Archives 2022

Well my knee that felt pretty terrible 24 hours ago has improved quite a bit since then, allowing me to walk limp free.  I will see if it continues to rebound.  I am sure the pain I am getting is meniscus related.  Sometimes something is loose and gets pinched, causing pain and inflammation.  However that same thing can relocate, allowing the knee to again become more functional.  I will be monitoring how the joint feels closely.  It definitely feels good enough for me to get another road bike session in tonight.

The two days of intense cold, by Florida standards, has swept a sheet of death across the property, green has been replaced by brown as the dominant color.  There are a few areas where I need to cut out the now dead plants/trees.  The banana trees got completely smoked but they always do when this happens.  The good news is even if I cut them to the ground new trees will start emerging within a few weeks.  There have been a number of other casualties in the yard. Years ago this would have caused me concern or stress.  Nowadays I have a survival of the fittest mentality about it.  If something is in the yard that gets killed by 35 degrees, it doesn’t need to be in the yard.

Outside of that task, everything else should be pretty standard fare.  I keep waking up each day hoping to magically have a bright, hopeful, and cheery outlook on life.  It hasn’t happened yet.

I headed to the track last night for my 3rd consecutive week. 24 hours earlier I assumed I was going to have to skip this week as I had sharp shooting pain in my lower right back for some unknown reason.  However when I woke up yesterday the pain was gone so I decided to hit the track.  I also had decided that I was going to increase the laps from 4 to 5, my plan for slow progression that would hopefully lead to being able to run a 5K again in March.

The run itself went ok.  I had seemingly normal levels of discomfort the first couple laps which went numb later.  I felt a little knee pain but again wrote it off to par for the course until my body warmed up more.  Running 5 laps didn’t feel more challenging really than four, I am sure if I had to, I could go longer.  After I ran I did my normal stretching, nothing felt particularly bad. However when I got home that changed.

My first sign was when I was trying to kick my sneakers off in the garage.  Trying to get the left shoe off sent discomfort through my left “good” knee.  It was mild but I could feel something was different than how I felt the previous two runs.  As last night progressed I could feel more soreness creeping into the knee, it was the deep seated variety, a sensation I am very familiar with.  It was starting to feel like it did when I injured myself running the parking garage two years ago. God damn it.

When I woke up this morning it was full on hurting, somewhat swollen and I was depressed.  It seems pretty clear that whatever took me out of commission two years ago with this same knee has flared back up after only three short running sessions on flat ground.  I’ll see how things go but I have read this book many times before, I know how it normally ends.  I am not happy.  Rebooting the act of running is good for me mentally.  Having it hit a brick wall so quickly is another reminder of the futility and frustration I have been feeling in many ways.

Yesterday I got a new Fire TV Cube.  I had one of the 1st generation cubes.  It had become really slow when loading streaming apps and would inexplicably burp back to the main menu in the middle of a show pretty regularly.  I bought a current gen cube as supposedly it has better hardware which equals better performance.  Hooking it up was easy as I could use the cable/cords from the old unit.  The difference in performance was indeed massive.   I had become so accustomed to an app taking 30 seconds or more to come up, when they were loading almost instantly it was a shock.  Responsiveness was like night night and day.  I was very happy with the purchase. Amazon has a trade in program for their old devices.  I was able to get $15 for the old unit in the form of a gift card, a win/win for me. It’s nice when something actually lives up to and even exceeds your expectations.  It doesn’t happen often.

Last night I had another extended session in VR.  I spent the majority of the time in Big Screen, it seems to be the one social app I have found where you can find a good number of adults consistently.  This is like the polar opposite of VR Chat where it is apparently filled with ADD riddled kids running around like maniacs non-stop.

So with adults come adult issues.  I found myself in a room labeled atheist bible discussion.  There were a few people in the room that dominated the discussion, which for the most part was civil and intelligent.  I was basically an observer.  The room was hosted by an atheist who was reasonable and clear in his points as were some of the christians in the room as well.  However at certain points things got heated and you would have three or four people talking loudly at once.  I eventually had to tap out but it was an interesting room to be a part of.

