It's been a while since my last blog entry. In the whole scheme of things, nothing really changed for a while and I am still recovering from my broken leg, so I haven't been doing a whole lot except for working, doing physical therapy, and slowly getting back to normal. The interesting thing is I did the opposite of what most people do up North. I basically stayed for the winter and came back for the Summer down South. Essentially, I reverse snowbirded.
My other blog entry outlined a bit of my day-to-day life when I was up in Wisconsin in a cast. I pretty much couldn't put any weight on my leg so my life consisted of sitting in a lazy boy the majority of the time.
I guess staying inside didn't matter much since winter weather in Wisconsin can always be crappy. Half the time there was no point in even venturing outside.
Even when it didn't appear to be crappy outside, it was crappy. When the following picture was taken, it was around -20F outside.
My car got to sit all winter and collect snow.
When I did go out for my bi-weekly clinic appointment, I had my leg jacked up in the pillow and this was my view.
Keeping my leg jacked up in the pillow was the staple of my life for 3 months.
One of the best things that happened was I finally got a walking boot. This meant I could take regular baths, unlike what I was doing and also could actually get around a lot better.
While I still couldn't walk well, at least I could set my foot down. This allowed me to be picked up by my friends and then hang out. I even had a legitimate reason to use the cripple cart at Walmart.
About 2 weeks after I was put in the walking boot, it was time to take out the long screws in my leg on March 31rst. It's kind of crazy to think the following screws were in my leg!
What surprised me is I asked the orthopedic doctor here if I could go to Texas once I got the screws out. To my surprise, he didn't have any objections. I then planned that I would leave that Saturday on April 2nd. What I find kind of crazy is, with my ability to work remotely, I was able to only miss 4 days of work total, even with having 2 different surgeries.
When I had left, the yard looked like when I had come to Wisconsin. I had effectively stayed for the whole winter.
While it was nice in Wisconsin, I spoke too soon for Minnesota. On the drive back down to Texas, I pretty ran into a blizzard. There were areas I was literally slowed down to 30mph.
By the time I hit Iowa, the snow had cleared, but it was very windy.
It was clear for most of the drive, but Kansas. I think they were doing some sort of range burning, but I swear the whole state seemed smoky.
The snowstorm in Minnesota did a wonder on my car. It was definitely caked with a lot of salt.
In the last month and a half, it's pretty much been getting back to normal. I have been doing physical therapy to get my range of motion back for walking and I am slowly getting back to normal. I have not done a whole lot in terms of road trips due to not being able to get around too well. I did have to take a day trip to the Bryan office to replace a router there. They do have an interesting view from the office.
Also, the beard I grew out.
Is no longer
I did decide to replace the radio in my car. The CD player wouldn't eject or suck in CD's anymore and I got sick of the 10 albums I had on the last MP3 CD I put in. I put the CD player in and realized that if I didn't put the mounting bracket in, I would have enough space for my CB also. This was nice because normally the CB kind of floated loosely in the car.
I also decided to buy a bike to help keep the stop and go city driving off the car and to get in better shape.
I did decide to end my no home internet experiment. Realizing the size of the videos generated with my Garmin VRIB X, I know I needed a good connection. I basically got the connection that was cheapest and had the highest upload speed. This was the Ultimate 200 package from Time Warner that has 200mbs down and 20mbs up. This costs $70 a month when everything is said and done, so I have a feeling I'll be doing a bunch of drive videos so I can get my money's worth out of the connection (and also the VRIB).
Other than that, I have just been working like normal. I also am heading to the gym to get back into shape from all the sitting around I did. Slowly but surely everything is getting back to normal and I have got to the point where I should be able to start road tripping again. There might have been a big gap between my last blog entries, but I'm hoping to have a bunch more coming more frequently.