Been there, done that

A month into the new year already. Unbelievable.  I’ve had a jam-packed end of the year and start of 2018, starting with travel. Of course starting with travel. It’s all I do.

Since mid-December, I’ve putzed around in Vienna, Zurich, Lucerne, Bern and Cyprus, and in a couple of weeks I’m aiming for another R&R.

Christmas in Vienna

Last year at Christmas, I headed off to cooler parts and got a ton of snow, but this time around, there wasn’t that much. Vienna was super windy but totally enjoyable. It’s a very walkable city, and the flights there are timed as such that you can leave on a Friday night and return on a Sunday afternoon. In my case, I took off Monday too and honestly, kind of ran out of things to do. Fortunately, they had decent movies playing and I saw “Coco.” Totally recommend it – it ranks up there with my favorite Pixar movies.

My only goal there, really, was to walk around and see Christmas markets, of which there were scores. I did the little circle tour (as recommended by Rick Steves, I think) and basically got my money’s worth with the daily metro passes. It was just nice to wander around in a Christian country at Christmas.

For New Year’s, I flew into Zurich to meet a friend who works in Bern. From there, we took a day trip to Lucerne, which was gorgeous.

New Year's in Lucerne

Trains in Europe are awesome and efficient, but boy, Switzerland is expensive. Even crashing with a friend, I felt like I spent a fortune. The trains between the cities were each about 50 Euro (even though Switzerland isn’t on the Euro) and I did one pretty much every day. Not quite enough to make a pass worthwhile.

Lucerne was gorgeous. We did the cable car up to the top of a mountain, and it was quite a journey. Two rides in different cable cars, each about 10 minutes. Pretty darn high. And once up there, it was very cold, windy and snowy, but I mean that in a good way.

That day trip was exactly what the doctor ordered. We did it on New Year’s Eve and came back in time to make pizza and have homemade ice cream and watch the fireworks, but from the warmth of my friend’s apartment. We could have gone outside, but it was just so warm.

She had AppleTV and I feel like I caught on watching all kinds of stuff. First, we went to the theater to see “The Last Jedi,” then we maxed out on Apple TV. First was “The Big Sick” on Amazon, I think, then “Get Out” on maybe Hulu. The next two days, we jumped over to HBO and went with “Big Little Lies.”

Then, over MLK weekend, I took a quick trip to Cyprus to wander around. It was offseason and I should have rented a car but instead just took local transport. There was a really cool structure that they called a castle but was really more of a fortress on the harbor. I’d gone with a colleague and we did various photo shoots from each perch, getting the same boats at so many angles.

Now I’m hunkering down for the last leg of my Istanbul tour. I realized today that I am officially down to five months left. My target departure date is June 27. I’m adopting the Peace Corps countdown method of setting short-term milestones.

And planning around travel. I’ve got a couple upcoming trips planned – Egypt, Antalya and the Baltics – and a few more long weekends to plan around. I’m thinking of taking a few more vacation days to add on, but nothing definite.

Accepting ideas for more new travel. I really don’t have many dates left.

Oh, Antalya is the 10k again, and this time I am rooming with a friend closer in than I did last time. And in April, I plan on participating (note: not using the word “running”) a half.

It’s nuts, but I really want to do it. I figure it’ll take me over three hours but I  just want to finish.

Weekend games

Saturday morning, I woke up as usual and headed to the gym, then, post-13k run, took a shower and crashed again. This is my normal weekend when I’m in town and not working. Unlike most mornings, I got jolted out of a semi-conscious state by the annoying beep of a smoke detector.

And thus began a solid half hour of The Beep Game.

You’ve played this. You hear that dang beep but can’t figure out where it’s coming from.  It doesn’t repeat itself quickly, so you can’t just hear it, start walking because you’re sure it’s not in the room you were in at the time, and hear it again. It becomes an audio cat-and-mouse game, and it’ll drive you nuts.

