PLANET3RRY

For the past 3 weeks, our household has been under viral attack. And from reading some blogs and Facebook updates, there seems to be alot of it going around. It first started with The Elder becoming lethargic, decrease appetite and then a big fever. What is tricky about the virus at our house is that it was simulating a 12-24hr virus. Roughly every 12 hours, the fever would come, break and then subside to the point where the patient was feeling MUCH better, only to have it come back again.

And it didn’t last just 1 or 2 days, no, this was a 5-6 day bug! And not sure about the incubating period either, because it seemed to be that The Younger’s ailment did not manifest until AFTER The Elder was feeling much better. This way, instead of having TWO side kids, you get ONE side kid for twice as long. yay. whoopie…. bleh.

This past week was The Younger’s turn for being Down and Out. Actually he started earlier in the week… maybe Tuesday or so. Each day, high fever, but not “too” high. Well, except for when My lovely and Talented Wife said that The Younger had a temperature of “105″ and I about peed my pants. She calmly said “oops, I meant 101.5″. Okay, so I did have a little leak. As a statistician, I have a degree (haha) certifying that know the proper techniques to manipulate numbers to make them say what I want them to say. And while in some cases 105 and 101.5 might not be statistically different (unless you want them to be… wink wink), when it comes to core body temperatures, you don’t [I'll use the word "Clown" here, but I am thinking of something allot less... entertaining] around.

The Younger was already a little nuclear power unit as it was when the fever was at it’s peak. There was about 30 minutes when I just set my coffee on him to keep it warm. But (thankfully) there was never a time when we needed to toss him into a tub filled with ice. The Younger did get some nasal congestion which The Elder did not. It could be that The Younger does have a lower threshold for allergies, so it may have been a result of that. And the cutest thing, in all this sickness, was The Younger talking with a stuffed up nose.

“Dabby, I neeb my mebicine”

and while there was some amusement in hearing him snore, I wasn’t happy that he wasn’t getting good air. But now, he is better. So, I imagine that it will one of the adult’s turn to get sick… stupid virus.

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Like I had mentioned in a previous post, may have been last month, was that I had was (or that I had) recording some audio for my podcast Gravity@1053′, which I did, But since I didn’t get it posted, things have changed, so I need to re-record some audio and will get something posted “soon” (which means, maybe later, maybe never, but I want to).

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As much as I would LOVE to run in this weekend’s 5k, I am just not ready. In fact, I haven’t even started training for anything… partly because that training plan that I have been “talking” about for months now… is still just “talk”. OH CRAP! I just remembered… this is a SPECIAL 5k this weekend! It’s the Scholar’s Run 5k! It’s the ONE race that I have done EVERY year since I became a runner in 1998. I can’t just DUMP it. Oh, just GREAT! I sure hope that I can still preregister. maybe I can do it online or something. be right back…

[INTERLUDE]

10 minutes later…

Okay, so I CAN register on-line through Wednesday and it looks like it will be $15 plus a fee, which I assume will be less than Day-of-Race which is $18. So, I will register tonight after I make sure that things are in order for me to run it. This way, I will still be eligible for the Triple Crown Door Prizes at the Reindeer Run in December, which is a good thing.

Running Status: Still no plan developed, no miles ran

I was a fairly interesting week. We had the Tellico Triathlon on June 21st which was a benefit event (of sorts) for ASD Athletes. We ended getting a $1,000 from the event host Race Day Events and the chance to do it again next year! Sah-WEEET-tah! The 2010 edition will be much better since we will have much more time, errrrr A Year, to plan for it.

I went to my my first Asperger’s Support Group this past Sunday… it was a great experience. Lots of interruptions, conversations upon conversations, random facts (usually numerical) blurted out, “That was a joke, right?” was said at least once and just a generally good time NOT having to worry about silly things like eye-contact. It’s held once a month and is sponsored by Breakthrough Corporation, a local non-profit, whose mission is to improve the lives of Adults with autism.

Also last week we submitted a grant proposal for the up and coming ASD Athletes Coach Certification Program. We are working with a guy from New York who works one on one with special needs kids and concentrates in Autism, hence the name of his company… Autism Fitness! We are planning on having the base program up and urnning this fall and it is still in the infancy stages, so there are a lot more details to work through. if you think that you would like to be a founding donor to our certification program, you can donate over at ASD Athletes and make sure you put in the notes that you want to sponsor the Certification Program. We should be hearing any day now on the decision for our 501(c)(3) status as well.

