Inside The Perimeter

My hurting knee really slowed me down yesterday. I hobbled around the house all day while doing work. The knee is better but still tender today, so I am going to try and be wise by giving it another day of rest.

Last night I was getting frustrated with Hulu as it interrupted the show I was watching nearly every seven minutes with a minute of advertisements. My frustration level lowered when I realized that what they were really providing me with was one-minute intervals during which I could work on chores. So, while “watching tv” I also put away clean dishes, folded and put away my clean clothes, and identified cans of paint that will be taken to CHaRM on Thursday.

Since I have returned to being an early riser I intended to make it to Kroger at 6:00am this morning, but I didn’t sleep well at all last night so I am still tired and in bed at as I type this at 6:20am.

I may try to get out to a couple of stores today to pick up a few things to keep my overall home improvement momentum going. Or, since I may not be able to do manual labor for another day I may just drive down to Aldi, and stop at Kroger to fill the M6 with gas along the way.

Speaking of the M6, I received an email from the Mazda dealership from which I bought it telling me that if I sold it back to them by the end of the month they’d give me 120% of the Blue Book value. While that sounds like a wonderful opportunity I am just not in a position to pull that trigger currently since I will be putting a new windshield on it Friday and am contemplating taking my first real road trip since February to visit the Raleigh Royalty in Raleigh in a couple of weeks for Lisa’s 50th birthday.

I have discovered a new itchy spot on my right forearm. Given all of the “deep woods” yard work, hiking, and hashing I am doing this summer I think I am going to have a record number of poison ivy outbreaks. ☹️

Tuesday Tale of the Tape: 195.4 pounds (+0.2 from last week’s weighing-in); Dangen! I’ll blame me knee, and the amount of food I shoved in my face recently.

Hope you all are remaining well.

I’ve awoken this morning with a very sore and stiff right knee. I think my body is telling me that today should be a “rest day”, and when you read about my weekend escapades you may agree.

Friday was a working day! However, I managed to put in 45 minutes on the trainer and hang out with Bonnie on my carport for awhile. We didn’t hang out too late because for the second week in a row we had an early morning planned for Saturday.

Saturday morning I picked up Bonnie and we drove down to Cochran Mill park to meet Steve, and Tammy, to ride Silk Sheets. Steve and I rode ten miles together before he had to peel off and return to the park so that he could be responsible. I on the other hand, was bound and determined to get in at least forty miles. For me it turned out to be 43 miles in three hours in the saddle, never feeling perfectly comfortable. After the ladies came in the three of us hung in the park for a little while before departing. My day was far from over.

After unpacking the car I hopped into the shower to clean off. I picked up Bonnie at 4:30pm and we masked up to drive to Lawrenceville to drink one beer! Well, the occasion made the effort worth is as it was the Grand Opening of an old friend’s brewery, Ironshield Brewing. Upon arrival you’d think Prohibition had just been lifted in Lawrenceville, the place was packed. I knew I’d see John (aka HamWithCam) there, and was pleasantly surprised to also see that Barb and her friends also made an appearance. The brewery is nice, we got a tour and a free beer from Dave, before heading back ITP.

One of the things COVID has made harder for me is making unplanned stops to eat or drink. As we snaked back toward East Atlanta Bonnie and I kept looking for places that were open and at which we’d feel comfortable stopping. That never happened, so dinner was a delicious white pizza from Grant Central East and a few more beers once again sitting in my carport.

Yesterday I was up at 5am. I wanted to tackle laundry before tackling the yard. I spent another 2+ hours “cleaning up” the yard. In two weeks I have amassed twelve yard waste bags stuffed with English ivy and other debris, and dragged many more branches and small trees to the far back corner of my lot. Someday I hope to get the yard in a shape that pleases me. After cleaning up from yard work the plan was to hike Indian Seats, but a look at what appeared to be a wicked storm system changed our minds. Bonnie and I scrambled to find a southern replacement and settled on visiting High Falls State Park. There Bonnie and I hiked about 4.5 miles. The plan was to then use our Hop Passports in Hampton, GA by visiting Jailhouse Brewing; that plan was killed when getting directions to the brewery I discovered that it had shuttered its doors just recently. As one brewery opens an old timer closes…

Undaunted, Bonnie and I set out to visit a place that has quickly become a favorite of mine — Red’s Beer Garden. Red’s offers a great selection of beer, and vegetarian hot dogs (yeah, they have meat ones too). Bonnie and I sat at a picnic table under an umbrella with a fan pointed at our table and enjoyed a meal with beers. I even was treated to seeing Bonnie do one of her favorite things, crushing cans with a beer crusher. 😁

I put many more miles on the M6 in two days than I have in the previous four months. This week I will have to do that thing we used to call “filling the tank”. 😮

And that was my weekend. I hope yours was as rewarding, and that you are remaining healthy.

