Waist to Hips Ratio - a better health measure

So I've ranted here about how I really dislike the Body Mass Index (BMI) as if you're muscular you will appear overweight. It's an easy bet that many Olympic athletes in Beijing right now would be considered overweight. An example being those gorgeous male gymnasts I was watching yesterday who are relatively short, but have arms larger than my thighs. Even many of the American Gladiators would be considered overweight or even obese which is a hilarious thought.

So I was thrilled to hear of more recent (recent being relative - it's not that new) research that indicates that fat around the belly ("apple" shaped rather than "pear" shaped) is a good indicator of health risk. There is now the concept of Waist to Hips Ratio (WTHR - ref1, ref2). Simply divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. Women with a ratio of .8, or men with .95 are at what is considered low risk (ref.)

I like this measure. It's a lot less ephemeral of a concept. Fat around the internal organs is a credible threat (an older but surprising good USA today ref)

I'm right at .8, but just barely so I'd like to take another inch off or so.

Chinese and Western Culture - Worlds Apart

A few days ago, I was listening to a radio program on KALW (I forget which program) about how China views itself (kind of a large generalization since we're talking about a billion people). The view of the person talking was that China has a self image similar to what the US had in the 1950's. The one where "Everybody loves us." and they were really stunned to learn that in the "West" (US and Europe) that's oh so not the case.

What makes me realize over and over how far apart the cultures are is that the Chinese put so much stock in shame and are so firmly convinced that's supposed to carry weight in the West. They quoted one person saying how "ashamed" they were of France around the torch relay protests. "Shame on you France." All I can think of is "Huh?" You ignore that your country steamrolls over basic human rights on a regular basis (too many refs to list), and when someone else points it out, all you can think of to say is that they should be ashamed for dishonoring China and themselves. All I can do is shake my head in amazement, we may never be on the same page at this rate.

Though I must admit I'm looking forward to the Olympics, but I always do. I think the expectation of many world records is a little high given the horrible air quality in Beijing, but we'll have to see.

Wombats Ride - Aug 2008

I owe Bladium big time (Well I guess I do pay them, but still). 1 year of spin/RPM classes and now riding up Deer Park Road and Shaver Grade (in Fairfax), is pretty much entirely doable for me. Before I would have to walk a fair portion of it. Places where before my muscles would have hit failure I was able to work through - I had this sensation that my quads were able to get more oxygen even though they were working under load. I had this sensation when I was doing the quad strength test (see last entry) and I've often had it during the RPM classes. Either that or they are working anaerobically - I have no way of telling. Though they were not burning which is usually the indication for me that they're not working aerobically.

It was great to see Jacquie again, and I met a woman named Lisa who is out here visiting and is from Brooklyn. The day was filled with things not going as planned, but with just enough of things not going as planned that they meshed perfectly. First of all I was late and made myself even later because Tom and Ray of Car Talk were amusing me so much that I forgot that I was getting of the freeway at San Rafael and fell into autopilot going up to Santa Rosa. Fortunately I had got only a few miles out of my way and was able get back on track. At the same time, Lisa who was waiting for the Wombats in the wrong location, realized her mistake and headed over to Deer Park which was the correct location.

I finally get there and don't see Jacquie which I'm only half surprised about since I'm so late (though it's not like they leave right on time either). I get the bike out and changed shoes and I notice there's a woman riding a bike slowly in the parking lot. I finally ask her "Have you seen Jacquie?" (Amongst Fairfax mountain bikers it amuses me that I can do this to just about any person on a mountain bike and most of the time they know who I'm talking about.) She says "Well it's funny you ask that." Turns out she's looking for her too. I'm familiar with the first part of the route up to 5 Corners and I was betting that if we just hang at 5 corners we'll eventually see her. We have a nice chat while we ride up to 5 corners and we were just getting ready to sit down and settle in to wait when a polkadotted dreadlocked biker appeared. "There you are!" I say, and we were all reunited. Those sort of coincidental misadventures you can not plan.

We continue on up Shaver Grade to Sky Oaks [paved] Road. Ride past the beautiful Bon Tempe Lake and continue on to Lake Lagunitas (not to be confused with the one by Stanford). Circle the lake and then head back this time staying on Sky Oaks the whole way back down.

What was fun about staying on the road was similar to going down Mt Diablo Road you can really scream down the hill and you don't have to worry about running over a hiker (or getting a speeding ticket which, in Marin, they do had out to mountain bikers). And in the same vein of you never forget how to ride a bike, the muscle memory of how to go down a hill fast on a bike doesn't disappear very quickly at all. I may have had to spend a year getting back into the shape I was when I routinely climbed mountains on a bike, but I didn't have to spend a year relearning the go downhill fast skills. though the disc brakes help a lot with better, more efficient braking power and my hands are not horribly fatigued like they used to get.

And of course we had tea and much dish afterward. I always like to hear how the bordering on incestuous Marin bike community is doing. This isn't a gossip column so I'll skip naming names.

I really like how much time Jacquie takes teaching biking skills to women. It's fun to watch her work. One thing that I found fun was that I had headed off to charge down a hill (not a beginner skill) and she was going to hang back with slower riders and do some instruction, but just as I left, I found that she had easily caught up to me to give me directions for the bottom of the hill, once she had done that (which was done at not slow speeds), she was immediately able to send me on my way and ride back up to where she had started from. Pretty talented multitasking there.

She wants to write a book for women over 50 who have never ridden a bike before (or haven't for a long time.) Given the increasing interest in exercise and alternative transportation her timing sounds right.

I tell Jacquie that I want take her skiing this coming ski season and she's all for it. I keep telling her that skiing embraces eccentricity much more so than the mountain bike crowd. (I tell her that she needs to see any Warren Miller film to see what I'm talking about.) Well this should be fun.

Well I thought I had Weak Legs

So I'm still pondering why my leg strength seemed to abandon me on Mt. Shasta.

I'm wondering if it has to do with a combination of altitude not delivering enough oxygen to my muscles, and perhaps the smaller stabilizer muscles needing more strength work.

If it's the previous that's a bummer as I have no intention of moving to a higher elevation.

I've noticed that I still have balance trouble with lunges - they do a lot of them in the Body Pump class and I hate them but realize that I absolutely need to do them. (This site says that they are the king of leg strength builders.)

I found another site here that says that doing a "wall squat" (sitting in a chair position against a wall sans chair) is a good leg strength evaluator. So I decided to try it. It says that 45 seconds for men is excellent (39 for women - don't know why it's less for women as women's legs are strong). I did 1:00 and this is with my feet sliding on the floor some, so I repeated it with a non-slip surface under my feel. Then I did 1:15. This is so not fair - why does all this strength go away above 8000'? Maybe I should just climb with oxygen (absurd at such low elevations).

I'm going on a mountain bike ride Saturday with Wombats (a pretty easy ride, but there is a climb), so I'll see how I do climbing on dirt at low elevations. Got to also figure out how to do assisted lunges in case I lose my balance. Right now I can do them, but don't sink very low.

More Healhnet Follies

It's been 4 months since I submitted my Max Out of Pocket Expenses form to Healthnet. This means that they had 45 business days (9 weeks!) to process it. They did but right at the end I realized that they hadn't told the pharmacy which should have been a simple day or two but that gave them the excuse to start the clock over and the claim suddenly had a June date (argh).

I received a letter date July 10th (though I received the letter much later), that the claim was going through "further review." (I need to check if this is legal.) I've seen this once before but usually it means that the check will be coming soon, but I haven't seen it yet.


Sat July 26th
The check finally came.
The End - till next year.

Sure let's get Married in the Backyard (eek)

So Terri innocently suggests that rather than going to find a place to get married, that we can just get married in the backyard. To a non-gardening person I can't begin to explain the excitment and horrible stress that causes. I think the first thing she noticed was the color draining from my face and the pained expression. You see we have two very active Corgis who tear around the yard and it is now a pile of sand with ceremonial bits of unmowed grass in it. Terri's explaining where we could stand and where people could sit and all I'm thinking about is how long I've been sort of trying to unsuccessfully patch our lack of lawn with two wee barking curs racing around it, and with water restrictions imposed. I make mention that we'll have to lay sod and she blighthy says: oh we can just lay down a green square of something and I refrain from outright appoxia and just started making funny gurgling noises. To her credit she notices (but does not completely understand) my distress (I am marrying this person and fortunately her understanding of this issue is not a deal breaker). This is supposed to be a very special day and I'm not having our guests standing or sitting around on green plastic.

I suppose I could come up with an alternative to grass. After all, she's suggesting that we stand under one of the trees and that won't have grass, so some nice mulch would work well there, but a small lawn of grass would be nice for guests even if there's only 4-5 of them.

This is very exciting though my low blood pressure may change some. Guess I'll go by the new Borders in town (or Books Inc) and look for some ideas in either Garden Design Magazine or a Landscaping book.

But first I/we have to clean the backyard first. Then I can start thinking about things like fuschias and other goodies.

The fitness null set

I'm feeling a little at sea
I'm in great shape when I'm at my gym, but I don't do well on Mt. Shasta.
I was in spin class and doing really well and I was actually kinda depressed about it.

For my own sanity I think this means I need to change gym routines. Maybe switch over to kickboxing and mixed martial art exercises and Body Jam.