Despite the fact that I have been super busy with ASD Athletes, my athletic endeavors have stagnated. I haven’t run since late May? I am not even sure at this point. My goal is to have the training program for the fall set up either today or tomorrow and officially start training on July 1st.

This JUST in… celebrities are REAL people and are dropping like flies!

In other news, the author of this blog, Terry, has acquired the P3I3 Virus and will be out of commission and touch with the real world for about 12 hours. We are expecting him to be able to blog again sometime on Tuesday June 30th. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused… wait… we apologize for nuthin’! Just suck it up. He’ll be back… eventaully (just like he ALWAYS says)! Signed, I.B. Baboon (Manager of MONK3Y M3DIA a division of planet3rry.com)

Yesterday, my stomach was in knots… today, it’s not much better. I have that “I FEEL SO HUNGRYYYYYYY” feeling in my stomach but nothing is appealing. Well, except for comfort food. And comfort food to me is chocolate… LOTS of chocolate. But I know that what comforts me now, will ail me in the future. Woe is me!

So then, at dinner last night… my toe begins to hurt. Not just ache but HURT! I was surprised how much it hurt. Then when I got up from the table to leave, my big toe was SORE and it was tough to put weight on it. Before I left the parking lot, I had to take my shoe and sock off and see what was so wrong. Apart from being a little red, there was nothing of note.

When I got home, I tried to get the kids ready for bed, but at some point, I knew that I had to see what was up with my toe. I could see myself with a short fuse if I was upset that my foot was hurting and the kids were not listening.When I took a good look at my toe, there seemed to be some debris on the side of the toe, which was the focal point of the soreness. The toenail was in good shape, so that was good.

I found a tool that resembled a dentist’s tool that I could use to pry into the toe cuticle. My toe was already sore and I was thinking that getting the debris out would be instant relief. But I was wrong! It was still sore. I dug and scraped as best I could without yanking off the toenail (it’s been a couple of marathons since I have lost one, so there is good chance I will still have this after the race). It was still tender and there wasn’t anything that really stood out as being the culprit of the pain. All I can think is that some yard debris had gotten lodged in the cuticle just from jostling of my feet and such.

It was about 10 minutes later that I had a bacterial type scare. I thought “what if it gets infected before the marathon”… 4 hours and 45 minutes of “OUCH, Ahhh, OUCH, Ahhh, OUCH”. So, I took some hydrogren peroxide and poured it over the toe. If was manic about my toe, I was ready for the rubbing alcohol to do it’s killing, if it meant extra pain… I was going to run.

The amount of reaction with the hydrogen peroxide was underwhelming. Being unimpressed, I put the Hydrogen Peroxide back and started to leave the bathoom, toe still sore. Untill… “AH HA, where is that Melaleuca Oil?”

I took the pure melalueca oil and poured it over the wound. My toe felt better, less sore and within 5 minutes, I could walk without noticing my toe. And there was much rejoicing!

I am in some sort of weird Sickness Black Hole. If it’s not one person it’s another. The Elder is having an unexpected 2 week spring break because earlier this week, he went to the doctor and was given a Certificate of Authenticity for flu-like symptoms. Of course, this is after last week’s Sinus and Ear Infection party inside my head. And now it seems that My Lovely and Talented Wife, has temporarily changed her pseudonym here on Planet3rry.com to My Lovely and Talented but Sick Wife. It seems that all the appointments that we had today have been changed for different types of appointments. Oi! When it rains, it flus.

So with sickness and the influx of more work for me at my 40hr Job, it seems that I have had less time to blog and more time to fall behind on reading blogs and such. In fact, without going back and reading my posts, I am not sure WHAT I have talked about. And since none of you go back and reread posts… neither will I. So let me Brain Dump, if you will, some of the things that I have been thinking about or that have been going on.

Running:

After the shock of having to perform 45 minutes better at the Knoxville Marathon, I came to my senses. Where as I was going to try to run 12 miles, because I was panicking that I didn’t have all the long runs run in, I came to my senses. I decided that it would be foolish of me to ONLY have long runs in for the week. What training program mandates that… only the crappy ones. There’s the problem of not having a coach help tell you what you should do, because they are objective. Part of that is a side-effect of the Aspergian mind, where focus is on one thing (not enough long runs) rather than “The Big Picture” (overall training program).

So, putting on a neurotypical hat (at least temporarily) and taking myself personally out of the scenario, I thought… given the situation, what would I tell someone else? What have I told the people that I have coached? How would I advise them?

