Wordless Wednesday - Track

Some Saturday Stuff

My workouts are in a state of chaos lately. After the last race I ran, the Cotton Row, my calf injury stopped me from running for awhile, so I was biking. But for some reason I seem to have a problem with my heel now. I think a ligament in my foot is inflamed, but I'm not sure. Whatever the case, biking has been my thing. And the bobcats make the idea of jogging through my neighborhood somewhat less appealing anyway. But this thing with my heel concerns me. I've already got a nagging calf problem. This makes what, 3 years in a row this calf thing has impacted me? If I add a nagging heel problem to it then my running days may be done.

One of the most popular things I've ever posted here was when I talked about the lunatic at my office stealing my coffee cup. When it first began the CIO's assistant immediately said "It's those people who sit around you, that group." And she specifically pointed a finger at 2 women in particular. I don't know why I do this, but I said "no, its not them. They're both nice to me."  I shouldn't have, but that was my reaction. All this time later I realize that I wasn't their first victim and the assistant had reason to point the finger at them without even hesitating. My shielding of them only egged them on.

I researched the worst one of them on the internet and found her various social media profiles. They were unintentionally hilarious in a pretentious, narcissistic way. Her name is Melanie. Her profile photo features her pretending to laugh as she holds a glass of wine. But it doesn't look quite right somehow. It looks like she's trying too hard to convince you. Anyway, she's the source of all the trouble. I hadn't even worked at this company for very long before I had overhead enough of Melanie's endless drama and personal phone calls to realize that she is a huge drama queen who just loves to stir up trouble and then sit in the middle of it and insult everyone caught up in her whirlwind of chaos. It makes her feel important. And that is really all she cares about. Half the time she was on the phone with family members screaming at them for being inferior idiots. Usually it was her mother she was abusing, complaining that her mother called her for help too often and usually for stupid things (Facebook.) But she loved it. She loved having them dependent upon her for certain things so she could yell and abuse them whenever they needed her. And she loved Facebook so much that she talked openly about how much time she was spending at work updating her Facebook profile or worrying over what some random guy 'meant' with his latest status update (whether it was about her.)

Like all narcissists, she would frequently get bored and abuse people to entertain herself. Stealing my coffee cup was her way of making a boring day fun for her. Never mind the trouble it caused for me. Never mind the trouble it caused her entire team after I asked HR to put a stop to it and they dragged her coworkers in and talked to them. She didn't care. She just liked to stir things up and abuse anyone unfortunate enough to come in contact with her.  Luckily for me, I don't have to come into contact with her anymore. I left that company and went somewhere else.

Aside from that, my life is pretty uninteresting right now. I'm studying a lot for my work. I have also been trying to focus on a project for my own personal benefit, but can't seem to stay motivated. The fact that my laptop died and seems to have lost all my work didn't help any, though. I don't want to start over. If I was struggling with motivation before, losing all my previous work has made the struggle a lot harder. Outside it is July and that means hot and humid. There is hot and then there is July in The South hot. It hasn't gotten above the mid-90s yet, but we're on our way there. I can run in heat up to about 95 degrees and not suffer so badly that I have to stop. But after 95 I don't feel like the run is doing me much good. The heat takes too much of a toll and I don't accomplish much. Maybe I'll find a new gym near my new workplace and get back on the dreaded treadmill until summer is past the worst part? Oh speaking of gyms ....

I haven't lifted weights in months. I stopped weightlifting and focused exclusively on running and biking prior to running the Cotton Row race. Since then I still haven't gotten back into weights again. I really should hurry up and find a good place to lift because it isn't good for me to go for so many months without doing any weightlifting at all. But then again, in my current situation it might not be such a bad thing because .....

I have a nagging back injury that won't seem to go away. I'm not even sure what I did to set this off, but it keeps coming back and it hurts like crazy. Sometimes it makes my neck hurt, but only on one side. Other times it is my upper back that is killing me. But again, only on one side. It's a truly strange back injury. It only hurts on one side. This is something I don't really know what to do with.

