Category Anything and Everything

I was hobbling around all day yesterday thanks to my left knee injury that came courtesy of walking around my kitchen.  I had plans to play pickleball after work that I was clinging onto.  When walking I had to be very deliberate with how I positioned my leg to avoid random stabs of pain through it.  In the last decade, generally speaking, I have gotten better at listening to my body.  If something hurts that normally is a good indicator you should give it a break.  Hell  that was one of the things that got me out of playing volleyball as swollen knees and a dead left shoulder after most tournaments got to become a regular thing.  Recently pickleball has been testing my common sense.

I had an easy out as Jeff told me that Mark was already canceling because of the chance of rain.  I could have just agreed to cancel, give my body some time off and been better off for it.  Instead I convinced Jeff that it was still dry out at the new park by me and we could still meet up and play.  So I got home and had to fly around the house doing the normal Thursday evening chores before heading over.  I took two Advil, wrapped both of my knees and crossed my fingers.

The skies looked menacing right from the start.  I got there a little before him and tried to stretch the best I could.  I knew my mobility was going to be severely limited as the knee still was painful, of course.  Because of this limitation I tried to use harder serving and smarter placement in the two games we got in, both of which I managed to win.  Jeff is rapidly improving though and I have no doubt it won’t be long until we are trading wins back and forth.

It was getting really dark towards the end of the second game.  Then the lightning siren went off, meaning the fun was over.  We packed up, happy to at least have gotten a couple games in.  Within a couple minutes of getting in our vehicles the skies opened up, letting down an end of days style rain.  My property which actually was pretty dry for September suddenly looked like we just went through a hurricane with huge areas of the yard underwater from getting several inches of rain in a couple hours, it was nuts. Elsa was not happy.

This weekend is open ended.  It will be too wet to mow so I will see what floats my boat, pun intended.  Recently I have been trying to think about what my future holds, what I really want, and how to get there.  Those ideas seem to ebb, flow, and shift regularly.  One thing that I consistently feel is still missing having someone to share life experiences with.  I’m not sure if that feeling will fade away with time as I become more and more accustomed to it being absent.

Oh, I am supposed to play pickleball at lunch today as well, f it.

We had a dry night last night so I felt guilty not taking advantage of it. The task I selected is one of those pretty high on the shitty list, weed whacking the property fence line, both sides.  This is something that has not been done since probably the start of summer so it was beyond due.  Every time I do my backyard walks with Elsa I saw the weeds and high grass woven into the fencing taunting me, mercilessly.  I headed out to the shed about 6:15 making a quick mental estimate that the job should take me around an hour.  You would think after 21 years I would have a pretty good idea of how long certain tasks take.  I underestimated this chore by about half.

I started off by weed whacking under the solar panels which is it’s own unique version of suck.  Their angled mount requires me to bend over awkwardly while holding the weed whacker to reach down low, a perfect exercise for my now clearly chronic lower back issue.  I did this first following my normal do the worst, first game plan.  It was then onto the fence.  Weed whacking the fence line sucks for a couple of reasons. First it takes a very long time.  Because the way the weeds grow around the wire you have to go slow and sometimes hit areas repeatedly to knock it all down.  In some spots the field grass is so high that you have to chop down in layers, starting high and finishing low. The other annoying aspect is the field fence devours trimmer line like mad.  I had to refill the spool twice during the nearly two hour session.

Because the job took much longer than I estimated I wound up doing the last section of fence in near complete darkness with illumination being provided momentarily by the various strikes of lightning that were nearby.  I am pretty sure “fck my life” ran through my head more than once during this chore.  Every time I whack the fence I get a front and center view of how bad some of the fence posts are getting.  In the areas where water is a near constant companion during summers there are a number of posts that are completely rotted at the base.  This winter I may try to see how it goes doing as needed post replacements although that sounds miserable, trying to do so with the existing fence intact.

So after finally returning inside and throwing my grass covered clothing in the wash I am walking around preparing my supper.  As I am walking I stepped on the edge of one of my kitchen mats.  Somehow that was just enough to send a stabbing pain through my left knee.  It was bad, requiring a full on hopping limp to move around.  This has happened to me a number of times were seemingly innocent activities result in injury.  This sort of thing normally means probably some torn piece of meniscus moved inside the joint in just the right way to cause the pain.  Now I just have to wait for it to move somewhere else.  Life after 50, it’s no joke…. I’m supposed to play pickleball tonight, I haven’t given up yet….

