Training Log Archive: Yukon King

D says he has a cold. gah. No dimsum today. But, it is snowing, & so far, I DON'T have a cold. Yet.

down the bikepath to the parkway, east, & then up back home in soggy snow. Morning walk. Dumsum after all!!

evening walk. very foggy, G was freaked out by this big tall guy moving very slowly & messing w/ his iPod or whatever, stopping even in the middle of the road. He was kinda freaking me out too; G is actually pretty good at noticing odd people behaviors.

Now that G's schedule has been defined, we are planning '08 vacations like crazy. D could have as many as 27 days of O, 6 days of canoeing or more, 4 days of sailing, & about 3 or more days of biking. G & me are gazing down the throat of several weeks of AM sipping cafes au lait, & PM BBQ's, & we are not afraid. My favorites so far are sailing off of Bowen (staying not on the teeny boat - bro will do that I think) but on a floating house on the dock, and NW Frenzy in Cle Elem followed by 6 days on Lopez Island down in WA.
Bought an eight-pak of fun lil biotic yogurts to dietetically engage my immune system & augment the effect of afflito's Yowza Molasses, which I am starting to wonder if I could get the same effect by just eating 20 gingersnaps for breakfast. (dont try this at home kids, I'm a professional)

over to Cortina & thru & back - picked up some discarded chunks of ...i forgot the name, garden stuff for ivy to climb on, for my step mom. Also a huge branch for G cuz she REALLY REALLY wanted it, so carried it all the way back & she looks at it like its this utterly totally incomprehensible tree branch in the livingroom...oh well.

back seems stiff or sore, so I did a bit of rolling about plus anti-jelly-arm things, boat, locust, bridge.

strapping various joints, resting, filing papers, planning mama's canned salmon loaf, baked potatoes, baked delicata squash, & zucchini/broc stir fry. Still very concerned re TN's waffle iron on Sunday at Stanley Park - should I offer to bring maple syrup or some Swix Kick Yellow...
dutifully picked out a 1km puppy-route.
Eye was being a bit naughty last night, will give it til tomorrow morning to respond.

did not strictly adhere to route choice - an Apparent (But Misleading, as it turns out) Poo Scamper was involved in the deviation. Teeny tiny snowflakes falling, saw a slightly manky coyote within 25 ft, wanting to get to an apt behind us, I guess maybe they leave food out? G very interested but quite clear this was Not A Dog.
Timed myself - 8 min to dress, 15 items to put on. This s/b loggable activity IMHO...

C • Transition time.....I agree. 3

added one more layer for evening walk, to wit, The Goof Vest, G-dog wears her Matching Teeny Goof Vest so we are a pair of highly visible & reflective Goofs - usually D does this - for some reason I felt a bit self-conscious, usually I dont care. Met a pair of lovable labs, black & white, w/ matching red blinking LED devil collars, very striking to see these things running about in the dark. Also Leo, Yolick, & Tisha.

BENCHMARK
forgot behavioral benchmarks - socks on & sweaters etc off continue good, & I notice I am sleeping like a log most nights ie blocks of 3-4 hr w/o full waking. It's awesome, could THAT be counted as improvement? Broken sleep is classic A symptom. Knee seems OK but it still gets strapped.

around the block, knee strapped & feels good. icing. rest. arrggggghhh! gerbil-gerbil-gerbil !! the gerbils a bit restless, figure I can distract them w/ spinach ravioli project. so far the spinach puree into the pasta dough worked nice, made up some spinach mushroom breadcrumb mix, now I'll roll and form a test batch w the goat cheese crumbled into the mix. ahhhh, gerbils mesmerized by this prospect, add some tea, & they'll be chillin'!

