Category: General Blather

And by extension…

BobbieLeave a comment

I’m tired. It’s mostly a good tired, like the tired you get after a long but positive (either in productivity or just vibes) day. It has the same quality as the soreness you get from working out really hard, not the soreness you get from twisting an ankle or (as time marches on) that appears to show up from nowhere. (My brother and I once had a conversation on “aging” as he is junior and so I try to keep him abreast of what is up next. I told him that after 45, it’s not so much “what’s going to hurt today”, as “what all is going to hurt today, and for how long”.)

I spent my middle and high school years daydreaming, and didn’t quite get my act together until the last year, really. The interesting thing there is that last year was absolutely STACKED with stuff– unlike previous years, I participated in after school activities (to the extent that I could). I took at least one honors class. I had a fully stacked babysitting calendar plus at least one job. I learned to scuba dive. I had a bunch of things piled on in a very short period with very real deadlines and it weirdly felt like the more I piled on the more I could do; if there wasn’t a lot to do then I just kinda fell back and daydreamed and read a lot. (Note to self: if you have or are a person who likes to retreat in fiction books to the possible detriment of their schoolwork, having 2000 books *in the house* by authors like Michener, Asimov, Niven, Heinlein, Herriot, etc. are going to get you more of that behavior). I don’t regret it (much).

This extended into college, coupled with the realization that the major I picked and the reality of the world were two different things. Keep in mind this was before the internet, and before you could access information with a few clicks: the understanding of what a science degree was, what it would actually get you, and what the process actually was to get somewhere, didn’t arrive until I got into UW and realized: no one was going to hand me a bunch of money and a boat to go study sharks. Or at least, not any time soon. That path was going to entail a Master’s Degree, and probably a Doctorate, and I was already not having a good time at school. I was working three jobs (all part time, I wasn’t crazy) but I wasn’t really attending to my schoolwork. I graduated and took the first employment that had a reasonable wage so I could eat and pay rent.

Fast forward some years (okay about 10 years) and I found myself a single parent with a “career”. It just sort of happened – I mean, yes, I went back to school for some stuff and yes I cajoled and pleaded and got job transfers and tried really hard – but I didn’t do anything like the LinkedIn signaling/go do networking type stuff one does today. This was nearly 20 years ago. I just kept reaching out for things that looked interesting enough, and that would pay me.

In that time I’ve continued the pattern of piling on things when it didn’t look like there was “enough”. Before I was a mom there was always a side hustle (in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, you could make some cash if you knew VBA and could get PowerPoint to do things it does easily now, like embed videos; you could also build websites. Most folks of my generation remembers a time when “everybody was a web designer”). After I became a mom there was always something too: PTA, library trips, sports, Boy Scouts, etc. As the offspring grew and became more independent, and I started having more “free” time, I would toss in other things: helping out a local nonprofit, running food drives, taking on extra work from actual work, etc. I felt better when there was lots to do, and a variety of it.

One time I was changing companies and took a week off between the two. This gave me something unusual in and of that I literally had *no job* for that week and so in preparation for that week I made a longish list in One Note of all the things I was going to do that week. But because it was in a list, and I saw the list, the bulk of that list was done before the week ever came. (Don’t fret tho: I replenished the list). That was when I first clued into the fact that *something* was driving me to Do Things and that I couldn’t “just sit still”. I mean, I had had friends point this out before – a meeting in Montreal where I was constantly making lists and bouncing my knee and my friend looked at me and said, “you can’t sit still, can you?” (she said it *really nicely*; it was more of an observation than an accusation) – but it’s different when you realize that it’s *true*.

I have this fantasy of having a “do nothing weekend” – where I do nothing. No housework, no obligations, certainly no work. Every time I block the calendar for this, and I tell the Husband person, and we vow this will happen for real this time; and every time something comes up. Usually because I thought “well it’s just one thing”. I signed up for a knitting class (I finally have the finger dexterity to knit in the round! It only took fifteen years), I go out and deadhead the garden, well and I can’t *not* lift, etc. I get to Sunday and look back at a “do nothing weekend” in which I have indeed done something — usually many somethings — and I am tired. Yet here I sit, looking at my calendar for the week, the month, and the year — thinking “oh I can squeeze in more. I wonder if XYZ needs help? Or maybe I should plan out ABC?”

There is a part of my brain that is constantly looking for things to do and wanting the reassurance of relevance and purpose. It chooses to jam stuff into the “schedule” in a Tetris-like fashion, because it knows that if it does not and if I do not have enough to do, Things Will Not Go Well. I don’t know why it thinks that since it has been thirty years since I’ve neglected my schooling, and I don’t think I’ve dropped too many balls since then; it just thinks “more is better” and piles it in. I think there’s also a quality of “if I fill every day with lots to do of a positive and/or productive nature, I don’t have to think about the really awful things in the world” and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. Thus far the only negative impact of this approach has been the occasional overextension, and the occasional crash that comes after fixing that. It doesn’t happen often enough to make me stop, apparently. I’m not typically over-extended, just… extended.

