Geek Habitat

Note: This entry was actually started on MONDAY, July 28 –

It’s clear from my infrequent blog posts that I’ve been fighting “the crud” (sinus infection and, for awhile, lower respiratory infection) for months, really. About the time I’d get so fed up with it that I’d entertain going to the doctor, it would seem to abate, but only long enough to sneak up on me by the following weekend. When you have bad allergies (forget “seasonal”–these are omnipresent) you sometimes forget when you’ve crossed the line from “Geez, this is a horrible allergy season and I can’t remember the last time I felt really GOOD,” to “Geez, I feel really, utterly awful…the worst I have in a long time. And I don’t seem to ever being getting WELL.”

I woke up Monday morning feeling especially crappy, and finally decided it was time to drag my sorry carcass to the Texas MedClinic. I’ve known I was dealing with a full-blown, tenacious sinus infection. (It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to correctly identify a rocket!) However, by Monday morning my left eye was painful and the area around it was swollen, red and purple, itchy and… numb, like I’d been shot with Novacaine. I know, how can you be numb and in pain in the same area? Go figure!

Anyway, the sinuses in the left side of my face have been especially angry, so much so for several days prior to Monday’s “eye opening” experience (*groan*), I’d been unable to chew food on the left side of my mouth because my furthest molar in my upper jaw couldn’t handle any pressure without sending shockwaves of pain through my head. Think exposed nerve. Think the kind of pain you imagine you’d feel if the dentist forgot to numb an area of your mouth before setting to work on a root canal.

All the pains, and now numbness, were puzzling and setting off alarm bells, but the eye is really what made me go straight to the doctor. As I posted on Flickr, “More than four weeks of recurring sinus pain and congestion and it took this to finally make me haul my ass in to the doctor. I’m not playing around with something that could turn into orbital cellulitis.

To make matters worse, Justin is out of town from midday Tuesday through much of Saturday, shooting photos at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh (the world’s largest airshow) for General Aviation News. Not only would I be on my own with our beautiful, full-of-energy 16-month-old, but I’d be on my own and potentially in need of an emergency doctor visit if I didn’t act a *little* proactively! The fact that Jus had taken Monday off to prepare for Oshkosh turned out to be doubly beneficial, since it meant I could go to the MedClinic and he could be with Sara, removing one more mental “obstacle” I’d set up for why I didn’t want to go to the doctor.

So I dragged my arse to the MedClinic down the street on Monday morning shortly after they opened at 8 AM. From my Twitter feed on Monday:
“Going to medclinic. Sinus pain unbearable and now eye is swollen. Sigh 07:18 AM July 28, 2008”
Other than going to the doctor and picking up my prescriptions on the way home (10 day course of antibiotics, corticosterioid nasal spray and prescription eyedrops), the only thing I did other than SLEEP was post a couple illness-related photos to Flickr -> http://flickr.com/photos/wildtexas/tags/sick/. What a gripping life I do lead, eh? {Bridget Jones’ Diary reference}

Anyway, it’s now THURSDAY at 10:30 PM and I can report I have been feeling progressively better since the meds started coursing through my system. I am still not 100%, but today was the first day I felt up to dropping Sara off with her other grandfolks’ (Justin’s parents) so she could play with her cousins who were also there for the day. With Sara safely and happily ensconced in games with her cousins, I came home and made a whirlwind attempt to catch up on all the things I had fallen behind on during my sickbed days:

• laundry (even WITH Justin’s help before he left for Osh, I was still depressingly behind on laundry loads & folding/hanging the clean stuff.)
• mowing & edging the front lawn which was starting to make the (not good) neighbors’ DEAD lawn look somehow “nice and manicured”
• dropping off recyclables and donations at their requisite spots
• an impromptu visit to my folks’ to chat with Mom (who had a very rough day) & grab lunch
• checking our business P.O. Box
• decluttering, etc.

I was also eager to indulge in some World of Warcraft, but my desktop computer was slightly out of commission–slow as molasses. Last night, right after Sara fell asleep, I managed to complete the initial installation of our business’ shiny new HP MediaSmart Home Server (shipped with one 500 GB drive and upgraded with two 1TB drives; still with one hot-swap HD bay free) and I didn’t pay attention to its default backup routine so it started dutifully backing up my desktop computer. Problem — MOST of the 850 GB of data on my desktop computer actually is migrating *to* the server, so I don’t really need/want a backup of it made on the server…. certainly not when it takes from midnight to 3 PM to reach 3% completion. So anyway, I let it run but killed it when I got back home with Sara this evening. I will start the data migration soon, maybe tonight? Sara’s down for the night; she blissfully went to bed without any crying and without fighting, even though she slept an amazing 2.5 hours with her grandma & grandpa Moore today.

PS: Sara is amazing and I really wish I could find the time to blog about her every single day because there is something to share–a photo or video or anecdote or new thing she’s doing–every single day. She has her domain names still, like any good geek gal over the age of 12 months. She has seemed to know I’m not operating at full efficiency, and on Wednesday she even cuddled me in bed early in the day and indulged me as I watched Fraggle Rock with her (normally a nighttime routine for us).

I’ll try to resume a more predictable blogging schedule, but I am insanely behind on the sites I own and manage that generate actual income, so forgive me if this site remains a forgotten stray for awhile longer.

Last message to Justin this evening, sent via my Blackberry to his and repeated here because it’s so true: “Love you hon. I wasn’t built to be a single gal. Miss ya.” I don’t mind him traveling, and before Sara joined us a one or two night business trip was kind of exciting–a change from the norm. But almost a full week away, and with Sara now, and with being on the mend from illness? Gah. Bring my babe home… when they’re done with him, anyway.