Do any of you have ideas about this? Any of you ever experienced a back injury that only seemed to hurt you on one side of your body? What did you do for it?

The Weird Question Meme, part II

If this were Wordless Wednesday ...

Setting aside the fact that I never did The Weird Question Meme part I, here is a lovely meme that I stole from Momspective. Hey, don't hate on me for following mom blogs. Most of the blogs out there are mom blogs and some of them are really, really funny.

What is your ring size?

I have no clue, but my wedding ring was slightly too large when I got married and these days it's so tight that I hardly ever wear it. Yes, I know, why not just get it resized, you say. Well, mostly because I'm too lazy.

How often do you wear jewelry?

Considering that my wedding ring is the only jewelry I ever wore, aside from a wristwatch, and I hardly wear my ring anymore, and never wear my wristwatch, I'd have to say 'never'. Also, I hate wearing jewelry in general. If you gave me a $10,000 Rolex watch I'd still almost never wear it. I just don't like wearing jewelry.

When was the last time you consumed alcohol?  

I cannot remember, and that tells you absolutely nothing, really, because my neighbor is a DJ on a beer brewers radio program and regularly hands me strange cans and bottles of various unusual alcoholic beverages to try. One time I was in the middle of mowing my lawn when he suddenly appeared with a bottle and handed it to me. I drank it, of course, but it made finishing the mowing really awkward because my mower doesn't have cup holders.  Anyway, all I've really learned from all this alcoholic experimentation is that I do not like pale ales from India. Blech.

Any big plans for the summer?

I plan to put up with a ridiculous amount of abuse from pricks who don't know what the hell they're looking for, apparently. And that is my summer plan in a nutshell. So excited.

Oh Lord, I've just forgotten. What did I come in here for again?

What is your favorite comfort food?

This is where, in my former life, I would have answered 'Jessica Biel.' But this is a new life and I shall not resort to that. Although, to be fair, I would love to ... no, no, we aren't going down that road. My favorite comfort food is probably a cup of ice cream. Or maybe a pizza. Or even a bowl of cereal, depending on my mood. If I feel truly horrible, a good old-fashioned bowl of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup is the only thing I crave. But that's for when I'm sick.

Do you prefer broccoli or asparagus?

I don't believe I've ever intentionally eaten asparagus in my entire life. So I suppose that just leaves broccoli.

What color are your bedroom walls?

I have no idea. Some sort of palish yellow, I believe. I didn't paint that room. I do recall being asked to choose the color at some point and I probably had something to do with the final choice, but I have  no memory of it.

With whom do you live?

A woman and 2 cats. And various insects that the stupid cats bring in riding on their thick fur. Mostly ticks. Oh, and apparently I've been providing a lovely feast to rodents in the attic in the form of rat poison that I left in a big tray months ago. There are three trays up there, all empty. I put each one down after discovering the previous one totally empty. This means that either the poison doesn't work and the rodents love the hell out of it, or else I have poisoned an entire village of rodents and hopefully they are leaving the attic at the first sign of illness and dying somewhere outside in the woods. I'd hate to think they're in our walls. Something about the thought of that makes me think of the movie "Poltergeist." Imagine how different that movie would have been if the house were built on a graveyard of old dead mice instead of humans. Yeah, kind of changes things a bit. Instead of little Drew Barrymore watching the TV screen and saying "they're here" it'd be my cats sitting patiently, staring at the digital snow and meowing that mice ghosts are coming. I'm not sure if mice ghosts scare me or not.

Which Star Wars movie is your favorite?

Whichever one features Carrie Fisher in a metal bikini, or Natalie Portman in a sprayed on white bodysuit, but not the one with Jar Jar Binks. He was really, really annoying. Can I break this into the 2 different eras of Star Wars movies and say that as a kid it was the one with Carrie Fisher in a metal bikini and as a grown man it was the one with Natalie Portman wearing an oddly revealing white bodysuit and that both my child-self and my adult-self hate Jar Jar Binks roughly equally? Me so hate him.

