Tag: health and wellness

Still sick!

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Still sick when I woke up this morning.  Last night was the third night in a row that I slept in the guest room in an effort to prevent spreading this cold to Kelly.  Don’t know if it is working.  This evening Kelly was saying that she might be coming down with something.  I’m not sure if this is a flu, but the irony is that I am scheduled for a flu shot on Tuesday.

Lazy day, of course.  I sat out on the balcony and did some reading.  I did a little bit of tidying up around the house, and made some more progress on thank you notes.  Jen S. came over and she and Kelly went to Cake Love to get cupcakes, while I took a break and played Tiger Woods.

Today’s reading:  Einstein.  Made good progress, too.  More than 350 pages through the book.

Back to work tomorrow.

I am surrounded by clocks!

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Throughout the day yesterday, I was slowly consumed by a vaguely familiar feeling–one that says: you are getting sick!  Sure enough, by the end of the work day, I was feeling it:  running nose, stuffy head, headache, etc.  I am supposed to get a flu shot on Tuesday.  I am hoping that it’s not too late.

They have been putting up wall clocks here at work.  They are fancy, GPS clocks, whose time is synchronized by satellite.  Otherwise, they look like the clocks you’d find in a school classroom, minus the stentorian ticking.  One showed up on the wall outside my office.  Another about 40 feet to the left, and still another 60 feet to the right.  Standing in myoffice door, I can now see three clocks.  Another clock hangs above the elevators.  They didn’t appear all at once, but one-by-on, like the symptoms of a virus–the flu, perhaps.  I have more empathy with Captain Hook than I used to.

Played a good round of Tiger Woods after work yesterday, something like -4 through 13 holes until I screwed up a par 5.

Kelly suggested I go to bed early.  I didn’t cook dinner and I was in bed at 6:30 PM and out cold.  When I woke up, it was something like 4 hours later.  Kelly was sound asleep and I was wide awake.  Not feeling better, but not any worse either.  I went downstairs, and watched the tivo’d episodes of Smallville and The Office that I missed earlier.  I read for a while, and then went back to bed.  Eventually, I transferred to the guest room because I was tossing and turning a lot and didn’t want to keep Kelly up, or get her sick.

Spoke with Mom today.  Received a few cards in the mail.

It’s deathly quiet in the office this morning.  Weather is supposed to be beautiful today.  Sunny and mid-70s.  strausmouse  is on the slow boat to China, where he’ll be bandying about for 9 days.

Today’s reading:  Einstein.

ETA: Yesterday, when I said to Karl and Leanna that I was disturbed by the fact that I could see three clocks when standing just outside my office, Karl responded instantly with, "Well, maybe you should stay in your office and get some work done."  SMACKDOWN!

Pre-Halloween vampires

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The pre-Halloween vampires were out in force today, collecting blood.  I was one of their victims.  I donated blood for the third time, but it still managed to be a "first".  Given my height, weight, and blood type, I am considered a good candidate for apheresis, which I agreed to.  I takes longer, but they can get 2 units of blood that way.  I was a little nervous about it, but it went mostly well.  I say "mostly" because after the first unit was taken and the blood had been separated, the plasma wouldn’t go back into my vein.  Instead, it seemed to want to go into the surrounding tissue, which made my arm puff up a bit.  They couldn’t get my vein to take it no matter what so we had to give up after just one unit.  I felt bad about that, but the truth is, I’d gotten light-headed and cold and I really wanted to be done anyway.

I had soda and water and juice and cookies afterward and I am warming up now.  Oh, and the other advantage to apheresis is that I can’t donate blood again until February–nearly twice as long as when donating whole blood.  So I have a while before I have to go through this again.

Peace!

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We love having visitors, but we’ve had visitors every weekend since moving. Couple that with the move itself, the tasks to do afterward, and wedding plans, and I think both Kelly and I are exhausted at this point. Fortunately, next weekend is Labor Day weekend. It’s a three-day weekend for me and a four-day weekend for Kelly (because of her flex-day). And so we have decided to make that a weekend of peace and quiet. We are doing nothing.

We are not going to anyone’s house, not going to anyone’s parties, not having anyone over, not going out of town, not doing a lot of errands. We are going to catch our collective breaths and relax for a change. I think it will be nice, and besides, it’s probably our last chance to do so before the wedding, which is now a less than 7 weeks (less than 50 days) away.

