#posting this after my test which went by pretty fast :00

[pineapple-frenzy]

I love love love your zutara book two au. That's all. Thank you for sharing it with us!

Aaahhh thank you!!! It's honestly such a self indulgent au I'm glad people are enjoying it as much as I am :'>>

Here's a few more silly doodles of them!!

[feelingofcontent]

DNP Rewatch: DAN AND PHIL BLINDFOLDED MAKEUP CHALLENGE

Date video was published: 03/12/2015 (X)

DNP Main Channel Rewatch: 262

I love Dan doing something silly for charity! Also his promo tweet for this was one of his (several) uses for the gay couple emoji to represent him and Phil, so there’s that.

0:28 - ahahaha, “no interest” but the format of this makes it obvious he’s at least watched some other videos of this challenge

0:38 - “I’ve only got one” ...of course if it’s something strange/out of his comfort zone for his channel, it’s got to be Phil. Also Dan calling him his “designated friend” in the description is great.

0:40 - love the matching t-shirts. love the expression on Phil’s face as he says he’s not ready. Love Dan’s soft smile as he listens to Phil.

0:48 - wtf is Phil’s little eyebrow-flick and smirk after the jump cut here

0:51 - shocked Dan went to shop for this in person actually, instead of online. also YES at the annotation

0:56 - Phil is not paying enough attention to the difference between the eyeshadow and the blush here...that will become an issue, lol

1:00 - Phil’s face while staring at the blindfold is something. Also “that’s going to be difficult” burn. 😂

1:05 - why is he acting surprised at what the material is made of? They’ve had that at least since THE WARDROBE when Phil ties it around his head. Also Dan with the gentle helping. And that annotation. 😳 This is a moment.

1:22 - yep, there we go. I love that Dan doesn’t tell him, but let’s the audience know.

1:25 - of course Dan didn’t think to get brushes or anything. Just going straight in with the fingers and face-touching. Dan is immediately amused.

1:35 - the fact that the one makeup term they seem to really know is “contour” is hilarious to me

1:45 - so soft at Phil testing how sharp it is on his own hand first before putting it on Dan 🥺 Although they already did eyeliner somewhat recently in Dan and Phil PUNK EDITS IN REAL LIFE!

1:52 - wtf happened during this jump cut that Dan ended up with it on his glabella and nowhere near the other eye?!

2:07 - love Dan’s amusement here and the teasing with the fast-forwarded editing, planned in the moment

2:27 - “illuminating” lol, the words/phrases they’ve picked up from whatever tutorials they’ve watched before amuse me

2:37 - and now we have Phil going into “I’m a little shit” mode, which is great. He is bored with actually trying, apparently. Also “to make up for the droop” what.

2:52 - yep, now he’s just trying to mess with Dan 😂

3:00 - putting the lipstick out that far, I can’t believe it didn’t break immediately

3:20 - I love this so much. I’m sure this is something Phil saw his mum doing and remembered!

3:31 - “enjoying this power too much” ...yep

3:39 - only Phil would think of this at that point, especially with the lipstick. “This is what you signed up to.”  😂😂

3:48 - Dan actually sounds somewhat sincere with that compliment. And psychic Phil here, when putting highlighter on your ears (though not lipstick, lol) will become a thing in the next couple years 😲

4:08 - Phil is me when put under pressure to think of a word I should know

4:17 - honestly, Dan is brave letting Phil near his eyes with all of this with Phil’s clumsy track record. The trust is there. Also, what is this face from Phil. 😳

4:31 - out of everything, Phil somehow had the best aim when going for his eyebrows. This is now his third use of “contour.”

4:45 - the reveal moment is great. And Phil tongue-thing!

4:56 - ooo, yikes, just finger marks down his face lol

5:08 - sure, Phil “fairly” maybe for the first couple of things... Dan apparently doesn’t need help with the blindfold.

5:18 - Phil has to test that of course

5:26 - #spon lol. I do love that they make it obvious that they know exactly how ridiculous it is sometimes, which means I somehow never get annoyed with them spon-ing their merch.

5:50 - why does Phil continue to face straight forward; he is not making it easier for Dan even a little bit

5:57 - Dan is doing a lot more touching with both hands to try to get things in the right place

6:02 - unnecessary zoom-in on Dan’s “shhhhh”...

6:04 - he really does stick two fingers right in Phil’s mouth 😳 And very over-the-top reactions. I apologize for this screenshot.

6:14 - and the little nose boop here. Phil is right about the open-mouth eye makeup.

6:30 - oh, Dan is actually attempting to use the eyeshadow applicator here

6:45 - love Phil’s reaction to how he looks already

7:02 - again, wtf happened during the jump cut here. Suddenly Phil has much much more on his cheek.

7:08 - seems to be some sort of little check-in tap here from Dan after Phil says “oh my god.” They are constantly making sure the other person is okay, even in the midst of filming.

7:15 - Phil is so disappointed, lol at the side-eye and Dan’s smug face even with the blindfold

7:22 - why would Phil even ask that?! what even is this conversation.

7:35 - pretty sure Dan knows perfectly well what he’s doing here too. Payback for some of what Phil did.

7:53 - love that Phil didn’t correct him here either

8:07 - yeah, waaaaaay to much lipstick up out of the tube

8:25 - this whole lipstick part is so messy in every way

8:36 - Dan is much quicker with ripping the blindfold off than Phil was. The reveal parts of this video are my favorite.

8:42 - “I look like I just ate someone’s neck” ...of course, Phil. I get more The Joker than a vampire.

8:47 - the synchronized lean-in

8:53 - love that Phil did a pout. Love that Dan noticed in the viewfinder and called him out on it.

9:02 - Phil with the burns in this video

9:08 - they seem to be having such a good time filming this one too

9:11 - until this moment, maybe

9:20 - I want to know if they actually phoned a friend or just googled everything. That is a mess.

9:27 - Phil panic-cleaning the carpet (which is what he included in his promo tweet). With a cleaver. 😂 Yeah, definitely some Google-ing going on. 

9:39 - Phil with that makeup holding the cleaver is terrifying, actually.

9:53 - love the behind-the-scenes of the selfie-taking. Dan posted the selfie on his Instagram.

10:03 - hahahaha, poor Kath. Dan found that hilarious.

10:37 - Phil’s deadpan “I’m really glad this will be on the internet forever” is great

I love this video a lot, if that wasn’t obvious, lol. Sometimes I forget about it in favor of more recent videos, but it’s such a good one.

[4haechie]

stuck with you

➵ request: can i request fluff + au #2 + trope #1 "enemies to lovers" + prompt #4 & #19?? thank you 🥰

➵ lee donghyuck x reader | fluff, enemies to lovers au, high school au | 2,760 words | “take off your shirt.” + “can you shut up for just two seconds?”

➵ warnings: cursing and one second of suggestive stuff

➵ a/n: thank u for requesting! i really hope u like it :D i added timestamps to avoid confusion, so this turned out longer than expected oops. if u want a part 2, please let me know!

want to request? check this post out!

present time – thursday, 6:30 p.m. 

you’re starting to wish time machines existed right about now. you’ll do just about anything to go back to two hours ago and avoid this mess.

you glance up at donghyuck, who’s put on his thinking cap apparently, and is trying to come up with a way to get you two the hell out of here. “do you have a hairpin? or a bobby pin?” he asks.

you shake your head, “donghyuck, that only works in movies.”

“y/n, i’m trying to come up with solutions here! or do you wanna live in this tiny janitor’s closet for the rest of your life?” he glares at you.

“if i did, i would’ve chosen someone else to share oxygen with. why would i choose you?” you glare back.

he rolls his eyes, indicating that that conversation is over. “whatever. try calling your friends again. someone must still be at school, right?”

you frown, “donghyuck, we had the student council meeting earlier, remember? that ended at six, and it’s almost six-thirty now. all the sports teams’ practice sessions must’ve ended, too. i’m telling you, it’s just us in school.” you shake a little as if trying to wake up from a crazy dream. no avail.

you’re stuck here–no, wait. someone locked you two in here. you’re going to have to trace back your steps to figure out who.

thursday, 4:00 p.m.

“the weekly student council meeting is in session. today, we’re going to discuss prom! i’ve put up a list on the bulletin board that says who’s going to do what. please take a look at it immediately.” you explained, gazing around the group of students in front of you.

you’re the president and donghyuck is the vice president. you two work together almost every day, you’re in the same classes, you have the same friends. but there’s one minor detail in your guys’ relationship: you two hate each other.

hate might be a bit too strong of a word, but it’s true. you and donghyuck, despite working together and being in the same class since third grade, have never gotten along. maybe it’s your guys’ competitiveness. maybe it’s your strong desire to one-up the other. but as long as you can recall, there hasn’t been a single time when he hasn’t made your blood boil.

anyway, you and donghyuck were in charge of planning your senior prom, and ensuring everything and everyone follows said plan.

while discussing the event, you realised you forgot to check with your school’s janitor if he’s free on the day of prom, or if he’s taking a holiday. either way was fine with you, as you were thinking of making everyone clean up after themselves. but just to be sure, you and donghyuck, unfortunately, decided to stop by the closet after the meeting had ended.

thursday, 6:05 p.m.

“i don’t think he’s here. it is after school hours, so i think he went home,” you said, peeping into the dark closet. it was pretty obvious he wasn’t there–the room couldn’t have been more than five feet by five feet. it’s a storage space, but the janitor keeps his bag here before starting work and picks it up right before leaving school.

“yeah, no shit, sherlock.” donghyuck reached around you to flip the light switch on. the lone bulb suspended from the ceiling blazed to life, setting the room alight.

then, suddenly, a figure pushed donghyuck into the confined space, which caused you to jerk inwards. it happened so fast, you barely had time to react, or identify the culprit. you heard keys jingling and fear danced around in your eyes.

donghyuck was still facing the door, while you were standing with your back against the wall. he tried his best to look out the little glass rectangle fitted in the door, but he turned around and shook his head in frustration.

“what the fuck just happened,” you said; it came out more as a statement, but anger resonated through your words.

“we, er, just got locked in here.” he deadpanned as if you couldn’t have figured.

you groaned and clenched your fists. “i’m gonna kill them. you didn’t happen to see their face, did you?”

he shook his head, “nope.”

“well, we know one thing. that person had the key–and only two people have the key to the closet. the janitor, who’s not even here, and the general office staff. but i’m sure they wouldn’t lock us in here.” you said.

donghyuck tilted his head, “okay, then, who...” he trailed off, allowing you to vocalise your theories.

 “somebody must have stolen one of the two keys.” your brain’s gears started turning, trying to think of someone who would pull something like this.

“it could be the janitor’s keys. the closet was unlocked when we got here.” donghyuck reminded you.

“yeah...but he never leaves the closet unlocked. he’s very responsible, so it can’t be his set of keys. it’s probably the staff’s set,” you countered. “they barely pay any attention to non-admin matters. that person must’ve stolen their keys, unlocked the door after the janitor left, and waited for us to come here, before locking us in. jesus, i’m so angry. this is so fucking childish,” you groaned again.

donghyuck nodded in slight agreement, surprising you. he never agrees on anything you have to say, but he didn’t have much of a choice in that situation. plus, your theory made sense. “do you think this whole thing was renjun’s idea? he was the one who suggested we check with the janitor about prom night.”

your eyes widened in shock. “oh my god...wait, but it wasn’t renjun’s idea. it was mine, actually–he just reminded me to do so.” you slowly dropped down to the floor and held your head in your hands. you couldn’t believe what was going on. the entire situation seemed to just hit you.

you’re stuck in a small closet with lee donghyuck, your number one enemy.

present time – thursday, 6:40 p.m.

“none of them are picking up. donghyuck, what if they’re all in on this together? kind of like a senior prank–except we’re the ones getting pranked.” you say, panic rising in your voice. you’re standing now, leaning against the wall with your phone clutched tightly in your hand.

knowing your and donghyuck’s friends, you’re sure you’re going to be here all night. they’re quite a bunch. you and donghyuck have a common friend group, but your friends find your ongoing rivalry extremely annoying. it makes perfect sense if they locked you two in here.

donghyuck digests your words quickly. “no way. that’s insane! why the fuck would they do that?”

“well, do you have a better explanation? i’m sure you don’t, considering i’m the only one who’s been thinking of possible theories, while you’re here giving me the only suggestion you have–your stupid bobby pin idea,” you say, breathing heavily.

“can you shut up for just two seconds? always telling me what to do, disagreeing with me, arguing and fighting with me. we’re locked in here, and you think arguing like little kids is gonna get us out?” he shakes his head in disbelief. “god, and to think i had a crush on you last year.” he must not have meant to reveal that little secret, because his ears turn red instantly.

you gape at him, “what–what did you say?”

“look at you, getting a big head again–!”

“donghyuck.”

“i liked you! there, you happy?”

“i like–liked you too, idiot,” you say in a low voice.

then, he laughs–a melodious sound, emitting pure joy and rainbows and sunshine. “some type of rivals we are.”

you laugh with him now, finding the situation so pathetically sad that it was almost funny. laughable. something to reminisce from time to time.

“you...you still like me?” donghyuck asks in a small voice you’ve never heard before.

“take a guess.”

“no?”

you bite the inside of your cheek, “take another guess.”

he grins at you, leaning against one of the shelves–which was a bad move on his part. he accidentally knocks over a bottle of...detergent? who knows, but it ends up uncapped and half-empty once it lands on the floor. luckily it was plastic, so the bottle doesn’t break. unluckily, the other of the liquid splashes on you, soaking your entire shirt. your plain, white, shirt.

donghyuck freezes, “um...y/n, i’m sorry–”

you hold up a hand. the god of testing people’s patience must’ve signed you up for some competitive exam today. “save it.”

donghyuck looks around hastily, trying to find a clean rag. he produces a small yellow cloth from the back of one of the shelves and hands it to you, “here.”

you don’t even say thanks. you quickly take it from him, free your shirt from your jeans, and start wiping and drying it to the best of your ability. you manage to make the shirt as dry as possible, but it was detergent that spilt on you. it was soapy–it was not water. 

you groan for the third time today and look at donghyuck, gritting your teeth. “i can’t possibly go out like this.”

he winces, feeling extremely apologetic. “take off your shirt and wear my hoodie instead. i have two layers on,” he suggests.

you give him a double-take, “what the fuck? no! why would i do that?” you exclaim.

