…and land.

Last week’s missive detailed how my back was feeling sore from my jump the previous day. So it was super nice that Mom came in to visit just then. We put together the inversion table I had picked up a few weeks prior, and it eventually found its way up to my guest bedroom. The thing folds up pretty nicely, for when the guest bedroom is indeed being used to house guests.

(The table in one of its interstitial locations while we puzzled out the best place for it.)

Mom got to work on cleaning out the garage. We came across a container that made me really, really mad.

I essentially wasted over $160 on paint for my deck that wasn’t even the right color, when this was sitting here the whole time. Now I’m planning on having someone come in and rip up the deck and replace with a composite material because the color is so bad, but I could’ve saved all that expense by just taking a gander through the garage. Oh well.

The end result of the garage cleanup job was fantastic though. Sadly missing a ‘before’ shot.

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Stopped by this awesome little ice cream shop in the middle of a new development in Kirkland, with very inventive flavors. Mattie and John will love it.

The next day Mom and I took most of the day off and went exploring Ballard.

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On the way back we stopped by Target and Home Goods to get a few things. Mom and I had a good groove, vetoing various items until we got a few options loaded into the car. Ended up playing a house-sized game of Tetris trying to find space for everything. Reminds me of that scene from the Prime Directive novel where Kirk is stacking cargo. (That description doesn’t do the scene any kind of justice, it was actually cool.)

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That evening, after shuffling everything around, we moved the recliners back to movie-theater mode and enjoyed 1989’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Excellent blast from the past.

I made room to have fun on Wednesday by moving all my afternoon meetings to Thursday. The end result was six and a half hours of back-to-back meetings from 9:30am to 4pm, when I’d get picked up by Mom so I could ferry her back to the airport for her flight to Davis.

Construction continues on our new office building just next door.

The wind was ferocious when Mom picked me up, and on the way back to the house we spotted the windsurfers that Mom mentioned in her AnderSync.

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It was pretty quiet once I got back to the place. The next day was a company-wide day off, and I’d previously arranged to head down to the drop-zone for a half-day lesson on packing parachutes. That stuff is a workout! My first pack job was under close supervision; my second pack job was less closely watched, but close enough for the instructor to give his thumbs-up of approval, so off I went to solo-jump with a rig I’d packed myself. Deployment was smooth as can be (after a nervous ~5 seconds of free-falling through low cloud cover), and I also managed to land on my feet, with no stress to knee or back.

Went back and re-packed my chute, much more confidently but also with no supervision so I didn’t actually end up jumping it again (instead taking it back to the packing corner and undoing much of my work, lest someone come across it and think it had been packed by someone competent). Figured there was time for one more jump, and the first one didn’t hurt a bit. Went up with a coach to practice more mid-air docking skills, and ended up losing my shoe after it came loose during the dive out.

Also, my landing was not quite as nice the second time around. I think I need to focus on getting my brakes flared to 100% before I get to 10′ off the ground, as it’s taking me too long to do so. Also, during last week’s jump I made a point to practice the Parachute Landing Fall maneuver, to great effect. This time, though I mentally recited the steps, the ground sped up too fast and I ended up in a crouch-landing position, not so good for back or knees.

Fortunately I don’t think I did any serious damage there. But my foot immediately felt off, as if I might’ve broken a bone in there (though I’ve never broken a bone so I’m not sure why I thought it might be that). I wrapped things up at the drop zone and headed to a nearby hospital with a walk-in clinic. Made it with 15 minutes to spare before closing, which made for a very time-efficient visit, with a humorous exchange with the nurse explaining why I had only one shoe on.

The results came back clean as far as breaks or fractures go. Likely some soft tissue damage. I’m hopeful I’ll still be able to jump along with Mattie and John when they come up next week.

Yesterday I headed to a game night and, upon fetching popcorn stuff out of the passenger-side door, noticed odd patterns in the reflection of some glass. Closer inspection revealed that Tesla had failed to remove a piece of glass protection film.

