Never mind about Pluto. Look at Blue go!

I went out to ride Pluto today, and the rotter is sick!  Again!  This time he appears to have a cold.  I've lost track.  Let's see.. I think it started with him colicking last winter.  Then the bloody thing on his jaw.  Then the second round of that.  Then his UTI.  And losing weight.  Now a cold.

The poor guy has really been through the wringer this year.

I groomed him, blanketed him, and put him back out in his field.  I figure if he's sick, he doesn't need to waste any more calories than he has to on keeping warm.  Even without the snot and the coughing, I'd have figured out something was wrong when he didn't try to misbehave at all.  I even left him tied to the post while I went in to use the loo, and when I came back he was just standing there placidly.  That's not normal.

Sigh.  I finally feel up to riding and now he's not up to it.  We have stinky timing.

I went to watch Tara get ready for her ride, and Timber was feeling FINE.  And so was Blue.

I came home, took off my completely unnecessary riding pants, and folded laundry.  We fold the laundry on the bed, and when all the clothing was stowed I could feel the bed calling me.  I lay down right on top of the covers and nodded off.  And so did JD.  I dragged his big comforter over me after a while, and I was zonked.

I woke up and thought I'd turn over and give the other side a go, but then I glanced at the clock.  Crap!  It was time to leave for a social event.  And it was raining.  And we'd have to walk in the rain.  I looked over at JD and said "I don't know about you, but I don't really feel like going out tonight anymore."  He didn't either. I hopped onto the internet to send our regrets, and we settled in for a cozy evening at home.

My back, btw, feels fine.  My neck is a little stiff from the various weightlifting I'm doing at PT, but my lower back feels as good as it has in ages.  I can feel the poky parts of my bad vertebrae grinding if I lean forward or back in a chair, but it doesn't hurt when I stand or bend.  Which is awesome.  I love PT.  Right now anyway.

I can't believe that trail misled me AGAIN!

I slept in again this morning.  It feels so good!  It will be hard to get up on time tomorrow to go in to work.  C'est la vie.  At least I had a few days of slack. Next week will be a regular work week, but I just checked the calendar and noticed that I have a tea date with JD on Monday the 16th.  Day off = woot!  Although this year that's a floating holiday for me, so I don't have to take it off if I don't want to.  I was not informed about our new holiday schedule until after I made the reservations, so a holiday it will be.  Lots of long weekends (when it is dark out a lot) agrees well with me.

Today I thought maybe I'd do two laps around the park, for a total of about eleven miles.  I still felt great at the end of my first lap, but did not have the mental fortitude to revisit ground I had just walked over for hours.  Instead, I did some trails around the interior of the park for an hour.  I got lost (again!) on the Dogwood Trail.  Some day I am going to go there with my GPS and find the daggone trail intersection that I have missed EVERY TIME I've tried it in the last few years.  Maybe I'll start out clockwise instead of counter clockwise.  Maybe I'll take flour to mark the trail.  I don't know exactly what I'll do, but something's gotta give.  I am tired of that trail getting me turned around.

So today's hike was around 9 miles rather than 11.  I felt great at the end, though.  Probably should have done a couple of loops of the Azalea Trail to wrap it up.  Instead, I texted JD to meet me for a meal at Chanan's.  Hiking around in the cold boosted my hunger.

I always get cold after eating a meal post-cold-hike, so today I tried out something different.  Before I left the park I put one of my new insulated Skhoop skirts on over my warm hiking tights.  It definitely slowed down the chilled feeling to the point where I didn't feel the need to wear my warm upper layers in the restaurant.  By the time I got home, I was chilly enough to want to keep my layers on for half an hour or so.  But the skirt made a big difference for me.  I must remember to carry it on future winter hikes, and it is definitely going in my backpack for cold weather backpacking trips.  I think it will help a lot with Cold Butt Syndrome in the sleeping bag.

I know I said today would be chili day, but lunch was held near dinner time.  So tomorrow will be chili day.  And the day after that, and the day after that.. I love that a pot of chili feeds me for so long.  The habaneros keep me warm.  So do the beans, though the officemates appreciate it less.

