Escape, 8
I was up in the air regarding if I should go run again with the club Saturday morning. All week my right knee had some degree of soreness deep inside as a result of my 7 mile run the week before. So although Friday I still was not free of this sensation I decided I was going to push ahead and hit the pavement once again. The driving force behind the decision in the end is the Tough Mudder which is about 2 months away. I feel like I need to be able to do a few 10 mile jaunts to be in Mudder cardio shape.
This time I had different running partners for each half of the 7 mile run, Matt heading out and Bob on the way back. The combo pushed my pace up a few notches to where I averaged 8:40 for the 7 miles, about the same pace I ran my 1:55 half marathon at last year. My knee didn’t feel particularly awful or good during the run.
Ali had something going on Saturday so she asked if I could pick up the dogs. I had plans to be busy around the house all day so I didn’t mind.
I handled the myriad of normal outdoor maintenance items and then worked on a couple other things. One of those things was to apply water sealant to my bar park and other wood items in the landscape like the ramp to the small shed and the frame of the dog deck. The deck and ramp only got one coat of sealant, the bar park got two as it gets a much higher priority in the yard.
I also set the live traps back up and baited them with sardines, trying to catch the lone remaining armadillo that has resumed his random excavation of the yard.
On Sunday morning I woke up in an absolutely awful mood. I opened my eyes, looked out the window and my first thought was (insert anything here) “sucks…..”
I was originally thinking about doing a biking/swimming brick but my knee was feeling pretty shitty at that point. I would be walking around and all of a sudden get a stab or two that instantly turned me into a limper. I instead decided to use the couple hours before the water park opened to do more chores and then go do some swimming since it was the last weekend the pool is open.
I arrived at the park a few minutes after it opened. The one woman there knows me well enough that she has my wrist band ready to hand over before I approach the window. She even took notice I wasn’t in my biking garb that day.
I set a mental goal of swimming 2000 yards, farther than I have gone this year. (only did 1200 so far) The goal was set for a couple reasons. First, since I didn’t pre-fatigue with a biking session, more distance in the pool seemed reasonable. Second, I was hoping that beating myself in the pool would help break up the mental cloud in my head.
The pool water had heated up a bit from last week, I would have liked it to be a few degrees cooler since I was swimming for close to 42 minutes. I broke the 2000 into five 400 segments, taking a brief break in between sets.
As I was in one of those breaks a guy jumped into the lane next to me. We talked for a bit. His accent lead me to ask where he was from. Turns out he was visiting from Romania, I think he said his name was Claudio or something that sounded similar.
Claudio was a good swimmer, much faster than I was. Just having him in the pool helped push my slower pace. I wound up averaging under 8:30 400’s for the entire 2000, which for me, is pretty good. I emerged from the pool pretty damn tired.
Ali was working on Sunday so I volunteered to pick up the dogs once again to hang with me.
I mentioned last week about Nicki’s drastic change in appearance of her coat, it has become long and shaggy. When I was outside with her I was petting her and was amazed at the amount of hair that she was shedding. I took both hands and started rubbing her back vigorously and in seconds I had piles of hair coming off, it was insane.
Nicki is also still acting like physically she is just breaking down. She won’t jog more than a few strides, despite Sadie’s best attempts to rile her up. It makes me sad.
One of the things I did during the afternoon was to spray the front yard with Weed B Gone. I have treated the weed infested trouble areas in the yard repeatedly with weed and feed in a bag. It would generally knock out dollar weed, at least temporarily, but leave a lot of the other nuisance weeds unscathed.
Weed B Gone is a more direct approach. You spray it on with a hose end attachment and the weeds bite the dust. Of course one of the things the directions say is to apply it on a day where no rain is expected. Of course on cue, it poured three or four hours after I applied it so I may be repeating the process shortly.
I installed Windows 8 on my work laptop on Friday, I have messed around with it a little bit. There is a moderately steep learning curve with the new tile based front end the OS uses. The absence of the START button and other items that have been in Windows operating systems for the last 20 years is pretty disorienting.
As I played around I figured out how to do many of the things I used to do intuitively. To be honest, although it may sound good on paper to roll out a user interface that is identical on phone, tablet and pc platforms, in practice I don’t think it is quite so rosy. Granted I need to spend more time in the OS to give it a fair shake. Right now it sort of feels like the tiles just get in the way.
So the Eagles played Sunday Night. I really dislike night games, I consistently have a hell of a time staying awake for them. Last night was no exception. I raised the white flag with about 10 minutes to go last night, I simply could not keep my eyelids open.
Up until that point the game was very tight with both defenses playing well. I was quite relieved when I flipped on the computer this morning to see the Eagles pulled out the game 19-17. It sounded like I missed an exciting finish with the game ending when a 54 yard Giants field goal attempt was short.
Not only was the game good in the NFC East real life standings, it helped my fantasy football outlook as well. Both Lesean McCoy and Desean Jackson pumped some big numbers into my point total. I have a 35 point lead with Tony Romo yet to play. My opponent has Jay Cutler and the Bears kicker. The win should be pretty secure but you never really know until the fat lady sings.
Jeremy turned me onto a new ABC drama called Last Resort which debuted last week. ( I watched the first episode online) It was a GREAT series premiere. It sucked me in almost immediately and has me anxious to see what happens next. I highly recommend you check it out. I also need to jump on the Homeland bandwagon. PLUS I should have an episode of Boardwalk Empire and Dexter ready to go via Xfinity on Demand.
Shows like these (and WoW) are one of the escape mechanisms I use to detach from whatever is troubling me at that moment.