Two weeks ago I decided to go for a hike up Panther Canyon which is at the back of Landa Park in New Braunfels. It is rated at Difficult but not very long. I figured I would give it a go and if I got to tired, I would turn around and try again until I was able to do the entire thing.

The temperature was COLD so I put on my winter leggings, super wool shirt, puffy jacket, hat, merino socks and walking shoes and did one loop around the park to warm up and then hit the trail.

​It has sections of dirt and uneven rocks and at times a dry creek bed is crossed or along side of it. I was feeling very good and not getting tired as I approached the top when I realized I did not have my walking sticks cause the trail was suddenly very uneven ... and just then I caught a toe and went down with a very hard face plant.

My glasses hit a rock and then broke my nose; I felt it. I thought the lenses had broken since it was that hard! I also landed on my right hand and I knew I broke it too.

I caught my breath, found my glasses which were bent but not broken and sat up. OH IT HURT SO BAD and the blood was all over my face. I took of my bandana, which I always wear to keep my neck warm or protected from the sun or to blow my nose, so I use it to mop up the blood. 

I was about to stand up when 2 people were coming down the trail and saw me and provided help. They stayed with me as I/we went to my car to make sure I was not going to black out. I was much more stable by then and I knew I could get to the ER.

The ER had no waiting so I was taken in right away. I had a CT for my head and neck and an x-Ray for my hand.  After almost 2 hours, the doctor reviewed the films with me. No concussion but whiplash. The nose is certainly broken and my right pinky is fractured. The hand was taped, I was told NOT to blow my nose and just rest and not to drive for a few days due to the neck and not to drive at night until that was all better. I got a CD with images and was sent home to rest and to follow up with my Doctor about the hand and an ENT for the nose.  Final instructions NO hiking or bar fights.

So 2 weeks later my hand is still is taped and will be so for at least 4 weeks. The ENT has scheduled me for surgery in late February.   My neck is 75% and I can kinda breathe.

Yahrzeit refers to the anniversary, according to the Hebrew calendar, of the day of death of a loved one. Alternative spellings include yortsayt, and yartzeit. On the anniversary of a death, it is the custom to light a candle to commemorate the departure of a loved one.

How does one observe this day?
"Despite the Germanic origin of the word yahrzeit, the designation of a special day and special observances to commemorate the anniversary of the death of parents was already discussed in the Talmud. This religious commemoration is recorded not as a fiat, but as a description of an instinctive sentiment of sadness, an annual rehearsing of tragedy, which impels one to avoid eating meat and drinking wine—symbols of festivity and joy, the very stuff of life."

Erich passed on January 12, 2023 so the observance would be on January 18th of this year to match up with the Jewish calendar but I am also observing it today; actually I lit the candle last night.  And if you don't know any candle can be used provided it burns for 24 hours.

So what am I doing today - I will be reflecting on our time together and moving forward with my new life.

Last year at this time I decided to make a temperature blanket for the year Erich (aka the Shop Elf) we were married. I was building a spreadsheet to hold the historical high and low temperature info and selecting my yarn colors and the manufacturer for each temperature band. 

Then Erich passed away and everything in my life came to a grinding stop. 

Several months later I decided that I was still going to do a temperature blanket but it would be for my first year without Erich - January 12, 2023 through January 11, 2024. I considered adding, somehow, the amount of rain on each day but each idea could not be integrated easily and then I saw a temperature blanket that used the amount of daylight and darkness such that the high temperatures were daylight and the low temperatures were the darkness.   I used the Weather Underground to locate a personal weather station near the house so I could get the temperature data. I used Time and Date to get the sunrise & sunset data and built out the rest of the spreadsheet to calculate the number of stitches based upon minutes of each.  I even added some conditional formatting so the recorded temperature would show the color of the yarn for that temperature band.

For the yarn I chose an acrylic from Lion Brand because the blanket will be on the couch and will probably get washed a lot plus the yarn is not very expensive!  Being the geek I am, I also set up a page in the spreadsheet to calculate the amount of yards yarn I would need based upon a test gauge swatch for the number of stitches and then calculated the total yardage using the number of stitches over the course of the year for each temperature band...   

