Scary things...

A scary thing is watching a 20 ton garbage truck coming just too fast up our car's tail.

A bit scarier was the fact that we were on a sheet of ice, on a mild downhill slope.

A bit scarier was that we were at the stop sign for an intersection with Colorado state highway 52, where the traffic was going anywhere from 50-70, even on this snowy, cold morning.

What made my heart stop, though was, right after John pumped the brakes to let the truck know that he'd better slow down, seeing the truck immediately fishtailed to the left. The whole back end of the truck covered the whole of the on-coming lane and the lane the truck originally was in.

Luckily, no one turned off 52 onto the road.

Thoughtfully, John executed his exit strategy and nudged the Passat, which was on ice, to the right, onto the shoulder of the highway.

The 20 ton garbage truck barely managed to straighten out in time to stop RIGHT where we had been stopped. It slid right by us, mostly along it's original trajectory. If John hadn't moved us, we would have probably been hit and pushed into the 50-70 mph traffic.

As we carefully pulled out into traffic, going the way we wanted to do, I saw, in our rearview mirror, the truck pulling out, and it was going far, far slower than when we'd originally seen it. It's good to know that some people can learn.

Scary things...

A scary thing is watching a 20 ton garbage truck coming just too fast up our car's tail.

A bit scarier was the fact that we were on a sheet of ice, on a mild downhill slope.

A bit scarier was that we were at the stop sign for an intersection with Colorado state highway 52, where the traffic was going anywhere from 50-70, even on this snowy, cold morning.

What made my heart stop, though was, right after John pumped the brakes to let the truck know that he'd better slow down, seeing the truck immediately fishtailed to the left. The whole back end of the truck covered the whole of the on-coming lane and the lane the truck originally was in.

Luckily, no one turned off 52 onto the road.

Thoughtfully, John executed his exit strategy and nudged the Passat, which was on ice, to the right, onto the shoulder of the highway.

The 20 ton garbage truck barely managed to straighten out in time to stop RIGHT where we had been stopped. It slid right by us, mostly along it's original trajectory. If John hadn't moved us, we would have probably been hit and pushed into the 50-70 mph traffic.

As we carefully pulled out into traffic, going the way we wanted to do, I saw, in our rearview mirror, the truck pulling out, and it was going far, far slower than when we'd originally seen it. It's good to know that some people can learn.

Far more Mundane

Jet's Birthday has been an on-going celebration for the last week or so, and will probably continue through parts of the coming weekend. He's having a blast, and getting a present from some other out-of-state relative pretty much every week.

Train tracks, an easel, two trucks that can be taken apart and put together with a battery powered power tool (yes, from Alex), books galore, a milk tank train car, lots of great clothing he can grow into and a dragon shirt he just loves. Apart from all that was a book that my sister made for him, on Dad's XOS iMac, of his second day at the beach. It's wonderful. Filled with language that he can understand pretty well, and lots and lots of pictures of his day out there, including all kinds of whimsical stuff as well. Jet opened it and peered in and said, with wide eyes, "Me!"

Hee.

He loves it, wants it read to him every night since. He also likes Chewy Louie, about a puppy that chewed EVERYTHING. Reminded John and I of Fezzik, tremendously. iMac farms the books out to myPublisher.com. So us poor Windoze and Solaris folks can do it, too, though we have to organize it ourselves.

On Tuesday he made it to swim class and got a one-on-one private lesson as no one else in the class of six showed up and both he and his teacher had a blast. That was cool after the previous crying session.

Work's been busy as heck. I guess it always is.

I made a conscious decision to not lean on my massage therapist any more. I have a bunch of problem points in my arms, shoulders, lower back, knees, and tension points all over my head. The problem is that I'd go to CeLena every other week and expect her to just fix it all, and then continue the bad practices I was doing. Stuff like working without breaks, not stretching enough, not getting nearly enough exercise, and things like that. All things I was just too lazy to do myself and so I just expected her to straighten everything out every two weeks, which she, obligingly, did.

But exercise, breaks, stretching, and all that have far better long-term consequences than just getting all the fatigue acids out of of muscles that have been clenched too tight, and I'm definitely NOT knocking massage therapy. I think that I was just leaning on it too much. So, since the new year, I've tried to work out *twice* every week by doing something aerobic and then something with weights, make more breaks, and do least some stretching every other day. I've managed the workouts, and also not getting too down on myself when I miss a week because of other things, but making it up other days. I still ache. But I feel better about the efforts I've been making, and don't feel like QUITE as much of a lazy ass.

