For my birthday Ingrid invited some friends over and we grubbed on pizza and cakes from Saint Cupcake. I got a new cherry tree and a new Japanese maple as well. Plus Keevin and I drank some nasty year old champagne.

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It does video, which I took on the way down Mt. Tabor Rain clouds east of Mt. Tabor

Ingrid ran in the Run For The Roses today. It was a super nice day out for running. I didn't actually run but it seemed nice out.

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Trey ran his 5th or so Beaver Freezer. This year had great weather instead of cold and rain, it was just chilly. He placed pretty high this year. Afterwords we went back to his place and had cinammon rolls and played with the new dog.

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I took a Wilderness First Responder course at PSU the last weekend and week. It was a really in depth class and we got a lot of information. The coolest part was doing simulations of patients that were hurt or sick and we'd access them. In almost all of them I (and everyone else) would miss one thing or another that was critical. But after doing that I now remember what not to do again. So hopefully if the situation ever comes up I'll be prepared. We dealt with everything from Acute Stress Reaction (freaking out) to brain injuries requiring an evacuation.

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When I met with the neurosurgeon we decided to go ahead with the back surgery. He said the MRI was a textbook picture of a disc bulge, so that's good I think. The surgery took 90 minutes and he ended up leaving the disc alone as it was ok and just removed debris and scar tissue. When I woke up the pain in my leg and back was gone and I was able to walk immediately.

I have some numbness in my toes and calf but they said this is normal as they moved the nerve around. Hopefully it'll go away in a week or so. I have gone for short walks down the block and back and they're pretty tiring. It'll be interesting to see if we can make it up any mountains this year in the spring.

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Last year I injured my back while running stairs. I got an MRI and it showed I had a bulged disc at L1-S5 (whatever that means.) I went through a few months of physical therapy and then talked to a neurosurgeon about it. He said the MRI showed significant disc matter and that I could get a surgery, but as my symptoms were very small at that point, that I shouldn't get surgery. So I called it good.

Over the last year the back had felt pretty good and I hadn't had many issues. Last week it decided to kick in again. I've been taking various drugs like oxycodone, hydrocodone, some P drug and Tylenol with codine and they aren't helping too much. I'm not able to walk much, sleep or sit upright for very long. So I'm actually out of work for a few weeks and lying on my side.

This time I decided I don't want to go through PT and go for surgery. I just got the results back from yesterdays MRI and it shows the same issue as last year. I meet with the neurosurgeon on Tuesday and hopefully we get the surgery right afterwords.

Picture of last years MRI:

Sara's Birthday was this weekend and I went out to Hood River to celebrate it with her and her sister MaryAnn. On Saturday we ate Cheezits and went cross country skiing at TeacCup Lake. We got lapped two times by one gal. But we had hot cocoa and sandwiches and she didn't. On Sunday we went up North towards Mt. Adams and skiied in the sun up to some ice caves. It was very cool and it'd be nice to go back there with some crampons and a helmet. It was a cool weekend hanging out and learning which muscles you normally don't use while skiing.

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I'm reading about strength building in Extreme Alpinism by Mark Twight. His book says (if I read it right) that you need to get warmed up and then do 6 sets of 2 reps of your almost max. This is supposed to increase your neuromuscular pathways and in turn increase your strength but not mass. It takes 9 or so sets of warming up before the set of 6, for a total of 15 sets. As you need to rest the muscles inbetween sets I tried throwing in other lifts or exercises. It also takes close to 1 1/2 hours to get through the lifting. I'm focusing on biceps and lats as I'm not wanting to hurt my shoulder with bench. I'm not doing legs as the gym doesn't have enough weight to do low rep/high weight for legs (serious, I plate the press machine with 1 leg.) This is my second workout like this, but I think I've seen a change already. In the first one I could barely get out 2 curls of 95lbs, but this time I got in 6 sets of 105. Hopefully it's not a fluke and continues. warmup: pullups x8 pushups/pullins on ball x15 curls 45x8, 50x8, 55x8 jumping jacks 1min 1 arm pulldown 50x8, 55x8, 60x8 1/2 ball shuttling 1min curl 65x8, 70x8, 70x8 calf raises x15, x20, x25 1 arm pulldown 65x8, 70x7, 75x5 behind head tricep 40x15, 40x15, 40x15 curl 75x5, 85x4, 95x3 fly on ball 25x15, 30x15, 35x15 1 arm pulldown 80x3, 85x3, 90x3 1 leg press 175x15, 190x15, 205x15 curl 100x2, 105x2, 105x2, 105x2 crunches on ball 1arm pulldown 100x2, 105x2, 105x2, 105x2 1 leg press 220x15, 235x15,250x10 curl 105x2, 105x2 1 arm pulldown 100x2, 110x2 jog 15 min

Ingrid and I went up to do Devil's Rest on Saturday. There was a lot of snow on the path which slowed us down a bit.There were lots of nice views of the Gorge as we hoofed it up to the top. Up top it was pretty cold but the cocoa worked its magic again.

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