Rather than risk ruining eight year streak of at least one post a month for lack of having anything interesting to share, I am going to share a few things that I have been up to lately.

First, my knee. Recovery continues to be my primary focus. I am progressing very nicely according to my physical therapist and my doctor. For the first time since I tore my ACL, swelling in my knee has come down to near normal levels and I have full range of motion. I have almost regained enough strength in my leg to start running again. Recently I have noticed how I crave going out for runs and since I can’t run yet, I just keep buying new pairs of running shoes.

Like most of the country, I got caught up in the World Cup this year. After a strong CONCACAF and Confederations Cup showing last year, and then drawing such an easy group, I was hoping for an exciting cup and it was sad to see them lose to Ghana again. A lot can happen in four years, but the US have promising young talent and their key players shouldn’t be too old to compete next time around. Speaking of next time around, Rachel and I have already decided to go to Brazil for the next World Cup. We don’t have many plans yet except that we are going to be there for the entire cup. Who is going to join us?

This Saturday will be Rachel and my seventh wedding anniversary. Seven years sure goes fast. It is amazing to think about much we have done and the places we have been over the years.

Finally, Sunday is shaping up to become an epic 4th of July. She & Him is playing a free show on Governors Island at 4pm and then Old 97’s is playing a free show over at the South Street Seaport at 7pm. I think we are going to try to make both shows and then catch some fireworks after. Legendary! Anyone want to join us?

 

Ten years ago, Rachel and I were in college and she decided she wanted to run the San Diego Rock ‘n Roll Marathon with a group called Team in Training. She would have to wake up earlier than any college student should on a Saturday and drive to Des Moines for the weekly team run.

My contribution to her marathon effort included driving her to Des Moines a couple times for the Saturday morning run, training with her around Lamoni and helping her raise the money needed for her Team in Training goal. I know she could have done it all without me, but I am glad I helped because she had a great time at the marathon.

Now I am again excited for Rachel as she prepares for the New York City Marathon. She is running with Team in Training again (which means she needs to raise money again) and there will be plenty of long runs in preparation, but I can’t wait to get to see her come running up Fourth Ave on race day in the sea of runners.

Rachel, I am proud of you for taking on this new challenge and know you will do great.

I had surgery on my right ACL yesterday and am feeling great today. Leading up to the surgery I heard various horror stories and stories about how easy recovery was, so I was not sure what to expect.

I arrived at the hospital around 8:00 am and was in the prep room by 8:30. For the next three hours I met with various doctors, nurses and staff preparing me for surgery. I can remember walking into the OR and the anesthesiologist saying, “you are going to feel really good in a couple seconds.” The next thing I knew it was 2:30, I was in the recovery room and I couldn’t move my legs. I was given a spinal block to prevent pain during in my knee and something to put me into a light sleep during the surgery. I was then given something to eat and my first dose of oxycodone. By 3:30 I was dressed and meeting with the physical therapist again, he taught me how to walk on my crutches and how to go up and down stairs. Rachel then called a car and away we went.

Getting up three flights of stairs was one of my biggest worries before the surgery. It turned out not to be a problem at all – I just held on to the rail on one side and one of my crutches on the other and took it one stair at a time. Since I was not given a general anesthesia I was fully coherent, which definitely made the stairs easier.

Rachel spoke to the doctor after the surgery and the doctor said the operation went perfectly. I was extremely impressed with everyone that helped me out during my stay at the hospital. Every person I met with was so nice and made me feel at ease. I was not expecting a bad operation, but I definitely was not expecting to be taken care of so well.

I got home yesterday and got lots of emails, texts and phone calls from friends and family. It was so nice of everyone to remember me and let me know they cared on my big day. Rachel’s parents sent me these flowers with the hope that they help me get walking around quickly like the bionic man, although I am hoping I recover and am more like Dennis Dixon.

I am now in my first full day of recovery and Rachel has been amazing. She has waited on my every need – fixing meals, changing my ice, helping me with my exercises, bringing me everything I need and plenty more. I can not carry anything while on crutches and have no idea how I could recover without Rachel’s amazing care. Rachel, thank you for taking such good care of me!

It was a bit of a wild 2010 Eightfivethree Classic and with Kansas bowing out way too early I was in no mood to report on the results. Today, however, Rachel pointed out that she got third place in the Classic, so I figured I should give the winners their moment of glory.

I would like to thank everyone who participated this year and and extend a very big “Congratulations!” to this year’s top five winners (team name followed by real name):

1. Florida Ray – Ray
2. Jravis Tohnson – Adam
3. sportssuperfan – Rachel
4. Jayhawk07 – Nina
5. travis – Travis

To the other eight of you that did not make this very special list, better luck next year.

