Almost Done

I finally defended my thesis yesterday and am now essentially done with grad school!! So freakin excited I can't take it. I still have some corrections to do on my thesis, but everything should be done in just a few short weeks.

In other big news I also did a few sets of pull-ups doing 3 reps each time. Mind you my shoulder was rocked afterward and it still hurts a few days later, but the point is I did it. Unfortunately my mind immediately went to thinking of climbing again. "If I can do pull-ups then I can climb too..." I am one unrational and overzealous human being. Don't worry though, I'll keep off it because I am truly scared of hurting this thing again. Not good.

Anyhoo, just thought I'd fill everyone in on the good news in various facets of my life. Maybe I'll even have a job soon. Woohoo!

Here's one of my favorite ski runs I've ever done. Steep and narrow. Couloirs are the greatest features out there.

It's always something...

Some of you know how much crap I've put up with while trying to get my masters degree finished. It's been a fight right up to the end. There was a point where I thought things would get better and my advisors would just want me to finish, but I don't know if they've ever really reached that point. I, on the other hand, have reached that point of wanting to be done about a year ago and finally let my professors know I was going to be done. And that's that.

To give you a little background the previous research done on prescribed fires in the political landscape has not been researched in the economic literature. Awesome, that means I'm contributing a strong paper to my field. On the other hand, though, it also means I'm trying to find what data is pertinent and significant. Well my data was hard to get (I was trying to get it from multiple government agencies who apparently think grad students are idiots), and my theoretical framework was extremely difficult. I made my own equation of how a public land agency acted when it came to prescribed fires and tried to get comparative static results to make predictions on my regression analysis. Low and behold I don't get any significant results and am stuck with a useless equation I spent months developing.

After all of the struggles to get things to work and get data to work I am finally at the end. But it wasn't that easy. I had to get an actual defense date set. Well I ask my head advisor and he's on vacation the next couple weeks. OK, that kind of sucks, but I'll make it work. Now I talk to my other advisor... and he's on vacation when my other professor gets back.

Oh, you've got to be kidding me. How is that possible. Well the last professor says he's on vacation yet farther into January when the second one gets back. No way. How is that even possible that the order in which I ask my professors when I can defend they're progressively gone later and later. Just humorous. Well, now I've changed my committee again and am now defending on the 22nd. Can't wait for this to be over. That will probably be the happiest day of my life. The constant struggle has been so tiring and it's taken a lot to grit the teeth and keep going after the finish.

Sorry for the boring post, but I at least thought I'd let everyone know that I will be defending. I realize everyone thought this was a mythical thing "defending" but it's real... I wasn't lying.

Hope life is going well for everyone.

Shoulder Recovery

I haven't written much about my shoulder and the recovery thereof. When I first hurt my shoulder I hit a brief stage of sadness thinking of recovery but an actual happiness that my shoulder would be better than when I had surgery on it 7 years ago. I had a shoulder that would chronically pop out of place after my first surgery and had grooved part of my bone because of it. Since that first surgery I had always thought it was going to get hurt again because it was so unstable. Even though I knew something was coming it was still hard to accept the fate that is recovery. It's a long and lonesome road and takes everything I have to keep myself going sometimes. The constant pain is torture and yet when I make even a little bit of headway it makes me so happy that I can keep gritting my teeth through it all. Even through these hardships, though, I think I'm making such good headway that I will be able to climb again and I will be able to do triathlons again. Having 5 pins in my shoulder will forever be a reminder of the commitment that's involved in climbing or backcountry skiing. Even if there is a lot of risk involved there is a lot of satisfaction.

I've gotten a little bit off point, but the point of this post is to fill you all in on the recovery. For as hard as it is there is a lot of happiness of getting back to normal. I still have a long road ahead and for as much as I feel like recovery is slow my PT informs me constantly that I'm far ahead of the curve. She's been keeping my head above water on some of the bad weeks.

I'll be back here soon enough...

Hello everyone. I've been working on my thesis revisions and generally staring at my computer in a dumbfounded nature. I feel like it's been working. And in amazing news I woke up to a glorious whiteness that is winter. There was easily a foot of snow down before I even left for work. Pretty sweet. Plus it's been snowing all day and we'll be above 20 inches here soon!

Anyways, the real point of this post is to throw up some pictures from climbing Devils Tower. This has a pretty good story to it too.

A couple friends told me they were heading there one day and I said I would be heading back home so I'd meet them there the next morning and climb with them. Well, they get there in good time, throw up a camp and are able to have a good 'ol time while I'm trying to pack up my climbing gear back in Bozeman.

