March 24, 2010

We cleared a hurdle in our journey.  We both passed the written exam.  This is a good thing primarily from the standpoint of continuity.  We have a plan based on success at each step of the way.  Failure would require an adjustment.  This success forces us to go down the next several steps in the plan since we won’t know any more results for at least several months.  By then, we will have completed a few more irrevocable actions.  This sounds ominous and frightening, but it is actually freeing.  We don’t need to move cautiously right now.  In some ways, I was holding back to allow room for contingencies.  Now it is a clear path forward. 

We have both been suffering.  Kris’ back continues to be painful and my knee has been weirdly stiff.  We took it easy over the weekend.  We did a little cross country skiing on Saturday, but only took a leisurely walk on Sunday.  And we decided to take another day of rest on Monday, although I did take an aggressive cross country ski.  I knew the conditions were going to be as fast as they get so I timed my normal loop to see if I could break the thirty minute mark.  I finished in 27:30, a personal best by a long shot, probably not the best thing for my knee. 

We downhill skied two easy days between yesterday and today.  We spent most of the time down low on the mountain working on techniques to reduce the stress on our bodies.  It was fun to focus on technique for a change of pace.  We skied for a couple of hours each day but didn’t add much to our vertical totals.  Today was hampered by an unexpected foot of heavy wet snow.  We still managed to ski a low impact style.  We both commented how we would normally work harder in such slop so our practice may have been helpful to more than just our bodies.

I accomplished another personal best yesterday.  After Kris declared her ski day over, I went to the top to take advantage of the good visibility and nice groomed runs.  My practice at low impact skiing fit right in with an efficient top to bottom run.  I finished the run in just under four minutes, a target I hadn’t been able to hit all season.

We have been driving the van more.  While I get excited about any new vehicle, Kris also seems pretty excited about this silly truck.  It is nice to have all that space.  It is nice to sit that high again and to see over the guardrails.  It is nice to put our ski boots on without getting out of the vehicle.  The only downside is I finished our second tank of gas.  It managed just over 13 miles per gallon and it cost over $80 to fill it up.  That is scary when you don’t have a job.

I solved my video tape dilemma over the weekend.  I defragmented the hard drive on my old desktop computer and this allowed me to capture digital video from my old video camera without dropped frames and odd sound impacts.  Most of it fit within nice 20 minute chunks, the most I could fit on the tiny hard drive on that old computer and coincidentally the most I could write to a DVD in an uncompressed format.  So I digitized all of my old video tapes.  This will allow me to get rid of the clunky tapes and to ditch the old VCR.  The only tape I will probably retain is our wedding video.  I digitized it, but I think I will keep the original as well.

I had to fix the furnace this morning.  I knew I had a problem from bed last night listening to the blower run endlessly on the garage heater.  I got up and checked.  I had no pilot light on the furnace.  I tried to relight it, but a couple tries convinced me it was time for a new thermocouple.  I didn’t think any of the 24 hour stores would have it so I went back to bed and told Kris to expect a cold condo in the morning.  The thermocouple only took a few minutes to install so the condo was already getting warm again by the time I ate my breakfast.  It is good to be able to solve such a $10 problem without calling an expensive technician. 

It is spring.  The weather has been warming.  The snow is melting.  The main roads are already clear.  The sun stays up late into the evening.  We are excited to start on the next phase in our adventures.  And we are relieved to have some additional assurance that our health insurance coverage will be there if we need it.  Everything seems pretty bright.