Archive for July, 2006

Knee is getting better

July 31, 2006 at 1:29 pm · Filed under Running

After many months of knee pain and popping, I think my knee is finally getting better. I’m seeing a PT a couple of days a week, stretching like a madman, and doing exercises to strengthen my inner quad. On the whole my knee is feeling pretty good. It still doesn’t feel quite right, but the popping in the back is almost totally gone and the patella instability isn’t bothering me that much. My inner hamstring still feels tight, and I think that is what makes it feel odd right now, but hopefully my excessive stretching will fix that.

I get the impression I will be able to get back to running soon. My plan is to start with short, 2-mile runs maybe 3-4x a week, then slowly work up from there. I’ll continue doing yoga at the gym on Mondays to help my flexibility.

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HHTD FTW!

July 31, 2006 at 12:03 pm · Filed under Beer

That’s “Hophead Throwdown for the win!”, for the uninitiated.

Saturday was the Hophead Throwdown at the Publick House in Brookline. This is a fundraiser for MS where you pay $15 at the door to get in, and they serve a list of crazy-hoppy beers along with incredibly spicy food. Cath and I talked her dad into going, and we headed down around 12:30.

To be served at the throwdown, a beer needs to be at least 70 IBUs. For comparison, a typical macro beer (Bud, Miller, Coors) is around 11 IBUs, and a normal IPA is 40-60 IBUs. Most of these highly-hopped beers are very alcoholic, to hold up against the hop onslaught.

I started with a Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel (say that 3 times fast!), which was probably my favorite. I liked the mix of the Belgian yeast flavor with the hoppiness, very unusual. My second was an Oskar Blues Gordon IPA, which was also excellent. At this point, Cath’s dad had ordered a De Ranke XX Bitter that he didn’t like, so I finished that off for him. And then, I finished off with a Hell Spawn of Oliver, a truly ridiculous beer from the Shed in Vermont. The Hell Spawn took their normal Spawn of Oliver, already incredibly hoppy at 135 IBUs, and turned up the hop-knob to 11. How many IBUs, you ask? How about 200! By this point my palate was destroyed, but this beer still caused an explosion of hoppiness in my mouth. It was awesome. A+++, would drink again.

Ah, the food. We didn’t realize this going in, but the point of this exercise, aside from raising money for MS, was to crush your palate. So all the foods were very spicy. Not your typical “spicy for Americans” — actual spicy, to the point that Cath couldn’t finish her wings and I was sweating over my chili. I would put that chili up against anything I’ve eaten in Thailand. My mom would have loved it. :)

As you can probably guess, the 4 highly-alcoholic beers I drank made for an interesting rest of the day. The alcohol didn’t really hit me until 30 minutes or an hour after we left, and I ended up sleeping for the rest of the day. Next time, I’ll stop at 2. Gotta respect beer.

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“2 Core 2 Duo”

July 27, 2006 at 11:45 am · Filed under Techy

Intel came out with a new processor today. Normally this is not big news, but this time they are taking the performance crown back from AMD in a big way.

I really have an itch to build a new machine with this processor. I have no need for it; my current machine is totally fine and still feels fast, even with games. But I just want one of these systems. They’re so fast. And it has been nearly 3 years since I built my current machine…

I plan to hold out until Windows Vista is released in early 2007, then build a new Core 2 Duo system with a DirectX 10 video card. Maybe for my birthday. :)

Just as an exercise, here’s what I would buy if building today:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor
Intel 975XBX motherboard
2 GB DDR2-800 RAM (probably Crucial)
320 GB SATA hard drive (probably Seagate)
NVIDIA GeForce 7900GT video card
Antec P180 case
NEC DVD-RW drive

Total cost: $1300-1400

Prices are inflated right now with the high demand for these new processors. I bet I can build a comparable system for $1000 in January.

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Happennings

July 24, 2006 at 1:14 pm · Filed under Beer, Personal, Running

Had a nice weekend. On Friday, Cath and I went to the Sunset Grill and Tap for dinner. The Sunset is known for having a tremendous beer selection (112 taps!), and they did not disappoint. We had been there previously a couple years ago, and I remember not really liking it. I think maybe we were overwhelmed by the beer selection back then, but now as true beer geeks, the selection seemed great and not too hard to understand. I had a Southern Tier Unearthly Double IPA, which was very tasty and incredibly hoppy, and a St. Bernardus ABT 12, which is reputed to be one of the great Belgian beers and totally lived up to its reputation. The St. Bernardus in particular was incredible, a very dark and flavorful Belgian beer, kind of like a dubbel but with more of an alcoholic kick (10.5%!). The food was tasty; Catherine’s seafood teriyaki was particularly good. We’ll definitely be back.

Saturday night we had Eric and his girlfriend Dorothy over for dinner. We made a tasty fettucine alfredo and some fresh corn on the cob. After dinner, we played Trivial Pursuit with a twist. See, our version of Trivial Pursuit is ridiculously difficult. If we played by the normal rules, the game would never end. So we added a new rule: If you can’t get the answer, one of the members of your team can look at the answer and then draw it, and the other member has to guess the right answer. So it’s like combining Pictionary with Trival Pursuit. This worked very well and was more difficult than you might think — how do you draw “Tony Gywnn”?

