Monday, December 17, 2007

Bzzzzt! WTF was that?

Last night was one of those nights that it was jut hard to get a good nights sleep. Woke up a couple times and just couldn't turn my brain off. At one point I got up, had a quick snack, went back to bed actually drifted off to sleep. However it didn't last as I heard a strange beep from my phone. Well it wasn't strange, it was the beep of it being pulled off the charger. Huh, look over and the power just blinked back on. Get up, reset the clock and try to doze off again. 10 minutes later I hear a big Bzzzzt! in the distance outside. My neighbors backyard light goes out and the phone beeps. Damnit, that's not going to come back on very quickly. :(

Thanks to this little incident down the road from me, Fire! my morning plans kinda got altered.

Since the power was out the it was going to cool down quick I skipped the shower this morning and just tried shaving by flashlight. Well after looking in the mirror here at work I kinda went light and almost missed a couple patches. I'll be spending the rest of the day looking like a Calico, but at least I didn't freeze. :)

MRI tonight, wish me luck!

Thursday, December 13, 2007

What time is it? Why it's wine thirty!

That's right boys and girls, when life throws you a curve ball, you consume alcohol.

This evening I started off wit ha little bit of mud slide but just wasn't in the mood. For some reason wine sounded so much better to accent the tape I now have on my shoulder. Glass #2 is going down smoooooth.














Tape you ask? Why yes, I have two different types of the finest medical grade tape you can get at your local physical therapists office. It comes in beautiful brown and wonderful white, both a sure to please for the holiday season. Why the tape? Well apparently the PT was less than impressed with the funny faces I was making as she contorted my arm and shoulder around for maximum reaction. Soon I had my shirt off and she was washing my shoulder down with some type of anti-itch and burn solution so should could apply my cool new tu-tone (867-5309) skin. She pushed, she pried and she taped my arm back up into the socket so it can heal while I live with this new skin on my shoulder for three days. Not being able to lift your arm past your shoulder without wincing is a bad thing I guess. The tape seems to help though, but I'm worried as she was trying to sugar coat the recover time of my injury.

They did have this cool contraption at PT though. They applied four electrode patches to my shoulder and arm tossed a hot compress on then started pressing buttons on the little white box. Woah! My arm is feeling all tingly and my muscles are starting to twitch. The assistant noticed though and backed down the juice a bit. While not the most comfortable feeling in the world the device intrigues me. One of these visits I'm going to turn that son of a bitch up and see if it can make my arm do the Hokey Pokey.

It's dead Jim!

Both my rotator cuff and my recently resurrected trainer bike specialized.

The first visit with the PT today confirmed what the doc suspected. My rotator cuff is torn but to what extent is unknown. In the mean time I'll be starting PT tomorrow and the MRI will follow next Monday. I'm not looking forward to doing PT twice a week for the next fouor weeks, but if it will get me healing I'll deal.

Today has been a bitter sweet bike day for me. I had a great spin at the shop, picked up a cool Free Agent for a young boy in need. Daniel sold me the bike way below cost, mad props to Cycle To Fitness for being charitable. I was giddy and excited about the Christmas gift for the young lad so when I was pulling into my garage I totally forgot about the Allez on my roof. :(
















Well that's what's left of it. Actually it's in amazing shape for being wedged between my car and the garage. The rear wheel is slightly bent, again. The fork sheared right off too, but that is all the additional damage. The Yakima tray however is toast and the bar for the rack is a bit bent along with the factory luggage rack. The mighty Allez will be getting a freebie steel fork to continue it's trainer duty. And me, we'll I'll get back in the habit of hiding my door opener as soon as I put the bike on my car.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Priorities

So for some reason I left the grocery store tonight without milk or eggs although I did walk out with not one but two bottles of wine. And my boss says I need to be better at prioritizing....

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Knock Knock Knock




Well that's what I'm waiting to hear on the door one of these times when I'm on the big terrible wind machine.









This was the first night I used my wind trainer sans ipod and headphones. I decided to just turn on the stereo and go. Tonight was the first and probably the last time for that little foray in to that little aural assault. Between the stereo and the trainer that sounds more like an air raid siren I'm sure it won't be long before the neighbors knock on my door. If I don't end up selling this thing I'm going to stick to headphones only.

On a good note, my big VMware 2.5 to Vi3 migration is almost done at work! Just three more VM's to move, two to power off and it's goodnight ESX 2.5 for my group. Then on to the backup data center to take them to Vi3 after the new year. One of these nights I'll write up the quirks of the new platform.

Spin to Win!

Well it's been three weeks since I got hit and tonight I finally got back in the saddle for a good trainer ride at Cycle To Fitness. I trued the rear wheel on the accident bike, put a new crank set, seat post and saddle on it for using on the trainer this winter. The frame is a bit tweaked so I'll be using the components on a new KHS CX200 frame eventually. The rear wheel is way off tension so that will get replaced as well.

Miami was cool enough to loan me his mag trainer as my wind unit would have driven most of us insane. I got started after the guys, but I got a good 45 minutes in and it felt pretty good. My legs in fact felt stronger than they have in a long time. The old ticker certainly let me know I had been taking it easy for a while though. My shoulder is not ready for road riding or swimming, but I think these trainer nights will keep my cardio humming along.

I also picked up a cool Christmas gift for Dirty Picasso girl before splitting, my shopping for her is done, now on to the rest of the family!

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Puppies!

That's right folks, new Greyhound puppies on the way! The team invites went out and the Cycle to Fitness Greyhounds are awaiting responses from those that applied.

This year is going to be bigger and better than ever. We have expanded from just Mountain bike to include road and multi-sport teams! I'll be heading up an army of roughly 10 people who will be waging battle in the water, on bike and on foot. Charge! Although at this point I think I'd make a better captain if I could actually swim and bike so this Friday I go to see the ortho about my popping and crunchy shoulder. With some luck he can help me fix what the car broke.

On a happy note, the nice insurance lady just dropped me an email to let me know the next check is being cut for my replacement bike. I already replaced the Specialized with a pretty new BMC!



Hopefully I'll be ready to rock it when the warm weather arrives. Until then it's trainer time and hopefully some running now and then.

Monday, December 3, 2007

What's this?

So I've decided to step it up, move to the 21st century and not do it via creating a Myspace page.

Here you won't find dazzling blinky pictures that say hello from all my online friends, but you may happen to find some things that amuse me, my training habits, my races, my good days and my bad.

Now if I could figure out which blog I'm actually updating to, I'm off and running!