Inside The Perimeter

Oh Florida… Last night I watched the opening game of the NFL season. The game was in Tampa, had an estimated 66,000 people in the stadium, and very few other them seemed to be wearing a mask. At least the game was outdoors? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Fun fact: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have won two NFL championships, but they only need two digits to represent them for they won in 2002 an 2020.

Yesterday was a really good day for me, with the only setbacks being not getting something for which I stopped at two Aldi stores to buy, and overcooking my pasta dinner.

As you know, I took the M6 down to Morrow to get some routine maintenance done. That went to plan with no unexpected expenses. After the dealership I drove to an Aldi down there looking for a camping table I had seen in their weekly ad email. No dice. I then drove to the Aldi down on Moreland, no dice there either.

After returning home I changed into choring clothes and headed into WLF. I spent a good two hours working with Wee Little Chainsaw, cutting up the felled pine tree and pushing large sections to the side of the yard. I have one thick, nearly nine-foot long section to deal with soon; the stump is going to have to stay there for awhile.

Two hours of tree work exhaust per me, so I switched to light maintenance, taking out tomato plants affected with blight, deadheading flowers, etc. My only mistake there was killing part of a butternut squash plant by cutting it instead of the dead leaf I was intending to prune. Oops!

After Bonnie dropped by to give me the box of books that were delivered over the weekend, I puttered around for about another hour before calling it quits for the day.

By the time you read this I have probably already returned from Lowe’s, where I spent my $25 gift card on compost.

Today is more of the same when it comes to my activities, mainly I will be working in WLF. I doubt that I will do any work on the pine tree, instead I plan to do some sowing, transplanting, pruning, and general cleanup.

Tonight I hope to cook a veggie burger for dinner, perhaps outdoors on the grill, or perhaps in the house.

Tomorrow will be a walking day with Betsy and Bella followed by more choring around the house.

Sunday is a Black Sheep day!

Hope you have a fun weekend planned, taking advantage of the fall-like weather.

Good morning from Morrow, GA. Do I know how to travel to exotic locations, or what?

Today I am getting some routine maintenance done on the M6 at the Mazda dealership. I was thrown a curveball as I arrived to find construction where I normally pull in to drop the car off, but I figured out where to go thanks to the signage. As I am wont to do I arrived early, and was scolded by one of the GMC workers for coming into their space too soon since they didn’t open until 7am. Look, in my world if I arrive for a 7am appointment at 7am then I am late; I guess I have been conditioned by doctors. I’ll be sitting here at the dealership awaiting the service completion, and killing some of that time by writing this blog post.

Even though I was shut out of qualifying for paid surveys yesterday I did make a “killing” with my Kroger shopping. I saved more than $30 on $66 (tax included), nearly 50%, on my purchases! Woot! Some of the savings, $20, were in the form of sale prices and Kroger coupons (including unexpectedly getting a bag of nacho chips for 49¢ because it has a WooHoo sticker on it), and $10 was from Ibotta for buying certain brands, nearly all of which I purchase already. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Last night I went over to Betsy’s for dinner. It was her turn to cook and we had a (meaty) pizza and salad. Since we have no “Top Chef” to watch currently, and we both have watched all four episodes of “Only Murders in the Building” available, we watched the Netflix documentary about the Fyre Festival instead. I had heard about the Fyre Festival fiasco when it happened, but had no idea just how large of a clusterfuck it was. The documentary also reminded me how much I dislike the whole “influencer” culture in which we live.

Thanks to Covid I skipped my routine of eating breakfast at Waffle House across the road from this dealership. 😢 This is fantastic for my waistline and wallet, but I do miss eating there.

When the car is finished, up to ninety minutes from now, I will drive toward home and perhaps make an errand stop or two along the way. Once at home I expect to suit up and do some hard choring in WLF to take advantage of this weather, and to prepare for the choring I will do tomorrow after my 6am trip to Lowe’s. Unlike the Fyre Festival, there will be a Version 2 of WLF. 😁

Hope your week is going well. I am certain that none of this readership did anything more monumental than saving more than $30 on grocery purchases yesterday… 😉

After arriving home yesterday and plopping my ass on the den’s futon I didn’t get much accomplished other than catching up on videos and resting. It was a little after 4pm by the time arrived home, so it wasn’t like there was a whole lot of time to do much else.