Sunday we spent organizing the apartment, and I also went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2 with my friend D. Movie was OK, entertaining, but certainly not high art. We also played poker with friends, where Cath won 5 dollars and I lost 2.

On another note, I’ve played tennis a couple of times in the past week. I really enjoy it, and it doesn’t seem to bother my knee, so I think I’m going to start playing regularly. There are a couple of people in my department who play, so maybe we can make it a regular thing. If I can’t run, maybe I can get back into tennis instead.

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This is my wife

July 13, 2006 at 10:35 pm · Filed under Personal

I’ll make a country girl out of her yet!
Cath on 4-wheeler

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“It’s a series of tubes.”

July 13, 2006 at 3:44 pm · Filed under Random

In case you don’t spend all your spare time browsing the web, Wired has a funny quote from Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska explaining the Internet:

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

He said this while arguing against Net Neutrality, which any sane person (except perhaps CEOs of telecom corporations) should support.

Tubes, eh? Who would thunk it?

Edit: The Daily Show did a funny bit about this…

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Anniversary!

July 13, 2006 at 1:16 pm · Filed under Personal

A few days ago, Cath and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary. Several years ago, I came up with the idea of cooking a special meal to celebrate Valentine’s Day. We would pick out a fancy recipe from a cookbook and then make it together at home. Set the table all fancy-like, etc. Cath was initially skeptical, but I convinced her and it turned out incredibly well. So now the “special meal” has become kind of our thing. We’ve made everything from crab cakes (awesome) to crab imperial (not so awesome) and even some non-crab-related dishes.

For our anniversary, we broke out the special meal once again. We decided to make homemade lasagna from the recipe in Joy of Cooking. The night before, we made the meatballs and sauce, and then on Monday we put it all together with the noodles and such. I made my famous bread dip (actually from Not Your Average Joe’s), and Cath prepared a nice salad. We topped it off with a 22-oz. bottle of Foonf Zane Auld Ale, a limited-edition beer brewed by Atlantic Brewing in Bar Harbor. A wonderful time was had by all. :)

Again, there should be a pic here, but it’s on my computer at home. Perhaps I will update this post later with a picture.

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Physiatrist visit

July 12, 2006 at 11:29 pm · Filed under Running

Today I had an appointment with a physiatrist for my knee. What is a physiatrist, you ask? A physiatrist is an M.D. who specializes in physical medicine and rehab. I made this appointment way back when, before I saw the orthopedist. Since I was dissatisfied with my ortho visit, I kept the appointment with the physiastrist, thinking it couldn’t hurt to get another opinion. This was definitely the right decision.

The physiatrist was a complete, 180-degree turnaround from the orthopedist. She took my concerns seriously, saw me for a good half hour, and listened to what I had to say. She says that the root cause of my problems are tight muscles in my legs, specifically my ITB and my hamstrings, and also the fact that my left arch is pretty flat. For now, I need to work on my stretching, and she also set me up for a PT appointment.

It’s not so much what she told me that makes me happy. I suspected that muscle tightness was the root cause of all this, and I was planning to work on my stretching anyway. What really pleased me about this visit was more the attitude of the doctor. When I told her about my ortho visit, she showed disdain for how he acted. She seemed interested in helping me get back on the road. Just the fact that she took me seriously and treated me as though, yes, this is a real problem made me happy.

So anyway, I did some yoga today with Catherine, and I’m also going to stretch a bit before bed. On another positive note, today is the first day since this happened that I haven’t been able to make my left knee pop. Usually I can do it by simply holding my thigh vertical and bending my knee. Today I couldn’t demonstrate it for the doctor, and I still couldn’t do it when I got home. The kneecap is still feeling weird, but this is definitely positive sign, and I’ll take what I can get. :)

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Two weeks, no running

July 6, 2006 at 1:00 pm · Filed under Running

Today makes it two weeks since my last run. My knee is still popping and seems to have stagnated in its recovery. I’ve changed up my treatment a bit in the past few days after talking to D, who had problems with tendonitis in his wrists and forearms. I’ve stopped icing since that can make the tendon/muscles tight, and I’m taking ibuprofen again to reduce the inflammation. I’ve started stretching and added several more hamstring stretches, since online articles say that hamstring tightness is usually the underlying cause of pes anserine bursitis/tendonitis.

I tried biking as my cross training, but I’m afraid it’s going to irritate the tendon and set me back in my recovery. My impression was that my knee felt worse the day after, but who knows if that is correct. But I don’t want to risk adding even more weeks to my forced layoff.

I chatted with the guy who runs the Tufts Marathon Challenge, and he was very helpful and recommended a physical therapist who works with the Tufts runners. Still waiting to hear back from the PT, but I am hopeful he can help me get back on the road.

I’ve written off this running season, which is a big bummer. We got a new issue of Runner’s World yesterday, and I can’t even read it, it just makes me depressed. There’s an article about “slackers” running a marathon, and just thinking about it makes me angry. I was doing everything right, building up mileage slowly, running consistently all winter, and yet I get injured while these bozos train for like two months and somehow complete a marathon.

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