“do you have any better ideas?”

you watch as he swiftly takes his hoodie off, revealing a loose tee clad on his body. you hate to admit how good he looks. he hands the item of clothing to you, and you tell him to turn around as you begrudgingly peel your shirt away. you take the rag once again, wiping off as much soapy liquid as you can, and pull the hoodie over your head.

it smells like him, you think. it smells like that expensive cologne he always seems to wear. you show no indication that you find his hoodie soft and comforting, and tell him you’re done. you roll the shirt, squeezing any remnants of detergent out, and stuff it in your bag.

he bites back the smile daring to form on his lips upon seeing you in his hoodie. “okay. now that that’s over, let’s try to get out of here, shall we?”

you nod. “i have our science teacher’s number. maybe i could ask her to help us? she’s always here late, marking papers and assignments.”

donghyuck snaps his fingers, “you’re right! yeah, give her a call.”

you scroll through your contacts till you find the name you’re looking for. you press the call button and set it to speaker mode so donghyuck can hear as well. she picks up after three rings, “hello?”

“hi, miss angela! it’s me, y/n. you see, um, donghyuck and i got locked in the janitor’s closet by someone, and we have no way to get out. are you still in school? if you are, is it possible for you to unlock the door from the outside?”

miss angela hums a little, as if in thought, “i just left, my dear. i could turn the car around if you’d like. i’m sure the office keeps an extra set.”

“yes! that would be great. thank you, miss angela. and we’re sorry for the inconvenience,” you nudge donghyuck with your elbow, who catches on immediately.

“yeah, we’re incredibly sorry. i’ll be sure to submit an extra report–!”

“save it, lee donghyuck. i’ll be there in five to ten minutes,” she hangs up with that.

you pocket your phone and look at donghyuck. “so.”

“so,” he repeats.

“are we going to act like we didn’t just confess to one another earlier?” you ask, biting your lip nervously.

“no, i don’t want to, um, act like we didn’t. i lied, y/n. i had a crush on you last year, yeah, but i never stopped liking you. i still like you. i don’t want to be your enemy anymore.” he nudges you. 

you smile shyly, “i like you too, donghyuck.”

just then, you hear keys jingling–an all too familiar sound. you get excited, thinking you’re going to be met with the face of miss angela, but when the door bursts open, you see the smirking faces of renjun and jeno.

“about fucking time!” renjun pulls you and donghyuck outside.

“what?” donghyuck demands. “it was your idea to lock us in there? are you fucking kidding me?”

jeno grimaces, “i’m sorry, it was the only way you two would confess your feelings for each other and stop fighting for good.”

“i can think of plenty of ways–!”

“wait, y/n, are you wearing donghyuck’s hoodie? holy fuck...don’t tell me you guys did it.” renjun looks back and forth between you and donghyuck.

“what? no, of course not!” you retort.

“then why do you have his hoodie on, dear y/n?” jeno asks.

“that’s none of your damn business, lee jeno!” donghyuck looks ready to pounce on him, but you place a hand on his chest, stopping him. his gaze drops down to your hand and it softens.

“there was a little accident...but the good thing is that we’re out. hooray. now, everybody, go home. i have to call miss an–”

“y/n, thank goodness! what happened?” miss angela emerges into the scene, looking a little worried.

you briefly explain the evening’s events to her, without mentioning the confession part. she doesn’t need to know that. you tell her it was a silly prank. nothing more, nothing less.

she visibly sighs a breath of relief. “well, at least it wasn’t some stranger. jeno, renjun, i didn’t expect this from you two. but i’m glad you’re all okay.” she takes her leave, after ensuring you four are on your way home.

jeno and renjun go home via jeno’s car, and you and donghyuck, living only a couple of blocks away from school, decide to walk the journey.

“all this... just so we could stop fighting,” donghyuck laughs. you’re walking side by side, hands occasionally brushing against one another. it’s like something out of a cheesy rom-com. you wouldn’t have it any other way.

“it worked, didn’t it?” you say.

donghyuck stops on the pavement, turning his body to face you. he stretches out a hand to push a strand of hair behind your ear, making you bump his shoulder shyly. he smiles; he wouldn’t have it any other way either.

“i guess it did. but what do we do now?”

“what do you mean?” you raise an eyebrow.

“like, do i walk you home first? do i ask you on a date? god, with you, it’s just so much more...different. if it was someone else, i would’ve gone with my gut, but with you, i don’t wanna mess it up. you know?” donghyuck finally takes your hand in his, intertwining your fingers. you feel his warmth radiate, you feel his touch bringing you safety and comfort. something way more powerful than a hoodie.

“donghyuck, i’m new at this too. i’m just as scared as you are. and that’s okay, trust me. i’m glad it’s me and not anyone else.” you assure him.

you gather up whatever courage you have remaining, tip-toe, and brush your lips against his cheek. you stay there for a moment, just breathing him in. when you pull away, his cheeks are a dusty pink shade.

“do that again,” he tells you.

“no, i think i’m good.” you start walking again.

“y/n!” he whines.

“okay, on one condition.” he raises a brow, “ask me on a date.”

for a moment, he’s bewildered. then, he gets down on one fucking knee, not caring about anyone who might be watching, and clears his throat. “y/n, i like you so much. will you make me the happiest man alive, and go on a date with me this saturday?” he looks up at you expectantly.

you chuckle at his antics and give him a nod. “i would love to, lee donghyuck.”

he grins, all big and bright, and leaps up to envelop you in a hug. his arms go around your waist and yours circle his neck. he whispers in your hair, “i guess we owe renjun and jeno a thank you?”

“i am not going to thank them for locking us up in a closet. in fact, i’m gonna double their prom duties.” you feel his chest vibrate as he laughs at your comment.

however, you are thankful that it was lee donghyuck you got stuck with. so, forget the time machine. you wouldn’t have had it any other way.

[scottrunsultras]

Leadville 100 recap

It took a while to fully process the experience.  I suffered from some post-race depression.  I wasn’t sure what to think.  I told myself that i was about 50/50 disappointed and proud.  But I think it felt more like 80/20.  But I think that was just the depression talking.  Yeah, I had performance goals going into the race.  And at no point did I ever consider “finishing” to be good enough, even if I tried to convince myself that it was.  But an amazing amount of life happens in the course of 30 hours on your feet in the thin air of the Colorado Sawatch Mountain Range.  And as I’ve thought about it, talked to my wife/crew chief/final pacer, as well as other friends who were either there or have ultra experience themselves, I think I’ve finally managed to full understand the experience and what it meant to me.

image: 3:30 am Saturday morning.  Heading to the start line.

Let me start with the week leading up to the race.  It was pretty rough.  I had a burning anxiety that I just couldn’t get under control.  Part of it may have been the taper.  It seemed to do its job because I had a ton of energy.  But I was also constantly visualizing the race, constantly thinking and rethinking the logistics of aid stations and what I needed to bring.  I also had stomach problems the entire week leading into the race - another likely byproduct of the anxiety.  I was mostly super excited to do the race.  There wasn’t any fear like last time I attempted Leadville.  It was absolutely a positive stress.  But it was exhausting.  And there was still, in the back of my mind, a pressure to finish after DNFing my last attempt.  

I attributed my previous DNF to dehydration.  And I still think that was a big part of it.  But the reality was probably closer to altitude sickness, made more pronounced by dehydration.  So I was extra focused on hydration and nutrition going into race day.  Probably overly focused.  But I was convinced that the only way I would fail is due to another crushing gastro-intestinal breakdown like last time.  It doesn’t help that the thin, dry air of Leadville sucks the moisture from your body unlike anything I experience in Boulder.  So I drank a ton of water the 36 or so hours prior to the race.  An absolute ton.  It seemed like the right thing to do.

I also get very anxious about sleeping.  I never sleep well the night before a race.  And I hit rock bottom last year the night before the Never Summer 100k by literally not sleeping at all.  Instead just laying in my tent for hours stressing about not being able to sleep - making it impossible to relax and actually doze off.  I’ve resorted to meds for sleep in races since then.  Before Javelina last fall I intentionally overdosed a little on Benadryl and it worked out great.  I did the same on Friday night, and actually slept a bit.  Probably in the neighborhood of 4 good hours - which isn’t bad considering I had to wake up at 2:30.  But I also felt... weird that night.  I told myself it was the Benadryl.  I wouldn’t say I was hallucinating, but I felt just mentally off.  I’d been freaking out about getting sick all week and was convinced that it hit me the night before the race.  Luckily I felt okay when I woke up.  My legs felt strong.  My stomach was mostly okay.  No real aches or pains from chronic achilles and ankle injuries.  I felt good and excited and ready to go.

I went out way too fast last time I ran this - doing the easy early section in the 7:00′s.  Between that and bombing the final descent of Powerline my legs were shot by the marathon point of the race.  I was determined to not let that happen this time.  My barometer for success began with how well I ran from 25-35, an extended slightly uphill but more or less easy section.  So I went out easy and ran the first 13 mile section in a bit over 2 hours.  Probably within 5 minutes of whatever my goal would have been if I’d cared.  But I knew that part didn’t really matter.

In the second section of the race - Mayqueen to Outward Bound, including the infamous Powerline - things started to get bleak.  On the 1 mile easy dirt road section just past the single-track Colorado Trail section, my stomach was killing me.  My entire nutrition plan had already fallen apart.  In my training runs I’d eat a granola bar of some sort every 30 minutes.  And I could go on for hours like that.  In my 9 hour big training run for the race, I did that the entire time and my stomach was thrilled.  This time my stomach was upset with solid food after the first hour.  

I made the conscious decision to try to settle things with electrolytes so I ate some salt tablets and started relying much more on Gatorade than water, and 30 minutes or so later I started to feel a little better.  But from that point on, every 30 minutes I’d have to force myself to eat and I was always unhappy about it.

image: Outward Bound Aid Station. Mile 24.

After leaving my crew at Outward Bound, things actually got a bit better.  This was the first test section for me and it went great.  Long, easy, semi-uphill miles.  I even hit a high point around the top of the climb on the way to Twin Lakes and flew down the hill.  I did that 15 mile section in a little less than 3 hours.  And while I was steadily losing time to my 25 hour goal time, I felt pretty good.  Then the logistical nightmare started.

Due to avalanches, the road to the halfway point, Winfield, was closed to crews and pacers.  So they had to take a shuttle from Twin Lakes.  So literally every crew, pacer, and spectator was parked at Twin Lakes.  From what I was told, the line of cars along the highway reached 5 miles long.  So when I got into the Twin Lakes Aid Station, I couldn’t find my crew... because they weren’t there.  So I walked back and forth for 10-15 minutes looking for them and spotted the crew of a friend from work also running the race.  I had shoes to change in to for the monster climb coming up and food/drinks... with my missing crew.  So I scrounged up some Gatorade from a stranger and prepared myself to cross a river and hike over a 12,600′ pass in my road shoes.  Then, right before getting back on the trail, I spotted my kids.  My wife had dropped them off on the side of the road with my crew bags and told them to find me.  They got there about 60 seconds before I left.

image: Hope Pass Llamas

So with proper food and trail shoes, I started the Hope Pass climb.  It went fine.  It’s a difficult, but beautiful and rewarding section of the race.  The section near Winfield was harder than I remembered, but I finished the 12 mile section in a little under 4 hours, cruising into the half way point a bit under 12 hours.

This time my crew was there and ready.  They apparently spent almost 2 hours in line to get on a shuttle, so they hadn’t been there for long.  But I got what I needed - a grilled cheese sandwich and a reload on gatorade and gus.  My stomach still wasn’t happy and I was heading into the section that ruined me last time.  So I had a definitely plan.  I had 3.5 miles until the major climb started.  So I gave myself 2.5 miles for my stomach to relax from what I ate at Winfield - then forced down a gu and a granola bar and resigned myself to not eating again until I got to the top of the pass. It didn’t feel good, but I didn’t puke - so it worked.

image: Hope Pass Part 2

The way down was fine.  Not easy - 4 miles of 800 feet per mile of vertical drop 15 hours into a race is pretty rough on the quads - but it was fine.  I had a great pacer for this section, who kept me super entertained with some great conversation.  And the peak crossing once again took about 4 hours - better than I had mentally planned going into the race but I’d lost so much time at Aid Stations and on the first crossing, the 25 hour dream was dead.

image: River Crossing heading back to Twin Lakes

Twin Lakes Inbound was good.  My crew was there and much more relaxed this time.  My pacers were there.  My wife brought me tacos.  i changed my shoes and socks and grabbed some cold weather layers and started the night section of the race.  That’s when things really started to grind.  This was the second test section for myself.  After a climb from 9,200 to 10,600 feet, I had a very long easy section.  Mostly downhill, reasonably smooth.  If I was going to have a good finish, this would be where it came from.  But it didn’t happen.  I told myself once it started going downhill I’d start running.  But my feet were trashed from blisters and my stomach was still giving me problems.  I felt like if I really pushed myself, I’d puke.  So I kept giving myself more time.  But more time didn’t help.  And the more time I gave myself, the more accustomed I got to hiking easy terrain - to the point that I couldn’t find it in myself to really run anymore.  So I’d shamble at 13:00′s on some sections, but actual running seemed to be over.  And that’s when the despair kicked in.

Staring down 50k of walking in the dark is hard to deal with.  I kept looking at my watch and thinking, “my god I have 10 hours left of this.”  In the back of my mind I felt like I’d still hit some high points and be able to turn it around, but it never happened.  I switched pacers again at Outward Bound, going into the last hard part of the race.  It was only 11 miles until the next aid station, but I had a big climb.  Once again I told myself that once I got to the top I’d dig deep and run down.  But I couldn’t.  My feet hurt so much that any rocks at all made things impossible.  And even on the smooth sections I only managed to run 13:00-14:00 minute miles.  My stomach still felt terrible.  It just never got better.

On this section I started to realize some mistakes that I’d made.  According to my pacer, I peed 8 times in this 11 mile section.  And it dawned on me that I drank too much during the race and in the days coming in to the race.  I’d always laughed off hyponatremia and the idea of drinking when thirsty, mostly because most of my races have been in hot weather.  But it looks like it may have bit me, though luckily only mildly.  Once I made this realization I ate the rest of my salt tablets and mostly stopped drinking except for the occasional sip of Gatorade.  It was 4am and 37 degrees.  I definitely wasn’t sweating.

