I start Tuesday with a good mountain bicycle ride where I'm up a gear for almost the entire ride. Back at home I make more effort on the Cat Balster Model 1 (though I'm still waiting for the big motor), watch some television, do some Python scripting for mutual fund analysis, and trim the roses.
I start Wednesday with a more than one hour walk, grab a shower, and go visit the ear doctor. During our last phone appointment he said that I should come in because he needs to see what is going on in order to go forward with treatment. He sucks some "junk" out of the ear and says that the left ear drum seems to be reduced in thickness but still thicker than the "normal" right ear. Today he takes pictures of the eardrums and shows me the difference. Even I can tell that the ear drum on the right side is healthy and that the ear drum on the left side is "bothered" but not damaged beyond repair. He notes that an audiologist is present today, so we agree that we should check my hearing and compare the hearing out of the two ears. The test is performed where I have to click a button when I hear something in either ear. I already know that my high frequency hearing is very bad in the left ear due to this infection or whatever it is, and the hearing test confirms it. My right ear is very good and my left ear is not as good across the entire spectrum but is 30 dB lower in the three high frequency bands. The ear doctor comes back in and we talk about some strategies as to how to proceed. He offers me options (including embedding an ear tube to try and drain the eustachian tube). Finally he says that the left ear drum still seems to be decreasing in thickness and we should give it another month and see what happens. He shows me a couple or pressure equalization "exercises" that I can do each day in the meantime. I'm not dis-satisfied with this course of action. When I get home I grab some bread and cheese and then I use my new PaintStick to start painting ceilings. (My friends gave me a PaintStick many, many years ago as a Christmas present and I told them how much I liked it. But the plastic parts have become brittle and broken, so I had to purchase my own.) I lay out drop cloth plastic and start whipping through rooms: there goes the guest bedroom, there goes the main hallway, there goes the library room, there goes a smaller hallway, and finally there goes the dining room. I'm sweating a lot because the ceiling are always hard because you have to lift the PaintStick (or roller) above your head and stroke, but I'm satisfied and tired and clean everything up. But the day is not done! I take another shower, do some grocery shopping, and make great progress on a mutual fund selector for different "sector funds". I'm not finished, but I'm making progress.
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday pass quickly. There are bicycle rides, weight lifting sessions, rose upkeep, edging and mowing the lawn, Zoom teleconferences for Cal State Los Angeles, and another Covid virutal hackathon - this one related to Africa. I keep telling the team leader that we need to finish the previous PPE distribution app and get it in the customer's hands before we do something else. But she's not listening.
I wake up at 4:30 on Sunday morning and think that I have a way to separate out the shapefiles of African countries. I lie in ned for a while thinking about effort as well as other things on the agenda for today. Finally I get out of bed at 5:30 to work on the African country shape files. The idea that I had does not work. I keep pounding away at it and run into a roadblock. At about 6:30 in the morning I'm in the backyward with a shovel, a maul, and a heavy rake to dig up some ground. The neighbors have put in an elevated vegetable box/planter system and had some extra zucchini, tomoato, and green bean plantings left over that they've given me. I spend a good hour digging way and working up a good sweat even in the coolness of the early morning. And I finally plant some of the seedlings though I run out of good potting soil. I take a shower and drive to a Home Depot that has a huge line of people waiting to get in. So I drive to a different Home Depot and this one has a line, but it turns out that the wait to get into the sore is only 12 minutes. I grab two bags of soile, stop in at a CVS for supplies, stop at the ATM, and go back to work on the vegetable garden. I've got the zucchini and green beans planted, but the small tomato plants probably need a few more days of sun training before being planted. I clean up and start laundry and go back to work with a number of other ideas to separte out the various country shape files. I'm still stumped. I take a break in the afternoon to relax and watch television. Late in the afternoon I figure out how to split the shapefiles and finish the clickable map of African countries.
I'm lazy on Monday and go walk for more than an hour, trim the roses, and keep watering the new vegetable plants. After a shower I uset the lessons that I learned from the map of Africa for the MIT hackathon to split up the world map and prepare it for future (unknown) use. I have two Zoom review with Cal State Los Angeles senior design teams throughout the door. After the second one I go walking for another 45 minutes and then just relax with some television. I find two old magazines from 2009 - one a Scientific American and one a Bicycle magazine. So I put these on the reading pile to see how things have changed in 10 years.