DMV Beige

BobbieLeave a comment

I want you to imagine a color, a very specific color, that I think most US-based folks would recognize and it may have an international bent (I haven’t been to the motor vehicle licensing offices in other countries). This color is that sad, slightly icky beige color reminiscent of the transitional period of the 70’s to the 80’s where not everything was yet Duran Duran and you still had smokey glass tumblers and “non-smoking” sections in restaurants were new. It’s the kind of beige with no redeeming qualities- it’s not Indiana Jones Adventuring Beige, it’s not Tasteful Coat Beige, it’s not even Mid-Century Modern Influencer Revival Beige. This is that Beige of No Redeeming Attraction that can sometimes still be found on the walls of your local DMV (or other underfunded government office).

Yesterday I was feeling very DMV Beige.

I am *not* very good at discussing strong feelings because feelings are not logical, and they don’t follow a predictive pattern. When they happen, I end up having a “retrospective” to try to figure out why they happened. Nevertheless, I have them, they will surface. Yesterday I found myself talking with some good friends at work about feeling “beige” and… they got it. It resonated. A lot of us are feeling “beige”.

Beige isn’t bad, per se. You wouldn’t pick it on purpose, at least not this irredeemable beige. You’ve heard about “beige flags” and such and this is its cousin: the idea that “everything’s fine” but somehow it could be better and/or worse; it’s this liminal, waiting room feeling.

After noodling on this with a fellow engineering friend, we came upon a hypothesis: this feeling is appropriate and also going to happen a lot more. She and I both have A Lot Going On both personally and professionally, and those Lots Going On tend to be of an urgent and complicated nature. There are often fires, emergencies, or confrontations that have to be had to further the product (or to keep it alive). There are translations, meetings, “per my last email”, and “I think you’ll find that…”. This is not limited to our work lives but also to the complications of personal lives as you get to a certain age and stage (family members passing and estates must be settled, the additional attention your health requires as you advance, etc.). We’ve both been underwater on both fronts for so long that now, as we are bobbing on the surface and we see the rescue boat coming, we’re wondering if there’s a shark somewhere.

If you’re conditioned to be hypervigilant and constantly alert for a problem to solve, and no problem (that you can solve) presents itself, then what remains are the problems that exist and that *you cannot solve*. For an engineer, or any “go-doer”, this is problematic. Maybe it’s because you do not have authority to solve the problem, maybe it’s because you do not have the ability or technological understanding to solve the problem, and/or maybe it’s not necessarily *your* problem at all (but someone else’s), and the bias to action drives one part of your brain whilst the other part of your brain screams at it to stop wasting time and energy because surely, surely a You Problem will come along soon and you’ll need your energy for that.

There is no shortage of problems to be aware of and feel inadequate or unable to solve or even subdue them. Which problems those are and how focused or personal they feel are largely determined by where you live and what 24/7 news hysteria cycle you consume. I say “hysteria” not in a dismissive tone – real news is real news – but the objective McNeil Lehr News Hour/ 60 Minutes that I grew up with is gone and replaced with Alternative Facts and non-neutral phrasing like “crushed” and “slammed” and “outrage” and such. Curating the inbound flow is almost a job in and of itself – I mean yes, you can tweak your algorithms and provide feedback to the “machine”, but the machine doesn’t feed off of you feeling happy or even content.

It feeds off of you feeling sad, angry, outraged, or any number of negative emotions. The very *best* you can hope for, on some days, is that all it wants is to feed off you feeling DMV Beige.

Productive Tedium as Therapy

Bobbie1 Comment

About six or seven months ago some enterprising individual got ahold of my work email, my personal credit card, and did some damage: desiring to hide their purchase of a trip to Cancun, they created a spam bomb attack which flooded my mail with something like 2500 subscriptions.

One of the older “features” of Outlook and the instantiation of it in our company, was that if mail was in your junk folder, you could *not* click on links. That makes sense – phishing is as phishing does. When it’s not phishing and instead is noise, one wants the noise to stop.

Complicating this is that in response to the attack I set my junk folder on the highest threshold – meaning that a good many *real* mails got sent to junk. This has meant, for the last six months, me going into my junk folder several times a day to weed through hundreds of mails to find the pearl that is, for example, my company’s newsletter telling us how we should be all more secure (we’re working on it). It has given me the opportunity to be smug on a few occasions when someone says, “oh check your junk folder it might be in there”, which is nice.

