On Monday morning I landed back in Seattle after spending a week-and-a-bit galavanting around Europe with the folks. Saw some awesome sights – feel free to check out the full album here; below I’ve pasted an abridged selection (click to expand).

Upon my return I caught a Lyft directly to the office, as there were a couple meetings I wanted to attend in-person. I did not realize, upon returning home that evening, that it would be another five days before I’d feel the sun on my face again.

Tuesday was just decompression, and I managed to make do with what food remained on-hand – bagels in the fridge, chicken I’d frozen before the trip, that sort of thing. Not uncommon to spend a day indoors – I’d gotten The Office Itch on the plane ride over and was now working through season 6. But on Wednesday morning, at the tail end of exercise, I bent over to put a kettlebell down and tweaked my back in a way I hadn’t done since 2021. I told my trainer we were done for the day, and most likely the week.

For the next several days I was thankful that I’d invested in a new bed with a power-recline base, as that was where I spent most of my time. Scrounged for a few cans of pineapple chunks and worked through the rest of the frozen dinners I had stashed.

While this was all going down I remained stuck on European time, waking up at 2-3am and not falling asleep till 8-9pm. The one benefit was that I managed to catch a few live games from the World Chess Championship match, being played in Kazakhstan. Riveting (mostly sarcasm, though there were a couple of intense moments that were fun to watch commentated).

I managed, somehow, to spend nearly every waking moment watching a screen. So it was a cathartic experience when I’d had enough on Saturday morning and stumbled outside to the most gorgeous day imaginable. In the shade the air was skin temperature, slight breeze, not a cloud in the sky. Just sat on my back patio for like half an hour taking it all in. Stood out front facing the sun, gently sandblasting the cruft from behind my eyes.

My back is more-or-less recovered now, and I took the opportunity to head out and replenish my foodstuffs. I plan on being pretty paranoid during workouts for the next while, but I’m pretty sure I can go in to work. There’s a team pickleball tournament that I’ll have to wait a bit on, though – my next opponent is apparently very good. Elsewhere in the bracket is a fellow BYU graduate that’s big on the game, and it will be quite cool if we manage to each make it to the finals.

Health-wise I now just need to figure out how to get my wrist to heal after a sprain I got skiing six weeks ago. Flexing the wrist backwards is what hurts, so that’s put the kibosh on push-ups and makes me carefully consider how to get out of chairs. Really hoping this doesn’t turn out like the ankle injury I got skydiving in 2021, which will likely never fully heal.

Speaking of which. I went skiing for the first time since 2017! I skied exactly twice since moving to Washington, before suffering the herniated disc in six-ish years ago. After doing personal training for the past year I was feeling pretty confident, and got some friends together to hit the slopes in March. Turns out that these people ski, like double-black-diamond stuff. Looking back, I suspect they were a bit trepidatious about me saying how excited I was to get back to the sport after so long away. Would I just be a drag, stick to green-square slopes, etcetera. But they and I were pleasantly surprised that it was like riding a bike. Even managed to do a few black-diamond runs, and one double-black that I accidentally ended up on, though I did need some coaching on slowly navigating my way down. I did have one pretty epic fall though, on a real steep hill where I tumbled and both my skis came undone. I flipped around on my stomach to catch them, else they would’ve slid past me and down the hill. I figured I’d eventually just come to a stop, but no, my speed was great enough – and the snow slippery enough – that I wasn’t getting any traction. Must’ve fallen for a good 20 seconds before I spread my arms and legs and eventually slowed.

It was my last run of the day where I opted for a more daring-looking route that I fell on my wrist and sprained it. Didn’t stop me from heading back to a different resort the next week for some night skiing. Funny story about that. The week prior, on my earlier ski trip, I’d stuffed my gloves into my coat before hopping on the bus from the parking lot to the hill. After disembarking and heading up, I noticed my gloves were gone. Shoot. I backtracked and found one of my gloves on the stairs leading up from the bus stop. No sign of the other one. Might not have even left the bus. I resorted to using an old beanie I’d found in my snow pants pocket as a makeshift glove for my left hand, which I managed somehow not to lose across my falls.

So on the subsequent week’s ski trip, I was trudging up the hill from the parking lot when I came across a glove. A left-handed glove. Just sitting there on the side of the walkway, with nary a passerby claiming it. I passed it by, figuring I’d just go buy a matching set of gloves on-site. Turns out though that they were all out. I found myself needing to return to my car anyways, so I resolved that if it was still there on my way back, I’d just take it as a sign that it was meant to be. Sure enough, that’s how I ended up with a mis-matching set of gloves.

A couple weeks after that I found myself at James and Karen’s place for post-General-Conference dinner. I brought some steak I’d prepared for a dinner party the evening prior but which had seen markedly fewer attendees than I had expected. Went quite well with the paninis.

Making absolutely no attempt to keep things chronological, I had Mom come up for a few days in early March. We had some awesome food, saw some very interesting Oscar-nominated short films, and caught a performance of Cirque du Soleil.

Final anecdote, I made my way to Vancouver for a spell. Was there for a work conference but, as Monday was a holiday, I ended up having a few Seattle friends that happened to be in the area, so we met up and had some fun.

And I think that just about covers it. Till next time.