I have a good Tuesday which starts with more web programming to finally get a good, common format. Near 9 am I pull the bicycle out to go riding and there are raindrops, so I put the bicycle away and continue work. AT 10:30 there is no rain and blue skies, so I take the bicycle out and ride. I certainly get a bit wet from the pavement, but it feels great to ride again even if it is is cold, wet, and windy. After a shower I break out my Arduino board and start working on real electronics for the new Cat Blaster. I've ordered a more powerful motor and I'm on hold mechanically until that arrives. In the middle of the afternoo go to the grocery store and they have a few things. I manage to get one of the last two loaves of bread and the last two frozen piazzas as well as a few other things. I work more on the Arduino electronics, watch some telelvision, and then catch up on the website a bit more.
I start a very cold Wednesday morning by sleeping until 7:30 am. I'm out the door on the road bicycle at 7:55am with the recently installed new rear tire. I get in a good ride of 60 kilometers with a good headwind making me work hard all of the way north on the San Gabriel river trail. It's a good ride to get going again after some recent shorter rides. When I get home the inside of the house is 56 degrees. So I guess I have to turn the heater back on for a while. I trim and deweed the roses and then spot fertilize (i.e., throw down some fertilizer by hand) the lawn on spots that need some incentive to green up or grow more. Today is a slow day and I do get some web work done and a few other minor things.
I drive to the grocery store early in the morning expecting some possible re-stocking of items overnight. There has not been much re-stocking. I do manage to find enough items to make it worth my while, but frozen vegetables are empty, bread is empty, bottled water is empty, and paper products are empty. When I get home I have a very productive time working on the Python/mySQL databse process for a production website. Late in the morning I get out and lift weights as the rain comes down hard at times and soft at other times. I lift heavy and toss in an extra set today, so I can barely complete the final set of bicep curls with lighter weights (since I'm still rehabbing an injured tednon, cartilidge, or muscle on the inside of the left bicep). After a shower I watch a streamed Kanopy movie which I have access to via the Long Beach Public Library. It's an older movie about human trafficking/exploitation, but its pretty disappointing. Late i the day I pick up the wen programming again and get very close to getting the next building block finished.
I sleep very well on Thursday night and wake up and go walk for nearly an hour in the morning. We have a CSULA teleconference today since CSULA is more or less shut down. Afterwards I go to a number of stores and pick up some vital longterm supplies, but none of the stores have paper products. I pick up lunch for later, start the laundry, and try some experimental production methods for our CSULA project. Though I don't have the proper tools, I can produce acceptable components for our project and I share the descriptions and pictures with the team. In the afternoon I watch another Kanopy film and relax. The weather has been been a bit sketchy today, so cycling will occur on Saturday and Sunday.
I start Saturday with a good road bicycle ride. There's a headwind all of the way up the San Gabriel river trail, but I persists and finish a 65 kilometers. I grab a quick shower and go to the grocery store and they seem to have a few more supplies than they had for the previous week. So I stock up on a few items, but I don't hoard. And we still don't have paper products. Back at home I work on the CSULA project deployment bearings and get some good results though it takes too long to construct each one. I'll have to think about this. I relax a bit and then get out to mow, edge, and trim the lawn. By the end of the effort, having not eaten anything yet today except for a few slices of pineapple, I'm beaten and my back is tired from the gardening positions required. I get another shower and relax on the couch with some regular television and some Netflix and finally get some vegetables and chips into my system. I'm slammed for the rest of the day, so not much gets accomplished and I'm in bed for reading and later sleep at 8:45 pm.