After some resistance I have clicked the little slider on “New Outlook”, which instantiates a whole separate app. While I am disheartened to give up in-mail anchor points and jump links (I assume they want me to use the newsletter function, but I am obstinate), what has happened is we now have the ability to click an “unsubscribe” link from junk without sending the mail first to the inbox. In the last two weeks I have gone from hundreds of junk emails a day to about seven. It’s cathartic.

It’s also very, very tedious. Many of the mails are in a foreign language, so I’ve learned that things like “abstellen” and such are the “opt out”/”unsubscribe”/”stop” links. Edge translate has also been my friend. I’ve equally been fortunate that the bulk of the newsletters I got subscribed to are harmless — products and services from around the world (though there was one that I ended up having to email my manager to let her know what I was doing because I’m pretty sure the site I visited to unsubscribe was NSFW).

So here I am, each early morning, click, unsubscribe, click, unsubscribe, click, unsubscribe, and so on. For low effort “productivity” you can’t beat it. And I need some low-effort productivity right now.

This electronic version of doing a laundry load of towels is helping me avoid the crazed hype machine that is our current media and particularly the media circus around our elections. The ads, the next-minute analysis, the fearmongering, the rage, the hysteria, the 20/20 hindsight, and so forth: the exhausting part of politics is doing its thing, and we will be in it for another four and a half months. Given the last round, we won’t be done after election season, either. “If it bleeds it leads” is a disgusting phrase that turns out to be true and as such we get fed a steady diet of screaming rage.

I have voted in every election (even the teeny local ones) since about 2000. While I appreciate the phrase that “all politics is local” – it isn’t, or not really. The bulk of the politics that directly affect *you now* is/are local. The politics that will directly affect you *and your offspring* are more likely state and federal, and in a country that cannot seem to decide who is in charge (state or fed) it makes for an erratic tug of war.

I click, I unsubscribe, I delete the mail. I click, I unsubscribe, I delete the mail. With this, at least one small part of my world gets a little more orderly.

Raiders of the Lost Ark Does Not Have a Glaring Story Problem

BobbieLeave a comment

There’s an episode of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon introduces Amy to Raiders of the Lost Ark (the first Indiana Jones movie) and, having expected her to be awash in amazement, is disconcerted when she asserts that it has a glaring story problem: “Indiana Jones plays no role in the outcome of the story.” The tenet here is that the Nazis would have found the Ark of the Covenant, gone to the island, opened it, and would have died as they did, regardless of Indiana’s involvement.

I don’t think this is true, and after countless minutes searching (yeah, I Duck’d it for a few minutes and found only a couple of articles including a discourse on movies.stackexchange– read, I invested no real time because I kept getting cookie notifications) I figured it’s time to document that here. I *hope* this is a cookie free experience but who knows what wordpress does.

Let’s start with the near-beginning of the movie, when Indy is introduced to the idea that the Ark is real and the Nazis are after it. The US Government has intercepted a cable sent by the Nazis saying they have “discovered Tanis” and need the “headpiece to the staff of Ra” and that they need to find “Abner Ravenwood, US”. The Government doesn’t understand what any of this means and Indy explains: Tanis is the resting place of the lost Ark of the Covenant (stone tablets of Thou Shouldn’t Really Do Anything to Piss A God Off), the headpiece is a shiny medallion like thingy that sits on top of the stick, no one really knows how tall the stick is, you use the piece on the stick in a map room to find the treasure, and he hasn’t seen or heard from Abner Ravenwood in ages because they had a “bit of a falling out I’m afraid”. (We discover later it’s probably because Indy was schtupping his daughter.) Indy says that he thinks Abner may be “someplace in Nepal”.

After some discourse with Marcus Brody (Indy’s boss? Chancellor of the University? Head of Archaeology? Curator at the Museum? I don’t think we really ever get to know his title) Indy books a trip (that we get to watch on an interactive map graphic) to Mongolia. We see as he boards the plan a nefarious character in all black (I prefer all black too but I’m not so nefarious — we know this guy is because the music changes) who eyeballs him and puts his paper up to shield his face.

Here is my first counterpoint to the argument: I don’t think the Nazis knew where to look for Ravenwood. The cable said, “Abner Ravenwood, US”. Indy asserted to the US Government folks (who said they couldn’t find any trace of Ravenwood” that no one really knew for sure and he thought Ravenwood was “somewhere in Nepal, I think”. Without the tail on Indy, they wouldn’t have known to go to Nepal, or at least in that general direction. I personally think the cable was leaked on purpose (though that is never stated in the movie).