Today I am going to attempt a bit of a life reboot. I need to stop eating so much food, eat better food, get more real exercise (such as hard choring or bike riding), and put my nose back to the professional grindstone so that I will be able to draw an income (and get subsidized health care) again some day. Oh yeah, after today I have to stop spending so much money as well. No biggie, right?

The sun is due to “rise” in about ten minutes so after I am done typing this blog post I will get out to WLF for some September cleanup work. Given the weather radar I saw around midnight last night I expected to awake to find everything soaked, but I guess the storm system didn’t provide much rain after all. Heck,I even backed out of the idea of going to Lowe’s this morning because I assumed everything would be wet. Oh well, perhaps Friday morning I will go instead.

I can’t dilly dally too much this morning because later this morning I have a haircut appointment, after which I will be hitting up Kroger and/or Publix to buy some essentials.

Tonight is Betsy’s turn to cook, so all I will have to do is be ready to get to her house by 7pm, so perhaps I will kickstart my iOS development re-development before then.

Hope that your week is going swimmingly well, even if there wasn’t enough rain to fill your swimming pool last night.

Back on the road, but not as early as I was on Friday. While I’d like to get home early enough to investigate the state of WLF I am not going to push it today. As always I have had a wonderful time hanging out with the Raleigh Royalty.

It would do me a world of good to skip a meal or three…

Yesterday I went for a hike in Umstead State Park. The hike was cut to about 4.5 miles because one of the parties had a grueling swim practice earlier in the day and wasn’t having the greatest time hiking. The hike did burn off a few calories which I later replaced with copious amounts of beer and food.

Last night we picked up Thai food from a food truck at a brewery. Thai food and beer, two things that taste great together! 😁

It would do me a world of good to skip a meal or three…

After dinner we, the adults, watched the three available episodes of “Only Murders in the Building”. I am really enjoying this series this far.

I am hoping my return trip doesn’t involve any more rocks to the windshield, or other car problems for that matter, along the way. I have scheduled routine maintenance for the M6 on early Thursday morning and it would be nice if that went as cheaply as possible given my lack of salary.

Hope your week is off to a healthy and happy start.

Tuesday Tale of the Tape: postponed since I am not near my scale this morning.

Good Morning from Raleigh, NC where I have had a fun, and fattening weekend. I have consumed much food and beer this weekend, but am not complaining since it has all been quite good. I even ate at a vegan restaurant in downtown Raleigh called “Element”.

On Saturday we drove to a town called Wilson, NC where we walked around the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park, which was quite the interesting attraction. Unbeknownst to me I have already seen some of Simpson’s smaller whirligigs, they are part of the folk art exhibit at Courtland and Ralph McGill in Atlanta. We also walked around the deserted downtown area of Wilson as well. In Wilson we found a place called “Brewmasters” at which we ate lunch. From the outer appearance the place it looked unimpressive, but once inside it was a beer-lover’s paradise with many taps and beers for sale. Who knew? 🤷🏻‍♂️

As the boys have gotten older the novelty of an Uncle Paulie visit has worn off, with the eldest wanting to spend time with his girlfriend, and the youngest wanting to spend time in front of his gaming PC. It was inevitable…

The Royalty also have two dogs, each of which is a bit of a handful in its own way. The younger dog, and Australian Sheep Dog is very energetic and loves to hear the sound of its own barking. And both dogs get riled up at the sight of a squirrel or bunny in the back yard.

Not sure what is on today’s Labor Day agenda.

Hope you are having a fun and healthy long weekend.

Here I go again. If you are reading this prior to noon on Friday then I am (hopefully) happily motoring toward Raleigh for a few days of visiting the Raleigh Royalty. It was my decision to get away, and let WLF do whatever it’s going to do without any rain the next few days. I won’t be surprised if I return to a sad little plot of land in a few days, though losing my seedlings might suck.

Bonnie, if you want to swing by and pick any of the peppers, eggplant, or green beans that are ready to be picked, then have at it! Sorry that I have already scavenged all of the ripe tomatoes, to be fair there weren’t many.

