Kidney Stones have put me on the training shelf just 4 days after my quite enjoyable 2:03 Chicago Half Marathon. Possible explanations are hereditary, dehydration, and dietary. Either way, they really hurt. After a trip to the ER and two different procedures (and one final office visit on Tuesday) everything seems to have calmed down. My training for Sacramento is on the shelf and their web site observes about twelve different ways there are no reimbursements, deferrals, substitutes, or even a way to get the tee shirt unless you show up at the expo which isn't going to happen.
I missed two classes in the process and am behind in most other work related projects. So how did I spend most of the last 2 weeks? Besides drinking fluids and waiting to feel better, I mixed and matched among the following.
Walked the dog. Perfect weather and never more than 10 minutes from the apartment led to my only outdoor exercise.
Recumbent bike. Not too much jostling. Nice couple of 20 minutes rides once the worst was over.
Netflix. Binge watching is the new channel surfing. Orange is the New Black. Scandal. Portlandia. El Bulli: Cooking in Progress. Jiro: Dreams of Sushi and too many documentaries to name.
VHS tapes. Yes, I still have VHS tapes and a player (a combo DVD/VHS player of considerable vintage). Perfect time to catch up on some favorites I have never replaced in DVD or downloaded. High Fidelity. Manhunter. Big Chill. Turns out they don't hold up very well and I don't have to replace them after all.
DVR. Now fully caught up on the season ending and beginning episodes of a wide variety of shows, mini-series and movies both old and new.
Reading. Plowed most of the way through The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President. This is one of the strangest most self indulgent recent books I have ever encountered. The author is Taylor Branch a Pulitzer winning journalist who has known the Clintons since the early 1970s. Clinton asked him to record an oral history of his administration in real time both to preserve presidential recollections and to aid the President in any eventual memoir of his own. Branch didn't transcribe the tapes and left them with Clinton so this book is just his notes and recollections combined with his own occasional involvement with events of the times. This is mostly just pandering for both author and subject and somehow diminishes both of them in the process. I am 2/3 of the way through. Clinton just got himself reelected, wonder if anything interesting happens in the second term? It is fascinating to see the discussion of the budget shutdown and debt ceiling mess from the 1990s as events replay themselves the past two weeks. Plus false advertising, they have talked about the History of Wrestling even once!!
Turns out that if you are home all day, you can also keep up on current events through two daily newspapers in hard copy plus actual magazines.
Oh well. coffee break is over, back to school for half day tomorrow and classes resume on Tuesday with thanks to super civ pro teacher and associate dean Mike Kaufman (also a half-marathoner) who covered for him in my absence.
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