I was back at the dermatologist for a 6 month check up. I had them biopsy a very small spot behind my left year that had been there for quite awhile. I was hoping it would resolve itself but it hasn’t. It’s such a small spot I am not sure if they would do conventional MOHS on it or not. It’s been a long time since I have gone a calendar year without getting something cut off/out.

So with pickleball being off the menu for a week and a half I am hoping to get some improvement in the aches and pains that are my normal companion. I would say my lower body feels a bit better but apparently my two shoulders decided to even things out. They both are significantly painful, so much so that I abandoned my bench press routine yesterday mid-way through the second set. If I do a complete inventory of the aches and pains it would include the right hip/knee/IT band, left knee, both shoulders, left thumb and my lower back now and then. It’s a constant game of whack-a-mole. One thing shows some improvement only to have another take front and center in the pain department. Getting old sucks.

If I was a Trump acolyte I would be offended by just how ignorant my human deity presumes that I am. He posted this ridiculous image to his social media, which he later removed because people found it in very poor taste and offensive for Trump to picture himself in a Jesus-like manner. His explanation that he thought would be accepted by light thinkers is he viewed it as him being a doctor. Even though the MAGA or death crowd will defend anything and I mean anything Trump says or does, even if it makes them seem like they are deaf and blind, I will feel sad/offended on their behalf that the president really thinks “his” people, are brainwashed enough to swallow and digest most anything he says. If he pissed on their leg and told them it was raining no further questions would be asked.

I know I have mentioned this reality a number of times over the years but it keeps being proven out to me again and again. It goes simply as this, generally speaking (not always), the more you know about a person, the less you will like them. When you find people that buck that trend, hold onto them.

Friday evening I tuned in to see the final chapter of the 10 day Artemis flight, it’s return to Earth. Just like the majority of the flight, the reentry and splashdown went perfectly. To commemorate the event I printed an Artemis replica over the weekend to be displayed at the office. It was a fun print where you print dozens of pieces that simply screw together. I can only hope the program doesn’t get derailed by the proposed insanely military heavy budget which would cut NASA funding significantly.

Over the weekend I finished up redoing the rock border around the back of the house. Doing so required lugging an additional 60 bags of stone home. Doing this sort of project where you are using bags of product whether it be mulch or stone is never fun.

You wind up having to load and unload each bag multiple times. It goes from store to flat bed then flat bed to back of truck and the back of truck to where it is going in the landscape. My girlfriend helped with a large portion of spreading the stone at the house which was greatly appreciated. This was one of those things I always had in the back of my mind that needed to be done that just got kicked down the road for three years. I’m glad it is finally handled. There are more tasks that are still in that line to be done.

My girlfriend and I took a drive out to Ave Maria on Sunday, a place I used to frequent regularly via EUC. I had not been there in quite a long time, at least a year. I threw her bike and one of my wheels into the back of the truck to roll around Ave Maria, it’s a beautiful place to do so. My girlfriend had never been there so I was excited to show her around.

It was a beautiful afternoon. She was very impressed by just how nice Ave Maria was. I was surprised by two very positive things that were added since I was last there, lighted pickleball courts AND a Dunkin Donuts. Those two additions made Ave Maria practically a utopia for me. 🙂 We had dinner sitting outside, coffee from Dunkin and ice cream from Coldstone on our way out. It was a great way to spend a few hours even though we had to spend nearly two hours of that driving to and from the town. It was a great weekend overall.

I am on a pickleball hiatus since the US Open runs through this upcoming weekend. I am hoping the break will allow some of my continuous aches and pains to become less so.

I played lunch time pickleball on Wednesday. I played ok but when I returned to the office and got out of my car I walked back to the office with a limp which is sadly getting to be the new normal. It’s very frustrating. For the last couple years I have attributed the issue to IT band pain which i have tried to address with stretching and strengthening movements. None of it has been a long term solution. I have only stopped playing pickleball maybe 2-3 weeks in an attempt to see if that would help, it didn’t. Although I am sure the movements associated with pickleball don’t help, I can get the same pain/problem just from walking more than a 1/4 mile.

