite, where it was completely inside the DS, and it’s not as comfortable to hold the sides while playing Metroid Prime Pinball as it was on the DS. I suppose I’ll get used to it.

I always forget how much driving is involved with being down there. Driving to stores, driving to restaurants, driving to grocery shopping, etc. I’m so spoiled here in DC, with a bus and rail system that, for all its faults, is pretty good at getting me (and others) around.
The drive back was uneventful. The mini’s a manual transmission, but does have cruise control, so most of the trip was spent with that on. Unlike driving back on a Sunday, traffic was pretty light, and I was able to actually spend most of the trip in the right lane, cruising along without being in other cars’ way, and vice versa. Only when we got into Richmond proper, and on the approach to DC, did I really have to take off the cruise control and dodge folks.

It’s going to be interesting having a car at my disposal again. I have an assigned parking space in one of our lots, so it’s off the street, and I’m supposed to pick up a cover from friends soon so I can keep it cleaner. It does have South Dakota tags, but the handicapped tags (Mom qualifies) were not in yet, so Dad’s going to send them to me later to switch out the plates. Shouldn’t run into problems with DC fussing at me for not registering the car here since it’ll be off-street and so not in the regular view of parking enforcement types. There are a couple maintenance issues which will crop up soon, two things that are going to need replacing/repairing, for which I have estimates, but which are not immediately needed. Otherwise everything which needed to be done to it has been repaired by Dad in anticipation of the trip to DC. Oh, and Dad prefers to put premium gas in it, so there’s that expense as well. But at 30 or so miles to the gallon, that’s not overly burdensome I suppose.

So it’s a mixed blessing, as most cars are. But I’m glad to have it.