I came into Mayqueen just before 5:00am, an hour under the cutoff.  And once again lost my crew.  After using the restroom I spent a good 10 minutes wandering back and forth looking for them - too tired to walk fast or yell anyone’s name.  I finally found my wife, decked out in her pacer gear, ready to pull me through the final 13 miles.

She did her best to encourage me.  “Run the easy sections.  Stumble the downhills.”  And I tried.  But my feet hurt so much that if there were any rocks at all I just couldn’t do it.  And the first 4 miles of the Turqoise Lake trail are pretty rocky.  So I did the best I could.  The finish still seemed impossibly far away, but I knew I’d get there at least.  Once the trail smoothed out I started to slow jog it a bit.  At this point, 27 hours into the race, my stomach finally started to feel normal.  I was no longer nauseous and I actually started to feel hungry. But I couldn’t stomach gus at this point so I was surviving on a snack bag of trail mix and some gatorade.  I couldn’t tell the difference between hunger and nausea so I was still afraid of throwing up.  But I was getting close and needed a goal to keep myself from slumping my shoulders and walking it in.  So I pushed to get under the 29 hour mark.

The sun came up, it started to get warm, and we pushed the long uphill back into Leadville.  I power hiked the ups and jogged the downs.  I passed at least a dozen people.  We turned the corner at the high school and started up the final real uphill.  I told my wife we’d start running once we got over the top.  And once we reached the crest, I turned to her and told her: “let’s blow the doors off.”  So we ran down the hill.  The first real running I’d done in more than 10 hours.  We were in the 7:00′s when the downhill turned back up into the final few blocks before the finish line.  I started running faster and dropped my wife.  I was in the 6:00′s going up the hill passing more people.  Then my son jumped in at the last minute and ran across the line with me.

28 hours.  44 minutes.  101 miles.  15,000 feet of climbing.  All mostly at or above 10,000 feet of elevation.  This is a hard fucking race.  And while I missed my stretch goal by several hours, it’s an honor to have finished it.  

I first heard of the Leadville 100 when I read Born to Run back in 2009.  It seemed mind-blowlingly impossible.  Apparently it wasn’t.

[levihauser]

寒くなります

20 November, 2019

Well, I have been very busy and it has been nearly a month since I last wrote a blog entry. Sorry about that!

November’s excitement started on the third, when there was a large districtwide Rotary event in Kanazawa. I had breakfast and lunch at home (both my favorite Japanese food-inarizushi!), then got in a taxi with my host dad. We were driven to the train station, then met some other Rotarians from my host club, then took a train to Kanazawa. The event began at 1:00 at a concert hall right next to Kanazawa station. All ten other inbound exchange students from the district were there, and we were seated together on a second floor balcony (probably not the best idea, since exchange students can become a little noisy when they are bored by speeches they don’t understand and surrounded by people who speak their native language for the first time in weeks). We sat there for 5 hours of speeches we couldn’t understand (with a five-minute intermission), then left the concert hall and went to a nearby hotel. We were ushered into a large banquet hall on the third floor and sent to various tables (the exchange students were still kept together). It was so crowded that few of the tables had chairs, and most people had to stand. There was a buffet of delicious food, but before we ate there was a beautiful musical performance by maybe 20 geisha. It seems pretty expensive, but it is a districtwide event and Japanese Rotary is pretty rich. The buffet foods were very good, and there were great desserts, too! At about 7:30, my Rotary club departed for another restaurant nearby for their own dinner-I was glad I hadn’t eaten too much. It was an interesting restaurant, with a mix of foods. We shared food around the entire club, but I ate pizza, omuraisu (rice covered with eggs and ketchup) with the eggs dyed black with squid ink, and their special Nyan Ice Cream Parfait (which had a cat cookie, several layers of ice cream and yogurt, grapes, and some sort of jelly). It was all delicious, and I was stuffed at the end. One of the Rotarians in the club had just reached his 45th year as a Rotarian, so everybody made speeches honoring him. As you have probably guessed, mine was not very eloquent. At about !0 we returned to the station and took a train back, then rode home with one of the other Rotarians.

The next day, despite being a Monday, I had no school, because it was Culture Day in Japan. In the morning, I got in the car with my host father and we drove to Kanazawa’s Teramachi (temple town). I had no idea what we were doing, since I had received no notice of it, as usual. We walked around to some of the many Buddhist temples for which the area gets its name, then went to an old shop. We were brought into a back tatami room with a group of other people, then given a presentation I couldn’t understand and small amounts of food to try. After that, we were brought into another room where we washed our hands and put on gloves, then were given a class on how to make kaburazushi (a kind of Japanese pickle made only in Kanazawa). We made six each, and being that they are large and both my host father and I made them, we had a lot of kaburazushi to take home. We had a filling traditional Japanese meal back in the tatami room, then returned home.

I am not entirely sure why, but on the seventh and eighth, school was only two periods long. In the first one, we took a kanji test, then in the second, we took a less serious one (on the first day it was answering as many questions as you could of general knowledge, like knowing how fast Mach 1 is or the name of the biggest lake in Japan, and on the second it was naming as many things as you could of a certain category, like spices or types of dog, with a team and trying to see who could get the most unique ones from other teams). I was given answer keys to copy from for both kanji tests, thank goodness. The sun is setting very early now, so I don’t have much free time in the daylight, and my weekends are usually busy, so I took the extra time on both days to go on train trips. On the seventh, I went to Kanazawa, in the hopes of riding a bus to the mountains, since I had been hoping to see them up close for a long time, but nobody I had asked liked them. That failed, as the bus station my host mother had directed me to ask about apparently didn’t exist, but I saw that there was apparently a tiny train station underground beneath the main Kanazawa station (which is operated by JR railways) operated by a small private railroad company named the Hokutetsu Railway. I decided to give it a try. I bought a ticket to the farthest station down the line and rode an orange, old-fashioned train to Uchinada. I had never heard of it before, so I kind of just wandered around on foot until I arrived at another Hokutetsu station and took it back. Apparently Uchinada is close to the sea, but I didn’t know that at the time. On the eighth, when the same thing happened, I checked my 34-year-old map to see if I could see any more Hokutetsu lines, and indeed there were, from Shinnishikanazawa Station to Tsurugi Station-which was on the edge of the mountains. I was elated to finally have an opportunity to see them, and immediately took a JR train to Nishikanazawa Station, which is just across the street from Hokutetsu’s Shinnishikanazawa Station. From there, I took a train to Tsurugi Station. It was great! I finally had some terrain with elevation changes to walk on. I followed my map to the largest shrine in Hakusan City (technically this area was Hakusan City, just like where I live, but the city is huge and spans from the ocean to the other side of the prefecture deep in the mountains), Shirayamahimejinja Shrine. It was very big and beautiful, and it took me about two hours to walk there, including getting lost, which I will blame on my 34-year-old map. By the time I left, it was getting to the time I should return so I would get home before dark, so I took the two trains back home. Sorry if all of the train information there was a little convoluted, I had to type it all out for it to make sense to me.

The next day, I had an average Saturday morning until I was abruptly told that I had to pack for an overnight and was picked up by the people who will become my fourth host family (Rotary Youth Exchange students switch host families several times in their exchange year), the Nishikawas. I was taken to their house, and played their nice grand piano for a while. They also have a tiny dog named Maple (Meepuru is actually her name, Maple is just the English transliteration). There was a barbecue that afternoon (it was still around 75° Fahrenheit), so I spent some time outside getting ready for it with Mr. Nishikawa. There were a lot of large and interesting mountain insects around their yard (I forgot to mention that they actually have a lawn, which albeit tiny, is very rare in Japan, since most Japanese opt for large gardens). Soon, people began to arrive for the barbecue, including three Rotarians from my club, their spouses, and the Nishikawas’ daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters. We had a lot of good food, then I went and played in a nearby park with the two granddaughters. They are both very energetic! It began to rain, and the barbecue moved inside the Nishikawa house. We played some games with traditional Japanese cards, called karuta cards. We fist played Bozumekuri, then Hyakunin Isshu. The first is fairly simple, and I might post its rules at some point, but the second involves memorizing 100 ancient Japanese poems (although we had a casual game, so most people didn’t have many memorized). After the games, the guests left, and the night wound down. I was told to sleep on a futon in a tatami room.

The next day I woke up in the Nishikawa house again, and was brought briefly back to my host family’s house where I changed into nice clothes for a concert of many doctors from around the area that are friends later that day. My host dad, a nurse from his pediatric clinic, and I went to an old factory in Kanazawa that had been renovated for music and rehearsed there for a while. We had lunch at a restaurant nearby, then the concert began. My host dad’s clinic was second on the program, and he and the nurse played a flute duet. I played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor, then we went back into the audience. I made far more mistakes than I should have, but that is how it always goes for me in piano concerts. We went back into the audience and watched many more performances, a few from many genres and instruments. After the concert finished, all of the performers had dinner in the same restaurant we had had lunch in. It was great! The food was delicious. There was some salty ice cream for dessert, then we returned home.

The next week in school we had several tours of various places to help us decide on potential careers. We went to the Takamaz machinery company and had a guided tour there. In a previous entry, I mentioned that I had spent some time with the Takamatsu family, and this turned out to be theirs. It is international, with several factories around the world, including two in the US. The tour was fascinating, but I unfortunately could not understand much of what was said. The day after that, my homeroom and the neighboring one went on two college tours. We took a fancy bus to Kanazawa Gakuin University and Hokuriku Gakuin University and were given tours of both. At the first one, we had lunch in the dining hall. It was pretty good. I had curry rice, and would have had ice cream, but the ice cream vending machine ate my money and didn’t give me any. Both colleges were very interesting, and the tour guides were very nice. That night, I was picked up before dinner by my third host mother, Ms. Ikemoto. She picked up her daughter and grandson. The grandson is interested in going on exchange the year after next, so we talked a little about that. We had sushi for dinner, then went to a karaoke business, a new experience for me. We were allowed entry into a small room with a sound system and a TV, as well as two microphones. The TV would play songs, and show the lyrics and music videos. We also had unlimited access to yummy snacks! There were several interesting songs. I returned home, and was told they are planning to take me out at some point to a Japanese movie theater. That should be fun!

On the 15th, I was picked up after school by my host club counsellor, Mrs. Nagase. I went to her house and spent some time with her and her husband there. She speaks very good English, having lived in the UK for four years back in the 1990s. We had a traditional Japanese dinner and talked a lot. In addition to a 30-year-old part of the house, there is an almost untouched 200-year-old portion of the house. It is gorgeous! The only signs of the modern era are electric lights. Mrs. Nagase’s father-in-law was a collector of beautiful, ornate objects that also fill the old house. I spent quite a bit of time there before going to bed in a small tatami room.

The next day, Mr. Nagase left early to practice for a golf tournament. Mrs. Nagase and I walked the dog, Tai Chan, then went to a performance of Roukyoku, or Edo Period style story writing. Few Japanese people have ever heard of it. The event was at a small temple. Before the performance began, we bought some food from the lotus vendors there-everything they had was made from lotus. It was delicious! The farmer was the performer’s brother. After a while, the performance began and we had an interesting time. There was a shamisen player who was very talented, and, of course, the storyteller himself. He told a story of which I could discern very little, but there was something about a sumo wrestler. He did many interesting things with his voice that I hadn’t realized were possible, like making two tones at once. We returned to the Nagase house for lunch, walked the dog again, then went to Kanazawa for another concert. This one was by a woodwind group, and one of the clarinetists was a friend of Mrs. Nagase’s. We returned late and I fell asleep quickly.

On the 17th, it was a Japanese holiday known as Shichigosan, but I didn’t see any signs of it anywhere. Mr. Nagase went out early to a golf tournament (my host dad was going to be there too), then Mrs. Nagase and I went to her home town, Yamanakaonsen. It is a small town nestled in a valley between two mountains, but it was very busy. It was pretty, too, because the leaves on all of the trees were beginning to change. I met Mrs. Nagase’s parents, who live there, ages 86 and 93. They are very lively and energetic. We walked in a nearby gorge for a while and crossed two interesting bridges, then went to a restaurant for lunch. It was mostly a normal meal, but there were also small pockets of fish and vegetables. I can’t remember their Japanese name, but it translates to “baby shark.” I went to the Japanese public bath and bathed there, then returned to Mrs. Nagase’s parents’ house. I had tea there and drank it out of a teacup given to Mrs. Nagase’s father by Emperor Showa, then we returned back to her house after stopping at two shrines. I spent the rest of the evening there, then was returned home.

Yesterday was a fairly normal school day (aside from the fact that one of the sliding glass doors in a neighboring classroom shattered during seventh period), and I went to a meeting of five Rotary clubs in Kanazawa after school. There was a trio of harp, koto, and shinobue, which played three beautiful songs before we had a multi-course delicious meal. It was great, and one of the other English-speaking inbound exchange students to the district was there so we spoke quite a bit in English.

This will probably be my last blog entry while I am with this host family since I switch on Saturday.

I am sorry. This week the blog still says it is having errors uploading images, so I can’t post any more.

[justinsdaysinthedark]

Post #2 - Thank You

What an overwhelming 36 hours it's been. An endless amount of phone calls & messages of support got me through what was an agonising day of waiting yesterday. This blog was started to keep my family and close friends informed about my journey but it's grown into so much more.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to each and every single one of you that took the time to reach out and wish me the best of luck. A simple message of support may not seem like much to you, but when you're in a situation like mine it means so much. Thank you.

Monday night provided the worst sleep I've had in weeks. Keep in mind, i've had some terrible sleeps in that time! Why? It was nerves. Simple as that. I was nervous for the gastroscopy and biopsy. It wasn't the procedure itself but the anaesthetic side to the operation. I haven't been under since I was five and the unknown had my measure. What if they didn't put me under fully? What if I could feel the procedure? What if I woke up early? What if I didn't wake up at all?

In retrospect, I lost sleep over nothing.

With the little sleep I did have, I woke up Tuesday morning earlier than normal. I was expecting the gastroscopy between 8:30am - 11:30am and knew I was booked in for a Radionuclide Ventriculography (RVG) scan of my heart later that afternoon.

