Winter finally arrived in the DC area this past week. We had two snow events. I use “events” instead of “storms” because the amount of snow fall, in total, was no more than 3 or 4 inches. I didn’t even bother to break out the shovel and my mega shovel continues to gather dust under the deck.
Alas, the snow did make a mess of the roads and bike trails around here. And with temperatures below freezing, I’ve put my outdoor riding on hold, spending most of my wheel time on Big Nellie in the basement, spinning and reading. I’ve knocked off four books so far, covering a variety of topics from fascism to poop. (I am not making this up.)
While off the bike, I’ve watched a bunch of movies and miniseries on TV. To be honest, it’s been a lean viewing season so far.
Every Christmas my in-laws send us a jigsaw puzzle. Usually, we complete them before our daughter heads back to school but this year not so much. She and her mother worked on this 2000-piece monster for two weeks before I took over for a while. For the last few days my wife has returned to the dining room and we’re finally starting to see some progress. My guess is we have 600 or 700 pieces to go.
One of my sisters told me she sent me a “fruitcake” for a Christmas. She was kidding. What she sent was a book of New York Times crossword puzzles. I have plowed through 125 of them. I was doing okay for the first 100, solving 97 of them, but they seem to be getting harder and harder.
When I was in school taking math classes, I would often hit a wall when trying to solve homework problems. My freshman year in college, I spent a couple of hours one Saturday banging my head on my desk futilely trying to solve a calculus problem. I gave up and went to a party. The next morning, with a mighty hangover, I rolled out of bed to see my calculus homework on my desk, tormenting me. I picked up a pencil and BOOM, solved it. No problemo. The same kind of thing happens with jigsaws puzzles and crosswords. Whenever I hit a wall, I just walk away. When I come back, my brain seems to have re-wired itself and I start making progress again.
While all this nonsense is going on, I continue to fight the battle of my aging body. I have been doing back exercises six times per week. One version is based on the Stu Gilman Big Three exercises for strengthening the core and lateral muscles. Oddly, this does more good for my riding than for alleviating my back symptoms. Every other day I do the stenosis exercises that I had been doing from 2022 to 2023. They help some but, to be honest, so does sitting down.
Standing and walking with lumbar spinal stenosis usually means I lean forward. This, combined with my bike riding posture, means I have a curve to my upper back. So I have added exercises to try to straighten things out. I use a pillow or a foam roller, positioned across my shoulder blades. Then I lean back and just hang there. It may not solve the curvature problem, but it feels good.
I have also started to go for walks, something I have been meaning to do for a while. I have to use a cane to unweight my spine. My first walk was two miles. After a mile, my back actually started to feel okay. My next walk was over three miles, with a stop at the bank along the way. I’ve since upped my distance to 3.5 miles. That’s about as much as my back can take. For now.
Part of my walking problems stems from spending so many hours on a bike. It’s as if my body forgot how to walk properly. The first walk, in addition to featuring spinal pain, was tiring. After a few more excursions, however, I don’t feel much fatigue at all. Progress.
I am hoping that lessons I learned from my running days will apply to my walks. When I first started running I couldn’t do 1/2 mile. After a few more runs, I could do a mile. Then a few weeks later I could do three. Then five. And so on. Each barrier seemed to be my max. Then, somehow my body adjusted and I’d run a little farther. When training for a marathon I once ran 21 miles and thought I was going to die. I felt physically ill at the finish. A week later I ran the same distance not only did I feel fine, but the last mile I ran was faster than the first. So I hope that in a few weeks my body will start adapting and walking will be more comfortable.
Time to go work on the jigsaw puzzle.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 
From fascism to poop is a pretty short distance.
The point of the poop book is that poop is part of a life sustaining cycle. Fascism kinda works the opposite way.
From years as a plumber and a hospital health care worker, I have lots of experience with poop. Fascists tend to be full of it. The cycle is the life-sustaining part of it. If you’re full of it, that doesn’t help.
Viewing: if you can find a source, you might enjoy “Slow Horses” (I think it was on Apple TV). Great writing, interesting characters (especially the one played by Gary Oldman), reasonable (by television fiction standards) plots.
Snow: my sister in law has a shovel (I liked your term “analog snowblower”) like yours and swears by it, except that after repeated uses in a short time the snow piles in the dump area get unmanageably high. I’ll stay with the power equipment for now, thanks all the same. I actually used it on Tuesday (we gout about 3-4 inches) and again Friday (another 4-5 inches). Having numerous excellent and unreasonably supportive neighbors, I tend to do all of the sidewalks and most of the driveways in our court so the machine’s a good approach and allows me to do a public service as a thank you for their continued tolerance and forbearance.
“Sleep on it” is a real thing. I’ve known of many people, myself included, who find as you do that stepping away from a problem with which you’ve saturated yourself often proves to be the gateway to finding the solution. My dad got to where he relied on that technique, when he was doing advanced math in pursuit of his MS in mechanical engineering. He’d belt himself into a chair at the kitchen table (the belt was a precaution against falling asleep on the table) and work problems intot he wee hours. When he couldn’t stave off sleep any longer he’d go to bed, and woke up a few hours later refreshed and with the path forward in mind. He said it scared him to be reliant on that method- what if it didn’t come through for him sometime?- but it evidently worked well enough, and often enough, that he got through.
I do the same thing with crossword puzzles, though I don’t generally reach the heights of the NYT challenge. Chapeau to you for taking on that challenge.
Walking: the more I walk the more I end up hobbling, so I avoid it.
Speaking of puzzles, have you tried Squardle? It’s kind of a Boggle/wordfind kind of thing. I like it because, if I am getting nowhere, I just turn it off for a little while and then come back to it.
That’s a new one for me.
I just tried Squardle. Addictive. And I stink at it.
I highly doubt that you stink. Today’s puzzle was the hardest of the week. Tomorrow, at 6am EST, they release the new daily puzzle. It will be the easiest one of the week.
If you do the “special” puzzles, some of them are monstrously huge and take forever. I just do the daily 16 letter version. I usually do it on the bus. This is bad for my reading, but good for my sanity.