I see pervy people!

How about Harry Potter?

I watched all of them and I don't really have a favorite. I thought they were all pretty well done. And I say that as someone who has read all the books. What I find most interesting, though, is the raging fascination that emerged with Emma Watson, the actress who played Hermoine, and the vast numbers of men searching the internet for photos of her panties or an accidentally released boob or just anything even remotely sexy involving her. It's fortunate that she did turn out to be moderately attractive in adulthood because I think there might have been rioting if she hadn't. Of course, no sooner did Emma Watson turn 18 than Pippa Middleton's bottom emerged during her older sister's wedding and suddenly all eyes turned from  Emma's panties to Pippa's buttocks and all bets were off. I'll bet this wreaked havoc on the databases at Google when it occurred. And then some paparazzi perv snapped nude photos of Kate Middleton changing clothes and ... what were we originally talking about, anyway?

What was the last movie you saw in theaters?

Superman. Or, er, uh, Man of Steel. Which is the same thing. It was OK. The fight scenes were a bit chaotic and hard to follow. I mean, when everyone is super strong and super fast and each punch sends someone flying through several buildings there comes a point where you just go, "yeah, OK, so you are hitting each other really, really hard. I get it."

Did you get the popcorn or candy?

No, I don't do that anymore. If you get the popcorn, then you need something to drink with it. And if you get something to drink with it, especially in this age of 2 1/2 hour movies, you're going to be getting up and going to pee in the middle of the movie. It's funny that theaters make most of their money from sales of popcorn and Coke because the emergence of the extra long movies kind of interferes with that.

What is the most romantic text in your inbox?

"That suuuuuuuuucks!"

Have you ever played miniature golf on a date?

Yes, and I don't recommend it unless you are not particularly competitive and are prepared to take absolutely none of it seriously at all. We cheated like hell and still I was bad at it.

What’s a phrase you overuse?

"Did your car not come with any blinkers or is your cell phone somehow preventing you from using them, you idiot?"

Do you always use good grammar?

Well, I don't intentionally talk stupid, but sometimes I find it necessary to adopt the speaking habits of the people around me, such as if I'm trying not to get robbed downtown at 2 am or if I'm at the farmer's co-op and don't want to get run off for sounding too much like a yankee.

Do you have an accent or a speech impediment?

I have a perfect Dutch accent. I'm not Dutch and I've never been to Holland, but I'm a big fan of blonde-haired, blue-eyed women with high cheek bones and perfect teeth so I long ago learned to speak as if I were from their homeland. Perhaps one day if I ever meet a Dutch woman she'll be impressed. In the meantime, I live in the Southern United States and people just think it's weird.

What did you eat today?

Protein shake, a ham sandwich, some beef and a piece of cornbread.

What do you do at work?

Currently I mostly put up with a-holes.

Do you know the rules to any sports?

I've played enough of them for years and years that I should  hope I do. I was even a line judge for a soccer league for a season. Sometimes I thought the coaches didn't know the rules, but I certainly knew them well enough.

Sometimes watching from the stands is OK

Do you prefer to watch or play sports?

It depends on which sport. I played basketball for years, so watching meant I was on the bench, which was a bad thing. I never learned to enjoy watching basketball. Soccer was the same way. I almost  never watch soccer or basketball. I like to watch football and hockey, though.

What is your favorite kind of hat to wear?

My favorite kind of hat to wear is my big, floppy beach hat because if I'm wearing it that means I'm at the beach. It's a dorky looking hat, or perhaps it's more accurate to say that I look dorky in it, but I don't care as long as I'm at the beach.

Do you pray?

Sometimes. Not as much as I used to. I don't know what to say anymore.

To whom do you pray?

There's this guy named Jehovah. I generally only ever pray to him.

What is the closest mountain to your house?

There is nothing even remotely resembling a mountain anywhere near my house.

What size engine is in your vehicle?

