On Monday night and into Tuesday morning when I wake up, I've been debating whether I should take a leg day off and lift weights or go cycling. When I climb out of bed I put on my cycling clothes and get out for a good 65 kilometer ride. The leg day off will have to wait until Wednesday. At home I trim the roses and bring all new blooms into the house, grab a shower, and try to get a haircut. But the place is "booked", though there is only one hair cutter and only one customer present, until three hours away, so I just say, "I'll have to come back another day", and I go do grocery shopping. I focus on finishing the permutation writeup and by 1pm it is online. (https://medium.com/@ray-90807/are-baseball-batting-lineups-optimal-fa7c3a8dbf27) During the writing I take a quick break to try and debug a kitchen light that has been flakey for a long time. I simply switch the light bulbs between the two sockets (within a single light fixture) and get an explosion and black marks all over when I turn the light on. What's going on here? I extract the blown bulb and save it for a real electrician and put things back together. One of the light fixtures (with two bulbs) works and has always worked. But the problemmatic light fixture (with two bulbs) does not work at all and one light bulb holder is charred and destroyed. I'm lucky that I did not cause a house fire! I read the news and markets and finally by 2:30pm I am sitting down for lunch. Later I flip back and forth betwen the ice hockey playoff game and the Dodgers' game.
I usually take Wednesday's off from working the legs, but today I get in a fast mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back home again. Shouldn't my legs have been tired from the last seven days of cycling and running? I immediately go and mow the front and back yards. Mowing the lawn is quick right now because the growth is much slower and there is less need to keep emptying the mower bag (as opposed to February when the rains keep the grass growing rapidly). After a shower I ride the mountain bicycle (and lock it up, of course) to the grocery store for a big collection of vegetables and a bottle of wine. And in between reading the news, I cook the vegetables in a tomato-based wine sauce (as I used to do on Sundays for the upcoming workweek). We'll see how long this batch lasts. I also repair a kitchen cabinet which has fractured in half. The installers put a wood screw attaching the cabinet "catch" right through an attachment hole. And that is where the fracture occurred. Good old Elmers clue and a C-clamp should take care of the problem. After getting the permutation analysis and report finished, I go back and see where I can tidy up the code and get it ready to be used as a fitness function for use with a genetic algorithm or an artificial intelligence algorithm. I don't make much progress, but, in theory, I have until AUgust to get it ready for either a California Statue University Computer Science senior design project or for my own use. (Yes, I'm in contact with the CSULA computer science faculty about this project and my the mechanical engineering senior design faculty member is fully behind me - even if it means he loses me for a year.) The rest of the day is a slow day though I try to find kitchen light replacements, if necessary, and I catch some of the Dodgers' game. Tomorrow will be a leg day off and I'll lift weights for the upper body.
I enjoy my leg day off. I wake up a bit late and get to work on some permutations. But I also start to clean up the code that I got from GitHub. The code had tons of mixsed spaces and tabs, which makes modifying the code a real pain. So I'm just taking my time making sure everything is tab-fielded as Python prefers and is much easier to modify or add to. This is for my own sanity and in case CSULA picks up my proposed senior design computer science project. I take a break near 8:30 am to go lift weights - again some lifts are a bit short and some are longer. Then I trim roses and bring all new blooms into the house. After a shower I go back to the permutation code and make great progress with a little break to unclamp the glued kitchen cabinet. I've let it stay clamped together for 24 hours. And I relize there are some markings on the cabinet which I'll have to touch up. These had to have been caused by the blow up of the electrical light and light bulb because the cabinet latch was perfect before the occurrence. I go pback to the code and soon have it running with all tabs - a Python friendly environment for development and modification. Just to make sure it is working properly, I run a few permutation runs, though not the 15 hour runs, and later plot the results and things are looking great! By now it is 2pm and I better eat something if I am going to ride the road bicycle long on Friday. The rest of the day is spent organizing a few things that are on my to-do list and watching some of the Dodgers' game.
