When the alarm goes off I turn it off and go back to sleep. I think I'm worn out from two good days of cycling and Monday's weight lifting and continuous up and down working on the mountain bicycle rear wheel bearings. Thus I sleep very late and work a bit on coding when I wake up. I find some outlier cases where, for example, a new district had no election results in the past cycle. SOI have to take care of these outlier cases to make the scripts fully automated.
After a Tuesday of almost nothing but coding and Netflix, I start Wednesday on the road bicycle. Going up the San Gabriel river trail a cyclist passes me so I pick up the pace and follow him from a distance for a few miles. It seems like he's slowing down a bit so I pull up alongside and we have a nice long conversation about cycling and MotoGP and racing and stuff. It turns out he's from northern Italy and moved here to marry his girldfirend, a former cyclist and now a triathlete. Finally he gets to his turn-around point and goes back south since he needs to go to work. I'm just riding effortlessly today so I end up somewhere between 70 and 75 kilometers. After a shower I read the news and markets and take the Yamaha YZF-R1 down to the main library for more new books to read. And back at home I do the monthly lube of the chain on the motorcycle.
I'm out of control on Thursday morning. Despite a long ride on Wednesday, I ride long again on Thursday - pushing out 65 kilometers. At home I clean the gears on the road bicycle and climb a ladder to trim the neighbor's bush which tends to grow close to my Internet cable. After a shower I do some grocery shopping and then do the every other maintenance of the garage door to keep it running smoothly. And then I can finally sit down and read the news and the markets and check a CSULA submission from the students.
I have some good ideas to work on Friday morning and get started. I've streamlined the seven step process with some class definitions and character set indices. And I work on presenting the results to people in an easy to understand format. Near 10:20am I get out and lift weights. I use the same weights as the last two sessions and can get an extra rep for some lifts. Maybe I'm not ready to increase the weights yet. I immediately pull out the ladder and electric hedge trimmers and electric change saw and go to work on four Juniper trees that have become a bit straggly. I an reach most of the top of the Juniper trees using a "safe" ladder step. But for some trimming cutting, I need to use the step that says "Do not step here". Nonetheless I am extremely careful swinging the hedge trimmers and chain saw around and I eventually get to a point where the four Juniper trees look good enough. This trimming of the trees has taken a lot of effort of climbing up and down the ladder, moving the ladder, switching between the hedge trimmers and chainsaw, and swinging both tools around to reach the straggling branches. So I drag myself to put everything away into the garage, get cleaned up, and then go back to work on the results presentations. I can feel my arms and shoulders getting more and more sore as the day goes on do to the good work. I just consider it a good workout on top of the weight lifting that I did. And I can be a vegetable for the rest of the day.
I sleep well on Friday night but can't answer the bell for a long road bicycle ride. All of the recent cycling, lifting, and yesterday's up and down the ladder and stretching and reaching while trimming trees has taken a lot out of me. Instead I get on the mountain bicycle. As I'm riding the only thing that I can hear is my heart pumping and the tires rolling along the road. So I did a good job of fixing the nasty grinding/squealing of the rear wheel axle. During the ride there is a bit of rain that falls. When I'm near the old yacht club I see a group of ten or a dozen women running away from the ocean yelling "Tsunami". The wind is certainly blowing in hard but I think that they are just teasing. But later when I get home I see that there was an emergency advisory alert for the area for a tsunami. After a shower I walk to the post office and grocery store in the rain - not wanting to get the recently waxed World Rally Car wet. I do a bit of programming but I'm just spent, so it's mainly a day of watching football and recovering for a Sunday bicycle ride. Though I do figure out how to size the popups on a leaflet map as produced by Python - so I'm happy that I pounded away on this effort despite feeling that I want to lie down on the bed, couch, or floor and take a nap.
I am s tired and physically hungover on Sunday morning. Usually when I am going to trim trees or dom something this strenuous, I will take sme Aleve before starting the effort. On Friday I did not do that and am paying the price on both Saturday and SUnday. So just before going out cycling I take some Aleve for help later today. I have a good mountain bicycle ride and again I can hear nothing except my heart pumping and the tires rolling on the pavement. I have a decent ride but I'm just cranking along trying to get the ride finished towards the last quarter of the ride. At home I get a shower and take care of a few little house maintenance items and then work on making the various demogrpahic processes more modular as well as watching football games. Most of the modular process effort is just passing the appropriate arguments into subroutines and it takes a while to trace these down and make them compatible. It's going to be a slow day today.
It takes me a while to get going on Monday, but I get some good coding done. THough I'm still tired, I get out and lift weights and do the best that I can. After a shower I take the Yamaha YZF-R1 out for a ride and stop off to pick up lunch for later. Near 3:30pm I have a Zoom call which is more of a social call than a technical call as it is just me and one other team member who lives very close to me but I have not met in person because of the pandemic. His girlfriend is Khmer so I share all sorts of stories of my travel and expereices with people from Cambodia. At 5:30 pm the school teacher calls and needs help with her email so she comes over and as I try to figure out what's going on Person An_Ph calls over Whatsapp and so the school teacher and Person An_Ph video chat while I work on the computer. Eventually I get the computer fixed and when the school teacher leaves I can talk with Person An_Ph. And then I finish watching the disappointing outcome of the sixth wildcard playff came (where I've been happy with the results of the first five).