My conclusion was that it would not be prudent to have another long run, after the long run this past weekend. No matter how fast. It would be better overall to have a Tempo Run, especially since this upcoming weekend is a crucial 18-20miler long run. So, my decision was to have a Tempo Run of 6.6 miles (3 loops at Lakeshore Greenway). Then I had a better idea and I felt smrt. I thought, “Why not run Cherokee Boulevard? It’s full of hills, which I need, I can run it tempo and it’s part of the marathon course. Brilliant!”

So, that’s what I did… I ran Tempo at Cherokee Boulevard, which the “Out” course I ran was miles 4-6.2 of the Knoxville Marathon course. So, despite the fact that I had run this section before many times, it was good practice”. I took the “Back” part of the course into 1/2 mile (~800m) intervals until the very end. At that point I was pretty tired and so I switched to 1/4 mile (~400m) intervals, but I pushed myself to complete the distance.

-:::::INSERT CRAZY MYSTERY VIRUS:::::-

Thankfully, I don’t have anything that has been going around… but, Wednesday we had an unexpected visit to the Doctor’s office for My Lovely and Talented Wife. Tuesday, she wasn’t getting any better and it was time to raise our hands and retreat to the hands of the professionals. So Wednesday, I had a nice day off from work because of it, but the work just kind of shifted around because I was busy the entire day. See, we had TWO appointments that day, already scheduled, so there was changing of schedules and all that fun stuff. In fact, I tag teamed with My Lovely and Talented Wife and went to the dentist on Thursday, instead of May 4th, my originally scheduled time.

And now… we are on The Mend. THANK GOODNESS! But, thanks to some weather pattern, we went from mids 70s to mid 60s to 40s on Thursday, so that probably just means that the cycle is going to repeat. Oh, Mannnnnnnnnnnnnnn.

Crucial 18-20 miler this coming up weekend. I am going to try to map out most of it on the marathon course itself. It won’t be in order, but I do want to try to get some practice on the course and try to remember 2006, when (at that time) Knoxville was the hardest marathon course I had run. Now, it’s definitely the Harpeth Hills Flying Monkey Marathon as the most challenging course that I have run… it has character and class… well, maybe not so much on class, but it definitely has character!

This past week has been a doosy. If it wasn’t one big thing then it was a HUGE thing (or two).

On Monday, I left work early because My Lovely and Talented Wife was sick, really sick. I was gone for most of the day and when I came home around 2 or so, she thought I had never left for work. We put a call in to the doc, based on her sickness ailments, it was looking more bacterial and not viral. I was able to go out and get a Z-pack for her to start her on meds.

Tuesday, I was supposed to run around 10 miles, but it turned out that I spent most of the day ironing out the final detail for the Form 1023 for ASD Athletes. Actually, I went to the post office around 11pm to make sure that it was in the system.

Wednesday was also pretty busy. I went to a networking meeting in the morning as a guest to promote the event at the end of the month. Also to get pledges, this way we’d be able to have an idea for a budget for the upcoming year.

Thursday, I was supposed to run after work, but I had this slight pressure in my left ear. It just wouldn’t go away. So, I decided that instead of running, that I would go to the Urgent Care. Sure enough, an ear and sinus infection. So, I got my meds for that and when I got home, the race directors of the Worldwide Festival of Races had our first conference call for the 4th annual event!

Friday, I was hoping that I would be able to catch up on some stuff, but I woke up late. Too late to take the trash out. Then when I got to work, it was one thing after another. Mid morning, it was a computer crash where I thought I had lost the hard drive. But, Linux to the rescue, I was able to have an operational OS in about 20 minutes and found my dilemma. I will have to try to make my computer dualboot. I think that if I use the web version of my outlook that I would be functional in that enviroment. Then after lunch, it was a meeting with one the head honchos from DC. That lasted until about 2 or so and then I was just getting my day started.

Saturday, I did make it out to run… I had planned to run 18 miles, but it worked out that I would make it back to the van at 15 miles. I stopped there with the intent of running 18-20 next weekend. This way, the step to the marathon, won’t be a big issue, especially if I am running at a slower pace. But when I got home, I was really tired and took 2 naps in the afternoon while I had the kids. Then being uninspired for dinner, we had waffles that I had made before. The Elder was showing signs of being under the weather… confirmed during the middle of the night. I went to bed early as I was really tired. Make that really, really tired.