-----------------
Insight.
I've had a day to ponder more.
I think I see what's different in doing actual climbing vs. gym stairclimbers and bike training.

On the gym machines or on a bike, if you get tired and pause, your weight passively applied to the stair or pedal will help carry you through. This is not so when you are climbing. Your muscle is what has to lift the weight of you up. I think I've gotten to used to relying on the mechanical assistance without fully realizing it. This is why I can bike up all sorts of things but actually climbing them is another story.

What sad about that is that the gym stairclimbers can only help me just so far. At this point I have to go back to just working on my leg muscle strength and endurance. things like doing step ups, or climbing actual stairs, and doing a lot of traditional squats and leg presses.

Or maybe I'll just take a break and do kickboxing.

Yeesh, why does it take me so long to figure these things out?

Mt Diablo more attainable goals

So to make myself feel better I did ride up Mt Diablo on my bike. I stopped short of the summit just because Mark and Jan wanted to take me out for my birthday, but I easily could have made it and I think this next Saturday, I'll do it again and give myself more time.

I think the thing with biking is that you can easily compensate for muscle weakness. Others on bikes certainly did pass me and it was partially because I was on a mountain bike, partially because I have lower gears available to me, and partially because I was just going slower.

Once again I was way exhausted to the point the Jan was worried about me at dinner, but I recovered after a fair bit of sleep.

And the ride down. Pure speedy bliss. Make me wonder why I ever descend on foot at all. Took 30 minutes tops, and it was fun to chase the cars down. I think for Shasta I really should work on skiing. What I love about biking up (and I would guess skiing too) is that the climbing adage of the summit is only half way, really doesn't apply. You can pretty much kill yourself going up and just have to save enough energy to descend safely. I like that.

Back from Shasta - wiser and really tired

I'm back from Mt. Shasta. Short answer is that I didn't summit and I learned much more than I planned on.

For reasons that it took me a day or two after the summit climb to figure out, I was moving slowly - even with a light pack. As we climbed, the fatigue in my legs increased and something clearly wasn't working and it was obviously not a summit pace, so at first offered opportunity, I opted to go back down (I got up to around 10,400' or 10,500'. Now I've been training for this for months, so it wasn't like I was out of shape. I had gone up 2 days early so I was acclimated and was not sick at all. I was convinced I had no excuse and no reason which is a little maddening.

After a day's reflection, it finally occurred to me that likely I had some residual leg weakness that only showed up under the very demanding conditions of Mt. Shasta (elevation, snow, climbing a steep slope in crampons), and didn't show up at sea level workouts or even ordinary hiking. It's 3 days later and my legs are still tired and have a bone deep fatigue.

Unfortunately, training for such a moving unknown target is really difficult and sanity suggests that perhaps I want to look for another obsession that's more suited to where I live. I love where I live and have absolutely no plans on moving to the mountains. I like visiting the mountains, I love the challenge of climbing, but I don't have any compulsion to live there and even spending the extra time to acclimate I kinda resent as it takes me away from Terri and the dogs.

So here I am wondering what to do.
I think summit dreams are now on a very lengthy hiatus, while I go pursue relatively easy goals like climbing Mt. Diablo on a bike (already have done it on foot multiple times), or day hiking Half Dome, and toy with getting more seriously into biking again. doing more rock climbing, and try to find a way to recreate this leg weakness issue so it won't interfere with skiing next season - I may have to start lifting more heavy weights or at least bench pressing them. (I'm not a weight lifting fan so it's going to take some attitude adjustment.) Shasta, for now, will be a ski and glissade destination - which is not a bad thing at all.

So I'm disappointed, but feel freed in a way as well.

I grew up listening to Jim McKay

Jim McKay passed away today and what a legacy he leaves.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/more/06/07/obit.mckay.ap/index.html?cnn=yes

While I worked out on the stair climber with a light pack (probably last one I'm going to do before my climb), ESPN was on the TV right in front of me and they did a 1 hour tribute to him. A large part of my television life passed before my eyes. I was an ABC Wide World of Sports fanatic and I loved watching the Olympics.
And McKay was so much more than a sports announcer. They replayed him having to announce that the Munich Hostages had been killed and he did it with such dignity and respect and this is after he had been on the air for 16 hours.

I saw so many people and events for the first time through his eyes:

• Olga Korbut
• Ludmila Tourischeva (even ABC mispronouncing her name initially)
• Kathy Rigsby
• Mark Spitz
• Bruce Jenner
• Dwight Stone
• Secretariat
• A J Foyt
• and the Chinese Olympic Gymnast who competed with a broken leg (and we all could feel his pain because of McKay's description.)
  

and on and on and on. What a great presenter and story teller he was. I remember him talking so well now even when I didn't realize it was him talking. It's such a shame he missed seeing the Belmont today and I miss that I didn't hear him talking about it.

The Belmont Stakes: What happened to Big Brown?

Like a lot of horse crazy girls I wanted to be a jockey. Ever since I've had a love/hate relationship with Horse Racing (I hate the injury and death rate of race horses). I simply can not help paying attention when the Triple Crown races come up.

And what an inspiration for Da'Tara a 38-1 longshot who led the whole way. Talk about don't listen to what everyone else is saying. Just go for it.

here is a so-so video of it.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CXhQ7uX8lrY

Here's ESPN's
http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?videoId=3431280&categoryId=2488837

If you let the above video play it will also have interviews with the trainers of both horses, the track vet, and Big Brown's future. Speculation is that the heat may have been a factor. Other speculation is that he was on steroids before the Kentucky Derby came off of them for the Triple Crown races, and that he may no longer be getting any benefit from them. Or maybe that quarter crack injury in his hoof is bothering him.

This is Big Brown in the Preakness. Near the end of the video you can see what an incredible finishing kick this horse has, and that just wasn't there today.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tWFcspLo13w&feature=related

Well we'll be hearing more in the next few days.

ESPN did retrospective videos of previous Triple Crown winners.
Secretariat's is here:
http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?videoId=3429342&categoryId=2488837&n8pe6c=2
There still hasn't been a horse like Secretariat since.

Healthnet Follies 2008

I have a high co-payment for my shots (30%). Af a result I meet my max copay for the year quite early and every year three years running it's a chore to get them to notice and pay me back.

To share the pain, I've started keeping a call log:

Health Net Call Log

Tracking the progress of the 2008 Maximum Copayment Liability Notification (Out of Pocket expenses)

2008 Payments to Caremark - submitted
1/21/08 547.75
2/20/08 547.75
3/17/08 547.75

Payments to Caremark after form submitted
4/19/08 547.75
5/19/08 547.75

Total 2738.75 (1238.75 after 1500)


3/25/08
Calling Healthnet
Talking to Rodney
Asked how I could fax in the 2008 claim
Claiming that I have to mail it it.
I explained that I faxed it last year and it got lost three times when I mailed it. He's checking again
Says the fax number is 818-676-5008 Attn Claims and it will get scanned it


[later that day]
Tried fax number - it answers but then hangs up (tried 3x)
Faxed to main number to "Claims"

Finally just sent it to the main fax number 800-204-3778 Attn Claims and that seemed to work and I didn't get a bounce fax soon after.

4/2/08
Calling Healthnet
Talking to Robert
Has OOP for been scanned in?
Yes, Received on 3/27/08 (that has to be it.)

Takes 45 business day (= 9wks, that would be 5/23/08)

4/18/08
Calling Healthnet
Talking to Betty
Checking Status
Currently being reviewed (they check all expenses)

5/14/08
Calling Healthnet
Talking to Deborah
On 3/28/08 send to claims by mistake (that was probably me though they told me to do that).
Form needs to go to specific person (Carmen), not claims, it got scanned in but there it will sit until someone actually does something with it
Deborah is sending all information to her.
Deborah says that if no name on the fax then it does get scanned in, but just sits there

5/28/08
Calling Healthnet
Talking to: Marie
Form sent back with 2007 information. (That's deliberately dense of them.)
Accumulator spreadsheet for 2008 empty and they need to update it.
Will resubmit and expedite
Says request does go to claims (but likely then gets shuttled off to Carmen)


6/4/08 11.40am
Calling Healthnet
Talking to: Brendisia

on hold - told her last person I spoke to was Marie and was a couple of weeks ago.
Everything updated on Accumulator spreadsheet [well that's good news]
Have met OOP for 2008
OOP status has date of 5/30/08 [slow slow slow]
back on hold while she checks on refund check
Asked that information be forwarded to pharmacy
Doesn't show overpayment
I will have to look up my own copy
She says that Marie is working today and that when I call back I can ask for her.

[Didn't have time to call back later that day]
Checked my copy of the Maximum Copayment Liability Notification
My total at the time was $1643.25 submitted 3/25/08.


6/4/08 12:07pm
Called Theresa at Caremark
866-833-3752 option 1 x4141

to see if there's a way to check if OOP processed
They have to put a claim through to be able to check.
I will call next week when I need more.


6/5/08 2:30pm
Calling Healthnet
Talking to Tara (Helpful - familiar with OOP Max)
Asked if Marie is working today (I don't think she was)
Tara sees the accumulator sheet and
not sure of status of overpayment
Will send email to Carmen (who handles these things) about the OOP overpayment reimbursement (told Tara 1238.75)
also asking how to let pharmacy know that OOP Max has been reached.
When she hears back tomorrow she will call me on the cell phone.