I then jumped into another chat, this was held on an outdoor balcony of a high rise building.  This was less civil as it was discussion/arguments between conservatives and liberals.  Again I just observed.  I was only ably to tolerate this chat for a short period of time before I headed out.  I exited the room thinking it was sad but not surprising that virtual reality mimics actual reality in regards to human behavior. I tried making my own room for a bit.  I only had one person enter, we talked for a bit but then I closed it down.

This morning as I was getting ready to go out to do the chickens I started the classic good morning stretch. You know the one where you extend your arms out to the side crucifix style, usually accompanied with a big yawn.  Well as I was extending my arms I got a sharp pain in my left shoulder blade that made me immediately retract my arms and wince in pain.  As I went outside with Elsa I told her how ridiculous it was that even stretching can hurt nowadays.

Last night when I was walking back from the chicken area I heard rustling in the nearby palm tree.  I looked up and see a squirrel looking down at me as he is munching on the remains of the ear of corn he clearly stole.  You may recall last week I mentioned how the corn cobs I was putting out for the chickens every morning were gone when I got home at night.  I was unclear if it was a squirrel or a bird. The answer is now crystal clear.  I don’t mind that they grab it, I just hope the chickens get their crack at the corn before it is transported elsewhere during the day.

I have two conventional cartridges for my Nintendo switch, they are tiny.  I have had the boxes for the games on my dresser as a dumb way to make sure I don’t lose them.  Last night I completed a 3D print to address that.  It’s a little cube that looks like the famous ? boxes from Mario games.  Inside there are slots for both cartridges and the micro sd cards that can be used for additional storage. Even though I have been 3D printing for years now I still get satisfaction for making something cool and useful, out of thin air.

This morning was around 10 degrees warmer than the previous two mornings, still cold by Florida standards but at least not freeze your hose cold.  The warming trend will continue with the thermometer hitting 80 by Thursday.  If I could just find a place that was 55 in the morning and 75 in the afternoon year round it would truly be the ultimate paradise for me.

Yesterday the new office officially opened to the public.  There were a lot of little bugs as expected but no show stoppers.  The entire project has been several years in the making, to have it finally open is a good feeling.  The majority of my focus the last several months has been getting everything lined up for this to happen. It has been the biggest building project I have ever been involved in and hopefully the last time I have to be involved with something of this scale before I retire in 8 years.

Friday felt a little chilly for my bike ride with temps in the upper 60’s.  My definition of chilly got adjusted majorly the following two days.  Friday night I was up very late live streaming, turning off the camera shortly after midnight.  I shot the entire episode on my new ZV-1 camera which worked well for the most part.  There were a couple episodes of audio distortion that I think had to do with a new background music feature I was messing with.

So during the day Saturday the cold front was blowing in, the temps never left the 50’s.  Despite this I wanted to get a couple things done outside.  I hooked up the electric pressure washer and gave the pool area a quick blast.  I only hit the lower frame and the deck itself.  It wasn’t horribly dirty but I wanted to hit it quick before it got that way.  This was the first time I recall pressure washing in such cold conditions.  I did my best to keep the two sweatshirts I was wearing dry.

I also worked on cleaning up more stuff outside.  There are a few areas outside that have things left over from Cindy.  I have been dragging my feet addressing them partly because of procrastination, partly because of the depressing nature of it all.  As my mood allows I have been hitting these things up.  I only have a few more things to get cleaned up or thrown out to be back to a clean slate which I look forward to.  Digging through things that once held value and required effort to implement only to be now tossing them away later really bums me out.

During the day I also took the time to take Elsa to the new park, something I did AGAIN on Sunday.  They took down the construction fencing from a huge section of the grounds so there was a lot more area to walk through.  Even though there were hardly any people at the park Elsa was nervous at first however as more time passed she seemed to actually start enjoying herself.  I am trying to make an effort to go on walks with her more as she no longer gets the same sort of activity at home during the day as she once did.  I think she spends most of the time just napping during the week.

