I start Tuesday with a good eighty minute run/walk. At home I trim the roses and grab a shower. After lunch I get on the motorcycle and ride all of the way up to Cedars Sinai hospital who performed the surgery just over a year ago. Both are amazed at my cycling and running distances and say that the scars and surrounding tissue looks great. They've heard about the infected implant post and try to keep me cheered up about recovery by telling me how great I'm doing. I know I'm doing well,. but to be honest with them, I told them both that I was depressed for a week or so after I heard about the implant infection and the required further surgery. But both doctors say they are going to use me as an example of how to recover from these illnesses. I fight traffic on the way home and grab a quick dinner of vegetables and pasta and garlic bread. Though not perfect, I've declared the removed door hinge and strike plate repair/paint finished. It's an interior part of the frame that nobody will see anyway. And then I just relax and look forward to a short bicycle ride on Wednesday morning.
Wednesday is a very strange day. It starts with a good mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back to home. I then mow the lawn and trim the edges. So far, so normal. I grab a shower and get back on the bicycle and go to the grocery store for a few supplies. Again, things are normal. As I sit down to read the news and markets there's an email in my spam box from a supposed hacker that wants a Bitcoin ransom. I'll usually ignore these but in this one I see the password to one of my accounts. I look through my accounts and that password, which is only eight characters long and very old, is only used a few times. And not for anything super critical. But to be safe, I change the passwords of some of these accounts to nineteen characters long. And hope this is the end of it. I try to make an appointment for a PET-CT scan, which is the gold standard for detecting cancer, and am stuck on hold. Finally I just press the button to have them call me back. As I'm doing this, there's a dog in my house! What? I don't own a dog. I chase the dog outside and it barks at me in the backyard, so I leave it alone for a few minutes. And then I slowly approach the dog and talk calmly with it and give the "come here" command. The dog slowly approaches but stops short and rolls over on his back. I thus go pet the dog and give it tummy rubs and now the dog can somewhat trust me. Two of my fences are relatively new and I see small opening in the fence that a neighbor and I built 35 years ago. So I approach the dog some more, pick it up, and shove it through a small hole in the old fence. And then I (temporarily) repair the old fence so that he/she cannot come back. It's time to talk to the undesireable neighbors about the state of that fence which I've propped up and repaired from my side uncountable times in the last ten or fifteen years (and propping up when their pool was leaking and also destroying the fence). I finally get to lunch at 2pm of veggie patties and brown rice. And then I work on a batting order lineup process made up strictly of permutations of who a manager wants to play in a specific game. This is not the deep learning process that I'm proposing for CSULA, but it's a step to see what happens. I have it running by 4pm and it's probably going to run for days. The rest of the day is spent with the opening game of the ice hockey conference finals.
Thursday is a leg day off, so no cycling or running. Instead I take the neighbor to see her cardiologist since she doesn't feel stable enough to drive. While I'm in the waiting room for her, a song from the clubs from 10-15 years back comes on the piped-in music and I set my belongings on the next chair and say out loud, "Doesn't this song make you want to get up and dance?" And I proceed to get up and dance. One guy across from me says something with a smile though I can't make out what he said (because he and I are the only ones in the waiting room wearing masks). After thirty seconds, nobody has joined in - afterall it is a cardiac care office - so I sit down and go back to my business. I pause for a bit and say to the guy who spoke to me, "Please don't call senior services mental health on me" and he starts to laugh with me. When the other guy leaves, because his wife has finished with her appointment, he keeps an eye on me as he walks by and I just smile and say, "Enjoy your day, my friend". And I get a big smile out of him. Back at home I have no motivation but I push myself to lift weights and trim the roses. With the weight lifting, though I'm unmotivated mentally, it goes okay with a couple of lifts down in poundages and a couple up in repetitions. I work a bit on the Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm in the afternoon and catch the other conference ice hockey playoff final.
On Friday I start for a long road bicycle ride. Today I feel strong (despite throwing up yesterday) and get up to the Santa Fe dam and it is raining. There is nothing to do but continue- the rain is light and not dangerous. On this ride I do not stop for an energy gel at the Santa Fe Dam. I continue south on the San Gabriel river trail and I surprisingly feel strong despite today's 0.4 fever. I make it home for another 100 kilometer ride. AFter a shower I pick up some supplies from the grocery store, including wine, and cook my Mom"s spaghetti/pasta sauce which requires wine. After reading the news and markets I grab a pasta lunch and the sauce tastes fantastic - much different or abnormal as it did a few months ago. I continue the day with FP2 for F1 from Monte Carlo, and FP2 for both MotoGP and Moto2 from Barcelona. Later I touch up the cleanliness of the bathrooms and continue the baseball lineup permutations as a precursor to real artificial intelligence work on deriving baseball lineups. And later I flip between the Dodgers' game and the ice hockey playoff game.