--------------------------------------------------------

Geez, I should at least get a merit badge for this pain.

Finally it's over! We have a nominee

It's over! It's finally over. Well not quite yet but close enough dammit.

Obama is the democratic nominee, and I really hope that there is a great power position for Clinton to have. My original dream ticket was Obama/Clinton, but Clinton may be a real pain in the rear for a Vice President, but what power that administration would have.

Don't Mess with "Crush"

Gina Carano, who is also known as "Crush" on American Gladiators (which starts up again on June 9th), is in her other life is a very successful Muay Thai fighter, and CBS showed a fight of hers yesterday (Sat 9pm). I didn't watch it, but I found a link to it here. She is tough, even when allegedly out of shape (Ha - I am in good shape and she could run rings around me.)

It's interesting how much fascination a lot of us have for her. Right after the fight, suddenly there was a jump in the stats for my first Blog post about her so I'm not alone in this intrigue.

I'm Getting Married

and it's not quite sinking in yet at all.

I haven't even told my friends yet so consider this an inside scoop. The California Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriages should be allowed, and though we've hesitated before (we're both property owners and we feared it would complicate life too much being in that legal limbo of Registered Domestic Partners) it seems important now to stand up and be counted.

We haven't told people about it as come November it might be anulled by a constitutional amendment that is going to be on the ballot. Because for some reason we are still the ongoing political flavor of the month. However it appears to be getting less so. In this article in the SF Chronicle they talk about how younger generations who have grown up with friends who've identified as LGBT their whole lives don't see what the big deal is at all and overwhelmingly support same-gender marriage. The graph here really shows the dramatic change.

At first I was thinking that getting a constitution amendment might be difficult as I mistakenly thought it took 2/3 of the vote to pass. But it turns out that in Calif there is the idea of revising the constitution (which takes 2/3 vote) and amending it which if proposed as an initiative only takes a simple majority (ref.) (I need to write a separate blog entry on how I hate the initiative process - I'm not a professional lawmaker why am I being asked to be one?)

So we may get the fun of being married for a few months. Anyone wishing to take over as political football is welcome to do so. The cool thing is to see the writing on the wall. It's inevitable that same-sex marriage will be legalized in Calif over time as the voter attitude shifts, likely other blue states will eventually follow suit. After a considerably longer time the Federal laws should shift once people see that nothing horrible has happened. Wonder if I'll live to see it, given how dramatically things have changed I might well indeed.

In the meantime, I get to wear a really cool ring. :)

The Rest Step - I can finally do it

It's taken me years but I finally get the Rest Step. I feel silly that it took me so long to get it but it involves immediately locking your knee and I've been conditioned for years to not lock my knees so it was a huge mental and physical block for me.

When you take a step you straighten and lock the leg that is getting the weight (what will become the trailing leg) and relax the leg that is brought forward for the next step. The thing I wasn't getting is that you straighten and lock the leg immediately. In this way, you can walk uphill at nearly normal speed.

I was hoping I could find a You Tube video on The [Mountaineering] Rest Step but there isn't one (and there needs to be one).

There are these refs:
From Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills
http://books.google.com/books?id=O_SNr4LPdUQC&pg=RA1-PA114&lpg=RA1-PA114&dq=rest+step&source=web&ots=5SIm2A7kCC&sig=5KxV6fzRsH2KRQtvIubTzf6opoo&hl=en#PRA1-PA108,M1

And also:
http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/2547689470078157984mOchMu
http://www.ehow.com/how_14512_perform-rest-step.html

I finally put it together while working out at the gym with a pack. It became clear even before I got to the stair climber machine but when I was walking up the real stairs of the gym. I hit a rhythm and was able to then work out on the stair climber for 45 minutes while carrying a 27.5 lb pack. It of course helped that NCAA Women's Fast Pitch Softball championships were on as I'm real familiar with fast pitch softball as I spent all of jr high and high school playing softball until I had to quit from a shoulder injury which I handled all wrong so it didn't heal for years. (As a result I became an excellent hitter.)

I walked out of the gym knowing that, for once, I was ready for Shasta. I should increase the weight and the speed but I pretty much have it.

Songwriting and Music

Music is a passion of mine that unfortunately I'm not inheritly good at. I've spent years working on playing guitar and piano better and was passable, but never really that good. I pretty much stopped when I was dealing with Carpal Tunnel and realized that I essentially had to pick which activities mattered the most to me as my hands weren't going to be able to do everything. I chose work and art and sports and let playing music slide. But I continue to mentally work on musical concepts here and there - trying to recognize notes, harmonies and keys.

But it's taken me a long time to get to the point of admitting that I'm much more visual that auditory. Visualizing things is very easy for me, except I can't just look at written music and know how it's going to sound, and keeping time musically by manually counting is out is very difficult for me (though if I hear it I usually can figure it out). I took a basic music composition class and it was fascinating (and demoralizing) how easily playing music came to some folks.

But I have to remember that writing (at least expository writing) is very easy for me and probably a lot of those folks would struggle with that. Or they may not be as visual and able to imagine an object at several different orientations in space. We all have our talents.

But it doesn't stop me from being really jealous. I keep thinking that I could at least write lyrics, but my brain doesn't seem to work that way. When I write a song I'm more writing a story and the idea of stopping to write a chorus just doesn't jive at all. It's clearly a skill that I need to learn but once again it would be an uphill struggle for me. When I stop and imagine myself writing a particular song that I'm listening to, I realize that I would never have occurred to me to arrange the words that way. Maybe I'm just too linear though I don't think of myself that way. Hmmm.

I'm obviously making this far more difficult than it needs to be. Each time I have trouble, it's magnified into a moral failure. Oh please.

Waiting is not a Horrible Thing

Twice now I've seen commercials selling the idea that waiting is a worthless time waster (I can't find a good reference but I'm sure you've heard them), One in particular outright says "No one has ever gotten anything worthwhile by waiting" (paraphrase). Implying that waiting was bad (since they were selling the speed of their service).

It's odd that they can actually get away with disparaging waiting. Waiting is an excellent exercise in patience. A sort of zen-like opportunity to work on breathing and relaxation, reading, writing or thinking.

I find it also helps to realize that as long as you are taking up their space it's quite likely they will get to you. It's hard to ignore a human. Humans take up space and a business only has so much of it. Not dealing with you is actually costing them money, so they have an incentive to work with you.

Waiting is not so bad. Really.

Miserable in Paradise

When battling training daemons it's best not to be alone...

I never got home sick as a kid, but I sure do now and I'm just realizing that's a part of what it is that is plaguing my trying to do mountaineering and altitude adjustment while by myself.

Thur, Fri, Sat I was up at Mt Shasta's Horse Camp (run by the Sierra Club). I had multiple purposes in mind. The most important was to invest the time to adjust to the altitude to see if that made a difference in the AMS that I'm prone to get. The good new is that plus Diamox kept me from getting sick.

The bad news is that after 24 hours I was miserable missing Terri, Yoshi and Trek, plus I was dealing with feelings of being a failure (at mountaineering, but you know how these things get generalized in one's head - sigh.)

While there I wrote this somewhat pathetic missive:

Thur Arrived 5:30pm [it's a 1.25 snow hike up to Horse Camp from Bunny Flat]
Fri At Horse Camp acclimating.
Midday - I will leave at midnight [for a training climb - which I wussed out on and didn't leave till the morning]. The spring isn't running yet. Caretaker is concerned.
I never count on how depressed I get when I'm away from Terri & the dogs.
This is tricky as for me to aclimate takes extra time [at least 36 hours or so], but I so much want to leave now. This doesn't bode well for my mountaineering future.
On the Alaska trip [a week long class on an Alaskan glacier] which started on a Sunday, by Tuesday I wanted to go home despite being in one of the most beautiful places on Easth - the Ruth Glacier.
I love physical challenges but I need to find somethng that takes less time. I joke that I should take up something simple like riding centures [100 mile bike rides].

Wonder if something I'm taking is affecting me. I need to Google diamox serotonin [didn't find anything useful]
I went and helped work on the digging out of the spring and the: carry wood, chop water (sorry) exercise seemed to help. I must say it's nice not to be sick. I can eat all I like.

So I think my future is in shorter duration alpine skiing where I aspire to be an excellent black diamond skiier. (Right now, I'm ok with easy blues). I will go on the Shasta Mountain Guides trip that I have paid for - that will be in June, but I'm not going to do any more solo training trips that exceed a day. I'll just start bringing a pack to the gym and doing the stair climber and also work out on my elliptical here.

As far as actual training and carrying skills I still have some work to do. My rest step is still too slow to use all the time, and even when doing it my right hamstring tends to tire so I'll need to strengthen it more.

Predatory Lenders - They're Back

The Predatory Lenders are back in my mailbox. Different tactics, but just as deceptive.

This one is from "Insite Financial Corp." Who is a real estate broker (Ca lic #01522406)

It's offering me more than my original loan, but for a lower monthly payment, claiming to be a 30 year fixed. Today's interest rates are higher than my current loan so I know there's a huge catch in there somewhere.