Gerbils: yumyum!

to train stn, DT, visited Allan & Natalia & walked thru Mole Town in the frosty sunshine. Bank, post office blablabla. The dog walk basically fiddling around by the creek, up & down, back & forth.
POPPED L knee, wow!! right behind the kneecap, doesnt hurt now but...This lends itself to my plan of helping Enbrel a bit by NOT pushing everything til it hurts so much I hafta stop which is default approach to life - if you use that strategy ALL the time you mayn't be able to notice enbrel-assoc. improvements altho maybe you can go for longer which is... well, a type of improvement. (pushing IS useful strategy normally cuz without pushing & w/ arthritis, then you tend to become big inactive couch potato. but there are shortcomings as above) So, plan is... hmmm.
1) ice aggressively.
2) elevate aggressively.
3) strap L wrist (it is cranky). A few days. non-critical.
4) strap L knee during walks to rest it. Rest of week.
5) shorten walks to 1km DISCIPLINE. Prechoose route & stick to it. Rest of January.
6) no hiding behind Mr. Tylenol.
QUICK BENCHMARK
I noticed both times so far that hands lose congestion day after enbrel. Honestly, nuthin else for sure. R hip, R shoulder, L knee, L wrist variously minor complaints mostly ignorable except now knee did that pop this AM.

36.40
Monsoon continues. Started w/ Special Hat, SmartWool socks, layers, waterproof layers, gloves, muffler... ended up warm, dry, indifferent to external conditions. Looked like cross between Shackleton-did-make-it-to-the-Pole & a raid on a diveshop, not able to look in any other direction without turning whole body. Difficult to scratch. Rainwater accum. someplace on upper body & spewed out periodically. G initially rather annoyed she got to go out in usual cheap yellow fur coat. Looked for dogs, but even Stupid Dogs appear to have been drowned & swept away downstream. oh well. Off downtown for more rain & transfusion after tea is finished. Humidifying apt w/ raincoat (& Soggy Dog) in front of fire.

to train stn & back, downtown walk to hospital. This was too much. oops.

BUT, gave my delicious (untouched) Canadian Maple donut (w/ creamy goo inside! yum!) to a twitching junkie guy who was begging outside the Hyatt - sneaked a peek back a few steps later (sometimes they are annoyed by food & throw it away) but...he LOVED it! It was almost all gone! That donut went to a good home, yum!

so, I did honestly move around today, but not enuf to really log. Utility-pee in the Insane Midnight Monsoon Rain that happened at 8:30pm, Gypsy thought it was the most brilliant thing I'd ever done when I turned right around and headed back.
In Other News, Gypsy Dog did her year-old Reproductive Review out in Abbotsford at the breeder's. In a nutshell, she ain't gonna. I was always kinda intrigued yeah maybe she should have babies, some atavistic mammalian right-to-reproduce thing I suppose. But at the same time when I thought about the reality of her going away for 6 to 8 weeks to pop out the babies & nurse them, I wasn't crazy about that, esp. since just now she is starting to get kinda cuddly & a bit more affectionate. So my first hint that it might work right was the email from the breeder saying "it's gonna be so great to see Gypsy and have her meet her half-sister Tiger-Lily" hmmmm... so they have the genetics repeated... & sure enuf, Lily is gorgeous, calm, & EVEN more long-hair than G-dog. And sure enuf, they wanna breed Lily, who is THEIR dog, and not G. So G is gonna have her "operation", and then she will be a footloose and fancyfree traveller. (we already went nuts looking at the '08 O-schedule - picked out Ruckle Park & Cle Elum so far...)
(as a weird twist to the dog thing, we brought along one of our Burnaby neighbors who fell in love w/ G to see the dog-ranch, and SHE got an email from the breeder that night asking if Su-Jane would like to adopt... Gypsy's mom, Shelly !! Apparently Shelly is gonna "retire", having popped out two litters, & being a quiet girl would do better in a single-dog household than the shiba-inu whirlwind that is the dog-ranch. So G's mom might be moving in - when G is in the kitchen, she could be as little as 15 feet from her mom, since she'll be just downstairs and over one apt...)