Darn SJ, I suppose if you’re going to catch COVID better now than 1.5 years ago. Hope you quick recovery.

Thanks for the kind words, guys. Other than the drop in oxygen take-up, my Covid symptoms were that of a minor cold, and I was soon over it.

I started with walking after work this week, and found that that my breath was not the only thing diminished: the muscles in my lower back and torso which help me to stand up and walk for long periods of time have atrophied, and they start making their weakness known after only a half mile or so.

I used to have disdain for people who'll wait for an elevator instead of walking up a flight of stairs, or who'll drive around a parking lot for 10 minutes, sharking for a close up spot, rather than parking right away and walking a minute and a half.

I still have in mind a character idea for a guy in his 20's who's worked up perfect gym muscles for himself; he lifts and does a grueling CrossFit regimen, and he runs 5 miles a day, but when he's not working out he drives a Hoverround scooter everywhere--he owns one of those new retro-looking Dodge Challengers, with a trailer attachment for his scooter--and he complains constantly about a lack of public disability access.

But lately, given my condition, I have found a new sympathy for people who are severely out of shape. It's not strictly laziness or a lack of mental toughness that keeps them from using the stairs or walking moderate distances. Towards the end of my walks, I've confronted real physical discomfort bordering on distress thanks to my atrophied muscles.

I did a half-mile on Wednesday, three quarters on Thursday, a mile yesterday, and my route today should be close to a mile-and a half. It's progress, though I have a long way to go to match the point where I was late one night two years ago, when I walked 6 miles down Charlestown Avenue from Rainbow Blvd to Las Vegas Blvd, just because I was too drunk to remember that Charlestown had 24 hour bus service.

Yeah I recall you being without a car in Vegas and doing a lot of walking. Damn surprised how quickly muscles associated with walking deteriorate.

Stupid duplicate posts.

Since you mentioned soreness, consider adding a stretching routine to your exercise. I'll often take a half-hour or so while watching TV and just try to keep somewhat limber.

Say you have a regular workout routine where you bench 220lbs for 2 sets: one for 10 reps and one for 8 reps. You go twice a week, say, with the chest.

But then, after quitting for a year, letting yourself go, and getting back, you decide to try to bench 260lbs for 5 reps, then 4 reps.



It's the same with my walks: my excess weight is the biggest issue. And I have to walk in order to reduce the weight. So it's like having to bench the 260 in order to get back down to the 220.

In any case, it's not impossible, and I've gone out 5 days in a row.

Always great advice. I've had decent stretch routines for other workouts, but never bothered with it for walking, and I should. I will remind myself to do so tomorrow; I forgot about it today.

Instances of Paranoia: Part I

I bought a vape pen and a cannabis refill a few weeks ago. It thought it might help take the edge off my alcohol wagon grind. I don't feel that I'm in danger of getting hooked on this type of dope, as it makes me socially anxious and paranoid as often as it provides me with amusement and diversion.

My apartment complex is non-smoking and non-vaping, and residents are made to head out to the picnic tables or to their cars to indulge. Those vaping flavored nicotine can likely get away with staying inside, as most of that stuff smells like candy. Vaped cannabis, on the other hand, smells like pot, so out to my car I went.

My first pull on the new pen ended up being too ambitious by half, and I was thrown into a loud, long coughing fit, and I blew some serious cloud--or however the kids term it. Soon after that, I exited my car and found myself confronted with a woman in her 80's standing a little off to the side and giving me the old white lady's version of Samuel L. Jackson's famous gimlet stare.



I know her generation: my parents are from it. They're not Boomers; they're the Silent Generation, heavily socialized in their youths to fear and despise anti-social behavior, communism, drugs, and the mixing of the races. Back when the Boomers were saying "Don't trust anyone over 30," this lady was in her thirties. Gawking busybodies from her demographic were far and away the most likely to snitch on me to the Man.

Pot is legal in my state; but as with alcohol, public consumption is not. Also, when I'd applied for a spot in this complex, apartment listings were few and far between in my area, and I didn't think it a good idea to ask my prospective landlords if they were 420 friendly.



I didn't say hi to the old biddy as I walked past; I just slapped on my best poker face--which isn't all that good--and stared back at her. When I made it back in to my apartment, I started the process of checking my email and phone to see if and when my landlords were going to evict me, thanks to the old lady's inevitable complaint, and repeating that checking behavior until I sobered up, and recognized that I was being paranoid.

Bureaucracy is slow, you'll prolly get it in a couple of days. Just joking. That's a mild version of weed paranoia. I remember some guys hiding behind a gas station with blue-colored lighting in Germany for hours. Cos they thought it was some kind of police installation/checkpoint

That is creepy, I take it you don't have a balcony. I am a boomer and I HATE getting blamed for what the Silent Generation did to the world. The boomers didn't do it, they did. But the younger generation has no idea about history, also part of the problem. I am not a violent man, EXCEPT when I hear some younger generation idiot say, OK Boomer. These idiots think Reagan was a boomer (or Biden). Silent generation screwed us all, boomers actually tried to fix it, but we failed miserably.

