Home Stretch, No Way Home, I’m Done
I entered the final weekend before Christmas with lots to do but I wanted to get my ass back on the road bike again. It had been somewhere around a month since I had been able to do my 10 mile darkness ride. This was the first time I got to use my new handlebar mounted headlight. It worked great, throwing a sizeable circle of light far enough ahead of me that I felt able to go at my normal 16-17 MPH pace without much trouble. I could definitely tell my body was re acclimating itself to the activity but my numbers at the end were decent, despite the break.
On Saturday my main focus was to get the property cleaned up. Even though the grass has grown very little in the last month it was looking pretty ratty. I spent all afternoon out there, weed whacking followed by mowing. The visual was much improved afterward and I felt good knowing I should be good to go until the new year rolls around at least.
I sat out a very late addition to my Christmas decorations, LED color pucks. These were an impulse buy I did off a FB ad several weeks ago. I was skeptical if they would even show up. They are solar powered and have a cool looking ring of multicolor LEDS that you can change as you see fit. For Xmas I made alternating red and green of course but once the holiday is over I can deploy these elsewhere using whatever color scheme I prefer. I like them.
My Saturday evening was uneventful. I had minimal appetite and no motivation to do conventional food prep. My dinner consisted of a PB sandwich and not much else. I still am getting nauseous doing my egg prep as well in the mornings. It’s getting to the point that I might just stop eating them altogether.
I got to lose myself in WoW for awhile Saturday evening. I have accomplished my first goal of getting all of my characters on my first account to max level. I am now working getting the three additional characters on my second account to that same level as well. This has been a dumb goal of mine I have accomplished in every WoW expansion that has come out since 2005. For some reason I feel obligated to get these bits and bytes to their virtual pinnacle. Not doing so would feel like shirking of responsibility, something that I have a hard time doing in real or virtual situations. I am hoping that within a month the task will be completed.
On Sunday morning I started a HUGE print on the Chiron that if successful will take over a week to complete. This is basically a torture test to see just how effective the new wiring harness I bought is at solving the random lock up issue. I have a camera on the print doing a time lapse which should look pretty cool if it completes.
I have fallen off of doing 3D printing for fun, for me. The overwhelming majority of my printing has been stuff for the store for a long time. Since the order flow on the store has really slowed I have printers just sitting there doing nothing. I might as well make something fun for me. This Chiron print is a Christmas village that I have printed before but never in this massive scale.
I bought a ticket for a 12:00 matinee to see the new Spiderman movie. This is only the second movie I have seen in a theater since covid became a household word and the first time I have gone to a movie alone since I was last single as Cindy actually went with me to see The Eternals. I decided to go back to our old stomping grounds, the Prado in Bonita. There was a time when we were going to the movies almost every week.
The last time I was there, the building I was parked in front of was getting ready to open as another Beef o Brady’s restaurant. I was surprised to see a For Lease sign in the window. I was even more surprised to see the remnant stickers on the window indicate it was most recently some sort of other business. So in the span of less than two years two businesses started and failed in that spot, wow.
I had not had lunch so I ordered a flat bread pizza that I ate in my seat in the top corner of the theater. There may have been 20ish people there, not many at all for a new Spiderman but they were also showing the film every 30 minutes. I am a huge Spiderman fan and had seen all of the movies, enjoying some more than others but I would never miss one. Seeing all of the previous films made me appreciate this version even more, I loved it. It hit all of the action quota you could want with the normal amounts of comedic relief as well as some real emotional moments that hit hard. Despite enjoying the hell out of the movie I found myself instinctively looking to my side, what I would always do to see Cindy’s reaction at certain moments. When I saw the empty seat it made me sad, repeatedly. I won’t spoil anything for you but just trust me, if you saw the other Spidermans, you must see this one, A+ for me. The better news is the new Matrix releases this week on HBO Max, another film I am really looking forward to.
When I got home I wasted little time before I threw on my gear and headed out for a short ride. There were some big things announced in the EUC world this week and in general I just needed to clear my head. Being out on a ride is a good way to realign perspective although I still have a lot of things I am trying to deal with right now, none of which have a quick or easy solution.
I have officially concluded my Christmas shopping for 2021. It has been a very different sort of holiday season and I expect that trend to continue in spades in 2022.