Stan Taylor

The words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr ring true today still:

A few weeks ago–a few days after the Run for the Water race, in fact–I injured my hip while running. Last week, I went to see my orthopedist about it. As her PA was examining me, noting that I’m a lifetime runner, I mentioned that also have low-level pain in my right knee, but not enough that I’d gotten it checked out. The PA said they should X-ray the knee, too, while I was in the office.

The good news: the hip injury will heal with a rest in running, some stretches, etc. The bad news: the knee pain is due to degenerative osteoarthritis. The doctor said that they can take some measures to ease the pain but that the only remedy is a knee replacement. The arthritis will only get worse whether I run or not, and I may eventually need a knee replacement. She emphasized that running it will accelerate the degeneration. She also pointed out that I would eventually have to stop running if I had a knee replacement and that knee replacements only last a certain period of time, therefore it’s vital that I delay it as long as possible. Therefore, she strongly advised me to stop running.

I think both the doctor and her PA assumed that I would find this news devastating and that I would not want to stop running. But after a few days of reflection and talking with a lot of people about this, at this point in my life I identify primarily as a healthy, fit and active person–it’s just that running is the only way I’ve ever used to maintain that state. Furthermore, I don’t relish the prospect of increasing chronic pain and eventual significant surgery. It’s much more acceptable to me to find other forms of exercise that don’t exacerbate my arthritis and allow me to remain fit than it is to continue running at all costs. I think that swimming is an activity that I enjoy that will most easily fit into my current schedule/lifestyle. I have already been to the pool once, and I think I will try to take a swim course to learn to swim more effectively. But I’m sure I’ll continue a little running, and maybe also do some biking as well.

On Sunday, November 3, I ran the 10-mile Run for the Water through west central Austin. I completed in 1 hour and 30 minutes, at a pace of 8:53 min/mile. I used to be a lot faster, but that’s not bad for an old guy.

I visited my company’s office in Noida (Delhi) at the end of August, 2019. 

Yesterday afternoon I took a bike ride around our home in Pflugerville. I took this photo of a dry feed corn field at a break just outside of Hutto.

Dry corn stalks against the summer sky

I recently bought some black plastic aida 14-count cross stitch canvas, and I decided to try out the DMC Étoile embroidery thread. The result is two rangoli-inspired small projects. The original patterns can be found here and here.

My coworker Joel announced a few months ago that his wife was pregnant with their first children. I already had one of these projects underway with no intended recipient, so I actually managed to finish both of them within a couple of weeks of the children’s birth. I’ve been doing projects for children with these dogs for over 20 years. I think I’ll retire it. If I do more newborn projects, I’ll just have to come up with a different design.

A writer from MEL Magazine contacted me via a comment that I had made on a reddit question about whether men should run shirtless. My whole email interview got included in the article.

After I graduated high school in 1982, I spent the following school year as an AFS high school exchange student in Austria. This past weekend, I started scanning the hundreds of slides that I took during my year abroad, including the photo in this post of the village sign. Yes, I spent the year in a village called Großklein. For those of you who don’t speak German, groß = large, klein = small. Yes, I lived in big-little. Note that in Austria it’s common that if a new village springs up next to an existing one, they use the prefixes groß and klein to distinguish them. In the case, the existing village was named Klein.

I was a pretty early adopter of Gmail, and I got the username ‘stantaylor.’ Over the years, however, I have discovered that at least 3 or 4 other people in the world who share my name also think they have the my Gmail address–or at least people who are sending email to them think that they have it: one in Australia, one in the UK and at least one in the US. The latest is the one who signed up for Publisher’s Clearing House (TIL that PCL still exists). Or, based on the large volume of email that PCH has sent to this person at my email address, maybe someone who hates him signed him up, mistakenly using my email address. (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t someone who hates me because the emails are addressed to a different first name that shortens to Stan than my full first name). Another Gmail feature–filters–is saving me from the spam.