Once December started I went and ordered one to 2 skeins of each yarn and cast on the first rows of black on New Year's Eve.  New Year's Day I started with January 12th.   It takes about 2-3 hours to knit each day while watching TV; today I am working on finishing January 14th and maybe all of January 15th. 

​Yes, it will probably take me all of 2024 and some of 2025 to finish it but it will keep my hands busy in the evenings

In 2021 my niece a.k.a "The Wonder Baby" got married and I said I would sew her a new quilt as their wedding present which you can read about here. 

When I assembled that quilt and I changed up the design a bit I ended up with extra blocks and since I was feeling guilty about the delay for that quilt I decided to make a bonus quilt for their couch.  After assembling the quilt top I had lots of half square triangle left over so I sewed them together for the backing - hey why not be an over achiever even more than you already are!

I also decided that I would quilt it on my sewing machine... Then it was onto the binding, washing and it has been Boots tested and approved.

Despite finishing the Big Snuggly Sweater over Thanksgiving week, things since mid-November have/had been a real downer for me. 

• First there was Erich's Birthday.
• Then there was what would have been our 35th anniversary's
• Add to that Thanksgiving which we usually just have a nice meal and spend the day together watching movies.
• And to round out the month was my birthday.

I didn't want to see or talk to anyone and I backed out of all events and get togethers for the duration.

As December started I felt the same way.
There's still the loom room and my studio to clean and reorganize PLUS there is Erich's workshop to tackle. Of course there is also the standard stuff to do around the house - cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, and getting out of bed because a certain cat wants to be fed.

Then last week, I got an email from the Lawyer that things are moving forward, finally, with Erich's estate and was as if a 1,000 weight had been lifted off my brain. Suddenly

Back in March I decided to knit a sweater using yarn I had bought almost 15 years ago when I lived in Murietta, California. The yarn was to be for a sweater that was in the Interweave Knits magazine which didn't get knit until I moved here and I bought other yarn for it so this yarn was stuck in my stash.

This sweater is knit cuff to cuff in one massive piece and then stitches are picked up for the collar and bottom band. I had to read the pattern several times and I actually re-wrote it for 2 reasons. First the pattern does not give instructions on knitting the second half of the body; it just implies that what you knit for the first half is worked in reverse and since I had a different yarn with a different gauge, I was going to need more exact information. The second issue is that the big collar - the turtle neck, is not actually attached to the sweater and the instructions don't say that; it just tells you to cast on stitches and knit in the round for a specific length. I had to look at the pictures of other knitter's projects to figure this out. 

I mostly worked on the sweater on Thursdays, down at the yarn store where we have a knit club get together from 2 pm to 4 pm. I usually show up early after having completed the errands I need to do in town.

Two weeks ago I finished the second sleeve and then spent that weekend knitting the collar which I mead longer than the pattern called for and in lieu of the separate turtle neck. Next up was sewing the sleeve and side seams and adding the bottom band which I decided I would do over Thanksgiving week as I had no plans to go or see anyone [I had been recording all the Star War Saga movies, no series, to watch during this time]. 

On Friday I had finished the bottom band and on Saturday I wove in all the ends from the color changes.  

I can now wear it cause the weather has gotten cool if not cold!

Thirty-Six years ago we eloped having only met each other two month earlier.
It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
​
In September of 1987 I was invited to a bicycle ride get together by my friend Gylver; he lived in Laguna Hills, California and I was living in Temecula, California.  Other friends of "ours" from Santa Barbara would be there as well as some other friends that Gylver knew.  

The plan was to ride down the coast for a while, stop and have lunch then ride back and afterwards have a dinner of home made chili.   

Not as many people showed up as expected but one was a good looking man named Erich Kern.  

We spent most of the ride talking to each other; and we talked all through dinner. Before I went home Erich asked for my phone number.   To be honest I don't remember much of the ride except for talking to Erich.

Several nights later Erich called to talk and ask me on a date; we ended up talking on the phone for six hours!
Yes, we took bathroom breaks.

Erich suggested we move in together in, in October but having just started grad school I said no; I needed time and space to do my course work. 

At the end of October he proposed.  I said yes cause when you know, you KNOW.

