I start the new year on Monday with a 75 minute run/walk. I start by warming up with a walk and to drop a letter off at the post office, but even the post office lobby is closed where they have the postal boxes. So I walk over a couple of blocks where there was a freestanding mailbox and it's gone. It was there this past summer. So I continue walking/running with the letter in one had and a Kleenex in the other since my nose tends to run in the cold morning - searching for a mail box, I find plenty of the green main drop boxes for the postal carrier, but I have to run/walk to Carson and Orange to find a post box. And coninue run/walking from there. I expected to go a bit shorter today because I planned on increasing the run-to-walk ratio. And I did increase the ratio and it felt good. After a shower I gather a lot of financial information and put together the story since retirement of investments and taxes and etc. It takes a good four hours to put everything into a convenient form but I'm realizing that I have more money than I need even before I touch my IRAs. It's 1:30pm now and I'm hungry so I have pasta and garlic bread and coca cola while letting a few tweaks to the integrated Artificial Inteligece code run and try to get more seat time with it to see if its going to behave funny.
I start Tuesday north on the Los Angeles river trail hoping for at least 80 kilometers of riding but hoping for 90. I get past the El Monte dam which is still flooded and do some street riding loking for Arrow highway. Except that I get lost and stop and ask one car driver and she says its back from where I came from. I turn back and can't find it and ask another man and he gives me good directions. I'm able to get to the base of the Santa Fe dam and take a quick break. On the way home I just get into a good rhythym and continue to note that only my neck is sore - nothing else is tired or hurts. By the time I'm home its 100 kilometers of riding and the farthest that I've ridden since my August 2022 birthday before the September 2022 accident. After a shower I relax a bit and go help the retired schooolteacher with her laptop and her phone and I finally get lunch at 2:15pm. In the afternoon I just relax and am barely able to see the light from a Falcon liftoff from Vandenburg Space Center at 6:15pm.
Wednesday and Thursday are slow, but productive days. I lift weights and cycle, do some touch-up work and final checks on the integrated Artificial Intelligence process, do yardwork, and relax with Netflix. I do note that Wednesday's weight lifting is "off a bit" since I had bit increasing strength lately. Maybe it was Tuesday's long ride, maybe its the cold weather, maybe it was lifting later in the day, or something. We'll see how this goes at the next weight lifting session. On Thursday I surprisingly get the non-profit's SAMS registration done in a short period of time. This is the required registration to do business with the US government. I could swear it took more than an hour last year. But this year it was thirty minutes and even included changing all osrts of bankig information. Now on to other non-profit paperwork that has to be filled out every year.
Friday is a productive day. I get out for a nintety minute run/walk where I've increased the run-to-walk ratio again. It feels good. At home I'm up on a ladder again with the new hedge trimmers to trim side bushes. These are bushes to the house that's rented out with the nice neighbors. This side usually doesn't need much work, but let's start the new year nice and clean with nothing overhanging. After a shower I do a lot of paperwork and watch some Netflix.
I start Saturday's anticipated long road bicycle ride in 42F weather. It is cold! I try to crank away a bit extra to gather internalwarmth, but I'm still cold. There is no decision to be made at the El Monte dam because I feel great and strong. And today I find Arrow highway without geting lost (by asking a guy at a bus stop where Arrow highway is). I start down the San Gabriel river trail and just crank like a mad man - up two gears and it could be up another at times. From the 100 kilometer total ride I start to feel tired mentally (and maybe in the lower back in the last two kilometers). A super ride considering the pace! After a shower I do more paperwork and fix a website that a hacker keeps trying to attack or gather information from and re-set my priorities on my list based upon recent events and tastes. I toss out some old paperwork including Christmas cards and the just relax with pizza with the two football games. Late on Saturday the CSULA senior design professor emails me and since we both live in Long Beach, we agree to grab juice/coffee at a very old coffeehouse, The Library, on Monday afternoon assuming that it is still in business.
When I wake up on Sunday I hear the howling wind that we are expected to have and reset the alarm for 45 minutes later. When I wake up the wind is still howling and it would not be fun to cycle or run. I decide to give it a try to set up my own server (on shared hosting) with my current web hosting company. It will be a challenge and I have resources to pull from, but I have some time to give it a shot and then change hosts (if I fail). I get a Secure Shell (SSH) process going very quickly and manage to install a basic Python interpreter quickly also. This way, I can pick my own version of Python and not be stuck with the web hosting comapny's only version of 2.6.6. I try to install a required mathematic package but fail. And the reading on the failure is not clear, so I go out to the garage and have a very good workout for the adbdominals, core muscles, lower back, and biceps. And when I get inside, I set a one hour alarm that notifies me to do my shoulder exercises once per hour. (The shoulrder problems are still left over from the bicycle accident and are only noticeable under certain motions, but I'm going to clear them up.) I watch MYDetroit Lions win their final game of the season and I grab lunch. I've lst the morning moivations and will just pick up the hosting effort on Monday. I've taken detailed notes so I can sound intelligent when I ask for help.