I never actually posted it here, but I hurt my knee a few weeks ago playing basketball. With about three minutes left in out city league basketball game, I went up for a pass and landed on my foot wrong. I immediately felt my knee move in a way it shouldn’t and then move back in to place. I went in for an MRI the next day and found out I had completely torn my ACL.

I have decided to get surgery on April 26th. The doctor said I didn’t have to get surgery if all I wanted to do was move in a straight line for the rest of my life (walking, running & biking) and would probably be fine. I, however, would like to return to an active life and don’t want to always have to be worrying that one false step could further injure my knee.

The only decision I really have to make is the what I want to replace my ACL with. I can go with my own patella or get a tendon from someone else. Anyone interested in donating? After some reading, I decided to get my replacement from a cadaver. I read a medical how-to from my brother-in-law and found that I could contract a bunch of different diseases and my knee could be a bit less stable than if the tendon came from another part of my body, but on the upside, I have a lower risk of arthritis and knee pain associated with the removal.

I will keep you posted.

Now in it’s eighth year, the Eightfivethree Classic is open for signup.

2010 Eightfivethree Classic

Anyone is welcome to signup, but act fast cause the tournament starts soon.

…another “blog”! I have blogs on twitter, tumblr, wordpress and probably a few other places I have forgotten about, so what’s one more?

I took a couple hours today to play around with a few projects I have been watching and wanting to try out. The new blog is hosted on github at http://travisj.github.com. Github is quickly becoming my favorite site on the internet. It is a great place to share code and find cool new projects.

The new blog is built using Jekyll and Compass. You can read more about both of those projects in my introductory post.

For fun, I also added fonts from typekit. I went to school with one of the founders and have been wanting to try out the service for some time. I leave all our design efforts to Rachel, but still had a lot of fun searching through the typekit font library and choosing fonts for the site.

I recently wrote about my troubles trying to buy a new camera lens on eBay and I wanted to tell about the great job ebay’s customer service did handling my problems.

I wrote the “seller” – which was really just the production developer testing account – on a Saturday and told them about my mistake in purchasing their item. By Sunday evening I had a full PayPal refund and an email from customer support. I was extremely satisfied with how quickly they resolved my issue.

Then this week I got home after a late (but victorious) basketball game and found a letter from eBay. In it was a personally written apology and a $25 gift card. Very cool.

The money is already burning a hole in my pocket. Since I ended up buying the lens elsewhere I wasn’t really sure what I was going to get until yesterday when I came across this gem. Love is Hell is the only Ryan Adams record that I do not have on vinyl and have not been able to find until now. While I could never pick my favorite Adams record, this is an amazing piece of work. I will keep my eye on this auction and will probably try making my second eBay purchase if the price does not get too much higher.

On one further side note, just reading over the track listing again takes me back two years to a trip that Cam, The Business and I made up to Salem to see Ryan at the Elsinore Theatre. And as a bonus, I found a recording of the show while checking to make sure I had the date right. I did not know this amazing recording existed. Great way to kick off the weekend!

My new lens arrived last night, but I haven’t had much time to try it out. The picture above was one of the first with my new toy and captures Crusher somewhere he probably shouldn’t be. I have lots to learn with the new lens. The shot is focused more on his body than his face.

On a very exciting side note, the record in the background is the newly re-released Anodyne from Uncle Tupelo. I picked it up tonight on my way home from work and have given it a complete listen. Anodyne contains one of my all-time favorite songs, New Madrid, and many other classics from a great band. I have enjoyed this album on CD for years and finally get to experience it in all its 180-gram vinyl glory!

I have been using Vim for a few months now and have found a few plugins that I can’t live without.

NERD tree makes it super-simple to browse and open files from your filesystem. I’ve mapped the nerd tree toggle command to control-c and then use “j”, “k” and “enter” to find and open the file I want to edit. You can also open the file with “i” and open it in split-screen mode.

I am still learning to work snipMate into my daily use, but when I remember to use it I love it. snipMate copies the most powerful feature from TextMate – snippets – which allows you to type a “snippet” of code, like say “input” when in an HTML file, and then it will fill out the input tag for you. You then can tab to each of the parts of the code that you need to fill out.

Today I downloaded and installed NERD commenter and matchit. Commenter makes it easier to add comments and comment out code for easy testing and matchit extends vim’s ‘%’ operator and makes it possible open and close HTML tags and much more.

I have also been developing on a few different machines and needed a way to keep my plugins and .vimrc file in sync. I decided it would be easy enough to create a git repo at github for my ~/.vim directory to easily share plugins and settings across machines. Feel free to check out the plugins and settings I am using and please share any other good tips and tricks that you have found.