Yesterday afternoon, after my IKEA pickup and assembly fiasco I was inspired by Barb to go out and mow the front lawn of the ITP Estate before spending a little time in WLF. I probably should have spent more time taking care of matters in WLF, but didn’t a plan nor motivation to do so. I did give it all a good soaking, however.

Last night I fell asleep early while reading a book after eating dinner, and therefore was awake past midnight again after waking up. I watched a documentary called “Farmland” on Amazon Prime Video before turning in to attempt to go back to sleep.

I also watched the second episode of “Only Murders in the Apartment”. Apparently the first three episodes are available on Hulu, with next no released weekly on Tuesdays.

I mentioned that starting next week I will be attempting to relearn iOS development techniques as well as reduce my spending. Additionally I also want to attempt to get my weight back down under 180 pounds.

Hope that you have a very happy and healthy long Labor Day weekend (I’ll make the assumption that the limited ITP readership all live in the USA).

I couldn’t get to sleep last night, finally dozing off after 1am. I’m sure it had a lot to do with the impromptu nap I took earlier in the evening. 🙄

Except for finding a tick on me, yesterday was a decent day. I worked hard in WLF yesterday as I started to pull apart a large pile of debris that lays in the far reaches of WLF. I also managed to finish cutting off four sections of the downed pine tree and rolling them to the western edge of the plot where they can rot in peace; there is still about twenty feet left to cut up and move. 😮

Yesterday I brought Beyond burger patties to Betsy’s and we had cheeseburgers with tater tots and salad for not “Top Chef” night dinner. We have completed watching last year’s “Top Chef All Stars 2” and the latest season of “Top Chef” is not yet available on Hulu, so we watched the first episode of “Only Murders in the Building” — a new Hulu series starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez — instead.

My gripe for the day is with shopping, no not having to save money, but instead delivery. Yesterday I mentioned that today I need to return to the FedEx Office store on Ponce to pick up my IKEA package. I was going to hit Lowe’s first, but because I fell asleep so late I also slept later than I desired and therefore may not hit up the hardware store for more dirt, um, compost.

On Tuesday Bonnie sent me a link to the MLS Store where they are selling past-year Atlanta United merchandise at a discount. The 2019 jersey I bought was $29, and then I noticed that is I spent $49 I would get free shipping. No problem! I added a discounted hat and discounted scarf to my order bringing me to $57. I’m good at shopping… With a $2 “handling fee” 😡 and sales tax, my order came to about $65, okay… I was then thrilled to see a Pay with ApplePay button because that would make it a one click purchase, no need to enter address and credit card info! Woot! And then I saw that I was charged $74. What? Somehow in the checkout process I was automatically “upgraded” to expedited shipping for $9. NO! NO! NO! Firstly, the whole reason I added more than the jersey to the cart was to get free shipping. Secondly, without expedited shipping my order wouldn’t be shipped until tomorrow, and thus delivered next week at earliest, which is what I wanted. I could find no way to cancel the order. According to the first email my package is due to arrive today, which is okay. But according to the second email it will be delivered tomorrow, which is not okay since as you will read then, I will not be at home. Dangen!

Okay, it’s nearly 8am, well past the time at which I need to be productive. Have a great day. Stay healthy.

Well, well, well. After sleeping later than desired I hustled up to the Waschsalon in midtown arriving ten minutes after it opened, or should I say was supposed to open because the attendant is once again late. Dangen! This may be the last time for this Waschsalon because I am tired of their continued failure.

Speaking of failures, I did not get up into the attic yesterday, and I just realized that I forgot to pack the jeans I wore the last time I went up into the attic with my dirty laundry. Double Dangen!

The only thing of interest I did yesterday was to watch a documentary on Hulu last night. The documentary was about the failure of the Dana Carvey Show back in the 1990s. Along with Carvey the show featured the then-unknown Steve Carrell, Stephen Colbert, a young Louis CK, and was directed by Robert Smigel. I found it to be a very interesting watch.

I MUST do laundry today, so I am kinda stuck waiting on the attendant… who just arrived.

I MUST get up into the attic and have a look around today.