As I type this I have just finished eating a breakfast of pancakes topped with blackberries, just as I did yesterday. I type this now to cement this into my brain for tomorrow morning when I am once again concerned by the darkness of my “early morning constitutional”. 🙄

Currently I am also trying to convince myself that I really do want to go out into the back yard to do some more manual labor, but I really do not want to today. I think the rain we had very late in the evening may be my ”out”, or perhaps I am tired (I am) and want to be a lazy ass today. I think I will successfully talk myself out of yard work and in exchange knock out a couple of other indoor chores today, like prepping all of my road by gear for tomorrow’s outing. There is no shortage of chores on which I can work, oh and of course there is that pesky thing called ”work” that I must do as well.

Just looked outside. Yep, it’s very wet. Awwww, guess I shouldn’t work outside now…

My return to German class was unceremonious. Having slacked off for a month I could tell that I was ill-prepared for the evening. This virtual class is large by Goethe standards, with ten students currently registered. One new participant is clearly slumming with us and will be the class ringer, a distinction I was hoping to hold but am not capable of due to my lazy ways.

Other than tomorrow’s ride I have no hardened plans for the weekend. I am going to try to make it to Lawrenceville for the opening of my friend Dave’s brewery, Ironshield Brewing. Who knows, maybe I can stop into another brewery or two on the return home…

Enjoy your weekend friends. Stay healthy.

In the CoA? Mask Up! Motherfu **record scratch**
Sorry, I got carried away.

As of last night the City has mandated wearing masks inside public places, and is discouraging group meetups of more than ten. Fortunately this will not impact Saturday morning’s bike ride, which won’t be in city limits anyway.

Yesterday was yet another fairly mundane day. I did some more work in the back yard, some parts of which are improving, and one I will mention in a bit will have to remain as is for the time being. Even though my AppleWatch doesn’t deem my manual labor as “real exercise”, I do, so I didn’t get on the trainer, or walk, or whatever last night.

While I was working in the den watching nature do the crazy and sometimes worrying shit that it does, I noticed my overgrown Japanese maple tree branches shaking a lot. Turns out, it was a squirrel jumping into it and, sometimes miraculously by hanging by its hind claws, chewing off small branches and leaves to build a nest (or “drey” if you are into crossword puzzles). By the quickness of its return trips I knew the drey wasn’t very far from the source of its construction materials. This morning I noticed that this new drey was constructed in Phase 2 of my backyard renovations. I’m not really happy about this new addition to my back yard, but I guess I won’t be a complete dick and take down that tree for a little while.

Last night I did a virtual Top Chef texting session with Betsy. Last week in “upgraded” my Disney+ subscription, which includes Hulu and ESPN+, so I was watching Top Chef on Hulu to experience the ads Betsy does. Hulu’s ads are frequent and long; they are insufferable! It’s like watching TV in the olden days. 😒 I know that I can pay more money to not have ads served to me, but I choose not to at the moment.

This morning I thought I would be one of the first customers inside Lowe’s, but then I talked myself out of making that journey today, and did a load of laundry instead. I have to return to German class tonight, now on Thursdays, so I’ll have to find a time to make it to the store sometime in the near future.

Hope you are staying healthy.

I really don’t have much today. I am blasting this out at 6:15am and then preparing to go outside to do a couple of hours of yard work before starting work.

Yesterday I managed 45 minutes on the trainer before eating dinner, and then returned to the basement where I started cleaning out and organizing my utility room, a space that has been doing little more than receiving items for the better part of twenty years. I espied a bunch of old paint, all of which is probably useless now, that I guess I‘ll be schlepping to CHaRM next week. For a second I thought about saving the cans in order to match the color, but seriously, if I ever do any painting again I’ll just use a new color instead.

