Survived the first night

7 Minute Miles Turns 14

It’s blog birthday time again – the first 7 Minute Miles post appeared on this domain fourteen years ago today.

Current stats:

• 11,119 Posts
• 208 Pages
• 41,174 unique visitors in 2019
• 2,169,487 pages displayed in 2019

Currently running WordPress 5.3.2 with my custom theme and 19 plugins on the old Mac mini server colocated in Las Vegas. Favorite plugins: Wordfence Security, VaultPress, Intagrate and Really Simple SSL (with a Let’s Encrypt cert managed via Certbot). Still want to write some custom data entry forms for the golf, run and bike pages, but those (along with making the theme more mobile friendly) have still not made it off the to-do list. Also never figured out the solution to the weird SSL/emoji issue.

Haven’t changed the overall site structure much this year, adding only a new Concerts page that I’m experimenting with using the Vimeo hosting platform. I made some major updates to the Résumé page and just realized that the Biography page now needs a refresh too. After prepping photo boards for funerals in back-to-back months, I should also spend some time on updating the Photos section. I finally moved our Christmas samplers to online-only last year and might do a Hummel section soon too (hit me up if you need any).

As always, thanks for visiting and stay safe out there!

Football, steak, stamps & Snoopy

Sheltering in Lowertown

Like many people around the world, the pandemic has been a difficult thing for me to process. I don’t have any particular expertise in the science behind it, but I’m married to the Corona Queen, I like to follow sites like this and I spent a lot of time last week getting our office configured and trained for an indefinite work from home scenario. Most of the things listed in my Twitter bio have shut down and it will likely be months before things return to some semblance of normal.

But we are very fortunate to still get outside to walk, run or bike, have money to order take-out from our favorite local restaurants and have reliable high-speed internet to cross off shows we always wanted to watch from our Netflix and HBO lists (and, of course, work from home). MK is doing the distance learning thing for the rest of the school year and SK has picked up some hours here and there helping out the Nive Man with take-out downstairs.

The Minnesota COVID-19 numbers so far pale with those in the hardest hit parts of the country (and world). The reports out of places like New York and Italy are terrifying and I worry about those on the front lines, like my Twitter friend @susanruns, who bravely works long hours to save lives in unimaginable conditions. My colleague was scheduled to start a new position in Hong Kong on April 1, but he is currently in limbo until the international travel and quarantine picture becomes clearer. I’m not sure what will happen with my work, but I’ve been trying to mentally prepare for all the different possibilities.

On the medical front, I had a 17-month MRI check-up this week at Hennepin Healthcare (which I thought might get cancelled under the non-essential procedure executive order). The new clinic building was empty – I was the only one in radiology and only saw one other person in the general waiting room. I never really had claustrophobia before, but now that MRI equipment feels like a torture chamber. Thankfully, the tech was done after two shorts scans (one 30 seconds, one four minutes). The resident that met with me pulled up the image and said everything looked great. Dr. Tummala will make the final call, but I shouldn’t have to go back for two more years. At that point, they will decide if it will be another MRI or a more invasive CT angiogram.

Lastly, the situation with my father’s estate made significant progress the past two weeks. With assistance from our friend John Schuster at Richfield Bloomington Honda, we were able to pay off his car loan and sell the car. Today, with the help of Kary Marpe from Edina Realty, we sold the house on Lombard. I thought that process was going to be challenging, given the hoarding nature of my mom (that would be one of my elementary school pictures above), various repairs needed and the pandemic’s impact on the economy. Kary was amazing, though, accurately pricing and listing the property, resulting in multiple offers by day two. If all goes according to plan, we will close on April 10. All that will be left is my dad’s taxes for 2019 (which shouldn’t be too hard).

Stay safe, y’all!

Bring ‘em back

In time, music shall prevail

We got Take-Out Fever

I’m just like Star Wars

Fabian’s Finest Flip

House flippers wanted

Still no TP, so…

Doge photobombed the clown

Byerly’s has the best candy

Personally Yours

MOR TAKE-OUT

Quarantine art from SK

A Two Dots Odyssey

Willie is the best

Good now Thu-Sun

Takeout from Doug and Amy ️

I can sorta cook stuff

Drowned rat

Construction 3.0

I spy a Coronavirus Queen

Permanent Glasses

The ongoing saga of my double vision has now lead to a semi-permanent solution. I had always been the one person in my family without glasses, but one of the lasting side effects of my brain aneurysm has been diplopia at farther distances. Thanks to the treatment plans of Dr. Amy Chang and therapist Courtney Mitchell at Hennepin Heathcare, I can now read screens at most distances and watch TV without glasses. Even at farther distances, I can usually find an angle to hold my head to remove any doubling up (although Dr. Chang says that I’m cheating when I do that).

At the end of January, we decided that I’d stop using the 3M Prism inserts in the pair of non-prescription lenses I had purchased from Amazon. We started at a +30 strength in the beginning and dropped all the way down to +8 with the temporary inserts. Dr. Chang wrote a prescription for a permanent pair of glasses that included a +6 Prism for the top half of the lens and some magnification on the bottom half to assist with reading small letters close up (i.e. – cheaters). I’ve had 20/20 vision for most of my life, but age has caught up to me and some things just don’t work the same as they did before (regardless of the aneurysm side effects).

On the advice of a friend, I took the prescription to Warby Parker in the Galleria. Since I’ve never done this before, I wasn’t sure what my insurance would cover, but they had people in the store that seemed knowledgable about my situation and helped me pick out frames and make adjustments for this particular prescription. I paid for everything and was told the glasses would be ready for pick-up and fitting in 7-10 days. After two weeks of not hearing anything, I looked up my order on their website, which had a “please call us about your order” message displayed. No phone calls or emails during this time – WTH? The person I talked to when I called was very nice, but told me that their lab couldn’t produce my prescription, saying the prism strength couldn’t be higher than +5 and that they would just cancel the order. Ugh.

So in the end, I just went to Target Optical in West Saint Paul, which fitted me in a nice pair of Ray-Bans that they shipped in under a week for around $300. It took me a little while to get used to the progressive aspect of my prescription, but once I figured that out, they work really well. I do still prefer to not wear glasses when I can (like right now while I type on the iMac), but it’s nice to have them for driving and for reading the small type on menus in low-light situations. It will be interesting to see how they work for golf and biking later this spring…

More burger therapy

Desperately needed

Wayzata comes to Rosedale

Only one day left

I could get these every day

Nino Highlights

Hello, old friend

Only a few days left

They finally made it big

Guard the Cyber Citadel

This isn’t the Ordway

Best hockey TV day of the year