My apartment isn’t all that big, but it’s got three bedrooms with a smoke detector in each. There are two hallways, a long one and a short one. The long one, at the front door, connects the front door to the living room and the short one basically fits a radiator and my L.L. Bean rug. (Plug for L.L. Bean: it is an awesome rug, kind of Navajo-y, but I don’t see it on the website now.) The little hallway serves as the intersection of the three bedrooms. There’s a carbon monoxide detector there and a smoke detector in the long hallway, plus there’s a fifth smoke detector in the living room.

That’s a lot of potential beeps, and it’s not like this is the first time they’ve driven me nuts. However, I can’t ever remember which I’ve changed because it takes more than one or two tries to figure it out.  Saturday was no different. It went off once, signaling that I really should get going, and all I could tell was that it wasn’t loud enough to be the one in my bedroom. This meant that, although annoying, it wasn’t enough to actually drag me out of bed at that time. I had a long week and wanted to sleep late, plus I figured I deserved it after 13k.

Anyway, when I heard it again – with what seemed like a long but indeterminate amount of time in between – I figured I should get up and join The Game.

Eliminating the one in my bedroom still left four smoke detectors, and I really thought it couldn’t be the one in the long hallway or in the desk/closet room, since I really think I’ve changed those before. (The desk/closet room is, obviously, the one with the Drexel desk. I moved the Drexel bookcases in there and, since Turks don’t do closets, I bought a shower curtain rod and rigged it between the wall and the bookcases, providing a home to all my pants and suits.

I moved a chair into the little hallway and waited. It seemed the next beep came faster than it had before, but all I could then determine was that it didn’t sound like a bedroom one at all. I thought it came from the long hall, so I moved the chair and took it out, then went to make pancakes.

Pancakes are the weekend treat. I’m finally whittling down the huge stock of flour that I brought for some inexplicable reason. Today in particular, I used a ton because I made a triple batch of cookies for our guards.

As I was making the pancakes, though, I heard the beep again, so I changed the one in the living room, pulling the old battery out and sticking in the one from the long hallway. This was no easy feat because, as I learned, my living room ceilings are really high and my shoulder is not doing those “lift and twist a little” movements much at all. I tend to compensate by lifting my arm with the other arm, but for this, unlike, say, the little light above me on a flight, required two hands.

A few minutes after I completed the feat, the beep went off again – twice, like 45 seconds between. This made no sense because I swear when I sat in the chair in the little hallway, right outside all three bedroom doors, the beep came in front of me. And now they were coming irregularly! Since I knew I’d changed the one in the desk/closet room at one time, I started in the spare bedroom. Nothing doing, so I tried the one in my bedroom, even though I was absolutely positive the beeps hadn’t come from there.

The beeping continued, and at this point, the game was getting really old, since I’d changed the battery in every single smoke detector I had. By that point, I was tired of The Game but it doesn’t end until the beeping stops, and it hadn’t stopped. I started re-trying them and knew it wasn’t the long hallway one, when, as I was closing the little smoke detector face after changing the battery for the second time, the sound went off from behind me.

At that point, I wondered if random coincidence had drained two batteries at once, so I basically started taking the batteries out of multiple smoke detectors at once – and then, as I was in the hallway, I heard the beep next to me.

Not the smoke detector at all, but the carbon monoxide detector, which is on the wall outside my room. However, there is no way that’s what I heard earlier, since I had been sitting right next to it when I heard the beep in front of me, not to my right, left or behind me.

The good news on that one was that I have rechargeable AA batteries so I could recharge those quickly, but right now, I have two 9-volts out of the five smoke detectors. I think one of them is probably still good, but at this point I don’t care. I’m just so happy to have silence! I had been headed to work that morning but decided to linger, just so I could enjoy the silence.

I don't do windows, but this guy does

Like many offices, ours has a bunch of windows and of course the outside ones have to be cleaned every once in a while. I think ideally, we aim for quarterly, but realistically it’s a bit less. And that’s kind of a relief, because it’s a big ordeal.

How many people does it take to wash windows? Well, I don’t know the total because I was just with one of the two teams. We had one on the ground to do the windows that were accessible by ladders, but I was working with a team of two responsible for the ones that required dangling from a rope over the ledge. One of those guys was the spotter, of sorts, and one guy was the window washer.