I'm immediately awake at the 5:30am alarm and on a mission. I take my blood pressure and body temperature, as always, and then get dressed and prepared for a road bicycle ride. Today I want to ride extra long. I get to the EL Monte dam and continue to the Santa Fe dam where I stop for a few miutes to have an energy gel. Then I continue south on the San Gabriel river trail. I'm feeling stroing physically but I'm losing mental motivation. Thus I take the turn off on Del AMo and sprint like a madman home for a total of 100 kilometers. I was hoping for 120 kilometers. AFter a shower I go to the grocery store for supplies and wine and start drinking the wine as I work reinforcing the permutation runs and writeup. I take a break to wacth a very inconclusive FP2 for F1 from Spain and to have lunch of vegetables and pasta. The afternoon lulls a bit as I wait for long permutation runs to finish. I point to youtube.com and watch a number of old videos from the 1970s and 1980s to bring back some old memories - something I will do about once every three months. For half of the songs I'm in tears because of the good memories and good feelings that they bring back to me. And later I switch back and forth between the ice hockey playoff game and the Dodgers' game.
I start Saturday, after a great night of sleep, by seeig that one long permutation run has finished. Thus that data is saved and I start another 15 hour run. I'm out the door near 6:15am for a mountain bicycle recovery ride. I get in a good sprint along the ocean coming home, but then my legs are tired so I try to keep up the pace north on the Los Angeles river as much as possible. And I'm glad to get home. Today I see the duck family again and I see that the two ducklings are bigger now, compared with a few weeks ago, and I'm happy that they are progressing. At home I get in a shower and ride the bicycle to the grocery store for a bottle of wine. At home I watch an exciting and close qualifying for the F1 race in Spain on Sunday. From there, I switch back and forth between watching golf, scrubbing my shower, relaxing on the couch, processing some permutation data, and watching the Dodgers' game. The permutation data all looks good and now it's time, within a day or two after another 15 hour run completes, to take the next step and add some artificial intelligence.
I wake up early on Sunday and cannot sleep. AFter tossing and turning for a while, I get out of bed at 5:15 am and prepare to go about my day. Today I run extra long and get in twenty kilometers of run/walk as I've increased the run-to-walk ratio to where it was before the 10 June oral surgery. At home I trim the roses and bring all new blooms into the house. And as I start my shower, I use the vinegar solution and scrub brushes to clean a bit of the shower. Its less painfull to clean a bit of the shower and let this go on over three or four days rather that do it all at ounce. Of course, if somebody visits, they'll see my shower in disarray with all of the cleaning supplies. But they'll just have to get over it. I start a final permutation run, clean the dishes, and get ready to cook spicy Thai curry vegetables to last for the next few days. And then, near 11am, I get down on the couch to watch a very close SPanish F1 race.
My legs and entire organism is so sore and tired from Fridays 100 km bicycle ride, Saturdays 45 km recovery ride, and Sundays 20 km run. Nonetheless I get on the mountain bicycle and sping down to the old yacht club and back to home. It's not my fastest ride, but the entire organism and legs feel better. I spend time cleaning up the shower by scraping soap scum off the tile with a razor blade and scrubbing with a vinegar solution. And then take a shower. I get back on the bicycle and have a short ride to the grocery store for a couple of supplies to go with the Thai curry that I cooked yesterday and will have for lunch. I read the news and markets. I then add standard deviations to the permutation problem and look forward to wraaping a genetic algorithm or artificial intelligence algorithm around the problem. Except that I keep messing up the indices at which to search over. This takes hours to get right and I break for lunch with Thai curry cooked yesterday and rice. After lunch I finally finish all of the permutations and standard deviations. The permutation effort has shown their are better solutions than the ones being used. Now I need a concise algorithm to find the best (or better) without purely running many permutations. Later in the day I watch game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs with an exciting oen goal game and the team that wanted to win comesthough and wins.
