Battered by a battery, Repurposed, fatty

So on my way to work yesterday I stopped and got a battery for the SSR, with plans to install it after work last night.  All day I felt slightly bothered by the idea of the truck sitting out in the driveway, naked and disabled.

Of course about 10 minutes before I headed outside to perform the battery install it started to rain.  I didn’t care since I was going to be working under the truck, so what if my lower body gets soaked.

Replacing the battery was challenging because of the limited working space.  Once I got the battery in the lowered support tray I had to awkwardly try to push the tray up and then backward to it’s locking position.  Doing this with the weight of the battery on top of my hand was a struggle.  After a few failed attempts I was able to wedge my forearm/hand between the ground and the battery tray to fashion a human jack stand while I wiggled the tray into position with the other hand.

I bolted on the battery cables and figured I should hop in the truck to make sure I had solved my no-start problem.  The truck fired right up although the engine sounded abnormally noisy so I turned it off immediately.  My theory was being parked on the incline of the driveway for the last 24 hours allowed all of the oil to drain towards the back of the engine/oil pan.

Once I buttoned up the rest of the battery box I drifted the truck down to the flat portion of the driveway before starting it again.  It sounded normal this time and I quickly pulled the truck back into the garage as the rain was picking up intensity.  I was relieved that the problem appears to only have been the battery.  The battery I pulled was an AC Delco brand, a good one with a 7 year warranty.  Unfortunately I have no way of knowing if it was the battery that came with the truck in 2005, which would be pretty amazing.

On the way home last night I stopped by the running store to pick up a computer, normally an odd place to pick up such a thing.  Awhile back I had set this computer up for the store to use to sign up people for races. It didn’t get enough use to merit the space it took up on the counter so it was just sitting disconnected in a back room.  My plan was to put it back to use as a replacement for mom’s aging laptop.

This system, although a few years old has much better hardware specs than mom’s laptop with 4 times the memory and a faster processor. It also has Windows 7 on it which will be a nice face lift from XP for mom. To really speed it up I bought a small SSD drive to install in the desktop as well which should show up tomorrow.

I set the system up on the kitchen island to work on it.  For network access I strung a long ethernet cable up over the pot rack and kitchen cabinets to the cat 5 jack by the telephone.  It looked pretty bad but it worked well.

Since the computer had been turned off for a long time there were literally 200+ updates that needed to be applied.  I let the system up and running all night letting it update itself.  Once I get the SSD drive installed I will set it up for mom, I think she will like it.

Today is my last day with the dogs as Ali returns from her latest trip this evening.  Nicki has eaten like a champ the entire time she has been with me.  Her overall state of being has seemed better too, surely because she is eating better.  She was wrestling with Sadie, as well as she can wrestle anymore, and has generally had a dog smile on her face the entire time.  It’s a nice change from the mostly mopey demeanor she was sporting during other recent visits.

I need to lose weight.  Last night before my shower the scale clicked in at 183 pounds.  Although I certainly don’t have love handles, I can feel the extra weight on me during my various body weight exercises.  There was a period of time, probably damn close to two years where my weight was hanging in the low 170’s.  Although I looked rather gaunt at times, I also felt more efficient both at endurance and body weight training.  Less weight also was a good thing for my troublesome, twice operated on knees.

Now some people would suggest the added body weight is from added muscle, particularly lower body muscle from my increased dedication to exercises such as squats and dead lifts.  To a degree that could be true, but I always find myself assuming any higher numbers on the scale are pure fat.

My diet definitely has been less strict than my 170 pound days where many of my dinners were just veggie wraps and juice.  My amount of endurance training is a few clicks down as well which doesn’t help matters.

So anyway the plan is to enlist more dietary discipline while trying to turn my exercise intensity dial up a click or two.  If I am not careful I could find myself back in my rather defintion-less, 195 pound shape I was sporting 6 or 7 years ago.

I think losing 6 or 7 pounds would put me at a sweet spot.