Saturday night I spent some more time in VR, mostly in Big Screen.  I wound up hanging with a group of adults, including three or four of them from the UK.  The one guy made his own room and we all went in there to watch Streets of Fire.  I couldn’t stay for the whole thing but I saw enough to remind me of why I thought the movie was so cool back in the day.  What the hell was the deal with Wilem Dafoe wearing the leather trash bag with suspenders….

Sunday morning was cold, the coldest I recall it being on the property in at least two years, possibly three.  The thermometer at the house read something like 34 degrees.  When I went out to the chickens the hose end was partially frozen, water only trickled out.  I let it keep running while I tended to other things. Eventually it melted enough to be functional.

After paying my bills I grabbed coffee and did my second park session with Elsa.  I was wearing not one but two hooded sweatshirts.  That combined with the coffee I was drinking kept me moderately warm despite temps in the low 40’s.

I didn’t have a lot of must do’s on my plate for the day.  It was too cold for me to ride but I did shoot a quick video talking about the new portable stands I designed.

I did get to watch a significant amount of both the AFC and NFC playoff games.  Both games were highly contested.  The Chiefs/Bengals game outcome was very surprising.  I watched the first half where the Chiefs were steamrolling the Bengals, leading 21-3 at the half.  I figured the game was over.  Well when I saw online an updated score from the second half I turned the game back on.  The Bengals had totally reversed the game and wound up winning 27-24, an outcome that nearly no one expected.  The Rams/49ers game was very close as well as they won by a field goal.  I LOVED that when the Niners got the ball back with a little less than two minutes to go the Rams played aggressively instead of the hated prevent that so many teams default to when protecting a lead.  Instead they pressured the hell out of Garrapolo and it resulted in a game ending  interception.  A Bengals/Rams Superbowl isn’t all that exciting from a network TV perspective but if the game is competitive, who cares.

This morning when I went outside the thermometer was actually a few ticks higher than the day before but the frost and freezing seemed much worse.  This time the hose in the chicken area felt frozen solid.  I broke the nozzle thumb lever on it trying to break it free so I had to skip the normal mat blasting that occurs, luckily there wasn’t a whole lot of action the night before.

Today should be the last frigid day in the immediate future.  Hopefully it will be another 2-3 years before we get a hard frost like this.  There have been a number of things in the landscape that did not survive this one.

Finally last night I dusted off my Quest 2 and spent a few hours in VR, something I have done surprisingly little of in recent months.  I had a really good time.  I started off trying a golf game that I bought months ago but never tried before.  The realism was pretty amazing but I stopped after a couple holes because my play area was a bit too tight, I was worried about smacking the TV accidentally.

Next I fired up Eleven, the excellent VR ping pong adaptation.  I did a few practice games to refamiliarize myself with the controls which are pretty natural.  The physics of the game are damn near perfect.  I then went online and played a couple matches, losing both but not by a huge margin.  Again my play area felt a bit constrictive as I bumped up against the walls of it several times.

I decided to do some some seated VR activities.  I went into Venues and VR Chat, two social apps.  I spent the time just mostly being an observer as it seemed almost everyone in both spaces was very young.  VR Chat is especially insane, it has to be seen to be believed.  I finished up the night in Big Screen which is sort of like a huge virtual theater filled with other VR people.  In there you can watch tv shows, movies, games, or just hang and talk in virtual environments with up to 15 people.

I was in one room where a kid was hosting a stream of him playing Beat Saber at a ridiculously high level.  I had never seen anything that crazy.  He then was able to turn on his web cam so we could see him both in and out of game playing.  I just could not believe he could do what he was doing, it was pretty crazy to watch.  I then went into a room labeled Let’s Talk About God.  This venue was outdoors, seated around a campfire.  It was hosted by what sounded like a high school age kid.  There were maybe a half dozen other people in there.

So the kid asks me what my relationship was with god.  I politely told him that I don’t really have one but I respected anyone that did.  I said if it works for you that is what matters.  He asked why I didn’t have one.  I said I don’t think it would work for me. A couple others in the room chimed in encouraging me to be open to such a thing which I didn’t respond to.  Another guy popped in and was asked the same question, “What is your relationship with god?”  His answer was “The same as my relationship with Santa Claus, which is pretty damn good!”  I laughed out loud at the comment.  The guy didn’t say it in a biting way, just very matter of fact.