Well, I'm gathering my gear and since I had just finished up school I was hoping I still had enough brain usage to remember all my things. I don't leave Bozeman until almost 9pm. This makes for a long evening of driving and I finally pull over somewhere in Wyoming and sleep just off the interstate with some truckers. When I wake up at 6am I hop in the drivers seat and take off for the Tower. Luckily I get there before they even wake up so I at least don't miss them. On the downside, though, I got up too early and am now waiting in the parking lot just getting my gear together. When they finally wake up and meet me in the parking lot we roll on over to Soler with way too much gear and string the two pitches up quite well. The climb was a lot of fun (I've only done the first pitch before) and we made it up without too many complications. Although we did have a good 'ol time with three of us on a hanging belay. So crowded and uncomfortable.

Well, here's the photos from the trip.

Yep, I look pretty stoked right here.

The summit

Final Days of the Thesis

I just handed in my last chapter to my advisor a few days ago and am now working on revisions. This means I'll be done with everything this semester and can finally move on from academia.

The downside is that I still have a hurt shoulder and cannot therefore go run around on the side of a cliff or even hiking for that matter. It was so nice the last couple days that I wish I could be out climbing rather than doing physical therapy. For once I'm going to do this rehab right and make sure my shoulder is as good if not better than before surgery.

Anyways, here's some more pictures from random beer tastings and the general snowiness of Montana (at least until the last few days when it decided to be 50 for some reason).

Old Pictures

I thought I'd also post some old images from climbing and what not while I'm waiting for my data to run. This stuff takes about 5 hours to run once the program is started. So here's some pictures of the young me.

Brew

Since my life revolves around my thesis and physical therapy, I don't have much of a life. Sadly I don't post trip reports anymore, so the next best thing is to post a few pictures of some friends and I drinking extremely good beer. A few of us get together and have "tastings" of a couple beers. These trappist ales are brewed by monks over in Belgium. Pretty hard to find beers, but definitely worth the wait. I also bought a few to age for a couple years.

These are from a tasting about a week ago with IPA's and Imperial IPA's from Boulder Brewery, Grand Teton Brewery, and Lagunitas Brewery. Excellently hoppy beers.

Jackson

I had to hit Jackson one more time to see the doc. so I had Fritz and Ryan come along to hit a few breweries while we were down there.

Nowadays

Now life revolves around coffee and my thesis. I finally have my last piece of data and can start working on my last section. I am ridiculously happy. Here's some pictures from the coffee shop B-randt and I usually hang out at on the weekends and a few pictures of some hops and brewing beer. Good stuff.
Maybe I'll actually start posting some relevant things about daily life now that I can't climb or ski for a while. Maybe...

Tetons VI

Here are some pictures of my last climb in the Tetons when we were snowed on and climbed through ice sections. Pretty uncomfortable day all around. Fun to look back on, but very tense at the moment. You can see some ice on the rock and a little bit of snow here and there, but the really disconcerting part were the clouds that you can see getting closer and closer up until they started spewing snow on us. Pretty good last climb....

End of Summer

I had surgery on August 19th and everything went very well. The first couple weeks after surgery are terrible. Waking up in the middle of the night (a couple times) to take pain meds, not being able to do anything with my right hand, being generally uncomfortable from bone being drilled, pins put in....
Anyways, I thought I'd post some of the pictures from surgery so those of you who are interested can check em out.
This first one is showing the main socket and just above the socket in the lower right photograph. Anything red is torn and inflamed. Apparently everything is supposed to be white. The lower right photograph is my biceps tendon that was torn from a bone spur that was shaved off.
The second set here is showing my rotator cuff. The top is the main cuff and is in excellent shape. I was relieved to hear that. It would have made rehab worse if that part was torn also. The bottom two are showing the torn labrum and inflammation. The doctor could completely pop my shoulder out of place "with ease" as he said it.
This third set of pictures is showing a lot of things. The upper left picture is showing my shoulder completely out of place. The next two in the upper right and lower left are showing some of the sewing that starts to happen through the socket to anchor and repair my labrum. He cut out some labrum because it was stretched so far, had to sew it up, then anchored it.
This set is showing the anchors and the labrum. The upper left and upper right are showing the pins that were put in to anchor the labrum down. The bottom two are showing the sewing of the labrum. At this point all of the torn and inflamed pieces of bone and flesh are taken out by now which is why most everything is white and healthy again.
This set is showing the anchored labrum and the fact that my shoulder is no longer able to be popped out of place. The upper left photo shows the anchored labrum. The upper right is showing the sholder not being able to be popped out. The bottom left is showing more of the anchored labrum. I don't remember what the lower right is... umm... i'm going to guess my shoulder.
This last set is showing the bicep tendon that was shaved down to healthy and untorn muscle. It's also showing a little of the bone that was shaved down.
I now have a usable shoulder. Pretty excited.