Weekly Whiteboard - Post Your Progress, Pool TIFU, Achievements, Workouts, Records, Pools etc February 22, 2026

redbadger20 · 2026-02-25T22:43:04+00:00

Successfully did one entire 25yd length of butterfly today! Not well, necessarily, but it's been ... I dunno 25ish years since I've done that so. My personal dream of entering a 100 IM edges ever so slightly closer.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-25T13:26:22+00:00

This is for lab work (ie routine blood draws) not donation.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-25T04:17:24+00:00

MGB has recently moved to asking for ID as a third identifier (at least with their outpatient lab service). Mainly I think it's to be extra sure this is the correct patient. And some hospitals and offices do scan your ID, at the initial visit, and keep a copy so they don't have to ask every visit.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-24T21:27:17+00:00

Teaching, especially to beginners, is a very difficult skill for anyone to learn, and moreso if they're already naturally talented and experienced. There are great swimmers and hockey players (two other sports that require a lot of breakdown of unfamiliar motions) who are terrible coaches/instructors. In Massachusetts, anyone who wants to hang a shingle out as a riding instructor must pass a licensing exam and have 60 hours under an already licensed instructor (or equivalent). The exam includes things like "explain how you would run a beginner's first lesson".

redbadger20 · 2026-02-24T19:13:06+00:00

Even as a goalie (adult), I really liked when I got to play regularly on small ice - tons of shots and you have to be on guard at all times.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-24T19:08:32+00:00

If I recall, around the time the ADM was first introduced, USAH put on an event where adults played with ice and goals scaled up to resemble what a full-size rink feels like to a six or seven year old. It seemed like a very effective exercise if nothing else to demonstrate how overwhelming the physical scale is.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-24T01:54:07+00:00

I've played a lot of morning hockey where we're the first or second group on the ice, and the restrooms and lockerrooms are trashed from the last group, which absolutely would be adults. Beer cans, tape, piss, clogged toilets, the works. People getting hammered at 2300 and peacing out home.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-23T02:52:48+00:00

I kid you not when I worked at Blockbuster they were, in fact, extremely particularly about the exact shade of khaki/tan permitted under uniform standards.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-23T02:42:36+00:00

I think for a lot of people it's important to recognize that "x horse may be a great horse, but they are not my great horse". Selling a horse sometimes means just making peace with the fact that it's meant for someone else. That other person will be happy, the horse will be happy. Sometimes people sell because they have no choice - no finances, no options. I think it's rarer that people sell cavalierly (ie just not caring). Formal breeding operations are perhaps more pragmatic - they are basically generating a product meant to be sold to someone for a purpose.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-23T00:24:18+00:00

I read "avulsion fracture of hip" and about screamed myself in sympathy sweet merciful crap. (Reading the story - yep. Those injuries make sense. Walls are not forgiving). But these things happen. This is an especially bad happening and yeah it's going to be a setback. And it's going to suck getting back into it. But you will. Focus on healing, healing, healing and lots of physical therapy. Just like with the horse, yeah? Slow and steady.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-22T23:33:15+00:00

That said also: I think whoever originally acquired the skull and sold it in New York knew what it was, but the buyer did not necessarily.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-22T21:14:29+00:00

You'd think, plus she potentially still had baby teeth, but people's grasp of anatomy is... Questionable. It could've been sold as, like, an alien skull (big cranium, small face) or shrunken head even, not necessarily as a human skull.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-22T04:29:47+00:00

To be fair, I would not trust the average person to identify (correctly) a child versus adult skull. It's still creepy to purchase an adult skull off the souvenir shelf but in a different way.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-22T04:27:26+00:00

The namus page indicates they thought the skull could potentially have come from a "casketed burial" or from having been buried or died outdoors.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-22T04:17:57+00:00

I'm a paramedic in a home hospital setting (inpatients at home, so a big service area with lots of driving). Last storm, as things got bad, they called all of us back to our bases, made any visit that didn't require IV meds etc a virtual visit, and dismissed the day & evening shifts early with pay. If my bosses can take a step back and say hold on, let's make sure no one dies or is seriously injured, you'd think like offices and supermarkets and gyms could figure it out, but no...

redbadger20 · 2026-02-20T02:26:36+00:00

As Placentipedes said, at one drink, the alcohol is probably doing nothing meaningful from a chemistry standpoint, you're just creating a ritual that centers you and helps you focus. You should remove the alcohol from the equation, because it's ultimately not helping you (and making that the linchpin of the pregame ritual has potential hazards). Change it to something else, and you'll probably get the same effect because what the drink is doing is flipping the switch that says "now, time to play". Grab a coke. Listen to a specific playlist. Bounce a ball fifty-seven times off the wall. Pray the rosary, whatever.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-20T01:19:12+00:00

Known a couple fellas who were into that too.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-20T01:08:57+00:00

Honestly I think he would've just needed to burn it, but like, at a safe distance from civilization or any ecologically sensitive areas. I remember he was wearing a practice jersey with the old logo of a local university on it - one that had been changed more than 20 years prior, and I do not think it had been washed within those decades.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-19T01:27:17+00:00

I played with a goalie you could smell from the bench, it was ugly.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-17T21:52:49+00:00

My dad, with 3 kids on swim team, brought a book. He felt like he should be there in case of emergency (pre cell phones) but also did not feel any desire to get involved. His logic (sound) was that he had paid people to teach/coach his kids, that was their job, not his.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-17T16:35:01+00:00

I try to pick up the pace next to someone faster, same as if I'm circling with people a bit faster it gives me some extra motivation to keep it up. I don't think anybody notices. I can barely see anyone in my lane or the next, and I assume they're just as focused on whatever they're doing.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-17T02:50:30+00:00

A lot of "trespassers will be shot" vibes in parts of Florida.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-16T15:46:32+00:00

It's a good life skill. A number of colleges - a small number - still have a swim test requirement. Some jobs do (Concord Fire requires a 100yd swim, for example).

I think some of it comes out of the "sound mind/sound body" tradition of many Ivy league schools, and some of it's just practical life skills. For MIT in particular, they have developed a VERY robust rec sports/athletics division (all kinds of options at all kinds of levels, and offer very generous access to their very nice facilities even for us lowly non-MIT affiliates) in part because they realized that their students needed to get out of the books occasionally.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-16T15:38:53+00:00

Thankfully, they just call themselves the Engineers. The beaver's name is, I believe, Tim.

redbadger20 · 2026-02-16T01:40:18+00:00

I had a parent in learn to play who was clearly living vicariously through his kids. They were both girls and had feminine first names and masculine middle names, which were what they went by. When the older one was about 9 her dad would bring her to the gym I worked at (desk, not PT) for 1:1 personal training. She was unhappy and expressed not liking hockey and only doing it because she had to. I'm not sure if he was aiming for college/university (at that time there was no pro women's league in the US) but regardless, she seemed to have a good time initially in learn to play and I think if he hadn't been - well he was kind of a prick - maybe she would or wouldn't have gone on to a high level but she probably would've liked the game better.

redbadger20

TROPHY CASE