While I was on the trainer I was also finishing the drying of yesterday’s laundry the “modern” way, in an electric dryer! I’m pleased to say that, at least for the moment, my clothes dryer still works. I kinda wish that when I had opened it up I found a shirt for which I’ve been unsuccessfully seeking for fifteen years. 😂

Not much more than routine chores and work today…

Hope you all are staying healthy.

You pretty much know all of the major news from yesterday, my cardiologist appointment went fine (we’ll see what the blood reveals), and supposedly the screw didn’t puncture my tire (I’ll check again later to ensure the tire hasn’t lost pressure).

The rest of my day was spent attempting to do work, as well as literally put parts of my house in order; there is so much more for me to do on both of those fronts. The rain put the kibosh on my desire to hash, so I forced myself into the basement for 45 minutes on the trainer.

I know COVID Times will not be looked at fondly by history, but for me it has been rewarding. I know, I’m privileged and have been able to work, from home, and collect 100% of my salary and benefits. For me, and perhaps many others, it has been a time of rediscovery. In cleaning/organizing parts of my house I’ve neglected for over a decade I have rediscovered items, techniques, and memories. Case and point: a shower rod.

What?

More than thirty years ago when I lived in apartments I used to haul my dirty laundry to the laundry room (some things have already been rediscovered) and then home to fold. However, my “nice” shirts didn’t get folded, they were hung in a closet. So that I didn’t dry them to death in the machine I’d allow them to hang for awhile to finish drying on an expandable shower rod before moving them into the closet. Last week, while cleaning around the dryer, I unearthed my old shower rod and am using it today to allow the clothes I have washed this morning to drip dry for a few hours before I attempt to (hopefully) rediscover the dryer as a functioning appliance. Wish me luck.

Today will be all about the coding, and making meals from the abundance of food that currently lives in my house. I should not return to a grocery store for over a week in order to use up some of the food I’ve “gathered” recently.

Tuesday Tale of the Tape: 195.2 pounds (-1.8 from last week’s weigh-in); as long as I continue to lose weight my retort to someone telling me to “Go away!” will be, “I’m trying; I’m losing weight as fast as I can!” 😂

Well, that was a heck of a weekend.

On Friday I picked up Bonnie and we went to Painful Member. A small group of us assembled and ran a three-mile, mostly road trail, before gathering for circle outside Colony Square. There was a little too much non-COVID-times behavior, and we around too many muggles for my liking, so we bolted after circle ended.

Saturday morning was an early gathering for the Peachtree Rogue Race. We departed Phipps Plaza around 8:30am running (!), or at least my best approximation of that activity. There was a beer stop at mile one, and then off again running (!). The next beer stop was at mile three, and that was the last time my feet moved faster than an amble. Another beer stop occurred between miles five and six (right next to “XYZ Corp’s” office building), and Bonnie and I nearly brought up the rear. I was told the intent was to keep a sub-eleven-minute-mile pace; news flash: I am no longer a runner. Bonnie and I walked from Piedmont Park back to her car at the Inman Park Marta station.

Her car?

Yep, apparently on Friday or Saturday the M6 picked up a sheet metal screw that was (one of four it turns out) kindly left behind by the HVAC crew on Monday. Why I didn’t think to scan the driveway after their departure still confounds me.

Yesterday Bonnie drove us out to Black Sheep on Thornton Road. It was a decent, six-mile trail, with only one spot that concerned me when I swore I heard someone shoot a shotgun. Everyone told me that I was wrong, it was a firework, I still have my doubts about that.

This morning I have an 8:00am cardiologist appointment, followed by a stop into a tire show near Piedmont Hospital to see about getting the screw extracted from the tire and having it patched.

Hope your weekend was fun, and of course safe.

Another mundane day, except for the failed efforts of dropping packages at a now non-existent FedEx drop off location, and misguided advice how to fix a new problem at the ITP Estate.

I hemmed and hawed for hours before finally deciding to skip SLUT last night. This weekend is going to prove to be an interesting window on how I feel the state of the country is currently.

Another humid morning, but this time I am headed to the yard for manual labor, aka “exercise”.

Have a safe weekend, including as much fun as you feel is advisable. Remain healthy.

Until Monday..

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]

One more work day for me this week……

Yesterday was another of the mundane days that occur around the ITP Estate these days. I managed to put in 45 minutes on the trainer yesterday afternoon, and cooked up a tasty and intriguing pot of “BBQ Lentils” in my Instant Pot. I essentially followed a recipe (for which I have no link?) and made some substitutions and additions as I deemed fit. I cooked up some vegetarian hot dogs and had fancy-pants “Franks and Beans” for dinner.

