Category Anything and Everything

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.

Since it again was raining that crossed mowing the grass off my potential activities for Wednesday night.  Instead I decided to stop at Costco, which I had not frequented in a number of weeks.  I bought the most amount of groceries there that I can ever recall, loading up mostly on food items that are easy to prepare but relatively healthy.  With a bill of over $200 I hopefully should be set in the food department for a little while.

I was considering taking my OneWheel GT to the park after sunset last night but light rain was still cycling through the area.  I instead took in a couple episodes of Umbrella Academy and even played a little WoW, which has not happened in months.

Ever since Fiona died, leaving Kathy as the sole survivor of my flock of chickens which at one time numbered as high as 13, I have seen changes in her.  Not having to contend for food with other chickens has made her less aggressive and vocal.  She also has seemed depressed, quite often just sitting in one spot for prolonged periods of time instead of moving around the chicken yard regularly like she used to do.  I have said before how for the most part barnyard animals like to be in groups, isolation makes them unhappy.

In the mornings when I am out there at 5:45 cleaning the coop part of the routine is picking Kathy up and carrying her out to the yard.  I have noticed that she clearly has been losing weight, another sign of decline that I have seen repeatedly with other birds. She also has had diarrhea for at least a couple years.  I am not planning for any heroic measures, I’ll just keep spoiling her the best I can.  The highlight of her day is when I bring out a handful of blueberries twice a day.  She gets genuinely excited for them, and not much else.

I have talked a number of times in here about the efforts I have been making to steer my direction more towards brighter and happier destinations.  One of my biggest struggles with being single is I have spent the overwhelming majority of my life not being that way.  I was always part of a partnership, for better or for worse.  So now that I have been single for a year I have been giving more thought to what a relationship is and what I should be focusing on.

I heard someone speaking about the error in focusing primarily on what you want your potential partner to be.  Having a mental, physical, fiscal, or emotional list of attributes you want in someone else should not be your primary focus.  The focus should be on yourself, what you can do to be a potential better partner for someone else.  This idea might sound or feel weird at first but it really makes a lot of sense.  Think about the attributes you want in a partner but then look in the mirror and see if you are what you desire elsewhere.  If the answer is no, you have some work to do. If the answer is closer to yes then trust that others will see the same in you, sooner or later.

We have been enjoying a drier than normal spell here lately, so dry that I have been able to mow everything without mud bogging the last couple weeks which rarely happens during wet season.  My luck ran out yesterday where we got a couple inches of rain in a relatively short period of time, instantly returning the grounds to swampland status.  I originally had ideas of mowing last night but they were washed away.

I got a message on my home phone reminding me of a blood draw this morning.  I had no idea I was supposed to be getting one.  Evidently it’s the follow up with the med clinic regarding my borderline EKG back in March.  It was a good thing I got the call because it was supposed to be a fasted test.  I managed to get through the test without excessive sweating or sensations of passing out.

Last night I worked on getting my new XT version of my stand online in the store.  It’s a revised model with extra tall sides (hence the XT designation) that will work with the new KingSong S22 wheels which have very high clearance.  As I mentioned previously, store sales have really bottomed out recently, we will see if this gives them a shot in the arm.

This morning I saw a message from one of my EUC buddies pointing to a funny video some guy made.  In it he imitates “famous” EUC YouTubers. I laughed at his commentary on me.  They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?  Here is the video.

I have been dealing with a new variation of annoying lower back pain which still seems to emanate from the SI joint area.  I have had a SI belt for quite awhile.  It’s worn low across the hips and has helped me deal with this sort of issue pretty well until recently.  The first time I recall having this new flavor of pain pop up was during the New York trip.  Every morning I would wake up and feel like I was stabbed in that area for a period of time.  As the day went on it normally would subside.  I had it in Roatan as well but I was hoping to write it off to not sleeping in my own bed.  Well it still is going on.

It has mutated a bit again where it almost feels like a tingling burn aka nerve pain. It can wake me up in the middle of the night if I am in a position that aggravates it. The pain still is worst in the morning but can rear it’s head randomly.  Yesterday I was at my desk and had a burn that was so uncomfortable I had to stand up and adjust my leg to make the sensation which was shooting down my side, go away.  Right now I am hoping that consistent use of the SI belt will help this fade away.  I’ve also been looking at some stretches to “pop” the joint to hopefully bring some relief.  I just feel like a dam that keeps springing little leaks, I only have so many fingers to plug them with.