Which vehicle? Since you didn't specify I'll just list them all from smallest to largest - 2.4 liter, 3.8 liter, 5.7 liter, 5.8 liter, 6.4 liter, and finally my baby, with a 7.0 liter high compression, forged steel crank, mega cam, oval port, tire roasting machine.

What do you need to do tomorrow?

Pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again

Wordless Wednesday

5 on a Friday

OK, those of you who know me, who really know me well, know how often I write things that would be construed as a 'positive' post. So, with that in mind I'm about to shock you and tackle something difficult for me. I'm going to steal from AlleyCat the idea of posting 5 things I'm grateful for or glad about this week. Let's see if I can even do it.

1. I biked today and I didn't die - To be more specific, I biked right past where people keep seeing the bobcats and I didn't get killed by them. I didn't even see them. And I had to bike by there again on the way back home, so that made twice today that I didn't die. Add to that the fact that I biked during a heat advisory which kept buzzing my stupid cell phone all day to warn me that it is really hot outside and still I didn't die despite the heat, despite the fact that the air felt like it came out of a furnace and was super thin and hard to breathe and this is really not entirely a joke. I am grateful that I didn't die, specifically today. It would suck to die on the side of the road in the scorching heat while a family of bobcats tore me to shreds. I'm so glad that didn't happen. Because it did happen to an unlucky skunk I passed and it made me think twice about turning around and going home when I saw the skunk parts thrown all over the place where something had ripped it apart and left the bones and fur on the steaming asphalt. That was no car that did that.

2. My air conditioning works - guess what always happens in the midst of a heat advisory? For one reason or another, either the power goes out across half the city, or else someone's air conditioning unit bites the dust. This week it was one of my neighbors. But it wasn't me. And even more than that, the air in my car is working fine, too. You might be thinking "why is that even an issue?" But that's only because you don't know my cars. I have a few. Most are really old. Most have had their air conditioners replaced already and it costs over $1000 each time. Once the factory air has been replaced it is never the same again. It never lasts as long the second time around and then you have to do it again if the car is still running and belongs to you. I am not in a position to replace any air conditioners right now. And it's too hot not to have air. So thank God I still have it.

3. I have my health,  such as it is - several people very close to me have experienced increasingly serious health issues these past few years. With each of them we all assumed whatever was wrong would be properly diagnosed and resolved fairly quickly, but it didn't happen that way. I was even told recently that my brother's wife may die, although I know very little about the details. I've got some health issues that are giving me cause for concern, or be annoyed, but nothing that threatens to kill me just now.

4. I have most of the things I want - When I say things, I mean literally things. There are certain goals I have for my life that I don't have, but as far as things go, objects that is, I have most of the things that I want. I don't have the exact guitar that I want, but I have a guitar that does what I need just fine. I don't have a brand new computer,  but I have one that works. I have more books to read than I can find shelf space for. I have my long desired digital SLR camera. This house is pretty much exactly what we need. Etc. I thought of this because I had a neighbor move away recently who had so few things left after her divorce that she was able to move with little more than a few pickup truck and trailer loads of furniture and not much else. There was no moving truck required. And she has 2 kids. That's not much stuff. I knew things were probably a little tight for her, but I had no idea that her house was basically empty for these past 2 or 3 years while they lived there trying to sell the house. My stuff isn't the best of the best, but it's good enough. I can't think of any 'thing' that I need desperately and don't have.

5.  I live in America - There are only a handful of places that I would ever want to live - America, Australia, Canada - but a great many places I would most definitely NOT want to live. America has its problems, to be sure, and they just seem to keep growing worse. But even so, we are not nearly as bad off as most of the world in terms of suffering under a totally oppressive regime, experiencing extreme poverty and hunger, or being ravaged with diseases and plagues. There are some truly horrific places to live in this world, mostly due to rampant corruption. The United States obviously has its share of corrupt officials in high places. But we don't have corruption at every single level, among every single leader and official, to such an extent that it is simply accepted and done openly. In many countries you can't live from day-to-day without being forced to bribe various officials and police around you in order to get them to leave you alone and let you live your life. Prosperity is virtually unheard of in those places. Even their corrupt leaders have to fly to rotten places like Cuba for health care when they are sick because their own extreme corruption has destroyed the medical practices of their own country. We are fast approaching this level of corruption in America, but we still have a way to go yet before we're a straight up third world hell.

