I get up a bit late and get out on the road bicycle. I catch up to two riders and we talk about and then pull each other down the San Gabriel river trail. They are turning to return to work and home, but I continue on with the loop ride. After a shower I get on the motorcycle and go to 7 different retail or organizations in order to try and sign them up as Fair Trade Long Beach contributors. For the most part, I don't get to see the owners of the businesses but I leave a Fair Trade who/waht/why/how introductory sheet with them so that they can decide if they want to participate or not. I'm sure it will take more effort, but this was my assignment for the day. I ride on home and watch a very fun Moto2 race from Framce though my OneXOX favorite team members do not do well. It is very windy in the afternoon and I trim the roses and cut some new ones to bring into the house. Later I pretend to work on the demographic effort as I let it smmer in my head a bit and watch the ice hockey playoffs. For the demographic effort, I've provided a draft to the candidate city counil lady and waiting for her comments as I proceed with the effort. But I better get it to her soon so she can continue to shape her "candidacy plaform".
I start Wedensday with some work on the demographic effort as it is getting very close to being finished. At mid morning I take the mountain bicycle out to the end of the beach trail and back for a ride just short of two hours. A good ride since there's some wind blowing me around. At mid afternoon I go see the dentist and she says that my teeth are very clean this time (back to my old standard) and we're keeping an eye on a white spot on my gums. As I start riding the motorcycle home it starts to rain and gets moderate at times but then tapers off. A weird May that we've had. At home I fix up the demographic study and just need to change a few colors to be finished.
I do not get out riding on Thursday. Instead I run some errands in the early morning. At mid morning I mow the lawn and trim the roses and think about starting to clean the windows in the house which is scheduled for tomorrow. (I try to clean the windows, both inside and outside, twice a year.) Person M_Fl comes to visit and we have a good visit about recent events and then I do the laundry and some other tweaks to the demographic study. In the time that it takes to wash and dry the laundry, I've gone completely around the house and cleaned the insides of the windows and window sills. Making Friday's task just the outside of the windows.
Friday before Memorial day starts with a decent road bicycle ride. It's not my best or strongest effort, but its a decent 50 kilometers. I relax and eat breakfast and read the news for a while and then I start cleaning the outside of the windows. Usually I start in one place and go completely counter-clockwise around the house when cleaning windows. Today I start at the usual ending point and go clockwise. I think that I'm done and starting to put stuff away when I realize that I missed two kitchen windows. How did that happen? So I clean the two missed windows and get my second shower of the day. I set back and watch some television for a while to rest after the bicycle ride and the cleaning of the windows (with a lot of up and down the ladder and reaching and scrubbing).
I start Saturday with another 50 kilometer road bicycle ride where I feel strong throughout. Back at home I run some errands and then clean up the roses. Qualifying for the Monaco F1 race is boring. Later I put a few items up for sale on eBay as continue to sort through items and try to get rid of the ones that are not of any use. For example, and I don't know who gave it to me, but I find a very old Day Runner paper-based organizer that is brand new and has never been used. That immediately goes up on eBay for $18.
I'm physically hungover on Sunday and had a moment in the middle of the night that scares me. I wake up near 3:30 and walk to the kitchen to get a small drink of water. As I'm walking through the house I get the tingles running up and down my spine all of the way up to the crown of my head - the same feeling that I had when Person Ti_CA's grandmother's ghost came and walked through my house. I'm thinking maybe my brother is going to come back and give me an explanation for some of the things that I don't understand. But the feelings go away and I have a bit of difficulty sleeping when I get back in bed. I'm sure my brother will give me some answers when he is ready. When I get up on Sunday morning I walk to the store for supplies, pay some bills, and cut some nice roses to bring into the house.
I start Memorial day a bit lazy with updating some finances and some financial prediction algorithms. I decide it is finally time to fix the Monte Carlo analysis that I have put off for so long. But first I get out and ride the mountain bicycle fr about two hours down to the beach and along the ocean - enjoying all of the people out for the Memorail day holiday. When I get home I watch a very strategic and pace-limited/tire-limited F1 race from Monaco. As usual, there is not a lot of passing, but the strategic nature of the race was fun. And then I get to work on the Monte Carlo analsis and by late afternoon I have it ready for some final touch-up for finacial predictions. I take a break to eat lunch and I stir fry rice and vegetables for the first time in my life. I use extra virgin olive oil which is supposed to be healthy and it needs a bit more spice to it, but it turns out well and I will try again on Tuesday. Finally I set back and watch some of the ice hockey playoff game.