May have taken longer to write than to do

Oof, Internet.  It's been kind of a long day.  Usually I have some time to sit and relax at some point, but 13 hours in I'm just now finding the time.  Still, it's been good.  Today's the first day since that first suspicious scratching of the throat that I feel healthy.  And that is a delicious, intoxicating feeling.  Delicious and intoxicating sounds like a piña colada to me.  Or a nice apricot beer.  Perhaps today was an apricot beer day.  I believe I shall think of it that way.  Not that I've had anything to drink.  Alcoholically speaking.

I almost got something done at work today.  I thought about it for a while, and I did some things that go oddly together (exported NFS from OSX, mounted it onto VMS) but was defeated because I forgot you can't backup the system disk of a VMS machine while it's booted from the disk.  So now I'm working on options.  The VMS machine in question is nearly dead, and may or may not be responding to console.  We don't have a vtterm, we have a laptop that fakes being a serial console.  So maybe the laptop isn't working right, or maybe the VMS machine isn't working right.  Either way, I'm kind of up a creek.  Perhaps I'll find a way to make it work tomorrow.*

I got to go for a walk with my work walking pal today, and that was very fine.  (I missed our talks while I was hiking this year.  I'd be hiking along, having hiked five hours already, and think "Gosh, I wish I could go on my daily walk."  Which always cracked me up.  )  The weather was perfect for walking, and it felt great to get out and move.

The afternoon was one of those where a line formed outside my cubicle.  We only have like six employees now, so I thought the days of the cubicle line were over.  Wrong!  Once you have visitors it is possible.  Maybe I should have let Joe put in one of those "take a number" machines after all.

It's nice to feel needed?

You may not be surprised to hear that I didn't linger.  As soon as my eight were up, I boogied.  All the problems will still be there tomorrow.  I'm afraid I'm past the days where I wish to stay late to fix problems that aren't endangering human health or spacecraft instruments.  Likely they'll make more sense when I'm rested, anyway.

JD took the old man to the vet.  They needed ... samples.  For testing.  Now, Trouble is not a helpful, easygoing cat.  People who know him do not generally volunteer to pet him.  They have to restrain him pretty thoroughly to work on him at the vet's office, sometimes, because that cat will cut a bitch.  And if you restrain him in every way possible, he will use his last defense.  Which is to pee on you.  But in this particular instance, that works in the vet's favor.  All they have to do is irritate him a bit, and he'll provide a sample.  The vet tech stands ready with a ladle.  I didn't ask what they did to get the sample and I don't really want to know.

Anyway, while that was going on I decided to go for a jog.  I started Couch to 5K Week Two today.  I wondered if I should redo Week One after my snotfest, but apparently I'm good with Week Two.  The jogging felt nice and I was dang perky afterward.  I really need to start doing it in the morning, but I am just so not a morning person.  I regard morning exercise as cruel and unusual.  JD says it works for him because by the time he's awake enough to notice how awful it is, he's just about done.  But I fed horses in the morning for years and it pretty much always sucked, and I noticed.  So I don't think that will work for me.

After I arrived back at the house, all sweaty and perky, my love took me out to a Chinese buffet for deliciousness.  They were treated to the sight of a middle aged sysadmin in spandex.  I'm sure their optic nerves will recover by tomorrow, though the twitching may take longer.

Then a quick zip by the grocery (where they no longer carry frozen french rolls, which makes me very sad) and finally home.  Day wasn't done yet, though.  We had to fold and put away all the laundry and straighten up the house.  Tomorrow the cleaning fairies stop by.  They have much better luck if they can actually find the floor and kitchen counters when they get here.

And after that (I'm nearly panting just listing all this) I went through the last 18 months worth of photos, trying to find something reasonable of Pluto to submit to the annual calendar.  I haven't been around much this year, so the stock of photographs is pretty slim.  I hope the calendar elves like one of the two I selected.

And now, Internet, I can relax.  The only problem is I am freaking AWAKE.  Dang healthy jogging.

*This nerdy interlude brought to you by the fine folks at NASA.