… and a temperature of -20 Celsius (with the wind chill factored in)?

The walk around my neighbourhood that da missus takes me on, that’s what. Me darlin’ wife has a regular walking partner from down the road. Lately, that lady hasn’t been feeling up to going so my wife takes me as a partially willing second choice. Tonight, I decided to put a pedometer on to measure the distance in paces and it came to, you guessed it, 8900 steps.

Can you guess how cold it was?

So. I’m standing up at the office chatting away with someone and I absentmindedly put my hand into my back pocket. There’s a piece of paper in there. I pull it out and glance at it while we are talking. It is a receipt from Sobey’s supermarket in Highfield Square, downtown Moncton, from four years ago! November 23rd, 2005 to be exact.

I must have gone there for my lunch. It was 1:25 pm and I bought 3 diet Pepsi and a chicken salad with ranch dressing. $9.96. I gave the cashier, S. Lane, 10 bucks and got 4 cents change. My healthy lifestyle (ahem) must be working because I still fit into a pair of jeans I haven’t worn in almost four years.

The supermarket is gone now, but its memory lives on in my denim clad, back pocket time capsule.

By they way, I was blogging back then. Here’s a post I put up three days before that chicken salad was doomed to dissolve in my digestive tract. The post is kind of cryptic, but anyone who knows anything about my working conditions back then is fully aware of the source of my near psychopathic meltdown.

What a weekend! Today (Monday) was a provincial holiday (New Brunswick Day) and as such a day off work. I decided to take last Friday off as a vacation day giving me a long, loooong weekend.

Friday was a day for chores. I had been putting off staining the deck boards out back all summer. I got up early to beat the sun and stay in the shade as I worked around the deck with the stain. Friday afternoon: Grocery shopping.

But Saturday is when the fun started. Up early and off to Petitcodiac for a run on the four-wheelers. It was a run organized by a local ATV club. Roughly 65 machines hit the 115 km ride, weaving through the trees and tearing up the mud. We always enjoy four-wheeling regardless of the weather or the location. We got back and cleaned up by about 7:30 at night. Donna was passed out on the couch and I was passed out in the chair when my phone rang with an invitation to go playing pool with a couple of buddies. Up and out the door to play pool, returning just before 1 am.

Sunday morning we got a call from some other friends asking if we were interested in going for a drive, a hike and a picnic down around St. Martins. We hadn’t been to St. Martins in several years. What used to be an interesting beach with shorelines eroded by millenniums of the world’s highest tides is now a beautiful groomed hiking park on the Bay of Fundy coast. It was mostly driving, a fair amount of eating, and just a little bit of hiking, but a wonderful day. We topped it off with a fattening meal at the Irving Big Stop Restaurant in Salisbury, an over-sized ice cream cone from Kings Cones and a cold drink of rum in the screened gazebo on our back deck. Another day full from start to finish.

Monday… totally vegged out and did nothing. I think I’ll sleep well tonight.

That’s it. Our weekend in a nutshell. Click the picture for more photos of our hike in St. Martins.

P.S. Happy Birthday Sharon. Happy Birthday Uncle Pat.

Ever since I fell off the scaffolding at my parents’ place last year I’ve been having increasingly painful issues with my feet. After several trips to the doctor including x-rays and assessments the Moncton medical community has concluded that I have been afflicted with plantar fasciitis.

According to Wikipedia:

Plantar fasciitis is a painful inflammatory condition of the foot caused by excessive wear to the plantar fascia or plantar aponeurosis that supports the arches of the foot or by biomechanical faults that cause abnormal pronation. The pain usually is felt on the underside of the heel, and is often most intense with the first steps of the day… Plantar fasciitis was formerly called “dog’s heel” in the United Kingdom. It is sometimes known as “flip-flop disease” among US podiatrists. The condition often results in a heel spur on the calcaneus, in which case it is the underlying condition, and not the spur itself, which produces the pain.

Well. I started my physiotherapy yesterday. I’m pretty sure you’ve been duly warned if the physiotherapist starts the session off with “Do you bruise easily?” I laid back on the bench and he started to apply pressure to the bottom of my feet. “Let me know if this starts to hurt too much.” I thought well, it hurts a little, but it’s not too bad. I can handle th…. sweet merciful mother of GOD!! Please PLEASE… if you stop this pain I’ll tell you my PIN number! Here’s my bank card!! After five minutes he finishes and says “Ok, now let’s do the other foot.” My dear God, I’ll do anything, ANYTHING, but please make him stop!

Then this sadist tells me to get a golf ball and roll it under my foot 40 to 100 times a day for the next month to simulate this same “therapy”. And get this… he says that if it doesn’t hurt as much then I’m not doing it right. I’m not sure if the intent is to cure my ailment or simply make me grateful for the hobbling pain I had before I started.

I go back on Monday. Say a prayer for me will you?

Nope. Just out of commission. Been pretty much down and out since last Thursday. I got some sort of a bug that insisted fluids expel themselves from my body via the nearest exit.

The details of the last few days are pretty fuzzy for me actually. I vaguely remember talking with Earl and Ralph on a big white telephone. Thank GOD for TV, remote controls and my wife’s infinite patience.

Last year, I published a list of resolutions as long as the word “resolution”. Aside from purging clutter in the storage corners of my house (resulting in creating a vacuum which simply attracts more clutter), I’ve not accomplished any of them. Having several goals in mind hoping I’d accomplish at least one of them was obviously not a very good strategy for me.

So… this year, I’m choosing one of those goals and I’m gonna give it the gusto. Since it’s already January 6th and resolutions normally start on January 1st, I think it’s futile to attempt to resolve against my procrastination issue. I think I’ll leave that until next year. (Did you get that? Procrastination… wait until next year? Funny, eh?) Obviously, I’m not giving up making stupid jokes.

Nope… this year I’m going to try to tackle my weight again. This time last year, I announced to the world my weight was 230+ pounds. Well, I’m still there. Twohundredandthirtyfourfuckingpounds to be exact. My list has been reduced to one. Perhaps now I can focus and succeed. You think?