Hurlshort

I crashed my bike going down a steep road yesterday. I swerved to avoid a hole and my back wheel lost traction. I hit a guard rail and flipped over into a ravine. When I landed, my leg was on fire, and all I could think was I need to get up and climb out of this. I wasn't with anyone and no one could see me down there. I stumbled over a bunch of bushes and got back on the road. Some cyclist came along and checked on me, and then a guy in a jeep offered to drive me down. The bike was deep in the ravine and not visible. I loaded up in the jeep and the guy took me to the ER nearby. It is amazing how supportive people are. My wife met me at the ER. I had a broken hand, but the femur looked good and it feels better today. It is super tight, but I can move it and it supports my weight. My knee is questionable, but we will see how it feels after some rest. I definitely got off lucky with the physical damage. After we were discharged, we went back to the mountain and met a couple friends to look for the bike. We had to hike about half a mile down, since there were no good turn outs near my crash. I found my body indentations in the bushes, and the bike was about 30 yards down from that. My wife climbed down and got it! It looks like it is decent shape. It needs a bit of work, but I got lucky there too. So yeah, scary day, but I'm very thankful for the great support group I have. Also typing with a splint is not fun. This is the turn I did not make. Oops!

Barry Bonds? I'm missing baseball something fierce. Watched Bull Durham last night and proceeded to call my kids a bunch of lollygaggers.

So Bruce had to share a taxi, which exposes the driver to him and him to previous passengers, in order to avoid violating a curfew which is supposed to enforce social distancing? I think everyone would be better off finishing the walk.

You don't own a piece of cloth you can wear over your mouth and nose? The idea that some minimim wage grocer needs to be exposed to you because of freedum is pretty silly. Cover your mouth and stop being a crybaby. The people at these businesses have rights too.

I'm running about 25 miles a week and everything hurts. But it is still easier than trying to homeschool my kids.

I haven't read it. Growing up it was a lot harder to find certain books, and I don't remember those being readily available (still have a copy of Time Cat.) I'll have to give them a try. Plus I can bug my kids to read them after I finish. My daughter just finished The Giver. We had some great discussions about it, but I think it suffers from having a sequel where the fate of Jonas and the baby are revealed. It was more powerful in the 90's when I read it and it was completely up to interpretation. I also got the audio book version of The Hobbit for my son, and he is hooked on it.

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3084779/coronavirus-hamster-research-proof-effectiveness Wearing a mask seems like a pretty simple thing to do.

I've always got a strange relationship with crafting in MMO's. I love it early, but it usually becomes a grind, and then any time I try to return to a character after time away I have no idea what is going on with all the ingredients. This is standard in almost every MMO I've played. At least they seemed to have sped up the curve in LotRO for the time being, so I'm not burning out yet.

I am not that old majestic, I wasn't teaching in the 70's. 😉

LotRO is still going well. My son and I are tackling quests together, he as a hunter and me as a warden. We are up to level 17 and it was amazing to take him through the Old Forest to meet Tom Bombadil. I also have a dwarf stout axe Guardian that is level 27 to play solo. I am excited to get to Moria. That is my favorite area of any game I think I have ever played. We also bought a couple of houses in an elven neighborhood. My daughter played a bit too, but she seems less excited about it. 😝

I stumbled upon a documentary about Galaxy Quest called Never Surrender. Will Wheaton refers to Galaxy Quest as the best Star Trek movie ever made, and I completely agree.

Fascinating development on the whole Roe vs. Wade stuff. I'll be watching the movie, for sure: https://www.revrobschenck.com/blog/2020/5/18/a-movie-that-bares-the-soul-behind-roe-v-wade-along-with-my-own-

Crystal Light lemonade powder mix is better than freshly squeezed lemonade.

Lloyd Alexander was my jam growing up. I'd say we are due for a revisit to Prydain. I still use the name Taran for basically all my fantasy RPG characters.

Eh, we had our fair share of feckless leaders in the first half of the 20th Century. Also, League of Nations.