I have been wanting to relate this story for quite awhile but the person involved wanted to make sure there was enough cool off time (statute of limitations) to ensure no further action was coming.  So these events happened somewhere between three and four years ago.  This person writes a blog where he talks about whatever comes to mind, it’s just a personal blog, nothing that resembles a commercial venture.

So this person out of the blue received a letter in the mail from some company that said it represented another company that provides stock images on the internet.  In the letter it had a screen grab of the blog post which had the image in question.  This image was something that was grabbed from a Google image search at one point.  Evidently the name of the file was not changed which is how the image was identified, more than likely.  So this letter indicated that this was an infringement of copyright and demanded a payment of $700 for it’s use.  There was a deadline of 30 days to make the payment or else “further action would be taken”.

Well of course this letter freaked the guy out.  Immediately he searched online regarding this scenario and found out that this shakedown has been going on for awhile, people getting popped for using images on their website that they grabbed online, not knowing of the potential issue.  This guy found a message forum where these threat letters were discussed.  The advice was generally that they were empty threats however in a few rare cases more action was taken.  There were also some people that just paid the money for peace of mind.  So this person made the decision to remove the image and the blog post that contained it and just sit tight.

Two more threatening letters came spaced a few months apart, each one asking for more money as penalty for ignoring the previous version.  Finally the letters stopped and my guy thought he was in the clear, he was wrong.  A few months later a letter came from a lawyers office stating that the claim was now turned over to them for legal action since the guy ignored the previous attempts for collection.  This time it was not just letters.  Emails started showing up and voicemails on his phone asking for him to respond.  This was getting serious and again the monetary ask was increasing, now more than double the original $700.

This new threat was aggravating and caused anxiety however the decision was made to continue the policy of persistent ignoring.  The originating email domain and phone numbers were blocked however a couple more letters did arrive, again threatening to escalate the stakes.  The gamble that a law firm was not going to spend money to locate and prosecute an individual that mistakenly used a copyrighted image in a non-commerical web site paid off.  Eventually the threatening letters stopped and the pursuit was presumably over.  Valuable lessons were learned of course, any images obtained from an internet search are no longer used in this person’s blog.  If there is something that he deems worthy it would be obtained by a screen grab and renamed randomly, making pursuit pointless.

It was a stressful scenario in this person’s life, reminiscent of when I was prosecuted by the national park service for a drone violation, via the internet.

On my lunch hour Friday I finally got to play some pickleball for the first time in quite awhile.  I played two singles matches against my buddy from the gym.  I won the first game pretty easily, the second game was much closer.  If he practices more I think he could be really good.  I had my Apple Watch on tracking my vitals.  At one point my heart rate got up to 174 bpm, which is high, very high.    Singles pickelball is a great workout and when teamed up with Florida mid-day heat and humidity, it can get extreme.  I followed up after work with my first Friday night road biking in forever, if I were to guess, probably June.  I was already a bit tired from pickleball but I turned in a decent ride all things considered.  It felt good to be back in a mode where I am once again pushing back on those walls that are constantly closing in on you as you grow older.

On Saturday I did the weeding at the more conventional Saturday morning time slot and hated it.  Despite it being early the heat and humidity had ramped up quickly.  It made me feel inclined to try to do this task during a weekday evening consistently when conditions are less oppressive.  I also got out and mowed the back half of the property again, despite just doing it two weeks prior.  When I did it then I had the deck at the highest height because the grass was tall.  This time I dropped it low to hopefully keep things down for a little longer.  During the session I got the tractor stuck in the rear ditch as I tried to mow across it.  Asking the neighbor for help was the last thing I felt like doing, who wants to admit defeat?  Instead I put the transmission in neutral and brute forced the tractor out by pulling on it from the rear like a mule. Fck hernias.

During the day Deb stopped by to get her outdoor bar set with her new boyfriend Bill.  It was the first time I met him.  They actually rented a small U-Haul for the pick up.  The set will be going to Bill’s place where Deb will be moving to shortly.  That set had been on my pool deck for at least a couple years, having it removed made the deck look even more sparse.  Oh well, I have other things to be concerned with.  I did get to utilize my pool for the second week in a row after mowing, it was so damn hot.