I can’t get at the whole thing myself, so if the car ever goes in for service again I’ll ask them to peel that thing right off.

With credit to Malcolm Reynolds.

So this last Tuesday my new ward’s bishop came by to visit. I got the place all cleaned up to make a good impression, then ate some brown rice dinner while I waited.

He came by and I invited him in, and we got to chatting and he was here to extend a calling: Young Men’s Advisor, focusing on the Priest’s Quorum. This ward has interesting demographics – there are ~13 kids in nursery, and it tapers down from there, to where there’s a grand total of two Deacons and three Priests. So it’ll be interesting to see what we can do here, especially until they fully lift social distancing requirements. (Washington recently came out saying “let’s wait a while until the vaccination rate gets a bit higher.”)

Later that evening, after the bishop left, I happened to catch my reflection in a mirror, and saw a couple of dried out grains of brown rice adhered dead center on my shirt. Awesome first impression there.

Several evenings this week I’ve found excuse to be out and about, and I took the opportunity to try some new restaurants. Found a place super near my house that’s always looked a bit sketch, but turns out it’s great and serves spam musubi, so, that’s awesome.

Wandering around a relatively new development in Kirkland I found an awesome burger place and an awesome sunset. Photo of course doesn’t do it justice.

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This Friday we had a short work event where we put a wood puzzle together that’d been shipped to us a week or so previously. Something to take the place of events we might’ve done together if the office were open. On the one hand, it was relatively low-key. On the other hand, the thought did cross my mind while we were gluing pieces together, “They’re actually paying us for this? Ridiculous.”

In any case, it turned out pretty nice.

Two movies I’d recommend y’all catch, both on Plex. One of them is an edited version of The Big Short. If you enjoyed Margin Call, I think you’ll like this. It’s also about the 2008 housing crisis, with a bit more of a star-studded cast.

The second movie is Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man from 2002. The CGI is certainly dated, as is Tobey Maguire’s acting, and that’s all part of the appeal. Not that Tobey’s acting is bad or anything, quite the opposite, just that you wouldn’t see this sort of thing in modern superhero movies. Overall just a fun well-put-together movie.

Now to explain the title of this blog post. Yes, I tore my meniscus the last time I jumped, and there’s some coolness factor to being able to say I did that while skydiving. But as it turns out it was for a really dumb reason, a very noob mistake in my landing technique. I read up and learned how to do hard landings properly, and was feeling like my back wouldn’t break at the drop of a hat or anything, so I decided to give it a go this weekend.

I had a thing at 3pm which was a two-hour drive away from the drop zone, so I rushed out at 8:30am to arrive by 10am, giving me time for plenty of jumps. However, when I arrived, it turned out that Google Weather lied about the cloud cover. It was quite overcast, and remained so for a long while. 1pm rolled around and I was getting ready to throw in the towel, when the call went out that the cloud cover was breaking up, and folks should get themselves geared up and ready to go. I’d just be fashionably late to my 3pm.

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There’s a rule when learning to jump, which is that if you haven’t jumped within the last 30 days, you need a “recurrency jump”, where you have a coach accompany you on the way down. Also, while learning, there are a number of jumps you do with a coach that teach you how to “dock” mid-air with another jumper. So I killed two birds with one stone and checked off the first of these learn-how-to-dock jumps.

Funny incident on the way up in the plane, stemming from the physics of air pressure. The cabin is not pressurized at all, so any pent-up gas tends to find its way out of whatever orifice is handy. Someone let out quite the stinker, and everyone noticed. To fix the situation my coach got up and – well before jump altitude of 13,500 feet, while the plane was still climbing – opened the jump door, only half-way, enough to circulate and clear the air. This drop zone certainly features a pretty chill crowd.

Given my overall build, I fall very fast relative to other jumpers, but on our way down we managed to dock a couple times before 6,000 feet, where no more maneuvers are performed. At 5,500 feet I broke off and tracked away from the formation, and at 4,000 feet I deployed my chute. At this my back made very clear that it wasn’t super happy with what had just gone down, but it wasn’t gonna punish me, just yet anyways.

