On Tuesday I have a semi-lazy day that feels to me like a lazy day. I start continuing the gerrymandering effort in the morning. To take a break I make a 45 minute walk to go vote and then return home to trim the roses and water the carnations. I grab a quick lunch and watch some telvision for a bit. Later in the afternoon I get out for another 45 minute walk and cool off with a shower. And then I return to the gerrymandering effort as well as another "consumer app" that I have a good idea for. As usual, I continue to read in bed for almost an hour each night before I drop off to sleep.
I start Wednesday with 60 kilometers on the road bcycle as I feel strong and enjoy the cool day (with some "drizzly moisture" in the air to keep me cool but to distort my cycling shades so that I have to keep wiping them clean). I wipe the road bicycle down after the ride and lubricate the chain and running gear. I just barely get re-supplied with blood sugar when Person M_Fl drops by. We spend a long tme talking about his upcoming commencement from UCLA as well as other things. When Person M_Fl leaves I watch the fun Moto2 race from Italy and then go back to work on the gerrymandering effort as well as the "consumer app" idea that has promise. On each, I just plug away and get stuck and find solutions and keep moving forward. I grab my nextdoor neighbor and show him the puddling in my backyard (because I heard from another neighbor that their pool is leaking). I run through the "my sprinklers running trong with no leaks, my water meter shows no residual water flow when everything is turned off, and my water consumption is no different than te past five years". He just says, "Our pool is not leaking and you need to start digging and find YOUR leak".
I don't intend to ride longer again, but I ride another 60 kilometers on Thursday as I'm starting to up the mileage. Today as I'm finsihing the ride I see a runner, Person A_Fl, who I see a lot on the trails so I turn and crawl along with him and we chat for a bit. He's Phillipino and a physical therapist and we have a nice discussion. He says he's taking his family to the Phillipines in December since he hasn't been there for seven years and mention that I might stop in during October. Finally I finish the ride, get cleaned up, and drive the car to the monthly Long Beach Human Trafficking Task Force meeting. Quite a few people ask why I've driven and I just say that I need to run some errands and carry stuff home that won't fit on the motorcycle. On the way back from the meeting I stop in for a fair amount of supplies at the grocery store and then go home. At home I start to work on documentation of my backyard puddle which I think is from the neighbor's pool leaking. I want to start gathering the facts and the evidence in case this gets nasty. Late in the afternoon I watch the ice hockey playoff game and then relax.
After Wednesday and Thursday's longer rides, I just go walking on Friday morning. When I get home I pull out some tools and take pictures and measurements of the puddles in the backyard. And then, on the smaller of the two puddles, I start digging. I start with the smaller one because it is almost dry, towards the back of the yard, is less visible, and is present where I have no irrigation lines. I work up a good sweat with a shovel and maul digging down 16 inches in the clay-like soil. And then I prop the fence up with two by four braces where the fence is leaning towards my side of the property line. And then I take some more pictures and get a cooling shower - the digging being a good workout on top of the morning walk. And now I'll wait and see if can discover the source of the smaller puddle. I continue to work on the documentation of the backyard puddle as well as answer emails, do the laundry, and get back to try and finalize the demographic study for the city council candidate before I go on vacation. I've intentionally let the demographic study set for a while so that ideas can churn in my head. (Just as I've let the experimental turbocharger build project churn a bit since I need to build a small test stand and I'm letting the ideas churn around in my head.) By 1pm I realize that I haven't eaten anything yet today so I cook some vegetables and mix it with a frozen burrito for lunch. In the evening I ride the bicycle over to First Fridays and walk along the streets to check out the open stores and music and stuff. But it's pretty slow this month so I ride on home after 45 minutes.
On Saturday I hear the alarm go off and lay in bed for a bit and eventually turn over and go back to sleep. I wake up at 7:55 am - the latest that I've slept all of this calendar year. Did I need some extra sleep from Wednesday and Thursday's longer rides and Fridays walks and digging? I get up and check the dig area and see water puddling up. I take more photos and then start digging deeper. By the time that I finish I'm down to 24 inches down. Let's see what we get tomorrow. I get in a shower after the digging workout, do some grocery shopping, document the digging with words and pictures, and sweep the hardwood floors. Approaching noon I watch qualifying for the Canadian F1 race. And I'm shocked when my favorite driver gets the pole for Sunday's race. Later I'm washing dishes and rose containers and I end up with a cut near the base of my thumb and near the base of my small finger. The thumb base cut coagulates nicely but it takes an hour of pressure, neosporin, ice, and keeeping my right arm above my head to finally stop the bleeding of my right little finger. I would be embarrassed to go to the hospital with a little finger cut that won't stop bleeding, but that's what I'm faced with until the neosporin, ice, and elevation takes care of the matter over an hour of time.
