no blog for a long time. I went to NYC a couple of weeks back and ran a 5K fundraiser with the wife for the 9/11 museum where I am a member and for some reason have a desire relive the pain of that event. I can't explain it but for some reason I feel very moved by this place. Anyway we took the train down on Saturday morning and stayed at the Hilton across from WTC which is where the race ended. Kind of surprised that they didn't have a respectable restaurant in the hotel but we wound up eating both nights at the downtown Les Halles which is where Anthony Bourdain cut his chops in the kitchen. The food was quite good, the first night I had the steak Au Poivre and the wife had the scollops. The second night I tried the filet which was little more than a belt buckle so I would not recommend that. I was kind of hoping for a nice rib eye but perhaps that is not appropriate for what they do. Anyway, hopefully I can get back to the running. Oh and I have a new job. More of the same in the banking industry down in Providence (guess who) but the pay is good so no complaints here. This picture was taken from my hotel room. It really is a special place.

My Left Foot. So this is the state of affairs now, a couple of shiny metal pins protruding from my second and third toes on my left foot. Not nearly as dramatic as the movie but quite painful nonetheless. There are also some fancy screws in there holding the bones inside the foot in place. Apparently the doctor had to knotch them out to move them in a bit from the bunion pulling them apart. I would like to say that this is the end of my running career and that I will stick to bicycling in the future but who knows, maybe I can be a dread miller without doing any further damage to my feet. I somehow wound up with something called a hammer toe and a mallet toe last fall and if I had chosen to take care of them then this might have been avoided but they really didn't hurt so I let it go. 

Anyway, hats off to the doctor who performed this, a one Dr. Leavitt at the Baptist Hospital here in Boston. He has a fantastic reputation and given that I live about 100 yards away I should consider myself very lucky to have access to his care. 8-10 weeks in the cast with no weight on the foot at all and then hopefully back on my feet.

I give up...

It's been a long time coming I guess. I have basically given up on any kind of regular outside running as I am sick of being hurt all the time. Constant pain in the right foot from Plantar Fasciitis, ankle pain, swelling, etc. The treadmill seems to be fine if keep it to once or twice a week but the outside stuff is done. I completed the BAA 5 and 10K earlier this year and I am signed up for the 1/2 marathon this weekend but I am skipping that in favor of a 4 day weekend in the Berkshires with the wife. Sorry to be missing the race but I think I will be better off in the end. The picture below was taken a couple of weeks ago at the Patriot Golf Course in Bedford MA where I played a round with my brother. There was so much fog you couldn't see where your tee shots landed until the 10th hole. The foliage was in full swing around the course given all the swamp maples and the low terrain.

Careful with that Axe Eugene...

Long time no write or run. I have been diagnosed with arthritis in my right ankle and foot along with a wee bit of a heel spur which I hope gets to the bottom of the discomfort that I have had for so long in my foot. Nothing to be done about the arthritis I guess, just a by product of getting old. Doctor has recommended me to a specialist for the heel spur but I just going to see how bad this will get or if it will resolve itself. The outdoor running season is cranking up and I don't want to have any kind of surgery if I can avoid it right now. Maybe in the fall.

I did run a 5k on St. Patricks day in South Boston, it's run a couple of hours before the parade starts and is for a good cause, the South Boston Boys and Girls Club. It sold out right away as Southie is the place to be on St. Patricks day although its not my cup of tea. The atmosphere while tame compared to years ago is still a bit over the top for my liking as I gave up drinking at noon back in college so the crowd is still hard core. The city even makes the bars and liquer stores close early since so many people find a reason to get absolutely hammered on the day of St. Patrick. That should tell you what kind of behavior you get if you should choose to visit with the kiddies to see how it is done in Southie.

I just finished reading the new Whitey Bulger book by Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy of the Boston Globe and I would highly recommend it to anyone who has any interest in Boston, Southie or how our government totally screwed the people of Boston by letting this animal and his like commit every crime in the book from murder to drug dealing. It is a shocking story and one that the government has been covering up for decades due to the misbehavior of of the FBI and the Justice Dept. who are complicit in all of the crimes that he was allowed to commit while the authorities looked the other way. If your not from the Boston area, you might be shocked at how this was allowed to go on but for folks around here, given that his brother was the most powerful politician in the state, this is sadly not real news but it is disturbing nonetheless.