I do still think the pain which travels between my right hip and knee is from my IT band but I am thinking more and more the hip itself could be the cause. Both my younger brother and my dad have had hip replacements done. I also think my bowed legs, which I think I got from my grandfather lend to this sort of pain as well. Whatever the cause I am feeling more and more inclined to have an orthopedist look me over. It’s been a long time since I have had any imaging done of my lower body. I am pretty sure it would reveal that I am kind of a mess.

The Artemis II crew are scheduled to splash back down this evening after a very successful 10 day mission. I can only hope this success keeps the momentum going so the planned future launches which are supposed to occur at a much faster cadence, can be carried out. That could be in jeopardy as I saw the new proposed budget which includes a heinous amount of money for the defense program, is paying for it by cutting funding to a number of domestic programs, including NASA.

This weekend I hope to get out with my girlfriend on another bike adventure. I also would like to continue work on a small project I started last week, redoing the rock border that surrounds part of the house. This is one of those projects I wanted to do since I moved in but never got around to. These areas had become more dirt than rock over the years. So have I have bought/spread 30 bags of small drainage style rock to replenish these borders. I may need 40-50 more. What I have done so far looks good, it’s just not fun work. However I am motivated to get it done before it starts getting truly hot again in SW Florida.

Trump is really fond of labeling people that do not support or challenge him. Loser and low IQ are two of his favorites but he also likes saying they have Trump Derangement Syndrome. I saw commentary that made a good point. In reality the only people that have TDS are the people that are still clinging onto their false God because it pains them too much to admit they made a terrible mistake in supporting such a man. Nobody is a fan of admitting they were fooled but to continue to show blind loyalty for this insanity is far more damning that just saying you made a poor choice.

I thought that I have pretty much dog proofed the main living space through trial and error, the errors being pointed out when Elsa or Mia do/destroy something they shouldn’t. Toilet paper is stowed away, hand towels are placed out of reach and all doors to the bedrooms and office are securely closed. Well yesterday they made me aware that leaving a paper plate that I had Mia’s food on unattended was a chink in my armor.

When I got home I saw small pieces of blue cardboard scattered about both on the floor and on the sofa. It took a few seconds to click as to what it could be. I then realized the paper plate was blue. After consuming whatever food was left on it the plate then became a chew toy which they surely ingested some of. I was annoyed and frustrated but the fault ultimately was my own. Mia’s food now will only be on a normal plate if it’s going to be left unattended. I have two Ring cameras monitoring their activities. When I reviewed the footage I could watch the paper plate carnage transpire in real time.

I saw the massively cringe inducing clip of Trump making a call to the astronauts that had just completed their historic circle around the dark side of the moon. After Trump made some odd rambling statement that was supposed to be complimentary to Canada by name dropping Wayne Gretzky the astronauts just sat there and stared at the screen. They say sat there without speaking on mic for around a minute, it was extremely awkward yet obviously intentional with that intent to let the entire planet know their feelings about the man on the other end of the line. What an embarrassment.

So cringe is one thing, stating a “whole civilization will die tonight” is outright heinous and something that nobody should be excusing/condoning. This is not locker room talk where you joke about sexually molesting women. This is describing genocide. The guy has lost any remaining thin tendrils of connection to reality. The fact that this has been allowed to continue to escalate to this point without somebody stepping in blows my mind. Many adamant Trump supporters have woken up and realized that this is a genuine four alarm fire going on in the White House.

Iran however is not running scared and appears willing to call Trump’s bluff. Doing so backs him into a corner. If he would actually destroy civilian infrastructure he would be committing war crimes at a level that Russia would only hope to aspire to. If he does not follow through he is once again exposed as the loud mouthed, ignorant, insecure, weak, thin skinned paper tiger that he really is. The guy needs to be grabbed by the scruff of his neck and dragged out of the White House kicking and screaming like the tantruming 79 year old child that he is.