Since being in hospital, 9am has been my regular time to get up, shower, brush the chompers - y'know, get ready for the day of sitting in my little 3x3 room and watching the world go past. Tuesday however, I was up and about at 7:30 - showered and ready. I hate feeling dirty, so if my procedure was at 8:30, I'd be ready to go.

Breakfast rolled around at 8:00 and I had to politely decline it as I was required to fast from 12am for the procedure.

This is about the time when my previous blog post took off and messages started coming in for the remainder of the morning. Before I knew it, it was 11am and nobody had been to get me for my procedure yet. I called the nurse and enquired to which I was told to hand tight, it shouldn't be much longer. Whilst she was around, she did my daily observations and it was no surprise to see my heart rate up to 100+BPM (regularly around 65BPM resting) and a slightly higher blood pressure. I guarantee this was due to the nerves.

Lunch comes around at 12:30 and once again had to politely decline. 12 hours fasting thus far - lucky I don't have an appetite still and honestly didn't care! It was around this time the doctor comes around with the results of my Lumbar Puncture. This fortunately came back negative as there was no major changes to the one I had three weeks ago. White blood cells still present with a marginally higher protein count than normal. I once again mentioned about my gastroscopy or there lack of and the doctor assumed I'd already had it. He said he'd follow it up and get back to me.

Mentally, I'm okay. Still incredibly nervous and a little frustrated I prepared myself for a procedure between 8:30 - 11:30 and still nothing. Your messages of support continue to light up my phone, which certainly kept me pre-occupied and made the time fly by.

Finally! 2:43pm and somebody comes to my bed to pick me up. "Justin Smith for a procedure? Let's go." I mentally build myself up as they take me. With my heart beating the quickest it had all day, we get going. Minutes later, we get into quite a dark room with a single scanner to my left and a glass wall. The radiographer, Liv meets me and goes through the basic questions. Name? Date of birth? Address? What are you here for? "A gastroscopy and biopsy" I reply. A few seconds of awkward silence follows so I split it with an "I think..." hoping to relieve the slight tension.

Liv replies with "not quite. We're here to do your Radionuclide Ventriculography scan of your heart."

My heart dropped. I spent the past fifteen minutes mentally preparing to go under and it's not even for the right procedure; I almost feel robbed!

To give you a brief understanding, the RVG scan involves injecting a small amount of radioactive material into your blood stream where they then track it until it passes through the heart, ensuring the heart is healthy and working as it should to a level that it should. Why am I having this scan? Good question. The doctors wanted to get ahead of the game essentially. Providing the biopsy comes back positive for lymphoma, I will need chemotherapy. The level of that chemo will depend, however if I do happen to require a strong dose, it can have negative effects to the heart. This scan is to ensure they have a baseline reading of my heart and ensure it will be able to handle a high dose of chemo.

This scan took 40 minutes from start to finish and before I knew it, I was up in my ward again. By this time, dad had arrived so at least I had somebody to talk to and reassure me when the time comes to get my gastroscopy.

4:00pm and the time finally came. 16 hours of fasting, I was slightly hungry but by this stage, I just wanted to get the procedure over and done with. I was still nervous, but more relieved the time had come. Having dad there for the hour or so beforehand made me feel a lot better about the whole thing.

The operation itself involved a gastroscopy (camera down my throat into my stomach) and if they could see lymphnodes, get a biopsy to test.

Cutting to the chase, was it worth worrying for 16+ hours? Not at all. All I remember is them checking my blood pressure, putting something in my cannula and asking me to count to 10. I got to 12 and next thing I know, I woke up coughing my lungs up in recovery with a nurse next to me. Luckily, the coughing only lasted for about fifteen minutes and that was just a result of irritating my throat.

Apparently, the gastroscopy went well and they were able to get a couple of good tissues from the lymphnodes to biopsy. Additionally, they also took the following photos whilst they were inside - I have no idea what they're of or even if anything is okay, but I thought they were cool!

For the first 45 minutes after the procedure, I felt fine. I was great! I felt incredibly thirsty and hungry but I assume that was simply due to the fact I hadn't eaten. Things from here turned pretty quickly once I had some dinner and a glass of water. I started to go downhill pretty quickly - feeling incredibly fatigued and tired....essentially dopey. It was from here I knew I just needed to have some rest and I'd wake up better in the morning. Needless to say, I was asleep by 9pm and basically slept through the night...except for when the nurses woke me up at 11pm, 12pm. 3am and 5am.

Waking up this morning (Wednesday July 17th), I instantly felt a lot better than I had last night. Admittedly, I had a bit more of a sleep in than I generally would've - it was great. I use the term 'sleep in' lightly though - it's nothing like a sleep in at home! What was the plan of attack for today? Well to be honest I wasn't too sure. A doctor yesterday mentioned briefly about a bone marrow test however the nurses and doctors on had no idea about one and couldn't see one booked in. I hadn't eaten since the night prior however the nurses got me to fast once again whilst they investigated. As a result, breakfast was staring me right in the face and I couldn't even touch my beloved weetbix, milk and sugar!

The clock ticks over to 10:37 and a Young, lanky doctor comes by. "Hi Justin, I'm Alex and I'll be doing your bone marrow procedure today..." Alex went on to explain the procedure, risks and what to expect. As he finished and started to walk away I had one last burning question. "When are we doing it? Later this afternoon?" "Now" Alex replied.

Woah. Wait. What? Hang on two seconds. I'm not prepared for this. You mean now...as in like, once Alex had finished preparing? You betcha....

Now I was under the assumption I'd be getting knocked out as I had done the night before however Alex proceeded to explain they'll put some medication in my cannula that "makes you feel like you've had four or five beers" as well as some local anaesthetic. No point being worried or scared about it - if it's getting done bedside, it couldn't be near as bad as the lumbar puncture, right? Once again, like I have been for the past few weeks I was completely and utterly wrong.

First though, what's this procedure involve? Basically, blood, white blood cells and platelets are produced in your bone marrow. This can be accessed via key areas of your body depending on your age...for me it was my hipbone - left side to be exact. The aim of the procedure is to get these fresh samples of blood, white blood cells and platelets as well as get a sample of my bone marrow - generally one small sample of the bone.

Alex got me curled up in the fetal position, lying on my right and basically began straight away. A few local anaesthetic needles numbed the surface before he inserted a needle in to collect the blood samples. This part was similar to a lumbar puncture, but I couldn't feel as much internally.

Alex then stated he was starting the bone marrow collection, which was without fail the worst part of this whole experience so far. He used the large needle with a blue handle, which can be seen below.

Alex hit the bone and advised me the next part was only going to tickle a little bit. What's he do? He starts to screw into my bone. Whilst I couldn't see, it felt very similar to uncorking a bottle of wine. Whilst he went in no deeper than 1mm, christ it hurt. The worst part was yet to come. Much like the pressure behind uncorking a bottle of wine, this happened too. Alex yanked the sample out and the pressure and pain was immense! Done. It's all done. Thank goodness. Then Alex said the words I didn't want to hear next. "Y'know what Justin? We want to make sure we only have to do this once, so let's get another sample, eh?"

Oh my lord. Are you kidding me? Whatever. Lets do it. I want to get it over and done with. I don't even think I replied, just mumbled something along the lines of whatever. And thus, the process happens again. I've attached photos of the two samples below, which I thought were pretty cool!

I must admit, Alex was incredible during the procedure. I asked at the start to keep me informed throughout the whole process. I'm quite an inquisitive character when things are happening that I don't know what the process is and this was no different. Alex not only kept me informed, he did as much as he could to keep me as comfortable as I could be during such a procedure. One thing I was incredibly surprised at was how much blood was on his hands!

Not much happened throughout the rest of today to be honest. Courtney, dad and mum came to visit but that was it. The doctors advised they are expecting the result of the biopsy tomorrow afternoon (hopefully) however they said it could take anywhere up to 72 hours from the procedure - which puts it at Friday night or Monday. Where does that put me? Same boat as I have been throughout this entire process - just waiting for answers.

I was advised that the results could come back either negative or inconclusive. Whilst this wouldn't be ideal, it's unfortunately just going to be another roadblock in this venture. In preparation the results don't come back the way we probably expect the, too, I'm booked in for an ultrasound of my gall bladder tomorrow. That will be their next avenue to answers. I suspect this is because my PET scan showed up significant areas in my gall bladder and I suppose that's not exactly a vital cog of the human body...so I suspect they'll just remove it, cut it open and see what's inside. But that's nowhere near a medical analysis of what's going to happen.

Before I finish for tonight, I'll leave you with how I am mentally. How am I going despite all this? Y'know what? I'm actually the opposite to what you probably think I am. I'm in the best mental state I have been over the past six weeks. Why? I think it's because we're close to (hopefully) getting an answer or at least following a more solid path to answers.

I end tonight with a final thank you. Thank you for all the messages and endless love. It's helping - trust me, it is.

Juzz xx

[gobigorgohome2016]

All the Cliches

When I started writing this post in my head, I was going to title it something like Out of Hibernation, yet make it known that I wasn’t planning to bore you with a 1,300 word soliloquy comparing myself to a Bleeding Heart (which is apparently a Spring perennial and, you know, we’re all about cliches here) blooming through the last remnants of Winter frost.

Then I thought, no, do I really need an intro to tell everyone I’m back on my bullshit after a few steps forward and another step back?  

Then I realized...isn’t running really just the epitome of a giant cliche?  

TL;DR I had a big accomplishment in the fall and thought the momentum would carry over super easily into the Spring.  I ignored some symptoms, realized I was anemic, felt really sad, and now I’m starting to feel like myself again.  aka, the simple, common, cliched journey of every.single.runner.

Even though this experience is the embodiment of what it means to be an endurance athlete, why do we act surprised every single time?  Leading up to Philadelphia, after my year of mystery illness [which, it turns out, had another plot twist.  Remember how I was having a massive immune system reaction and pretty terrible quality of life?  Well, after we found mold in the house the problem went 90% away.  The remaining 10% was still driving me crazy.  Long story short, the installation of a whole-home water filter has returned me to a fully functioning human being.  Hello, my name is Anna and I’m just your local canary in the coal mine] I vowed I would do a better job about just letting life go with the flow and not try to fight the current every step of the way.  I guess I got too big for my britches because - lo and behold - I found myself avoiding what I pretty much knew all along.

After Philadelphia, I took 2 weeks off and really enjoyed my down time.  The highlight was a day trip to French Lick, where Dave and I hit the casino (I won $25), ate all the sweets, shopped, split an amazing kobe beef burger, got day drunk, and took the scenic drive home.  The next day I started running again and, much to my surprise, felt way better than I normally do after two weeks of zero exercise.  This felt like a big win. 

December turned out to be extra crazy, then at the end of January I co-hosted a women’s running retreat, BAnna Camp.  Any fatigue I was feeling during December and January I just chalked up to stress and the typical things you do when you’re in that awkward in-between period from one race to another:  less sleep, less healthy food, less fitness.  

^have to make sure this post never dies

The first day I was in Austin, Becki and I did a workout together.  It was my first “real” workout back (other than some fartleks and strides), and it wasn’t even supposed to be hard:  3 x 7 min @ 6:00 pace.  I STRUGGLED.  I couldn’t breathe, my quads were heavy, and the paces felt much more difficult than they seemed like they should.  But, there were plenty of excuses:  it’s windy, we were running a net uphill, I was dehydrated from travel, I was stressed about the upcoming camp, etc. etc.  Midway through that workout I had a very distinct thought of oh shit, this feels very anemic right now.  That night I texted my friend who would be joining us later in the week and asked her to bring some iron pills, since I had forgotten my supplement.  

The following week my workout didn’t feel great, but again, it was easy to make excuses.  I was on a treadmill.  I was still catching up on sleep from camp.  Maybe I’m more out of shape than I thought. 

Longer efforts didn’t feel great, but I was getting them done.  My paces felt quick, but, winter training never feels amazing.  Plus, it seemed like every workout I did was into a strong wind, so how can you really judge pace and effort?  

In early February, I had my first race of the season which was a 5 miler in downtown Indy.  I had told Dave I was going to hold 5:30 pace for as long as I could and see what happened.  My first mile was 5:54, and Dave said he could hear me breathing before he could see me.  I was 3rd that day in just under 30:00.  Again, there were plenty of excuses.  It was windy.  We had celebrated Valentine’s Day the night before, so maybe steak, lobster, buttered mashed potatoes, and wine wasn’t the best pre-race meal?  

During my sulking about the race I had an aha moment.  In December, prior to realizing we had an issue with our water, I was trying to figure out what was still causing skin rashes and GI issues.  The only thing I was taking every day was ferrous sulfate, which is an iron supplement that is gentle on your stomach but has some suspect ingredients (food colorings, sorbate, etc.).  I decided to switch my supplement (one that had worked for me for YEARS) to something that seemed “cleaner”:  ionic iron.  While I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what could be wrong, it occurred to me to check my iron dosage.  

I was taking ~10% of my normal ferrous sulfate dosage, and honestly don’t even know how absorbable ionic iron even is.  That day I made the switch back to ferrous sulfate, but knew that if my iron/ferritin was low, it would take about 6 weeks before I felt a difference.

If at this point you’re reading along and thinking to yourself, it’s not expensive to just go and get a blood test to find out whether your iron is low - you are absolutely correct.  I should have just scheduled an appointment to take a blood test and find out.  But, I’m stubborn.

Two weeks after my 5 mile race I flew to Atlanta for the Road to Gold, an 8 mile race on the 2020 Olympic Trials course.  This is a whole other post in and of itself, but I will say that the hype is real.  That course is going to be hard.  

While the experience was great, my time was not.  My goal had been to run 5:45 pace through the first 4 miles and then pick up the pace.  While I did go through the first 4 miles in 22:50, just under my goal, I went through the next 4 miles in 24:20ish, and again felt as though I couldn’t breathe.  I finally conceded it was time for a blood test. 

The results were pretty much exactly what I thought they would be:  low ferritin, high CO2 in my blood, and borderline-low Vitamin D.  After weeks of agonizing over whether I was out of shape I finally had an answer (albeit one I should have just figured out sooner).  So, I upped my iron supplement and looked ahead.  

Nowhere to go but up, right?

