Archives 2021

Friday after work I once again donned the bike shorts for another 10 mile ride.  As has been the trend, my average speed ticked up another couple 10ths, right around 17.5 mph.  It’s nice to at least have something getting better when it comes to my fitness/health.

On Saturday I decided to let the grass maintenance slide this weekend.  It looked ok except for a few places so I let it be.  When I got back from running errands it was time to pick up all of the limbs from the trees I trimmed one night after work last week.  Again I misjudged the amount of work, initially thinking I might be able to get it all done with one trip back to the fill pit with the Tacoma.  Instead it took three overflowing loads to get the job done.  To be fair I added to the pile by trimming the areca palms that surround the pond as well, they were getting out of hand.  Just doing that amount of clean up beat me up a bit, imagine if I was still doing the full boat.

I got done with the work about an hour before Dan arrived.  Dan is from the Boston area but visits Florida regularly, he has met me to ride twice before, the last time being the miserable flooded out swamp ride late last year.  We didn’t have anything planned out as far as a route goes but we decided to do the Ave Maria ride once he arrived.  Before we got started I let him ride the various wheels I have that he never got to try before.  By the time we got rolling east it was after 4PM, pretty late to get started.

Right before we left I had a mishap while trying to mount the Sherman.  My foot got tangled up with the pedal as I was taking off.  The end result was me coming off the wheel awkwardly and having one of the pedals of the 80+ pound wheel smash right above my right ankle.  The area immediately started seeping blood and I could tell it was going to be very sore from the impact.  I had no time to give it much attention as we were literally heading out.

The ride out there was fun.  I had to be mindful of my speed as Dan’s 18XL has a top speed about 20mph less than the Sherman.  Dan was impressed by just how remote Ave Maria really is as we rolled though a combination of farmland and undeveloped areas along the way.  I gave him an abbreviated tour of the town but we didn’t have much time to spare before darkness set in.

On the way back we made a detour to the nearby DD to fuel up.  Dan had a massive four hour drive back north so caffeine was helpful.  Once we got back to the house Dan hung for awhile talking about EUC’s and other things.  It was nice have extended interaction with someone since I don’t have a lot of that nowadays.  Dan headed out a little after 8.

Saturday night I finished up the Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark.  I always was a Sopranos fan and saw every episode binge watching it several years ago.  I found the movie good although the main character, Uncle Dickie, is a name I don’t recall ever being mentioned in the original show.  I thought it was impressive that they found a kid to play young Tony Soprano that looked like him, until Cindy told me that the kid was actually James Gandalfini’s son.  Wow, imagine that.  I’d give the prequel a B+.

Sunday was unexpectedly overcast and rainy.  I had not paid attention to the weather forecast recently.  Thankfully it was not hard driving rain but the day was grey throughout and it seemed to cast the same color to my mood. I just did not feel very happy/upbeat.  I was feeling beat up from the combo of the yard work and the Sherman ankle smash which had me walking with a limp all day.  I watched my second HBO Max movie of the weekend, Dune, Sunday afternoon.  The movie was two and a half hours long and was only “Part One”.  I remembered next to nothing about the original movie so I struggled to keep the story line straight, there is a lot going on. I would give it a B+ as well, it’s a good story and has epic visuals.

The Eagles game was late against the Las Vegas Raiders.  The game was another example of just how hapless the team is.  Much like the week before, the final score was not indicative of how close the game was.  The Eagles again got blown out early and then threw some junk points/yards on the board way too late.  This team is just totally unenjoyable to watch.

I think Sirianni is overmatched and Jalen Hurts is way too inconsistent.  It seems like the Eagles are constantly in 3rd down and long situations, which they very rarely convert.  The defense insists on rushing four and playing a soft zone that gets torched all game.  To be honest, the team is so boring to watch I don’t even “watch” it.  I have the game playing in the background while I do other things around the house so I can keep loose tabs on how the team is underperforming, once again.

I finished out my evening getting more small things knocked out around the house that need attention, the number of these items is practically endless.