After much thought and reflection about what my sister went through with our parents when she got married I knew I did not want a formal wedding and so Erich I decided to elope over Thanksgiving weekend as I also had a small break in my course work. 

We found a Rabbi to marry us and we made reservations in Santa Barbara at a B&B for the weekend. We would take our bicycles and spend the weekend doing some rides and on Thanksgiving day I would work on a paper I had due the next week. 

Gylver was the Best Man and my friend Kathleen was the Best Woman; we met at the Synagogue and were married and then went out for a nice dinner and afterwards Erich and I drove up the coast. 

The rest, you could say is history.  

This picture was taken many years later in the 2000's.

Temps have cooled and tours and maintenance work has resumed at the gorge.
Two weeks ago I signed up for a small 3 hour tour and had a good time but the lack of walking for almost 3 months was apparent as my legs were wobbly when I was done and I ended up taking a nap when I got home.

This past Wednesday I was docent for a special 5 hour "Off the Beaten Path" tour. A petroleum company located in Dallas that paid for a custom tour as part of their "let's use up our budget road-trip"; they were going to various location around the state to look at the geological structures that have an impact and influence on their work of mapping, modeling, and drilling. There were engineers, geologists, modelers, and surveyors and the tour was led by two of our guides who are retired from the petrochemical industry and could point out and discuss faults, fractures, fossils, geology/limestone formations and water flows that would be of interest to them. 

We started at the top of the spillway to explain the flooding, and how the gorge was formed in just a few days. Then we walked to the far side of the spill way to look at the first exposure of the Hidden Valley Fault. We stayed on the far side to look at a 3 meter vertical shift of the fault as the tour group measured and counted fractures and lengths. This side of the gorge has no formal trails so we roughed it over very uneven terrain - up and down over rocks to see scrapings from the fault shifting and the fractures and tilting of the limestone. We stopped at the various pools and waterfalls and saw fossils in the limestone as well as calcite crystals and "flow stone" where the calcite as dissolved and flows down before recrystallizing on the limestone similar to how stalagmites and stalactites form.

Yes, I was very tired at the end but I learned quite a bit and met some really interesting people along the way which made it worth it.  After I got home it was shower, eat and nap time of course!!

Things are getting better - WHEW

I have just started the 3 and final dosages of the Prednisone - 1 10mg pill per day for the next 10 days. I have had most of the side effects (sleep issues, weigh gain and raging hungriness, agitation, high blood pressure, pounding in the ears and more. Thankfully they are going away.

When this started, I had just begun, again, on a "Get Healthy" regimen. I had contacted the Nutrition and Fitness coach who helped me get ready for my Big Walk in Scotland to start a plan again. I put new batteries in the Blood Pressure cuff, which uses Bluetooth to store the data in an app, so I could get off that medication that started the medical ugliness and I also bought a new scale that also records stats for BMI also via Bluetooth to an app.  I also cleared my Fit Bit and BP History which went back over 10 years - I was going to start new and clean. Additionally I created a new account with my food tracking app.  Then of course I had to hit the breaks hard on all of these plans until we got this thing under control.

​In some ways, now I really have no choice. To be honest I am 30 to 40 pounds over weight and my BMI is just over 30. My BP puts me somewhere between Hypertension Level 1 and 2; it is NOT a pretty place to be.  

About 10 years ago when I worked for the Navy in San Diego I started seriously walking and eating better.  At one point I was walking 4 miles around the harbor, my weight was down 15 pounds and my BP was in the Normal range. Then we moved and I slid backwards, then Erich died and I slid even more and so that is where I am today. 

This week, I am not official on the plan because of the Prednisone but I am doing what I call practicing. I will go for some walks, maybe 2; I will go to the gym for a weight work, once; I will track what I eat to get back into that habit and to make better food choices but I won't try to hit any macros levels.   But come October 2nd when I finish up the pills I will begin. 

Stay tuned, this could be an eye opening and wild ride

Back Story:
In April, I contacted friends who are mineral dealers about selling the majority of our mineral collection. It wasn't about the money despite that happening; it was about getting the specimens to good homes because the members of my family who would have to deal with it when I was gone really wouldn't know who to talk to or what it's real value was. You hear horror stories of grand/parents/sibling collections just being tossed in the garbage!