Yesterday at lunch I played pickleball with Kerri, the woman that I previously knew from the gym who started playing with us a few weeks ago.  She is improving rapidly.  Although I won all of our singles matches I had to work hard to do so.  She is incredibly quick and gets to all sorts of balls I would never get close to.  At the end we teamed up to play doubles against some decent players and won that game as well which was cool.  She is a pretty hardcore beach volleyball player and has been nudging me to step back on the court to at least see how things go.  I might.

Her all around athleticism is pretty astounding.  I am hoping that if I trend up doing more total body activities like pickleball and possibly volleyball it will become less and less impactful to my body.  That is the hope at least, with no basis in science whatsoever.

So today I had a follow up appointment at the med clinic.  It’s intent was to see how I have been since the abnormal EKG in March that sent me into the circuit of cardiologist testing which basically revealed nothing significant.  Prior to this appointment they did a standard blood panel to get basic numbers on sugars, cholesterol, and a number of other things.  All those numbers were very good.  I told her the cardiologist said I was good to go.

She then asked about my hernia since I went to see her first about it.  I told her I had a surgery scheduled, got covid and then canceled it.  I told her since it has not changed and is not really bothering me I am going to just let it go until that changes.  She didn’t seem to think that was a problem.  I then asked her if it was possible to have a testosterone level test run.  I told her I have had  some issues that made me wonder what my level was which was last tested 4-5 years ago when I had my 18 months of mystery fatigue.  I also mentioned how I had lost a pretty significant amount of weight in the past year.

Last year at this time I was upper 180’s, last night I stepped on the scale before taking my shower and was 174lbs.  Keep in mind that was a night weight which is normally the heaviest you will be during the day.  She said she didn’t think the weight loss could be attributed to low T but I said my thought process was loss of muscle.  She asked if anything else happened during this time.  I mentioned the end of a long term relationship where I was well fed.  She wasn’t sure if she could get a testosterone test covered under insurance, I said I didn’t care I just wanted to know the number.

So the weight loss concerned her somewhat.  She asked if I had any history of cancer in my family I told her outside of skin cancer not really.  She said to be safe she wanted to run some cancer marker blood tests, awesome.  I mean I guess in the outside chance that there IS something going on it would be good to know early so I agreed to it.  They did the draw on the spot, pulling 5 vials of blood which I managed to get through without showing how uncomfortable it makes me.  In a perfect world all the cancer screenings will be clear, my T level will still be in normal range and I can move ahead with life.

It’s interesting that the last time I weighed this little was also when I was single after splitting from Ali in 2012.  However during that time the low weight was sort of intentional as it made calisthenics, which I was heavily into at the time, easier.  I was in the best overall shape of my life around then. Now my weight is in the same range but the strength is not there.  At the gym today doing bench press, a weight I could push 5-6 times a year ago, went up once, and it wasn’t easy.  Now part of that could be from having blood pulled a few hours earlier but still, there is a clear trend going on. It could be a side effect of the stress I have been under for various reasons the last year.  It could just be as simple as I don’t consume the same amount of calories as when Cindy cooked for me.  I am hoping for simple explanations and solutions.

When I got home Friday night I traded doing a 10 mile road bike ride for doing the weeding instead.  Because I was hosting the fantasy football draft on Saturday afternoon I wanted to make sure I had the time necessary to prep.  I went a step further, staying up relatively late Friday night to get the furniture in the house rearranged in draft configuration.

Saturday morning Elsa and I headed out to run errands, I had more to pick up than normal due to needing some supplies for the party.  My food spread has changed drastically.  When I first started hosting the party when Cindy was there we would prepare all sorts of food which required all sorts of time.  However the other guys would bring food of their own as well so the end result was tons of food that got wasted and thrown out.  I provide much less food nowadays and there is still plenty to go around.