I sleep horribly on Saturday night into Sunday morning. I have another shivering bought like I had in June 2009, February 2012, and September 2014. I just shiver and shake uncontrollably and feel horrible with a fever way up. With the past three shivering events my body temperature returned to normal within 6-10 hours. By 10 am my body temperature is down 2 degrees and hoepfully this trend will continue quickly. Late in the afternoon I out walking because I believe that you want to keep the metabolism up to sweat out the toxins. I barely make a 42 minute walk sine I still have a fever. But after cooling down a bit and a shower, I lay back down on the couch and watch the ice hockey playoff game. I'm feeling much better and will hopefully get on a bicycle on Monday morning.
Thus on Monday morning, as suddenly as the shivering/siezures/fever occurred, normality is restored. My body temperature is back to my normal and my blood pressure is normal. I get in 50 kiloemeers on the road bicycle in and only feel a bit tired towards the end. Tomorrow should be a better ride. After getting cleaned up I watch the F1 race from Canada which is affected by a 5 second time penalty assessed by the stewards of the race - thus the winner of the race only gets second place. It was a stupid, ridiculous call and the crowd boos the results (as they should). Later I do some work around the yard including watering the roses since today has been so hot and the next two days are supposed to be hot also.
On Tuesday I go walking in the morning and then get obsessed with getting together a website for a friend. He's shown me a website that he likes and so I busy myself with scraping the assets of that website. I can usually get this 75% done with a script and have to manually get the remaining 25%. But this time it is more like 50% each. At a certain point I get in the car and drive to the library to retrun two books and get two new ones. And then I drive to a cafe to continue scraping the website assets. I look up at the clock and it is 5:15pm - I've just become obsessed with this whole scraping and site building that the day has flown by. I stop in at a Japanese restaurant for food and then go relax at home reading.
I have trouble sleeping again into Wednesday morning. But I get up and get in 50 kilometers on the road bicycle. After a cooling shower I start to feel not-well, so I lay on the couch and read for a bit. When I check my temperature it is 3 degrees above normal - where did this come from. Thus the remainder of the day is fairly slow and I catch the 7th game of the Stanley Cup finals. And today I make another call to the lawyers in Providence and leave another message wondering what the status of my being named executor/admin of my brother's estate. It's been two months and recently the lawyers won't even call me back. So I vow to start calling them every single day until I get an update. And this is supposed to be one of the better law firms in Providence.
On Thursday I sleep late and get out for a good mountain bicycle ride. After a shower I run errands including one already-read book from last Saturday and getting two additional books. I stop in at a diner and have lunch. Again, I think I've only been here alone once, but I was craving french fries. When I get home I trim and mow the lawn and pull out the rose trimmer to trim some neighboring plants that are infringing on the driveway. I'm feeling very good today despite the 0.5 degree fever this morning.Later in the afternoon I scrape a few more assets and fix the website for my friend as a starting point. His event is in November, so we should probably get moving on this.
I get up early on Friday and get out for an hour long walk/run. (95% walking) When I get home I trim the roses and rake the dead leaves out of the rose bed, grab a cooling shower, and then continue on with web and demographic work. I pump myself up with a cocktail of Red Bull and Mountain Dew for energy. This gets me coding along and making great progress on the website for my friend as well as the demographic work. Everytime that I get close to thinking that I'm finished with the demographic work, I find a little nuance that has to be corrected. If this effort is going to lead to campaign posters and policy issues, then it needs to be right.
I sleep very well on Friday night and get up early and out the door for a good road bicycle ride. I head north on the Los Angeles river and go past the WHittier Narrows dam to a convenient turn around point and then head home. I have a couple of difficult stretches, but its a good ride. And the longest ride I've had since before the November 2018 trip. Other than being worn out from the ride, I feel good after the recent illness but still have a slow day of reading, watching MotoGP qualifying from Spain, and watching some golf. Late at night Person Ch_C comes to visit on his way home from the airport. We have a good visit and I kick him out the door after midnight.
I start Sunday with a decent MotoGP race from Spain. An early crash takes out four of the top contenders and gives a gap to the lead racer to just manage in order to win. After the race I get out and ride the mountain bicycle for almsot two hours as a recovery ride. When I get home I get a cooling shower and run some errands before relaxing with more reading and the final round of US Open in golf from Pebble Beach. (Watching last year's US Open, I thought about buying tickets and going to this year's US Open in California, but never made it happen.) But the sights of the rugged northern California coast and the constant pounding of the waves makes me start thinking about a driving trip up and down the coast one of these months.
I start Monday with the loop ride and an extension on the road bicycle. As I'm getting ready to exit the bicycle trail I see Person A_Fl starting his run. So we talk for a few minutes before we go our separate ways. There's a super excting Moto3 race filled with lots of action and quite a few crashes (where all of the riders walk away uninjured). Unfortunately none of my favorite get on the podium. I continue to clean up loose ends before my trip. Person Ti_Ca contacts me and expresses his condolences that my brother has passed away. It compounds as I tell him that Person T_U has also passed away and there is no specific date set for a funeral/memorial yet. Later I do some reading and then continue to finish up the demographic study. There isn't as strict a smoking gun as I thought there might be.