Not the guy, but close enough.

In addition, one of my guys was somewhat supervising (he came and went between the two teams) and our regular window washer was also there. He’s one of the guys who does the inside windows regularly and I guess he was there for quality control or something.

And then there was me, so that brought the total of the ropes team to four. I was there because of the location of some of the windows, and I was there from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., so it was a long day standing on the roof watching a guy wash windows.

The actual window washing didn’t take long. I timed one of the latter windows at 27 seconds, but I was there for seven and a half hours.

But that’s not to imply the guys were dilly-dallying. It was a fascinating to watch the window washer in action.

He was like Spiderman, but a Spiderman serious about safety. The guy, who was maybe in his late 20s, had a harness with all these climbing hooks coming off it, each with a specific purpose. He was deliberate about how he hooked up all his wires, hooks and clampy things, taking his time and being very meticulous before lowing himself down the wall.

In all, it probably took an average of 10 minutes to do each window, with less than one minute being the actual sponge-and-squeegee part. He had this awfully long rope, which he doubled up. Watching him roll it up at the end of the day was entertainment in itself  because it reeled  it in, made sure there were no twists in it and looped it around his shoulders for storage, then twisted it into a knot for easy carrying.

He scouted the roof for the little safety hooks, the ones designed exactly for the purpose of allowing people to hang off the walls. I saw this earlier in the summer, too, when the guys power-washed the roof. But Spidey was in a class all his own. Watching him tie knots was mesmerizing, and trying to figure out what all the implements were hanging from his body was a game in itself.

He has a couple of things that looked like compasses in giant Vice-grippy-ish sort  of things, and another thing that I could tell you were supposed hold in your hand, kind of like a squirt gun, but it didn’t have what would have been a muzzle, just so weird tube sort of thing. Turned out, these were pulleys he’d clamp to the rope to help him climb up and down. I don’t mountain climb and really don’t rappel down cliffs, but it seemed like the kind of stuff you’d use for that.

Except that’s fun. (Or at least is to a certain breed of thrill seeker.) This was work, and I cannot fathom how someone would wake up and say to himself, “You know, I want to be a window washer when I grow up. And not just any window washer, a high-rise one.”

Our building isn’t that high, but it’s far up enough and solid enough on the bottom to make it hurt if something went wrong. This guy was no dummy. He was absolutely methodical in his prep work, starting from a long survey of how to rig up his ropes. It wasn’t just a “hook it there and slide down” thing; he used multiple anchors at various parts of the roof. I’m sure it involved math in the same way that playing pool does – tie this here to leverage that, then run this other thing through here.

I don’t know how long it took him to perfect his method, or how he learned. He had an assistant with him who was a bit older so I wondered if he’d apprenticed to a degree, but I couldn’t ask. First of all, the window washer spoke absolutely no English and I can only say good morning, good evening and thank you and count to five in Turkish. Second, the assistant didn’t speak. It took me awhile to catch on to this; I thought the grunting was just to get the window washer’s attention; the anguage of a longtime partnership. But eventually, I realized the older man couldn’t speak, like an Avox in “The Hunger Games.” He communicated by grunting or making a noise with his throat and was pretty good with sign-ish language. When he made some motions in my direction, I had no trouble figuring out that he’d asked if I lived in Istanbul.

Anyway, watching them work together was engrossing. I’d brought along my Florida State beach chair to chillax in, but I never bothered with it. I was utterly fascinated with watching Spidey ease himself over the wall, load up with the bucket, sponge and squeegee and then slowly, a bit at a time, lower himself to the window. Then, if the window was big, he’d keep himself from swinging back and forth by smacking a giant suction cup on the window and holding it while he went to town in the window.