Monday evening

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Kelly met me after work and we went home together. She’s still sick (she stayed home today) and when get got back to the house, she went right to bed and slept for a few hours.

I got my bike back together and then took it out for a test-drive. I rode up Army-Navy drive to the country club and then turned around and came back. I had a headwind on the way, plus it is a gradual climb, so it was more of a workout than I expected. Also, I still need to do some adjusting of the rear brakes. But the bike is now fit for road travel and anytime, I can start riding to work.

Kelly had eggs and beans for dinner and I had French Bread Pizza, which did not really fall into the “no carbs” category. Also, I noticed after that the last remaining piece of French bread had a little mold on it. I guess it wasn’t enough to hurt me, but it creeped me out a bit.

When Kelly woke up, we passed the evening watching a few episodes of Dexter on Showtime HD On Demand. Kelly frames some more photographs and put them up in the family room, so that, between the mantle and the coffee table, we have a ton of pictures on display.

Got a “Save the Date” magnet from Lauren. I was in such a fog yesterday that when I stuck it on the fridge, I didn’t even look to see what the “date” was. I have no idea.

Late night. Got to bed sometime after 11 PM and up this morning around 6:30. Kelly is still sick. She decided to take the day off today, which I think was a good idea. She can use the rest to try and get better.

Busy Sunday

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Up before 8 AM, had breakfast and got ready for the day. We dressed up nice because we had our engagement photo re-shoot this morning up in Columbia, Maryland. We left here around 8:30 and arrived at the lake shortly before our photographer. It was really pretty there at that time of the morning. The only problem was that I was feeling a little nauseous on the drive up and I wasn’t sure how photogenic I’d be. Kelly managed to catch my cold but she very photogenic, as usual. As photo were taken, however, I began to feel better, and by the time the shoot was over, I felt perfectly fine.

That was a good thing because our next stop was nearby in Laurel, Maryland in order to do a wedding cake tasting. We tasted vanilla and chocolate cakes and they were delicious! We decided on a 3-tiered cake with both vanilla and chocolate. There will be chocolate mouse mousse filling and other flourishes that we chose to make it look just perfect. We were decisive and knew what we wanted and so when we were asked for our deposit, we simply asked in return if we could pay for the whole thing now to get it over with. With that done, they gave us a half dozen of the “sample” cupcakes to take with us. We were in and out of there in 20 minutes.

Then we headed up to Camden Yards for the Orioles game. We were there when the gates opened and stayed until the middle of the fifth inning. The game was close–a real back and forth effort–up to that point. Then, in the top of the 6th inning, Texas scored six runs. Kelly wasn’t feeling great and I had a pretty bad headache and we decided to call it a day. It was just as well. The Orioles lost 15-7.

Back home, I made Kelly french bread pizza for dinner, while I had teriyaki chicken and a baked potato. It was drizzling here a little while ago, but there is more rain in the forecast.

Busy week coming up. Monday is clear, but Tuesday we’re listening to some violin play after work–the person who will be playing at our ceremony is demonstrating for us. Wednesday I have a softball game. Thursday we are having some friends over after work. Friday, everyone arrives for the wedding shower weekend.

Going to do some reading this evening. Maybe get to bed a little early.

Feeling groovy!

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There’s nothing like feeling better after feeling sick. I went to bed sometime around 10 PM last night and slept pretty well. I didn’t get up until almost 8 AM. Kelly was already up. I had breakfast and then we both headed to the clubhouse to go to the gym.

When we got there, we found much of it vandalized. Three of the 5 flat panel TVs were smashed in. Many of the treadmill screens were smashed in and broken. There was a window open on the north side. We commiserated over the event with a few other people there, and when the concierge person arrive just before 9 AM, I reported it to her and she notified the proper authorities. We had time to get in light work outs (15 minutes of cardio for me, some light abs and some pull-ups) before they asked us to leave so the police could investigate. The Avalon people were very apologetic. I imagine we’ll find out more soon.

We’re now off to run some errands. And I’m definitely feeling better.

Blurry Friday

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Still sick. Today it was mostly the usual cold symptoms: runny nose, stuff head, coughing, etc. But no matter what cold medications I tried, nothing seemed to work. I muddled through the work day, which include a marathon meeting this afternoon. The day is mostly a blur. After work, I met Kelly at the Gap, where she was doing some shopping.

