A bit more HR Stuff 'n Stuff

Don't worry, not so many videos this time. If we're very lucky, none!

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Washing dishes and one of Grandma Helen's Pyrex nesting bowls slipped out of my hand and shattered in the sink. Those things explode when they break! I tried to catch it but my reactions were too slow, so I only caught a piece of shrapnel.

I'm down to two remaining of the five-bowl set. They're not valuable and I imagine they were pretty inexpensive back in the 1950's when Grandma bought them. But when they're gone, they'll be gone forever. Another door will have closed on the past. Which is okay and the way it's supposed to be.

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One of the things I really hate dealing with is negativity and crybabyism. Man, I despise that stuff!

The most important thing about my position on "that stuff" is that it's my position and no one else's. While I despise the whining, I cannot under any circumstance allow that to shadow the foundational respect I have for my fellow and equal lizard-ape. Even if he or she is being whiny. Especially if they are being whiny. If that makes any sense.

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So yesterday's workout was 6,000 steps or a little over three statute miles. What does that mean?

Those numbers mean nothing. Not really. The fact that there was a dedicated workout means something positive. Puttering around doing chores and logging five miles is great, but it's not exercising. Setting aside time and dedicating effort to elevating the heart rate and giving lungs and skeletal muscles a workout is positive.

Compared to my June 29 workout, yesterday's effort was rather paltry. However, comparing it to my previous day's workout (no workout) puts it in a different light.

What other people do or what I used to do doesn't mean a lot to the me of today. What I did yesterday does, as does the concept of bettering yesterday's effort.

Bettering that effort. Not necessarily yesterday's distance or time. Yesterday's effort.

I was pleasantly surprised with yesterday's effort. I feared that I was completely in slug shape, but as it turned out I was not. Getting back to where I'd like to be suddenly doesn't look like the insurmountable task I thought I was looking at from my January 11 perspective.

The big positive takeaways for me are my ability to scramble up and down those icy damme snow drifts/glaciers, my ability to slip and fall many times and bounce back up unscathed, my ability to go prone to shoot pictures without any particular effort going down or getting up, and my ability to fight through nerve pain and clearly demonstrate it's not directly coupled with muscles or motor ability.

I guess another positive is that I did my glacier gallop in work clothes and work boots. Granted, my work boot of choice these days is a trail running boot, and that helps a lot. But being weighted down with work clothes and pliers and pockets filled with knives and nuts and bolts and assorted working detritus added to the mass I had to dance with, which increased the effort needed and made my workout more efficient.

So yes, a good time was had by me. I do apologize to those of you who felt compelled to slog through the videos. They were a selfish indulgence. Unsurprisingly perhaps, those are my middle names.

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Today (Monday, January 13 if I get this scheduled for auto-release correctly) I hope to expend some dedicated workout effort. I also hope to get a positive update on the status of my neurosurgery consult. And I hope to do more writing on the next installment of the rboc saga.

"Saga." Sounds pretentious, no?

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Last week when Mom and I ate at the Green Plate over in Scottsbluff, we had something called Kartoffeln und Glace. I am no Germantologist, so I asked the big commie interwebz ("don't be evil") outfit to translate. They rendered the phrase "potatoes and ice cream." Maybe that's correct, maybe not. They are after all a bunch of commies over there. What we actually got was boiled potatoes and dumplings in a garlic cream sauce, with a big schnitzengruben thrown in for good measure. It's just possible that the item should have been listed as Kartoffeln und Sahne, which the commies claim is "potatoes and cream." I suspect that Kartoffeln und Glace is what the Deutscher immigrants who settled in these parts called the dish though, and that's good enough for me. 

Now I thought the dish was quite tasty, and also quite heavy. The dumplings in particular reminded me of U.S. Navy dumplings which were in my experience called cannonballs and so despised that you only rarely experienced them. But the Green Plate's dumplings were tasty, and Nona really loved them. She moved pretty slow for a couple of days, but she clearly loved them.

Mom liked the meal but hated the dumplings. In her world there's just no excuse for a cannonball dumpling. So last evening she prepared her world famous chicken and dumplings so that I could experience (re-experience, of course) how dumplings are supposed to be done.

Yep, I was salivating at the keyboard when I wrote that.

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But hold the presses!

I heard the menu wrong. Last night it was "Spaghetti Squashsagna." Which was awesome.

Chicken and dumplings will be later this week.

And I'm going to send this off to scheduling. See if I can get my posting back on track and under control.

Be well and enjoy the blessings of liberty.