Upon landing, I tried out the “parachute landing fall” technique, which I feel like they should’ve drilled into us earlier, would’ve saved me an MRI and surgery, but oh well. It worked precisely as advertised, landed hard but got right back up and didn’t stress my knee at all.

Turned in my chute, got all checked out, and headed up to a friend’s graduation party. It was held in her friend’s sister’s back yard. I was wandering back and inspecting their tree house, when one of the residents, a 5-year-old girl, walked up and asked me what I was doing.

“Admiring your treehouse.”

“It’s a tree deck.”

“Oh, my mistake.”

“Want to watch me hang on these monkey bars?” (Hanging below the deck.)

“Sure!”

[At this I marveled at children’s weight to grip-strength ratio, and lamented that I can’t do monkey bars anymore.]

“Hey, what do you think about the idea of a pulley on this thing?”

“What’s a pulley?”

“I used to have one on my treehouse. It’s a rope that goes over a wheel, and you can use it to pull up snacks and stuff.”

[At this the lightbulb turned on, her eyes widened in delight and I could see her envisioning how much cooler the tree deck would be with a pulley.]

“Yes I want a pulley! It’d be sooo coool. Can you ask my dad?”

“Haha, no, you ask him.”

“Pleeease?”

“Nooo, you’ll have to ask.”

“Ok.”

She then ran off to ask her dad, who was standing outside. I made myself inconspicuous, lest I come across as putting dangerous ideas in children’s heads.

The rest of the evening was fun, with the eventful episode where I got to climb a tree and rescue a cat. Much fun.

This morning my back was even more explicit. It did not like yesterday’s adventures. I’m thinking the inversion table I picked up and will put together with Mom will help considerably. And there will always be drugs.

Made even more of a great first impression this morning by forgetting to zoom in to Young Men’s after the Sacrament Meeting where I was sustained in my new calling. Would’ve had such a great intro too (“Sorry I’m recovering in bed from skydiving yesterday”). Will have to meet-n-greet next week, or during this week’s youth activity which I have no idea about yet.

Alright, signing off to pick up Mom from the airport. See ya!

My team members are regularly posting about how they’ll be temporarily unavailable because they or a family member are heading in for their second dose of the Covid vaccine. Nice to see Washington catching up with Utah, where I did some vaccine tourism to hop ahead a little bit. It didn’t feel life-changing or anything, but it is nice to be able to have small group gatherings and be all, “We’re all vaccinated? Cool, masks off.”

One of my favorite memories of the excursion was working with Hayden to make his idea for the Mattie / Isabella graduation game a reality, and helping Dad adapt it for the Mattie / John party.

Also the little mini-road-trip Mattie and I went on out to the skydiving facility, only to find it closed due to high winds. Didn’t realize that was something you need to watch out for. In the words of Jayne Cobb, now I know that.

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We got to see some helicopters train in transporting fire suppressant though, which was fun.

I tried and failed to bring the smart switches back under Alexa control, but we’ll figure that out eventually.

It was way cool seeing the trees in the side yard start to come down. At first I was as sentimental as ever on the trees going away, but one look at the mountains behind the first tree to go down and I knew the rest of the trees along that fence line needed to go as well. Looking forward to seeing the end result next time I’m there!

After this lovely stop-over at home base we siblings headed off to San Diego for a getaway. We were originally going to rent a car but decided to go pure-ride-hailing at the last second, and that turned out to be a great decision. No parking or gas to worry about, and our place was fairly close to groceries and other food.

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A couple days into the trip, I was minding my own business when my back decided that 20 months was too long to go without a relapse of the slipped disc issue. I spent all of Sunday indoors, taking it easy. Monday I nearly did the same, but I really didn’t want to miss out on sibling fun time, so I decided to just grin and bear it, and had a great time looking around the tide pools. It just so happened that the place we settled on for lunch was like 5 minutes’ walk from an Urgent Care, which itself was 5 minutes’ walk from a pharmacy. I was able to get in and get some real good drugs, including a direct shot of an anti-inflammatory that got me into great shape in short order – I was basically back to full strength that evening, and was able to enjoy the rest of the vacation just fine.