The younger kid talked more about how sin was a problem and he mentioned things like viewing pornography as an example.  The santa claus guy chimed in again, admitting that he watched pornography.  He asked if that meant that he was going to burn in hell.  The kid and others in the room immediately assured him he would not burn in hell for this.  Right about then my Quest shut down as I had burned through the entire battery.  It was really an interesting and diverse time in VR.  It motivated me to get back into it more often.

Tonight I am planning to do another live stream, hopefully after getting my road bike ride in.  This weekend a very COLD front is coming through that will push temps real close to the freezing mark.  In the past this would be a four alarm fire moment.  I would scramble around the property trying to cover up anything outside that could take damage from the cold.  That concern has totally evaporated, I now have a much more Ivan Drago attitude about it.  If it dies, it dies….

If it’s not too ridiculously cold I would like to use the electric pressure washer to give a quick blast to the pool deck area.  I also would like to take Elsa on another park walk.  It’s good for her and for me.

So I got it in my head that I wanted to try to run another mile at the track for the second consecutive week.  There was an additional layer of challenge as I squatted on Tuesday for the first time in a couple weeks which had injected all sorts of soreness into my legs before I took a single stride.  I popped my two advil and headed to the track anyway.

The first 200 yards was not a great feeling.  I watched the kids baseball practice that was going on to take my mind off the feedback my body was giving me.  In less than two laps things had settled down and overall I felt better running the mile than I did last week, which is the outcome I hoped for.  Now that I have done two sessions without significant injury I am going to slowly add distance, tacking on a lap every couple weeks.  If I am able to run 8 laps around the track by the end of February I would feel like I could grind out the 5K at the beginning of March.  Who knows how viable this plan is but I am going to give it a shot.  I will back up the run with my 10 mile road bike session after work tomorrow hopefully.  I am hoping that the combination of these two endurance activities will harden my resistance to injury.

So for the last few months part of my routine has been buying ears of corn.  These are not for me, I really am not a fan of corn on the cob due to the mess and debris that is lodged in my teeth afterward.  I buy it for the chickens.  Every morning I take an ear out, shuck it, break it in half and leave it in the chicken area for them to pick at.  Usually by mid-morning the cob is picked totally clean of kernels.  Well that changed within the last few days.

I started to notice when I got home at night that both pieces of the corn are MIA. They are nowhere to be found, something was taking them.  I hoped solving this mystery would be as easy as reviewing my Ring footage from the coop area where I should be able to spot the perpetrator.  Nope, nothing was triggered by the normal motion detection, damn it.  That tells me that either the thief is very small or very fast, possibly both.  My two prime suspects are either one of the squirrels that hangs around or a bird.  I hope to catch one of them in the act, somehow.

I got a surprising piece of mail today, it was a check from my electric company.  This was not expected.  I had talked about how my rough estimate was for the year I only consumed around 600-700KWH of power not provided by my 48 panel solar array.  Clearly I was wrong, the check was only for 15 dollars and change but it was proof that I actually ran at a surplus for the first time ever for a 365 day period.  I covered previously the changes that I theorized were responsible for the dramatic shift in power consumption.  Many of those changes only happened for part of the last year, I am hoping a full year of this will result in a big enough check to buy a weeks groceries or a few cases of beer.  Of course until the solar array is paid off, I can’t truly start working in earnest on having the system actually pay for itself, but this is a nice tiny first step.

Since I have been on my own I have had plenty of opportunity to do some self analysis to think about why certain things are as they are.  There are clear patterns that develop over one’s lifetime and one of my big ones is the need to always be fixing things.  In some ways this is a great trait, it keeps you motivated, hopefully saves some money along the way, and provides a sense of satisfaction when you fix something that was once broken.