On Sunday I sleep a bit late but jump on the mountain bicycle for a recovery ride. I spin for a while and push for a while and trade back and forth until, on the last leg north on the Los Angeles river, I just spin because my entire organism is tired. I get in a shower and answer some emails and very soon I'm out in the garage working on the CSULA project - because I had a good idea in the middle of the night as to how to make the build go faster. I set up the build and it does go faster - I get all of the deployment bearing done in sixty minutes or so. And my back's again starting to be tired because I don't have a proper work bench and have to kneel on the ground to make the bearings. But I'm happy with the result and send some pictures and descirptions to the team. I go back in the house and then, though completely worn out, get restless again. So I go out and clean up the roses and bring some beautiful blooms into the house to enjoy. Except I don't know where my vases are, so I make one from a discarded two liter Coke bottle. I remember dropping and breaking one rose vase. But what happened to the oval-shaped vase? So I declare today that I am finished with all physical activity except to drag the two trash bins out to the street later in the afternoon. I have no blood sugar, so I don't work on web programming or algorithms and just lay on the couch and try to find movies to watch to learn or to get entertained from.
On Monday I get up early and get buzzed with my favorite "pick me up" substances and make a tremendous amount of progress on the Python/mySQL conversion. Before I know it, the time is approaching noon, so I go out and lift heavy weights today. Perhaps I bit off a bit more than I can chew as I don't complete the intended number of repetitions for each set, but I'm breathing hard and sweating like crazy. After a shower I relax with lunch and a recommended Netflix movide "Concusssions". But it's pretty boring and unremarkable. Eventually I go back to coding and have a lot of things done and make a list for the morning to continue on after a bicycle ride.
I wake up many times on Monday night into Tuesday morning with dreams of how should have taken Person Ti_Ca to work as a visitor and showed him around all of the buildings and introduced him to all of my co-workers. I keep falling asleep and waking back up with another similar dream where I'm introducing him to othe people and I can even recall my introductions from the dreams. What does this mean? Eventually I get out of bed at 4:40 am and DO NOT GO RUNNING for fear of falling again. But I get up and make super progress on the Python/mySQL effort and it has only a few small tasks left to be completely finished. Near 9 am, after I've been coding for five hours, I get out on the mountain bicycle. Only to be met by rain a quarter of the way through the ride. I might as well keep going and end with a pretty decent ride though the bicycle is now very dirty again (just after I cleaned it up sparkling new last week). After a shower and an errand I lay out some groundwork for some final plotting routines and a final database update before I can declare victory on this effort.
By the time that I go to sleep on Tuesday night I've convinced myself that I'm not going cycling in the morning. It's a night with "one of those" attitudes. I get up early and make progress on the plotting routine. After a couple of hours I go to to a different grocery store than usual and find some supplies that were out of stock at my usual grocery store, I try to return a library book but the book return boxes are locked with a "return in April with no late fee" notice, and I get to Subway to pickup lunch for later. Back at home and unpacked I trim and deweed the roses and carnations and check the other trees for early growth that I can trim back so that it doesn't become a problem later. I grab a quick shower and wash and scrub some of the shower, I clean the kitchen floor, and then I scrub the kitchen sink. The kitchen floor and the kitchen sink look brand new as they did back in 2009. I go back and update some databases and update my list of things to do since I've made a lot of progress on the previous list. Though I'm waiting for parts delivery on a couple of Arduino hardware projects. By 1:15pm I'm losing motivation, so I sit back and relax with various Showtime (spcecial free preview period) and Netflix viewings. Later in the day I continue working on the statistical analysis that goes along with the Python/mySQL database and make good progress until I get stuck on some formatting issues.
On Wednesday night into Thursday morning I wake up in a panic from a nightmare. In the nightmare, I've just sawed off the two arms of a person who invaded my house and am about to put him to his final resting place. I wake up with my heart pounding like crazy. I realize (hope) that it has been a nightmare and I try to practic some deep breathing and relaxation to calm myself and pounding heart down. But I keep taking a glance down the hallway to see if anyone is coming into my bedroom. The deep breathing works and I eventually fall back asleep. Needless to say, I don't get up when the alarm goes off and I go back to sleep for a while. But then I jump out of bed and I'm on the mountain bicycle for about a two hour ride in windy conditions. The wind makes this a very good workout. Back at home after a shower I stay away from the statistical plot formatting and instead do some maintenanc on ym desktop computer and keep an eye out for the delivery person for parts for the refrigerator and the Cat Blaster. Ther are CSULA phone calls going around as we try to get the various pieces that different team members have into the hands of a single person who will do a subsystem test.