And I must (not as critical) go to the grocery store to get a few things to bring to Betsy’s. I think that I will be making veggie burgers tonight.

Other than that, and probably some WLF choring, my day is wide open! 😂

Hope you make it a happy and healthy day.

August Summary

08/01 – ?, M, hashing 😁
08/02 – ?, V, hashing 🙂
08/03 – 181.8, V, nothing 😢
08/04 – ?, V, nothing 😢
08/05 – ?, V, nothing 😢
08/06 – ?, V, nothing 😢
08/07 – ?, V, walking 🙂
08/08 – ?, V, rafting 🙂
08/09 – ?, V, yard work, hashing 🙂
08/10 – 179.8 V, nothing 😢
08/11 – ?, M, nothing 😢
08/12 – ?, V, yard work 😐
08/13 – ?, V, walking 🙂
08/14 – ?, V, walking, cycling 😀
08/15 – ?, V, yard work 🙂
08/16 – ?, V, yard work 😐
08/17 – 183.4, V, yard work 😐
08/18 – ?, V, yard work 😀
08/19 – ?, V, yard work 🙂
08/20 – ?, V, nothing 😐
08/21 – ?, V, swimming 😐
08/22 – ?, V, nothing 😢
08/23 – ?, V, yard work, walking 😀
08/24 – 183.6, V, yard work 🙂
08/25 – ?, M, walking 🙂
08/26 – ?, V, yard work 😐
08/27 – ?, M, yard work, walking 😀
08/28 – ?, V, walking 😀
08/29 – ?, V, hashing
08/30 – ?, V, walking 😀
08/31 – 185.2, V, nothing 😕

Rats, once again I am disappointed with my weekly weigh-in. Oh well, the power of change is in my own hands.

Yesterday I puttered mostly. You’ve read about the pallet I turned into a planter. While coming in from that task there was a FedEx truck parked outside the ITP Estate. I am not expecting anything, so I figured it was not for me, and then I saw the driver walking to my door. 🤔 Turns out “XYZ Corp, Mark II” wants their computer returned, and have sent me a box to do so. Perhaps I will knock it out this week, or perhaps next.

While the weather threatened to wash away Bonnie’s trail yet again, a handful of hardy hashers came out and ran the trail in a bit of rain. Job done!

Today’s original plan was to drive to a laundromat and wash a few weeks’ worth of dirty clothes, but the motivation didn’t exist this morning. I will have to take care of this tomorrow morning — what a great way to start a month!

Instead, I am being lazy at the moment. I’m sure at some point I will muster the motivation to start moving and getting some shit done.

Hope you are remaining happy and healthy.

Tuesday Tale of the Tape: 185.2 pounds (+1.2 from last week’s weigh-in); 🐀🐀🐀

That was a whirlwind weekend for me.

On Friday evening I went over to Betsy’s house for dinner with a small group of old time hashers. Star Whore brought over a mess of food from Hai (think “Tasty China”) and we filled our bellies. It was apparently also Bella’s thirteenth birthday, so Betsy made a doggie birthday cake for her.

Saturday morning Betsy, Bella, and I did a walk for coffee after I picked up a large bag of trash around the village.

After walking Bonnie and I drove down to Hapeville for the criterium. It was a good afternoon of racing and while down there we ran into a different group of old time hashers. After the races were done Bonnie and I walked up the Arches Brewery, because you know, we were in the neighborhood.

Yesterday was a Black Sheep day! But first…

I was working on WLF yesterday morning when Owlie came in for a fly around. At first Owlie startled me because it landed on the gate to my chain link fence and I hadn’t noticed. I must have startled it too because it flew away. After seeing it fly through the yard and then come back again I went inside and let it root around for its breakfast.

After my morning choring Bonnie and I drove way up to Dracula for Black Sheep. The trail was a good five-mile romp, but I managed to jack up my body a bit. While on trail my left shin, and this morning my right hip is oddly painful.

Injuries be damned however as tonight I will be helping Bonnie lay her Moonite trail. This trail will be a re-lay of the one that got washed away a few weeks ago.

Also on my agenda today is to research and sign up for health care.

How that you had a wonderful and healthy weekend.