Looking carefully at the language it says "30 year fixed loan with a payment at 3.25% amortized" odd that it doesn't say "interest rate," and in the next paragraph it says APR or 7.99% which is way over what my loan is and a major red flag.

Turning over the page in search of the fine print, and the "offer" goes from sounding friendly to a financial nightmare.
"New loan is a 30 year fixed with minimum payment option starting at 3.25% for the first year. Minimum payment is available for 120 months [10 years] with the following minimum payment schedule:

Year Amount
1 1074.34
2 1154.92
3 1241.54
4 1354.56
5 1434.76
6 1542.37
7 1658.05
8 1782.40
9 1916.08
10 2059.79

So in 10 years the payment doubles! And what year does it exceed what I'm paying now?
Year 4. Such ripoff artists. Especially since during the years where you're not paying much money, interest in accruing.

Oh and there could be a prepayment penalty in case you had the idea to use just the cheap part of the loan. Run away from these types of quagmire loans.

Muddy Buddy ride and run

Muddy Buddy: A bike ride, a run, an obstacle course, and a crawl through a mud pit.

Do I get to admit that this looks like an absurd amount of fun? And it's only 6 miles total - part of which will be on a bike. You actually could not train for it and be fine.

Check out the race video: http://www.muddybuddy.com/info.php

There's one coming up in San Jose on June 8th and entries are open till June 5th.
http://www.www.muddybuddy.com/events.php?id=2

Unfortunately, that's right before my Shasta climb and I'm paranoid about getting hurt as I'm more than hell bent on climbing that mountain this time. I really do want to put someone up to this so I can watch. Wonder if a dog could go along? Maybe just not ride the bike though the dog could be carried through the obstacles (and would love the mud crawl). Given that would add to the sillyness the organizers would probably be all for it.

Bad Web Design Still Lives!

It's gotten harder to find, but really bad web "design" is still with us.

I found this completely by accident: http://www.crossedsabers.com/

This is amazing. This is not a case of ignorance of how to set up a page. You have to work to make it this bad. This person knows how to change the font and backgroud colors, insert photos, change the text justification, but they have no sense of TalkingTooMuch. In fact, no sense of text placement at all. There is a blizzard of text all over the page. And the text language is seriously off kilter. The miles long crap in the left column where you should only put basic outline headings. It's an easy bet that their in person communication skills are just as bad, but I'm not willing to check further.

And the content is a hoot. Saying they will shoot anyone caught trespassing and cutting their horses tails. So much for due process - who made you judge and jury? And I love the barn manager ad for 40-60 hours a week at sub-minimum wage ($5.00/hr - maybe that's normal for West Virginia.) And I love the near religious references to "Our Executor."

This isn't a web site - it's a side show.

This person is a West Virginian Republican. Surprised? Thought not. :)

Workshop Organizing - Learning New Skills

Well I thought they were new skills, they really aren't.

There's a dog trainer in Southern California that I've been wanting to take Yoshi to as the training techniques ("Control Unleashed") are proving to be very effective. I made an appt for him in March and had about a month to work on the exercises presented in the book. As the appt got closer my dog started getting behaviorally a lot better and then I realized I didn't know what I wanted to work on so postponed the appt.

In the meantime, I had joined a Yahoo group of people also working on the techniques and found that there were about 4 of us in the Bay Area who were interested, so it started to look like it might be easier to bring Kienan up here instead of a group road trip. To get an idea of interest, I asked the Bay Team list and got an avalanche of responses. I decided that it was time for this to happen in the Bay Area and on the spot decided that we should organize a Control Unleashed Workshop (even though I'd never done something like that before). My life hasn't been quite the same since.

The cool thing is that I was able to get The Bay Team to sponsor it and thus I had both insurance (the big part) and, also important, the advice of our Trial Secretary which helped huge amount.

Technology made a huge difference too. I created a Yahoo group and invited people to it and had an easy way to talk to people and get suggestions and feedback from them. I kept the simpler documents on Google docs, and used Open Office for the more complicated ones that used special fonts (like the flyer and the completion certificate). Even Google Street Views got into the act as a view of the parking entrance was really helpful to put in the directions of the confirmation. And my monocrum of graphic design skills got dusted off as well in designing the flyer and the certificate.

Even though we used the mail to send checks, I used email heavily to confirm receipt of the checks, and made liberal use of my cell phone. The cell phone was invaluable the day of the event so last minute things could be taken care of easily.

What helped a lot was that I've taken several seminars and I know what generally happens at them. I knew what I liked and didn't like and actually had the power to do it differently this time. I hate it when people can't use cameras, so I allowed them. I don't like having to pay for lunch separately so I just included it in the seminar price which also meant that we didn't have to manage who paid for lunch or not (a huge win in my view). Though the biggest win was to offer an auditor spot to someone who would be the food service manager. She bought and brought all the snacks and breakfast items, laid it all out and dealt with the caterer. Phew.

I guess this is all about how to delegate which is what the management gurus always talk about.
Though I was stepping outside my usual sphere, I never felt lost and actually didn't realize that I was doing it. I think I kept waiting for reality to hit and I was standing in it the whole time. The funny part was that I got to sign my own completion certificate which was a schizophrenic sort of feeling.

One of the more fun things was the opportunity to publically thank my dog for bringing us all together on that particular day as he was the reason it all happened in the first place.

Praying for Lower Gas Prices - Oh please stop

Seriously. There's an article in the Chron today about how Rocky Twyman staged a pray-in at a Chevron station (!). He must be kidding, but he swears he's serious.

As if God gives a flying whatever about how many trading tokens it takes you to secure a gallon of dead dinosaur residue. Especially since according to this cnn Money article, we're still only playing about midrange in the scope of world gas prices (at least it's closer to normal than before when it was absurdly inexpensive.)

People invoke God in the oddest ways. I'm much more in the God sets up a system and then leaves it alone. I mean you gotta admit that particle physics and evolution are pretty cool tools (now that's intelligent design) in the scope of universe design. (If you care, I'm kind of a non-practicing Buddhist myself.)

A friend sent me an article that someone did a creationist museum that shows Adam and Eve's progeny in a world complete with docile (!) dinosaurs (ref1, ref2). Now that's funny, tempting to go see it, but it's way off in Kentucky.

Am I going to get in TROUBLE for this?

So I'm organizing a dog training workshop (which is a long story in itself). People sign up and send me checks. Sometimes the level they want is full and they have to send me a different check (easier than my managing refunds) This has been working great and I just had one deadbeat who I had to nag a little. I wasn't getting answers via email, so I left a message on her voicemail at which point I find out that she's an elementary school Principal. Eeek!

When I was a kid (and I'm informed that this is no longer the case) the Principal was the most powerful figure in a young kid's life beside their parents. So it was difficult for me to leave a slightly nagging message on the PRINCIPAL'S voicemail. I don't think my voice shook, but there was a groveling small child in me worrying that I was going to get in trouuuuble.

I did eventually get the check and the workshop is about to happen, but I sent out email asking for a reply to let me know that they had all received the workshop confirmation and directions. I've heard from all but 2. Wouldn't you know? She's one of them. ARRRGH. My inner child does not need this anguish even though I keep telling her that she needs to get over it.

I'm going to wait a couple of days in hopes that I don't have to face these silly internal issues.
Let's hear it for avoiding issues.

Torch Run - Afterwards

As you have no doubt heard, SF (Gavin Newsom) changed the path the torch took, avoiding a whole bunch of protesters, but disappointing those who came out to see it.

I was trying to think what I would have done in the city's position.

I came back to

A city's responsibility is to
1. protect its citizen's and visitors
2. not stomp on civil rights

A caller to KFOG mentioned yesterday that it was a powder keg on the Embarcadero and there were people planning on violence. I think Newsom probably took the best of a set of not fun choices. The protests got to happen. The torch got to run. And most importantly, no one got killed or severely hurt.

Yes, people were disappointed that they didn't get to see the torch but they likely wouldn't have seen it anyway. They would have seen a street brawl at best. And the stick thin torch bearers would have been at considerable risk.

Olympic Torch in SF - Worry

The Olympic Torch is here along with all the accompanying controversy. Mayor Newsom is taking what I think is the right tack of encouraging peaceful protest and for the most part I'm sure that's what will happen, but there is always some group that takes things further and gets violent in some way. Usually in a protest without a specific target that's [relatively] fine.

But this is different. There is a focal point and a vulnerable one at that - the torch and the torch bearer. This is going to make tomorrow more than a little exciting for those charged with protecting the torch bearer from harm. I'm hoping we'll have no violence, but historically that hasn't been the case there's always been some.

Of course, the Chinese Gov't doesn't give a hoot about what happens (I really dislike the Chinese Gov't and for good reason), but the rest of the world will be watching. I'm particularly impressed with the protesters who climbed the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge. Now that's bravery.

I Hate When My Superstitions are Reinforced

"These things go in threes." I hate the foreboding that I get from that saying.

We've had three dog agility related people (all male) pass away recently. The last one Bill was a former Power Paws classmate of mine who just died yesterday of Bladder Cancer. When I heard about the second death I had already heard of Bill's diagnosis and the fact that he and his wife Nan had moved to Houston from Ottawa, Canada (where they had moved for an employment opportunity) for treatment. While Houston is an okish city as far as Texas goes the culture shock must have been appalling.

