All kinds of good news ....

This past week was definitely a good week.

Martika has finally gotten her braces removed and she could not be any happier. The first thing she ate was an apple. Not that she could not eat apples with her braces on BUT she did enjoy finally being able to eat an apple without slicing it up.

She still has some work to do - she gets her retainer on Wednesday and she has to make sure she uses it. Given the efforts she went through with her braces I am sure that she will have no issue in making sure to use it as needed.

The other bit of good news is that I am allowed to start running and riding again - Woo Hoo!

I went to my Neurosurgeon on Thursday and he had seen my last CAT scan report and the scan itself. He said that all of the bleeding had stopped in my brain and that the blood and scar tissues had been absorbed as they should be. He did some tests to make sure things were physically working right and asked some questions to make sure things were ok there as well. He did say I would still have some headaches, especially for a few more weeks while the orbital socket finished healing. After all of that though he said I could start running again, just cautioned me to take it easy (so only do 3 miles at a time right this week) and he also said it was ok to get back on the bike. Again with the bike he said take it easy to start. The bike will wait a bit as I need to fix the brakes on my mountain bike and the road bike still needs to be repaired from the damage from the accident. I am just happy I get to run again. Of course everyone else is happy that I got the all clear for all of the other reasons.

Well now you can start looking for race results in October :-)

.... cu

Tika and me in DC

The end of the school year I spent a day chaperoning Samantha's class on a field trip to DC. It was a cool field trip in that it was focused on the mall but required the kids to answer a list of questions about things in and around the mall. A couple of weeks later myself and Tika spent at Saturday afternoon at the Corcoran Gallery and we talked about the field trip and Tika said that there were a lot of places in DC that she had not been to so we planned a day for just the two of us to go see some places in DC that we had not seen or that it had been a while since we had been there.

Our day started with tea at Teaism, a place we both like for lunch but it was too early for that. After we were caffeinated we headed off to the National Archives - which neither of us had been to. The lines were short early in the morning and we got to spend a couple of hours looking at the collections there as well as the architecture, such as the Rotunda. Since Tika enjoys history, and does well at it (a 5 out of 5 in her AP History exam last semester) she had lots of things to talk about. We saw the Bill of Rights, Constitution and Declaration of Independence but also things like drawings for the initial lunar lander and Shaq's shoe that he gave to the president.

After we left the Archives we walked over to the Canadian Embassy and saw an exhibit of Yosuf Karsh's photography as well as played in the echo chamber before walking up and around Capitol Hill on our way to the Library of Congress. The Library was also a place I had never been to. We were hoping to get to actually go into the library but we found out you need to be doing research to get in so we toured the building, looked into the library through the viewing area, saw the Jefferson Library and exhibits on Gershwin and Bob Hope.

Once we left the Library we were getting hungry so we walked over to Union Station, one of my favourite buildings in DC and had lunch. We spent some time walking through the station, since it is such a beautiful building, before we headed over to the National Building Museum. I guess by now you can tell we both like architecture :-)

After touring the Building Museum we headed back home. We were fortunate not to get rained on but we were also fortunate enough to take advantage of living so close to so many fantastic things to see and do.

I am looking forward to keeping up that tradition.

..... cu

Sam is tonsil free

Last Friday Sam went in to have her tonsils removed. She had been getting sore throats or strep quite frequently over the last few years so we took her to a specialist and he recommended getting her tonsils out. We of course had to wait until she came back from the US National Karate Championships. Sam and Tika went with their dojo, Ichiban Karate and Sam came back with a Gold and Bronze while Tika came back with two bronze medals.

Once she was back and rested she went in early last Friday for the surgery. The doctor was very open about things as were the assistants and nurses. The surgery was less than 20 minutes and she was home about 2 hours after she went in. Her throat has been a little bit sore but she is eating and drinking as best she can. She does not like her pain medicine but she is taking it. The doctor said no strenuous activities for a couple of weeks - which of course she does not like, she would much rather be doing karate and learning new things. So far though she is behaving and that is what she needs to do.

OK - back to work for me ---- cu

First day back to the office

OK - maybe not a full day but I did manage to get into the office for a morning meeting and also a conference call afterwards.

It does still amaze me that just getting out of the house and back into a more usual environment does help get things back to normal. Well I guess back to normal based on what normal has been for the last 3 weeks. It will be nice to get back to exercising and doing the real normal stuff I would do. Another few weeks and hopefully I will get clearance for all of that. At least I hope so - I have a race in October that I would really like to do.

.... cu

What a hard couple of weeks ....

So everyone says that moving is one of those "stressful" events that should be avoided. Well I will safely say that moving is hard but add to that a lady cutting in front of you as you ride at 20+ MPH on the road a couple of days before moving and moving gets REAL interesting.

It has been just over two weeks since I went out for a morning ride when a lady went through a stop sign right in front of me and I slammed into her new SUV. As one can imagine the cyclist rarely gets the better end of that deal and I spent the next 36 hours in various ICUs having doctors, nurses and who knows who else checking me out. They did release me on Saturday evening carrying home with me a small fracture on the back of my skull, two smaller fractures in my left orbital socket, some minor bleeding and at least a couple of weeks of headaches.

I do consider myself lucky in that I am walking, talking and no other obvious injuries. It will be a couple of more weeks before I get back to exercising again, and riding my ride bike will be a lower priority this year, but I am feeling much better than two weeks ago.

I finally got to see my bike again. A lady who was out jogging picked it up for me and took it home and we finally synced up on Friday. The picture does not do it justice and it will be interesting to see what the bike shop says - but the handlebars and left shifter and likely done, both wheels are bent and then of course a good scratch on the frame.

The good news is things are getting back to normal and now I just feel like I have a medium flu bug. I will be keeping my fingers crossed that all else is OK and I am DEFINITELY grateful that I had someone to look after me for the last couple of weeks. I would not know what I would have done without you Laura. I am also thankful that my girls and Darlene were also there to help when they could - again a big thank you.

Hopefully I will see you out running this fall - I d have a 10 K I am planning to run in October :-)

Take care .....