That's been cool.

It's also kind of weird contemplating the fact that for President's Day weekend I'll be away from John and Jet for the first time in... hmm... two years and three months, as the last three months of the pregnancy I couldn't be more than an hour away from a hospital. So it's been a while since I've traveled on my own. I celebrated by going to eBags and getting myself a cheap messenger bag to hold gaming equipment (yes, it's my old annual pilgrimage to DunDraCon). But mostly I'm a bit apprehensive of the whole thing. I've mostly weaned Jet. I'll probably have to pump once a day while I'm gone just because *I* can't completely let go of nursing Jet, yet, though he's mostly there with weaning, especially around other people. But it'll also be the first time I'm out with adults All The Time for a length of time.

I wonder if I've completely forgotten how to interact. *grin*

We'll see. I'll also have to keep up my workout program while away, which actually shouldn't be all that hard as the hotel has a workout room and pool which the gamers don't seem to use that much. Hee.

Far more Mundane

Jet's Birthday has been an on-going celebration for the last week or so, and will probably continue through parts of the coming weekend. He's having a blast, and getting a present from some other out-of-state relative pretty much every week.

Train tracks, an easel, two trucks that can be taken apart and put together with a battery powered power tool (yes, from Alex), books galore, a milk tank train car, lots of great clothing he can grow into and a dragon shirt he just loves. Apart from all that was a book that my sister made for him, on Dad's XOS iMac, of his second day at the beach. It's wonderful. Filled with language that he can understand pretty well, and lots and lots of pictures of his day out there, including all kinds of whimsical stuff as well. Jet opened it and peered in and said, with wide eyes, "Me!"

Hee.

He loves it, wants it read to him every night since. He also likes Chewy Louie, about a puppy that chewed EVERYTHING. Reminded John and I of Fezzik, tremendously. iMac farms the books out to myPublisher.com. So us poor Windoze and Solaris folks can do it, too, though we have to organize it ourselves.

On Tuesday he made it to swim class and got a one-on-one private lesson as no one else in the class of six showed up and both he and his teacher had a blast. That was cool after the previous crying session.

Work's been busy as heck. I guess it always is.

I made a conscious decision to not lean on my massage therapist any more. I have a bunch of problem points in my arms, shoulders, lower back, knees, and tension points all over my head. The problem is that I'd go to CeLena every other week and expect her to just fix it all, and then continue the bad practices I was doing. Stuff like working without breaks, not stretching enough, not getting nearly enough exercise, and things like that. All things I was just too lazy to do myself and so I just expected her to straighten everything out every two weeks, which she, obligingly, did.

But exercise, breaks, stretching, and all that have far better long-term consequences than just getting all the fatigue acids out of of muscles that have been clenched too tight, and I'm definitely NOT knocking massage therapy. I think that I was just leaning on it too much. So, since the new year, I've tried to work out *twice* every week by doing something aerobic and then something with weights, make more breaks, and do least some stretching every other day. I've managed the workouts, and also not getting too down on myself when I miss a week because of other things, but making it up other days. I still ache. But I feel better about the efforts I've been making, and don't feel like QUITE as much of a lazy ass.

That's been cool.

It's also kind of weird contemplating the fact that for President's Day weekend I'll be away from John and Jet for the first time in... hmm... two years and three months, as the last three months of the pregnancy I couldn't be more than an hour away from a hospital. So it's been a while since I've traveled on my own. I celebrated by going to eBags and getting myself a cheap messenger bag to hold gaming equipment (yes, it's my old annual pilgrimage to DunDraCon). But mostly I'm a bit apprehensive of the whole thing. I've mostly weaned Jet. I'll probably have to pump once a day while I'm gone just because *I* can't completely let go of nursing Jet, yet, though he's mostly there with weaning, especially around other people. But it'll also be the first time I'm out with adults All The Time for a length of time.

I wonder if I've completely forgotten how to interact. *grin*

We'll see. I'll also have to keep up my workout program while away, which actually shouldn't be all that hard as the hotel has a workout room and pool which the gamers don't seem to use that much. Hee.