I’m beginning to question whether or not I’m going to be able to continue running on a regular basis. My knee, which seemed to be getting stronger and better, now seems to be going the other way. I’m guessing that my increased stress on the leg has been a little more than it can stand.
I’m still wanting to run the 5k in Chattanooga on February 27th but I think I’m going to concentrate more on riding my bicycle between now and then and see if that lets me strengthen that knee more at a pace that doesn’t over do it.
To often we go through life being offended when people challenge our beliefs. I’m not sure why we do this because every time someone challenges our beliefs it gives us an opportunity to do a little self reflection and see if the beliefs we believe we hold we really do.
This coming year I want to be challenged on my stated beliefs. Whether religion, politics or society please challenge me if you find any flaw in my stated beliefs. I promise I won’t be offended and I won’t get defensive with you about it. I may not agee with your assessment but I promise you I will give much consideration to your feedback to me. I want this process to take place.
That can be your holiday gift to me. I’ll even return the favor if you would like for me to. Just tell me.
I’ve been trying to get myself back in shape. After several months of walking my dog on multi-mile walks I finally got my knee strengthened up enough to run on it with a knee brace. After a couple of weeks with the knee brace it is now strong enough to run without it.
I’ve been making progress.
A big part of that progress has been due to my sticking with my training plan and at least doing a portion of each days plan. This has worked fine until this morning. Winter has finally set in with a cold and rainy day. I can’t motivate myself to get out and do the 20-25 minutes of running that I really need to do today.
My worry is that this early into my training any deviation from my plan will destroy my committment by giving me a precedent for not following through with my plan any time there is something in my way of completing the days plan. Habits are formed through repitition.
The other day I was musing about various religions and what I knew personally about some of the adherents to them. I started thinking about a couple of Hindu guys I know. They were both devout to their religion as far as I could tell but one of them was much more compassionate than the other. In fact the compassionate one had more traits of what I think a Christian should show than most Christians I know.
That got me to thinking about Luke 6:44:
Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.
If I’m to take this verse literally then I have to recognize my compassionate Hindu friend as a Christian. I”m not saying that he’s any less a Hindu but if he’s walking like a Christian should walk and talking like a Christian should talk, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for the sick, he must be a Christian. If, then, he is a Christian he must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. But he’s a Hindu so how could this be?
Maybe our ideas of how one believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, how one becomes a Christian, are a little skewed. The prophet Micah pointed out, “What is it that the Lord requires of you but to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” Could it be that that is also what is required for us to believe in Jesus? Maybe we don’t need to even know His name, just His attitude of being just and merciful and doing everything for the glory of God.
I’m in Columbia, SC this week on a temporary job. I’ve enjoyed the work and really like the company. This week has me staying in a Country Inns and Suites. I really like this chain.
When making my reservations I asked about places to run close to the hotel. I was assured that there were sidewalks and residential back streets right there at the hotel and this was in a safe part of town. This is important because I am now fully committed to a running program and can’t miss any of my scheduled runs. There is also a treadmill here and an indoor pool.
Since I’m suppose to run today the treadmill might be where I head in a bit. It is a rainy, messy day and I really don’t want to get out in this weather. Twenty minutes on the treadmill and a half hour in the pool may be my exercise for the day.
The fact that I’ll be running for a time on the treadmill rather than running a distance along a street is what got me thinking. So far I’ve been thinking of goals in distance. I want to run a 5k in March. I want to run a 10k by the end of the year. I want to run a Marathon (26.2 miles) in five years. Maybe instead of distance I ought to be thinking of running in time. I want to be able to run solid for forty-five minutes. I want to be able to run forty-five minutes at a certain cadence. This makes more sense to me for a training regimen. Once I get to where I can run for my goal time then start increasing the cadence of my run. Once I reach a certain cadence that I can maintain for a certain period of time then increase the time I’ll be running and drop my cadence back down.
Does that sound more reasonable than setting distance goals?
Weight Watchers is going good. I’m staying really close to the plan but I could do better. I’m down over six pounds overall. Yeah, that’s slow weight loss but that’s what I’m expecting. I figure as long as my weight continues to trend down I’m not in a huge hurry.
Altering my eating habits has had one good effect so far. I seem to have more energy. I’m walking more and have even began mixing a little running in with the walks. My knee is getting stronger and I have decided that I need to go ahead and move from just walking to running and building on my distance.
In fact, I’ve set a goal for myself. In five years and a few months I’ll be 60. I intend to run a marathon then. I’m not counting out running one before then but running a marathon a 60 after the last 25 years of being a couch potato seems to be a good goal.
Other small goals, fitness wise, are the 100 pushups, 200 situps and 200 squats programs. All three are six month goals. If I’m going to get old I’m going to do it healthy.