The evening was a blur, too. I think the various medications caught up with me and knocked me for a loop. Kelly urged me to go to bed after dinner, and sometime around 7 PM, I collapsed. I woke up around 9 PM and was completely out of sorts.

Spoke to Jen today. Also to Mom and Doug. Dad left me a message. Got paid today. And deposited the rental deposit refund from the old place, which I received in the mail yesterday.

Everything is blurry tonight. I’m hoping that when I wake up tomorrow, this cold and all of its appurtenances will be gone. Fortunately, tomorrow is a relatively light day.

Is it feed a cold and starve a fever…?

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Had another restless night last night and finally, around 11 PM, I got up, went downstairs and ate two large bowls of cereal. I had another when I got up this morning. And I was still hungry at 10:30 AM, and so I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich right then and there, instead of waiting for lunchtime.

I discovered two things about the Comcast package we have (with just about all of the premium channels). There are tons of On Demand movies that we get for free because we get all of the premium On Demand at no extra charge. Many of the movies are presented in HD, too. Second, we have been watching episodes of Weeds On Demand. Last night I discovered that if you choose SHO HD, we can watch the same episodes in HD. Kind of cool!

Casey suggested a local bike shop this morning, so I’m planning on taking my bike over to Spokes after work, and having them repair my tire, show me how to properly do a “quick release”, and adjust the computer so that it works correctly. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to ride my bike into work tomorrow.

We are back in wedding planning mode. Time is beginning to grow cramped. It seems like every weekend is occupied with one thing or another. To wit:

Weekend of August 9-10: Cake tasting, Orioles game, engagement reshoot, possible meeting with officiant, possible visit by AJ and Denisse, dinner with a friend on Saturday.

Weekend of August 16-17: Wedding shower, lots of guests in town for the weekend (rubysnina, he11o_sunshine, stubiebrother, as well as Kelly’s mom and dad.)

Weekend of August 23-24: bigblu4 (Dad) in town for the weekend, Orioles game, possible meeting with officiant (if it doesn’t work out this weekend).

Weekend of August 30-31: Labor Day weekend!

That’s just the rest of this month. I think you get the idea. Where does one find the time? Well, I have gained some time back. My commute is non-existent. A trip to the grocery store takes 2-1/2 minutes via back roads. But still, there’s a lot to do and the clock is ticking away.

And the writer’s workshop starts up on August 18. To say nothing of three consecutive weeks of softball games beginning next Wednesday evening. And various visitors stopping by to see the new place.

Whew!

Chef salad

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Busy, even productive day at work today, even though I wasn’t feeling well. Made progress on several fronts and that felt good. After work I came home and worked on the wedding info website, which is going out on the info sheet with the invitations (probably next week). he11o_sunshine (who did our invitations) is helping with the look and feel of the info site.

Picked up Kelly and we made a chef salad for dinner. Lettuce and some veggies. She made a veggie patty and cut it up in her salad; I had some chopped turkey in mine. We also made hard-boiled eggs (and thanks to rubysnina who reminded me how to make them the right way) which we had in our salads. They turned out really good, and it was the perfect meal for a warm evening like tonight.

iPhone update 2.0.1 came out and I updated my phone this evening. Kelly wants to sync her phone to the iMac, which means that we’ll need to transfer her music and stuff over. I’m thinking about getting an even bigger external hard disk (I’ve got a tiny 100 GB disk on there now; I might look at a 1 TB disk so that we can keep all of our music and stuff in one place.

Getting back into The Count of Monte Cristo now that the move stuff has finished and settled down, and I’m enjoying it once again. It’s interesting reading it on the iPhone, convenient, certainly, but it takes me a little longer to forget where I’m reading it and disappear into the story. Still, I get there eventually.

Final electric bill from the old place came today. And I got email from my landlord telling me that the old house was in great shape and I’m getting my entire $1750 deposit back.

I had planned to go back to the DMV today and get my car registered, but didn’t get around to it. Tomorrow doesn’t look good either, so it will probably have to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday (when it’s not crowded).

I’m seeing a lot of blogs of people heading off (or arriving at) World Con. I’m a supporting member only; I wish I could go, but there’s too much going on this year.