Instead of playing pickleball Saturday morning I went on a 15 mile ride on my Veteran Patton while my girlfriend rode the F7 E-bike for the first time. We rode from the house all the way to the beach and back. We went at a slow and steady pace as my girlfriend preferred to ride mostly on sidewalks where as I am accustomed to riding in bike lanes with traffic nearby.

There was a funny incident where we had to go through a tight section that leads to the pedestrian underpass. Evidently the hotel there has had too many issues with people going through that section on bikes and having accidents with either other bikes or possibly pedestrians.

In an effort to curtail this they put two large speed bumps at the entrance and exit to this area along with a sign that tells bikers that they must walk their bikes. I have ridden through this spot for years and never saw this before so it must have occurred recently.

So although I saw the sign, I ignored it. My EUC is maneuverable and has suspension so the speed bumps didn’t provide that much of an obstacle for me. Once I got through I waited for my girlfriend who walked her bike through as indicated. When we got maybe a half mile further toward the beach we were stopped when she told me the one hotel employee was very angry that I just rolled on through. She said he asked her if she was with me, she said she was. He thanked her for walking her bike through the area but that she should tell me to fck off. LOL. I weighed the idea of riding back that way and riding through the obstacle course again to piss off Mr Fck Off but I didn’t. My girlfriend would have not endorsed that idea either.

Should I have gotten off and walked through that spot? Probably. I have had incidents where clueless pedestrians stop abruptly in the twisting tight corners which could definitely cause an accident. Still, going straight to FCK OFF was more than was necessary IMO.

The rest of the ride was very nice. The E-bike seems pretty great for the money. The thing can go over 30 MPH although my girlfriend barely went half that speed. It has a full color display, LED headlights and tail lights, front suspension and evidently gets great range. After doing 15 miles the battery indicator was still showing full. I look forward to doing more tandem rides with her going forward.

My Easter was very mundane. We went to the gym Sunday morning where I did a more condensed version of the HIT circuit. Instead of 400 total reps it’s only 150 and it’s only pull ups and push ups. The goal is to do 50 pull ups and 100 push ups as quick as you can. I opted to do 10 sets of 5 pull ups and 10 push ups. Even though the total rep count is way less I was still sucking major wind with the only difference being I was only doing it for 15 minutes instead of 40. I have a considerable amount of shoulder pain right now so I thought dialing things back a little made sense.

We did an Easter brunch sort of deal at a local place which was the extent of my Easter celebration. It rained most of the afternoon so it curtailed plans we had to take the dogs out for an extended walk. Despite my non-celebration of the day the same cant be said for the hundreds of people that jammed the nearby catholic church. The cars exploded out onto the median and side streets for parking. I don’t recall ever seeing it so full.

It was nice to see a warm and encouraging message from DJT Easter morning. Of course I am kidding. Just when you think the bar has been set in embarrassing, childish, ignorant and blasphemous statements by Big D he goes and surprises you. I never thought I would see the day that a US President would do/say the things this man does. Just imagine the example he is setting for a generation of malleable young minds that see this garbage spewing from what is supposed to be the “leader of the free world”. I keep waiting for enough is enough sort of accountability to finally be administered to this man-child. I don’t know if that will day will ever come or instead we will just have to wait for the grim reaper to do it for us.

Last night after work I tasked myself with putting together the electric bike that showed up a couple days prior. For the past 10 years most personal electric vehicles I have purchased have only had one wheel with the exception being a couple electric skateboards and electric scooters.

The listing for this bike on Amazon stated the bike was 90% assembled. I was skeptical of that but once I opened the box I was a believer. Everything was very well packed and by the time I got all of the protective materials off I only had to put on the front tire, the pedals and a couple other small items. It was a total piece of cake. I will get the hang of how everything works this weekend before letting my girlfriend get on there so I make sure she is safe. It seems like a real nice bike for the money.