Betsy and I did a long-distance Virtual Top Chef last night. Yesterday I upgraded my Disney+ subscription to include Hulu and ESPN+, so I was able to watch along with Betsy and experience the commercial breaks she has; I was previously watching commercial-free downloads of iTunes purchases.

I need to figure out how stream ESPN+ because I understand that they will be showing Bundesliga games starting next season. Speaking of Bundesliga, my beloved Werder Bremen has a chance to stave off relegation; they play the first of two Relegation Playoff games today. Unfortunately I can’t watch the game because Fox has already discontinued their soccer service.

There may be four days of hashing starting today. I’ll have to see how my body holds up as I’m battling some nagging injuries and spots of poison ivy.

I was hoping to pull some English ivy this morning, but it is huuuumid out there today and that is no bueno.

It’s now 7:00am, my morning chores have been completed so I suppose I should commute to my home office and start my work day.

Stay healthy friends. Yes Dear Reader, I expect that there will be a blog post tomorrow.

Okay, it felt a bit weird typing a 7 for the month. If not for Tasty China night, June would have been my first (ever?) vegetarian month. I do not regret eating meat that night.

COVID-19 finally claimed someone I knew personally, a former coworker who lived in Denver.

Yesterday was a fairly mundane day for me otherwise, laundry, work, masked haircut, and wasting time. “XYZ Corp” had an All Team Zoom meeting yesterday, as of now I am still employed, and for the foreseeable future will be able to work from home.

I was not stunned, but perhaps disappointed, to see so many people inside LA Fitness working out, unmasked of course. Had I planned better I would have gone inside, masked, and finally canceled my membership since I will not have the comfort to work out and shower amongst others for a long while.

I awoke to the thought of filling yard bags with pulled English ivy. Alas, apathy set in quickly thereafter when I saw the humidity outside. There is always tomorrow, and Friday. I miss the days when I awoke to thoughts of early morning bike riding this time of year, but the humidity would mean that less fun as well.

I accomplished about 69% (11 out of 16) of my June chores, and have rolled the other 31% into July. Some of the unfinished chores would take me less than an hour to perform, but somehow I never made time to do them.

June Summary

06/01 – ?, V, walking (3.58 mi, 69:22) 🙂
06/02 – 206.4, V, trainer (50:00) 🙂
06/03 – ?, V, yard work 🙂, walking (1.54 mi, 30:24) 😐
06/04 – ?, V, trainer (50:00) 🙂
06/05 – ?, V, trainer (50:00) 🙂
06/06 – ?, V, cycling (26.91 mi, 184:00) 😁🍺🙄
06/07 – ?, V, hiking (5.32 mi, 143:00) 😅
06/08 – ?, V, nothing, rest day 😕
06/09 – 203.8, V, walking (2.1 mi, 42:43) 🙂
06/10 – ?, V, trainer (50:00) 😕
06/11 – ?, V, yard work 😅, trainer (50:00) 🙂
06/12 – ?, V, trainer (50:00) 😕
06/13 – ?, V, yard work (180:00) 😅, walking (1.53 mi, 31:16) 🙂
06/14 – ?, V, hiking (3.91 mi, 96:09) 🙂
06/15 – ?, V, (7.61 mi, 118:43) 😅
06/16 – 201.6, V, nothing 🤨
06/17 – ?, V, yard work. (150:00) 😅
06/18 – ?, V, trainer (50:00) 😀
06/19 – ?, M, cycling (33.34 mi, 175:09)
06/20 – ?, V, cycling (11.27 mi, 71:21) 😕
06/21 – ?, V, hashing (5.88 mi, 130:00) 🙂
06/22 – ?, V, nothing 😢
06/23 – 199.8, V, trainer (50:00) 😅
06/24 – ?, V, trainer (50:00) 😀
06/25 – ?, V, yard work (~120:00) 😅
06/26 – ?, V, yard work (~120:00) 😅, walk (1.98 mi, 38:38) 🙂
06/27 – ?, V, cycling (23.03 mi, 179:13) 😀
06/28 – ?, V, walking (4.98 mi, 196:01) 😀
06/29 – ?, V, yard work (a lot) 😅
06/30 – 197.0, V, nothing 😢

Shame on me for ending the month on a low, but I had other things to do, like wasting time!