Farmer's Market

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Went to the local farmer's market this morning. I went to buy fruit for a wedding shower for Martha this afternoon. The market is along Murphy Street, where our offices used to be. I head downtown very little these days, and very rarely to Murphy Street in particular, so the trip brought back lots of memories.

Memories, and a lot more emotions than I was expecting.

The office was a good office. It had plenty of space for the 3.5 (hi, Katie!) of us. It was located with easy access for the three of us most of the time (until Mike moved away). There were lots of food places around (even if Doyle did complain about going to Firehouse once a week).

I don't want to romanticize the time we were there, as it certainly wasn't all rosy. I will, however, comment that I really, really, really wish that the time there, with the company, and with Mike and Chris, hadn't coincided with one of the worst depressions of my life.

Unfortunate timing there.

Yeah.

Over before it began

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You know, I've had my share of injuries over the last decade and a half of playing ultimate. I've rolled my ankles more times than I can count (and enough times that I don't donate my crutches, even months after I've healed). I've had discs thrown at my face. I've been crushed by male players, and broken my ribs under some. I've had my knees crushed, my hands kicked, my feet stomped on, my shoulder broken, my back seize.

This one, however takes the cake.

Early in this season (you recall, the season I "took off" by becoming a practice player so that I could concentrate on my confidence, my skills, my fitness and my health), I started having problems with my left achilles heel. I didn't think much of it, to be honest, having had pains with one or the other achilles tendon off and on for the last few years.

Lisa purchased an ankle stretching aid for me four or so years ago. It was one that Ben thought was dumb, given that it was only a piece of nominally unneeded, shaped plastic, he thought. "Just use the wall to stretch your achilles!" he'd say, but I loved it. I used it regularly that season, and ended the season with some other bizarre injury.

You know, I think it's to the point that people I've known for years will meet me on the sidelines and ask, "So, what is it this time?" with the understatement of, "why didn't you retire when it was still fun?" I can't say I'd think differently for anyone else.

So, this season, I've been struggling with my achilles. I figured the problem was with my shoes. When I originally purchased the style of cleats I wear now, the heel cup was so high that it pressed against my achilles tendon and caused some horrible pain. I figured out that issue fairly quickly, and cut a V into my cleats, removing the achilles hot spot. I do that with all of my cleats now, so I knew that wasn't my current problem.

After a few practices having the pain in my achilles, I started putting topical analgesic on my achilles, and kept playing. Clear case of "ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away." I mean, haven't all the other problems eventually gone away? Ribs heal, bruises heal, ankles heal, it all heals, just give it time, why not this one, too?

I gave up last week, and decided to have it looked at. I described the problem to my doctor. A few pushes here, a few prods there, and I was diagnosed with a crush injury to the ligaments and tendons around my achilles. "So the decision to continue playing on it was probably bad, eh?" I asked. "You could say that."

Since the problem is recurring, over many years actually, the doctor suggested I consider different shoes (since the thought of stopping playing ultimate wasn't even suggested, even by the doc). Originally, he told me to lay off running for three or so days, and start again after that. That was last week. When I couldn't walk at all the morning after this Tuesday's track workout, he told me that all running was out.

So, here's my recovery process, what I'm supposed to do to heal my achilles, given that ligament healing takes longer than muscle healing and this is going to take a while:

1. Stop running. Stop sprinting. Stop jumping. Stop all ankle impact exercises.

2. Keep the cool looking kinesio tape on as long as I can (wondering what kinesio taping is all about?), probably three days.

3. Heat my achilles for 30 minutes every 2 hours. That's a lot of heating.

4. Walk. Swim. Exercise in ways that not only don't hurt, but also don't aggravate my achilles.

5. Lots of vitamin C.

6. Wear sandals.

7. And stretch, as long as it doesn't hurt and doesn't aggravate the injury. Any discomfort at all and I'm supposed to stop.

That, and in 3-4 weeks, and I can try running again.

Three to four weeks.

THREE to FOUR weeks.

That's 21 to 28 days from now.

No running.

No, this isn't going to be hard, why do you ask?

I've been trying these last few months to go with the flow of life. Instead of forcing things to be the way I want them to be, I've been trying to accept things for what they are, to make things as good as I can given the way things are outside my control.

For the record, I need to say I've been trying this without much success. This injury is an example of how I just couldn't accept that I was done for the season, this time in June. I didn't want to believe it, I refused to accept reality, and managed to make my injury even worse.