This was the first time the party has been mid-afternoon, normally they kick off at 7PM.  In many ways this was a better scenario.  Owners started showing up at about 2:30 and the drafting started maybe 10 after 3.  We only had two owners that connected remotely via Skype this year, at one point we would have 5 or 6.  This is literally the only time I see these guys during the year.  It was nice to catch up but I have always been the outsider of the group as they all have working relationships that are centered around golf.

The draft went smoothly.  As usual I did next to zero prep but somehow the draft rating system said I had the fourth best draft, I’m not quite sure how.  I have been increasingly less enthusiastic about fantasy football for a number of years and have considered dropping out.  I continue to trudge on because of a sense of duty with my long standing hosting of the draft.  By 6:30 everyone was gone and I started cleaning up the place.  I did a funny accelerated video of me putting furniture back.

As usual I had a decent amount to eat and drink but not quite the levels of gluttony as have gone down in prior drafts.  I kept in mind that I had scheduled a live stream Saturday night for 8:30 PM.  I was able to get the house almost 100% in order before the stream.  I felt a little tired from the day’s festivities and kept the stream to a more reasonable 2 hours and change.

Sunday the yard was still a bit soppy but mowable so I knocked that out around mid-day.  I later decided I wanted to try to do a high speed test of one of my new wheels, the S22.  I really loaded up both on safety gear and camera equipment for the run, wearing my full upper body armor, full face helmet, and my new carbon fiber knee guards.  I brought my 360, GoPro and Skydio drone to record the ride.  I went to a side street a few blocks from me where I had done successful speed runs before.

The run was more challenging than anticipated.  I was having a hard time getting up close to the listed top speed of the wheel.  I later realized I was riding in a direction that was into a small head wind.  When I reversed it was easier to carry speed.  On my last run I crossed 40mph, hitting 40.6 on my tracking app which is still 3mph below top speed.  It was close enough for me.

Instead of editing the video Sunday night I decided I wanted to watch El Camino, the Breaking Bad movie.  When this came out I intended to see it but never did for reasons I am not quite sure of.  Finishing up Better Call Saul reminded me that I never saw the movie (on Netflix) which gives a follow up to what happened to Jessie after the end of Breaking Bad.  I recall some people speaking negatively about El Camino but overall I liked it and felt it carried the breaking Bad torch as I would expect.  I’d give it an A.

On Labor Day morning I edited the speed run video.  It was pretty tedious coordinating the footage.  I had to sync the drone, 360 and GoPro as well as the screen recording I did of the app I use to rack speed.  In total I bet I spent close to three hours on the project.  I think it turned out relatively well.

I made arrangements to go up to Ali and Shugs place to hang out a bit in the afternoon.  I brought my One Wheel with as I thought Babcock Ranch with it’s endless paths would be a sweet place to ride.  Since I had been there last the two of them had made a lot of progress in getting their new house in order.  Shugs had built a large shelf unit in the garage that held a bunch of stuff and I helped him finish off hanging some rails on the opposite wall that are used to hang a lot of other items off hooks.  Compared to how it was when they first moved in it was night and day better.

We ate lunch at a nearby pizza place.  They drove while I rode my One Wheel there.  Ali said she felt very nervous watching me ride, she has not seen me ride PEVs very often.  She said it looked unsafe.  I would classify PEV riding as a lot of things, safe is not one of them.  After lunch I threw the board in their vehicle and hitched a ride back to their place.  They got inspiration to work more on the garage.  I used that as an opportunity to go out and ride some more, this time with my camera gear in hand.  I look forward to riding there more often. I rode my GT “naked”, meaning I removed the fender.  I think I prefer it this way.

I was sweating my ass off by the time I got back.  I tested out their pool which was a great way to cool off in a hurry.  I also grabbed my stash of grape Pop Tarts that Ali bought for me which was greatly appreciated.  Elsa LOVES hanging with Ali and Shugs so we will definitely try to get up there regularly.

Last night was spent editing the One Wheel footage as well as wading through some mental baggage which was not expected.  I’m looking to reboot and start the new week with anticipation for the what is yet to be.

I have talked about the presumably SI joint related lower back pain that has been my constant companion for months.  Despite the pain I have been able to stay functional, including weekly pickleball sessions, normally Fridays at lunch.  Because of some conflicts we wound up playing yesterday at lunch.  Most of the games were singles which I prefer, despite being more demanding physically. I won more games than I lost which is always a good thing.

