I wake up on Monday night (Tuesday morning) near 2 am and cannot sleep. I get up and work on some programming tools and manage to figure out a way to do a programming task that has been bothersome to me for the last few weeks. I eventually get back to sleep before 4 am and hit the snooze button on the alarm a few times before getting out of bed at 6:30 am on Tuesday morning. I jump on the mountain bicycle and have a very fast ride to the old yacht club and back again. I guess the three previous hard workouts plus one day of rest made me faster! I run a few errands for business banking and grocery shopping and house maintenance and then have a slow Tuesday late morning into early afternoon.
I'm thinking of skipping a morning workout on Wednesday because of late night phone calls the previous night, but I get out for a 52 minute run with no aches and pains. I ride the motorcycle up to CSULA for meetings and am already on the phone walking between the motorcycle parking lot and my meetings. There are good possibilities coming along. I have two good CSULA meetings with students and then meet with a student from last quarter to try and re-work last quarters project to test it out in the field. It is almost 4pm before I am heading home and fighting traffic. When I get home I return phone calls and only get to leave my return phone number with people who say, "I'm in meetings all day today and will call you back on Thursday or Friday". I go out and water the roses and trim them. I see good solid second bloom growth but not good second blooms yet. And on Wednesday evening I catch up on plans for future trips and even start planning out next week. And I mull over an offer that the CSULA dean has made to me when he "accidentally" ran into me on campus: Come and teach the senior design class because we know that Ted is leaving for DARPA in a while. The offer only confuses me. I don't know what to do.
I enjoy the very chilly nights and mornings and stay in bed under the warmth of the covers for extra minutes. I'm lazy this morning and don't go riding right away - ratioanlizaing that I'll lift weights later. But after reading the news and doing some work on the web, I go riding for about two hours. I'm a bit tired, but it's a good ride. When I get home I don't want to take a shower and I start to feel a bit worn out. I've been exposed to a lot of sick people at CSULA lately and other places. I take some Airborne and grab a shower before running errands at the grocery store, the library, the sporting goods store, and the bank. The bank is making a pitch to upgrade my account and provide increased financial advice and I listen to this second pitch and take home the suggestions to read. But I'm tired and just relax a bit and possibly fall asleep at one point before waking up and making sure everything is ready for Friday's first Industrial Advisory Board meeting at CSULA.
I get up early on Thursday and work the abdominals and lower back. I don't want to run and over-use my legs and I haven't worked the core muscles for a while. Soon I'm on the motorcycle towards CSULA and for the Industrial Advisory Board (IAB). I run into Derrick, my former cycling partner, but we're soon split up by protocol. It is a good meeting and I meet many of the engineering faculty members and we try to decide how to work together to improve the CSULA engineering departments and get ready for ABET accrediation in a couple of years. I hit it off with one faculty member and one IAB member and many people get my email address as we'll try to work together before the next IAB meeting. Near 2pm I go to the student store and get a Pepsi and relax for a bit and note a ChiChi with green hair. And then I meet up with one of my senior design teams and try to throttle them back for their presentation next Friday - they were panicking thinking they were behind but I had to remind them that they were trying to do more than was required for next Friday's presentation. Traffic is bad getting home and I'm glad that I'm on the motorcycle. And I relax for a bit and get so fed up with the presidential election mud-slinging and sexual harrassment that I have to quit watching and thinking about it. Instead I clean up one room of the house and make it presentable - cleaning up a lot of the stuff that I had brought home from my work office back in May when I retired.
I wake up at 2:30 am on Saturday morning and have trouble sleeping. I read for about an hour and finally give up. Just after 4 am I get out the door and run for 110 minutes. This would be approximately equivalent to a half-marathon (as comparing times from when I actually have run half-marathons in the past). I water the lawn and check qualifying for the MotoGP race from Japan and run some errands and I'm back at home late in the morning.
Sunday starts with a windy and drizzly road bicycle ride. I get up to a convenient turn around point and then fight continuously changing wind conditions for a good 48 mile ride. Afterwards I watch the MotoGP race from Japan where the championship is decided when two pursuers both crash out. And later I see MY Detroit Lions beat the (fictitious) Los Angeles Rams. Later in the day I work on websites and try to stay occupied so that I will sleep well.