I'm a boomer. I blame everything on the boomers. We were given everything and used it in an attempt to avoid growing up. The silent generation? They just tried to stay out of the way and live their lives.

I blame everyone but me.

I blame Morph. And the boogie.

Both are correct.

Back in the 90's I read a book called Generations, by William Strauss and Neil Howe, that put forth the theory that there are 4 recurring generations throughout US history.

With the recurrence you have say, the Victorians, who came of age in the 1900's, akin with the Boomers. Then the Lost Generation, who came of age in the Roaring 20's, are akin with Gen-X. Then the Greatest Generation, the generation type who is always faced with an existential national crisis--a World War or a Depression or a stock market crash or an attempted coup by a sitting president in the middle of an historically deadly pandemic, or what have you--is akin with the Millennials.

Each of the 4 generations has its own characteristics, often in deliberate opposition to the one 2 generations ago, and that older generation always criticizes the younger by 2--in the way the Boomers criticize the Millennials.

Anyways, they go into great detail throughout US history to make their point, going all the way back to the early 1600's, and I was captivated by it for many years. Eventually, though, I snapped out of it, because they're talking about 10's of millions of people as if they all share the same personality traits. And what about the different races and classes: did Black Boomers share a similar upbringing as White Boomers? Do Asian Gen-Xers share a common set of values with Latino Gen-Xers? For that matter, digging deeper, do Puerto Rican Xers share personality traits with Cuban Xers, and so on?

It's just too many people to corral into a personality menu item, and the hard science behind their theory is little more rigorous than that behind astrology. Still, I'd probably read the book again sometime, just for fun, in the same spirit that I'll peek at a horoscope every once in a while.

The only people doing serious predictive generational experiments are marketing people, and their attitude seems to be that we are the sum of what we buy, or what we want to buy, and their research only goes that far.

People have to put people into groups. It save a lot of energy that would be otherwise spent on thinking. I would prefer people be put into astrological groupings because they are patently ridiculous--but no, just because I find them ridiculous doesn't mean other people do.

Libra

I don't believe in astrology, but the description of myself based on my sign is 100% accurate, both the good and bad points. Sometimes I have to wonder about that.

Instances of Paranoia: Part II

As mentioned upthread, I've been walking most days, weather permitting, to try to get in better shape for the WSOP Main Event satty grind in two weeks' time. For weekdays I've settled on a 2-mile walk, first up a long hill, then down a short one, and then back, with a short rest at the halfway point. During the rest break, I have a few puffs off my new pot pen, for inspiration and edification.

After walking a half mile in either direction, my oblique and lower back muscles begin to stiffen up, and I have to change my walking style into what I call the fat man's truss walk.

It's an ugly turn of phrase, but appropriate for what it describes. My back goes ramrod straight, and I lean back a bit, like one of those drinking bird toys stuck a 100° angle. My steps start from directly underneath me, swing a little to the side in a waddle while going forward, then return to directly underneath me, with no backswing to speak of. I look like a penguin, or like a fat man wearing a truss.



The last leg of my walk takes me through a small plaza parking lot fronting a drug store, a couple of restaurants, a cell phone store, and a few other local enterprises--the standard small town Americana lot. Driving past that lot one day was an unfamiliar ice cream truck. It looked like a converted UPS panel truck. I stopped and I admired the truck, because it was very clean.

Now, there's another food truck that operates near my apartment, but I never buy from it because that truck is always dirty on the outside. I'm not a neat freak--I don't wash my own car, like ever--but I figure if the food truck proprietor can't be arsed to keep the outside of his truck clean, what does that say for the inside of his truck, and for his food storage items and utensils?

So I'm admiring the pristine ice cream truck as he's slowly driving by the lot until it hits me that I'm a stoned fat man who looks winded and possibly hungry. What happens if the proprietor notices me in my state and pulls in, assuming with good reason that he has a valuable customer on the hook?

Ice cream: I could take it or leave it. I don't buy it for myself as a treat more than twice a year. But if that man pulls in the lot, I'll feel that I'm obligated to buy something, if only to reward the man's entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to customer service.

Instead he beeps twice and drives on. Now what does that mean? **** you, fat man, I'm done slopping the hogs for today? Or maybe; I see you. You are seen, but this is a brand new operation and I haven't loaded my truck yet, I'm just driving this baby home from the paint shop? Or maybe he was beeping at something that had nothing to do with me, but in my state of mild paranoia I felt that his beeps had to be directed at me and no one else.

I stood and gawked at him as he drove away, me looking like a fat rube watching a carnie caravan pull out of town. And then I saw myself, as if from the outside. I had a laugh and walked the rest of the way home.