But I should stop making this about me. I loved having Bill and Nan (and their dogs) in class. Bill had this perfect staccato way of saying "Bert" (their first Border Collie). I wish I had a recording of it, but it is so embedded in my brain that I probably don't need one. He loved his dogs and he loved seeing them succeed and never yelled at them (in a bad way), even when Radar was doing his best imitation of that fictional slow race horse whose name I can't find now (and I've just wasted 10 minutes looking). Though Nan has a special way of saying Raaay-Dar.

I'm wondering how Nan is doing as I spent more time with her. I selfishly hope she'll move back here.

In start contrast to Kevin, Bill's death is not a shock or a surprise, but no less angering. He gave it his best shot. He should have won, dammit. The world is a less happy place because he's gone. Their web site is http://www.kednac.com/index.html

Randy Rhodes - shy soft-spoken radio host

Randy Rhodes who is a funny, bright, very direct Air America radio host came out to San Francisco for an appearance and got into hot water by really letting loose (seems that SF brings that out in folks) and called both Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton "fucking whores." Geez Randy - don't hold back now. :)

She's apparently indefinitely suspended. Oops - but you know she'll be back.

The video is here:

http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=42226&cat=14

Air America's web site says:

"Air America encourages strong opinions about public affairs but does not condone such abusive, ad hominem language by our Hosts," said chair Charlie Kireker.

While I don't think Rhodes tirade is really constructive, the trouble is - it's really funny.

Squinting at Lawn Signs

The Alameda Education Foundation has started a campaign to support the school programs that are facing being axed. Things like music for grades 1-3 and athletics for high school and advanced placement programs. Very admirable goals and the campaign has a sense of novelty that I admire. The one problem is that the important part of the lawn signs (the contact information web address) is unreadable from further than 10 feet away, which makes them pretty pointless if you're driving by.

Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12094656@N00/2338265903/in/pool-672557@N20/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24943895@N07/2356188736/in/pool-672557@N20/

The second one with the blue stripe is the most mysterious to me. What is the purpose of the blue stripe? It cries out to have the invisible url larger, in white, and on top of the blue stripe, and it's driving me a bit nuts as these signs are all over the neighborhood.

Problem is that while I totally support our schools and vote for every school related tax accessment, I'm leary of whining too much about this as I don't want to get roped in to redesigning the sign as I'm busy enough as it is. So here I whine, but I really hope they work on the presentation.

Predatory Lending - New Tactics

They're back in my mailbox, but differently styled, and just misleading instead of borderline illegal.

Two came yesterday.
The first on was from Loan Management Services in Oakland, CA

Right at the top it displays an inflated estimated value of my house or what it was probably worth a year ago at the top of the real estate value. Then it goes on to say what my loan is (a public record), and then it asks if I'd like to discuss options for refinancing this loan.

The next one from United Capital Mortgage Solution starts out with Fed Lowers fund rate below 3.0% and says that that congress has approved increasing the loan limits from $417,000 to 729,00. Both of which are completely irrelevant. Then it goes on to say: You may meet the requirements to take part in a government backed 30 year fixed rate mortgage program.

This government program does not require a good credit score to quality and this program may allow you to obtain Cash Out of up to 95% of the value of your home. It goes on to say that I had an adjustable rate loan (I don't) and should call to refinance. This one at least has fine print which basically admits this product or service has not been approved or endorsed by any government agency. Which means all the stuff they told you doesn't apply to what they're proposing.

So it seems as if the tactic is to shove a bunch of true but completely irrelevant but nice sounding information into the promo letter.

Truck transmission

Well the brake trick didn't last long for my truck and it's getting harder and harder to get it into gear. Eventually it's going to strand me so I gave in an let my mechanic take a look at it. At first they were wondering if it's the clutch but I was pretty sure it wasn't as the clutch had been replaced not too long ago, so I wasn't surprised at all to hear that yes indeed it's the transmission. They found a used one for me for $850 and out the door is going to be in the neighborhood of $1900. (Ouch).

Unfortunately that's going to impact the agility budget, but the truck is for the house so I may bill the house for part of it.

What's interesting is that it's cheaper to just replace the transmission rather than take it apart and find out why there are metal filings in the transmission fluid (I trust these folks as this would be a great way to rip someone off) I am having them keep the old transmission so I can take it apart to learn more about how it works.

[later]

Unfortunately the place they got the transmission from had a $200 refundable core charge which means they want the old one back or I give them another $200. Fun as pulling a transmission apart would be, it's not worth that much.

I did call them back as the clutch felt really soft and Rodell told me that the clutch was replaced (appartently you get a clutch out of the deal too as it's like trying to change the oil without changing the filter) and the new clutches are super smooth and they feel totally effortless (and hence wrong), but that it's normal and as long as it's going into gear that's ok.

Just Spell It OUT Jodie

I don't usually make a habit of reading Parade Magazine but if it's waved under my nose I typically don't resist, because it takes less time just to read it than avoid it. (Make People Magazine look downright literary), and I freely admit to being the curious type.

So I read the Mar 16, 2008 interview with Jodie Foster. and I'm a little ticked off at how they presented her as not having found love (she's been in a long term relationship with Cydney Bernard for years and they have 2 kids) but at the same time realize that if Foster isn't going to tell Parade Magazine the whole truth then what are they going to say?

Given that John Hinkley tried to assassinate Reagan in her name, she pretty much has earned a right to her over paranoid privacy, but these days I don't think it serves her as then you get things like Parade Magazine (deliberately I believe) densely calling Bernard her "longtime friend." Foster has been in the "If they're not bright enough to figure it out." camp for a very long time and now is making it so obvious (your kids share your names!) that it's appalling that Parade takes the single, loveless Foster tack (which I find pretty offensive.)

Come all the way out Jodie, enough with coded acceptance speeches that you've been doing for years. Spell it out even to the dense. You don't have to discuss every detail, but just tell them the truth of who Bernard is for you.

Alameda Telecom on its way out

I hate being correct when I don't want to be.

10 years ago. Alameda Bureau of Electricity called me up doing a survey of whether I thought them going into the cable business was a good idea. I said I wasn't sure I wanted my city's very successful municipal power company getting mired in the risky cable business. This was during the dotcom boom and every thing looked rosy, but already there was this sneaky sense that this all couldn't go on forever.

But they did it anyway, and my household needed to get out of dialup hell and I wanted to support them as I was hoping that my caution was totally off base. The service has been great all this time. Unfortunately they've been losing an astounding amount of money and the electric company side of the business has had to loan them money.

According to the Chron's Chip Johnson and other sources the writing is pretty clear that the cable side of the business will have to be sold, which is fine. I didn't particularly want to choose Comcast as a cable provider when a local one was available, but if suddenly we become Comcast customers for some reason that seems ok. I just hope they don't offer me the Discovery channel as I would never leave the house then.

On Writing

It's funny the categories that one makes in ones head. I write. I have no problem with writing, I'm a liberal studies undergrad (English, History Theatre, Math) so you could say that I've been trained as a writer. And friends who are real writers say they like my writing (a huge compliment that always takes me by surprise). But I don't see myself as a Writer, nor have I ever aspired to that lofty goal. And yet here I am. Writing.

For me writing has been a means to an end (my apologies to the real writers for the cliche). I want to tell a story or an anecdote or express an idea and writing is the most natural way for me - probably because I spent a lot of time alone as a kid (my siblings are older than me and were out of the house while I was young.) I would tell myself these long narratives as a way to cope. This has left me a little weird about spending significant amounts of time by myself, but that's another blog entry.

I see myself now as more of a chronicler that a writer.

While I love to read fiction, I'm rather poor at creating it. I'm much more the write (mis)adventure stories. Also, as a way to keep myself motivated to train my dogs, I write about my dog training and one of my dog's has obliged by having some very challenging behavior problems, so the Training Diary has developed a following (probably from sympathetic souls) - something I never anticipated. I put the Diary online so I could get at it from anywhere, and so if I had a question for a trainer, I could easily point them to the Diary, and yes of course I use it to share silly dog stories with friends. These days, people do come up to me at agility trials commenting about an entry and of course I get email too. It still happily surprises me that people read it and I hope it always surprises me.

But this was about writing wasn't it? I think one thing I'm noticing is that I'm starting to really enjoy it. I'm sitting in the parking lot of Sugarbowl and its windy and chilly outside and what am I doing? Writing this. Ostensibly I'm waiting for it to warm up and be less icy and that's mostly true, but when I got here and noticed the conditions, I was thrilled to pull a notebook out and start scribbling instead. But the slopes are starting to call and hopefully I will stay mostly on my feet/skis today.

Automotive Mysteries

My truck is acting strangely and it's taken me months to even figure out a work around to the problem and I don't understand the solution at all.

For months my truck has been sometimes difficult to shift into first when it's sitting still. I tried a whole bevvy of supersticious things like: trying other gears (fine if it would let me), holding the gearshift against the gear (rarely would work, double (and more) clutching, and changing the transmission lubricant.

A couple of days back I by accident found a solution and I really don't get it and need to spend some quality time with my mechanic. The plus side is that it may well be cheaper than a transmission rebuild to fix.