And now I have to accept it, because I can't walk from my bed to my desk in the morning to get to work. I struggle to the bathroom in the middle of the night, knowing that any step in going to wake me up fully with a rocket of pain up my leg. I need a long time to get going after sitting for any time greater than fifteen minutes, as my ankle stiffens up so quickly.

Sandals. Like my feet aren't already cold enough.

Not for sale

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Doyle once left his truck in front of my house. I don't recall why, but I do recall it was there for a few weeks.

During that truck stay, I began accumulating notes that had been left on the truck. They all pretty much said the same thing:

Hey, if you want to sell your truck, give me a call!

I handed the first couple to Doyle, who told me that, yeah, he received a lot of these notes, too. He received more when he left the truck sitting in one place for too long. Our truck has been sitting in front of our house for a while now, so, yeah, I can see how someone walking along could think that it's not being used. Having that truck is pretty great when you need it. Fortunately, having it when you don't need it isn't too bothersome.

Andy has a truck, too, and once casually proposed sharing ownership of our truck, too. Given that we're not exactly neighbors with Mike and Kate, I thought it was a grand idea, as he'd be more likely than the two of our families to use it regularly.

I think he was kidding, though.

When Doyle received the notes, he just crumpled them up and threw them away. They were a nuisance and not much else to him (more so, when you realize it's not littering for someone to put a note or ad or flyer on your vehicle, but it IS littering if you pull it off and just toss it over your shoulder in disgust - they can place it there without your permission, and YOU have to clean up the mess. I despise this type of advertising, in case you didn't know).

To me, they're a puzzle. I mean, sure, everyone wants to get a good deal on a vehicle. Going directly to the owner means you'll get a better deal than going through a middleman or used car dealership. And I can see why a third vehicle, one left parked in the same place, could be construed as not wanted.

But to leave a note?

Of course, I'm not above leaving a note myself. It's how Mike and Kate became my neighbors. I've mailed letters to the current owners of houses I like, ones in my past, perhaps in my future. My mom left a note on the doorstep of the house that she and my dad later bought, that my dad still lives in.

I've never left a note with a car, though. That's the thing I find fascinating. At what level does someone decide that a preemptive strike is better than waiting until the "for sale" sign goes up?

Not sure.

I am sure, however, that our truck isn't for sale.

I find you interesting

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As I was checking my email this morning, I noticed this email come through:

Now, I don't know any Nathan Montgomery, and I haven't been any place recently where I would have met someone new, say at a conference or meet-up or networking or developer event, and forgotten that I had met this said Nathan. Although meeting new people is fun, I'm 100% sure this wasn't a new person I met.

I recognize the purpose of spam subject lines is to lure the recipient into opening the email. Given that I read my email in a mail reader that is beyond old, I'm not particularly worried about accidently unleashing a virus onto my system, so the fact that the message is clearly a spam message with that subject line doesn't bother me.

However, there's that bit of flattery in that subject line that just begs that message to be opened.

"I find you interesting."

Could there possibly be a better pickup line? To have someone find me interesting has to be one of the most flattering compliments I think I could receive.

I think I'll leave that email a mystery, unopened.

Removing form=QBHP referrers

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Upon looking at my search logs yesterday, I noticed a slew of results in my referer log. As in many, many more than I had the last time I looked (which, admittedly, isn't very often).

Instead of my expected Google search results (let me tell you, the most shocking one I had was "how to stretch my asshole", which led the reader to my jerk neighbor post and one unsurprisingly disappointed searcher, I'm sure), I had a slew of referrers from search.live.com.

Uh... okay....

So, I looked at them. There were thousands of these results, all of the form

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=table&form=QBHP

with the "table" part being random words that no one (did I say "no one"? I meant "NO ONE") would ever use to find my site. LIke "about." Right, when I search for "about" I expect to find my site.

Riiiiiiiight.

So, I added these lines in my .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^65\.55\.(109|110|165|232) [OR]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^131\.107\.0\.9[56]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} FORM=(LVSP|LIVSOP|QBHP)$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]

If the request is coming from the Microsoft servers, and it has the "form=xxxx" in the string query, it's a bogus query, so don't show ANYTHING. If they want to crawl the site, fine, have at it. But don't put in the bogus referer values and clutter up my search log files. Those are interesting!

Take these recent search queries that brought people unwittingly to my site:

People with long torsos (#3 baby!)
dog trash and dry heaves (#5!)
Russian crunches (#4 in Canadian search results! Whoo!)
sit ice bath (#1 in the UK! Gosh, I rule!)

Who knew that I could be so prolific in so many diverse topics?

I KNOW! Me either!

Now that the search.live.com clutter is gone, I can see them, too!

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