After I arrived back in Seattle though, recovery proved stubborn. More than once I woke up in pain during the night and had to pile up pillows on the couch to stretch out on. After a bit I realized it was my bed’s memory foam mattress topper that was to blame. Once I shifted to sleeping in the guest bedroom, with its more standard mattress, I’ve been sleeping so much better.

Our office is piloting a program where you can opt-in to come into the office on specific days, and they’ll give you a temporary desk on your assigned day. Tried it out on Thursday and Friday, and had a blast. Got to have some meaty whiteboarding sessions and an actual team lunch. Also got to try out some new buildings that had been finished during the last year.

This weekend was a real test of my recovery. On Friday I went on a date that involved a “scavenger hunt”, and it wasn’t clear until I was on the date that it involved parking somewhere in Seattle and walking around to various landmarks. Had fun, and was able to make it through everything before I started feeling it.

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The next couple days I was playing tour guide to friends of a friend. They were in town and had never seen Seattle before, and my friend Kyle asked if I’d be able to show them the sights. It was actually nice that I’d gone on that walk-around date the night before since I hadn’t been into Seattle in a long while.

Before I picked them up though, I headed into a Relax the Back store in Bellevue to check out their inversion table offerings. They had one that was quite nice, with a massage-table-like hole in the table allowing face-down inversions. Should note that they advise against full 90° inversions, recommending more mild 15-30° angles.

Whereas normally I’d describe the feeling in my back as angry and red, hanging on the table it was replaced by a cool blue. Yes please, more of that thank you.

The table’s in a box in my garage, awaiting assembly. Mom will be in town this Sunday, we’ll have a good time with it 🙂

So, that errand wrapped up, I headed off to pick up these friends of friends and begin the tour. On the way over to Seattle they naturally asked me questions about the Tesla. When they asked me what it was called, and I said Shadowfax, they both busted up cackling, and I knew I was in good company. One of them also has very strong opinions on urban sprawl and bike transportation infrastructure, so bonus Hayden points.

We did Pike Place Market, the Chihuly glass museum, Monorail, Ballard Locks, and Hawaiian food near Alki Beach. There was a massive container ship blocking most of the view of the city, but everyone still had a great time.

The next day after church I picked them up and took them through Whidbey Island, hitting the usual stops. Much better weather this time around than when I took Mom and Dad through in October 🙂

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So I was very heartened when at the end of that weekend of excitement, my back wasn’t screaming in pain. In fact, I actually biked to a nearby restaurant for dinner today. I was huffing and puffing way more than was appropriate, but I’ve been pretty sedentary for some time so it stands to reason.

Another thing keeping me literally grounded was my knee, which ever since my last skydive has been unwilling to completely support my weight without letting me know something’s up. I was finally able to get an MRI looked at this week and it appears I’ve gone and torn my meniscus, a cushion between bones in the knee.

There isn’t supposed to be any white in that black area. The tiny thread of white shows fluid that’s made its way into the tear. There are no blood vessels to the area, so the tear will not heal. The torn portion isn’t moving along with the rest of the meniscus.

The doctor presented two options: physical therapy or surgery. As the tear will not heal, physical therapy is just about making the knee as strong as it can be.

The surgical option involves getting in there and snipping out the torn portion of meniscus, allowing the rest of it to move around more freely. As there are no blood vessels in there, the meniscus will not grow back. However, the doctor indicated that beyond standard risks associated with any surgery, this procedure isn’t terribly dangerous, and in fact is somewhat common-ish for people who are involved in rough sports. I’d be able to walk out of the operating room the same day – though I’d be pretty high from the general anesthesia.

So I opted for surgery next month, after Mattie and John’s visit – which I’m very much looking forward to.

Till next time!