On Tuesday morning, with the entire organism and legs tired, I anticipate a one hour walk befor egetting ready so see my radiologist. After a ten minute walking warmup I feel better and I do a run/walk for sixtye minutes. Granted I do a bit mor walking and less running than usual, but still its' a good run walk to get the day started. At the radiologist's office I tell hie about the good things: long bicycle ride, half marathon runs, lifting weights to gain strength and ten pounds, and the temporary prostethetics for my front teeth. Bt I also tell hime how depressed and demoralized I was when one implant was infected and had to be removed and a second, during surgery, had to be removed. We both agree that implants are now off the table and I'll have to have a bridge or dentures for my front five or six teeth. I'm depressed, and I tell the doctor so, but I accept this and tell hime, "You know, I've always had a positive attitude and will make this work". At home I simply summarize algorithmically the permutation runs and start writing a second article about the results. During the afternoon I take a break and I don't know why, but I put an ice pack on my forehead, upper head, back of the head, and neck and it feels good.What the blank is this? And tomorrow I will go see my maxilofacial surgeon and hopefully get good progress and we'll discuss what to do from here. The radiologist and I have agreed there should be no more implants - of course effing no because they're just going to get infected and removed - and we see discuss alternatives. These will be discussed with the maxilfacial surgeon before I go back to the prosthodontist. What an effing mess!
I start Wednesday morning by sleeping a bit late and getting out on the mountain bicycle ride. Today the Los Angeles river trail is blocked south of Anaheim street, so I ride along ANaheim street to Pine and to the ocean trail. And then reverse the process coming home. It gives me a chance to see all of the new businessses in the area butalso all of the empty storefront. Afer a shower I read the news and markets and ride the motorcycle up to Century City to visit the maxil-facial surgeon who did the surgery sixteen days ago. He says it is healing very well. We talk and I let it slip that I've always been in a positive, "give it my all" mood, but after I heard two of my implant posts were infected, I was very depressed for a week or so. He listens and realizes this is out of character for me and besides telling me how well I've responded to a complicated manidulectomry surgery and all of the cycling and running I'm doing, he asks me, "Are you going to harm yourself"? I answer with an emthatic "NO!" and reinforce how positive my attitude has always been but I just had a bad period - my first ever setback - and now the entire implant process is no longer on the table. I thank him for asking that question because it is out of character for our discussions but he's being on his toes asking this question. SO now I see this doctor again in a few weeks and a day later the prosthdontist to see what can be done to get my five missing teeth back. I have a good motorcycle ride home and continue to put miles on the bike so I can get past the break-in period and continue to learn its capabilities compared to the previous bike that I rode everyday for twenty years. At home I finish up the added permutation work and start writing that up to be finished on Thursday. And I become a vegetable because the entire organism is still tired.
Thursday is a planned day off from legs since my entire organism and legs are tired. I'm out the door at 6am to get to the ATM, drop off a library book (in the after-hours dropbox), get to Home Depot, and stop in at the grocery store for supplies. I read the news and markets for a bit and then go lift weights. All of my lifts are good except the bench press is down a few repetitions for each set. I then trim the roses, wipe down the gold rims on the World Rally Car (They had a coat of wax applied a while ago, so it's just loose brake dust that wipes off easily), do a few minutes of weedwacking and weepup, and then step intothe shower with a razor blade and vinegar solution. No - I haven't decided to slit my wrists and drink pure vinegar. I use the razor blade to scrape the soap scum off the tile, then spray the tile with a vinegar solution, let it set, then srub and rinse it off. The are of the shower that I did, which accumulates the majority of soap scum, looks brand new. I'll do a bit of this effort over the next few days and have a brand new shower! As I sit down to work on the second permutation document, the phone calls come in. My CT scan is scheduled and my picking up a replacement light fixture for the one that burnt out is scheduled. (That light fixture from Restoration Hardware was fifteen years old, so it was hard to find a duplicate.) This slow day for the entire organism and legs has been trmendously productive! So I finish the second permutation article and send it off and enjoy spicy Thai curry for lunch and relax. And then, to both raise my blood pressure and get me angry, I watch the special presidential debate.