Saturday night I thought I would reward myself for the day of ass busting with a trip to Brooks.  I sat at the bar as usual.  I had a single Miller Lite, the first beer I have had since being on the island.  I just wasn’t feeling it and did not hang around long after finishing my food.

On Sunday Gladys had mentioned to me possibly meeting up with her to go for a ride at the Greenway. It would probably be the last opportunity I would have to see her in person for a long time however it did not work out, so instead I started mentally laying out a massive range test on one of my new wheels the EX20S.  This wheel weighs almost 110lbs and has a massive 3600WH battery.  Just to give you perspective a BIG battery when I first got started with EUC’s was 800WH.  I wanted to see just how far I could go on this wheel without recharging.

I knew this was going to take a long time so I got out on the road pretty early, right around 10:30.  I headed in the direction of Ave Maria.  Not only does this wheel have a big battery, it’s fast as well.  The fastest speed I recorded on the ride was over 38MPH.  On the way back from Ave Maria I had a scary moment where I looked at a nearby biker for a few moments.  In that split second I hit a large rock that was in the roadway dead on.  Thankfully the suspension on this wheel absorbed most of the impact.  If I had been on one of my wheels without suspension I have zero doubt I would have been launched onto the roadway and turned into one big piece of road rash since I was traveling around 30MPH at the time.

When I got back to the house I had amassed 34-35 miles but had only used around half of the battery so after eating a quick sandwich for lunch I was back on the wheel, this time headed for the Dunkin Donuts that is 10-11 miles away from me. During this leg of the ride the heat was really starting to get to me, it was uncomfortable, even with a 25 mph constant breeze hitting me.  I also was in physical discomfort from riding for so long, my feet were burning. As I got closer to the house I still had over 25% battery remaining so I needed to keep rolling.  I rode a few laps around the park and then headed across Immokalee Road to the swamp side to get more miles in.  In one last ditch effort for length I went up to the end of my road and back, another 4 miles.  When it was all said and done I had traveled an incredible 67 miles in somewhere between three and three and a half hours.   I was tired and overheated as you can imagine.  Even with all of that riding I still had 11% battery remaining, I could have likely gone another 5 miles or more. That distance is made more amazing by the speed I was maintaining, most of the time between 25-35MPH.  The video tells the tale.

The rest of Sunday was spent video editing and tending to little tasks that I have been putting off for no good reason. I would say that I am officially out of the grasp of lingering covid blah-ness.  I’m ready to resume engaging with life in a more meaningful and impactful way.

Last night I finally got around to washing and vacuuming out the Tesla, something I have been wanting to do since I got back from Roatan.  It had not been washed since I picked it up from getting repaired.  As I was washing off the crud I did a double take as I looked at the driver side rear wheel well.  Where is my mudguard?  Evidently somehow the mudguard was not reinstalled or lost on the driver side, it was still on the passenger side.  Well that’s annoying.

The other thing that annoyed me after the repair was it looked like the rear hatch glass had some sort of crap on it.  Imagine my surprise when even after washing the car I noticed the shit was still on the window when I looked out from the inside, wtf??  So what I realized is the junk was on the inside of the glass, they evidently forgot to clean it for some odd reason.  Maybe the kid that was in my car taking selfies when I picked it up was too busy to clean it thoroughly.

I called the body shop and let them know about the missing mudflap.  They asked me to send pictures which I did.  I also included a link to the mudflaps as they were purchased from a 3rd party.  I am not quite sure what their plan is for remediation but I will make sure it is followed up on.

Last night after I got done buzzing my hair I was getting ready to take a shower.  I look up at the bed and see Elsa all buried up by my pillows which does not normally happen.  She mostly sleeps on one of the two dog beds in the room or if she is on my bed she will be more towards the end of it sprawled out.

For whatever reason she wanted to be closer to me last night.  What is even more surprising was she stayed close to me all night.  I woke up a couple times as I felt her feet pushing off my side.  It was very cute.

I am wondering what qualifies as long haul covid.  I am now at 16 days since I first started feeling off.  My main remaining issue is coughing fits that sound worse than I feel.  I’m just going to keep pressing forward until I burn whatever is left out of my body.

This weekend I have chores in mind as is normally the case.  I also am getting a visit from Deb O and her boyfriend.  She is picking up the outdoor bar set she gave Cindy and I a couple years ago.  I guess she could use it once again since she is moving which is fine.  At some point I will invest in some outdoor furniture of my own if I find myself in a situation where there would be more than a party of one.   I would like to get a long ride on one of my new wheels at some point over the following two days.  I have these new toys and haven’t had hardly any “play” time for them.