However this trait becomes a negative when you try to apply these skills to other human beings.  I know I don’t like when someone tries to “fix” me yet for the last 30 plus years I time and again have tried to do this for others.  Rarely the end result is good but more often than not, long term, it isn’t the answer.

My brain doesn’t seem adept at differentiating between types of problems that could use fixing, if I see it, I want to fix it.  The time alone has given me some clarity about this part of my personality and made me realize that if your plan is to fix things for other people you are setting yourself up for failure.  It’s a hard part of me to turn off but if I want calmer seas in my future I need to be able to let things pass by the bow of my boat without throwing a tow line.  If someone asks for help, asks for a fix, surely I still will extend that arm if possible. It will always be my knee jerk inclination.

However I know how I felt when guys at the gym would offer unsolicited advice to others.  In their mind they are doing the recipient a favor when in reality their “help” is unwelcome most of the time.  I don’t want to be that guy in my future human interactions, regardless of context.

The death of Cutie on Friday cast a shadow that lingered all weekend long.  It was almost like the weather was mimicking my mood with overcast skies and a cold rain for a good portion of Saturday.  I got my chores done and then did a quicker than usual errand run with Elsa as I only had to hit Publix after hitting DD.  The rain let up mid-afternoon and after verifying with Dark Sky that I had a window of dryness I pumped up the tires on my road bike and headed out for my 10 mile loop, something I shit canned Friday night after burying Cutie.

The ride was weird from a wind perspective.  Normally with the way this route is you will have half of the six legs with favorable wind and half without.  For whatever reason, perhaps wind direction shifted mid-ride, 3/4 of the ride felt like it was into a headwind.  I managed to keep a decent pace, still averaging over 17MPH overall.  When I pulled back into the driveway I felt good knowing that I both ran and rode a bike in a three day span, something that has not occurred in years.  My goal is to repeat it this week.

I have been watching the new Boba Fett and Peacemaker series on Disney+ and HBO Max respectively.  I knew I would like Boba Fett, I was less sure about Peacemaker as his character turned out to be sort of shitty in the second Suicide Squad movie.  Well I can tell you that the series so far is great. It’s funny, action filled and entertaining with a HBO appropriate adult theme.  Once I got current on Peacemaker I started on Doom Patrol which has been around for three seasons.  I am four episodes in and loving that as well.  It’s odd, from a movie perspective I like Marvel franchises much, much more than what DC has put out there with a few exceptions.  However the DC tv series I have watched lately, Titans, Peacemaker and Doom Patrol have been REALLY good.  I have been watching/recording far less network tv and watching shows on Netflix/HBO/Disney+ far more.

On Sunday it was just raw outside, the temps were hovering right around 60 degrees with wind.  Ali and Shuggs asked me if I wanted to come visit and check out Babcock Ranch where they are having a house built.  I had never been there before but it was described to me as Ave Maria without the god part.  I brought Elsa with, she was beyond excited when she stepped foot in the apartment, jumping around like a rabbit on caffeine.  We left her there with Sadie and Ferdie while we headed to Babcock.

When we pulled into the place I could understand the Ave Maria comparisons as it is a huge residential area sort of plopped in the middle of not much although I don’t think it is as remote as Ave Maria.  Shuggs drove me through various neighborhoods.  I immediately appreciated the obvious and deliberate effort that was made to have visual diversity in the place with different styles of houses on streets to avoid the cookie cutter approach.  We eventually got to their plot which was basically just a foundation at this point. I told Ali it brought me back to when our house was being built, the excitement of checking on it every week to see the progress (or lack there of) that was made.  It’s a cool feeling seeing your house come together.  Nearby there was the same model house as theirs that was almost done that we were able to walk through so I saw the layout.  I think it is going to be a great place for them, not too big, not too small.

I was really impressed with Babcock Ranch overall, they have a town center with the basics you would need including dining, small stores and a kick ass gym/fitness building.  They had a farmers market set up in the town square that we walked through.  Babcock features fiber high speed internet and a massive solar farm consisting of over 300,00 solar panels.  It seemed really, really nice. It seemed like the type of place I would have little problem adjusting to living there with plenty of what I like and less of what I don’t.