I've been having weird dreams for the last couple of hours of sleep and my blood pressure is within the normal range but elevated a bit. I get on the road bicycle and go past the EL Monte dam, stopping at the Santa Fe dam for an energy gel, and then cranking on home against a slight headwind for a good 100 kilometer ride. I relax a bit and then ride the motorcycle down to a Mediterranean restaurant to meet my Khmer friend Malyneath. We've known each other for probably eight years but haven't seen each other in person since before the pandemic started. We have a super-delicious Meiditerranean lunch and she announcs that she is getting married to somebody she met during one of her human trafficking events. I'm happy for her! Her Dad is picking her up and I can speak some Khmer language to him and he's excited that I can speak a few phrases and when I call him "lok thom" - which means "big man" or "big boss" in Khmer. And he laughs when I call myself, in Khmer, stick ox. (I used to be the old ox in Khmer, but after losing 50 pounds to cancer, I'm the stick ox.) Because I don't want to pay for parking, I ride the motorcycle down the pedestrian walkway, across the sidewalk, and into the street where I can get to the freeway. It's great to have a smaller, super agile motorcycle! At home I watch the F1 practice from Austria, the MotoGP FP2 from Assen, Netherlands, and the Moto2 FP2 from Assen. When I go to have a light dinner I see a lot of blood on the couch. I get cold water to rub it off and I'm fairly successful, but where did it come from? I can't find any open or closed wounds. And then I do some mid-year financial updates and look up grant opportunities for Malyneath for the work that she is doing. Unfortunately, I know she's going to ask me for help in writing the grant proposals. And I can help her with these.
On Saturday I sleep well but I'm still hungover from Friday's long ride. Regardless I get out on the mountain bicycle for a recovery ride down to the old yacht club and back tb home. The legs get going after six or eight kilometers and its a good ride. At home I spend time pulling weeds out of the carnation bed and then grab a cooling shower. I go to the grocery store for some supplies and then start in with qualifying for the F1 sprint from Austria and the MotoGP/2/3 qualifying sessions from the Netherlands. I've committed to help Malyneath work on writing grants and she wants to talk after 4pm today. Okay, not a problem. I'm ready to write and help and give direction and technical direction to these proposals as long as I get some guidance. In the meantime, I work on some very old stock market prediction algorithms where I'll just consider the most recent data. And I watch some golf from Detroit, Michigan - near where I grew up. Here's another weekend where I rode 100 kilometers on the bicycle on Friday and a recovery ride on Saturday. Will I run 20 kilometers on Sunday, run shorter, or lift weights (before F1 and MotoGP races). We'll find out soon.
My legs are tired on Sunday, so I decide to sleep a bit late and lift weights. I start the day working on some curve matching algorithm just to take my mind off the Monte Carlo Tree Search effort, trim the roses, and then lift weights. AGain the bench press is lacking repetitions, but the other lifts are good. After a shower I relax and have a "mixture day" I keep mixing up watching F1 racing from Asutria with tidying the bathroom with MotoGP racing from the Netherlands with trimming a few tree branches that are growing in a direction that I don't want them to grow in with other little activities. A good Sunday and enjoy getting down for reading before sleep.
I get up a shade late but I'm out the door for a run/walk before 6:15am. I run/walk for an hour and as I'm cooling down I see a neighbor, Paula, starting her walk. So I walk with her for twenty minutes and explain to her the bicycle accident and cancer and that's why she hasn't seen me much. She says she'll come over later today and we'll exchange phone numbers. After a shower I read the news and markets quickly and Paula does come over and we exschange contact information (in case one of us needs anything) and we have a nice visit. I then drive to a consignment shop in Gardena that syas that they have my exact fifteen year old kitchen light fixture originally from Restoration Hardware. I gocheck it out and it is the same one. So she cleans it up a bit and I buy it in order to replace the "always flakey one" that blew up a couple weeks ago. She says somebody in Beverly Hills was doing a kitchen remodel and she picked out all of the stuff that she thought she could share on consignment. Does this mean that I need to remodel my kitchen since it is fifteen years old? At the consignment shop I see a young man and woman and the man has a Krabi, Thailand t-shirt on so I ask if he's been there. And he has and I haven't, but we talk about the country and the people. Later I come home and sign up for a month of Peacockfor %5.99 so that I can watch the Tour de France. And later I watch the F1 race from Austria witha wild set of circumstances in the last ten laps that people will talk about for a long time.