It's cold on Friday morning - down to 44F - so I stay in bed a bit and then go for a walk. I've had the heat in my house turned off since the middle or end of Debruary, so morning temperatures in the house are sometimes near 58F. It's a good walk. I get home and relax a ibit and then trim the roses and bring some beautiful brand new blooms into the house. I go out and so some grocery shopping for both longterm and shortterm supplies. Back at home I make a video for the CSULA team on how to assemble a set of bearings made from plastic balls and coat hangers and then work on the Cat Blaster. I don't have all of the preoper cables, but when I add in the relay code and make some electrical hookups, I can hear the relay turning on and off so I think I'm on the right track. I just need another delivery and then I need to order a few more, better wire connectors to make the Cat Blaster more robust. After putting everything away I go out to start the motorcycle since it hasn't been ridden or started for a few days and it won't start. So I pull the battery out, note a low voltage reading, and put it on the charger. Whereas for 35 years I've ridden a motorcycle everyday of my life, now I barely ride it. So I need to start riding more and also replace the 2002 Yamaha YZF-R1 which is giving indications that it is is tired and ready for retirement. At mid afternoon I cook a ton of pasta and enjoy the pasta with my special pasta sauce with red wine and red pepper and other spices as special ingredients.
I want to go out cycling on Saturday morning, but I do not. I mill around the house for a while and then I fix and paint a small section of crown moulding in a hallway. This is more of an experiment as much as getting the painting done. But it turns out very nice so I now know how to attack the crown moulding in my bedroom next week. Later in the morning I spend a lot of time trimming a bush in the front yard to try and reshape its future growth. And then I mow the lawn and put the battery back into the Yamaha YZF-R1 which died yesterday. And after the overnight charge, the bike starts right up. Whereas for the first 14 years of the R1's life it was ridden everyday, now it gets ridden about once a week. And this isn't quite a enough to keep the battery fully charged during the cooler weather. After my tasks are done I get in a shower and relax. Late in the afternoon I'm asked for help with a "virtual hackathon". So I provided the requester with geocoded resources that he can import into a database and display on the website. By the time I am ready to get down and sleep, I notice my FitBit says I still got in 10,000 steps today. I'm not a big believer in the FitBit or the accuracy of its heart rate, for example, but I hope it can at least count steps. So even though I did not go out cycling, running, or lifting today, I still did not have a sedentary day.
I'm out the door on Sunday morning a bit after 7 am heading north on the Los Angeles river trail. Long Beach has closed the bicycle path along the beach due to the CoVid-19 issues, so I head north. Though there's a strong headwind going north, I just keep fighting it and go past the Whittier Narrows dam and then turn around at a convenient point. I drag for periods on the way home, but I finish with 80 kilometers and I'm happy. After a shower and a trip to the grocery store, I try to clean up some small requests from the "virtual hackathon" people and trim the roses.
I'm physically hungover from Sunday's ride on Monday morning, so I get up and go for a one hour walk. Back at home I clean up the roses and carantions and then grab a shower. Today I have it in my mind that I need to enhance my Python maps with various layers, so I spend a fair amount of time recoding this effort and I'm surprised that it goes quicker than expected. (Note that coding never works properly on the first try. So even though it went quicker than expected, it means I had a number of trial and errors and debugging print statements along the way to get things to work.) I watch some television for a while and try to rest for a bicycle ride on Monday. Late in the evening I check the Long Beach Police Department website and see that some additional months of crime statistics have been published. So I grab that data, convert it to a more friendly format, and get ready to run the long crime prediction scripts on Tuesday.
I start Tuesday with about a two hour mountain bicycle ride up north on the Los Angeles river trail and then back towards home. Long Beach has closed the ocean bicycle trail, so "Eff you Long Beach" and I'll just ride away from the beach. My legs are still tired from Sunday's longer ride, but it always feels good to be on two wheels. At home I grab a shower and start the long crime learning/prediction script for the city. In the bright sunshine of the afternoon I go trim the roses and pull up weeds from the carnations as both are about ready to start popping out tons of blooms to bring into the house and enjoy.