I'm physically hungover on Saturday morning, so I reset my alarm to sleep forty minutes later. I get up and get out the door for a very good recovery mountain bicycle ride. It seems that after the "standing ride along Del Amo" my legs are stronger. I'll have to try that again in a few weeks. At home I weedwack the roses and grab a shower. I've been given notice that people want to make a map of attendees at an International Youth COnference and so I pull up some of my Python scripts for mapping out the United States (color coded based upon number of attendees) as well as a world map (also color coded). Now I just have to wait for the actual data to pop into my scripts. How much you want to bet the data will not be in a simple csv format that I asked for and will be in a weird format? And I'll have to spend hours trying to reformat it for use. Regardless, I'm ready to do some mapping. I watch some golf and qualifying for F1 race in Monaco and qualifying for MotoGP/2/3 races near Barcelona. And later I watch the Dodgers' game and the ice hockey playoff game. I originally had it on my schedule to wash the outside of each window in my house, but today is a bit overcast and Monday should be bright and sunny and a bit warmer. So the windows will dry faster. Thus I push that task off.
I am again physically hungover on Sunday morning, so I start with a walk and it turns into a 65 minute run/walk. This is good enough for today. I trim the roses and bring new blooms into the house and watch the F1 race from Monaco. Today I have the chills, so despite it being 70F outside, I have sweats on inside the house to watch the race and do the laundry. With Monaco, the race is either bizerrely wild or lap-time-controlled boring. Today, for the most part is the latter. Later I relax and work on the Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm and watch an iice hockey playoff game. And later I fast-forward as much as possible through the Indy 500.
I start Memorial Day with a walk to the grocery store for a big giant bttle of wine. Before 8am, which is early for me for ever lifiting weights, I get in a good session with the weights and have extra repetitons on every lift. Where did that come from? Immediately I pull out the ladder and bucket and soap and sponges and towels and go around the house cleaning the xterior of each and every window. This has nt been done for two years since the bicycle accident and cancer process. I just keep pushing through it - climbing up and down the ladder to soap up and clean the windows, rinsing them, letting them dry as I move to the next window, and finally going back around up and down the ladder to dry off every window and to windex each one. They are beautiful and I leave all of my window shades open to enjoy the crip, clean view out of my house. AFter a shower I watch a wild, unpredictable, shocking Tissot Sprint race from Barcelona. Finally near 2pm I eat something for the first time today - pasta with the pasta sauce as my Mon used to make it. For a long time after radiation it just did not taste right, but over the last month it has tasted super. Later, as I'm physically hungover from lifting weights and moving the ladder around and climbing up and down the ladder (twice) for each window, I watch the Dodgers' game and continue to work on the Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm. This algorithm is provong difficult andnow I'm afraid I've bitten off more than I can chew as I have proposed this as CSULA senior design project starting the fall. And later, still hungover, I watch the ice hockey playoff game and keep fiddling with the MCTS process and graphical display of results.
My entire organism is tired from recent activities, but I'm still out the door at 6:15 am for a road bicycle ride. I do the extended loop ride and it takes me fifiteen kilometers to get warmed up and ready to go. But then I start cranking nicely against an onshore wind and then I crank like a madman up the Los Angeles river trail with a tailwind. Today I use a gear I've never used before because it is so fast and I'm able to pull it reasoanbly well. At home I take a quick shower, pick up grocery supplies, and work on the Monte Carlo Tree Search piece. I finally have it working and can produce results with lineup permutations which make sense. Thus I keep increasing the number of permutations and keep checking the results. Throughout the day I notice that today would have been my brother's 68th birthday, so I cook my Mom's pasta sauce (with wine) and eat pasta and later chocolate chip cookies in honor of my brother's birthday. With the MCTS algorithm I am trying to use and the specific problem that I am trying to solve, my bother would have been very interested and would have had great suggestions for me to try. So my work on this effort is also an attempt to continue his interests. I start in watching the MotoGP race from Barcelona, Spain but I take creative breaks during the pre-race show to wash the dishes, put window cleaning equipment away, and trim the roses for a few new blooms into the house. The MotoGP race is unpredictable and exciting though my favoritre rider crashes out of second place while hassling the leader for the lead. Later I watch some news and the ice hockey playoff game and plan my next checks and steps for the MCTE algorithm. I also get an email from more CSULA faculty asking me about my proposed fall semester project and I answer their questions and provide them with backup information. It might happen or it might not.