Tuesday and Wednesday are taken up with cold and chilly morning bicycle rides. Tuesday it is 39F when I leave the house and soon I cannot feel my fingers (even inside the long finger cycling gloves). On Tuesday I mow the lawn and spend a lot of time cleaning it up to get it ready for spring growth. After a shower I work on the Python installation and list a number of things to ask a friend later in the day. Late in the day I have a Zoom session with Ashley and we walk through what I've done. I finally decide to uninstall the few things I've installed and try again. I see a small mistake that IU made when I re-install Python and supporting tools but by the end of the night, I still cannot load new modules. After Ashley hangs up so that I can grab dinner I make more progress and realize one of the tools may be in an inconvenient location. So this will be worked on during Wednesday afternoon. After Wednesday's cycling I hard prune the last two rose bushes and clean half of the hardwood floors before the Long Beach Human Trafficking Task Force meeting. After the meeting I go finish the hardwod floors and have lunch and prepare to tackle my Python module installation problem.
I sleep until 7:40am on Thursday - I don't know if I'm that tired, the weather is that cold, and/or I'm frustrated trying to get Python running on the shared server. I drive to the grocery store for supplies and lift weights. The weight lifting is again a struggle. Right afterwards I go clean up the rose beds of weeds and wild grass in hope that this will be a better year for the roses. Inside the house I start the laundry and start working on the annual paperwork for a non-profit agency. Besides taxes, there are five forms that need to be filled out annually. I get a couple done to be mailed off on Friday. The others need the non-profit taxes to be finished before the forms can be turn in. Maybe next week.
Friday is a cold 39F again. It is a running day. Today I go extra long and end up at two hours. This is probably the longest that I've run/walk in I don't know how long. After a warming shower I just put my head down and get the non-profit taxes and paperwork all ready to be sent off. I don't feel like being frustrated dealing with the remote server installation, so I do the taxes and annual paperwork. I don't feel any aches or pains from the extra long run, but that will probably come on Sunday.
I start Saturday on a mission. It's cold on the road bicycle, 39F, for a ride north past the El Monte dam up to the Santa Fe dam. From there I've given thought to going further, but instead I just turn back for home. But I decide to pop the bicycle up at least one gear (and sometimes two) for the entire ride down the San Gabriel river trail. I'm just cranking along quite nicely with no complications and try up a third gear for a bit. But that's too much for now. So I get all the way down the San Gabriel trail to my exit at Del Amo up to gears and then ride along Del Amo to home up two gears (for the most part). A super ride! After a quick shower I pack up the eWaste (electrical and chemical items for recycling) from their staged area into the World Rally Car and away I go. I stop in at the ATM and CVS before getting to the recycling center and finding out they are closed to the public today because of the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday. (Recall that a month ago I abandoned the effort because the line was so long - probably five times as long as I'd ever seen it.) So I just tell the attendant I'll be back in March (because everybody from December, January, and February will be at February's event). I grab Togo's for lunch and dinner and n the way home I think I should just put this in the refrigerator for Sunday and eat other things today. At home I perform maintenance on the garage door and look in every nook and cranny for warm clothes that will fit. I find a brand new, tag attached Ralph Lauren large zip-up sweater that was given to me by Person C_T in the 2006 timeframe. This sweater is 17 years old and never been worn (because it was a bit too tight and I rarely wear sweaters.) But it fits nicely over a regular t-shirt it helps keep me warm at today's temperature and today's weight. Very much later I watch the football game.
On Sunday its very cold again and though I just take the mountain bicycle to the old yacht club and back to home, my fingers really feel it today. I'm glad to get inside the house where the temperature is 59F - I turn the heat off at night for sleepng and turn it back on as I step into the shower. Today I trim a couple of downed tree branches and do some sweeping from all of the wind debris left around. And finally the heat gets turned on and I get a warm shower. Immediately after I put on warm clothes and try to work with my hosting company to fix a problem. They see one open ticket from a coupe weeks agao and now I have another. As I'm on hold as the "receptionst" tries to find the right technical contacts to deal with my problem, I keep working away trying to get the new version of Python installed. Because as of last night, not even the old version works. Today will be a slow day with football and I have the Togo's snadwich completely intact from yesterday. So I set my phone's timer for 60 minutes and every 60 minutes I have to get up and lift weights for the biceps - since they seem to e lagging behind. Last week I did this with the shoulders and it seemed to help them have less pain (after the torn rotator cuff from the bicycle accient, ice hokcey injuries, and probably some arthritis). Whereas now I'm just trying to pump the biceps up rather than strengthen them to relieve pain. MY Detroit Lions play an incredible first half and lead and manage to hang on to win by one point - their first playoff win in thirty years.
Monday is the national holiday for Martin Luther King and I'm feeling a bit sick and lazy. Just to keep the blood pumping I do some abdominal and core exercises and call it a day.