Done with deck, Interviewed, 45, a half century change
So on Friday two large boxes showed up at my door, they were the two Polywood lounge chairs I bought from Amazon. Picking up one box let me know the chairs were substantial and well built. The box was HEAVY. After we devoured our Friday night pizza I got busy with assembling the chairs.
Really the only negative we read about the chairs online was the assembly was a pain for some people. Well there were less than a dozen parts so I didn’t understand the complaints. Once I started to bolt things together I got some appreciation.
If you use the two included allen wrench tools I can see where it could be a pain. The holes you were inserting the bolts into were in positions where you couldn’t get full turns. Since most of the bolts were relatively long that meant you would be turning, pulling out, inserting, and turning some more quite a bit which would get tedious. Of course if you have a cordless drill with allen wrench inserts things become stupidly easy. After trying the manual method for a couple minutes I quickly grabbed my power tools.
Cindy of course was my assistant in the process helping hold and align pieces where necessary. The chairs felt sturdy and looked great, well up to the task of surviving their incredible 20 year warranty. I also loved that they are made in the USA, such a rare thing with most material goods nowadays. Over the weekend Cindy scored some inexpensive cushions to complete the look.
The chairs were part of completing the pool deck repaint/renovation project. The black chairs went well with all of the other old furniture that Cindy renovated with some black paint/stain. The project was more involved than I anticipated but we both are very happy with the fruits of our labor.
Putting the pool deck back together was part of what was an unbelievably laborious Saturday. I started work around 8:30 and put in a full blue collar day, not finishing up until after 5. I could not even attempt to list everything that was attended to but I would not surprised if it added up to a couple dozen things.
Of course Cindy was a big part of getting things done, including taking down the interior Christmas decorations. De-christmasing always brings it with some degree of unavoidable melancholy for me. I wasn’t as bummed out as I have been other years but it still was a downer.
During the day Saturday Cindy’s daughter and her boyfriend stopped by to pick up my old recliner which I told her she could have for her apartment. This is the recliner that my mom bought for me for my 30th birthday. It is oversized and designed for a taller/bigger person.
Over the years the ironic thing is other people used the chair more than I did. Despite it being supposedly made for tall people, the leg rest hit my legs in such a way that just wasn’t all that comfortable for me. Since Cindy and I pretty much exclusively use my $200 Craigslist sofa set for seating the recliner has seen even less use the last few years. I even offered it back to my mom when she said she was thinking about a recliner last year.
Well when Katie was over last she said how she loved sitting in it so it was a no brainer. I was happy to have the chair go somewhere it would be appreciated and used heavily instead of gathering dust. I think mom would have felt the same.
With the chair out of the great room there was suddenly a large open square of floor real estate open that had not been before. It felt weird being able to shortcut trips back to the bedroom. Eventually I would like to put a large pit sofa in the great room but that will be something down the road a bit.
One of the other big projects of Saturday was cleaning all of the floors in the house, dirty from dogs and holiday foot traffic. I let the Scooba handle the kitchen while I vacuumed the rugs first with the Dyson before hitting it again with my carpet cleaner. The gallons of dirty water going down the drain made the endless back and forth strokes feel worth it.
On Saturday night Cindy I decided to rent The Interview since it’s bizarre online/theater re-release after it was initially cancelled due to the hacker threats. It was cool to see a movie that was just released from the comfort of my home. The movie itself was ok but I thought it relied too heavily on dirty humor and also had some silly gore that made no sense. Even though I fully support our right to see any movie regarding any subject matter, producing a movie that is based on killing a present day ruling dictator wasn’t a very well thought out plan in my opinion. I think Cindy summed up The Interview for me when she said “at least it wasn’t Into the Woods”. I personally would give the movie an average B rating, not really worth all the controversy.
Sunday morning, despite a long day of work the prior day we decided to get out for a run. Cindy had suggested just running 60 minutes regardless of pace/distance. I told her I was scaling back my time goal to 45 minutes since I haven’t done more than a half hour of running in months. I wore my Garmin to check after the run but did not look at it during.
Early on my back, which had be troublesome for nearly a week, was not enjoying the up and down pounding however after a mile or so I warmed up enough that it subsided. The pace we ran was slow and steady, just at or below the 10 minute mile rate. Despite the slow pace, as the clock advanced my poor cardio endurance was more and more of a factor. I finished up 45 minutes with 4.61 miles covered according to my Garmin. According to Cindy’s newer Garmin I covered less. Regardless I was pooped, it felt good to start 2015 with a run longer than I covered for most of 2014.
The rest of my Sunday was pretty slow paced, especially in comparison to the non-stop pace of Saturday. Cindy however kept herself quite busy as I spent time in WoW accomplishing virtual tasks. Despite working myself hard on Saturday and starting Sunday with a run, the net result was with me feeling lazy at the end.
I forgot to mention on here that I stopped buying/consuming cow’s milk this past week. Although I have known for years the negatives of consuming cow’s milk I have continued to do so in smaller amounts. My entire life I have always been a heavy milk drinker. I will be replacing cows milk with almond milk instead. I have been drinking the unsweetened almond milk variety (make sure it doesn’t have carageenan) with my lunch for awhile, I will be drinking the 60 calorie variety as my cow milk replacement. I don’t think it will be that hard of a change to make, despite nearly a half century of drinking the bovine stuff.