In the following weeks I paid better attention to meal timing (i.e., if I was having a steak for dinner I wasn’t pairing it with red wine or other iron-inhibiting foods).  I cut out my second cup of coffee in the afternoon so that my body could have a better chance at iron absorption.  I focused more on sleep.  I got back on nutrient tracking to make sure I was getting everything I needed from my diet.  

and it paid off

6 weeks after my miserable 5 mile race where I could barely run faster than 5:58 pace for 5 miles, I ran 1:16:37 in the Carmel half marathon on a less-than-ideal day with rain and wind.  

During race week I cut out all caffeine and red wine to hopefully give my body the extra boost it needed to absorb iron.  I meal prepped early in the week so that I had nutrient-rich options readily available.  I said no to a couple work-related opportunities that popped up in favor of less stress, and I gave myself my best chance to succeed.  

In truth, sometimes setting yourself up for success is scary.  What if you do everything possible and you don’t succeed?  I have seen so many talented athletes give up because they went all in and it didn’t immediately pay off.  But, that’s probably another post for another day, too. 

Come race day we had 15 mph winds, pouring rain, and puddles on the course.  It will sound sarcastic when I say this, but that truly is my favorite racing weather.  Going into the race my A goal (not accounting for weather) was 75 min, B goal 76 min, and C goal 77 min.  My plan was to run the first 10 at 5:45 effort, then see how fast I could go the last 5k.  

Starting off, I was very pleased to find myself in a pack of men and through the first mile around 5:40.  I NEVER trust my GPS, so all splits I give will be those from the course.  I went through 4 miles in 22:50 - the exact same time I went through 4 miles in Atlanta, only this time I felt so much better.  I went through 6.55 (again, as marked on the course, not my GPS) in 37:26 and felt like I really had a chance at sub 75 still.  Through 10 miles I was right at 58 min.  I felt strong for the first time in a long time. 

Around mile 11 I started to get tired, and just focused on getting through 0.5 miles at a time.  T last couple miles were definitely the toughest, as they were mostly uphill/into the wind.  76:38 is my fourth fastest half [74:03, Houston, PERFECT weather; 75:20, ‘17 US championships, goal race full taper, 75:59, Columbus half, 4 weeks out from Philly], and this gives me a lot of encouragement considering some sub-par months of training.    

Now that I am feeling the effects of higher ferritin, I’m beginning to wonder if I wasn’t a little bit low during my Philly build up.  I have had some of my best long runs and workouts the past couple weeks - ones that would have blown away what I did leading up to Philly.  It also makes sense, given how I felt the last half of my Philly race, that my ferritin may have been low.  Moving forward, I’m going to schedule blood work much more regularly so that I don’t have preventable problems like this occur.  Definitely kicking myself, but, as with all failures in life it was a great opportunity to learn and grow.  

My next race is in 6 weeks and I’ll be at the 25k championships in Grand Rapids.  I’m looking forward to seeing what another 6 weeks of quality training and (hopefully) warmer weather can do for my fitness!  

[jswdmb1]

Time

“And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.  No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.”

- Pink Floyd

I still owe you that playlist from 1971 and I promise that it is finally coming later today.  It’s been delayed because, like almost anything that I do, it has turned into a much larger project with questionable value.  Nevertheless, I am going to share the results with you because, after all, this blog is “the biggest waste of time on the internet” and why not keep within the spirit of that slogan?

The project got big because I realized while listing to last week’s Saturday Morning Flashback of 1971 that I had a book on the music of that year.  It goes chronologically through the year by month to build a case that it was the year that defined rock music for the ages.  That statement is certainly debatable, but that is not what got me sidetracked.  Rather, a comment by the author that the start of the decade that we know as the seventies really started in 1971 and not in 1970.  Lots of examples are given, but the one that sticks out is that the Beatles officially broke up on New Year’s Eve 1970 when Paul had his lawyer send a letter to the other three that it was all over.  The argument is that act officially ended the pop era of the sixties and started a new wave of rock with bands such as Led Zeppelin who defined what we call “classic” rock today.  Again, debatable and not my point here, but it did make me curious about when a decade really begins and ends and whether we even have decades anymore after the new millennium began.

As for the first point, logic dictates that a new decade cannot start until the previous one ends.  We have been led to believe that the third number of the year drives a decade (e.g., any year falling within 197x is “the seventies”) but I say that is a fallacy.  Why you ask?  Well, go back to year zero.  The B.C.s ended (wonder if they made a big deal about it like we did for Y2K?) and the A.D.s began.  A decade = ten years, so that first decade of the first millennium didn’t end until the end of year 10 A.D.  Roll that forward a couple thousand years and the math plays out to say that 1970 was the last year of the sixties, 1980 belongs to the seventies, and so on.

Before I go much further, do now you see how I don’t get anything done.  Who sits around and thinks like this?  And this is with me taking all my meds!

Anyway, if we firmly establish 1971 as the start of the seventies, then 1981 would naturally be the start of the eighties.  What evidence, though, supports that beyond just adding 1971 and 10?  Well, WXRT just happened to select 1981 for this week’s flashback this morning and the music made a strong case for a true start to the eighties happening in that year.  Debut albums by the Go-Go’s and Stray Cats went along side early U2 along with Rolling Stones singing “Start Me Up”.  Lots of other iconic eighties music came out that year including albums by the Police, Genesis (and Phil Collins solo), Van Halen, Journey, Foreigner, Hall & Oates...and on and on.  I think that would be enough to back the claim, but I offer two other pieces of evidence.  First, Ronald Reagan took office on January 20, 1981.  With his swearing in, the American hostages in Iran were released and two depressing symbols of the seventies were ushered out (the other being Jimmy Carter).  It’s pretty much a universal truth that Reagan personifies the eighties so this makes a lot of sense (if I say so myself).  Second, 1981 was the birth of MTV.  MTV not only changed music but pop culture.  If Reagan isn’t the best symbol of the eighties, then MTV certainly has to take that spot.  

As I thought about it, 1981 made an even better case than 1971 for getting a new decade rolling musically and otherwise.  That made me decide to go one step further and check out the music of 1991 again.  Now, I have always considered 1990 as part of the eighties since that was the year that I graduated high school.  I never think of any of my time in high school as anything but the eighties and for me that is an absolute truth.  Still, I wanted to test my hypothesis into the third decade for which I have been alive to see if the music also signified a cultural shift into a new decade.  My research netted plenty of evidence that says yes but I’ll give you four albums that leave no doubt.  The first two are without argument the defining records of grunge in a decade that is musically known more for that than anything else.  I am speaking of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Pearl Jam’s “Ten” which both came out that year.  The other two albums were REM’s “Out of Time” and U2′s “Achtung Baby”.  While both of those bands emerged in the 80′s and were plenty big then, these two albums moved them both into superstar status and probably represent their finest work.  Whether you agree with that last part or not, there is no doubt that the impression left by both records on pop music was indelable and shaped the sound of the decade.

While none of this is scientific, I went ahead and created three playlists, one for each year, so that you can judge for yourself.  Actually, mashing the three years together makes for a really great mix of music as each year produced amazing music from some of the best artists of our generation(s).  You may ask where my playlist for 2001 is, and my answer would be that there is no need for one because we stopped living a decade at a time after the nineties were over.  To me, every year since is just part of the new millennium and the eighteen or so years since Y2K have just blended into one weird era.  Part of it is because it’s hard to say (the aughts?  the 00′s?  both sound stupid).  I think the other part though is time moves too fast to get overly nostalgic about a group of 10 years anymore. Think about how long ago it seems that you didn’t have a smart phone, or social media.  Doesn’t it seem like more than a decade ago that people still talked to each other?  Remember when you didn’t wake up to a new scandal every morning?  None of that was very long ago in time and yet it is hard to define when things changed.  Don’t even ask me to figure it out from a musical perspective.  My finger left the pulse of that scene well before the millennium started, but I still cannot define any distinguishing sound between “the aughts” and whatever we are calling this hot mess of a decade (I like the “teen years” since it’s about as disastrous as mine were).  However it adds up, I just don’t care anymore about decades, so my 1991 playlist is the last you’ll get from me.

If you have actually read this whole post through to this point, I really applaud you.  You clearly enjoy wasting time as much as I do and I don’t think you could find a better way to do it.  The next step is for you to listen to the playlists and run off on your own with this goofy tangent of my mind.  I will release them one at a time over the next few days from my sister “Dear Mr. Fantasy” blog.  There will be links through those posts to the actual music that I have created for you on Spotify (I am an avid Apple Music user, but I know how people feel about actually paying for content so enjoy your free music over on Spotify you mooch).  Each list contains 40 songs and i tried not to repeat any artists.  As such, it is not a “best of” list of each year but rather an attempt to be an illustration of how I think the music represented the start of each respective decade.  I have taken the time to order them in a manner that I like, but certainly shuffling through those is fine too.  I would also recommend doing a mash up of all three years at some point.  I am listening to that as I write this and it has produced some real gems (last three songs: “Genius of Love” by Tom Tom Club, “I’ve Been Waiting” by Matthew Sweet, and a cover of “Proud Mary” by Ike & Tina Turner.)

So happy listening everyone.  I would also wish you a happy weekend, but I have another post coming tomorrow.  Whether you asked for it or not, I am feeling quite full of crap lately and have a lot to share.  Until then, let the music play.

Cheers,

Jim

[thejourneytomyheart]

May 7th, 2021- My Surgery Info

I’m back!  It has been a little while since I have written.  Mostly because, well, life.  Life is busy and chaotic.  Also, it’s been mostly uneventful the past year with COVID.  However, the positive of that is that I have just been able to be spending time with Scarlett. And my blog was mostly about my journey to getting Scarlett.  So I haven’t posted much else because we got her and that is the end (or new beginning) of that chapter.  This post sort of goes with that theme.

I am going to apologise in advance if something doesn’t make sense.  I am trying to watch as I go.  I am on high pain meds as I type this.  Why?  That is why I am updating.

***The short version- I had surgery today, May 7th, to remove my left ovary and tube.  When they got in there they were actually able to save the ovary and only took the tube.  They did send something to pathology, but he said it didn’t look “too bad”.  It was laparoscopic and I am home now recovering.  If you want to know more and what led to this, keep reading.

Full backstory:

I had been having pain.  Pain in my pelvic area since after Scarlett was born.  Obviously that is normal after growing a human and pushing it out down there.  SO I didn’t think anything of it.  6 months past, still had it, one year came so I mentioned it to my OB.  She said it really shouldve went away but since it’s getting better (and it was and less often) then it’s possible to just be leftover from that.

Well, it got less and less.  But, I would have flare ups.  And when it hurt, it hurt.  It was not just my pelvis, but my lower back, hips, groin, buttocks, etc.  So this didn’t seem like an OB issue.  I just let it go.  Until I randomly had a could of days that it flared up and I literally could not walk.  It was awful.  I thought maybe it was something I needed to see a chiropractor for.  BUT, I still believe whatever it was stemmed from giving birth.  So, FINALLY, I decided to call my OB.  Got the pap smear.  Came back normal.  But she ordered an ultrasound.  

So, on April 9, I went for the ultrasound.  Then I was supposed to discuss the results with my doctor in an hour.  Well, she got called away for a delivery.  So they set me up with a virtual consult with her the following Wednesday, April 14th.  

April 14th- Consult with my doctor.  She said there was “a lot going on in there”.  Some fibroids and small cysts that can be normal, blah blah, but she wasn't worried about them.  BUT, on the other side there was a huge cyst.  About 5-6 cm, so 2.5 inches.  She was a little concerned about the size, but what most concerned her was that it had “several small nodules with vascularity”.  So normally cysts are fluid filled.  Women have them all the time and don’t know.  The body normally absorbs them.  But they can get big, they can rupture or burst.  I have had one burt before (multiple times) and that is THE WORST pain I have had in my life.  It landed me in the ER three times.  AWFUL.  If you know you know.  Then came the words… I am referring you to a gynecological oncologist/surgeon.  We need this out and it will need to be tested.  Beyond that, it is his expertise.  The Cancer Center will be calling you to set up an appointment.  That word is scary.  Cancer.  You hear it all the time, but it sounds different when it’s about you.  

I get home and I am still shocked, numb, but still not sure about anything.  Then I have to tell justin and of course he is very concerned.  And doing things he shouldn’t do (googling).

They call me the next day.  And set up an appointment April 27th.  That seemed so far away, but apparently we were expedited and that was quick.  The next two weeks were filled with so much mental exhaustion.  (Also, dealing with a TWO year old, and end of the year school stuff).  It was two weeks and thinking, and reading, and googling, and talking about the WHAT IFS.  You can’t help but let your mind wander.

Finally the consult came.  It didn’t give much more information.  Basically you can’t know anything until they go in and look.  Based on age, bloodwork, family history…. The textbook answer is that it is nothing.  Of course, we all know there are exceptions.  So it needed to come out.  They decided they needed to take the left ovary and tube.  Obviously the cyst would come out as well to be tested.  The more scary part is when he mentioned that once he gets in there, if it has spread then we may need to take more...the uterus, the other tube, and ovary, etc…  I want another baby, so this hit hard.  We left, still in shock and waiting for a call to schedule the surgery.  Went for ice cream, because…..ice cream.  While there we got the call.  May 7th.  

So the next two weeks were a lot of thinking and planning.  WHat do I do with and how will this affect taking care of Scarlett? How long can’t I work?  What if…? SO many thoughts.  Decided to take a full week off work.  I know it is laparoscopic but I still feel like I might need a week.  Writing 6 days of sub plans was the worst. And then lining up things with Scarlett.  Then Justin has to make some sacrifices with soccer to be home more and help with babysitter drop off and pick up.  I like to be in control of all of that.

  Then I asked about weight restrictions (in my mind it will be like 20 lbs for like a week or 2.  Imagine my shock when they tell me that recovery time is 2-6 weeks.  And lifting restrictions at 10 lbs for 6 weeks.  I immediately panicked.  FIrst , I had to run down to my boss and tell her.  Luckily she was really nice about it. Then, I was freaking out because I have a two year old that is 22 lbs.

So here we are, May 7th.  Had to get up at 4 am to drink some gatorade by 5.  We had to get to the hospital by 6.  My mom stayed the night to stay with Scarlett in the morning because the sitter doesn’t open til 7.  We get there, get registered and I go back for pre op.  Pretty uneventful.  I have never had surgery before so I was so scared.  Had to wash up, get undressed, get the IV started.  The anesthesiologist came in to talk.  The surgeon came in to talk. Then they whisked me back to the operating room around 7:45.

