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The Short Versions
Jul. 30th, 2017 09:49 amKitteh Update - Sheba seems to be fine now. She kept making that "ratchet" sound and I suspected she actually had something stuck in her teeth. I got Fox to hold her and, as best and as gently as I could, forced her jaws open to take a look but didn't see anything obvious. I also got a pointy tooth right in the flesh of my finger, in that spot where the fingernail curves down to the side of your finger, the place where you get hangnails. No more than I deserved for that, LOL. She's mostly stopped making that sound, too, and whatever was bothering her has cleared up. She's on a maintenance dose of cat lax, a small squirt once a week.
Cancer Sucks - My Mom also got a biopsy recently and she has stage 2 lobular breast cancer. She says she is going to ask for a mastectomy, because she doesn't want to play around with this thing. She already had one almost fifteen years ago. Mom's almost 80 now and that surgery is rough even on a young person, so I'm not sure what to think here. Her surgery consultation is Thursday and obviously I'll know more then. I let my sister know that if there's anything she needs to ask me, so I'm not sure if I'll be needed to go up there for a while.
Raven Run - In September I start Hal Higdon's training for the Dopey Challenge, which I'll be running in January. I'm spending August ramping my weekly miles back up after a satisfying summer training of working on speed. With Dopey I am not at all worried about my pace. For one thing, the minimum pace to avoid meeting the "balloon ladies" is something like a 16 minute mile. I think a lot of the generosity in pacing is to allow runners time for photo ops with the characters along the route. So I'll be focusing on endurance and making sure my body can handle doing 48.6 miles in four days. My speed work actually did me real good. I can get up to around a ten minute mile and sustain that. I know that's not super fast and it's absolutely nothing to brag about but I'm pretty proud of my progress.
Random Political Aside - I tend to cringe inwardly when I hear or read the term "SJW," but was not totally certain why. I know it sometimes gets thrown at people as an insult, like, "Ha ha! You care about things!" (Read that in Nelson's voice.) But I came across a post on Tumblr, of all places, that said, "An activist fights to have a wheelchair ramp built so everyone can have access. An SJW fights to have the stairs removed because they might offend somebody." As someone who considers themselves an activist, I found that to be both accurate and elegantly stated. I stand on the side of expanded civil rights and equality for everyone, but man some people just seem to have their heads so far up their asses they can see their own hairdo. The activism I signed on with says that you and I are as capable, strong, and deserving as anyone else.
Also, with my skill set I'm more of a social justice druid.
Cancer Sucks - My Mom also got a biopsy recently and she has stage 2 lobular breast cancer. She says she is going to ask for a mastectomy, because she doesn't want to play around with this thing. She already had one almost fifteen years ago. Mom's almost 80 now and that surgery is rough even on a young person, so I'm not sure what to think here. Her surgery consultation is Thursday and obviously I'll know more then. I let my sister know that if there's anything she needs to ask me, so I'm not sure if I'll be needed to go up there for a while.
Raven Run - In September I start Hal Higdon's training for the Dopey Challenge, which I'll be running in January. I'm spending August ramping my weekly miles back up after a satisfying summer training of working on speed. With Dopey I am not at all worried about my pace. For one thing, the minimum pace to avoid meeting the "balloon ladies" is something like a 16 minute mile. I think a lot of the generosity in pacing is to allow runners time for photo ops with the characters along the route. So I'll be focusing on endurance and making sure my body can handle doing 48.6 miles in four days. My speed work actually did me real good. I can get up to around a ten minute mile and sustain that. I know that's not super fast and it's absolutely nothing to brag about but I'm pretty proud of my progress.
Random Political Aside - I tend to cringe inwardly when I hear or read the term "SJW," but was not totally certain why. I know it sometimes gets thrown at people as an insult, like, "Ha ha! You care about things!" (Read that in Nelson's voice.) But I came across a post on Tumblr, of all places, that said, "An activist fights to have a wheelchair ramp built so everyone can have access. An SJW fights to have the stairs removed because they might offend somebody." As someone who considers themselves an activist, I found that to be both accurate and elegantly stated. I stand on the side of expanded civil rights and equality for everyone, but man some people just seem to have their heads so far up their asses they can see their own hairdo. The activism I signed on with says that you and I are as capable, strong, and deserving as anyone else.
Also, with my skill set I'm more of a social justice druid.
