memories

Covid-19 / memories / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on Upper arm still sore
9
Mar 21

Upper arm still sore

But everything else feels just fine after the first full day of the first shot of my two-dose Covid-19 vaccination. I only notice my arm hurts when I try to elevate it, as if to more closely examine the sudden emergence of this extra thumb on my right hand. But for normal, light office stuff, all is well and good. I’d read somewhere about whether you should get this particular shot in your dominant arm or your non-dominant arm. When I asked the shot-giver which arm she wanted she, in turn, asked me if I slept on my side, and suggested the other arm.

After going to bed last night and waking up this morning, I can say that was the correct way to determine my arm selection. I did not like lying on the arm that had the sharp piercing metal poked through it. Go figure.

Also, the shot itself hurt about 11 percent more than the flu shot last fall, but the post-shot arm ache was different.

And if all of that helps you decide which arm you want, you are now … armed … with the information. Now get lined up to get that shot!

It’s a crowded day in a busy week — busiest of the semester thus far — so this is thin, yes. But, hey, it’s Tuesday.

I did get stood up in one Zoom meeting. Hey, it gave me a break from anything else for a while. And it let me make this gif.

That’s from a video I shot at the airport in Amsterdam in 2018. You can see it here.

It’s a fascinating piece of art by Maarten Baas and, being an airport, spot-on accurate. More on the Schiphol Clock, here.

And, tonight …

adventures / Covid-19 / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off on My bicep is a little sore
8
Mar 21

My bicep is a little sore

That didn’t go over at all how I’d pictured. I’d somehow imagined something big, more emotional, more celebratory. I am all of those things, and something approaching the direction of relieved, too — but it’s internalized.

A young woman named Emily gave me my first Covid vaccine dose today. She said she’s been at this eight days. She’s not counting how many people she’s seen, how many times she’s handed over the famous cards, answered the same questions.‬

‪I made sure she heard my “Thank you,” made sure she knew it was sincere.‬ It seemed the only feeble thing I could do, then and there. Sometimes you just want to give high fives to total strangers. It’s hard not to be excited about this.

I am not showing my whole card, because putting that online is somehow when the microchip gets activated. And my superhero powers haven’t kicked in yet, but you know I’m trying.

We stayed at the store a while, to make sure there were no side effects, which was interesting because you could overhear the excitement of others. It was nice to see and feel the optimism of others once again. We passed the time in one of our group chats, where I made a decent Spider-Man joke, and, later, a Hulk joke that didn’t land as well as I wanted it too. The Yankee made a terrific Sue Storm joke, though, and so it was worth it. We had no perceptible side effects in the minutes and hours after the shot, and still feel fine. But my arm is a little tender right at the needle spot. Small price to pay, of course.

So, one down, and come on, end of March, at which time all of those feelings will be externalized, and there will be much relief expressed in many ways — while carefully making sure to continue observing the appropriate safety measures.

Honestly, if it’s a peace-of-mind thing at first, then it can be a peace-of-mind thing for a while.

We’re charting a snow pile at the local box store. This is from Saturday, our fourth week of observation. The weather has been delightfully mild this past week, and that’s reduced this mound to a pile of dirt and debris.

This is that same pile, on Valentine’s Day, after the first snow that mattered.

Just a few days after that photo was taken we got a substantial snow event, and so this was our pile on February 21st.

And, last week, on February 28th, when you could see some obvious decline.

May it all be gone, and soon.

And the weekend helped. Saturday I stood in the shade on one side of the house and had a bit of a chill, but I stood on the other side of the house, in the sun, cleaning windows, and it felt rather grand. Yesterday it was almost t-shirt weather. So, hoping to encourage the onset of, ya know, spring, I wore a t-shirt. This was a Christmas present. Pretty awesome, right?

And it is still, mostly, autobiographical.

The cats are doing well. Phoebe has just about scratched herself out. She had a big weekend full of getting into places she shouldn’t, and being allowed in places we don’t usually let the cats explore.

That’s pretty much every day for Poseidon, though. He’s constantly everywhere. It’s really cute, in retrospect, but not so much when you’re constantly having to jockey against him and fight for position.

But it’s cute.

cycling / Friday / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off on Welcome to March
1
Mar 21

Welcome to March

It doesn’t feel like spring yet, but it’s gonna. Today, though, I’d just like to feel a bit … less. Or more. I’d like to hurt less and feel like more.

As I mentioned Friday, I had a big weekend of riding. And I’m happy to report that I toughed it out. I fueled terribly, but I survived. I think. This was my view all weekend:

It wasn’t the miles, it was the user error. And also the climbing. I could explain the fueling, but suffice it to say my caloric intake got all out of whack. And I became well aware of that reality on the way to the last climb yesterday. I told you about the Friday ride. Here you can see me in third place on the road on Saturday.

I was not in third place, but it sounds nice, doesn’t it? It wasn’t a race, to me anyway, it was just an excuse to make thousands of tiny circles with my feet, and also to get a cool aerotuck screengrab.

After Saturday’s ride featured 4,124 feet of elevation gained, Sunday was the big day of climbing. You can see even my avatar changed clothes for the bigger 33 mile, 5,617 feet gained effort.

It … hurt. Don’t let the sprint I eeked out at the mountaintop finish fool you. I was so spent I thought I was hallucinating the aurora on the iPad.