So I only play once a week because I don’t think my body can take much more.  There are a lot of short bursts of speed, direction reversal and other movements that just don’t cooperate with my aging joints.  Well on the way home I got a text from another guy I know from the gym asking me if I wanted to play at the new park by me.  The opportunity to play so close to home sounded good to me so I said yes, despite just playing at lunch.

As I drove home it became clear that playing there would be a no go as a storm was drenching the area however JD told me they were going to play at Veterans Park instead where it was not raining. He encouraged me to still play.  Playing suddenly became much less convenient but I had been wanting to get together with Jeff for a little while so I told him I would be there.  I had played at Veterans a couple times before, it is pretty busy and has a lot of higher level players mixed in.  I got home, took care of Elsa, Kathy and the normal Thursday night chores before heading back out.

When I showed up Jeff was playing a doubles match with his wife, another county IT guy I know and a fourth person they picked up.  They had me swap in immediately.  I played with JD’s wife who had only played a couple times.  Despite this we actually managed to come back and win our game after being down pretty big.  I was jamming them up with my serve for a bit to score some quick points.  We played a number of games and I played a singles match against Jeff as well which was fun.  He has only played 6 or 7 times but you can tell he has the skills to do well as he has played a lot of racquetball and moves well.  They had to get going but I stuck around some more, despite knowing I was already past the stage of pushing my luck physically.

I wound up playing another singles match and then pairing up with the guy to play two doubles matches against two different teams with players that were much higher skilled.  We felt proud to have scored 5 points against one of them.  I was beat up.  All of the time on the court definitely had left my knees sore.  I was sweating my ass off and according to my Apple Watch I again touched 170BPM during some of the play.  I knew I overdid it.  Oh did I mention, I am also supposed to play TODAY at lunch?  That will be powered completely by Advil and my dual knee braces.

My Labor Day weekend is looking to be pretty busy.  Tonight I plan to get the weeding done after work to clear out my time tomorrow.  I am hosting the fantasy football draft for our league once again but for the first time ever it is not at night.  Instead it is scheduled to fire off at 3PM.  I will barely have enough time to clean up until my live stream starts at 8:30 PM.  Tomorrow will be a long and busy day for sure.

On Sunday I am running into the office to get something done and then head home.  Depending on the standing water situation at the house over the weekend I will be trying to slot in a mowing session as well.  I better get some wheel time in as well along the way since we are off Monday for Labor Day.

You may recall I was sent a hoverboard for free to review several months ago.  You may also recall the thing died on me which resulted in me sending it back.  Well over a month ago the replacement arrived but it has sat in the box unopened as I had the two trips and a bunch of other higher priority things to deal with.  Last night I thought I would finally open the the box so I could continue with the review.

So I get the device on the table while filming and press the power button and get no response.  I pressed it multiple times with my sense of disbelief increasing each time as this is EXACTLY the same problem the first unit had.  Needless to say I was frustrated.  I sent the vendor an email reporting the problem, asking for a return shipping label and indicating I do NOT need another unit sent to me as I can not recommend it to my audience.

Ironically ANOTHER free product that was sent to me for review arrived yesterday. It is a percussion massager.  Ironically I bought one of these for myself several months ago.  Hey if companies want to send me free stuff to review that’s fine with me.  If I like the item I’ll keep it, if I don’t I’ll give it to someone that wants it, a win/win.

Last night was pretty productive.  I spent a decent amount of time in the hobby room assembling stands and starting a print on a printer I have not used in at least 6 months.  I was happy to see it fired right up and worked 100%.  I modeled a custom stand order for someone as well, another thing I have not done in many months.  It would be nice to get the flow of income from the 3D store more active again.  Lord knows I have enough expenses lately that the money could go towards.

I am scheduled to have lunch time pickleball sessions both today AND tomorrow.  A woman that works at the county whom I know from the gym started playing with us as well so it has been fun increasing the opponent pool.  She is extremely athletic and competitive so I will not be surprised if she starts taking us down sooner rather than later.