After six months of being out of work the phone has started ringing. Last Wednesday I received two calls about jobs. Friday I received another and today, on the way back from a meeting about one of the jobs I received a call for a pet sitter. Pet sitting is something I worked at getting off the ground for a month right after I found myself out of work and never received any interest.
As much as I would have loved it I had to turn down the pet sitting job. Now I just hope that these other three jobs can be juggeled so that I can do them. None of it is employment but all of it pays well and in these times I’m not seeing employment meaning security like it once did.
This does lead me to believe that our economy is improving in spite of everything the politicians are trying to do to us.
Seems I can’t make this a habit any more. I’ve started to write several times but things have gotten in the way. So let me try to get y’all caught up with me a bit.
I’m still unemployed, though there seeems to be some movement in the job market lately. I’ve been wanting to try to take this time to get myself back in shape. I’ve joined Weight Watchers with my wife and it has made me aware of all the food that I’ve been consuming. It seems I do pretty good until sometime around 9:00PM when I start craving sweets.
I also found a problem I was having with some medication that I’ve been taking that could be a big part of my recent weight gain. Amlodipine causes edema. I noticed my feet were swelling about a week after I stepped on the scales and noticed a sudden ten pound weight gain. The weight gain proded me into joining Weight Watchers. I began searching for causes of edema and found that Amlodipine can be a culprit. Since I am also on Toprol XL I just quit taking the Amlodipine and started monitoring my blood pressure more closely. My blood pressure remained stable and after two weeks off the medication the edema cleared up.
That wasn’t the only thing that cleared up. I had been having trouble making any progress on WW. I was losing but losing by a pound or half a pound a week. Last week I wiped out all my losses and had actually gained a half a pound overall. Last night I had lost seven pounds and made my 5% goal.
The losing weight is only one side of the equation. Getting in shape means I have to move more. I’ve been walking and exploring some local parks. The rains have been playing a bit of havoc with my walking intentions but I’m determined I will be walking more and more. I’ve got to. I’m not happy with what I’ve become and I’m not doing my dog the service she deserves by not being active with her.
Ft. Yargo is a local state park that I’ve been going to. The hiking there is fairly flat but there are miles and miles of trails there around a nice lake. I’ve also been walking and hiking at Harbins Park a new Gwinnett County park that features over five miles of hiking trails in what gives the appearance of being wilderness. There is also the Suwanee Greenway Park.
When not visiting the parks my subdivision gives me a decent amount of space to walk in. I can get three miles in just lapping my subdivision and the one across the highway.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ll try to finish up some of the essays I’ve also been starting and stopping on and share them with you soon.
A number of years ago I got to wondering about saving insurance dollars by paying my doctor so much a month in return for an agreement for him to keep me healthy. Basically what I was looking at was an alternative to the standard health care policy. I figured instead of paying insurance to cover doctor’s visits in a reactive fashion I could pay him for providing me both proactive and reactive care. The better he and I were at the proactive practice the less he’d see me in reactive mode which should result in him making more off of me and seeing me less while I saved some insurance dollars and stayed in better health.
My doctor told me that it was an interesting idea but if he did that he would have to change his practice to this style only and accept no insurance or medicare/medicaid patients and he wasn’t going to leave his current patients in a lurch to test out this idea.
For those of you who might be interested, not accepting insurance for payment allows for a list of fees for services like this. Government intervention is not required.
Okay, maybe the question posed in the title is a little dramatic. Certainly the constitution allows the federal government to do some things in regard to health care reform. However, what about certain specific proposals that have been key parts of the presidents plan? If the federal government doesn’t have the authority to implement these proposals why waste our time even discussing them unless it is in the form of proposing constitutional amendments to authorize the government to follow through with them.
In particular I’m talking about the president’s proposal to mandate that everyone buy health insurance. David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey authored a piece in the Saturday, August 22 edition of the Washington Post claiming this is not within the authority of the US government and they go on to give very compelling reasons why that is so. Basically, if the constitution allowed for the authority for the federal government to mandate the purchase of health insurance it could also mandate the purchase of iPods. The article cites several Supreme Court decisions that they believe supports their assertion. I won’t bother to repeat them here.
Reading that article started me thinking about how health insurance is currently regulated. It’s regulated by the states, not the federal government. Insurance policies are state specific and even when, say, a Massachussets company writes a policy to insure someone in, say, Georgia, as is my case, it is a Georgia policy that it is selling. While this is interstate commerce we are talking about the federal government taking over a responsibility that has been that of the states since the inception of health insurance.
Maybe insurance reform needs to be booted back to the states. Maybe the governors ought to look into standardizing insurance regulations between the states. Maybe that is the level this discussion should be taking place because that seems to be where the problem is.