After the map gets to Nepal, instead of seeing Indy’s arrival we see a drinking scene, and Marian Ravenwood closing her bar after winning it. Indy comes in, they fight with some exposition, he asks her for the medallion and she says she doesn’t know where it is, he offers her cash, he leaves. The Bad Guys come in after, having followed Indy (I think this further supports my point above, if the Nazis knew where Marion was before Indy went to her, they would have gone there first), and attempt to get the medallion. For various reasons they don’t get it but they get a print of one half of it. Indy and Marion escape with the real deal. And now we’re off to Cairo!

The Nazis are digging in the wrong place, which we know because they only have one half of the medallion. While we can say that’s because of Indy, we can also assume if they had both halves they’d be digging in the *right* place. Indy gets his digging team in the right place, he and Sallah bring up the Ark, the Nazis catch them, and now the Nazis have the Ark that they are going to attempt to fly out. Indy escapes with Marion and as part of that escape blows up the little airport (and at least one plane), and his rival French archaeologist (Belloq) and the German in charge of things (Dietrich) say they’re going to put it on a truck and get it out of Cairo that way.

Then of course Indy hijacks the truck, gets to a ship and Marion with Sallah’s help, and they’re now on a boat! Which of course gets waylaid by the Nazis and the two of them (and the Ark) taken *again*.

I’ve glossed over a lot that happened here and we’ll get into a more nuanced argument in a second, but let’s pause: let’s give the Nazis credit for craftiness and assume that they would’ve, *eventually*, figured out where Abner (or Marion) Ravenwood were, and would’ve eventually got the medallion, so they would be digging in the right place.

I don’t think they were originally going to take the Ark to the Island. The original plan was to fly the Ark out, but Indy blew up at least one plane and a bunch of fuel at the airport– and the German in charge’s next plan was to *truck* it out of Cairo. Without Indy blowing things up, the Ark would have been on a plane back to Berlin.

Here’s where the more nuanced part of this comes in: Belloq and Indy are old adversaries, and Belloq (it’s pretty clear from some of the dialogue) winces at his mercenary status. (He’s not giving it up though, because it gives him access to things he thinks are valuable, like the Ark). It’s clear that Dietrich doesn’t approve of him and that approval decreases over time with Belloq’s fancy with Marion, with Belloq’s apparent soft side, etc. But Dietrich allows for it because he knows he cannot get the Ark without Belloq, and as Belloq uses patience over time to get to the Ark this strengthens his position with Dietrich — meaning Dietrich has to give Belloq what he wants (Marion, specifically not torturing Marion, and then letting Belloq be the one to open the Ark) because Dietrich knows he can’t get what the Fuhrer wants without him. My point (and I know I’m laboring to get here) is that if the Nazis had got the medallion first thing, got to the map room straight away, dug up the Ark without Indy, and had their plane not blown up, that plane would’ve gone straight to Berlin — with Dietrich in tow, certainly, but none of the confrontation we see between Belloq-Indy would have fueled pursuant Belloq-Dietrich confrontation — I don’t think Belloq could’ve made the successful argument that they needed to divert an entire army to a small island to open a box. The blown up plane, the hijacked truck, the ship’s capture — all of that needled the situation to allow for it.

At this point we’re on the island, Indy bluffs with a grenade launcher and loses, and now Indy and Marion are tied to a pole. Queue opening the ark, ghosts come out, face melty things happen, and Indy and Marion survive because they close their eyes. If Indy had not been there, and if we say my second point is moot (we ignore “would they have gone to the island or Berlin directly”), YES, the Nazis would have opened it and all died anyway. Sure. But what would have happened is now you have a closed Ark on an altar in the middle of a presumably deserted island with some Nazi artifacts around it (remember, it consumed the bodies but left the camera – although it did fry the camera, so no video evidence). Without Indy, the Ark stays there. With Indy, the Ark goes to a warehouse in US Government custody. There is truth in the assertion that Indy’s original charter was to make sure the museum got the Ark, and that did not happen because US Government. But the Ark exists in the movie in that undefined warehouse because of Indy; otherwise it’d be either have discovered in Berlin (assuming no one opened it and it just sat in a Nazi-analog warehouse) or opened and left on a remote island, somewhere undisclosed. In the Big Bang Theory, towards the end, the boys (Sheldon and his friends) do acknowledge this, but then burn on Indy as he “couldn’t get it back to the museum”. Sure — that was his charter and he was unable to fulfill it (Thanks, Uncle Sam) — but it is not an argument on his not having a role in the outcome of the story.

New

BobbieLeave a comment

It’s been three and one-half months since I last blogged. I know this because I forgot my password to this blog and my computer didn’t recognize me as its author and so it sent me to my own front page, which was about Tough Mudder. It seems fitting, because Tough Mudder was a Thing that I did to challenge myself and was new for last year.  I know I said I wasn’t doing it again, but…

GUESS WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR?