I am really glad I wasn’t on this Lufthansa Airlines flight which attempted to land in extremely high crosswinds. Note: the did make a successful landing on their second (“go ’round”) landing attempt.  Further, for non-pilots, the yaw back and forth and the aircraft’s odd sideways, not lined up with center line, approach to touchdown on the runway *is* proper (indeed the only safe) procedure for landing in crosswinds–it’s call “crabbing”, since it looks sort of like how a crab runs sideways in relation to where it’s head it facing. Even a heavy crosswind landing in a Cessna isn’t fun… I love flying with Justin but my least favorite approach and landings are when we are faced with strong, especially gusty (wind’s there one moment and suddenly gone the next, etc.) crosswinds.  It’s like riding a bucking bronco, and I have no idea how hair-raising it is to land, but judging by Justin’s look of complete concentration, it’s no fun.

Video:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/03/03/germany.plane/index.html

That was *not* a pleasant ride for the passengers and crew, but the pilots did exactly what they needed to by not trying to fight the wind and the bird and just going full throttle to make another landing attempt.

I don’t know what the winds were like, but every airline and pilot has their own rules and decisions regarding what’s acceptable given the type of aircraft, the length of the runway, etc.

I rode 14.89 miles with Justin and his BIL, David, this afternoon, and am feeling great. See the ride’s stats from my Garmin Forerunner 305+heartrate strap at http://tinyurl.com/2xaywq; you can compare my heartrate to Justin’s (his stats, here). He’s in far better cardiovascular shape than I am right now.

We even swung by Bulverde Airpark where a former co-worker (former executive) has his home-built aircraft (RV9) hangared. She (all aircraft, like ships, are female) is a beauty–I was trying to be polite, so I didn’t snap a Blackberry photo… only to have Justin confide to me that any owner of an aircraft would be thrilled to have someone take photos of his baby. Point taken.)
With the installation of my indoor bike trainer not happening until Tuesday (it arrived late Monday), and all the yard work on Thursday, I only got two bike trainer sessions in this week and today’s outdoor ride, but that’s nothing to sneeze at given all the weeks prior.

My cadence sensor didn’t behave so I don’t have cadence data for today’s ride, which doesn’t matter to me outdoors but is a PITA for the bike trainer sessions (because MotionBased sucks for GPS-trackless activities.). I hope to get the cadence sensor issue resolved ASAP. Tomorrow’s a recovery day from the bike, though. I feel great but don’t want to burn myself out.

Congratulations and a heartfelt hug to Justin for strapping back into the cockpit of a trusty Cessna Skyhawk and going for a flight yesterday. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta sing, and pilots gotta fly, so I am glad he did it.

And I, too, look forward to when Sara’s old enough to appreciate and enjoy a flight, as well. It always struck me as particularly cool when we’d fly in to some local airport (Fredericksburg or Hondo, for example) and see a kiddo climb into or out of one of the many aircraft tied down on the tarmac. I’d look at the kid and grin inside, “How amazing it must be — to that child, a single-engine aircraft is exciting and yet perhaps as typical as a ride in the family car!” I always hop the kiddo knows how lucky he/she is to be able to fly, and I suspect most do, even if they are climbing into or out of an aircraft the family owns, vs. a rental like Justin and I use.

Justin took a co-worker and his son on a “first flight” last weekend, and a wonderful time was had by all. Today, the co-worker’s wife posted the following comment on his blog entry for the flight:

Awwwwwww….

The gift of flight is definitely one best savored when shared! I can’t wait until our daughter’s old enough to actually appreciate that her daddy can fly an airplane, and enjoy the view from above!

In completely unrelated news: someone washed her car yesterday without checking the forecast, so of course here’s what our current weather radar looks like:

And I’m too tired/lazy to feel like doing the whole shammy dry routine in the garage so my hybrid at least still looks like she’s recently been washed!

Justin and I figured it was about time I joined him on a General Aviation (GA) flight again, in part because it really has been too long (months!) and because we wanted Sprout to log some GA flight hours in utero. Baby Einstein’s got nothing on Baby Earhart, after all! As Justin so eloquently put it, she is now his “youngest Young Eagle of all!”

Anyway, we figured she was ready since she’s become quite the “wiggle worm” inside my womb. I’m afraid NASA probably wouldn’t allow me on their “Vomit Comet” in my present condition, and even if they did, the aircraft would live up to its name. The next best thing, however, were some steep turns in a Cessna Skyhawk glass cockpit equipped (Garmin G1000) single engine aircraft, with Justin at the controls. We three — Justin, Sprout and I — all had a blast, and the weather couldn’t have been lovelier! I have missed flying with Justin, and as with our hiking and cycling, we’re enjoying these prenatal introductions. Someday, we will be able to embarass Sprout by reminiscing about all the things we did with her when she was still in Mommy’s belly.

While on approach back to KSAT (San Antonio International Airport), we mused about the proper attachment method for a child carseat in a single engine aircraft — front seat or back, facing backward or facing forward, etc.? Obviously, there will be many other firsts in our lives before we add “Baby’s First Flight” post-birth to Justin’s pilot logbook, but it pays to think ahead!

GPS ground track from Sprout’s “first flight” today:

See Flickr for map annotations.

Thank you, Justin, for a terrific flight and a superb landing (as always!) To reference Justin’s blog post of today’s events, I too sensed my perspective altered on this flight. How very amazing it was to see the Earth from above once again, knowing full well there’s a new life growing inside of me to whom all of these wonders are, as yet, unknown. We adults take so much for granted; it takes something momentous, like the impending birth of your own child, to make you take a deep breath and appreciate the beauty and meaning all around you.

In related news, Justin and I extend our congratulations to Joe and Julee on the birth of their bundle of joy, Jason Dodd, on October 24, 2006. Looking at their first photos gives us a beautiful glimpse into our lives come April 2007!