I feel like I have a scratchy throat on Tuesday after a night of bad sleep and having to sit up and read for a while. When I get out of bed the pavement is wet, so I go for about an hour run/walk. There's a little threat of discomfort in the left Achilles tendon today, so there's a bit more walking than running. But it's close to even. After a shower I run through my list - I get the Long Beach Human Trafficking Task Force website domain and hosting and website up and running, I get an alternative site to redirect to the that site, I add in Google Analytics, and I add in meta keywords. I turn my attention to an improved Fair Trade Long Beach signup and mass mailing process which I complete. And then I work on mapping crime district reporting districts (represented as abnormal polygons) to city council districts (also represented as abnormal polygons). I get this process to work manually and I know how to do it, but I don't have the motivation to automate it today. So I take a break, run to the grocery store for supplies, watch a few recorded episodes of "Weeds", and relax in the afternoon. The rain that was supposed to show up late in the morning is not here yet after noon.
Wednesday is not a good day. I wake with a sore throat, the sound of "moving liquids or phlegm" in my lungs, and a 1.0 degree fever. I get up and do some crime mapping work and lift weights. As expected, I'm a bit off on the lifting weights due to being partially sick (and the left shoulder arthritis). The CT scan was taken back on 7 January and I still have not heard a word from my medical provider. In the afternoon I drive to the dentist. This is only the second time in many years of visiting this dentist that I have driven - only because it is raining. I recall one other time I drove the car rather than ride the motorcycle. This is not a good visit with the dentist as I point out a little white spot on my gums to watch though it is not sore. But the dentist does a lot of digging around today even though I have not changed any of my oral hygiene habits. I'll just have to re-double them.
I sleep late on Thursday and still have a sore throat though my body temperature has come down 0.5 degree. I get up and start a brand new Python script for the crime mapping and census/redistricting effort based upon the lessons I've learned (in a hard way) over the past couple of months. And by the end of the morning I've got super promising results! I drive over to the Los Angeles river today because I want to see how strong the water is flowing. It's flowing wildly from all of the rain that we've had! I stand over the river and just watch the flowing river when I see a police officer pull up. I'm thinking he's worried about me jumping into the river, but it turns out that he's on the other side of a fence and doesn't have the key to open it so he drives away (rather than possibly jump the fence to talk with me). I'm not going to jump in, but I take a picture or two of the flowing water and feel sad that I have not ridden the bicycles in four days. After the trip to the river I go to the grocery store and buy supplies and start cooking up a storm! I cook vegetables for the upcoming week and I bake almost ten pounds of potatoes to have readily available. By noon the rain has subsided and it looks like the end of it for a while. Our season total through today is getting close to our typical annual rainfall levels.
My throat is getting worse, but I have to go ride. So I get on the mountain bicycle and ride to the end of the ocean trail and back home. It feels good to ride even if I'm a bit tired from the illness. After the ride I go have Chinese lunch with a Chinese ex-co-worker and we talk about our travels and finances and friends and activities. When I get home after lunch I lay down and rest for quite a while. When I get up I have a warmed up potato and then jump on the motorcycle to meet with two of the CSULB students from the Climathon as we attempt to productize it and win a CSULB Innovation Lab competition with real money involved. We make good progress and will have to meet again next week before we meet our CSULB advisor.
I sleep a bit late on Saturday, but it was a deep sleep throughout the night. I'm still sick, but I think I'm getting better. Its warm and sunny today so I get on the mountain bicycle again and ride late in the morning to the pier and back. It's not my best effort, but I'm sick. When I get home I wash the bike (since it has picked up so much debris left from the rain), rake the leaves, and catch the Delta IV heavy launch of an NROL 71 satellite streaking across the sky from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It's an 11:05 morning launch so its not very visible, but it can be seen all the way until its going greater than Mach 10, the fairing has separated, and the boost engines have cut off. After a shower I make a quick trip to the store for supplies and note two large dogs on the loose on my street. As I pull into my driveway I see the neighbors' gate across the street is open. So I knock on the door and only the youngest girl (about 12 years old) is home and she calls the dogs' names and I can only call out "Tuta" which is the Tagalog word for puppy. (I don't know the Tagalog word for dog.) But both dogs come running back home and the girl makes sure the gate stays shut. In the afternoon I work on a couple of websites and relax. It's a warm day so I've turned off the heater and opened up the doors to let a warm breeze blow through the house and try to clean out all of my illness germs.