If it won't go in gear, I press on the brake pedal and 9 of 10 times it will then allow me to smoothly shift into first. Say what? How could brakes have anything to do with a transmission? That question will surely be answered by my mechanic, but I just save myself a bunch of money by knowing what fixes it rather than pay them to puzzle it out. It's probably some hydraulic problem and stepping on the brake increases the pressure enough, though I have no problem with the brakes so it's something deeper down.

Odd. I suppose chanting might help.

[followup]

Now stepping on the brake is no longer working. It pretty much has to be in motion. To the shop it goes today.

Hillary Should Concede

Much as I hate to write this, given that the Republicans are deliberately crossing party lines to vote for Hillary as they see her as a more defeatable candidate, and given that Obama is in the delegate lead, I think it's time for Senator Clinton to bow out honorably rather than keep attacking Obama. As long as it was a positive campaign I certainly didn't mind that it continue but this negative slamming of each other just is not serving us at all, and the republicans are loving it.

Randi Rhodes thinks that she knows what Clinton is thinking. That McCain is a one term president but Obama is a two term president, so she has a better chance of eventually being president if she were to run against McCain even if she were to lose the first time. If that was even remotely what she is thinking that would be remarkably short sighted as we need a Democrat as president Right Now. 4 more years of a Republican administration is going to come at a terrible cost of both lives and money.

Skiing Progress

I'm starting to "get" skiing. Or more specifically, my muscles are getting it. The memory of how to make a proper turn is starting to sink into my muscle memory (ref1, ref2). I'm starting to think of the turn as a whole process rather than over thinking each part of the turn (though I still have to do that some.) No longer do I feel I'm strapped to these unwieldy things whose operation is a mystery to me and that I have to think about every move I make with them or else they will turn on me and throw me to the ground. They do still throw me to the ground from time to time, but I usually understand what I did wrong, and also I haven't fallen when exiting a chairlift in a long time. (Unfortunately, that was also my only chance at being in a Warren Miller film - Yes, I've seen many of them.)

I spent the day on Sugarbowl's Jerome Hill going down the Trailblazer run (over and over again) I'm almost to the point where itn's getting a little dull, but not yet. Then I'll have to go looking for steeper blue square terrain of which there's no shortage of. Next season I hope to be able to start learning black diamond.

My right turns are still awkward but getting less so, but it is my left leg that does get fatigued quicker and I have to stop to rest on the way down the run. As one might guess, the less I'm fatigued, the better my form is. I did a fairly short day today as I wanted the form to have more time to set in rather than having me struggle with poor form when tired. It's tempting to just do half days, but the best skiing conditions span the mornings and afternoon (10-3 or so).

With the climbing season coming up I do need to spend more time actually climbing up the snow, but I think I'll squeeze in one or two times more this season. I will be at Shasta in a couple of weeks, but I really should be snowshoeing then.

The nice thing about learning to ski is that I'm not overcome with wistfulness when I see skiers fly past me on Shasta as I now know what's involved. I will be able to comfortably ski mountaineer one day - just not yet.

I'll have to plan with my trainer Bryce about how to increase quad endurance for long climb and ski days. Probably lots of squats - oh boy. The best exercise is still without a doubt walking around in ski boots, carrying ski equipment. I was thrilled to realize that my heart was hammering away and I wasn't out of breath at all. (I'll credit Indoor Cycling for that)

The only bummer is that I seem to have reinjured the muscle pull near my ribcage (base of the lat). Hopefully it won't take long to improve.

While skiing, I still use my poles a lot to keep me on my feet and the avoid stupid pratfalls. This makes me think that I might not enjoy snowboarding that much as they don't use poles. I'll stick with skiing for now as there's plenty to learn and it's more useful for mountaineering.

Dying from Treatable Illnesses

Someone I know (but not well) just passed away from Bacterial Meningitis caused by a Strep infection and I'm feeling pretty angry about it and this is by far the best place to vent rather than make the living feel worse than they already are.

The problem with Strep is that we have some familiarity with it but it has a dark side that can be very nasty and deadly if not recognized and treated early and aggressively (ref1, ref2, ref3). I think of it like driving a car. As an analogy, we are very familiar with driving, but to stay sane, have to retain some denial of how very dangerous it can be (and I just drove 300 miles yesterday), but that analogy doesn't hold really is that while most of us drive, if asked, we know about the danger, and that probably isn't true about Strep infections.

This is all very much on my mind as ironically I was listening to a Discover Magazine's Vital Signs podcast of someone nearly losing a leg to a Strep infection resulting from a stupid scratch on her foot and the medical staff disagreeing on how to treat it. It was very much a parable in don't take infections lightly and if you think it's Strep treat it immediately and aggressively.

The person I knew had been battling a sinus infection (page down on the ref. to "eliminate infection") for several weeks. Now while I know him casually, I don't know his health status, his attitude to getting medical attention (how long he'll just "put up with it"), how his body responds to large doses of pennicillin (Strep responses well to it according to the podcast) or the skill and patience of his doctor, and most importantly what strain of Strep it was (group A or B - see the numbered refs above). Sinus infections are common and it's easy to just think of them as a nuisance and they mostly are, but ones that hang on I think (though I'm no doctor so what do I know? Just enough to make me dangerous.) is a red or at least a yellow flag. More than a week is certainly long enough to get a culture to see what you're dealing with and I don't know if that was done (and I'm not going to ask as it's beside the point for us as it won't bring him back, and a kind loving person is no longer in this world and we're worse off because of it.)

Matt Gonzalez joins Nader - now it's personal

well sort of personal. More ranting follows.

I just heard on KFOG news that local lefty and former SF Supervisor Matt Gonzalez is going to join Nader on their presidential bid. Now I don't know Gonzalez, in fact I haven't even introduced myself to him (since I'm a huge Gavin Newsom fan and Gonzalez is best know for his running against Newsom, I really didn't have much to say to him).

But we all do see him around from time to time at local coffeehouses, so this brings it all a little closer to home, and I'm hoping that someone here can manage to talk some sense into him as opposed to allowing Nader to brainwash him.

But how do you bring it up in a way that isn't completely confrontational? How do you politely say "Consider something past your own ego, you dense lunkhead."? It's not overstating things to say that the reputation of the US is on the line here during this election.

Dammit Nader - You're SO out of Touch

Ralph Nader has announced again that he is running for president (ref.) and I very much want to hurt him (but that wouldn't change anything). About the only thing that might help is to put him through brain surgery to cut his ego down to a more normal size and plug him back into today's reality.

He says "most Americans are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties," which is a really old line and proves that he hasn't been paying attention for at least a year to the giddy grounswell of attention that Barack Obama is getting and the fact that many people are thrilled with actually having two excellent choices for the Democratic nominee.

What drives Nader? Does he think he's the Messiah? He claims that he only runs when people ask him to. Who on Earth is he hanging around with? Can someone get a line into that bubble they're living in to phone in a clue to them? At least have them turn the damn TV on and watch a little news. Please.

Terri thinks that no one is going to vote for him, but all I can think about is the 2000 election of Bush that would not have happened if Nader hadn't been there.

Parental Caregiving - Reality vs. Personal Demons

My parents, mostly my mother, need to have a full time attendant and have been resisting doing so mostly because of my father. My siblings have been terrific at trying to work with a currently unworkable situation of dealing with legally competent adults making terrible choices for themselves.

What's tough for me (and why I'm writing about it here as this issue is not about me, but I need to puzzle this out) is working through all the weird unspoken emotional subtextual messages that I'm feeling regarding my mother. Even as a kid, my mother used a cane to get around, and always wanted help. For example, she always wanted me to hold her hand for stability when crossing the street. This is tough on a kid who is too old to need hand holding to cross the street. A kid isn't able to really separate out her mother's needs vs. her own.

The demon that I wrestle with now is the constant pull of emotional obligation (likely mostly imaginary) that I should still be there helping her. I woke up this morning feeling like the reason that my mother was resistant to hiring an attendant is that I should be there taking care of her. Now my mother (who has huge class related issues) grew up with a hired cook/housecleaner so she's entirely used to having hired help so the reality probably not that and what is going on is a combination of my father's resistance to getting help (since that would mean that he isn't completely capable of taking care of his family himself) and my mother trying to cope by falling back on using the youngest child as the caregiver (which is totally not fair of me, but is the message I feel.)

Ironically, when I'm there I'm a great attendant up to a point. I'm a really good wheelchair driver and helping her up and down into the chair. More intimate issues like managing getting up and down off the toilet) I do have more issues with and don't do much of that.

I have to keep reassuring myself that I live no where near them. There's no danger of my getting trapped into that role, and if my father were willing to hire an attendant, my mother would be thrilled. I just need to keep repeating this to myself. Over and Over and Over.

Telemark Ski Clinic - Unanticipated Benefits

Last Saturday, I had the second part of my Babes in the Backcountry Telemark Ski Clinic. It went similar as I started out strong, but was completely exhausted and demoralized by lunchtime and elected to do a little alpine skiing for the afternoon. But I noticed something yesterday and also today (now that my body had had a chance to rebuild). I'm way stronger than I was before the clinic.

I had an indoor cycling class on Monday and I could tell that I was stronger (and I'm already pretty strong at it), but this morning, right as I got up, my usual tottering around wasn't there at all. I can easily stand on one leg without having to concentrate nearly so much on it as I usually have to. I don' t know for sure, but it seems like the last of my lingering muscle weakness symptoms have finally been rectified. Given that I've been working on this for well over 2 years this is most welcome news.