Here is a reenactment of my stream of consciousness from last night, this level of to do’s is not all that unusual anymore.  Go to Costco, Elsa is low on chicken jerky, get home, Elsa is licking her chops meaning she is hungry, feed her, put away the groceries, it’s getting dark already, geez, I need to give the chickens treats, oh shit it’s water day too, ok I’ll give them treats first and then clean their water, now it’s almost dark, I’ll put the birds to bed awhile, back inside, see the blow ups in the yard need some help, fix them, go in the hobby room, swap out print jobs, realize filament came for a custom order, get that going, have another order that needs custom text, make the model in Tinkercad, slice it in Prusaslicer, load filament and start the printer, oh shit it’s trash night, grab all the trash and take it out to the curb, did I get the mail already?, back inside, geez it’s almost 8’oclock, I need to eat dinner, throw left over pasta in microwave, eat it while watching recorded dvr content, finish off the chocolate cake, clean all the dishes, check the print job status, edit the video of the Tesla footage I shot in the morning, post video, make thumbnail, take Elsa out while singing the “potty before bed” song, shower, watch a little Halloween Wars while laying in bed, think about tasks that need to get accomplished this weekend as I drift off to sleep.

Here is the video

My Thanksgiving trip to Texas is locked in. The series of events this weekend are not. My first day of wearing a SI belt felt a bit odd, I will deal with oddity if it allows the lower back pain to fade away.

So as I mentioned yesterday, I thought I could knock out the trees that I had to still trim in about an hour or so.  I took that thought and ran with it last night, thinking I would be able to get all the trimming done and debris dumped before darkness sets in around 7PM.  It was like I forgot all lessons that the previous 19 years of tree trimming taught me.  I felt so upbeat about it that I headed out to do the work in my gym clothes, no hat, and crocs.  I did at least have on gloves and safety glasses.

First I grabbed the power pruner to tackle the two sets of pygmy palms.  The pruner definitely made the job faster but because it has a decent amount of weight, holding it suspended over my head for long periods of time induced some considerable shoulder burning sensations.  I had to switch up arms repeatedly.

I then grabbed the sawz-all to do the rest of the trimming.  Three of the palms could still be trimmed on the ground but six of them required the extension ladder.  As soon as I got up there and started hacking away I regretted my clothing and (lack of) head protection choices.  Tree dirt, ants, and other organic material dumped all over me.  It constantly felt like I had something crawling on me, because I probably did.   Although I was making a good progress, it didn’t take long for me to realize my one hour time estimate was stupidly optimistic.  I finished trimming up the last palm by the fill pit in near total darkness.  Hell I thought I would get all the trimming done AND the debris dumped in the pit by dark.  Nope, all of the piles of branches remain scattered around the property, waiting for me. The experience left me dirty, tired, and intent to pay the extra money to have the tree guy trim all trees next year that require a ladder.

My SI belt arrived yesterday.  One of my EUC buddies described having similar back issues as I have and one of these belts really helped him.  It looks similar to a back brace but it is designed to be worn lower, across your hips.  Supposedly the compression helps stabilize the SI joint which in turn allows it to heal somewhat, reducing the associated pain laxity in that area can cause.  I have it on today.  It definitely feels odd.  My buddy said it took a couple weeks until he noticed a sizeable difference.  I am hoping for a similar outcome.

Yesterday the most ass busting annual chore I have around the house was done, without me lifting a finger.  The tree service I used last year came out to the property yesterday morning and cleaned up all of the higher cabbage palms as well as cleaning/lifting the oak tree in the chicken yard.   To trade off 7-8 hours of ass busting labor for a few hundred dollars is something I would not have been willing to do in my younger days however now it’s a no brainer.  If anything I kick myself for not paying someone to do this years ago.  The damage it would do to my body combined with the dangerous situations I put myself in to reach the highest trees was sort of dumb.

I still do have trimming to do, however it consists mostly of trees I can do from ground level.  In total I should be able to get it all done in the span of an hour or so, a huge improvement over what was my reality the first 18 years I lived at the house.  I may even try to get that trimming done tonight after work, so I don’t have to be bothered by it over the weekend.

Yesterday when Cindy was at a store she saw a smaller green version of the spider inflatable that I have in the yard.  She thought I may want it since she knew the old one was on it’s last legs so she let me know about it.  I asked her to grab it for me.  I wasted little time before I added him to the yard.

I was flying around last night getting things done.  I even found the time to quickly wash the Tesla which had a layer of grime on it.  Yesterday I also started the wheels in motion to potentially take a Thanksgiving road trip to Texas to visit my sister and her family.  Cindy was good with watching the homestead which makes it all possible.

It will be a bit of unconventional schedule.  Because of existing vacations in our department that week I won’t be able to leave Naples until Wednesday evening.  My plan is to drive until midnight or so, hopefully winding up in north Florida, hopefully in the panhandle somewhere.  Then after minimal sleep I will be back on the road for a very long day of driving which will get me to Torrin’s house in a suburb of Dallas sometime Thanksgiving night.