Okay, I’ve got to say something about this. I thought from the beginning this debate was suppose to be about improving health care in America and making sure access to health care was open to as many people as possible. Instead it’s turned into a debate on regulating the insurance companies and maybe the government getting into competition with the insurance companies with their “public option”.
For those of you who may not have figured it out the “public option” is just taking TennCare and expanding it to the entire country. Ask the good folks in Tennessee how well that has worked out for them.
I think instead of concentrating on delivering health care we need to start looking at ways we can avoid finding ourselves in need of medical care. If we could encourage more Americans to consider a healthy lifestyle maybe the need for health care would drop, we would live longer and also reduce the degree of end of life care we need and medical costs would drop along with insurance rates.
For as long as I can remember there has been a “President’s Council on Physical Fitness” and this council has had their President’s Challenge in order to encourage Americans to be more active and physically fit. As a way to decrease health care cost why not more strongly encouraging Americans to become fit. Why not offer a tax credit to those Americans who can meet the President’s Challenge? If we can do it for alternative fuels we can do it for fitness.
I think this is an idea that needs to be spread around so I’m asking you a favor, link to this idea. Whether you agree with it or disagree with it let’s talk about it and maybe move the discussion on health care reform toward prevention rather than strictly on delivering health care.
Gerri and I went out for dinner last night at Feast in Decatur, GA. This place is located on East Howard Avenue across the street from the old depot (now The Depaux) just outside of the main business district. The Stone Mountain/Atlanta Trail passes right in front of the building.
This place offers fine dining in a relaxed setting. Dress was very casual with the patrons being very diverse in age. A jazz trio started playing shortly after our arrival and added to the relaxed atmosphere. The only problem I had with the environment is that there are hard surfaces everywhere making it more noisy than I would have preferred it. Sidewalk dining was available along with a garden out back that was reserved when we got there or we would have tried it. Overall the environment was well done.
Service was excellent. Our waitress was very pleasant and attentive without seeming like she was hovering over us. I like the wait staff seeming to only be there when they are needed and still being there every time they are needed.
The menu is somewhat eclectic. I was intrigued by the lamb burger on the menu and had to give it a try. Gerri had the Moroccan spiced chicken. I think she had about half a chicken on her plate. She gave me a taste and I’ve decided I need to find out what the Moroccan spices were they used for the rub on this chicken. It was very tasty.
My lamb burger was the best $9 burger I’ve ever had. Every bite exploded with a slightly different taste as I bit into the pickles, the onions and the cheese. The pickles were billed as “house made” and the onion also had the taste of pickling. It all went together with the ground lamb/ground beef burger to make a truly sloppy burger that taste so wonderful but makes you think you might need a shower after eating it.
We got out paying under $40 before the tip. Overall I thought it was a very good experience and would recommend it to anyone.
The night was comfortable so Gerri and I had a pleasant walk around Decatur after our meal. Our walk took us by the Decatur Library. There is a huge magnolia tree on the front lawn there that is well worth seeing if you are in the area. I think that Decatur is a town I could live in.
It’s difficult to hear regardless of where its found. I most likely have cancer. That’s the part you hear. Yeah, this is skin cancer and the doctor called it a carcenoma, not a melanoma, and it has been caught early so while it is most likely cancer it is also most likely fairly harmless. We’ll find out for sure in a couple of weeks after the lab tests are back.
Still it’s cancer.
I feel so deeply for those who actually have a serious form of the disease. With me I have skin scraped off my arm where a sore has been for an abnormally long time. For them it’s the prelude to serious surgery, subjecting their body to all sorts of toxic chemicals and being illuminated with radiation. All that on top of hearing, “You have cancer.”
While I needed the income I can’t say that I’m completely upset about this situation. Oh, I’m a little concerned about paying my bills but I honestly believe that there is something out there that I’m suppose to do and this was God’s way of giving me the opportunity to find it.
I know that now is not a good time to be seeking employment so I’m looking for work mainly, just about anything to bring in an income. I won’t turn down employment but I’ve got to be truthful to myself about prospects and I think I’m more likely to find paying work than finding employment. I think I may be happier that way also.
I will now start the process of updating my résumé and several webpages (LinkedIn, CareerBuilders, this site and others I operate) and start looking for work. If you need someone who is very experienced with Wonderware, RSView, ControlLogix, PLC5 and SLC50x, OPC servers and clients or building and maintaining websites please give my a yell. My rates are reasonable and I’m currently available.
This weekend was spent with my dogs. This was a wonderful time either walking, playing fetch, rough housing or just lounging on the couch. I guess with my boys both grown I’m using these two dogs to fill in for them. Most of the time was spent with Sammie but Mattie got his share of laptime also. Sammie didn’t always agree with Mattie needing my time also. She told me so in this video.
Boxers can be extremely vocal when they have something to say.
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