I'm out the door at 6:30ish for a road bicycle ride. The low temperature has been hanging near 50F and the mornings are already lightening up, so I get out early. It's a decent 65 kilometer ride today. At home I edge, mow, and trim the lawn and then sweep up all of the debris - the lawn growing nicely with a combination of recent rain and fertilizer application. After a shower I make a quick trip to the grocery store for supplies and then can relax since its already been a very productive day. As I do the laundry I work on making a generic mapping Python code to draw multiple maps with various data displays and ranges.
I'm a bit lazy on Wednesday and just go walking for an hour. Today I drop off a letter at the post office and just walk down Atlantic avenue to see how the businesses are doing. I don't think I've done this since the pandemic started and, of course, some look like they are still in business, some are gone, and some are replaced. Back at home I check out the roses and see good early season growth and then spray the front juniper bushes for spider mites. If this doesn't do the trick, then I'll go to a professional nursery and see what they suggest. I spend until 1pm getting the multiple mapping finished. And the resat of the day disappears.
I'm out the door at 6:32 am on Thursday for a mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back top home. I wanted to ride the road bicycle longer today but my left calf was giving me some problems from yesterday. Nonetheless the left calf does not hurt while cycling and I enjoy the ride. AFter a shower I buy gasoline for lawn equipment, get to Trader Joes for supplements, and get to Vons for the remaining supplies that I need. At home I clean things up a bit and then put all of the F1 and MotoGP races on my Goggle calendar (just in case they happen) so that I can possibly start planning some trips to races. As I plan out my 2022, I also review and replan other 2022 tasks for CSULA, nonprofits, and my own technical interests. By early afternoon I'm "planned out" and so I watch some Netflix shows and just relax.
I sleep horribly on Thursday night into Friday morning. At one point I have a dream where the entire contents of the house that I grew up in in Michigan is cleaned out by robbers in one hour - I remember seeing the time when things were okay and an hour later everything was gone. This dream/nightmare wakes me up and I cannot sleep so I read for a while until I can fall back asleep. It's a planned day off from cycling or running and I get in a session with the weights at mid morning. I cannot decide if I should trim the bush in front way back or remove it entirely. It needs to be trimmed every few months and either cutting it down by half or removing it would make trimming (if in existence) easier. Thus I trim the junipers, cut out damage from spider mites, and trim the side bush. And the decision is made! The front bush is coming out. The chainsaw is revved up and I cut the bush off near the roots and haul everything into the backyard for later cutting up and disposal. I can deal with the roots of this bush later because they don't show up due to coverage from the junipers. After a shower I am very tired and finish off a trauma website with lots of mistakes made as I proceed. And finally near 2pm I dump some pasta into boiling water and can eat something to get ready for tomorrow's (planned) long road bicycle ride. Late in the afternoon I go into the garage and take the chainsaw apart and do maintenance on it and align it.
I'm out the door in the semi-darkness and chilly temperatures at 6:25am for a road bicycle. It doesn't feel like its going to be extra long today. But I get warmed up and cranking along nicely and when I get to the turn-around point for a long or regular ride, I wimp out and turn back for a regular ride of 65 kilometers. It's more of a mental thing than a physical thing cuz I feel good during today's ride. At home I take out the newly-maintained chainsaw and buzz right through the trimmings on the ground in the backyard. Not everything fits in my trash receptacle, so some of it will wait until the following week. But I see how well the chainsaw works when I've maintained, lubed, and aligned it properly. I get in a quick shower and a trip to the grocery store and then read the news and do some creative brainstorming before the playoff football games start in the afternoon.
For Monday through Friday of this week, I feel that some depression has crept in. I'm still working out everyday, coding everyday, and getting asked to teach classes at CSULA, but I've just been feeling "off". But On Saturday morning, after a good bicycle ride and playing with the chainsaw, I just have a better attitude. Why is this? I don't know. But I'll run with it, do some of the creative-brainstorming that I want to do, and relax with football and see how things go. I have to admit that the creative-brainstorming that I do does not seem to involve CSULA, any CSULA projects, or CSULA teaching assignments. (Or perhaps one CSULA project related to sizing artificial and replacement organs during surgery.) Just before the football games start I am able to fill out, scan, and envelope two of the non-profit forms. I'll continue working this effort for the remaining required annual four forms throughout the next week.
On top of yesterday's 65 kilometer road bicycle ride I have another 65 kilometer road bicycle ride. I have some good periods and some bad periods but have a good ride on this sunny Sunday. Back at home I take a nice warming shower, run an errand on the mountain bicycle, and then decide that I need to correct some of the non-profit forms. So these annual non-profit filings get corrrected and only the non-profit tax forms needs to be filled out. Most of the day passes away with playoff football games.
I work on more Python/mySQL work on Monday morning - giving the legs the day off. Before noon I take the motorcycle out for a ride and stop in at the Thai grocery store for supplies. Except that I've forgotten any sort of mask, so I go back home and get a mask and return to the Thai store. I pick uup the supplies that I need to cook Thai curry tomorrow. I keep alternating between the Python/mySQL work and some Netflix series throughotu the day.