I don't know what happens on Sunday morning, but I just stay in bed for quite a while and do not get out cycling. Instead I take the road bicycle outside and give it a good cleaning. I then run a number of little errands like returning library books, getting to the ATM, cleaning the bathrooms, picking up lunch for the ganes, doing some grocery shopping, and finishing off the human trafficking website (until further notice). I was unmotivated to get out cycling in the morning but I'm moving around and doing things and NOT just sitting on my behind. I also notice that "my shakes" are greater than normal but I just write that off due to no serious ride this morning. I watch most of the two football games but go walking for 45 minutes during the second game and am surprised that it is just ending in overtime when I get back inside the house. Later I check out the blood moon lunar eclipse just for fun.
I start Monday slowly and do not go riding because it is chilly but also very windy. This could make it a bit dangerous as well as not as much fun as usual. But near 8 am I get out for a 60 minute run/walk and the Achilles thendon and both calves feel good. There's no hurry - I'm in this for the long haul. After a shower I run some errands hoping to catch some good Martin Luther King holiday sales and then I clean both bathroom floors and the kitchen floor. Today is a slow day, but my main task is to look through the items on my "to do" list and see which ones are getting done and which ones need to be emphasized. Or are there other things that need to be added to the list? Later in the evening I make more progress on intersecting polygons as I need to map various districts (such as city council districts or police reporting districts) to census districts.
I sleep late on Tuesday since I had some difficulty sleeping and had some weird dreams that came from nowhere: delivering a eulogy for my Dad, delivering a eulogy for my former neighbor, and being together with my Thai friend Tree again. But I get out on the road bicycle and ride. Near the aquarium I see an obvious tourist and stop to welcome him to my city and ask him where he's from. He's from Bangkok. So I start speaking Thai with him and surprise the crap out of him that a white guy can speak some Thai. We have a nice little discussion and I give him my phone number in case he needs some help as he visits my country. I ride another mile and run into Terry and Khin. So we stop and chat and I don't let them hug me because I'm sick, but we have a great conversation. And then I excuse myself to get home as they continue their ride out. After a shower I run an errand and get a phone call from my primary care physician. She says that many people have read my x-rays and CT scan and concluded that I have a lot of loose bone chips in the lower right scapula and nothing else. I'm in tears and can barely talk to my doctor because I was expecting something serious. I can choke out "I know I'm old and arthritis will get me and it didn't help that I used to drill the crap out of opposing players playing ice hockey". But my doctor re-confirms that it is purely bone-structure related and nothing serious. The weird thing is still that the bone chips are on the lower right scapula and its the upper left shoulder that hurts so much. So I'll go to my physical therapy session on Thursday and see what we can do. After I take some time to cool down from this good news, I go back and work on my priority list that didn't even get started from yesterday - probably because I was worried about my x-ray and CT scan results. And later I spray the rose beds to try and chemically emove some weeds before I physically remove them in 48 hours.
I work on websites for a bit on Wednesday morning and then go for a 90 minute mountain bicycle ride north on the Los Angeles river trail. I go north so that I can push hard against Santa Ana winds on the way out and then have a tailwind back home. On Thursday I get up and have the meeting with the physical therapist about my shoulders. He's the same guy who helped me with my Achilles tendon so I give him a big hug when I first see him and tell him how great the Achilles tendon is and I give him a small gift that I bought for him in Thailand. We look at my x-rays and do some diagnostic movements and he doesn't think my shoulder pain is entirely due to arthritis. He holds my should blades in place and we repeat the same motions as before and I don't have any pain. So he thinks that between a lot of cycling and deskwork, my upper back has become somewhat rounded and is closing off gaps that should be there. He gives me some stretching and flexibility and massage exercises to do. As when I saw him for the first time for the Achilles tendon, I tell him, "I KNOW this is going to work!" He compliments me on my enthusiasm but it's more than that - I think he's found the root cause. As I drive home I practice pulling my shoulder blades together (similar to one of the exercises) and I can feel the shoulders already feeling better. When I get home I edge and mow the lawn and then get down on my hands and knees and pull up weeds from the carnations and roses. All of the time I keep telling myself to "squeeze the shoulder blades together" and there's puling and motions that I do during the yardwork that would normally hurt my shoulders and don't hurt today. I know one day does not make a recovery, but I JUST KNOW that we're on the right track. After the yardwork I work on websites and try to remind myself about the shoulder blades and posture. Later in the afternoon I do some of the suggested exercises and we'll see how sleep and tomorrow morning goes.
