Archives July 2026

My four day weekend ended with me hardly being able to walk. I played pickleball for a little over two hours Friday morning since we were off. I came out of that session with some mild pain in the right hip and knee but nothing that seemed out of the scope of normal for me nowadays after playing. If I got up after sitting too long my first few steps were “limpy” but again, that isn’t all that abnormal for me any more. I felt good enough Saturday morning to suit up and play again, after taking two advil of course.

I played roughly another couple hours and didn’t have any particular incident that felt like I hurt myself. However by the time Saturday night rolled around I was in pretty bad pain and was limping consistently. I still didn’t think it was that serious. I theorized that going to the gym Sunday to stretch my lower body and do some cardio would help loosen up my knee and lessen my pain. At the end of the session I had the bright idea to do the rower for 10 minutes which I think was the icing on the pain cake.

Walking became increasingly more painful Sunday afternoon/evening. When I woke up Monday morning walking was almost impossible. As I looked down at my right knee I saw it was badly swollen. It’s been a long time since I had seen the knee like this. This type of swelling is normally caused by some sort of inflammation or irritation in the knee joint and I usually would see it like this after volleyball sessions over the last 25 years. I spent my day off mostly sitting or laying in bed while pumping advil and icing the knee several times. By the end of the night I was walking but very slowly and still unable to put much weight on the right leg.

This morning I am still walking with a bad limp but feel a bit more mobile. I am angry with myself for pushing it too far and likely damaging it more at the gym. The anger is amplified by the fact that I am signed up to play in my third pickleball tournament Saturday. I have to do whatever I can to get the swelling down. I would hate letting my partner down.

So outside of my knee issues I had a productive weekend. I replaced the shock on the Inmotion V14 on Saturday afternoon, bad knee and all.

I watched more World Cup soccer this weekend. Unfortunately the two teams I was pulling for, Mexico and the US both got eliminated in their games. The Mexico/England game was crazy. Mexico had a ton of scoring opportunities they just missed and the game was filled with action in the 3-2 loss.

The US/Belgium game never felt that close. The US seemed out classed very early on. Belgium players seemed to press more defensively and had better ball handling skills, stealing the ball from US players routinely. The US also made some bad mistakes, the biggest being their goalie coming way too far out and turning over the ball in the process which lead to an easy Belgium goal. The game made it clear the US is not in the elite tier of world soccer yet in the 4-1 loss.

The 4th of July was another misery fest for Elsa. Firework zombies were firing off damn close to midnight. Elsa spent all night hiding in various spots around the house but her favorite is the guest bathroom where we run a loud vent fan to block some of the noise. I clearly recall thinking fireworks were awesome when I was younger. I now can say confidently I could never see/hear another firework in my life and would be totally fine with it.

I watched the US/Bosnia game last night. Even though I have seen a lot of World Cup I have not seen any of the US playing live because of when it came on. They came away with an impressive 2-0 win, the first time the US has beaten a European team in 5 years. The win advances them to the round of 16.

The win was more impressive because the US had a red card pulled on a player which seemed wrong. He clearly accidentally stepped on the opposing player which should be a yellow card. With the red card the US played nearly 30 minutes of the game with only 10 players. Even with that handicap they scored a goal while shorthanded on a penalty kick. I was genuinely into the game and now that I understand it more I appreciate soccer as a sport more. It only took 58 years.

I had a disrupted night of sleep after Elsa got me up around 2:30. I’m glad she did because she had do do a 1 and a 2. It was not fully diarrhea but it wasn’t solid like you want either. She then threw up but only a small amount. This was after she had a great day of eating where she cleaned her plate and bowl of every bit of food we had for her. This endless cycle of one step forward and a step and a half back is not fun to go through but the reality of her condition. The idea of going on an extended road trip in a few weeks is sounding less and less likely because I don’t feel comfortable rolling the dice that she will be ok for that long.

I have a long weekend ahead. We get off Friday for 4th of July and I took off Monday as well. I am sure the time off will include several hours of pickleball play. It will also give me an opportunity to shoot more V14 Pro content, address a few small to do’s around the house and do my best to keep Elsa calm when all of the backyard firework shooting crowd does their thing on the 4th.

For about a week I was getting a stream of notifications about user accounts being created on my WordPress blog installation. It didn’t make any sense because I have registration disabled. I would check my user list and not see any of these user accounts which were being supposedly created which obviously were not legitimate users. I was paranoid and unsure of what was going on so I installed a security plug in on the blog to keep an eye on things. I finally realized yesterday what was happening.

I host my blog with GoDaddy. One of the options they have is to create a staging site where you can try out changes first in a test installation before doing them to your main site. I evidently created a staging site years ago but have not touched it. It was this site that the bots found and were creating bogus accounts on. I addressed the issue by simply deleting the staging site, end of problem.

Mexico won their knockout game last night in the World Cup, the first time they have done it in 40 years. Sure I am pulling for Team USA but Mexico is my number two based on my girlfriends rooting interest.