This Easter weekend will likely be a non-event around here unless we decide to do some sort of lunch/dinner on Sunday to mark the occasion. Easter in my lifetime has never meant much of anything except a possible meal with family members. I’m fine with it.

Oh Pam Bondi got blown out yesterday. That was fun news. Hopefully Patel is next. Soon Don will be out of sacrificial lambs.

I was locked in to watch the Artemis II launch last night. Cloud cover in our area made the possibility of seeing the smoke trail on the horizon impossible but watching it on TV was fine. The anticipation of the countdown was intense. The way the rocket accelerated off the pad was surprising. It practically leaped into the air at a pace much faster than the SpaceX Starship launches I have seen. They will spend a few days circling the Earth running a number of checks and tests before they hit the gas to accelerate to 27,000 MPH to escape Earth’s orbit and head for the moon. It’s going to be an exciting 10 days. Things have started just about perfectly, let’s hope it ends that way.

This morning as I was getting ready I saw this out my bathroom window. It was so beautiful that I threw on my pants and took a picture out of my garage. The skies in Florida are beautiful both at sunset and sunrise, one of the many reasons I never have regretted moving here.

Yesterday a large box was delivered to my place. In it was an e-bike I bought for my girlfriend. The thought is she will be able to use it to accompany me on some of my EUC rides. I need to put it together yet. From the video I saw it should not be a very difficult task to do so. It will be fun to have her along for the ride once in awhile.

Today Artemis II is scheduled to launch. Setting a launch date of April Fool’s day seems less than well thought out to me. This will be the first time astronauts will have circled the moon since the early 70s which is crazy. The program has been riddled with setbacks, delays and large cost overruns. It was originally scheduled to launch in 2016, yes, 10 years ago. The intent of the program is to establish a lunar base at some point, which again, was supposed to have been well underway at this point.

Much like the original Apollo program, the Artemis program is mostly motivated due to competition with another country. Back then it was the Soviet Union, now, it’s China who is pushing to establish a presence on the moon. There is a lot of pressure for this mission to go well. It’s been a long time since NASA has been in the spotlight. SpaceX has gotten almost all of the attention since the shuttle program was put to rest.

Being a space enthusiast I am very interested in this event however it seems like I am in the minority. In this 6 second attention span society we live in I bet you would be lucky to get 10% of the population that even knows what Artemis is. I think it would be amazing if we had a consistent human inhabited base on the moon. I hope today’s launch is the first step in making that a reality.

Happy April Fool’s day. I heard we were celebrating by having the biggest fool of all embarrass himself and the nation once again by doing a live address where he will explain how bigly we are winning the war. I saw a post on X from a former huge Trump supporter that not only voted for him three times but donated heavily to his campaign. Like many he is finally done with the circus and never ending stream of lies and broken promises. He ended his post by saying “The only ones left supporting him are MAGA always Trumpers who place the man above the policies and our country.” Amen. That is what cult members do, blind, undying obedience. Just ask Jim Jones followers that drank the poison Kool Aid.

I have a long history of working on my vehicles. I documented a lot of my trials and tribulations on my YouTube channel as well. Out of my 10 most viewed videos on the channel seven of them are vehicle related. It’s been a very long time since I have had to do a significant repair on my vehicles. Since I bought my 2016 Tacoma and sold the 99 Tacoma I haven’t really had to fix anything. All I have done is install upgrades and mods and not that many of them. Since I bought my first Tesla in 2019 I haven’t had to fix anything on them either. So when I decided to address my failed backup sensor issue in my Tacoma of course I needed to make a video of it. I sort of dreaded the task though as almost every automotive repair/project I take on turns out being a major PIA. Plus, I just haven’t done it for awhile, maybe I didn’t have the will power/determination to see the project through to the end. From my research I could just throw $500 to a dealer to fix the problem for me.