I get out for about an hour run/walk in the morning and get cleaned up. I'm on the motorcycle up to CSULA for the first meeting of the Spring semester and we try to jump-start the activities. When I come home Person M_Fl comes to visit and we talk about his internship position and my health issues (since he's sudying to be a nurse). I note that I haven't really flt anything in my shoulders all day resembling pain. I've felt a bit of discomfort or adjustment that the shoulders and upper back are going through as I work through the exercises. But no pain at all! If this set of exercises soves the problem, then I'm going to go back to my initial skepticism when I saw a shoulder specialist years ago when he told me that I have shoulder arthritis. Typically arthritis wouldn't respond this quickly to these exercises.
I get up a bit late on Saturday but get on the road bicycle for about 50 kilometers. There's some Santa Ana winds blwoing today so the last two legs are good to push against. After a quick shower I go to another human trafficking event and run into my acquaintances and make new ones. One lady is hell-bent on getting me to become a foster parent, but I keep telling her that "I am too old emotionally because I need a fair amount of quiet time. And you don't get that with kids". Finally I ride the motorcycle back home to do the laundry and work on the dashboard website for karl (who has finally become re-interested in it because his competitiors have something similar).
I wake up a bit lazy on Sunday but notice that I have not had any shoulder pain throughout the night. I walk to the grocery store to buy some supplies and then I tidy up a few little problems with Karl's website that I left unfinished last night. Just befor e9 am I take the mountain bicycle north on the Los Angeles river and my legs are tired right from the start. I get to a convenient turn around point just past the bridge and head for home. Within a couple miles of home, a few minutes after I was thinking "Just keep te pedals turning and get home", I decide to d a couple of intervals. I do two long extended all-out sprints and finish just in time to get off the Los Angeles river trail and go home. I'm blown up now and I just crawl on home. When I get home I spray the rose beds for weeds - it's that time of year to make a regular effort to prevent or kill the weeds before they take hold - and then I get in a nice warming shower. Today is, fortunately, a slow day so I do laundry and work on websites and occassionally stretch my shoulders and upper back as prescribed t keep my "shoulder momentum" going in a positive direction. At 4pm I walk over to the Fair Trade Long Beach board meeting and participate and then I walk on home.
I wake up tired on Monday, do a few shoulder exercises, and work on Karl's website. I see the silly things that I'm doing wrong immediately and I fix them. The site works great on any size device now! Before 9 am I get on the road bicycle and start riding and say to myself, "Just spin along - it's a recovery day". But I see a rider ahead and I have to chase him down and then toy with him until he gets off the San Gabriel bike trail headed south. I continue on and fight against the wind on two legs of the ride and I'm glad to be finished and maybe have a day off cycling tomorrow. After a shower I write up the meeting minutes for the Fair Trade meeting and then write the Privacy Policy for the group. Somehow I'm nominated to be secreatry of the Fair Trade Long Beach organization for 2019. Seeing that I've made progress on a number of fronts recently, I pull out the to-do list and re-write it.
I wake up on Tuesday and start work on Karl's website. At mid morning I go do an abdominal/lower back workout. As I'm working out I have a good idea to make Karl's website run better, so I tuck that away and finish the workout. After a shower I fix up Karl's website and then get new library books and go to a meeting with the carbon footprint application team (that won last year's CSULB Climathon) and an assigned business advisor. A few team members have not kept up so I expect the business canvas and business plan to get ripped to shreds and it does. We have until 15 February fix things and try to win the next level of competition at the CSULB Innovation Challenge. I get home and work on Karl's website and will deal with the carbon footprint application tomorrow.
At 6:30am on Wednesday I have a telecon with an intern who will be working with us on Karl's website (in addition to one of Karl's distributors in Chile). Jackson seems like an enthusiastic and smart university student where Karl teaches so we have a nice introduction and conversation to get started. I start out on the loop ride and feel strong today so I keep going and going and finally quit at about 65 kilometers. It's a great ride to probably finish out January riding and to get me used to spending more time in the saddle. When I get home I rake leaves - maybe one more raking in a week or so and I'll be done. After a shower I start laundry and flounder around a bit because I can't find the impetus to get started on one of te projects that needs my attention. Finally I decide to at least push the carbon applcation forward even if it isn't my most productive afternoon. At mid afternoon I decide that a tree needs to be trimmed, but I have been drinking wine so I think better of that. Instead I pull out the rose trimmers with sharp edges and trim along the west fence to catch any overhanging branches. I only spend 30 minutes or so doing the trimming but then I call it quits and consider the effort a success since I still have all of my fingers.