Being wheeled into the operating room was THE SCARIEST.  I started crying.  In my head I was like, why didn’t they put me to sleep before bringing me in there.  It was just a huge white, cold room, like you see on tv.  Just one little skinny metal table in the middle with the big metal lights and people rushing around to get ready.  The nurses were super nice and walked me through everything they were doing.  They had country music on.  This is how fast I was out...I have 2.5 songs that I remember.  They put me on the metal table then had to strap me down because it was so small.  Both arms were out and strapped and over my torso.  They told me they were gonna take good care of me and I was going to fall asleep and wake up in no time. BOOM

My surgery was scheduled to be from 8:00-10:00.

Next thing I am “waking up”  really just opening my eyes for a minute at I see a clock.  I was in recovery and it was only 9:00.  Nurse came in, said they actually only had to take the tube because the ovary was fine.  Since I want more kids, he left it.  And nothing else.  They did send the solid mass to pathology to be tested. We will know those results in two weeks.  I just have 3 small incisions.  One is a little bigger to get it out.  Then I fell back asleep until they brought Justin back at 9:30.  He said I was actually done at 8:35.  Then I was in and out 9:30-10:30.  At 10:30 they said I could get dressed whenever I felt like it and recover at home.  I literally thought I was going to be there til late afternoon/evening.  Also, because it ended up being less than they thought, they think they may be able to back my restrictions to only 2-3 weeks instead of 6. (driving, working, lifting), which is a relief.  I have to call him next week to ask.  And then he will have to evaluate me before he releases me to do that.  So, honestly, best case scenario.  I do feel a little guilty because I am so lucky when I know others aren’t.  But that just humbles me and makes me so very thankful.

Getting up was rough, dizziness, nausea, pain…..  So it took a while.  But by 11:40 we were on the road home.  The ride home was AWFUL.  I was sooo dizzy and thought I was going to vomit (but I didn’t).  Got home and ate because i was starving.  Then went to sleep (painful, but manageable).  Just woke up.  It is 4:30 ish.  Wanted to write this and then I can take pain meds again.

Justin went to get Scarlett.  I am worried about her wanting me to hold her.  But, it is only temporary.

*No idea if this was due to Ivf, but very possible. Still worth it. Even if they would’ve had to take everything, I’d do it all again to get Scarlett.

[nettheworldonfire]

Less Than.

It’s been awhile.  Let’s catch you up to speed.

June 13th I had a CT scan that showed NO progression, and POSSIBLY necrosis on some of the tumors on my liver.  (Necrosis = death, so yay!) Dr. Rose said that was as good as we could have hoped for and thought we should move forward with possible embolization through Penn since they seem to be the experts in NETs. He wasn’t sure if the clinical trial of chemo/bland embolization was running currently due to Covid, so he said I should reach out.   I scheduled the consultation appointments, which were originally not until August, but got bumped to July 22nd.  

My in-home phlebotomist was a no-call, no-show on the 30th, so I called my office and found out there was a mix up, and they were scheduled to come the same day as my injection, so I had to go to Labcorp in person.  I was pretty anxious about that since we aren’t do to much real-worlding these days, and they may or may not be doing Covid testing there, but I mustered the courage, and went.  There was only one person in the waiting room and only two employees, one of which dealt with me from beginning to end exclusively.  Everyone was masked up; it was smooth and painless. (Shout out: I ALWAYS have a good experience at the Labcorp on Easton Road in Abington, near the hospital.  They are rockstars!) Those results came back looking a-okay. 

I had my 5th Lanreotide injection on July 2nd and met with a very stressed Dr. Rose who still may or may not be retiring, due to some major changes with the hospital. He said labs and scans were good, and to keep him posted about my appointments with the folks at Penn.  Overall, I felt fine after the injection.  My GI issues are still relatively prevalent after the Whipple, so I never know if what I am dealing with is “normal” or an issue.  And right now, with you know, the world crumbling, it could just be stress.

So fast forward to the 21st, the day before my appointments, and I get a call that Penn doesn’t have the scan images or pathology report and that maybe we should reschedule my appointments (you know, the ones I’ve been waiting a month for).  They said the problem with this was that the doctors like to look at them in advance.  Although, a point I brought up to the nurse, I don’t see how much advance looking was going to be done after 6 pm the night before.  So we rescheduled my 10:30 a.m. call with Dr. Soulen to 6 p.m. so there was time to review, in the hopes that SOMEHOW I could get both reports and images to their office between the call and the appointments. Without any other options, my gracious husband made the one hour drive, and carted them into Penn at 7 am on the 22nd.  (Only to spend 20 minutes there looking for the building, since I was never told any information as to where the doctor was located with my appointment being through telehealth, and like a dummy, didn’t ask.)  Images delivered, and I get a call at 9:45 ish saying Dr. Soulen is still calling me at 10:30  again (and now my mother, the child pacifier, won’t be here in time, since I told her to come later when the appointments were rescheduled).  

My first call was with Dr. Michael Soulen in interventional radiology.  I introduced him to the two-legged noise makers who would provide a classic toddler soundtrack, and he seemed pleasantly on board with the situation.  

My mom did show up during the call just as things got hairy (Charlie had all the cushions off of the couch and my cat litter barricade was no longer stopping Olive from making a bee-line for the steps).  Gram to the rescue, as per usual.

Dr. Soulen liked my June scan.  He said it was great because that meant we didn’t HAVE to embolize (despite him mentioning several times how seeing a liver like mine makes him drool because of how much he enjoys embolizing livers).  Dr. Soulen said that the treatment plan should be “to ride the horse until it gets tired” because we only have so many horses.  Therefore, we stay on the Lanreotide until it stops doing what it is supposed to before trying something new, as the treatment options are limited and there isn’t data on whether or not they can be repeated multiple times successfully.  Especially with someone who has a history of a second cancer (Hodgkins) and chemotherapy.  He also clarified some things about the embolizations.  He said that a bland embolization and chemoembolization both cut off the blood flow to the liver, something we cannot do, because during my Whipple they removed a duct that helps my pancreas get rid of bile and bugs, which now filter into my liver.  Normally, this isn’t a major issue, but when you embolize a liver like this, it will cause a liver abscess in 20% of patients, landing them in the hospital for a while (because a serious infection like this requires IV antibiotics) and obviously with two little ones and Covid, that’s not something I’d like to risk right now.  There is a third type of embolization - radioembolization - that instead of cutting off the blood flow, shoots in little radioactive beads that are attracted to the tumors and give a very direct dose of radiation to them.  This makes patients a bit more fatigued, but only has a 5-7% rate of abscess or infection, which is better, of course.  That being said, none of this is the plan for now, and may not be for several years, as long as the Lanreotide keeps doing its job (he estimates 3-5 years at best).   

With all of that information and hearing that the Lanreotide is not expected to work forever, I really wanted a more accurate prognosis, although nothing is certain in the world of cancer.  He said that he has some patients who do these drugs and trials and make it into the double decades - but those are usually the grade 1 tumor patients (I am a grade 2, grade 3 being worse).  So, he said a single decade is more in tune with what patients in my situation should expect - but that 5, 10, 15 years is possible.  While I WANTED to hear some real talk, and I didn’t expect to hear that everything is good, that was still a little jarring.  At 37, and with a 1 and 3 year old, 15 years might not even get me to high school graduation, and that’s the high end.  Thinking about leaving my family in the next 5-10 years is beyond terrifying.  He said that my liver right now is functioning as it should.  It’s “more cheese than holes.”  I should be glad for that.  I am.  

Here you can see my two scans.  Left is June, right is February.  This may not be the perfect shot (I was trying to take a screenshot while we were talking), but you can kind of see some of the white spots (cancer) with some blackness (necrosis), so, that’s cool.  

The second call was with Dr. Ursina Teitelbaum, the oncologist who specializes in neuroendocrine cancer.  She was awesome to chat with, as always, and agreed to take over my care - something I needed to ask because Dr. Rose is ready to pass me along like the worst re-gifted patient ever.  I also asked her some morbid questions and was particularly surprised to hear her response, too.  She said had my June scan indicated progression in any way, it would have likely meant a 1-2 year prognosis.  I am a little annoyed and confused as to why no one said anything like this to us in previous visits.  I mean, you’d think someone with toddlers deserves to know that they may only have 12 months to live, especially when they are currently spending their time in quarantine and not doing any of the things that mean the most to them.  She agreed with Dr. Soulen, we should hold off on the embolization for now, and wanted to see me again (virtually) in September.  She also said she would get another scan scheduled for me for before that appointment and that we could plan for someone to come to my home to do the Lanreotide injections, rather than have to get into Penn each month for that when I am trying to work and parent this fall.  

One thing that she said that stuck with me, was that she believes this pandemic is going to get a lot worse this fall, and that regardless of what happens, we should be careful, but not limit visits with loved ones.  We need our family and friends around us for support.  We need that connection.  While maybe her message was to “live like you are dying” because I am, in a way, dying, I think she is living this way too.  I think she believes that the damage that months and maybe years of this will do to our psyches may be greater than the risk of getting Covid (not worse than actually getting it, but again, being “safe” and careful, in masks, etc.)  Just something to think about, especially for my family.

In other news, my anxiety has been through the roof (not surprisingly so - I did get diagnosed with cancer exactly a month before we got hit with a global pandemic, ya know).  After a talk with my primary, we upped my Lexapro dosage from 5 mg to 10 mg last week.  According to my OBGYN, that’s still a very low dosage (they said they prescribe 20 mg to woman for PMS sometimes, so there’s that), so we will see.  I really think I need something for panic attacks, other than a 32 ounce frozen margarita from Mad Mex.  They get costly.  My primary has given me a couple Ativan doses to hold me over as the new dosage of Lexapro kicks in and wants me to follow up in three weeks.  Til then, expect more of a “hot mess” than you’ve seen before.  Please note, hot does NOT indicate I look good right now, and “seen” is perhaps the wrong word, too, since, I barely SEE anyone.  Just forgive me, I’m losing it.  

* Dark side: Change in plans: Cancer probably WILL kill me, afterall.  

* Bright side: Being chronically ill may help to keep me working from home this fall, instead of returning to the cesspool known as high school.  Maybe.

* Next steps: 

7/27/20 between 8:30-10:00 a.m. - home visit from phlebotomist 

7/30/20 at 9:30 a.m. - Lanreotide injection #6 and appointment with Dr. Rose

9/20 - Next CT scan in Valley Forge (instead of my super close Willow Grove location), date TBD

9/22/20 at 9 a.m. - Telehealth appointment with Dr. Teitelbaum

Morbidly accurate GIF: 

[liu-anhuaming]

chemo update #1

so i wanted to post this last night but tumblr was being ridiculous and not letting it post but here it is now. i don’t know if any of you are actually interested in reading this, but i want to post it bc before getting this diagnosis i knew fucking nothing about what chemo entails and i don’t know if any of you are curious to see what it’s like and how it can effect people. i’m also going to do this post under a cut bc i have a bunch of updates from like 1 am last night so here i go.....

so i started my chemo for hodgkin lymphoma on thursday (12/10/2017). i haven’t stated my official diagnosis on here so i’ll just add it right here: stage two hodgkin lymphoma with bulky disease (the bulky disease just means the mass in my chest is larger than 10 cm across). the chemo regimen i have to undergo is called ABVD and is made up of four different drugs with varying side effects (they’re called adriamycin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine). most common among them are hair loss, nausea/vomiting, low blood counts, jaw pain, and many more. the second drug (bleomycin) can can serious long term side effects in relation to the lungs so, if the chemo seems to be working well enough after two months, my doctors might drop bleo from my chemo regiment completely.

since it was my first time receiving chemo ever, it took a long time to get everything done. i had to get blood tests and 12:45 to check my counts and then see my onc at 1:30 to briefly go over what to expect during my first treatment as well as the possible side effects.

from there, i was taken to the treatment center. i had to wait until around 3:00 to get called in and one of the nurses there had to get my weight and height so the pharmacy could mix the right amount of medicine for me. she then led my to a chair in one of the pods and gave me some heated blankets.

after i got all settled in, another nurse came over and had my take two tylenol and a benadryl before she put my iv in. then, i was given premeds, which were two different medicines to help prevent nausea (i was also given two different medicines for nausea to keep with me at home just in case the two premeds didn’t fully work for me).

once those were done i was given the adriamycin and the vinblastine as a push through the iv. fun fact: the adriamycin is red and makes your pee red for a short while after receiving it! after these two, i was given a small dose of the bleo. they don’t give you the full dose immediately during your first treatment bc they want to make sure you don’t react to it. so once they give the test dose they have to wait 2 hours before they can give the rest of it. in the meantime, they gave me the dacarbazine.

it’s given through the iv as one of those hanging bags (i can’t remember the actual name of them but you know what i’m talking about, right?), but it’s wrapped in a green plastic bag. i’ve heard from non-medical sources that it’s in a bag to protect it from the sunlight. 

as soon as the dacarbazine started, my forearm started burning like hell. they tried to slow down how fast it was being administered, but when that didn’t help they just put it back at the regular rate and diluted it with fluids to try and help. they also wrapped my arm in a warm blanket to see if that would help my veins expand, thus making it easier for the medicine to go through. apparently it won’t hurt this much during subsequent treatments. it took about an hour to administer all of the dacarbazine.

i had to just chill for a little while afterwards until the two hour waiting period was up. once it was, though, the bleo was administered pretty fast. by the time i was rid of my iv and ready to go, it was 8 pm. now, i had battled through the intense exhaustion brought on by the benadryl, but by the time i got home i was ready to just get in bed and die for 8 to 10 beautiful hours. alas, i had to eat dinner first. but then, as i settled into bed, i realized i had to pee. a lot.

you see, they had to give me so many fluids during chemo that i peed ~5 times before i went to bed and then one more time at some time around 1 am. also, my mom woke me up twice to check on me and while i understand her worry, i was trying to get some well needed sleep.

so i woke up yesterday feeling kinda tired. but then my friend came over and i was able to banish those feelings of exhaustion for a few hours. once i at dinner though, things went a little haywire.

as i was finishing my dinner (we were eating pesto) i started to feel weird. i wasn’t certain if it was nausea or if i just really needed to burp (spoiler alert: it was prob just gas whoops). deciding i was better safe than sorry, i took one of my nausea meds and put it behind me. i ended up going to bed at 9:30-ish.

the real fun begins some time after 1 am. i wake up and i’m really not feeling good. luckily, i had put my other nausea med (the one that makes me tired) on my bedside table. so i brought it into the bathroom with me and took one of the pills and tried to fall asleep. 

so after 20 minutes i was still feeling shitty, but it was a different feeling of shittiness this time. i was feeling the drowsy effect from the meds i took, but i also felt like i was wide awake. after a while i figured it out: i was feeling sick because i was really hungry. so i went downstairs and ate some toast.

the moment i finished eating my toast i felt like i was about to pass out (it was almost 3 am by this point). so i went back upstairs, got in bed, and 30 minutes later i was sound asleep. i didn’t wake back up until almost 10 am this morning.

and that’s it so far.