Less than a minute later, he’d do some rearranging of his clamped items – yes, while he just hung there – and the little Vice-grippy pulley would emerge and he’d attach them to the rope. Pulling out what looked kind of like a big nylon dog leash, he stuck one foot in it and then, as he slowly moved the pulleys up the rope, the rope would raise the leash and his foot, mimicking him climbing steps. Once he got to the top but before he pulled himself over, he’d deliberately hand over the sponge/squeegee bucket to the other guy and the do some fancy clamping and unclamping, plus removed this handy nylon sheath that he wrapped around the ropes where they touched the building, which kept them from fraying.

The whole production really was interesting to watch. The guy, young as he was, was a complete pro. Even at the end, he took a couple items the assistant had tucked in there back out so that he could refold them in a certain way.

I really like working with the facilities crew on the weekends, but usually I want to jump in and do some of the work. I like that kind of stuff, though I’ll leave the window washing to Spidey. I really was jealous when they power washed, and when they tore down the wall they pretty much had to hold me back. I like to try to guess how they’re going to go about the work, like which tools they’ll use to do the job.

We had a big part on some kind of air conditioning thing replaced not that long ago, and the unit was on the roof. The part was huge, like lifted-by-crane huge. It was interesting to watch the crew guide the new part in, because it was going a couple floors up on the roof – which has lots of electrical-type stuff on it – and being hoisted by a crane whose driver could not see the roof. There were a couple guys hands-on on the roof, another calling the shots and another relaying the shots over the radio to the crane driver. It went in without a hitch.

Today, I couldn’t even pretend to help, although I think Spidey was amused at my presence. Through one or two other people, I asked a couple questions about the equipment because it baffled me. (I thought the suction cups were kneepads.) But I really couldn’t help, so I took a knee and weeded the roof. And although that must sound a little weird, the roof has these concrete (I guess) square blocks and, either on purpose or not, weeds sometimes spring up between them. Once the team was out of the area where I had to keep a constant eye on them, I sat down and did some weeding.

I miss this kind of stuff, and it makes me want to buy a house.

Publix, Radio Margaritaville, Eskimo Joe’s, playing tourist, dumb Americans: it’s my normal

Cockfighting Cupids

Hopefully this is the last time I grouse about this, but how stupid can traveling Americans be? I’m manning the duty phone again and it’s just amazing what people do.

First, visas are tricky to come by these days, and, if you travel internationally, you should always know how to obtain a visa in the country you’re visiting. So many people do not, and it seems that most of those people have called me this weekend. They are also under some delusion that I can beam them in the country. Nope. Go back from where you came.

They also seem to think I wield power with Turkish Airlines, such as the woman who missed her connection because, while her originating flight was on time, she didn’t realize she had to walk to the connecting gate. She was all pissed and expected me to talk to the airline out of having her pay a change fee. She said she didn’t have it and would “have to spend two months in the airport.”

Then there’s the people who put their 70+ grandmothers on an international flight alone and then get upset when I don’t swoop down in my black helicopter when they miss their connecting flights. The grandmothers always, always, are “elderly,” either “sick” or “crippled,” and never speak English, yet the relatives are fine to put them on international flights all by themselves.

"From Russia With Love" and "Inferno" filmed here.

Two scam calls, though neither caller would acknowledge they were being scammed. One lady who was concerned if her kids’ father could take them internationally without her. I had a terrible connection on that one and was basically yelling the same thing over and over in hopes that she got it. I was concerned because I wasn’t sure IF she wanted him to be able to take them. She did, so I kept trying to repeat “I think so, but call the airline.” Seriously, why would I know that? And how hard would it be to write a note just in case?

My favorite so far (I have the thing til Tuesday) was the American in Greece who called me with a beef with a Turkish company. He was stunned when I told him it was none of the U.S. government’s business.

Solve your own problems, people. That guy called me on Thanksgiving morning as I was headed out to play tourist. We’re still on “movement restrictions,” but I got permission to visit two places on Thursday morning: the cisterns and the Archeological Museum. I really wanted to see those two, and my annual museum pass expired the Friday after T-giving so I was really glad I got the OK to go.

Obligatory Medusa photo

I sped through the cisterns because, well, first of all, it’s pretty much all the same thing, but also because I had no cell service and couldn’t risk not being available for the duty phone.