It is a weird week! On Monday there ia rain - the first significant rain in Southern California for 180 days. I get in a good session with the weights and try to catch up on paperwork and stuff. On Tuesday and Wednesday I get out for a two hour mountain bicycle ride and another 52 minute run. My legs are still a bit sore in certain situations from Saturday's 12 mile run. I work on errands and websites and things around the house. Except on Wednesday I get up to CSULA and run into many people from past quarters and last Friday's meeting. We talk about ways we can work together and strengthen CSULA and its relationship with neighboring industries. Later on Wednesday, after mowing the lawn, I watch the final presidential debate and then get out to a bar in Sunset Beach where Person T_U is playing guitar with a band. Though I've known Person T_U for more than 10 years, this is the first time that I see him play. The music is mostly older rhythym and blues type of music but I note that the lead guitar player is very friendly and very talented! Person T_U plays well also.
I'm a bit slow gtting out of bed on Thursday, but I get out on the mountain bicycle for two hours starting just before 7 am. Today the city of Long Beach has "counters" stationed at certain locations to count the number of bicyclists and pedestrians at certain intersections. I stop and talk with one guy for a few minutes and it turns out he is a CSULB student in civil engineering. So I encourage him and wish him as much fun as I had in aerospac engineering. After a shower I run a couple of errands and then work on installing an SSL certificate for the non-profit and updating the security of the website. And am disappointed later when I get another letter from the IRS indicating that they want the non-profit articles of incorporation changed again for some dissolution words. Couldn't they have spotted this before the last time a couple weeks ago? In the middle of the afternoon I get down for a two hour nap and then continue with the website security until reading before sleep.
I start Friday a bit slow since my legs are tired from two bicycle rides and a 6 mile run in the last three days. At mid morning I lift weights and get cleaned up for another at Cal State Los Angeles. I sit through a number of student presentations and help the main instructor grade the students. There are some very good presentations - much better than when I was a student. And there are a mix of other students who know the technical details but have trouble presenting as well as other who are just lost. But this is only one-third through the academic year and our comments will help them improve throughout the year.
I start Saturday with a super rip-roaring road bicycle ride. I go north all the way to the Santa Fe dam at a good pace. And when I turn around and start for home I have better pace. There is one rider who joins the trail halfway down the San Gabriel trail that I cannot keep up with, but I drag others along. And I get thanked when I take my turn-off for the good pull. When I get home I am surprisingly not as tired as I should be and run a number of errands before checking out MotoGP qualifying from Australia and F1 qualifying from the United States. Throughout the day I work on my Halloween costume and clean up the roses a bit and read some local news. I'm under-motivated today but I do find a solution to a football statistics scraper that I've been working on.
On Sunday morning the legs don't want to get out of bed. But I get out of bed and watch the recorded MotoGP race from Australia before going out for a two hour loop ride on the mountain bicycle. At times I feel good and crank along and at other times my legs are tired and I just spin along. But it's always great to be on a bicycle! And later, after the F1 race, it starts to rain. We have not really had rain in 180 days. I stand out on the front porch with my arms stretched to the sky breathing in the smell of rain. I imagine the neighbors saying, "Hey honey, there's that old guy standing out on the porch, praying to the heavens, and breathing in the smell of rain". But I don't really care - we are in desperate need of water in California.
I sleep in a bit on Monday and check out the news and elections and stock markets before lifting weights at mid-morning. Today I've finally increased the weights a bit to start heading up in weights after many months stalled. It feels good to work hard and sweat and grunt and groan to try my best! After a shower I work on some websites and then I get restless. So I pack up a laptop and a book and go to a coffeeshop a few miles from my house. All of the outlets are taken so I read away on this book about a special operations officer in Syria, Libya, and other fun places. I get a call from a financial advisor and talk about strategies and agree to bring money to our meeting on Friday. (I've met with him twice before and like his suggestions for a small portion of my portfolio.) When an outlet becomes available I move inside and work on websites and find a silly error that I've made that stalled out one website. Finally I head back for home and gather financial documents and prepare for another day.