A Most Hokey Update, or: “All I hear is Burn…”

blghowdydoughnutsWell, Howdy Doughnuts everyone!

It’s been about two and a half weeks since I last surfaced, but don’t think for a moment that I’ve forgotten about you. Almost the opposite, actually. While it’s true that my four-part Disneyland recap kind of blew any remaining writing instincts clear out of the studio, there’s been a metric bushel of ideas bouncing around my head that I wanted to bring to the blog.

And then… it happened.

I wasn’t completely forthcoming about Disneyland. On my last night in California, after a lovely fried chicken dinner at the Plaza Inn right off Main Street, I started noticing that I wasn’t feeling… right. Kind of cold, light-headed, almost a little weak-ish. I noticed I was feeling slightly feverish as the night wore on, so we turned in early and got ready to leave the next morning.

By the time I was on the flight home, the fever was full-borne awful. I always run a little bit cold, but I was shivering like a human icicle while burning up like a raging firestorm. The weird thing was… there were no other symptoms. No runny nose, congestion, joint or muscle aches, sore throats, nausea, stomach issues… nothing. Just a fever and its ensuing fatigue. We made it home, I unpacked, changed, took some Tylenol and hopped into bed.

The next morning the fever had mostly broken, but Phase 2 had begun: a full-on ulcerative colitis flare-up of the worst kind. We’re talking cold sweats, achy joints, cramps, wild rushes to the bathroom, bleeding… the works.

I’ll make a ponderously long story short and simply say that it got worse before I got better, then got slightly worse again, got better, got a little worse again, and finally brings me to today, where I’m mostly doing just fine. It certainly made my September marathon training problematic, to say the absolute least, but I managed to continue (mostly) successfully with it (albeit modified from the original schedule). I doubled up on my meds and changed our training routes to ensure an available restroom at least every 3 miles.

Except that one time during a 17-miler when the available restroom at Mile 5 was far, far from being open. Grr.

Anyway, in the midst of all this — plus a HUGE impending Go-Live at work starting on October 6th and continuing until who knows when — I decided to take a little break from updating the blog. But still, I’m back, and committed to keeping my goofy block of the intertubez as active as I can. And there’s a LOT of stuff coming down the pike, and I hope you’ll stick around for them.

baabibFor instance… I just received my bib for the 2014 Boston Half Marathon in the mail yesterday, which means my dream of running a BAA event– even just for a half marathon — is really gonna happen, and just 11 days away from this writing. Boston is still my favorite city in the country, and while I’ve returned to Beantown a few times since graduating college there in 1992, I’ve yet to come back in the autumn. And I certainly have never raced there, which makes this event even more exciting for me. I’m sure I’ll be blabbing all about the experience in the weeks to come.

There’s also some more album reviews to come, as well as my return to the Miami Beach Halloween Half and my take on the Flanigans 10K (Free beer? Free RIBS? Bring it!). And November is going to be absolutely insane. Did I mention I was able to score not one but TWO last-minute bibs for the Avengers 5K? Well I just did. Huzzah!

Anyway, thanks for your patience and please stick around. So much good stuff to come, so cool that it burns me. In a good way, not a UC way. This disease may be incurable and both a literal and metaphorical pain in the ass, but like hell I’ll ever let it slow me down. Here’s the video:

If you're reading this blog, YOU'RE AWESOME! Let me hear your thoughts.