But it was such a pretty place, and very peaceful when you’re there at 10 a.m. I’d been to a cistern once before, in Morocco, but it wasn’t nearly as nice.

Here’s a bit from Lonely Planet on it:

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/istanbul/attractions/basilica-cistern/a/poi-sig/402088/360887

“This subterranean structure was commissioned by Emperor Justinian and built in 532. The largest surviving Byzantine cistern in İstanbul, it was constructed using 336 columns, many of which were salvaged from ruined temples and feature fine carved capitals.  …

It was originally known as the Basilica Cistern because it lay underneath the Stoa Basilica, one of the great squares on the first hill. Designed to service the Great Palace and surrounding buildings, it was able to store up to 80,000 cubic meters of water delivered via 20km of aqueducts from a reservoir near the Black Sea, but was closed when the Byzantine emperors relocated from the Great Palace. Forgotten by the city authorities some time before the Conquest, it wasn't rediscovered until 1545…”

Two of the 336 columns are built on Medusa heads, one of them upside down. I feel like that’s the photo op everyone goes after.

Look! It's the Brady Bunch

I ran over to the Archaeology Museum after that, and again I practically had the place to myself – for a while. I was winding down in the “Istanbul Through the Ages” exhibit and the noise level increased exponentially. I think the entire Istanbul system entered the museum at the same time, so I got out of there pretty quickly after that.

But I loved perusing the exhibits. They had an entire display of sarcophaguses, like four rooms’ worth. Those just amaze me. I took three photos of one huge one, getting closer and closer with each shot. The detail is amazing, and how, first of all, and how long it must have taken to get those things right.

I’m really glad I got to go. I fear that in eight years, when I tell someone I lived in Istanbul for two years, they’re going to think I was an idiot for not being able to visit all this city has, but right now a lot of it’s off limits.

So that was one thing to be thankful on Thanksgiving. Another was being invited to a friend of a friend’s place. My colleague from work has friends from church who got together and asked me to join them.

There were a handful of Americans in the mix, plus one Mexican who had gone to school at Oklahoma State. The hostess was from Oklahoma and I totally blew their minds when I told them I’d gone to Eskimo Joe’s. Had a weird conversation with the bartender that had something to do with Dominik Hasek.

A taste of home

As I tend to do at parties, I helped out in the kitchen. I’m much better at coping with groups, even small ones, when I have a task. So, channeling Karen, I jumped in and helped with the food. Never done a sugar glaze before, but it worked.

I can make myself at home in a kitchen, but when Oklahoma pulled out the gravy packet from Publix, I knew I was home. Oh, man, I was so happy to see that. I miss Publix.

It’s little connections like that that do you a world of good on Thanksgiving. Kind of like a win over the Gators, you know?

But Monday was the best. The hurricane relief concert was past my bedtime or before my wake-up time; I’d had a busy weekend and just couldn’t spare those hours as waking ones, but I did write myself a note to turn on Radio Margaritaville as soon as I woke up. I managed to catch the last two songs live (and subsequently had “Hey Good Lookin’” going through my head all day) and then got a text from Leila from the show.

Happy she could go, but I was so jealous. Yes for Jimmy Buffett, Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney and somewhat for resident Seminole Jake Owen (seriously, he didn’t wear an FSU shirt? Shame!) but Scotty Emerick was there, too. Bucket list item! Had a hunch but it wasn’t exactly like I could take that black helicopter from Istanbul to the civic center. It’s only for dumb Americans.

Having a ball. Or not.

Two busy weekends back-to-back here! Over Veterans’ Day weekend, I spent two days on a sightseeing tour and then ran 15k. Today is the afterglow from our “Marine Ball;” I’ve just finished baking and icing cookies for a party tonight as well as a dessert for Tuesday’s Thanksgiving lunch.

The 15k about killed me. I’d met my buddy at 7 a.m. to transport to the 9 a.m. race, which was darn early considering I’d gotten home at 10:30 the night before from my two-day road trip. I’d also not really eaten a decent meal the evening before so the race was really rough. I finished the 14k strong three weeks ago, but it took me 11 minutes longer to run one just one kilometer longer. That’s really not good, but I’m still trying to psyche myself up for a half in April.