So anyway, that's what I'm grateful for this week. I hope you have a great weekend and have at least 5 things  in your life that you can be thankful for.

I'm grateful that this isn't my car

Wordless Wednesday

Holy Bobcats, Batman!

OK, so it's been over a week since I blogged, if I remember correctly. In that time there has been some chaos, but I don't want to blog about most of it. The main thing, since this seems to be my fitness blog as much as anything, and I'm not really sure how that happened since it wasn't my intent, but I haven't been able to run or walk all week. Partly it is because I've been out of town. Partly it is because of my injured calf not being healed enough for a good solid run. And partly it is because of certain wild animals currently roaming our neighborhood.

We have a family of bobcats living near my house.

I wanted to put that previous statement in a line all by itself so you could think about it for a second as your eyes scanned down to the next sentence. Yes, bobcats.

I was talking to my neighbors the other day about how unhappy we are that some douchemonkey bought a 10 acre plot of land around the corner from my street and just leveled the trees, leaving behind broken, ruined trees and a big mud hole full of water and mosquitoes. It's been that way for over 6 months with absolutely nothing more being done with this land. It looks like a tornado armed with a chainsaw ripped through a single 10 acre stretch of land and destroyed everything on it. But it wasn't a tornado. It was a douchebag. And I know he destroyed all 10 acres despite it now being an uncrossable mudhole/swamp thanks to him because I can see it on satellite view courtesy of our all-seeing, perpetually watching, electronically spying government. This issue has me more than a little irritated. So I mentioned it to our neighbors while we were sitting on their back patio.  And this is how my neighbor responded:

Hello, we're new to the neighborhood ...

"There is a family of bobcats over there now, too. I've seen them twice. In broad daylight. I've seen them running across the road there, with three babies."

I took a keen interest in this for self-preservation reasons. "Um, across the road where? Where the trees are leveled, right where I go running every day?"

"Yep. I'd carry something with you in case you encounter them if I were you."

Oh, so awesome. What shall I carry? A camera perhaps? It'd make an awesome photo, wouldn't it?

"Here's a great shot of 4 bobcats that I took right before I was mauled by the big one. Isn't she pretty? Look how big her paws are. Those claws are razor sharp, too, believe me."

How about a gun? If you're a runner then I'm sure you can imagine how annoying it would be having a heavy steel gun banging against you as you jog along. It'd beat you to death.

One person suggested I wear a shoulder holster. That way the gun could beat my ribs instead of my groin like a fanny pack would do. I'm all for choosing to sacrifice ribs over groin, especially since its impossible to stand, let alone run, after being hit in the groin. But I'd really prefer not to get either ribs or groin pounded by a metal object while running. And carrying it in my hand isn't a good idea either, especially out here in the country where people might mistake me for a man running with gun in hand for some evil reason and decide to apprehend me. Country people are doers and they'll take matters into their own hands if they think the situation calls for it.

Imagine driving down a country road in your big Dodge Ram pickup truck when you come upon a man in running shorts and a sweaty shirt, all red faced, running down the side of the road with a gun in his hand. You'd consider hitting him and then calling the police, wouldn't you? Maybe he's running because of something bad he did? The idea that he might be running from a family of bobcats probably wouldn't be the first thought to enter your mind.

So, someone else mentioned pepper spray. All of my canisters of pepper spray are older than dirt. So I may have to make a trip to the store and see if I can find a brand new can of it that is big enough to make me feel safe running with bobcats, but small enough to still be carry-able while running. I hope so because I can't really think of anything else that would work. Everyone I talked to seems to feel expert enough on the subject of what works to fend off a wild bobcat that they all agree on pepper spray. I just wonder how the  heck they know this?