Anyway, I am currently listening to the Pink Floyd boxed set that you can get on ITunes. It has remastered versions of every album they produced and if you take the time to just sit and listen from start to finish it really is quite an amazing compilation of music and gives you a different appreciation of the depth of what they accomplished. I don't think that my cat or my wifes birds appreciate this but it is quite good. The photo comes from Storm Studios who did a great deal of the artwork for Pink Floyd over the years and put together the slide presentation in the box set on ITunes. This picture I lifted off of someone's Tumblr page and is a fantastic bit of art.

Golf, Running and Aleve

Well I went off to the doctors today for a quick look at the right foot that has never quite healed from the plantar injury a year and a half ago. I have scaled back my running to essentially nothing over the past 2 months and it is still most uncomfortable and the discomfort has now snaked it's way up into my ankle. I was sent off for an X-ray and directions to take 2 Aleve a day for the next week to see if this helps at all. We shall just have to wait and see although the doctor was certain that I had not reinjured my plantar which was a relief. Nothing like that one let me tell you.

I was quite impressed with the technology in the medical office where I had my X-ray. I probably should have assumed it but apparently they no longer print X-ray film as it is all viewed on-line on a computer screen. I still had this picture in my head of all the X-ray pictures in black and white stuck up on a backlit screen as it was done in the past. I guess I should be glad that I had no need to see the newest technology in play which means I have been somewhat healthy and have had no need for many visits beyond my yearly physical.

The picture attached is one from our trip to Ireland last September as I had a few quite nice jaunts in the country side early in the AM while everyone else in our party was still sleeping. Beautiful place and my wife is going back again this summer with a few co-workers for 10 days so I am quite jealous of that. My only console is that I am very, very close to purchasing a new set of golf clubs and may do so this weekend at the golf show here in Boston. Can't wait for the weather to break so I can get back at it again. My wife gave me a golf pass of sorts to 5 different courses here in Massachusetts for Valentines day which was quite nice of her. I will take that as the go ahead to buy new clubs.

Snowed in

So now that the Blizzard has passed us and we are on to the clean up phase, it is quite remarkable how only 2 feet of snow can shut down and paralyze a city. There are plenty of places that get much more snow than this and continue to function but I guess once you dump this much on such a congested place with people and cars, trucks and buses it really messes things up big time. We hunkered down from mid afternoon on Friday to late yesterday afternoon. It really is a non event for us now that we don't own a house and live in a condo. I could barely hear the snow plows from our unit which is on the inside of our building facing the courtyard. If we were back in Holbrook, I would have been stressing over the weight of the snow on the roof of the garage and having to clean all my elderly neighbors driveways. I did enjoy being able to help them once I broke down and purchased a snow blower and I can only hope that the people who bought our house have continued to assist them.

After listening to the talking heads on the local news ad nauseum about how historic this snow fall was and blah, blah, blah, we finally emerged after 24 hours. The main roads here were passable but most of the side roads had yet to be cleared and we even saw a couple of plow trucks that were stuck and had to be pulled out. We walked down to JP center and then detoured back to the Jamaica Way where we had to walk in the road to loop back as the sidewalks were no clear yet. The roads were barely passable so I am guessing that the sidewalks will wait a bit. We did stop off at Canary Square for a beer on the way back and even though the Kitchen was closed, there was maybe 20-25 people hanging out around the bar enjoying the break from shoveling thier cars out I would imagine. After seeing cars that were under 8-10' drifts and people struggling to dig them out, it made me appreciate my indoor garage spot that supposedly cost around $30,000 as part of my purchase price of my condo.
The forecast for tomorrow is rain so that should make things real interesting for the morning commute, can't wait for that one. Here are a couple of pictures from our walk yesterday.

Not so warm out...

Well the running is getting back a bit. I did 6.5 miles on Wednesday evening and the wife and I are heading back to the gym this afternoon. Way to cold to run outside for me. It was something like -15 with the wind chill the other morning on the way out to the train. Stuck on the dreadmill for the time being. On a warmer note, I managed to get registered for the B.A.A Medley races. You sign up for the 5k, 10k and the 1/2 marathon at one time and you get a unique number and medals for each race. Can't wait.  The picture is from St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. The view is overlooking the Carambola beach resort where we stayed this past July. The Island itself is a bit rough and impoverished but I highly recommend the resort. We have stayed there twice and it's been a great experience each time. Wishing I was there right now given the temps outside here today.