The run was about the same route as last year’s 10k, except we jagged left at Eminonou instead of right and then added on another five kilometers. It was chillier than I expected, but I had brought a very lightweight jacket so I wore that the first 5k before warming up and taking it off (which is hard to do while running with a painful shoulder). Then, with about 3k remaining, we hit the shoreline again and it got really windy, so I had to re-juggle and put it back on. However, even though I struggled, I forced myself to run the last few bits so at least I told myself I finished strong.

And I hurt for a couple days alter, too. That’s the first time, really. My Achilles heel on one side wanted a divorce, and on the other both the knee and the hip weren’t really happy with me. Still, I feel like I’m cheating myself if I at least don’t try the half.

The two days before, I signed on to one of those tour companies and hit up both Troy and Gallipoli. Oh, man, I just love Turkey so much. There is so much history here, and Troy is exhibit A. There have been nine layers excavated, dating back to 3000 BC. The area is pretty big, but so far, only 10 percent has been excavated. It’s pretty impressive.

 

There’s a replica Trojan horse, even though that’s really just a story. Maybe it’s true, but probably just something that Homer, et. al., have popularized. But it’s really cool, and I love to take pictures of archaeological stuff like that, even if photos don’t do it justice.

Saturday was Veterans’ Day (happy birthday, Dorothy!), but the rest of the world knows it as Remembrance Day, and when I made my “I wanna go to Troy and Gallipoli” plans, I totally didn’t put together the importance of Remembrance Day in Gallipoli.

There were multiple Ozzies and Kiwis on my little tour bus, and one of the Kiwis had made it a retirement bucket item to see Anzac. He had retired the Friday prior, and it was that important to him to see the place.

We had a Remembrance Day service and the tour guide gave us each a rose to put on one of the graves. Most of the headstones had the same words inscribed but a few had personalized. I found the marker (and these were people who were “believed to be” buried in the areas) of one 18-year-old Australian who had “He gave his life for his friend” and it got to me. He got my rose.

Other than the Mel Gibson movie, I really didn’t know much about it, including what “Anzac” meant (Australian and New Zealand forces in WWI), and it really was enlightening. And that’s on both sizes s- the Anzac and the Turk.

The campaign itself was pretty awful – nine months for Anzac troops to try to move about 2k straight up a cliff from a beach.  The tour took us to the beach and wound around to see what’s left of the trenches (lots of erosion) and up to the high point they were trying to take.

 

On the Turk side, it was what put Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the map. He went on to found modern-day Turkey and is highly regarded, to put it lightly. His image is everywhere, including in practically every one of my local colleagues’ cubicles. I didn’t know that he was from that region of Turkey and had, so to speak, gotten his start at Gallipoli.

So busy weekend last weekend and so far this week’s been the same. Our Marine (It’s A Birthday Celebration, Not A) Ball was last night and I am just so glad it’s done. Most everyone had a good time, which is good, but as a person who doesn’t drink, cannot dance and really hates to dress up, it’s kind of my trifecta of hell. The only thing that made it bearable for me was that there was an amazing birthday cake involved.

But, since I was basically the person who finagled it to bring down the ticket cost from $60 to $30 and get an open bar, plus I organized the transport shuttles coming and going and pointed our Marines to an incredible baker for that amazing birthday cake, I felt I had to go.

I had two pieces of cake.

I’d wanted to leave at 10 p.m., right after the birthday cake part and before the dancing but our motor pool guy begged me to stay and help him get everyone home safely, so instead of being in bed at 10:30, I arrived home after 1 a.m.

Today, I’ve been trying to knock a few things out before going to another little get-together. It’s feast of famine for me. We have a luncheon on Tuesday and not many people have signed up to bring stuff so I’m trying to make a dessert (cookies) and three side dishes (veggies/rice, stuffing, okra) but I decided that the side dishes will have to wait until Monday night because they’ll get nasty.