Back to the clinic. The flu really cut into the numbers of the attendees, so it was me and just one other person with instructor Elizabeth. Such a deal. I have the near equivalent of an all day private lesson for the cost of a very inexpensive clinic.

Concepts we covered were:

• even though you have two skis consider them as pieces of one long ski
• focus on the big toe for the main turning ski, the little toe for the other
• bow the little toe ski towards the hill when traversing
• pole placement (hard to summarize)
• keep looking down the mountain
• slide the soon-to-be uphill ski back for the turn

Notes for me in particular:

• get more comfortable with speed - stay on the easier slopes for this
• stay in the turn/fall line longer - especially with right turns that I tend to cut short
• stop trying too hard - that's what's exhausting me
  

I think I'm going to have to spend a lot of time on alpine skis to get used to speed and pause on the Tele efforts for a bit (though my legs have really benefited). I'm also noticing that March is nearing with the climbing season only 3 months away, so I may have to pause on the whole skiing thing fun as it is and just work on climbing in snow. I'm not going to get good enough at skiing to feel comfortable backcountry skiing this season (I think) so it sounds like that's next season's project - though I'll go a couple more times this season just to practice what I've learned.

Marianne joined us for a little bit and offered advice as well, and I got to meet Leslie Ross, the founder of Babes in the Backcountry. Watching all three of them (Elizabeth, Marianne and Leslie) was completely mesmerizing (the poetry in motion cliche comes to mind - but good Telemark skiing is beautiful) and I felt honored to be there.

Meanwhile back to my hapeless reality. I signed up for Mt. Shasta Guides June 20-22 Women's Climb. With any luck, I'll be on the summit for my birthday. And this time I'll be able to look at the skiers with a practiced eye, and hopefully I won't be battling leg fatigue as much (that's the project of the next couple of months). And I have promised myself not to whine about climbing roped and to just suck it up and get used to it. Though I will have to go up a couple of days earlier to acclimate.

The speed thing is funny as I find a walking descent too slow (I'm not going to whine about that either). I'm a big time glissading nut (the text based definitions of glissading kinda suck so just see the video). There are a lot of glissading videos on Mt. Shasta on You Tube. The first person in this video is most similar to me. Terri says she can look up at climbers descending and can pick me out by being the faster moving dot. I thought I'd be totally into the speed of skiing, but that's faster than glissading and just past my current comfort level which is something I didn't know. With practice that will change, but for now I'm fine with that level. What's cool is that that video is from a place higher on Shasta than I've ever been and it doesn't look too bad. I look forward to standing on it it person.

About that Impressive Sounding Name ...

I couldn't decide whether to put this entry in the dogs diary or this one as it's about dogs, but really only peripherally and nothing to do with training a dog.

It's actually about two things

1. Find out the background of that fancy sounding name you want to make use of
2. What do you do when you know the non-impressive details of such an appellation? Oh that's simple - you write about it here. If I knew the person I'd tell them, but I don't know them, so here I sit.

Some Welsh Corgi breeders like to give their Kennel names a Welsh name since the breed originally did come from Wales (Unlike the Australian Shepherd which did not come from Australia - guess I need a citation for that - elf was nice enough to put some in the comments section.) A common choice is a town name which is fine, people can actually research how to pronounce it and have a shot at getting at least a little close (Welsh is notoriously hard to pronounce - I think it makes Gaelic look easy - ok, not really, but you get the idea.)

Also, I've been to parts of Wales, so I have some visual images to match up with the names.

So I decide after a few years of wondering, how to pronounce a certain kennel name (I'll withhold the name to be nice, but Corgi folks will probably have a few guesses). I'm over on Wikipedia reading the part about how to pronounce the town name and I'm flipping back and forth between the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) spelling of the name and the IPA guide on how to read it. While i was doing this I would spy little bits on the rest of the text about the town. Famous Narrow Gage railway town. Ok. Old mining town. Interesting. Slate mining. Really? Sounds familiar. Known for huge piles of slate rubbish. Wait! That's too familiar. I look at Google maps/satellite and I realize that I've driven through there. It's a striking place that they're preserving the surrounding mountainous area very nicely. But there's no getting around that the Kennel with the fancy Welsh name is named after a place that features ginormous piles of slate debris eyesores that are clearly visible from planes, satellites, even the road.

I'm really glad I don't run into the kennel owner (who is very successful and on the other coast I think) at parties or other gatherings as that would be too hard to sit on.

What's really funny is that typically all dogs from a particular Kennel have that Kennel name as the start of their name. So therefore all the dogs from that Kennel could conceivably be called "Slag Heap Corgis." (A geologist noticed that I misuse "slag" here - see the comments section). My consolation (besides writing it here) is that I know someone with a dog from that Kennel (a lovely dog), but he would get a laugh out of the Rubbish Heap legacy.

So be careful when you want to learn how to pronounce something as you may end up with way more knowledge than you thought you wanted to know.

Using Caller ID to Ignore Sales Calls

Computers have revolutionised the making of sales calls but the short cuts they take now make it absurdly easy to not talk to them. Sales call companies use computers to make thousands of phone calls. If a live person actually answers the phone the call is then routed to a sales person and you can hear this as the line is initially silent and then you can hear the click of someone coming on the line. If you're fast you can detect this delay and hang up if you don't get a response on the first hello.

But that's more work than I want to do. I got caller id because I really want to know who is calling and my cell phone has it and I love it. I don't like paying for it but it's proved invaluable to not have to have unwanted conversations with companies/organizations that I have/had previous relationships with but don't want to have a conversation about it right now.

Sales call companies block their number in a host of ways (google on "unavailable caller id") but they almost always do and I've never seen a legit call come up that way. Even if it was a legit caller they'd leave a message. We now have a joke in our household about how "unavailable" always calls and never leaves a message. Sometimes the number shows up but the name does not which provides the most information (example below.)

Of course, the first step in avoiding sales calls is to add your number to the do not call list. I've heard people claim that sales companies ignore the list, but that hasn't been my experience, though it's not like I'm answering their phone calls either.

If you do get a phone number with the name as unavailable appearing, there's this handy site called 800 notes where you can enter a toll free number and find out who owns it and any comments people have about it. For example I just got a call from 888-858-9823. I looked it up on that site and found out that it was Chase - a company I haven't dealt with in years but oh well. One poster said that if you called the number there was an option to remove your number from their sales call list, and they were right. It took a little while but it finally let me enter my number and promised to remove it. I'll have to try this on the other numbers too though most of the calls are from my schools (UCSB and Cal Poly) or the people they hire like Telefund. Though now that I look at Telefund's website I see the it was more likely The Sierra Club or the Democratic National Committee. The trouble with all of these groups is that they are so hard to say no (high guilt factor and they know it) to even though I never give money over the phone.

Article on Ski Balance

In skiing, as with many things, there is the idea of Intermediate Plateau. You can cope on the blue square slopes but have a hard time on more advanced terrain. That's just starting to be me. This pdf that SkiNet just send me claims that you shouldn't throw all your weight onto the outside ski, but instead make it a more gradual transition. After all this time about keeping most of your weight on the outside ski, that's going to take some adjustment, but it will make switching between tele and alpine easier.

http://www.skinet.com/skinet/content/pdfs/ski0208tp_int.pdf

There are pictures included, I must say I look like the incorrect photos.

Alpine Skiing Intermediate Private Lesson

Saturday I went to Sugarbowl and my parents had recently given my a cash gift after the sale of some property (my mother the queen of privacy/secrecy would give me hell for even discussing that much) they had so I decided to spend some of it on a private lesson to work on parallel turns. My instructor was Rich and he was excellent (another instructor said that as well).

His main points were

• focus your weight of the turning ski on the big toe
• rotate the other ski into the hill
• face your upper body where you want to go
• the rhythm is similar to riding a bicycle (turn-beat-turn-beat-turn...)
• (probably the hardest) during a turn, stay in the fall line a bit longer to gain speed and momentum and to allow the skis to get into position (my words). My right turn is not as strong and I cut the turn shorter than it should be.
  

He lengthened my poles to 120cm which initially felt way long but felt perfect later on.

In alpine skiing during a turn 70+ of your weight is on the outside ski (in Tele it's 50/50). Focusing on the big toe helps you get the correct edge into the snow. Now that I think about Tele's big toe / little toe adage is pretty similar to the first two points.

The third point is the very important and easy to forget "look where you want to go," but don't just use your head, your whole upper body should get into the turn as well (this is also expressed as "look down the mountain")

Later in the day as I practiced I finally started getting the idea of developing a turning rhythm. That's why good skiers look so good and why a intermediate skier generally doesn't. They're turning a lot more for one. They're turning while I'm resting my tired legs. But the cool think is that I can feel the rhythm working its way into my muscle memory and that's so excellent and probably the best reason to take a lesson. A person taking the time to watch and work with you can speed your improvement more that 3 times (in my experience) and help you push through stumbling blocks, and notice if you're doing something incorrectly or not as efficiently.