This upcoming week does have a number of appointments and meetings, but hopefully if everyone is on The Mend, that it won’t disrupt the schedule too much. You can’t just mess up my schedule! Come on! But now I have to play catchup on everything else.

My Running Calendar has me down for 16 miles today. I don’t believe that is going to happen today. I think what will be more in line will be 6.3 or 8.4 depending on how many laps of Lakeshore Greenway that I will do. I only had some mild soreness yesterday morning and I tried to drink a bunch yesterday. What is humorous, in a cynical kind of way, is that now that my Kidneys are feeling better, my throat is very scratchy. As in “Dare me, Runner! You Run, I will hurt you.”

Since I am a Jedi, I decided to take some meds yesterday at the first signs of some chest congestion. And well, I think that I have made a good stand at keeping this illness that is trying to take me down and take out my kidneys and sell them on eBay. I probably need to sit down and give my training that good look see.

In other running related items that I saw yesterday, Palm is going to come out with a Smarter phone than the Treo and Centro and it has a Runner written ALL over it. It’s called the Pre. I will be naming mine Fontaine. When I get mine in 2015. It’s going to have the fancy-schmancy stuff of the Blackberry and iPhone together, but with some pretty neat features: Magnetic Charging, 3MP Camera, REmovable Battery (if needed), GPL which means that people can write their own applications… kinda like FireFox of SmartPhones.

Off to go get some more water for the kidneys.

That’s right folks, I did not even SHOW UP for the race. This Did Not Start is atttibuted to some injuries sustained on Wednesday Night night, the exaterbated with some mild sickness Thursday Night/Friday Morning. The injury that seem to waylay me for ALL of Saturday was some Kidney issues. Given the pain location, duration and the inability for any type of releif from it, My Lovely and Talented Wife diagnosed me some “Kidney Problem N.O.S.”

Putting on my Sherlock Holmes Hat, I sat back in my Chair and THINK. THINK. THINNNNNNNNNNNNNKKK [wait, that's Blue's Clues]. I was still prone on the bed, immobilized in aches. Wednesday Night, I can home and felt pretty bad. Achy all over, chills, fever and so I laid down on the floor. The Younger, seeing my moment of weakness came in at 50mph and pile drived into my back, disguised as happiness for seeing me. This is when the injury to the Kidneys happened. Then, I had some cold like symptoms Wednesday. Thursday, I started out poor and then felt better. Friday, started off with symptoms, but was making sure that nothing icky-like would be able to attach its ameoba badself on me and give me some illness, especially since I had the Strawplains Half marathon on Saturday morning. Except, that Friday afternoon, I wasn’t all that hydrated with everything else going on and then the Thai Food kicked in. Or rather, the broccolli kicked in and I was basically doubled over in pain with my stomach and then my back started hurting. This was my lovely Friday Family Movie Night.

I had little sleep Friday night and then when it came time for Saturday morning. Although my stomach was better… my back was not. No position I could find would help. My Lovely and Talented Wife then diagnosed the Kidney area as the nucleus of the pain and prescribed: No Caffiene, Cranberry Juice, and lots of liquids. Amazingly enough, after drinking the cranberry juice, my back did feel better and I kept drinking fluid. However, I was Down and Out for all of Saturday.

Sunday, I was better… the outer sides were still achy, but everything else seemed intact. I was able to operate at 100% Power but felt rushed because I had to cram the chores that I didn’t get done on Thursday/Friday plus the critical things on Saturday and then the normal Sunday stuff.

And now on Monday… I am still a little sore, less than yesterday. No substancial cold symptoms. If I feel good tomorrow, I might try that running thing again. Maybe. I might wait until Thursday. However, this little “episode” has caused some major damage to my training, more for Knoxville than Cincy. But we Runner-type are resilent, I will find a way to make it work.

It’s Monday morning and I running (not literally through – sigh) on 4 hours of sleep. Oh, wait, I fell alseep at my desk, so make that around 4.5hrs of sleep. I am trying to think of what the hell happened that I didn’t get to bed until 3am… Pa-Pa and J-Lo are in town and we took them and The Kids to a Fall Festival at The Younger’s Mother’s Day Out program. We were back and The Kids were asleep pretty early around 8:30 or 9. But what did I really do that required SIX hours?

I don’t remember doing anything terribly time consuming… putting laundry away, loading the dishwasher, paying bills, getting The Elder’s Kindergarten paperwork together, setting up coffee for the morning a few hours later.

But what was it? I dunno. I stayed away from email because that would have just prolonged everything.