It will be a grind for sure but I can make it work.  The one positive is on Thanksgiving Day traffic should be relatively light, hopefully allowing me to make decent time.  Of course I will be taking the Tesla, which makes long drives almost fun.  I plan on staying there three days before allocating two days for the drive back.  If it all works out it should be a fun little adventure.

I got a text at 6AM this morning from the tree guy, who I was trying to schedule to do the trimming again this year.  He said he had a last minute cancellation and wanted to know if he could come this morning.  I said that was fine as long as he didn’t need someone there, which he didn’t.  It will be nice coming home to a trimmed property.  The few things I won’t have him trim I can knock out in an hour or less.

I had a busy but enjoyable weekend.  Since the grass tasks were already handled it freed me up to do other things.  One of those other things was making my mom’s chocolate cake recipe for Cindy’s birthday.  I bought the ingredients I didn’t have during my errand run and then started making the cake mid-afternoon.

Cake prep went smoothly.  I would up using my big Kitchen Aid stand mixer for the main cake mix which probably resulted in the ingredients getting better mixing than typical.  However with this cake the icing is the star of the show.  I bought a new double boiler just for the icing.  It too worked well, I would say the end product was one of the top 10% of the cakes I have made.

Saturday evening I took the V11 to Dunkin Donuts.  On the way back I rode through the nearby developments checking out the Halloween decorations.  There weren’t a ton to see but I enjoyed the ride regardless.

On Sunday morning it felt like I was spinning in circles trying to get small tasks done so I could get out the door.  I finally got down to Marco to do a hill test with my two Inmotion wheels, the V11 and the V12.  I parked by Indian Hill, the steepest and longest hill in Marco Island.  It was very interesting contrasting how both wheels felt going back and forth over the hill 10 times.  Part of the test was also monitoring wheel temperature during the stress test.  Both wheels passed the test but the V12 was clearly the winner with much more speed over the hills as well as having a top temperature 20 degrees cooler than the V11.

Late in the afternoon Cindy stopped over.  She had spent most of the day with Katie and DJ which was a fun way to spend her birthday.  We picked up food from Brooks Burgers, one of her favorites and enjoyed it at at the house.  Afterward we each had a piece of the cake after I sung a solo version of happy birthday to Cindy, something I am not sure I ever did as normally at least Katie would also be part of the process.  The cake tasted quite good, although both Cindy and I felt the side effects of the caloric bomb we ingested.  Despite the major change in our dynamic since her last birthday, I think overall Cindy had a good day which I was happy about.

The Eagles/Buccaneers game went sort of like I expected with Tampa winning convincingly.  The game was not as close as the 28-22 final score.  Tom Brady was surgical in his dissection of the Eagles defense, which returned to seeming pretty hapless.  Again the run/pass balance was woeful and statistically Jalen Hurts had an awful game, making very few throws, instead relying on his legs to to keep anything going.

To be fair this is only his 10th start but I certainly have not seen anything so far that makes me think that the team has made anything better than a lateral move at QB and more than likely, a downgrade. The more he plays, the less promising his future appears, to me at least.  After the Patriots scored to go ahead 28-7 I flipped over and watched another episode of Titans before flipping back to see the post mortem.

Man, getting up during the week to the 5:40AM alarm is brutal nowadays.  I mean before the alarm was set for 5:55 AM so it’s only 15 minutes earlier.  However before if I wanted to lay there a few minutes to catch my bearings I could.  There is no time for that anymore.  Within 15 seconds of that alarm going off I need to eject myself from bed whether I am ready or not, because I have to.  To get everything done around the house before leaving for work requires that I hit the accelerator the instant my eyes open. It gets a bit rough, especially when you are up late watching the Eagles under performing.  I really need to try to get more than 6 hours of sleep during the week.  I spend most days feeling alert only during the coffee induced waves of artificial energy I experience twice a day.

This will be a bit of an odd weekend, it’s Cindy’s birthday. Normally this was something that we celebrated consistently and enthusiastically over the years with family dinners, nice presents and even the cruise for her 50th birthday which was one of my favorite memories of recent times.  Going into this birthday not together is certainly going to feel foreign and unhappy, for me at least.   I am going to make my mom’ chocolate cake for her, I need to make sure my cake baking skills don’t get too rusty.