The last point about staying in the turn longer (on the "fall line" where you're basically going staight down the mountain momentarily) is the hardest one for me (and I would guess many folks) It's dealing with speed without getting panicky and my right turns is not there yet. I need to park myself on the Trailblazer blue run (via Jerome Hill lift) for a few days. The thing that's hardest for me is that the ski doesn't seem to respond as quickly and that may be me tightening up on the turn because of the speed, but part of it is that I want the turn to happen faster that it needs to.

As I speed up I can see that I'm going to occasionally crash harder. I did wack my head once. Maybe it's time for a helmet. If I'm going to write about how my head is important to me since I think for a living I should probably start protecting it in this realm. It seemed completely silly when you're going slow but now it's starting to feel more relevant and the snow gets harder at speed especially on a groomed run.

I did work up the nerve to go up the Judah lift and do the blue Tunnel 41 run. The top of the run is lovely, but it quickly gets too steep for me to do anything beyond survive. And the run takes you through the lower part of the terrain park which is not nearly as scary as it sounds but don't fall right before a jump as they don't like that. :) Fortunately the jumps are obvious and it's quite natural to ski around them. So it's back to Trailblazer and its cousins for me.

My leg endurance is better and I'm hoping that it doesn't have to get much better. As I improve it should take considerably less effort and that's a stage that's probably the hardest to get through.

Marianne of Babes in the Backcountry said that her Alpine skiing improves after she works on Telemark. My experience is the same. Wonder if the reverse is going to happen as the second part of my Tele clinic is going to be next Saturday also at Sugarbowl. I'm going to be using one of their group discount lift tickets so I have to remember to not have the pass around my neck like I usually do (but keep it around for lunch). Oh and this time I'm keeping my poles as they keep me from falling in stupid ways.

The pizza was delicious as usual. It feels so self indulgent to pay that much extra for a pizza at a ski resort, but it's such a nice reward.

The stretch lycra jackets that the instructors wear intrigue me. It seems like a nice compromise, but I'm wondering if that fabric has the same issues as the North Face one that I wound up returning because it was cold to the touch and stayed that way.

Did I mention that I was really into the equipment aspect of winter sports? (of any sport) - will have to write about that someday.

I might actually miss Mittens

Mitt Romney has "suspended" his presidential campaign (whatever that means) and it pretty much means that McCain is going to be the GOP nominee. When I heard the announcement I was actually a bit disappointed surprisingly enough. I mean he was really good for some amusing twisted reasoning (see: Freedom requires Religion), or thinly justified fabrications like "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King" (use Google to get a lot more refs) and then arguing that "saw" could be taken metaphorically, which I would say is not really correct as it's "see" that can be used to suggest hypothetical situations like "I see myself skiing down a black double diamond slope."

The reason I liked Mittens over say Bush's English hatchet jobs of sentences is that Mitten's can at least talk in complete English sentences (even if he doesn't think in them) and is not nearly as painful to listen to.

I Don't Care for Valentine's Day either but...

It's that Hallmark of holidays: Valentine's Day.

This post was prompted by:
Someone emailed KFOG and ripped into them for having someone on yesterday who talked about greener Valentine's day gifts. He or she called them hypocritical, since it's still promoting consumerism and if they wanted a good way to celebrate it then you should go on a walk together.

Yeesh, what a Grump.

I don't like V-Day as it's so hard on single people so on V-day I stand in solidarity with singles and don't celebrate it. But I think I and others should lay off on those who do.

I wrote this to KFOG:

Wow the person ripping into you all for being hypocritcal about V-Day, seems like they're unfairly directing all their frustration about consumerism at you.

Even though I'm in a relationship, I don't celebrate Valentine's Day, but the message I got from the Greener Valentine's interview was that if you want to celebrate it here's a way that you can participate in a more green way. There's tremendous social pressure to participate in Valentine's Day and I don't give anyone a hard time for taking part (especially kids - who really seem to enjoy it.) The thing I resent is how hard it is on single people and I do hope I follow through one year in having an anti-Valentine's day celebration for single folks, but still need to figure out how to make it non-condescending.

And I must say that it seems weird that the writer is blasting you for being commercial when you are a commercial radio station (Hello? Reality is on the phone and wants to speak to him/her). I think you all strike a nice balance.

Thanks for having a great morning show.

And before I wrote this I did some checking to see if Hallmark really did dream it up and the answer is No. Chaucer, of all people, appears to have made it up. Here's the Wikipedia entry on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day

Not to say that every single capitalistic enterprise hasn't jumped on the V-Day bandwagon screwing the guilt past the sticking point (to mangle a tired metaphor.)

And what a better time to plug the show:
My Sucky Valentine: Sour Grapes and bitter chocolates, Good writers on bad sex and tainted love.
(Soon to expire Yahoo listing here; craigslist ref here)

And the appropriate candy to go with it: http://www.despair.com/bittersweets.html

Anyway, enjoy the 14th whatever you do on it.

Voting in Person - Being Part of the Process

When I'm going to be out of town I vote absentee, and whenever I do I'm offered to become a permanent absentee voter.

Terri is and for a long time I went back and forth about whether to do it. It certainly is easy. In general I avoid lines whenever I can. I use self checkout at the grocery store, I rarely go into banks except to do something complicated like reassign all of my accounts to my trust (another post, another day), I don't even stand in line to go skiing - I have a day pass that they scan at the lift. But there's something about participating in the voting process. Maybe I just like see the workings of it all. Something I'm normally not a part of similar to courtrooms, police stations and television studios. I've had 3 surgeries and the prep for each of those was endlessly fascinating.

I guess it's (a) watching an unfamiliar process and (b) wanting to feel a part of it. That will probably change as I age but for now it's kinda fun. Maybe it's hearing too many times things like: well we know what the results are but we can't say for sure until we count those loser absent ballots. (Well that's what my brain hears). Given that a huge percentage of California votes absentee that's got to change.

Mechanics: My area got rid of voting machines quite soon after they became so controversial. I voted with a pen (no chad) on paper, and then fed it into an Op Tech scanner (it kept the paper). There was a small printer on it but it didn't print a receipt though I got the proof of voting tear off stub. - wonder if I could have gotten an actual receipt. I think the scanner provides a nice compromise. There is a paper copy, but it can tally the votes faster and if there's a scanning issue the voter is right there to fix things. I'm sure you can screw around with the scanner, but it's a pretty established technology. No, I didn't bring a camera as I trust my heavily democratic district. There's never been an obvious voting scandal here.

Oh and after all my agonizing? I voted for Obama.

American Gladiators "Crush"

The woman who plays Crush on American Gladiators is named Gina Carano, and she is seriously adorable. I was having trouble reconciling this cuteness with the story of her being a very successful Muay Thai fighter, even with her saying in an interview: Yes I hit people.

So I finally started Googling for her name and found all sorts of things to correct my thinking.

First a disarming interview but has fight footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1o1Aa3Vjvg

Then a real fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgRtBM-hWm4&feature=related
(And there's a lot more to be seen)

Ai-ya, not just a pretty face. I'll try to refrain from calling you cute anymore (or if I do it will be from a safe distance.)

While I love punching inanimate objects, I do not see the appeal of hitting another person. And I really don't want to be hit in the head (or anywhere else) by another person as I want to keep the wits I have- I have MS which can have cognitive effects and most importantly: I think for a living. The physical challenge of fighting for real has no appeal to me. (Though I do admit to trying to use being hit as a way through depression pain - it actually worked for a short while - I did a lot of things to try to [mostly unsuccessfully] cope with the pain of depression but that's another post.)

I love basic kickboxing, but don't yearn to hit someone for real. Sparring would be fine, but no blood please.

This Time My Vote Counts

... and that's kinda intimidating.

For the first time the California Primary is a part of Super Tues.
Usually by the time our primary comes around the candidate is clear.
Not this time. Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama are basically tied and the daunting thing is that for the first time: I have more than 0 excellent choices, in fact, I have more than 1 excellent choice. Argh. I DON'T KNOW!!! I've been an Obama fan for months and have really enjoyed watching his extraordinary campaign, but Clinton has more experience and in a perfect world I'd have Hillary for 8 years and then Barrack for another 8.

But the thing is that Obama could create a revolution Right Now, and that's really important since our country's reputation has really been trashed by the Bushies. Also, for reasons that I will never understand, there are a lot of people in this country who hate Hillary and the Clinton dynasty. There are Republicans who can see voting for Obama, but will lie down in front of a train before supporting another Clinton. I don't know why and I don't think I'll ever know why, but if the country can get behind Obama then so be it.

A year ago I wanted a bumper sticker that said: "Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama in '08"
There's a chance that I may get my way (yikes). While I'm still wishing, can we have John Edwards as Attorney General? And Dennis Kuchinich as something pretty high up too.

Finally Getting Blogoranized

I've always been a little frustrated by the blogger.com page organization. To use their fancy tools you have to have your pages on their site or be an expert on XML. Given that I pay for my own site that seems a little silly and I just haven't gotten around to be more than just barely passable at XML If I were to move the pages, I would have that much less control and it just doesn't feel right. So I finally finally got my act together and made my own Table of Contents for the Blog. Virtue is momentarily mine. That way it's not just organized chronologically, but instead by topic. An entry doesn't get heaped on the e-slag pile just because it's older. This way I can highlight favorites and group things how I choose.