Sweet 3 days, dark but true

I really enjoyed my long three day weekend following the fun road trip into frozen western PA.  I tended to most of what needed to get done on Friday, leaving the other two days of the weekend to do what I wanted to do instead of what I had to do.

One of the things I got done Friday was picking up a new box spring for the king size gel infused foam mattress I bought off Woot last week.  The bed is for the guest room, replacing the too small for two people queen bed, that was graciously donated to me by Jeremy after I separated.

The foam bed came shrink wrapped and rolled up like a burrito.  It also appeared to be vacuum sealed with all of the air sucked out of it.  The bed came shipped to me in a huge, heavy duty drawstring bag that may be repurposed for other use in the future.

I lugged the bed on top of the box spring and started cutting away.  Once I punctured the plastic seal it was pretty cool how the bed “inflated”, sounding like one long inhale.  In a couple minutes the mattress had fully regained it’s original shape, looking like a regular mattress.

I had to give the mattress a quick test run.  The foam felt firm but soft at the same time as it conformed to my body shape.  I think future house guests will be quite happy with the bedding upgrade.

I also was very fortunate to have the old queen bed set out of the house before 5PM.  My neighbor that will check in on Tuki and the dogs when I am away, knew someone that was looking for a bed.  They came and grabbed it late afternoon.

The one thing that was not quite so enjoyable about the weekend was the temperature.  It seems pretty strange to be complaining about it being too hot after shivering in 1.5 degrees less than a week earlier.  But hey, it’s too fricking hot for February.  My thermometer read 86 degrees on Saturday afternoon.  The temps included high humidity as well adding to the irritation.

On Saturday morning Cindy and I got up early to go run at the local track once again.  It was VERY foggy.  As we ran circles the moisture on our face/bodies was equal parts fog and sweat.  We put in 3 miles at a slower pace than a couple weeks prior but it just felt good to get out there and move.

Cindy worked on Saturday.  I had a few things to get done around the house but it was all very minor.  I headed out to Home Depot to grab some vegetables for the garden, hoping to replenish it from the cold weather damage.  I loaded up on a big variety of crops, grabbing spinach, tomatoes, eggplant, broccoli, peas, and banana peppers.  When I got home I prepped the raised beds, pulling out the two sections of bolted lettuce and turning over/raking a number of other empty beds.

Of the pre-existing crops, my kale is doing the best, I have 7 or 8 healthy plants.  My swiss chard, which was getting devoured by insects is making a comeback presumably from my treating it with insecticidal soap.

By the time early afternoon rolled around I had everything I wanted done, done.  I decided to take the opportunity to totally relax the rest of the afternoon.  I played a couple hours of WoW and then dug further into Inferno, the Dan Brown book I started reading in PA. It was very nice to just relax.

Saturday night Cindy and I went to see the new RoboCop movie.  I looked at no reviews of the film ahead of time but figured it had the potential to be a clunker just like so many movie franchise reboots are.  I was pleasantly surprised.  I really liked the movie, I think it actually was neck and neck with the original Robocop in my book.  I give it a solid A-, we both thought it was good stuff.

We started Sunday morning once again with exercise.  I had forgotten that the waterpark reopened this past weekend.  I figured the near summer-like conditions would lend themselves to getting some swim time in.  We decided to pair it up with a bike ride to make a training brick, something I haven’t done since the waterpark closed for the season last September.

The ride was short compared to the 20 and 30 mile routes we have done in recent months but it was tough none the less.  Cindy was really having a hard time with her breathing due to the VERY heavy pollen count in the air right now.  She had a tough time keeping pace which for her is very unusual, normally it is me sucking wind to keep up with her.

Her breathing was too bad to try to swim however she hung out while I put in two very tough 400 yard segments in the pool.  The first 400 actually felt worst than the second.  The first time back in the pool after a long lay off always feels that way so it wasn’t unexpected.  I emerged from the water feeling like my first 2014 training brick had whacked me in the head like a real brick.  I was really pooped.

After the park we had a nice lunch at Panera before heading into Target to get a new comforter.  The comforter that has been on my bed actually is the one that used to be in the guest room and is more of a match for the colors in there.  I was buying a new one for the master bedroom. We wound up finding a decent set on clearance, the $30 price tag made it very appealing.

The rest of my Sunday was pretty laid back and enjoyable, just as the rest of the weekend had been.

The Winter Olympics are over, bummer.  I watched a decent amount of coverage but not a ton.  I didn’t catch one second of curling which is disappointing.  Unfortunately it is normally only televised on NBC’s cable channels.

Since I finished watching Sopranos I hooked into a new HBO show, True Detectives.  It caught my eye when it was being promoted because it had two actors that you normally only see on the big screen nowadays, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey.   Cindy and I got through the first three episodes yesterday.

It’s a good show with a very dark tone to it.  Woody and Matt’s characters are both very interesting and well written.  I find McConaughey’s character fascinating.  Some of the lines he uses to describe his overall negative but honest viewpoint of the human race and religion are brilliantly stated.  I wish I had thought of them.  If you have access to HBO you should be watching this show.

Inferno also is based around a very negative premise, how world overpopulation is the TRUE source of so many things tagged as worldwide calamities like ozone depletion, global warming, water/food shortages, pollution, and animal extinction.  All of these problems are actually symptoms stemming from the incredible population growth of human beings in the last 200 years.

Any logical individual should be able to see a chart like this and realize something has to give. Despite this, the majority of the world gives no thought to the the meteoric rise of population and the inevitable end results if it continues unabated, the collapse of civilization as we know it. As long as we can get our McDonald’s food and Iphones the world must be ok.  The discussion of the function of human denial in the book is one I find myself shaking my head in agreement with quite often.  The big picture often is just too scary/overwhelming to look at so instead we just look away.