Tomorrow starts another rough week at work, but it’s rough in the “there’s a lot to do” vein. I got a cortisone shot in my shoulder this week and have a follow up tomorrow. It’s helped, which confirm there’s something wrong with my shoulder, but there’s still other pain so I have to figure out what to do on that.

My only really downer this weekend has been that I am too busy to have scheduled a massage. I could really use one.

There’s something wrong with my shoulder and I am thrilled

Something like 8-9 months ago, my thrift-store leather Timberland jacket fell off the back of the chair at my desk. When I went to pick it up, some terribly mean invisible gremlin took my left arm, ripped it out of the socket, twisted it, and then jammed it back into the socket.  Or at least that’s what it felt like.

That was December, January, February or something like that. After a couple of months of agonizing pain when I reached for something or twisted it a certain way, I went to an orthopedist. That was April, but until now, all signs indicated there was nothing wrong.

Since April, I’ve had a total of three MRIs (two shoulder, one neck), X-rays, anti-inflammatories, steroids, physical therapy and some kind of really, really, really painful shot that was supposed to block pain but didn’t. All that took place between two doctors and one physical therapist at a hospital that took an hour for me to get to, which added all kinds of stress. And in all those appointments, I was probably with the actual doctors maybe a total of 20 minutes. That counts a five-minute stretch with the original doctor as he waited to see if the shot would kick in. (It didn’t.)

The original doctor diagnosed me from across the room. In two appointments, I spent maybe five minutes with him before he passed me off to the other doctor, a frozen shoulder specialist, who prescribed physical therapy and was initially convinced it was frozen shoulder. To be fair, I had many of the symptoms, but after unsuccessful and incredibly painful PT she changed her mind and announced it was probably my neck and not the shoulder at all. I was like, um, OK, but you have the neck MRI I did four months ago, right? They never bothered reviewing them.

As it turns out, I have some kind of thing in my spine where the disk is mashing against the spinal cord, but Doctor 2 still wanted to rule out any shoulder injury with the shot. It hurt, but didn’t work, and this convinced Doctor 2 it was my neck and not my shoulder at all.

At this point, though, it was about August and I was just exhausted and frustrated trying to commute to the place, and I also really didn’t understand why kind of doctor they were trying to send me to next. I tried to make an appointment to understand and that didn’t pan out, but fortunately, the medical staff at work helped me figure out it was a pain management doctor who wanted to do a shot in my neck.

However, at that point, I was just done in trying to deal with the commute and really not overly happy with the doctors, who always seemed like they were just trying to get me out the door. The medical staff made me another appointment at a different place, and, after two postponements, I finally saw the doctor today.

And there’s something wrong with me! I’m so relieved.

The pain is just incredible, I figured there had to be something wrong, but all the MRIs came back with nothing special. I’m no wimp, though, and the pain, which is getting worse, just takes my breath away.

Massages have helpd, and during the last one, the masseuse found a spot that definitely trigged wet-your-pants kind of pain. She said it was a tendon and it was “crooked.” She tried to “pull it out” and holy God, that was the worst. Massage therapists are absolute sadists.

But as it turns out, she was pretty dead-on, at least partly. By that I mean the new doctor (No. 3) took a brief look at the MRI, left the room and came back five minutes later with not only one issue but about five.

The tendon, indeed, is pinched between a couple of bones, so the masseuse was right on that. I have tendonitis as well, plus arthritis and some kind of other “you’re getting old” kind of thing. Can’t do much about that, but I have the bone-on-bone that I had in the other shoulder, too.

As if all that wrong with my shoulder isn’t enough, I also have what they call here a “hernia,” which is where the spine disks are stabbing the nerve. I really did suspect that, too, because once in awhile I will bump my arm, but not move the shoulder, and a jolt of pain goes all the way up my arm.

I feel vindicated that something really is wrong. Dr. 3 read the readout on the MRIs, which said all was right with the world, kept saying, “This is not right. There is something wrong with your shoulder.”