I get up at 5:30 am on Tuesday morning and continue working on the Monte Carlo analysis. I originally had intended a long road bicycle ride in honor of what would be my brother's 63rd brthday, but I'm physcally hungover from yesterday's ride. I find a few inaccuraces in the Monte Carlo analysis, but they don't fix the expected results. After I've tried a number of things I give up and say that I have to re-do the original parameter estimation because there must be some systemic issue. So I start the re-do going. I walk to the grocery store for supplies and trim the roses. I pull out the pump and intend to flush the tankless water heater. But when I get everything set up and all of the electricity turned off, the gas turned off, and the valves in their correct positions, the pump itself starts leaking vinegar all over the floor. I check all of my connections and valve settings and try again, but more leaks. Thus I clean up the mess and decide that this pump has given up the ghost and I should probably buy a submersible pump for future efforts. I continue to get the baseline analysis to converge to a solution prior to a new Monte Carlo analysis. In the meantime I do some cooking for the next week or so in order that food preparation for lunches and dinners will be easier for the next few weeks.
I start Wednesday with a very good road bicycle ride. It's a typical 50 kilometers but I feel strong throughout and push at certain times. After getting cleaned up I run some errands and continue to babysit the new Monte Carlo analysis where I've decided to re-do the complete baseline analysis prior to a Monte Carlo analysis. I've let the analysis run overnight and it still stretches into Wednesday afternoon to complete. And the convergence isn't quite complete yet so I have to re-start these baseline analyses and continue running until I have a good, solid baseline analysis from which to Monte Carlo from. I take turns coding and trimming a side bush and coding and trimming the roses and coding and watching some television and coding and having an online Fair Trade Long Beach meeting in the evening.
I'm lazy to start Thursday and work on the Monte Carlo analysis. Near 10 am I get out for a two hour ride on the mountain bicycle and this makes me feel better. When I get home I decide to re-do the baseline analysis again but with a genetic algorithm (since I'm not entirely happy with the new gradient-based baseline analysis that I did in the last couple of days). Near 6 pm I walk to a restaurant and meet up with a third cousin who lives in Long Beach and recently contacted me. My third cousin and his wife and I have an instant bond. We talk about how the family tree connects us as we draw the names and blocks on paper, we talk about our lives, and we talk about some of our histories in Michigan and other places. Person K_MI, my third cousin, is a lawyer who works for the victims of child abuse and domestic violence, so we talk a lot about his and my work trying to help victims. Person K_MI has pictures of my aunt and uncle that I am missing and I get a phone photo of the actual photograph that was taken back in 1960. And Person M_MI's wife, Person K_EC, is an incredibly personable and empathetic person and I feel a bond with her right away. Eventually we are kicked out of the restaurant because we took a "reserved" table that was reserved for 8:30. So I end up walking back home and thinking how lucky I am that Person K_MI has reached out to me. (And there are strangely-concocted, but true connections between Person K_MI and my brother.) (And I also note that Person K_MI's brother had spoken with me on the telephone about two years ago because he was going to go visit the maternal homeland of the Czech Republic and wanted my advice since I had previously visited.)
Friday is a planned no-cycle day, so I get out for a long walk and then pull out the hedge trimmers to trim a bush in the front of the house. Almost everything is trimmed and ready for me to leave for a while. At md morning I ride the motorcycle to get two new books from the librabry, pick up lunch for later, and stop in at the grocery store for additional supplies. When I get home I start some laundry, work on the new re-baselined analysis to be followed by a Monte Carlo analysis, and trim the roses.
I don't get out riding on Saturday morning - what is wrong with me? Instead I continue work on the Monte Carlo re-baselining. Near 10 am I ride the motorcycle down near Moher's Beach in Long Beach for Long Beach Climate Action Plan (LBCAAP) display and discussion. I run into a previous LBCC atmospheric sciences instructor and we chat for a bit. I have some other fun discussions with some knowledgeable people and put in a suggestion for the LBCAAP team to try and use the application that we developed at last year's CSULB Climathon. And finally I ride home to grab lunch and watch qualifying for the Italian MotoGP race. Afterwards I pull out some pieces and skate bearings and start working on modeling up an idea I've had for a while for a new type of turbocharger. I get about halfway through and mow the lawn and then relax.
I get out for a decent road bicycle ride on Sunday morning during which it rains. Rain in June? So when I get back home I wipe the bicycle down, take a warm shower, and then put on warm clothes. There's a very exciting MotoGP race from Italy that I watch at mid morning with a lot of action. I trim roses and bring new ones into the house and do a bit of work on the turbocharger concept that I'm working on. And I have a slow day since I don't have much energy.
I start Monday a bit slow, but get on the road bicycle near 8:30 am for a good ride. Even starting just two hours later in the morning means the ocean breezes have picked up. I watch an exciting and fun-filled Moto3 race from Italy, pick up some supplies at the grocery store, work on the turbocharger pieces, and then read. Late in the day, inspired by an interview that I see on television aboout the anti-democratic gerrymandering (i.e., redistricting) process, I start to download shapefiles and other demographic information to start playing around with the re-drawing of sentae, assemble, and congressional districts to make them fare. (And to jumpstart the effort from the March 2018 Gerrrymandering Hackathon in San Francisco for which I was ill-prepared for but am now ready to work on.)