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Month: July 2017

this stinks

this stinks

i’ve had a sniffing/clearing of the throat problem for many years, which i attributed to allergies (being slightly allergic to cats is my guess). and then this past april i had this nasty cold, during which i lost my sense of smell. i can only guess that the cold, along with seasonal allergy season kicking in, kind of did my sinuses in, because i never 100% got back my sniffer. lilac season? i had to stick my nose way in those blossoms to get a whiff. everything i ate tasted not quite as good because it just didn’t have the smell to go with it.
so i went to the doctor at the beginning of july to see what was going on. she looked in my face holes and said everything looked good except my nose looked a little “boggy”. she prescribed me flonase and sent me off. 
i think i was a little enthusiastic on the flonase. you’re not supposed to sniff it way up there, like a normal person does when she has a runny nose. nope nope nope. and one night, i involuntarily sniffed the heck out of the flonase because it was like having a running nose. ugh! well, right after that, i decided to put on this lotion that i loved the smell of, and it smelled AWFUL. like wash off my hands because i couldn’t stand it awful. then all night, all i did was smell this awful lotion smell because it was imprinted on my steroid-laden brain or something. that was about 2-3 weeks ago. i stopped using flonase.
slowly it sort of went away, but this past week it came back with a vengeance. everything i eat that has some semblance of sugar or carb smells like the awful burnt varation of grapefruit brulee lotion i used to love. now i’m wondering if there’s something else going on. i’m going to give it another couple weeks to see if it clears up. in the meantime, i’m using a netipot to hopefully clear out my sinuses and breathing through my mouth a lot more.
the internet tells me i have a brain tumor, of course. 

getting ready

getting ready

i guess i’m doing RAGNAR! ok! and NOT the van version! we’re doing the northwoods trail ragnar race in wisconsin, so we’ll camp in one spot and then run three loops each, a 7, 4, and 3 mile loop. it’s actually 15.2 miles total.
i got my trail running shoes, and this weekend i’m going to start getting out to the st john’s trails (if my stomach cooperates). i’m not entirely sure i’ll be good at this. i wonder if i can bring some trail stick things? i need to buy some anyway for my lake superior trail hike eventually.
ugh! check out that elevation change on the red loop! ack! 
Screen shot 2017-07-28 at 9.46.23 PM

take it back

take it back

have you heard about randy bryce? (aka @ironstache) he’s a wisconsin ironworker taking on paul ryan in the 2018 midterms, and i think he’s onto something. 

his background and platforms hearken back to old-school democrat – think actual democratic-farmer-labor party. he’s a veteran, iron worker, and a unionmember, not a millionaire or someone with grand business interests. his kid goes to public school. his brother is a police officer and his sister a teacher. if there were any way to unify the democratic party and get back to its roots and really capture the base they’ve lost – the salt of the earth – i feel this is the perfect opportunity. 
another thing i think the party could do to ruffle feathers: take back the flag. the US flag has been co-opted by the republican party. if you wear a flag, wave a flag in your yard, or have a flag sticker on your vehicle, i automatically think “republican.” now, i am the first person to say that a flag does not define a country. (it’s the people who define a country.) one of the more profound things i’ve read was on fark (remember fark?): “if america’s so great, we shouldn’t even need a flag.” but if the democratic party started waving the flag at all the protests and other events, in their yards, on their bumpers, maybe, just maybe, those wavering people on the fence might say, hm, i guess democrats are patriotic after all. 
so, there’s my plan for an america that doesn’t include a nuclear-weapons-wielding egomaniac at its helm: go back to our roots and take back the flag.