Cav's Place

Since it was Friday afternoon by the time I figured out that my switch was the reason why my Internet access was so terribly slow, I had to act quickly, looking through what was available, finding one that seemed to check all boxes I was looking for and ordering it so the order will be confirmed that day, as otherwise it’ll have waited until Monday. It still said they had to order it from their supplier, with an estimate of Wednesday evening if I was to go pick it up myself or Thursday if I wanted it delivered, but I was lucky and the message I received, less than 30 minutes before closing time, said I’ll be able to pick it up Monday evening, which was exactly what I did. And yes, I actually went there myself to do that.
Still have no idea why the old one failed now, despite the fact that it was about nine and a half years old. After all, the lightning strike from 2010 burned a port, but the rest of it continued to function, then the one from 2013 didn’t seem to hurt it at all despite the LAN port on dad’s computer getting burned and the one on my old one also being somewhat damaged, as from that point on attempts to reset that chipset required hard reboots as the system would be unable to perform the command, leaving networking unusable, and then got stuck if trying to reboot normally after that, and then it once again appeared undamaged when it got wet after the cable decided to piss on my desk last year. But now, even though I’m not aware of any other such events recently and the network cable now also passes through the LAN port of my UPS, to stop any other power surges, it seems to have just had enough. And yes, I looked inside and didn’t see any obvious signs of damage, and also tried using it without the case, to eliminate the possibility of an odd short caused by something somehow ending up touching the metal casing.

But enough about that; let me move on to Wednesday, which was the last day before the temperature dropped sharply and therefore perhaps my last chance for a good long run before spring. So, despite having a bit of a cold, I ate some cereals with yogurt, went to the bathroom, blew my nose as many times a I could, got dressed, drank some tea, shoved some napkins in a pocket and went to the park. Once there, I made sure my shoelaces were tied properly, removed the upper part of my training suit and tied it on, so it ended up as something of an odd cape on top of my t-shirt, spent a couple more minutes trying to work up the courage… And then ran ten kilometers.
Had prepared for this in the sense of figuring out where I’d have to go after finishing the third lap to add the remaining 400 meters, as a lap around the lake has 3.2 kilometers, and setting target times at each of the ten points, as in the usual two intermediate points and the end of each lap, plus the finish. The overall target was one hour, aiming for 18 minutes for the first lap, 19 for the second and 20 for the third, plus three more minutes for those last 400 meters, which included climbing stairs. But, while I admittedly wasn’t feeling too well during the last lap, it actually wasn’t as hard as I thought it’ll be and the time was 54:43. Also, while I no longer remember most intermediate times exactly, I definitely remember that I beat the targets for nine out of the ten “sectors” despite actually trying to control my pace until quite shortly before the end, so I could probably improve by up to a few minutes if I really tried. The only exception was the second sector of the first lap, which admittedly had the rather ambitious target of 5:30 when a good time for it on the normal route, of 4.1 kilometers, is somewhere between 5:15 and 5:20. Either way, even there I was very consistent, managing about 5:45 the first two times and 5:40 the third, but the target for the second and third laps was six minutes.

After getting back, eating something and letting my body eliminate excess weight for the second time that day, I went out again, wanting to try to buy a cake I saw in a confectionery last Tuesday, after the whole mess with the pizza. This would also involve actually asking, so I was far from sure I’d manage, but after going to buy a few things on Monday, before and after picking up the new switch, I had managed to save the exact amount… Or at least the exact amount that was listed then, because when I got there now the price was 0.5 RON higher, so I couldn’t afford it and had to turn back. No idea whether they actually increased the price or it’s the fact that I got there close to closing time at first and they may have slightly lower prices then, so they’ll have fewer left over. I guess I’ll have to check again some other time, possibly even next week, close to 9 PM, to see how things stand.
Either way, and despite going out without my jacket and the fact that the wind was picking up even more, I didn’t come right back after that. Instead, I went exploring a little, ending up checking out three other confectioneries, one which was some distance away and two others that are nearby, which I actually just happened to notice as I was coming back. Knew that one of them should be in this area and had kept looking for it, but couldn’t remember the exact address and had pretty much given up when I noticed it, while the other is, oddly enough, very close to it. None had that type of cake, however, and doubt I could have worked up the courage to ask for it even if they did and it was cheap enough, but now I want it even more, since I’m not even sure I had it ever since I was little. May have, once or twice, but definitely no more than that and, well, I guess it’s something else done for the sake of nostalgia.

Somewhat surprisingly, I could wake up quite fine the following day. Was expecting a fair amount of pain and my cold getting noticeably worse, but it wasn’t the case. However, the cold weather is making me even more miserable than I usually am, even though I’m sitting here with a sweater on now. Can’t stand this period, with temperatures below 20°C but above 5°C or so, especially if the heat isn’t on yet either. I like winter, but by that I mean real winter, with highs around or even below freezing, lows even lower, and definitely plenty of snow. This autumn weather, chilly, cloudy, with the humidity and nagging rain, just makes me want to curl up in a ball even more and have someone wake me up when it’s over… Though in fact I’d sure want someone to wake me up when all of this, meaning everything after she left, is over and I can realize it was just a bad dream…

As for the blood mentioned in the title, well, apparently whatever issues my rear end has decided to act up again. Was sort of expecting it after Wednesday’s effort, but I ended up going twice more by the end of that day, body still striving to get rid of all excess weight, and there were no problems. Yesterday, however, I felt something tearing in the usual place and then everything was red, and it happened again today. Been a while since it was like this, and guess it’ll take some time for that to heal now, but I hope it’ll just fix itself as it always does and that it won’t take too long to do it.