As I anticipated, things did not go smoothly. The four sensors in the bumper that are used by the system can not be accessed easily. I had to remove the bumper covers to get access. In the process I wound up snapping a number of connectors, luckily I had enough unbroken ones to put everything back together. If you watch the video you will get a good sense of the frustrations I worked through. In the end I got the problem fixed which was somewhat surprising. In total if I include the trim tools I bought for the job I spent less than $100 on the repair along with roughly three hours of my time.

My new (to me) wheel arrived on Friday. Over the weekend I put on some parts that were removed for shipping. The wheel has a few warts like a bent and unusable kick stand, a slightly crooked headlight, a missing charge port cover and a charger that has something rattling around inside. None of these things are huge issues.

The wheel is HUGE. It legitimately seems like half of a motorcycle with it’s massive 100/90 tire. I only got to ride it for a couple minutes just to verify base operation. It feels very stable and planted based on that ride but I need to get a real road test in the books. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of my trade.

Elsa’s one dog bed has a small hole in the top of it from either her or Mia digging at the bed with their claws. I bought them a new bed over the weekend. It looks/feels like an oversized marshmallow covered in faux fur. After a brief WTF is this when they first saw the bed they quickly realized how soft and comfortable it is which made me happy.

I skipped doing the HIT training workout on Sunday. Saturday morning I walked between a mile and two on the beach with my girlfriend first thing and then went to play pickleball afterward. That combination left my body feeling all sorts of aches and pains that made submitting it to that intense exercise circuit sound like a very bad idea.

Today my wheel that I traded for is supposed to arrive, the Commander Pro Max. Hopefully it survived the journey from California without incident. I got word that my Aero that I shipped arrived out in California Wednesday in good condition. This wheel has the largest battery and presumably the longest range of any wheel I have ever owned. I will need to put that to the test at some point. It’s fun getting a new wheel without laying out any cash to do so.

Elsa has continued to do well in recent weeks. She has been doing well enough that we now have my girlfriend’s dog staying with her during the day.

Both Mia and Elsa are very fond of one another and both hate being alone so it works out well. I have adjusted my routine so I drive home quickly before my lunch to let them outside briefly and to say hi which they seem to enjoy as well.

Besides needing to wear the diaper, Elsa otherwise has been acting pretty normal. She still drinks a lot of water but that has been the case for a long time. She is consistently eating the FreshPet food which is very high quality and nutritionally complete. She is eating way more than she used to which has her making BMs 2-3 times a day but they are the good, well formed variety. Overall she has seemed happy and content since her flurry of vet activity at the end of January and beginning of February. I am good with that.

I never expected to be changing diapers at 58 years old but it isn’t the huge PIA I initially thought it might be. Elsa being agreeable to wearing diapers has made my intense laundry routine much less so. I am no longer having to strip and wash the bedding on a daily basis. I have left my alarm clock at 6AM however. That extra 30 minutes allows me to get ready in plenty of time and get into work early which is a good thing. Where we are at now is much better than I anticipated a month and a half ago.

I am going to be attempting something I have not had to do in a very long time, an automotive repair on one of my vehicles. Sure I have done maintenance/upgrade items all along on both the Tesla and 2016 Tacoma but I now have something to actually fix. The rear parking sensor system in the Tacoma has been broken for quite awhile. This system consists of four little sonar button looking things that reside in the rear bumper. From my research it is not an uncommon thing to fail.

My “fix” up until this point has been to just disable this system which is controlled by a button on the dash. I bought four non-OEM sensors to install although I may not need all of them. My understanding is these sensors are connected in series so if just one of them goes bad the entire system fails.

The non-OEM sensors have a mixed bag of results. Some people say they worked just fine, others said you should just stick to OEM. The thing is Toyota charges a ridiculous amount for these sensors. I read a dealer quoted somebody $500 to replace the sensors. If things go my way, I’ll do it for 35 bucks.