Really the only negative thing about the tour was it was so freaking cold.  I had on a hoodie but with cargo shorts.  Ali and Shugs under dressed for sure as well.  Shugs seemed to be part polar bear and said he didn’t mind the cold, Ali on the other hand was freezing.  We grabbed lunch at a place called the Boat House.  It reminded me of an upscale and much larger version of the Snook Inn in Marco.  The one negative was it was ALL outdoor seating.  We got a table next to one of those floor stand heaters that Ali and I flanked.  It helped a little but the persistent wind smacking us was far more impactful.  The food was good but it was shame we were shivering most of the time while we ate it.  I’d like to try the place out again sometime when my legs don’t have goosebumps on them, something I am not sure I ever saw before.

When we got back to their apartment I took Ali and Shugs for a ride in the Model Y.  Neither of them had been in a Tesla before.  It was a pretty short demo ride but they both thought the car was really cool.  It seemed like they both now had a better understanding of what all the fuss is about.  I thanked them for the invite.  It was nice to do something with friends, an activity that I need to lean into harder to help combat some of the blah that dominates my life otherwise.  Elsa loved seeing everyone but she was also excited to hop in the car and get home.

When I got home I got the clippers out and buzzed the top of my head.  I had been letting the top grow for months and it had been making me progressively more annoyed.  When I woke up in the morning I looked like a mad scientist and was using some hair gel to keep it under control during the work week.  I didn’t go hard core buzz, using the longest guard in my clipper set, so it doesn’t look like I just started boot camp.  I think the top/sides/back ratio is now more aligned that I can let it grow all together without it getting too freaky.

Tonight it is supposed to drop into the 30’s.  It’s going to be an especially miserable chicken coop cleaning session at 5:30 in the morning…..

When I got home I found Cutie (middle in picture) motionless with her head hanging over the edge of the nesting box.  Of course sorrow came rushing back in but there was also a sense of relief that her suffering had come to an end.  As I mentioned previously her mobility has been limited for well over a year due to some sort of leg issue.  Despite this she seemed happy enough.  Hell just this past weekend, Cutie was still alert and as normal as normal got nowadays.  She hungrily gobbled blueberries I got her as well as watermelon.

All of a sudden early in the week she started acting noticeable weaker.  When I saw her starting to tuck her head under her wing a couple days ago I knew the end was coming as this was a scenario I had seen played out with multiple birds.  Chickens and all birds in general will do their best to hide injury/illness as long as possible.  When they pass it often happens quite suddenly.

Cutie got her name because she was a very cute baby chick and was also very inquisitive.  She was a Jersey Giant with incredibly soft black feathers.  Her and her sister Cupcake felt like pillows when you would pet them.  She was always friendly and somewhere in the middle of the pecking order, even when her legs started failing her.  As she relied on me more and more to move her around our bond become closer.  I would say her name and she would respond with her cute noises.  She knew when I was coming to give her a ride, she would stand up abruptly and take a few steps in my direction. She would normally eat seated in front of a dish, when she had cleaned out the area she could reach she would look at me, letting me know.  I would spin the dish and she would resume chowing down.  When I would put her on the perch at night I would make sure her feet were in the proper position and stand guard until she got herself seated as she would sometimes be shaky during the transition.

Most of the times when I bury hens I would wrap them up in the coop area first in plastic before carrying them to the back of the property.  For whatever reason I didn’t want to do that with Cutie.  I cradled her in one arm as I carried the shovel in the other.  I always get emotional when burying one of the hens but this was a few clicks higher on the sadness scale for me.  Cutie and Cupcake were two of my all time favorite birds.  I don’t recall a time in chicken ownership where we lost birds so close together, in this case exactly one week apart.  I am down to Kathy and Fiona.  I am more attached to Kathy as she is the last OG hen.  Fiona, who is about two years younger has never been anything resembling friendly her entire life.

The burial derailed any motivation I had to go out and road bike tonight.  Perhaps I will find the time/motivation to put in the 10 miles over the weekend instead.