[cosmosogler]

hi guys. i am starting at 10:40!!! i was grading. i wanted to finish two sections today since i didn’t get much else accomplished.

in the morning i was working on my note catch-up. i accidentally forgot mom and my brother were coming to pick me up. mom wanted a “long lunch” and i said no. i think i mentioned that yesterday. she drove like a blind person again and almost plowed right into someone in the lane next to us trying to make a left turn.

what ended up happening was that we went to panera and after i ate i said i was ready to leave and then mother decided to just not leave. also my brother got some trash dumped on him accidentally and he was pretty upset about that since he had to sit on the plane all day. i think he had a change of pants at least.

so it took a little bit to cajole her into leaving the restaurant, and then we spent some time at my apartment and again it was difficult to get her to leave so i could go to the office and work. i got to the office at about 1:30 which was disappointing but could have been a lot worse.

at about 3:00 harrison rolled in and sat at the desk across from me and started chatting. we talked for a long time... i wanted to get more work done but i think it helped a little to express my frustration at not being able to keep up with my classmates in our classwork. he said his grades aren’t that good and he’d feel bad lending me his homework to work off of. i think i might have to ask him to do that though because suzanne never got back to me about the help. harrison said he would help at least but like... it would be a lot of help. he said he doesn’t have anything left to do this week because he accomplished everything he wanted to over the break. i congratulated him, honestly.

jennica and i had a discussion about harry potter and star wars prompted by her laughing about her mother starting to watch dr. who. it got extremely stressful for me extremely quickly. i think i was having a panic attack? i could not think at all and my mouth felt thick and heavy and i had trouble making sentences when i didn’t a few minutes before. my head started hurting real fast too.

i was trying to say that i didn’t like the prequels, and that the force awakens had just been a rehash of a new hope. harrison seemed to pick up on my meaning there but jennica kept talking about how it was totally different, she grew up watching the prequels so she liked them.

if you had trouble following that train of thought, i did too. that didn’t help me become more coherent either. it felt like she was arguing against points only tangentially related to what i was actually saying. 

like i said fantastic beasts had too many plotlines to fit into a two-hour movie and she said they were all going to be continued in the next installment. i said it kinda sucked that the memories all got erased at the end and that rebuilding the city in a one-minute scene kind of destroyed the stakes there. she said that the muggle guy did actually subconsciously remember the whole adventure and that he’d be showing up in the next movie too. 

it didn’t line up with what i was saying very much and that repeatedly threw me off. i think i was getting genuinely angry and that might have been why i felt so sick. mom and dad and my sister do that to me a lot too.

i guess i’m too cynical but it feels like so many of these sequels are more about the cash grab than telling a coherent story set in a very, very small universe. i was trying to talk about how the harry potter universe doesn’t make a lot of sense once you leave harry’s narrative and she kept coming back to these spinoffs. i mentioned native american magic in the harry potter world and she said the wizarding school in the us was built by a british guy. which didn’t address my point at all.

so like, trying to expand on a universe that ONLY serves the narrative of one character stops working when you’re making a cinematic universe or whatever. since the barrel’s so dry it feels like a cash grab. i dunno. i just feel like harry potter and star wars are culturally overblown. like they’re good stories, they’re solid and i like them, but the widespread obsession is really confusing to me.

thinking about it is making my thoughts hazy. i can’t seem to put together a paragraph of coherent thoughts on one topic about it. i run into this problem when i try to talk to other people in a fandom too. it stresses me out. i had a headache that whole time i was composing that message to the artist i liked on deviantart the other day. 

it doesn’t happen to the same extent, but it does happen when i try to talk about pokemon with other people who know what they’re doing. when i’m explaining the basic rules to someone like harrison, who doesn’t know a lot about it, i feel fine, but talking movesets... unless i’m sharing something that i’m proud of it’s a huge blur to me.

GEE IT’S LIKE THAT WHEN I TRY TO TAKE TESTS TOO???

it’s miserable.

something good is that i graded TWO sections today AND organized some lecture notes for my final lab this week. and i completely caught up on classical mechanics notes. i need one quantum lecture and i might be able to wring it out of jake. he and suzanne can be... unreliable. i’m not sure what’s going on there. jennica said she’s had a lot of trouble exchanging more than one message with suzanne too so it’s not just me. it’s aggravating that the messages register as “read” and she also posts in the main group chat but only replies to one private message every few days. and the response is usually a greeting.

i really need to do homework... i’m worried. i’m always worried.

ok the good thing. i uh, i also rode most of the way home in a gear higher than usual. i Went Fast. and i’m on schedule for grading. if i can grade one section per day through next saturday i’ll be done for the semester.

harrison said the lab we just finished before the break is very easy to grade... maybe this won’t be a 2/3-hour time sink every single day.

i know it’s not true but i can hope anyway.

it’s almost 11:10. i can’t keep writing or doing homework. i need to sleep. i’m still kinda sick. still have to live next to a tissue box. it’s been ten days.

[thisdaynews]

Italian GP: 'You realise you are not invincible'

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/italian-gp-you-realise-you-are-not-invincible/

Italian GP: 'You realise you are not invincible'

A minute’s silence was held before Sunday’s the race at Spa

Chequered Flag podcast: Italian Grand Prix preview Listen to the full interview with Daniel Ricciardo, plus a look ahead to the race at Mona, tonight at 21:00 BST on BBC Radio 5 Live. Click here.

Last Saturday, Daniel Ricciardo went through what might best be described as a long, dark night of the soul.

Following the death of Formula 2 driver Anthoine Hubert at the Belgian Grand Prix, the Renault driver went back to his hotel and questioned whether it was all worth it. The answer did not come easily, but in the end the Australian raced at Spa on Sunday.

Four days on, he sits down with BBC Sport at the start of the Italian Grand Prix weekend, and delves deep into what it takes for a racing driver to confront his fears and race on in such difficult circumstances.

“I certainly questioned it,” the 30-year-old Australian says. “The reality is, weirdly, I do love it too much. Racing did feel right in the end. Even though I didn’t really want to, once I did it, it was like, OK, this actually feels right and normal.”

For a long time over last weekend, though, it felt anything but normal.

“When you’re a kid and you see it on TV, and you’re not present or not part of it,” Ricciardo says, “it still seems like there is some form of distance, or a disconnection to what’s happened.

“But when you’re there and it happens to one of your colleagues, or it’s in the same race, it seems more real, and it’s like: ‘OK, this actually can happen to anyone, and it’s here, it’s present right now.’

“The realisation of us not being invincible does set in. I know my parents stress enough for me already – you know, watching me race and travel the world and being on a plane every few days. You just question it: is it really worth putting not only myself but family under the same amount of stress?”

Palmer column: Resilience wins day on tragic F1 weekend

Injured F2 driver Correa moved to intensive care in UK

Leclerc dedicates first F1 win to Hubert in Belgium

The aftermath of the accident

The night of the accident, Ricciardo says, he “didn’t get much sleep, and for sure you’re asking yourself questions, probably just fighting a little bit with some anger and some frustration of ‘why,’ you know?

“And then also fighting with a few of the emotions of should I actually get up and race tomorrow? Is it the right thing to do morally? Is it the right thing to do for me?

“And I kind of did also think: ‘Let’s see how I feel by lunchtime, and if I’m still having some doubts then maybe the safest thing for me is not to race.’

“I kind of wanted to play it by ear. Just running through all these scenarios: ‘What if I feel like this? What if that?’

“By Sunday morning, I had a bit more clarity. I did manage to sleep a little bit and wake up preparing myself for race day. But it still felt cold and weird. It didn’t feel right to be excited to race, just to be happy to be there. It felt like, tick off the minutes and get the job done.

“The lead-up to the race, I’d probably just describe it as not very fun in terms of just it was tough to try and go through the motions and go through a routine when that has happened less than 24 hours ago. And, you know, drivers’ parade and all that, you’re waving to fans, but you don’t feel right smiling or being happy, I guess.

“It was difficult, just trying to get into the zone, just trying to find any form of rhythm.

“Getting in the car on Sunday was not easy, but it was more of a sadness than a fear and I think it was important I established that. If I had been getting in the car with a pure level of fear, then it wouldn’t have been smart for me to race. I did understand that it was just a sadness.”

‘Just go as fast as possible’

“Once we kind of got going, it actually felt like pretty good release. It felt like a de-stress, just racing and competing. Just going at those speeds, it was like flushing out the system and that felt good.

“After the race, for sure I was still glad it was done but I did feel better than I did two hours before that.

“I’ll be honest, the race was fun. It was good to be out there. And as much as I was looking forward to seeing the chequered flag, I did enjoy a pure race on Sunday.”

The race, he says, acted as a form of catharsis.

“When something happens, you’ve just go to dive back into it, and that’s the best way of overcoming it. And I think that’s what the race was for us. I told myself little things as well: ‘Just go fast as soon as possible. Leave the pits and just go, and try to get into that mode already. Don’t tip-toe around. Don’t over-think certain places on the track.’

“I remember I got out of the pits, drifted out, and forced myself to get into that mindset straight away.”

Race winner Charles Leclerc and the rest of pack head through Eau Rouge and up to the swerves where Hubert’s crash began to unfold

This is a reference to his thoughts about going through Raidillon, where Hubert had his crash. It is part of the infamous Eau Rouge swerves, a left-hander over the brow of a hill taken flat out at more than 180mph.

“I told myself: ‘Go full throttle, and just don’t over-think this corner, don’t over-think any of it.’ Out of the pits… held it full. That was a relief but it felt good to get out there and do that. And that also told me that I was ready to go.

“I think if I was, big lift and scared, then that would be a sign that maybe I shouldn’t be on the track right now. I guess I wanted to do that to test myself and then it all felt right.”

Did he talk to the other drivers about it?

“I got to speak to a few. I only met Anthoine this year. The Renault Academy boys obviously spent a lot of time with him and I saw them Sunday morning. I spoke to a couple of them Saturday night as well, just over text.

“They had done training camps together. They’re a little family. They’re younger as well. That’s where I felt I could try and be a little bit of, in some ways, a father figure to them and comfort them. I was feeling it, but they were more so. We basically gave each other all a hug on Sunday morning. We tried to chat over it a little bit.

“And then with the other drivers, I spoke to a few of them, but before the race you could see everyone kind of wanted to be on their own.

“Waiting for the driver parade, we were all just standing there. There were a few handshakes or hugs but you could kind of tell everyone was just trying to prepare for the race and it was a tough one. After the race, I spoke to mainly the French drivers, who I knew were closest to Anthoine.”

The Bianchi factor

Ricciardo wears a tribute to Bianchi at the 2015 Hungarian Grand Prix

Hubert is not the first driver Ricciardo has known who has been killed. The last F1 driver to lose his life was the Frenchman Jules Bianchi, who suffered fatal head injuries in a crash at the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix. Ricciardo had come up through the ranks with Bianchi and they were close friends.

“Jules’ [death] hit me very hard,” Ricciardo says. “In a way, not disrespecting it, I was quite surprised how hard it hit me. I didn’t expect it to hit me so hard and for it to last so long – the sadness and the hurt from that extended over some period.

“With last weekend, you think time kind of cures everything, and it was like, OK, nothing’s happened for a while and with good reason. The sport’s got safer and we’re in a good place. And then it happens. And it’s a shock.

“It’s an anger that it has happened again. We thought we’d moved on from all this. It’s when it’s refreshed in your mind again and it’s there in front of you, it’s hard not to take it with difficulty.”

Has it changed his perspective on racing?

“Initially, it did change. Time does cure it. Those intense initial emotions did slowly fizzle out.

“With the Jules one, I felt like my purpose and intent after that was, ‘OK, if we are going to strap ourselves into these cars, and if we’re all aware of the risk, it doesn’t make sense to go in half-heartedly. If we’re going to do it, go all in, and make it worthwhile.’

“I felt like Jules’ passing kind of made me embrace the racer even more so. And to be honest this will probably end up having the same effect.

“I didn’t have that kind of fear in the race. And until that fear steps in, I’ll just use it as a form of motivation. However many years I do it, at least I can say I did it right.”

‘I surprised myself’

Ricciardo finished 14th at the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday

It can be hard to comprehend how a racing driver can compartmentalise their fears in this way, or the uniqueness of the sort of character required to do a job that they know can kill them, but to go ahead and do it anyway because they love it so much that they can’t stop.

Can Ricciardo explain what makes F1 drivers able to live with that contradiction?

He pauses for a few seconds.

“Actually I get goosebumps,” he says, “because I don’t actually know why or how.

“On Saturday night, I felt in no place to drive a race car on the same track the next day. But then even getting out of the pits and going through Raidillon and all that, it was weird how normal and natural it felt. And I can’t explain that.

“It’s probably just when you have a deep passion and love for something, that’s the result. To be honest, I surprised myself. And we probably all did on Sunday.

“I didn’t expect to enjoy any part of the race, no matter where I finished. But I did enjoy being back out there, and that rush of racing. Yes, it was still in your mind, of course. But how we’re able to put it to one side for a moment, I can’t explain why or how. It does surprise me.”

The approach to mortality

Ricciardo is known for his gung-ho style, and his attacking victories, often made possible by on-the-edge overtaking moves in which he throws the car down the inside of an opponent from an impossible distance back. How does he rationalise the risks, carry on knowing that an injury is always a possibility?

“You’ve got to always control the controllables,” he says. “In my case, I guess never get reckless.

“After the race or at times you may see me give a driver the finger or show my kind of anger. But I’ve always tried to teach myself to not let the emotion take over the driver in the race and get reckless, basically.