Yes, poor drug companies. How will they ever turn a profit in this environment?

There also seems to be an unreasonable loyalty towards Trump in many parts. Maybe the President doesn't need to throw out the names of medicines at all? He's not a doctor.

I am in California and I'm not sure where the power mad examples are. For the most part, cities and counties are making their own decisions with guidance from the State. In fact the whole kerfuffle with Elon Musk over Tesla was that the county and city were dragging their feet behind what the state was doing. The governor eased restrictions on May 4th, but not all counties followed suit. Santa Clara County just went into phase 2 today, which is where I live. Honestly it's been fairly smooth. Our grocery stores are well stocked and people have been out on the trails enjoying nature. Small businesses are doing takeout all over town. Is there a couple yahoos yelling about freedom on street corners because they are supposed to wear masks in stores and can't get a haircut? Sure. edit: Of course, we knew all along there are only two outcomes here. You don't do enough and a bunch of people die, or you flatten the curve and people whine about losing their rights. There is no middle ground. Anyways, we aren't exactly out of the woods yet.

I've been slowly working my way through the Lord of the Rings trilogy with my son. We watch about an hour a night, which is about what his attention span can handle. We are 4 nights in and it should take about 9 nights total. It's always hard to judge how engaged kids his age are, but I think he's enjoying it. I mean, I do keep pausing it and quizzing him on the lore (I might be missing the classroom a bit.) I'm enjoying the heck out of it. I think it works really well in short chunks like this. It was been a number of years since I watched them, and they've held up well. I've been humming the heck out of the theme song for the last few days. I'm a bit torn on whether it is worth showing The Hobbit Trilogy. They didn't have the same magic. edit: I'd rather he read the book, but he is only 9, and I'd say he has a couple more years before he can sink his teeth into Tolkien. I tried to find the Andy Serkis reading of The Hobbit he did recently, but it looks like you needed to catch it live.

This is still the best version:

So someone I know on Facebook posted this crazy theory. They are a school counselor. Granted they are are a school counselor in Florida, but still...

Hmm...there should be a water bottle holder that looks like a holster. That might help curtail this stuff. I could also have a tire pump that looks like a shotgun hanging off my bike. This might be an untapped market.

With less traffic and more runners and cyclists on the road lately, it's been a bit more dangerous on the roads. This is an interesting look at the psychology of the driver: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130212-why-you-really-hate-cyclists

So car crash deaths have risen during the pandemic, despite car crashes and traffic in general decreasing. Why? Because people are stupid and see open roads as an excuse to drive like a moron. I am so ready for automated cars. My running partner and I were run off the road on Thursday. It was some old guy in a little sports car. We were running on a little country back road with very little shoulder or sidewalk. We were running with the traffic because the shoulder is a bit wider on that side, but we were still out in the lane a bit. He had plenty of room to pass though, and there were no cars coming in the opposite direction, so he could easily move over and share the lane. Instead he honked right before he came up on us and nearly clipped my partner. Then he actually stopped at the stop sign about 30 yards ahead and waited for us to catch up! He just glared at us, it was super weird. I don't know what his deal was. I'm not sure what he was trying to prove. Cars will always beat runners and cyclists, it's not a competition. Relax and try to remember you are driving around a massive and dangerous potential weapon. We were able to restrain ourselves from kicking his door in. I assume he thought we were a couple punk kids, and not two grown men in their 40's. Strange days, I've had this happen on my bike a number of times, but rare when running. On the bright side, it gave me some motivation to climb the steep grade were were headed towards.

Aquaman - had a campy kind of charm to it thanks to Jason Mamoa and Willem Dafoe (oh, and Dolph Lundgren!) Amber Heard is very unlikable. She should only be used as a villain. But overall it was a pretty decent flick. Kind of felt like they were trying to tap the Thor Ragnarok vibe. It doesn't, still felt like an imitation, but it is better than most of the DC stuff. Edit: oh, and Murlocs!