The problem is, though, that I don’t know which of the owies is really making me go owie. My spinal disks are attacking my nerve, yes, but that might not be the source of the pain. It could just be the tendon. The course of action is to start with a cortisone shot and see if that quells the pain. If not, it could be the neck thing.

Honestly, right now, I don’t care. I’m just so thrilled that someone validated the pain I’ve been in for more than a pregnancy’s worth of time. My plan is to try the cortisone next week.  And get another massage.

Not since “The Golden Girls” has there been this much talk about cheesecake

The stakes are up. I ran, and completed, my first 14k, and I did it in a time that was respectable to me. Plus, I finished on a good note – easily, I could have kept going. That’s fortunate, because in a couple of weeks I am on the hook for a 15k.

The race this time around was in the south of Turkey in a little city called Dalyan. It’s where baby turtles hatch and head to the Mediterranean Sea, so the race is called “The Turtle Race,” but in Turkish – Carretta.

It’s not carretta season, so we didn’t see any of them, but I did see the in-the-mountain tombs, which date back to the second century B.C. I swear, I will never get over that kind of thing. I’m utterly amazed at Turkey’s history and am so blessed to have the opportunity to drift by it on a boat, a stroll or a run. It’s everywhere here.

The city itself wasn’t much; basically it was the equivalent of a beach town or a little ski village – lots of cafes, restaurants and souvenir places. Perfect for strolling around, and we did a lot of that.

The run, the turtles, the beach, the in-the-mountain tombs, all that history, though, was second to the most important discovery of the trip: the cheesecake.

Backing up, I went with a colleague from work, M, and three of her longtime friends and travel buddies. M had d been traveling with her oldest friend in the group for about 20 years, and they’d met on a ski trip or something. The second came in a bit later, a friend from M’s church, and first ran with M and then they expanded that to traveling. The third came along a little later but basically they’d all been together for a long time and had a lot of fun together. They go on several annual trips, like some ski thing in February.

While I have zero plans to hone in on that, I had so much fun. I roomed with M and the oldest friend, F and the other two, who were a little younger, had another room. One of those two – T – oh my God, she was funny. While they all spoke at least some English, the longtime friends conversed more easily in Turkish, of course, so a lot of the time I was trying to follow conversations when I only caught a word now and then.

The one word I picked up on? Cheesecake.

T, especially, would talk really, really fast, and the tone was always upbeat. Without knowing the whole topic, I could tell that she was amazingly funny, but it was really hysterical to hear what sounded to me like, “Blah blah blah blah blah cheesecake blah blah cheesecake blah blah blah blah blah cheesecake.”

Wherever we were, the topic came back to cheesecake. And so did we – three or four times (depending on if you count the visits to the café or the pieces of cheesecake itself.)

One of the cafes, a little coffee and dessert place, served homemade cheesecake. My traveling quartet had made the same trip last year and discovered this place, but when they visited there were only two pieces remaining and they had to split them.

This trip, T called ahead and made sure they had five pieces for us, and, no kidding, we opted for that over dinner. The next day, after breakfast at the hotel, it was the first stop. I have to say, it was also darn good cheesecake, made by the owner himself.

While we were eating the cheesecake and drinking cappuccino (or, in my case, hot chocolate), I asked if they’d ever heard of “The Golden Girls.” Both M and F are about my age, so I knew they were in the target demographic when the show came out, but I had no idea if its popularity made it to Turkey.

It had. Not only had the two older ones heard of it, but the younger ones also knew of Dorothy, Ma, Rose and Blanche and remembered them sitting around the dining room table (the one that sat four, but for whatever reason [of course the camera] they never had a chair at one side of it and the fourth person always sat at a stool or the island or something.

The Golden Girls’ go-to food was cheesecake, and so was ours. We had a good laugh over it.

Honestly, with all we ate, both there and everywhere else, I’m surprised I was able to run. Plus, the race was on a Saturday afternoon, which seemed really weird since all the 10ks I’ve done so far have been in the morning. We did not eat cheesecake the morning of the race (I had fusilli broccoli) but as soon as we showered after, we made a beeline for the place.

Not a bad post-game routine, I have to say. It really was a fabulous.