Last night when I got home I saw that the property must have been dumped on again during the day, standing water was back.  I had already made plans to get the weed whacking done last night which luckily is not affected by wet conditions.  Well there are some consequences, like my body being coated in a wet green carpet at the end of it.  The days are getting shorter so the end of the work was done in almost complete darkness which I wasn’t a fan of since weed whackers do not come equipped with headlights, unlike my tractor.  As always when the work was complete I felt a small sense of accomplishment along with a large sense of being tired of having so much maintenance to upkeep the property as a single human being.  My grass speckled clothing went right in the washer and I ate my dinner in my underwear, glorious. I did at least catch yet another beautiful color display in the sky as I whacked away.

I hate leaving tasks that I start uncompleted.  One such task was the S22 range test I started Sunday but had to abort because of widespread and long lasting rain.  My goal was to complete it last night.  The skies still were threatening and I drove through rain on the commute home but after doing my chores I surveyed the skies and deemed them stable enough to ride.

I was a bit worried that all of that exposure to water could have adversely affected my brand new wheel.  Luckily it appears to be pretty water resistant as I did not notice anything abnormal once I got rolling.  I stayed relatively close to the house since my goal was to ride through low battery conditions.  I wound up putting another 13 miles or so on the S22, giving me a grand total of close to 50 miles for the range test.  Considering how fast I was going for the first 60% of the battery pack I thought the range was good.  The number however pales to the EX20S that traveled 67 miles with 11% battery remaining.  I only had 2% left on the S22 when I pulled into the driveway last night.

By the time I got done editing the video it was another late night.  I’m hoping to have a few less of those going forward.

I mentioned how I could possibly be getting a headboard for the guest room.  I did indeed make arrangements to go pick it up from a seller on FB marketplace.  I didn’t leave the house until after 7:30 Friday night.  I brought Elsa with, figuring she would rather be with me in the truck than home alone.  The drive was about 45 minutes, 30 of it were just fine.  The last 15 was a mess.  I drove into an intense thunderstorm that terrified Elsa and made driving treacherous.

When I arrived at the address I bit the bullet and dashed out into the deluge, getting soaked in a matter of seconds.  The young woman directed me to their garage that I had backed my truck up to.  I gave her the money, grabbed the queen size headboard and jammed it into the back of the Tacoma which thankfully has a bed cover.  Even with only a few seconds of exposure the headboard was very wet. The drive back was a mess until we cleared the storm.  Poor Elsa was so scared, I felt badly about subjecting her to the trauma. When I got home I dried off the headboard and slid it into place.  It made the bed seem more finished and will keep guests heads off the drywall.

I did something abnormal for me on Saturday, I set a 7AM alarm.  I never do this nowadays since I subject myself to a 5:30AM alarm during the week.  However I had this idea.  The idea was if I got up early, did the chicken chores and then immediately did the weeding I could escape the brunt of the miserable heat and humidity.  The idea was ill conceived.  As soon as the sun cleared the horizon it felt like a broiler was turned on.  Despite the early start I still wound up with a sweat soaked t-shirt.  I just need to do this during the evening whenever possible.

On Saturday I mentally committed myself to knocking out a number of smaller tasks that I have been putting off for various reasons.  Some of these have hung out there for a few months.  None of them took more than 30 minutes to complete and it felt good mentally to clear them out.

Later Saturday afternoon I made arrangements to meet up with Monique.  We wound up having a pretty diverse night.  The weather out by the house had pockets of rain but we wanted to get some walking in.  I first took her to the new park by me which I had talked about a number of times.  We walked the perimeter, she thought the new facility was really pretty and impressive.  We then talked about going to walk the swamp.  I had picked her up in the Tesla but I did not want to drive the car on the limestone road that leads to the trail entrance so we stopped back at the house.  Elsa at first gave Monique the customary growl but soon remembered that she was “safe” and relaxed.  I changed into my boots and we jumped in the Tacoma.

I was quite glad we changed vehicles as the rain had created all of these dirty puddles and gulleys that covered the truck in dirt as we approached.  When we got out at the swamp Monique was immediately impressed by the natural beauty that surrounded us.  There was only one other car in the parking lot as it was later in the day and wet.  We stopped and briefly talked to the owners of the car whom we saw on the boardwalk.  They had spotted a small gator floating in the water, still as a statue.  As we were talking the guy asked if Monique was my daughter which instantaneously made me feel old and Monique feel young.  She does not look her age but still, damn….

