Month: February 2003

Walks In The Woods

The sun shone today. The temperature made it above 60. WOOT! We rode home with the top down and didn’t need the windblocker or the heat.

Since I’m not bike riding any more, at the “suggestion” of my wife, we have started to flirt with hiking. We have some friends that do and have tentatively scheduled a to The Len Foote Hike Inn at Amicalola Falls State Park for an overnight. In preparation for this we have bought some hiking boots (and the $14 hiking socks to go with them,) a Camelback mini pack and I talked her into buying a walking stick that doubles as a monopod for the camera. We are lucky that we have the 2000 acres of Hitchcock Woods within spitting distance, so we are going to plan on 2 walks in the woods a week as practice. A shorter walk on a weekday evening and a longer one on either Saturday or Sunday. Tonight we managed around a 2 mile hike (that is if the pedometer we got is accurate.)

Started up, went down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 30

Well That Shit Ain’t Cuttin’ It II

After poking around the WebMD Hypertension Message Boards I discovered that sometimes it takes a couple weeks for some medicines to get to peak effectiveness, so I decided to hold off on pestering the doc. I got a good night’s sleep last night and felt pretty good today. Checked my BP this evening and it read 134/91. Dang that’s 15 points lower than yesterday. Was it the good nights sleep? Was it the 2-mile walk in the woods after work? Was it the meds? Was it that I got my review at work today and got a whopping 2.9% raise? Stay tuned…

Well That Shit Ain’t Cuttin’ It

A couple weeks ago at my last Doctor’s appointment my blood pressure had creeped back up to the 150/100 mark. Whatever drugs we tried and though worked had lost their effectiveness. The Doctor tossed up his hands and said, “let’s send you to a Cardiologist.” Not only was the BP back up, but the palpitations that started at Thanksgiving hasn’t totally gone away either. Last Thursday I saw the heart Doc and he said, we’ll put you on this different medicine Lotrel 5/10. It is a combination of a couple of drugs, come back in 3 weeks and we’ll do a check and see how you are doing. He suggested I buy a home BP monitor and check my pressure everyday. I have been taking the new meds since last Friday and I have been checking my pressure and it has been hold steady and actually today it was the highest it has been, 152/104. Trouble is, I have been feeling crappy the last 2 days and is it because my BP is up or is it something that makes the pressure rise? I’ll call tomorrow and see if I need to muddle through another week or should we change something now.

Logan Was Wrong

Don’t run, except it. (Jenny Agutter…Mmmm)

Sometimes I think there is something to be said for not living past 30. I’m well past it and sometimes feel much further past it. Today is one of them with just a whole litany of minor ailments that make me want to go lay down and nap to forget about them, but I’m afraid if I do lay down I won’t wake up. I know this is some sort of age thing, because if I was still in my 20’s none of these things would bother me, I’d just shrug them off if I noticed them at all. And I remember watching Letterman a few years back when he was at the age I am now and every night he would complain, in his way, about some minor ailment befalling him. It has got to be some, perhaps a male trait only, age induced hypochondria. I just hope I live through it. 🙂

albatross, charge, deadweight, demand, difficulty, drain, duty, imposition, load, millstone, onus, pressure, strain, task, weight*

Can you tell I did my taxes this weekend? Our big mistake was refinancing our house note last December. We paid $2000 less in mortgage interest this year and didn’t compensate for it deduction-wise, so now we owe Uncle Sam about one toilet seat cover for an Air Force cargo plane more than the Staff Sargent’s annual salary he took out already. I have yet to do the state income taxes yet, who knows maybe we’ll owe them a couple of State Trooper nightsticks…

* typed “tax” in over at Thesaurus.com

Giant Map Of Guam

As I loaded the trunk with the Miata caricature this morning in preparation for taking it to work, my wife asked, “Why don’t you hang it here at home?” I responded with, “Huh?” She said that I could try and hang it here in the “computer” room. So that is where it is now. I pulled the giant map of Guam off the wall and placed it on the exposed nails. It is a little, no a lot, too high, so I guess tomorrow I’ll fill in some holes and drill some more.

Started up, went down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 26