Yeah. I did.  And Ragnar.  And CC and I will be running the Dark Side Challenge in April in Disneyworld.  I’m considering doing the Seattle Half this year, because it would be the ten-year anniversary of my first Seattle Half. It’s official, I’m doing these Things.

I know that the new fashion is to not have New Year’s resolutions, because after all if you’re resolute you can as easily be so on October 1st or April 4th or September 23rd as you are on January 1. As human beings, though, we tend to like starting new things at the arbitrary start of things: new weeks, new months, new quarters, new years. Some of my resolutions for “this” year I figured out and started on early (better eating, etc.), but I saved one to truly start on a Monday, 1st of the year, 1st of the month, 1st of the quarter: I’m not going to complain.

My good friends know that I don’t actually genuinely complain a lot — mostly because genuine complaint doesn’t seem like a useful thing to do. Since becoming a Real Adult™ I’ve been one to go do something — anything– than sit and whine. (Although on reflection yesterday I publicly whined about my inflight Wi-Fi being slow. So maybe I’m not as virtuous as I’d like to believe). It’s mostly a superficial whine, like that irritating hum your fridge makes but you’re not going to call the warranty repair because it’s not bad enough to warrant the inconvenience to call someone and deal with them.

At any rate, I have a tendency to gripe while training — any kind of training. Weight training. Running. Spin class. That I signed up for a bunch of events and then have to train for them. That it’s too cold out. Too wet out. Too hot out. Too dry out. Too hilly. Too far. Too boring. It’s not limited to voluntary improvement training; I whine during PT, the train of which I’m back on (remember Tough Mudder? that shoulder injury came back to bite me in a really crappy way).

Mostly the bitchy whining has been to myself — an inner monologue that drills through my head, making the training that much more hard or boring or arduous.  When I work out with my Weight Dudes (yeah, they won’t like that moniker either) I cheerfully whine; it’s all part of the hour (sometimes hour-plus) experience of lifting with David the Trainer and T and J.

It’s ceasing to be cute, for me. (I have no idea how they feel about that but they keep inviting me so it can’t bother them too much. Or maybe they find it entertaining. Or distracting from their own inner monologues.) And it doesn’t make sense: these things are voluntary. No one, absolutely no one will be let down if I stopped tomorrow.  I would probably have to watch my diet more, but I already got that news courtesy of genetics and ageing. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this.

One day has become day One.

In Vein

BobbieLeave a comment

I have had, since I was 14, a varicose vein on the inside of my left leg (90 degrees from my kneecap). It started as a 1-2 cm annoyance and then ended up about 4cm for a good long time. Somewhere in the last 5-7 years it grew and grew, and as I’ve come to realize that I am genetically likely to become my parents, I came to the decision to do something about it.

(Side note: in my thirties I amassed attorneys — family law, traffic law, estate law, construction law — and in my forties I am amassing doctors: cardiologist, vascular surgeon, physical therapist, etc.  Happy to give recommendations to any who need.)

I went on recommendation from my cardiologist (Dr. Maidan of Evergreen Cardiology) to go see Dr. Kathleen Gibson with Lake Washington Vascular. I like her because she’s direct and patient and answers all of the questions, and since we know I am the kind of person who showed up at the cardiologist with an Excel spreadsheet of my cholesterol metrics from the last 10 years, I had a few. She basically broke it down thus: there are two “tranches” of things I could do for my varicose veins* — I could get the problem child glued (the problem child vein is usually farther up the trunk, in this case my problem child was about an inch below my groin) or I could get the problem child lasered.

A woman after my own heart, she gave me a T-table of what to expect with each treatment. With laser treatment, I would be on antibiotics for two weeks. There would be local anesthetic but also a general “happy drug” for during the procedure (so I wouldn’t be upset by the burning smell that was me). There would be a 10% chance of DVT. I would have to wear a compression stocking for 2-3 weeks. I would not be able to work out for at least a week. It wouldn’t necessarily remove the visible varicose vein, just the problem child causing it, so I’d have to get a separate treatment for that.

With glue, there would be:

  • no antibiotics
  • <1% chance of DVT
  • no compression stocking
  • I could run the same day
  • no happy drug (just local)
  • and it would likely remove the visibility of the vein in about 3 months.

Why do people pick laser with how awesome the glue is? Well, insurance. Some insurances cover the glue. Most don’t, although I understand Medtronic (maker of the magic glue) is working with insurance companies on this.

I’m at the gym at least 4 days a week. I don’t like taking medicine (of any kind) if I don’t have to. And I have a luxury of being able to afford this procedure — so I went with glue.

Today was my procedure.

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Matt, prepping my leg. Glorious orange.