At that time we made arrangements for them to be here in Texas after the Northeast Summer shows were over, in August as they would then be heading back to California and would detour south. 

As the time grew closer I started looking at what I wanted to keep and set some of them aside. These were minerals we had bought on special trips or occasions or had collected ourselves during the various road trips we took around the west. Erich loved certain minerals and we had many multiples of them - garnets, fluorite, stilbite and more so I figured I would only keep one or two of each of those as well. 

Mid-August rolled around and I cleared my schedule for the weekend they would be here. I gathered boxes, bubble wrap, original labels, receipts, tape, pen and paper so we could get to work.  They arrived late Friday afternoon so we just sat and caught up with our lives and during this time John started to look at and in the cabinets. His evaluation was it was a very good collection; he could see that we had over time we acquired better quality specimens and we had some that were excellent but that overall we had a wide range that would appeal to all collectors. This was very good news and so at this point we decided to go into New Braunfels and have an early dinner and get them back to the the cabin they were staying in so they could rest and get a good night's sleep after driving for 3 days and being on the road for over 2 months. After dinner I told them where to go for a good inexpensive breakfast and to just call me before they were to arrive Saturday morning.

John and Cathy arrived around 10 am and we got to work. Because they had their truck full of show stuff they had said that they could NOT take all of what they were interested in purchasing but would be able to take some as the Denver show was at the start of September and they wanted some specimens for that to start. John would select a mineral, look at the label on the bottom, I would look for the original paperwork, Cathy would document the mineral and then we discussed how much John would offer and even possibly sell it for and then Cathy would record the price and we wrap it up and mark it.  We stopped for the day around 5pm and went to dinner and planned on repeating the days events on Sunday.

One mineral that John was VERY interested in was a Rhodochrosite rhombohedron that's gem quality - he did not take it (yet) he took pictures and measurements and sent it to a friend who could give him a more accurate valuation.

Sunday I woke up around my usual time due to the Boots alarm clock at 7-ish. John and Cathy arrived again around 10 am. We selected a few more minerals and John made arrangements to meet another dealer, in San Antonio in the late afternoon. I suggested that due to a late start to getting on the road home, they stop in Fort Stockton which is a 4-5 hour drive then on Monday get to Tucson which is a 12 hour drive and then Tuesday they could get back to So. Cal in 7 hours (which they did). Eventually we taped up the boxes, loaded the truck and I was handed a check.  

Now for the rest of the story:
John called me the following week and said that the Rhodochrosite was worth A LOT!! and he wanted to sell it as a commission (80/20) at the Denver show and so could I box it, insure it, and get it mailed to him. I jokingly said that maybe I should hand deliver it to which he said SURE! and to bring some more minerals if I wanted.  Which I said I would and few days after I had second thoughts because of all that I would have to do - stop the mail, get hotels, put Boots in the kennel, and more. Then a few days later I changed my mind again and went for it. Going to the Denver show was on our list of things to do this year because the pandemic canceled those plans.  In 2 days I had my plans made and started selecting more minerals.

The plan was to leave on Tuesday and stop in Amarillo and then arrive in Denver Wednesday afternoon. Setup was on Thursday and I would help and make labels for what I brought. The show would open on Friday and I would assist in the booth but NOT make any actual sales. In the afternoon I wandered the rooms for the location were we were. Saturday I helped open and close  and in between went to the other locations to peruse the wares.  Sunday morning I helped open and at noon, I headed home again via Amarillo.

There is no major Interstate to get from San Antonio to Denver so it was some Interstate and State highways most of which were 2 lane with passing sections or 2 lane passing sections. There were State highways marked as 75 mph then 55, 45, 35 and suddenly you are in a very small town of 2 - 6 - 12 blocks with maybe a single gas station and a fast food restaurant and many boarded up store fronts.  Northwest Texas is FLAT with lots of wind farms, cotton farms, sorghum farms, corn farms and lines of power poles that go on for ever.  After Amarillo I did a quick pass through Oklahoma and into Colorado which added cattle, donkeys, goats, and corn to the mix.  On my way home I did take the I-25 and cut through New Mexico before getting back to Texas and the State Highways.