Since I got the mowing done during the week and the Eagles game went down last night I should have some extra time this weekend to do other things, besides baking a cake.  What exactly those other things will be is not determined as of yet.

Last night I shot a quick video regarding my Anycubic Chiron, the largest 3D print I own.  The printer has sat mostly unused for months and months because of random lockups during prints.  As a last ditch effort I spent $50 on an upgraded wiring harness for the printer, the stock harness has a long history of being low quality and unreliable.  I have since done a number of prints successfully, including a very long 44 hour print over the weekend.  The video reports on the results.

Last night I finished up season two of Titans on HBO Max.  I am really enjoying the show except for one complaint.  In both season one and season two they put tons of work developing the super villain story and depicting how insurmountable it would be to defeat him.  Then in the last episodes, the bad guy is defeated somewhat routinely.  I have one more season to go, I am curious if they do better at coming up with the final outcome this time.  For those of you keeping score at home, finishing season 1 and 2 in the span of around 10 days means 26 episodes have been watched.  I guess I do have some free time after all.

We had a couple days of minimal rain so I decided during the afternoon that I wanted to try to get the grass mowed last night.  I even asked to leave a little early to make the task more doable.  As I drove home I became increasingly annoyed as the commute that was sunny, turned into dark and full clouds in the direction of the house.  I was really pissed.  When I got home it still wasn’t raining but it looked like it could at anytime.

Well that time came about 60 seconds before I was ready to head out and get started, it started to rain somewhat heavily but it stopped after less than 10 minutes so I decided I was still going to press forward with the plan.  As I fired up the mower I could hear the rain ramping up again, hitting the roof of the shed.  I didn’t care, I was now officially committed.

I kept my ass planted on that seat through multiple outbursts of rain, at least a half dozen, soaking my t-shirt in the process.  The wet grass made clogging a thing and spinning wheels a common outcome.  Once again aided by the multiple floodlights I have in the backyard I plowed forward, completing the task at about 7:45 PM, again in complete darkness.  Despite being wet and covered with grass clippings, it felt like an effort well spent.

On Friday after work I got back out on the bike for a 10 mile ride.  My pace seems to be improving by tiny fractions each time I do it.  It’s nice to something improving instead of declining at this age. Friday night I did a nearly 3 hour live stream celebrating 50 live broadcasts.  I drank one of my handful of remaining Zimas during the stream, which at this point is 2-3 years old.  The Zima unfortunately did not taste normal, clearly it has a limited shelf life.

Saturday the property was still too sopping wet to consider mowing but I did wind up running the weed whacker as I hadn’t done it in at least three weeks.  I am hoping to mow the property tonight which will surely wind up in the dark.  Cindy stopped by as I was finishing up mowing for me to do a couple things to the laptop she has been using.

On Saturday night I did something out of the box for me, went to a comedy show.  Cindy’s younger brother who has been trying to establish himself in the local Miami comedy scene was one of the openers for a show in Fort Myers so I decided to go.  I was curious  what it would be like so I bought a ticket and showed up.  As I walked up to the front door I saw most of Cindy’s family by the door, many of which I had not seen for a couple years.  They were happy to see me and didn’t ask where Cindy was so I assumed they all knew the deal.

The show was funny with a total of 5 comedians doing their thing.  It was a bit weird sitting at the table with all of Cindy’s family without her actually being there.  Like I said they all were very friendly and nice to me which I appreciated.  The three light beers I had during the show helped keep me socially viable.  I enjoyed the show and if Cindy’s brother comes back to the west coast I would consider going again.

On Sunday morning I ran several errands which included meeting Cindy at Lowes to help her load up some stone.  She has a cast and a boot on one foot right now so it makes doing such things very problematic for her.  I carted the stuff over to the place where the work was being done and unloaded it there.

I watched the Eagles game against the Panthers. The offense looked dreadful for the majority of the game, but unlike the previous week, the defense actually made plays, coming up with three interceptions and a blocked punt, all of which was a big part of the scoring the team did.  During the first half I thought there was no way the Eagles were going to win the game, they did.  I was happy to be wrong but it didn’t do anything to change my overall pessimistic outlook for the season ahead.

After the game I decided to carve out some time for a quick ride on my V11, the only suspension EUC I currently own.  I had not ridden that wheel in a little while since I added the V12 and Z10 to my collection.  I immediately felt the difference suspension has on my body, it was great.  I need to get out on it more often.