At 8am I checked in at the front desk, and was taken to a room to change. Shirt stayed on, so did undies; the rest had to go and I got to wear a standard-issue hospital gown (the kind that opens in the back) and a waffle-knit robe (which had me really warm). Coffee, iPhone, and bag in hand I went to the operating room (that’s right, I took my phone. There was no side table for the coffee but that was fine). After a brief discussion of music, Alice in Chains started playing and I was introduced to the crew: Megan, who was assisting during, Matt, who did prep (including betadining my leg, so it looked gloriously tan), and Pam who was on ultrasound.  Dr. Gibson was there, and Medtronic had two folks visiting as well including Monty who was part of the original company that developed this glue (out of Spokane, WA! Shout out!) which got acquired by a 2nd company which in turn got acquired by Medtronic.

 

At 8:30 I was prepped and Dr. Gibson took a time out to discuss the procedure so everyone was on the same page (including me), and at 8:35 I was getting local anesthetic applied. The needle was supposed to feel like a bee sting, but if so it was the gentlest bee I’ve felt. If you sew, and you’ve stuck yourself with a needle through say, just the top layer of your skin– so it’s annoying but not stabby– that’s about the range of pain. It lasted half a second and was gone, and short of pressure and the occasional tickling sensation that’s the last thing I felt, although I was completely awake and we were talking about the procedure, 90’s alt rock, and how Medtronic works with physicians and patients to solicit feedback.**

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the sharp, white diagonal line about 1/3 from the top is the needle in my vein. the rest is leg meat. 🙂

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Martha Stewart’s gun isn’t this cool. On the right is Dr. Gibson, that’s Megan behind her, and you can see Pam’s left arm on the left side of the frame.

The way it worked was this: a catheter was stuck into the side of my calf, about halfway up. Then, they put a super-long, flexible needle, and snaked it up my great saphenous vein . The glue was injected by what looked like the medical answer to Martha Stewart’s glue gun, and was held in place for 3 minutes. (At this point we all did a little sing along with Stone Temple Pilots). Then every 3 centimeters down the vein (so a slight tugging feeling, then pressure as they glued, plus 30 seconds wait for the glue to set) until they got to the injection point.

 

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All done. Very orange.

At 8:55 I was done, they put a band aid on the injection site, and washed most of the betadine off my leg. An ultrasound pass over the area to make sure there weren’t any issues, then I went to change and get my discharge instructions. No pain meds (unless I felt the need, in which case, Advil), be active (don’t sit on your butt), and if it’s going to be sore it will hit about day 5 to 10. Follow up appointment is January 11th.

 

 

 

 

Then we looked at my before pics, and took some afters, which I will share here. Note: full impact in terms of visibility would hit around the 3-month mark, so this is just immediate results.

As always I’m happy to answer any questions based on my experience and/or pass them along to the professionals, and will update with my results as we go.

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before

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after

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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before

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after

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*as can be expected, your mileage may vary. This post is meant to provide an example of what can be done about varicose veins based on my own experience : talk to your doctor. Also, look both ways before crossing the street.

**an awful lot like I work with my customers at work — a combination of “what features do you want” and “what problems are you having”, because we all know that you get two different sorts of very valuable answers to those questions.

 

The Illusion of Control

BobbieLeave a comment

It’s a testament that my Cardiologist remembers my father when he asks me why I’ve come to see him and I reply by saying “this” and hand him my laptop with my Cholesterol charted over the last 9 years. The chart was full-on Excel, broken out into the different types (HDL, LDL, Triglycerides, Total Cholesterol, and my ratio on a 2nd series). I am not the only one in my family to chart a bunch of things in Excel and come armed to a doctor’s appointment with data. “Ah,” he said, “You’re discovering that your cholesterol is going up in spite of what you do to make it not.”

I had explained about the diet and the exercise, I had explained about seeing it go down back in 2010 and in 2012 when I undertook larger physical activities (namely the Ride to Conquer Cancer and the STP), and how with Ragnar (last year and this) there was no downturn. With a restrictive diet there was no downturn.

I was prepared for him to tell me it is genetic (it is, both of my parents and their families have related histories) and I was prepared for him to tell me that short of “drastic changes” I wasn’t going to be able to make my LDL go down without help. I’m not a drastic person so I didn’t want to ask what “drastic changes” were, although I should have just for comparison.

Naturally, I expected him to whip out the ol’ prescription pad and prescribe a statin.

Nope.

“With young healthy people,” he said, and I could have kissed him for the “young” part except I had already figured by the waiting room that I was a good 20 years younger than his usual patient, “I don’t like to put them on statins.”