And I could barely walk when I got off the bike. (Time for new bike shoes!) After I hobbled upstairs and had a shower I started eating vegetables directly off the cookie sheet. Fueling was a problem because I wasn’t diligent about it because, at the end of the day, I’m riding a bicycle inside the house. It’s easier to be fussy about that, I realized this weekend, if you’re riding way out of town. But if the kitchen is just steps away, different story. And I’ve never really had the opportunity to climb 12,690 feet in one weekend, so I have no frame of reference for this.

It’s a big frame, and this was a great reference.

And I finished the Zwift Haute Route Challenge.

What does that mean? Absolutely nothing, but a sense of mild accomplishment. And it’s more base miles for the year.

We were looking at a giant snow mound at the local big box store.

This was the mound of our affection two weeks ago, on Valentine’s Day, after the first snow.

And here’s the same mound of our laments, a week later, as seen on February 21, after the even larger snow.

And here’s that same mound, this Saturday, on February 28th.

After a bit of weekend rain, and looking at the weather ahead this week … this thing might be gone by next Saturday. That’d be a signal almost-as-happy as returning robins and other springtime birds.

adventures / Friday / memories / photo — Comments Off on One more of these
12
Feb 21

One more of these

Because it’s a fun trip down memory lane, and maybe I should archive the good ones somewhere better than Facebook.

Facebook: Literally everything is better than us.

I wrote this bit below a few years back and it just showed up in my Facebook Memories and, wouldn’t you know it, I put it here on the site back then, too. Because we’ve always really known that this was better than Facebook.

Facebook: Literally the worst for forever.

Anyway … I like this one. It’s almost Valentine’s Day. (That’s Sunday, fellas.) It’s hard to do much, so I got a small little handful of flowers — just some color for the house since we’re all going to be seeing snow drifts for the next week — and already they’re dressing the place up. And I picked up a brownies mix, a new brand, so we could have an adventure in a box. Because we’re celebrating the little things during a stay-at-home pandemic. And that, and maybe a walk in frigid, frigid weather will be the extent of it this year. But that’s a lot! We are well and together and healthy, and that’s the extent of what you could hope for, anyway.

Some pictures are worth remembering. Some pictures you just know perfectly. I have about 13-plus 18-plus years worth of snapshots on my website. And after Lauren, earlier today, posted a picture of the two of us from our 2013 trip to Ireland I wondered if I could recall the first one of her I uploaded.

The sun-eating one, I figured, had to be high up the list. And so I went back through our early months of knowing one another. I scrolled through the people we knew, most all of whom have kept us around, since then, until there I was, 12 16 years ago. February 2005. I remember the night I took this picture going down the highway, and that one is probably from a library, because I have always liked repetition in my pictures. These next two are at a Super Bowl party in Five Points we were invited to.

The Patriots beat the Eagles in that game. Paul McCartney was the halftime show. (I had to look this up.)

And, oh look, here are a few sunsets and clouds. And there she was. The 10th photo I uploaded in February 2005, the first one of her.

We were in her car. I know precisely where that was, two cities, two jobs (for each of us) and one car ago. She was probably taking me home after work one day. We were carpooling at the time. We’re traveling north, to soon turn west.

That next weekend we got invited to a dinner party — (thanks again, Laura!) and sometime after that we realized we were getting invited to places. That people in our little world thought of us as a package deal. I skimmed through the rest of the 2005 series of photographs. Jamie​ shows up, and so does Greg​ and Brian​. Look, there’s Justin​ and RaDonna,​ and Wendy​, too! There are family shots in there, also. There are pictures of colorful people that you pass by in life. There are blurry, low-res, sometimes underexposed pictures in the collection. There are trips and sports and bands and Lauren figures into most of all of those pictures, somehow, even though she’s not in a lot of them. That’s how you remember, though, the circumstances and the stories and the time you went to the place and saw the thing and tried the unusual item on the menu.

“Who” is how you remember those. Some are worth remembering. Some you just know perfectly.

adventures / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off on They were hungry, I’m sure
14
Dec 20

They were hungry, I’m sure

Another week has begun, and so we are here, to charm you with your regular update about the cats. Over the weekend I had to open their most recent food delivery. Being cats, they were very interested.

Poseidon saw the box coming out of the storage closet and was intent right away.

I thought if I put it up on the counter I could do the things I needed to do — open the box, pull out the bag, and transfer the important information, like the proportions and the calendar progress, the date I opened it and all the nerdy things you would write on a bag of cat food. I don’t know why I thought I could do it on the counter unimpeded, since the cats spent most of their time on it despite by wishes.

I put the box, including the food and Poseidon, on the floor and pulled the bag out from under him. He was fine with it. Back on the counter went the bag. And up to the counter came Phoebe.

Who could write on a bag in permanent marker around a face like that?

Chewy, which has been dependable throughout, has text printed on the box encouraging you to keep the cardboard, because cats like boxes. We’ve got plenty of boxes around the house, thank you very much, Chewy. We will recycle it, though.

Today is the anniversary of the beginning of our engagement. It was twelve years ago today that we were under Our Tree in Savannah, the same place we spent a day on our first trip and the place we return on every visit. (We were supposed to visit again this spring, alas.) The next year we got married just across the street. I asked her if she would like to have more adventures with me.

And we’ve had great adventures, every day! And still plenty more to come. There’s tomorrow, and Wednesday and Thursday and that’s just the normal, daily stuff. Most times, those are the best adventures of all.

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