Last night after work I made arrangements to meet up with Gladys’s sister Monique to do another walk at the Naples Greenway, which we did once before.  I haven’t hung with Monique in quite awhile, the last time being the end of June.  When I pulled up to the house to pick her up her mom and younger sister were just finishing a walk of their own, it was nice to see them as well.

There were a few stray pockets of rain hanging around so I was prepared to get a little wet.  Luckily we managed to avoid them.  We did the same walk as before which is right around two hours and is just shy of 5 miles, a solid distance to travel by foot whether running or walking.

Monique and I talked about a lot of stuff including my trips to New York and Roatan as well as her time in Roatan and mainland Honduras with her mom.  Just like the last time we did it, I enjoyed the walk and took several scenic shots as the sun was setting along the way.  It was a great way to spend a Wednesday evening.

Last night after work I decided to get the regular mowing done.  I had already weed whacked everything on Saturday so the timing made sense.  I have been enjoying a spell of manageable rain since I got back from my trip, there hasn’t been any prolonged deluges for a little while which I am a huge fan of.  Even with limited rain the grass is still growing quickly, it took me nearly two hours until I parked the tractor.  I utilized my brand new Eagles camo floppy sun hat which I am a huge fan of.  You could see it on a pickleball court as well soon.

Last night I watched the series finale of Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad prequel that had a 6 year run.  I have enjoyed the series quite a bit, presumably because the same creative geniuses behind Breaking Bad were also running this production as well.  I thought the story telling and the way they tied the past and present together was very interesting.  I enjoyed the finale.  Breaking Bad is one of my all time favorite series, I felt this spin off did it justice.

I have the season/series finale of West World to take in as well.  For the last two years I figured the show was over and they managed to spin it into a different compelling direction, one of the advantages of having a plot based on self aware androids that can be reanimated countless times.

Somewhere around mid-day I realized that today was my 23 year anniversary at my job, a pretty big number.  I started on August 16th, 2000, scarcely two weeks after Ali and I moved to Florida.  I was the one that had no job secured (Ali did), but I was confident I had a resume and skill set that would be desirable to someone.  Luckily I was right.  I managed to step into a job that is amazingly low stress overall compared to most IT positions, regular hours, abundant paid holidays, and generous vacation time.  It also offered something I didn’t put much weight into way back then, a pension, something that is on the endangered species list for most employees in our country.  In another 7 years I will qualify to collect my full pension benefit.  Hell if I wanted I could stay even longer, racking up a big lump sum that I could collect if I stayed another few years.  However that is not the plan.

As long as my financial outlook is as healthy as I anticipate it being, I will be out the door as soon as I can.  7 years used to sound like a lot of time but now I know the reality is it will pass before I know it as time continues to accelerate with each passing year on the planet.  I look forward to that finish line and am anxious to see what life looks like for me at that point in time.  If I am still solo or manage to take on a trusted co-pilot by that time, all I know is it will be time to shift gears in so many ways.  I’ve spent a lifetime feeling responsible for a lot of different people, situations, and circumstances.  I’ve already started the mental transformation towards the next chapter.

At the gym today my lifting buddy was there. He and I have been hanging at various gyms together since 2001.  Although we talk whenever we are at the gym there is only one type of exercise we prefer to do together, chest.  So I did chest yesterday as I reported.  My chest was killing me from my layoff, it was very sore.  Despite this, I asked my buddy if he did chest yet this week.  He said no so I guess that meant I was doing chest again today, that’s how much I enjoy our bench press interactions, which surely number into the many hundreds over the last 21 years.  My ability to bench was pathetic because of the soreness I already had from doing it yesterday, I didn’t care.  I ground out the painful reps which at times felt like I was tearing my pecs, they were that sore.  My buddy only has around a year until he can retire, man I am going to miss our bench press hang out sessions.

During our workouts we always share whatever is going on in our lives. Today he shared some stories regarding domestic strife (he is married with a kid) which gave me some renewed appreciation for some of the things I DON’T have to deal with as a single man.  There are definitely some tangible benefits to being single.  I am curious if I will follow the path I have seen others shift to.  The path where once you are single long enough, the idea of being in a relationship becomes less and less appealing.