The walk was good although somewhat muddy in spots.  We only went maybe a mile and a half in because of the time of day. On the way out I heard a hissing noise that I was not expecting.  I looked down and a couple feet from us was a baby gator.  I have seen tons of older gators up on the path but never one this small.  I took a picture of it but neither of us wanted to interact with it long because of the possibility of an angry/protective mother gator being nearby.  Monique really liked the swamp, it was her first time there.  She said she would like to come back and go further some time in the future.

Afterward we headed back to the house.  I did something very rare, prepared a psuedo-formal dinner.  I mean all it involved was baking preseasoned mahi in the oven and microwaving some lentils I recently bought from Costco.  Even so, Monique appreciated the effort.  We watched the movie Dog while we ate.  It was a cute movie.  As is almost always the case with any movie involving animals, there were portions that touched me.  By the time the movie was done it was close to 10:30.  Elsa came with us in the back of the Tesla to take Monique home, it was a fun night.

On Sunday I wanted to do a range test on my other new wheel, the KingSong S22.  I looked at the weather forecast and it inidcated rain may start around three so I wanted to get back by then.  I failed.  The ride out to Ave Maria went fine but on the return trip I went through walls of rain.  I stopped at the park hoping to be able to ride it out but it was pointless.  This was a widespread and long lasting rain event.  I decided to just ride home, getting completely soaked in the process.  I originally hoped to be able to go back out in a couple hours but the rain never stopped, forcing me to have to complete the range test another day.  The bad weather didn’t stop me from making two videos.

The editing took me late into the night.  This morning I again woke up with intense pain in the lower right quadrant of my back, a near daily occurrence right now.  Thankfully by mid-morning it normally subsides but man, waking up hurting every day is a habit I would like to break asap.

I had been wanting to mow the grass since Tuesday but have been unable to because of rain.  On my drive home last night I went through torrential rain, some so hard that it flooded roadways, requiring me to do my best to steer clear since water and electricity are not a great mix.  However when I got home and looked at the property I noticed that there was not significant standing water although it looked like it could pour at any moment.  The seed was planted, I could get the mowing done, maybe.

So as I was wrapping up the Thursday night chores I heard thunder and light rain started.  I decided to eat my dinner first, hoping the rain would stop.  As I looked outside after eating the light rain continued but at this point I had mentally latched onto the idea of mowing.  When that happens it’s almost like a bear trap, it’s very hard to get me to relent.  I have been called McGyver both in appearance and in personality more than once in my life, I figure out ways to solve problems. I put that skill to use last night.

I knew since the grass was already wet and likely to get wetter, clogging/clumping of the exit chute was going to be a constant problem that would slow me down.  I pulled the tractor up to the garage and rigged up a “chute remote control” which consisted of drilling a hole in the rubber deck guard and then running a rope through it, routing it through and tying it off around one of the grab handles.  I put tension on it so the chute was maybe a half foot higher than normal which allowed clippings to fly out with less obstruction, preventing clogging.  It also made it easier for me to pull the chute up when I hit the spots with tight clearance.

I then hit the yard, mowing the entire time in light rain with some periods of harder stuff.  I didn’t care, anything short of a skies opening rain event, I was getting the task done.  My chute mod worked well, allowing me to keep cruising without having to clear grass clogs every couple minutes.  Later in the process I was treated to an intense rainbow thanks to the sun poking through in the west while steady rain was still falling on me.  It was really beautiful.

Because I started later I wound up mowing the last 20 minutes in darkness, relying on the headlights and two floodlights I have pointed towards the backyard to see what I was doing.  I pulled the tractor into the shed a little before 8:30 wet but content that I got it done.

I have a potentially busy Friday in front of me.  I have another pickleball match scheduled at lunch.  On the way home from work I hope to drop off what may be my final harvest of guavas to Monique for her to do something cool with.  Then depending on the weather I may try to get a bike ride in.  Finally I may take a drive up to Fort Myers to pick up a headboard for the guest room.  I laid in there the other day and realized how annoying it is to have your head against drywall. This weekend I have a bunch of soft targets for tasks, meaning nothing is critical but I still have more than enough to keep me as occupied as I can tolerate.