I start Wednesday with a windy mountain bicycle ride where I have to fight the wind on the first two legs out to the old yacht club. But then I have a good tailwind for the last two legs home and crank along strongly. At home I mow the front and back yards and grab a shower. After reading the news and markets I have veggies and rice along with the Moto3 race from Barcelona, Spain. And I continue to have good ideas about the MCTS and keep implementing better comparisons. I find an IRS website to check on the status of a tax refund and see that my check was mailed out in the middle of April. Thus I ask for a duplicate check and they say they will send it if they cannot find a cancelled check that I cashed. If they find a cancelled check, I'll have to show them that my signature is different than the one on the back of the check. The process will take 45 days. At some point I get on the motorcycle and ride to have a PET-CT scan from skull to thigh. This is the gold standard as to whether there is any caner present anymore or not. I'll just have to be patient to wait for the results.
I have a slow Thursday. I walk to the grocery store for supplies and make good progress on some MCTS ideas. I out to the garage to set up to lift weights, but my heart isn't in it. Thus I lay out the yoga mat and pull out dumbbells to work the abdominals, core muscles, lower back, and biceps. I trim the roses and bring new blooms into the house and then give the Yamaha YZF-R3 wheels a quick wipedown. I'm committed to wiping the wheels down regularly rather than waiting to wash the entire bike and wheels. After a shower I finally get to the Moto2 race from Barcelona, Spain. Throughout the day I perform ten sets of shoulder exercises as I finally want to relieve the limited range of motion and flexibility of my shoulders from many years of ice hockey shoulder injuries and the torn rotator cuff from the bicycle accident. (This has been my practice for a few weeks and I want get back to "normal".) And then I continue working through the MCTS process, update websites for the endof month, and watch the ice hockey playoff game.
I start Friday physically hung over like all get out. But I slowly move around and mix up a preotein shake for after a ride and climb on the road bicycle. I get warmed up and start moving well but it seems like there's the slightest headwind going north on the Los Angeles river trail. I get to the Emerald Necklace park, just north of the El Monte airport, and immediately turn around. And now there is a definite headwind against me going home. How can this be? I dhift up a gear and just say "take it" and I end up at home with some fairly tired legs but a good eoghty kilometer ride. After a shower I go to CVS pharmacy for my dental gel, refulse the blood pressure drug because my primary care physician and I agreed we whould cut it in half and then down to zero and my blood pressure is still well below 120 over 80. I also stop in at the ibrary for a book that they are holding for me and then I pick up final May 2024 supplies. Today is the eight year anniversary of my last day at work and I buy a giant bottle of wine to celebrate. At home I keep wokring on the MCTS process and watch FP2 for MotoGP and Moto2 from Italy. Later I get tired of seing rust on the pizza pan, so I take ut a Dermel tool and wirebursh and sand away the rust. What's the worst that can happen - the rust comes back and I should buy a new pizza pan. Otherwise, I have a new pizza pan. Later I'm both physically and mentally hungover so I watch the ice hockey playoff games and bake some chocolae chip cookies. Yesterday I did enine semi-lightweight sets for my shoulders throughout the day and today I get in six sets. (The shoulders still show after-effects from twenty years of ice hockey but also torn rotator cuffs from the bicycle accident and I'm going to slowly and gradually get rid of these bad effects.)
On Saturday my legs are still very tired. Thus I switch from the intended road bicycle ride to a recovery mountain bicycle ride. It takes a few kilometers to get going, but I have a good ride. Except that there are two different organized runs along the river trail or along the ocean, so I'm extra diligent about runners jumping into my path. At home I weedwack the roses and grab a shower and start in with MotoGP/2/3 qualifying from Imola, Italy. Later I keep following the MCTE process that I started - it looks like might not finish until Sunday. And later I watch an ice hockey playoff game.
On Sunday and Monday I continue good workouts with a fifteen kilometer run/walk and a 65 kilometer road bicycle loop ride. On both days I do a lot of work on the MCTS process, watch various classes of motorcycle racing from Imola, Italy, and watch the last Stanley Cup finalist be determined on Sunday night.