There’s another reason he’s not putting me on a statin, and that is because I have osteoarthritis in my joints. I’m able to run because I have a fabulous physical therapist, orthodic inserts in my shoes, and I use Hokas. But statins tend to cause joint pain, and I already get joint pain if I’m not careful, so statins, for me, right now, are not the magic bullet. The plan is to take 3 additional supplements, for 3 months, and come back for another round of lipid panels. The 3 supplements? Vitamin D (5000 IU, rather than the 1000 I’m already taking), CoQ10, and Cholestene.

(Can we just take a second to have three cheers for a Cardiologist who is Director of Cardiology for the hospital chain and has been practicing some 30+ years, offering an initial alternative medicine approach? Usually you have to seek that out. )

So, here we go. We’ll give this a try and see if it works; I feel like I’m in good hands.

Next up: The Great Protein Shake Challenge!

 

Choices and Consequences

BobbieLeave a comment

I have struggled with my weight pretty much all of my life.  I remember being roughly eight or nine, seeing that I had skinny calves — what 8 or 9 year old doesn’t? — and despite my chubby belly, thinking I was skinny and resolving to eat *more* to fill out the calves.

I remember being in high school and feeling overweight and the solution then was to just not eat (or more accurately try to skip lunch or replace lunch with diet pepsi). What I wouldn’t give to have the body I had in high school (okay, okay, minus the acne).

I remember being just back from the student exchange, freshman year of college, and weighing 230 pounds and knowing that the reason the random guy in Statistics class asked me out was because he knew I’d be grateful. (Sweetly verified by his friend in a side comment).

I remember going to the gym with  my friend Colleen — the person who introduced me to gyms and I wish it had been sooner — and by virtue of a hairy-chested trainer named Vinny and a spreadsheet of exercises, losing all of that weight and getting into the best shape of my life.

I remember thinking that was that and I wouldn’t have to struggle with my weight anymore. Then I got married at 200 pounds. I remember getting our wedding pictures and crying for two hours.

I remember eating nothing but Slimfast and Lean Cuisine when my then -husband (USMC) would deploy, walking 3 times a week and thinking I’d finally kicked it.

I remember moving back up to Washington in 2000, having gained it all back.

I remember deciding that if I was going to have a baby — my son was very, very planned — that I was going to need to be healthy if not for myself then for him. And so before I got pregnant (2002) I lost the weight again, and for the most part have kept it off (I have fluctuated by about 10 pounds here and there ever since). I have been in and out of gym memberships (the current one is the longest lasting) and signed up for random events (half marathons, a triathlon, a couple of double-century bike rides and a couple of Ragnars), and for the most part have been doing okay, weight-wise.

Here I am at 42 and the issue is not weight. I recently lost a little and that’s fine, but my goal has been health — being able to run, and trying to be good about what I put into my mouth. At my annual exam in April I got my blood tested and my cholesterol had eeked up; having a family history of cardiovascular problems I took it as a warning bell and tightened up: I quit dairy (except for nonfat greek yogurt and lowfat frozen yogurt). I quit red meat (ok, I had red meat twice in 3 months). I kept up the running (training for Ragnar helped). I took fiber daily. I haven’t had anything to drink since May 1st. Protein shakes for breakfast nearly every morning, with berries and bananas using soy milk.

Three months later I’m back at the doctor’s office, back giving blood, and my triglicerides went down but my LDL shot up 20 points. I have been tracking every bit of food I eat since February (I’ve been using MyFitnessPal off and on for about six years) and I couldn’t figure it out… until I looked at breakfast. My protein shake, the most virtuous thing about my day, has 25% of my daily recommended cholesterol. I wouldn’t have thought it — why would a *protein shake* have cholesterol (I mean, they engineer the crap out of the contents so why not engineer that out?). Vigilance, ever vigilance.

I have an appointment with a cardiologist this Wednesday. You know you get to sit at the big kids table at Thanksgiving dinner when you can not only chip in on the political debates and discussion about the markets, but you also have your own set of health issues to contrast and compare in on, and you officially have a Cardiologist (to go with your other specialist doctors).

So here I am: nearly 43. Weight-stable (losing a little still and that’s fine). Active. I have arthritis and high cholesterol, low blood pressure and Raynaud’s. I have three of those in check. Now I just have to lock down the fourth.

Once more into the breach, dear friends…

Type 1.5 Fun

BobbieLeave a comment

Ok so we’ve visited on the Types of Fun previously; although my natural instinct is to be very black and white about things I really do think we need a Type 1.5 fun.

At this year’s Ragnar I ended up enjoying myself much sooner, and had already (mentally, if not publicly) committed to doing it again *NEXT* year (note to friends: let me know if you want to do it next year!). Even though I got lost halfway through my second run.