“Yes, I’ve tried some late overtakes in my time and I’ve done some moves that might seem risky, but there’s always a level of control and calculation in that and it’s never done purely on emotion.

“So I’ll not let myself get reckless or put myself in a position I don’t need to be in. Yes, I want to take risks and be on that fine line. But be sensible enough not to over-step it and I think I am able to do that.

“From that point of view, I am comfortable hopping in the car. There’s obviously the thing of failures and technical stuff that can go wrong. That’s an uncontrollable from my side. Can’t really think about those actually. And even if you know they’re there and present at times, once you put the helmet on and get going, you don’t think about it.

“It’s one of those things that if it happens in the wrong place or the wrong corner, then what do you do? You’ve got to put that rationale in your head that it could have happened on the way to the circuit, it could have happened on the road.”

It’s rare for racing drivers to discuss danger and the risk of death so openly.

Safety is discussed every weekend in F1, but it’s normally on an abstract level – what can we do about this gravel trap, or that barrier?

Hubert’s death has brought it front and centre. Is it hard is it to talk about it?

“Of course it is tough to address something that’s real and has happened,” Ricciardo says, “but it does help to talk about it. Having the comfort of everyone else last weekend and being on the grid together, and talking to some of the other drivers… yeah, it’s not fun talking about it, but it also helps relieve any feelings or emotions.

“I think just knowing that you’re in the same boat with someone else, knowing that you’re not alone feeling the way you do, that helps.

“So being part of a group or a community. That was where you realise, there are rivalries or whatever, but a rivalry on track doesn’t express how much we all have in common and how much we do actually care and feel for each other.

“It’s tough but it does feel nice to get some of it off your chest.”

Read More

[basketdouble29-blog]

BLT Salad

This fast, easy and flavorful BLT Salad is perfect for lunch. You could also serve it alongside a pizza or pasta at dinnertime. Or you could double the portion size for a full on entree salad. Creamy vegan ranch dressing coats crisp romaine lettuce, juicy summer tomatoes and tempeh bacon bits too. Add some steamed broccoli if you'd like and a hefty portion on buttery avocado on top...

Post-long weekend mood... Sochi gets it..

Blue sky, yes and yes.

Long weekend over and summer is on the way. I had such a chill long weekend! We didn't go anywhere or do anything really special and that made it lovely. Friday through Sunday was a bit rainy, which made for perfect writing and creative projects weather. A nice run at the gym (I'm actually working out again after a looooooooong hiatus) and I even got back in the kitchen and cooked a bit (also a bit of a hiatus). Then Monday opened up with this beautiful powder blue sky and soft streaks of sparkly warm sunshine. I went with a friend to get a facial at HeyDay in Brentwood - super cute spot for natural skincare - and then home to make this salad.

Breakfasts for me have still been super simple - oatmeal and blueberries. I think I may have tested the limits of how many pints of blueberries one person can eat in one weekend these past few days. I think we went through four pints! Yup. They were so good!

And I only have a few more weeks left of my UCLA writing class, which is so sad since I've loved it so much these past eight or so months.

Oh, and the kitties loved their long weekend as well - so many sunbeam naps and snuggle time on the couch. I binge-watched Dead to Me, which was pretty good. And I also watched the GOT documentary which was great. Still sad it's over, but FYI the soundtrack from this last season is SO great. I love it as work music!

So, that was my weekend, I hope you guys had a nice one as well.

BLT. And these salads are just super with their easy romaine leaves and a creamy vegan ranch to flavor things up. My tempeh bacon provides heartiness and loads of protein too.

Ranch. You can DIY your dressing or use a store-bought version. Follow Your Heart High-Omega Ranch is one of my faves.

You can totally use any greens you'd like and play around with the veggies on top.

PS. I have been listening to so many Podcasts lately. I sometimes daydream about starting one, but have no idea what topic I would want to commit myself too. And do I really need another project right now? Hm. Thinking outloud I guess, but curious what your fave Podcasts are.

Hope you love this salad! Happy almost-summer. PS. Snag this PDF for recipes!

BLT Salad

By Kathy Patalsky

Published 05/28/2019

This vegan BLT salad has ranch, romaine, tomatoes and vegan tempeh bacon on top.

Ingredients

4 cups romaine lettuce, chopped

1 avocado, diced or sliced

1-2 tomatoes, diced or sliced

tempeh bacon (4-8oz)

side veggies - optional (I used some broccoli)

vegan ranch dressing, to taste - DIY or use a store-bought version for ease

Instructions

Cook your tempeh bacon in a skillet. You can use 1/2 - 1 package of tempeh, depending on how big of a serving you'd like.

Toss the lettuce with the ranch. Pour into serving bowl(s).

Add the tomato, tempeh and avocado over top the lettuce. Add any other veggies or toppings you'd like. Nuts and seeds are also great additions.

Serve!

Yield: 2 servings

Prep Time: 00 hrs. 05 mins.

Cook time: 00 hrs. 10 mins.

Total time: 15 mins.

Tags: salad,entree,easy,lunch,tempeh, avocado,blt,vegan,recipe,food,

Pin for later!

Source: http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2019/05/vegan-blt-salad.html

[andrewansahartwork]

     TL;DR: I severely underestimated how much shading and blending work I would have to do in one sitting the night before turning this drawing in. This led to me finishing the drawing in a trance for several hours after the time I wanted to sleep, while shading everything sloppier and sloppier, and trying not to wake up my sick roommate with my laughter. Also I was shivering a lot because the air conditioner was running for no reason.

    The assignment was to draw something that showcased the inside and outside space of a building.This is a drawing that shows off the inside of a Dunkin Donuts, but the giant windows also allow the road and the buildings across the street to be seen. I took this picture sometime last week on my phone, and have been drawing it for several days since then. I feel that the shading is fine for the top two thirds of this drawing. The bottom third is where it starts to get a little wonky. Not only that, but the perspective and size of everything inside the Dunkin Donuts isn’t the best. There is a reason for this, and it involves one of the strangest drawing sessions I’ve ever had.

     Yesterday, I was a little behind on this drawing, and I had the line work finished, and in a state that I feel was near identical to the photo I took. I didn’t include the trees and traffic cones that were present outside the building, because I wanted to have the composition get simpler the farther your eye would trail off from inside the building. Anything outside of the buildings I felt added unnecessary cluster, and I didn’t want to make it hard to figure out what the drawing is of. So, I confidently thought I would be able to get all of the shading done yesterday evening. I get back from class at around 5:30, and ate dinner and relaxed until around 7:00. After a light power nap, I was rejuvenated and ready to start adding some detail to this drawing!

     I didn’t want to add too much detail to the drawing, because I wanted it to be a simple image that clearly communicated the setting. But right before I started shading everything, I suddenly decided that I didn’t like the way the two guys sitting at the table on the drawing’s bottom third looked. So, I went back and changed them to have better proportions (they were way more stretched out due to a perspective error on my part). However, trying to fix one perspective error opened up a lot more errors. One thing led to another, and suddenly about thirty to forty minutes were gone. Not wanting to fall too far behind, I got right to work on shading (finally) until around 9:00 when I took a break to shower.

      As I continued to work on shading everything, I realized my own meticulous detail obsession was getting the better of me. When I refer to “meticulous detail” in this context, I’m talking about wanting the lines that made up every building across the street to be as well crafted as possible. Those lines were drawn lighter than everything else, so I had to REALLY focus to see it when shading in the space with a lighter graphite pencil. At this point, I’m deep into the night (let’s say 12:00), and my ideal time of when I wanted this drawing done (11:00) was but a sad unobtainable dream. The desk lamp was my greatest source of light, as it was closer than the ceiling lights, the air conditioning was running for some reason, making the dorm and the hallway colder than usual, and my roommate also got a cold, and I didn’t want to keep him up. The air conditioning would lead to me shivering pretty frantically at random intervals, it calmed down after about ten minutes, but it was still interfering with my progress! So, at this point, I’m trying my hardest to give this drawing my own seal of quality, but I also want to finish it ASAP.

     I should also mention that for long drawing sessions like these, I tend to put on Let’s Plays or Podcasts on Youtube (through my earphones of course) so I have something in the background in order to not go mad from just hearing my pencils, erasers, and blending stick rub against the paper for hours. During the hours I was adding detail to everything, I had listened to the entirety of the Stream Train playthrough of Space Quest IV. I didn’t intend on finishing the playlist of videos in one session, and the playlist also served as a timer for myself. At this point, I’m starting to panic a little (and I’m aware this sounds really cocky, which isn’t my intention, but I’m not one to stress out, at all).

     In a rush to put something on I clicked the playlist for the Game Grumps Let’s Play of Zelda: Wand of Gamelon. If you don’t know, the game the two play in that particular series is an infamously terrible second party Zelda game developed for a legendarily terrible console called the Philips CD-I. So, in usual “Youtube Let’s Play of a terrible game” format, the commentators would start out calm (well, calm-ish, they knew how bad the game was instantly), and slowly lose their sanity as the Let’s Play went on. So, as I’m sitting in my chair, still shading in the drawing at around 2:00 in the morning, I was starting to get a little stupid. I attempted to contain my laughter at the commentary from the Game Grumps playthrough, and trying to speed through a shading and blending job while also trying not to make any mistakes. It devolved into madness for myself in a good hour.

     It was around 3:00 AM when I start quiet laughing at almost everything. The Game Grumps were losing their minds playing this bad game, and I was losing my mind rushing to get this drawing done. I even laughed at the fact that the people sitting by the window in the picture I took were unaware of the fact that they were causing me to lose a ton of sleep. It was the perfect meltdown scenario, but I refused to quit. I was at the bottom third of the page at this point. If you pay close attention, you’ll be able to tell I didn’t put in nearly as much care to the bottom third of the page as I did the top two thirds. I was basically rotating 2H, HB, B, 2B, and 4B pencils getting all of the shades down on the page as fast and as carefully as humanly possible, while giggling like a tired hyena at Youtube personalities trying not to loose what was left of my sanity that night. I had severely underestimated my workload. It should be noted that around 2:00 AM, my blending stick stopped working for next to no reason. I didn’t know what to do, and I was pretty emotionally compromised (or at least that’s how it felt at the time), so I used three tissues in their place.

     Upon completing the shading and blending, I noticed how there wasn’t much distinction between buildings and objects. Instead of adding more depth, I just added comic book-esque dark lines to most of everything. It doesn’t look as good as it could have, but I really wanted to sleep at this point. Mainly because I had an online test today that I could only get started on from 9:00 AM to 10:20 AM (I was able to take said test, and did well, don’t worry). It wasn’t until I stood up did I realize how much of a trance I was in. I stopped laughing, turned off the Youtube app, and noticed it was 4:20 AM. I set the mess of materials on my desk aside, and went to bed. Now that I look at the drawing, with around four more hours of sleep, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever made, but if I had budgeted my time better, it could have improved. Oh well, you win some you lose some.  

-I’ll post a better lit picture along with the reference picture eigher later tonight, or tomorrow.-                              

[kissnovel46-blog]

BLT Salad

This fast, easy and flavorful BLT Salad is perfect for lunch. You could also serve it alongside a pizza or pasta at dinnertime. Or you could double the portion size for a full on entree salad. Creamy vegan ranch dressing coats crisp romaine lettuce, juicy summer tomatoes and tempeh bacon bits too. Add some steamed broccoli if you'd like and a hefty portion on buttery avocado on top...

Post-long weekend mood... Sochi gets it..

Blue sky, yes and yes.

Long weekend over and summer is on the way. I had such a chill long weekend! We didn't go anywhere or do anything really special and that made it lovely. Friday through Sunday was a bit rainy, which made for perfect writing and creative projects weather. A nice run at the gym (I'm actually working out again after a looooooooong hiatus) and I even got back in the kitchen and cooked a bit (also a bit of a hiatus). Then Monday opened up with this beautiful powder blue sky and soft streaks of sparkly warm sunshine. I went with a friend to get a facial at HeyDay in Brentwood - super cute spot for natural skincare - and then home to make this salad.

Breakfasts for me have still been super simple - oatmeal and blueberries. I think I may have tested the limits of how many pints of blueberries one person can eat in one weekend these past few days. I think we went through four pints! Yup. They were so good!

And I only have a few more weeks left of my UCLA writing class, which is so sad since I've loved it so much these past eight or so months.

Oh, and the kitties loved their long weekend as well - so many sunbeam naps and snuggle time on the couch. I binge-watched Dead to Me, which was pretty good. And I also watched the GOT documentary which was great. Still sad it's over, but FYI the soundtrack from this last season is SO great. I love it as work music!

So, that was my weekend, I hope you guys had a nice one as well.

BLT. And these salads are just super with their easy romaine leaves and a creamy vegan ranch to flavor things up. My tempeh bacon provides heartiness and loads of protein too.

Ranch. You can DIY your dressing or use a store-bought version. Follow Your Heart High-Omega Ranch is one of my faves.

You can totally use any greens you'd like and play around with the veggies on top.

PS. I have been listening to so many Podcasts lately. I sometimes daydream about starting one, but have no idea what topic I would want to commit myself too. And do I really need another project right now? Hm. Thinking outloud I guess, but curious what your fave Podcasts are.

Hope you love this salad! Happy almost-summer. PS. Snag this PDF for recipes!

BLT Salad

By Kathy Patalsky

Published 05/28/2019

This vegan BLT salad has ranch, romaine, tomatoes and vegan tempeh bacon on top.

Ingredients

4 cups romaine lettuce, chopped

1 avocado, diced or sliced

1-2 tomatoes, diced or sliced

tempeh bacon (4-8oz)

side veggies - optional (I used some broccoli)

vegan ranch dressing, to taste - DIY or use a store-bought version for ease

Instructions

Cook your tempeh bacon in a skillet. You can use 1/2 - 1 package of tempeh, depending on how big of a serving you'd like.

Toss the lettuce with the ranch. Pour into serving bowl(s).

Add the tomato, tempeh and avocado over top the lettuce. Add any other veggies or toppings you'd like. Nuts and seeds are also great additions.

Serve!

Yield: 2 servings

Prep Time: 00 hrs. 05 mins.

Cook time: 00 hrs. 10 mins.

Total time: 15 mins.

Tags: salad,entree,easy,lunch,tempeh, avocado,blt,vegan,recipe,food,

Pin for later!

Source: http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2019/05/vegan-blt-salad.html