I get up late on Tuesday but get on the road bicycle and ride past the Whittier Narrows dam to a convenient turn around point. Its already warm today and I struggle for the last 10 kilometers home. But its 80 kilometers and I'm entirely wiped out. I'm barely able to clean off the rear cluster and chain before I need to get in the shower and cool down. Fortunately today will be a slow day and other than some Zoom meetings for Cal State Los Angeles, I'm able to tend to the vegetables, read, and watch television for the hot day.
I start Wednesday with a 90 minute mountain bicycle recovery ride in the coolness of the early morning. After the ride I trim the roses and water the newly-planted vegetables. I get cleaned up and do the grocery shopping for the week (trying to minimize the trips to the store) and then perform some semi-related coding related to the Covid-19 supply app. The app has now changed from finding supplies for healthcare workers in need to one of merely filing reports of healthcare workers in need. Since the customer is a union, I should have known that they would be more interested in filing grievances as opposed to actually helping their members try to find PPE suppliers. This is a big disappointment and I let the team know of half of my feelings. But I continue on to support the team as best as I can. At mid afternoon I have another Zoom review with Cal State Los Angeles students (and faculty and other reviewers) and then I relax with reading and television - hoping for a big cycling day on Thursday.
I don't know where Thursday went but it did involve a very long, brisk walk in the morning and then trying to stay cool throughout the day.
I wake up many times on Thursday night into Friday morning and I'm tired when I finally get out of bed. I check the news and the markets. Later I go to mow the lawn. In the backyard I see that three of my vegetables seedlings have been dug up and removed. I didn't think animals, such as possum, raccoon, or rats, would dig up and remove seedlings since there aren't any vegetables there. But they have. After a coolingg shower I have a final practice session via Zoom with my Cal State Los Angeles senior design team and then I relax until the real presentation at 4pm. In the early afternoon I get yelled at by Ruby because I'm such a negative person nowadays. And I try to explain that all of my negative thoughts have been internally with the team and that there needs to be a health positive/negative discussion so that everyone knows the entire situation - not just a "Yes Ma'am" or "Yes sir" rubber stamp by the team. We certainly need to know the upside of a business proposition but we need to know the pitfalls also. I think this falls on deaf ears.
I get out the door at 6:50 am on Saturday for a road bicycle. I get in another 80 kilometers and find myself crawling home for the last five. What's going on? I had strong 80 kilometer rides towards the middle of April and now I'm spent for the last part of the ride? I try to go to the grocery store, but there is a long line just to get into the store near 10:30 am. I guess I'll have to return to my usual practice of going when they first open in the morning. I spend most of the day recovering from the ride and watching weird films that I have free access to via Kanopy and the Long Beach Public Library. Some are short films and two are regular length films. But none are good enough that I would recommend them to people to view.
I start Sunday a bit late at 6:45 am. I get over to the grocery store and get the shopping done for the next week (or half week) with no line to get into the store but a little line to checkout. Back at home I get get dressed and have a very good 90 minute mountain bicycle recovery ride after Saturday's long ride. When I'm finished I take the bicycle into the garage and lube the chain and let it set (as the lube directions indicate). Approaching noon I start in watching the German film "Christiane F" which I find on youtube with no English subtitles. So I watch the movie and get the deep understanding of the film. I take breaks during the film to prepare lunch for today and then realizing that the cooked vegeables and beans are empty, I cook more for the upcoming week. Approaching 2pm I have not eaten anything yet and have not finished the film so I remedy both situations. Except that I'm interupted with a phone call from someone who I have not spken with for a while and it's a two hour conversaion. So finally near 4 pm I get some vegetables and rice inside me and watch the rest of the film (in German with no English subtitles).
Monday is a pre-planned day off from cycling since my legs are tired and I've had two good rides over the last two days. Instead I go walking for 65 minutes and then get breakfast. At mid morning I break out the painting supplies and paint the last three ceilings (that are scheduled for this go-round). Even though it is cool weather, I'm still sweating a lot during the painting because you keep moving a lot and holding the heavy paint stick above your head. After cleaning the paint supplies I get another shower and relax. There might be a Zoom telecofnerence tonight about the union Covid-19 app or might not. That's how the team's organization is.