I think one of the things that made it much more pleasant was knowing what I was in for and training more. I am at my very core an impatient person and so training is really not my forte. Training represents the tedious effort that “wastes time” until I can get to the “fun stuff”, but training helps. Much like at work. It has been a year now since Firehouse left and it has taken every day of that year for me to feel like I have a handle on my platforms, and not constantly second-guess myself. A super-good dev manager helps, as did a super-good boss (true to form, as soon as I really liked my boss I get a new one. It’s like I’m training bosses).

However I spent all of that training time listing all of the things I’d do “once Ragnar was done”. Once Ragnar was done, I was going to do the pruning in the front yard. Once Ragnar was done, I was going to run a deprecation at work. Once Ragnar was done, I was going to start on a quilt, reorganize some personal spreadsheet sprawl, go back to weightlifting, catch up on my podcasts (running with podcasts is a mixed blessing — I tend to lose about a minute a mile), clean up my filing system, fix my reporting metrics, and evaluate my wardrobe. I was going to reach out to friends again (because whenever I sign up for one of these things I tend to fall out of social events) and catch up on correspondence. I was going to blog again (hey, check!).

It’s just once that you’re on the other side of “once Ragnar was done” you realize there’s another Ragnar, and there was just no good reason to put off things for “once Ragnar was done”. And now that Ragnar is approaching Type 1 fun, I can demote it from being a milestone of deferment.

 

 

Once More into the Breach

BobbieLeave a comment

It’s happened again: I have signed up for an Event and it means I have to do training and let’s face it no one likes training. I will be participating in Ragnar Northwest Passage, this time with a different set of folks (albeit I know the same number of people this time as last: one). Interestingly enough I’m assigned the same runner legs I was last time, and so it shouldn’t be too rough.

Training is exasperating. As much as I default to Rule by Spreadsheet — checklists, things to do, etc. get almost maniacally followed — having one tell you exactly how many miles you must run is annoying. Some days it’s four, some days it’s two, some days it wants you to run fast and some days it wants you to run hills.  This means you may be feeling like a nice, flat four-miler, but the spreadsheet says you must run 2.5 miles of hills. The spreadsheet does not have any regard for your feelings.

In previous years the “long run” of the week was typically the most daunting, not because of the run itself but to find someplace, local and convenient, that fit the spec. I live on a hill. I live in an area surrounded by hills. You cannot, conveniently and within walking distance of my home, start a run that will be flat for longer than about a mile. So when the spreadsheet calls for 4 miles, “easy” (read – flat), then the spreadsheet is blowing you a raspberry. You must either get into a car to drive to someplace flat (which is ridiculous), walk however long to get to someplace flat (in my case, about 2 miles down a crazy steep hill, which means you get to walk back UP the crazy steep hill when you’re done), or deal with hills and try to tell yourself that you’re taking them “easy”. When it’s four miles that’s fine. When it’s seven that’s less fine.

Which is a long and whiny way to point out that this is the least fun part of Type 2 Fun, and I’m in the thick of it. On the flip side, the usual performance anxiety that comes with these things — questioning if I really can do it again, finding that joints hurt more than they ought to, fantasizing that if I really injure myself then I can bail and no one can blame me — has not happened.

At all.

This is unusual, and incidentally I am not exaggerating when I say that often in training, usually about 20% away from target, I get this fantasy that I will fall or trip or otherwise twist or jar my ankle or knee or hip, and then I won’t have to run anymore, and it will be okay because no one could blame me for quitting. We have a deep societal attitude towards quitting which merits further inspection (and an example can be found here). Rather than feel comfortable saying “I realized I said I’d run the Seattle Half/do a tri/bike 200 miles, but I’d rather stay home and read Nero Wolfe books”, I’d find myself running along the manicured suburbs considering the merits of air casts and crutches.

I can’t dismiss this newfound acceptance as “I’ve done Ragnar before so that’s why it’s okay” because the “I’ve done it before” didn’t work with training for 4 of 5 half Marathons, or the second of two double century bike rides.

The only thread I have to hang this on is that this time last year I was finally running again after having messed up my ankle good and proper – complete with crutches. I lost an entire month’s training, and still caught up and was able to run Ragnar. Not perfectly, not even at my desired pace towards the end; but I was able to do it and survive the sleep deprivation and questionable hygiene that comes with a two day relay race.  Instead of bailing when the opportunity was handed to me (in the form of tripping in a restaurant, of all places, in Beijing) I did my physical therapy, used my crutches, worked my way out of it and ran.

Maybe the fantasizing of what it would be like to quit — or, I think more accurately, to not have to train — was enough to keep my mind occupied while running. Maybe I don’t have that anymore and the tedium needs to get replaced with other things.

Maybe this is what I will try to figure out while I go for my next run. I’ll need something to distract me. There will be more hills.