Ice cream trucks rock, takes me back to my childhood. Reminding me that I am an adult now, they are banned in my city because of noise and "safety" concerns. That actually sucks. And I do not live in a white rich NIMBY neighborhood. But what I really liked was your reference to the Fabulous Furry Freak brothers. Do you perhaps remember the best underground cartoon of all, Wonder Warthog, the Hog of Steel?

In college a buddy of mine had a big book of underground comix, with R. Crumb, the Fabulous Furry Freak Bros, Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural and others. I borrowed his book and read it at least twice, but Wonder Warthog was not in it. I'll have to check him out!

So much for the fat man's truss walk; I seem to have broken through a fitness plateau in the last few days. I did 5 miles on Saturday, in two stages, with no shortness of breath and little muscle discomfort. For all I know, the breathing trouble I'd had beforehand was a lingering Covid symptom.

Medicine is one of the few subjects I've never been curious about; actually, it's more that I'm averse to learning about diseases and disorders, as if my willful ignorance has stood in front of me all these years as a sort of quantum talisman, keeping all the bad health demons away.

Getting my breath back had some unforeseen consequences, mainly that the hit I took off my vape pen at the halfway turnaround point was unexpectedly huge. From earlier walks, I'd thought that I was building up a tolerance to the stuff. I was wrong.


Instances of Paranoia: Part III

Whewwiee, 2 1/2 miles to go and as high as a loon. I started the return journey off by twisting my ankle, fortunately not as severely as I'd done a couple years back in Las Vegas, when I put myself off my feet for several days.

I could still walk on it; but that ability, I told myself, was a 500,000-year-old temporary survival mechanism designed to get us back to the cave and keeping us out of the belly of an apex predator whenever we twisted or sprained an ankle on the hunt or the gather. How much more was I going to hurt it by walking another 2 1/2 miles?

The alternative was to Ask For Help. I had friends and family not far away who could and would help me in this spot, or I could install Uber or Lyft on my phone and summon a ride like a normal person.

I walked.

One mile in, while I was crashing through the woods by the roadside along a narrow trail flanked by tall grass, on my way to a find a safe spot to pee, I did not worry about a copperhead snake biting me. It was not until I was back out on the well-kempt sidewalks that I started to keep an eye out for one of those danger noodles slithering out of the various neat hedges or flowerbeds to give me a venomous bite out of sheer malice.

I talked myself down from that fear with a little effort. Copperheads are shy snakes and prefer to stay out of peoples' way, not biting unless cornered or stepped on or otherwise messed with.

I passed by a mailbox that had been recently stove in and knocked off its post. "You did this," said the part of me that loves to mess with the rest of me.

"Don't you remember, on the outward leg, when you were standing over the mailbox, gawking at it? I've got news for you: right before that, the part of you that does bad **** when you're blackout drunk smashed up this very mailbox, and you forgot all about it because you never remember things like this. Because you're crazy."

I replied, "You don't remember when I do blackout drunk stuff either. So how is it that you remember this?"

"We're not drunk; we're high. Blackout rules are different when we're high. In this spot, I'm allowed to act as a sort of emissary between you and Blackout Suited. Look, here comes a cop with his flashers on. Everybody has doorbell cameras nowadays. You're ****ed. Get ready.."

The cop car flew by.

"I wasn't high when I walked past the mailbox the first time, idiot. And what did smash I it up with, my fists? Lord knows it wasn't my feet. I can't kick very high with my current loadout. And I don't see any big sticks around. No implements of destruction."

Boom. Innocent.

Five minutes later...

"Has it occurred to you that you are now covered in ticks? No? Well, snakes aren't the only things who wait in the high grass. Ticks, my man. You have ticks crawling all over you. Here we are not 80 miles from Old Lyme, CT, home of the first known Lyme disease outbreak."

"There wasn't much high grass. It was practically a trail."

"Oh and ticks don't hang out at the edges of game trails?"

I had me there. My skin started crawling with anticipatory pestilence. I hoofed it home, stripped off my clothes, threw them in the bathtub, and checked myself. No ticks.

I took a nap and woke up no longer high, and barely able to walk. The ancient survival grace period on my twisted ankle was over, and I was paying the piper. I limped over to the bathroom...

What a cliffhanger!
As usual, well written suitedjustice!

Thanks uberkuber! I found a second visitor last night.



Lurking the perpendicular a few feet up might work well in the woods, but not so well in an apartment with white walls. If any more are left and they stick to that strat, I should get the drop on them before they drop on me.

A spider also took up residence yesterday. Usually I tell them to leave, and they're gone within 24 hours, but I told this one she could stay if she was willing to eat ticks, and she's still here.

jfc, look at the size of that thing!

That was my bad. It was actually pretty small. I just put the camera close up.

Do you do that often?