Halloween wasn’t very happening at our place this year. We only had a handful of Trick or Treators and The Kids sure didn’t get as much candy as I wanted as they could have. But I am sure I will be thankful for less candy later. It seemed just like last year, oh wait… it was, that they got a ton of candy and one night FOUND some of the candy because there were candy paper carcasses on the floor the next morning.

We are having awesome weather here in Knoxville. The leaves are starting to peak right now. I may have to move Terry Day to a Mountain Run tomorrow and take Stella. Although transforming my Saturday run into a Saturday Walk, may mean that I will need to have some mileage and with the travel time that may not work, but I could get some Awesome pictures.

Now… there is somethine else that is happening tomorrow… what is it? Oh YEAH… The Elder doesn’t have School, this first Tuesday of November!

It's Her Birthday Too!

She's 74 now...

Yes Ms. Bardot and I share a birthday, but she has a few years on me. Surprising this year, I was not really anticipating my birthday all that much so when I woke up, I wasn’t all giddy or anything like that. Even later in the day, it was still like another Sunday. I guess because it’s one of the mid-year birthdays “37″ when not a whole lot happens or is associated with the number.

I got a bunch of cards made by The Younger, a rain check on some camping stuff from My Lovely and Talented Wife and The Kids. Our Reliable and Resourceful Au Pair gave me a basket of Chocolate Candy and Smarties – YUM! A couple of cards in the mail, a number of well-wishing emails and a French Press and gift certificate to a local coffee shop.

I wasn’t on a computer for the weekend, so I need to make the donation to the NMSS in memory of my biological father (as opposed to my dad aka Pa-Pa for new readers) who passed away in 2006 due to complications resulting from Multiple Scelrosis.

Other Celebs that share their birthday with Mr. Terry

Past Year’s Posts:

Wish Gwyneth A Happy Birthday

The New Age Group

The Not-So Happy Birthday 8k

This Birthday Sponsored by “33″

Back to the Carbs

Birthday

I had been thinking about what it would be like if Planet3rry ran for public office and just what public office it would be. It would definitely have to be more of a “No one else wants to do it” for me to actually take the job (or be elected). And I did have to run against someone, I’d definitely have to take the stance: Vote for BLANK, they’re better. Sure I’d get some sympathy votes, but that’s just the way that I roll.

I was thinking about this because of the massive amount of mudslinging that goes on during the Presidental Election. The two camps of Obama and McCain can’t poop fast enough to arm their arsenal and TV adds. It’s a He said, He Said world and so it makes other candidates such as Barr and Nader seem viable just because their not wasting their resources going overboard trying: Not too tell you how good they are, mind you, but rather how much the other candidate sucks.

And this led me to this blog and the big stinking pile of ammo against me were I to run for public office. I mean, I don’t really censor much of anything around here, when I do publish it. Sure there are things that only My Lovely and Talented Wife knows, but there are plenty of things here that would kill a political career. Although, if you can smoke crack cocaine with hookers and STILL get elected, then I might have chance with some of my antics.

I actually had to write this random post, because it’s getting in the way of me concentrating on more important things right now. So, I need to suck it out of my brain and clear the way for the week’s task at hand.

Another thing that has been going on is my weight. I changed Meds from Lexapro to Fluvoxamine and love it. It has the same anxiety power to it with less of the side effects as well. It’s a twice a day pill, but that’s fine… out of 14 pills to take, I usually only miss 1 per week, but when I do miss it I can tell. Also, as a result of this new meds, I don’t “feel” as fat and My Lovely and Talented Wife says that I don’t look at pudgy and have less Love Handles (although there’s plenty of Love to handle! RAOW!). But what is odd (besides the number 177) is that my weight has remained the same at the upper level of the 170s. In fact, just the other day, I had a patriotic weight of 177.6 and even as high at 178.8. So, I am not losing any weight, but since I feel better, it’s not a problem. Or rather, it’s less of a problem. So I am pretty happy.

The best part of the new meds is that it’s generic, so it’s only $5 as opposed to $20. SCHWINGGG!

I’m also doing some experimenting Mad Scientist drug cocktail as well. I can’t confirm or disconfirm the ingredients, dosages or other statistical methods that I am doing in my research, but I’ll be begging forgiveness on Tuesday and perhaps getting the Green Light for more research.

So, It’s a Monday… and I need to get this week started. Changes in the Theme will happen during the week. DOn’t adjust your television set if the colors and or content go crazy.