In the middle of Monday night and into Tuesday morning I receive a text, though I don't hear it. It asks if I have ordered something on my credit card from Wolt, Albania. When I respond "No", it takes five seconds to receive a text message saying my credit card is cancelled due to fraudulent activity and that I will receive a new card in five days. I'm happy that my bank stays on top of my activity. I start Tuesday on the road bicycle and it seems like I'm a bit slow up to my turnaound point and back towards the ocean. I pick up some speed and soon I'm towing other riders down towards the ocean - only slowing down to let a rider know that his rear whel/bearings are making abnormal noises. When I get to the end of the ocean trail against the headwind, there is nobody behing me. Where did everyone go? I push along the ocean trail and then push home for a good ride. I get in a quick warming shower and get to the ATM and CVS pharmacy. At home I deal with some phone calls and then watch a super-exciting Moto3 race from Qatar. In the warming sunshine I trim the roses and bring new blooms into the house. Near 3pm I finally eat some vegetables and rice and watch the Moto2 race. Both Moto3 and Moto2 are exciting races. And I enjoy the brief post-race interviews with the Japanese, Brazilian, Spanish, Italian, and Turkish riders with their various commands of English. And I even try to determine which part of their home countries they came from. (Just like northern English in America is different than southern English, this is also true is other countries. And I try to pick up the differences.)
I start Wednesday with a chilly recovery ride on the mountain bicycle down to the old yacht club and back to home. I see plenty of ctivity as grandtsands and barriers are removed from the past weekend's Long Beach Grand Prix. At home I grab a shower and, craving salt, ride the bicycle to the grocery store to pick up some supplies and a small bag of potato chips. Today I attend the Gallup New Mexico Human Trafficking Task Force meeting via Zoom to hear about the human trafficking concerncs, resources, and enforcement in the Native American community. Afterwards I finally watch a fun MotoGP race from Qatar and do a bit of Python backend coding for a website. I get caught up on the Javascript front end but not the Python back end. That can be tomroorow. Later I catch some of the Dodgers' game. And I note that both Achilles tendons, though certainly not in pain, are letting me know that they need attention. So I put a cold gel pack on each Achilles tendon and squeeze my feet together and hold the outside edgees to give a complete icy cold treatment to both Achilles tendons. Since Thursday is a planned day off from cycling or running, it is not as important but I do it anyway.
I sleep in until about 7am on Thursday and start doing some coding. I'm working on a new website and getting html yo talk to Javascipt and talk to Python. Since I haven't done this for a while, I'm fairly rusty. By the end of the day in two separate sessions, everything works except a final redirect page (which I'm sure I'll get fixed easilyon Friday). I get in a good session with the weights where all of my reps are a couple higher than usual. Where did this come from. After a shower I code some more and then visit the prosthodontist. The good news is that I'll get a substantial refund from what I originally paid because all of the implants failed and we have to resort to a bridge. The bad news is that it will probably take five visits to get the final bridge perfect (as opposed to the temporary bridge that I have now and is just fine with me).
On Friday I go for a 74 minute run/walk because it is chilly and there is the threat of rain. I'll plan on an extra long bicycle ride on Saturday. At home I try to degrease the gears on my road bicycle but both the bicycle degreaser and WD-40 won't spray. When I shake the cans I can hear the fluid, but they won't spray. This happens to me regularly when I buy WD-40 where the propellant dies and won't spray the fluid out because they sit so long unused in the garage. So I clean the gears with a few drops of degreaser and will try again another time. I go outside and cut my own hair - ala during the Covid-19 pandemic. I just couldn't find a convenient time to get to the haircut place. I read the news and markets and, of course, get a phone call from the retired schoolteacher. A letter with a check has been return for improper address. So I tell her to rip it all up and the billing place will send her a new bill. She rips that letter up but in the same pile is a check TO her for $318 that she rips up. So I take the pile and puzzle back together the $318 check and bottom paperwork and tell her to take it to the bank and ask if they'll take it. Or else she will have to call the payee for a duplicate check. And I reinforce (again), if you would keep separate piles of stuff for Spectrum and healthcare and banking and etc, then that would never have happened. Anyway, it was fun putting the paper back together like a jigsaw puzzle and taping it together so she can try and cash it. Later I watch FP2 from Saudi Arabia for F1 and cook pasta to carbo-load for a long Saturday morning bicycle ride. And later I do a bit of re-styling of the latest website I'm working on and am stuck. Thus I go outside and degrease the gears and chainrings of both bicycles with WD-40 that I bought today. The running gears, chain, and chainrings of both bicycles both look brand new. I waste a bit of time and don't quite solve the last bit of my website formatting and it will have to wait another day. Not a problem since this is Easter weekend and nobody will be using this new site.
On Saturday, the day before Easter, I get in 110 kilometers on the road bicycle. Some of it is hard riding as I ride with other riders at times or I see a rider way off in the distance and chase him down. At home I grab a quick shower and watch the F1 qualifying from Saudi Arabia with lunch. I watch a bit of the Dodgers, otherwise its a relatively slow day. Today I manage to get the dishwasher started and running completely with only one screwdriver poke - as I usually have to stand near the dishwasher, listen to it quit running, pull the door open, re-poke the Start touchpad button, and quickly close the door to get it running again. But today the first poke and closing of the door gets it running through to completion. Later near 5:50pm I walk over to Smart & Final and pick up a couple of items so that I don't have to deal with a potential Easter morning crowd.
I start Sunday about ten minutes late and get in a good mountain bicycle recovery ride. My legs feel stronger than I thought they would after yesterday's long and fast ride. At home I trim the roses and bring both rose and carnations blooms into the house - the first carnation blooms of the year. I love the smell of carnations and everytime I walk past the blooms I put my nose down to get the fragrance. I install a Python module for reinforcement learning that was somewhat mentioned on a recent documentary that I saw and I play with some more reinforcement learning (as opposed to continuing to write my own). I keep refreshing my computer to see if the F1 video from Saudi Arabia is finalized - which means the race coverage is over. In the meantime I have golf playing in the background with laundry going and an early start to a Dodgers' game. I need to spend more time with this new laptop to make sure all of the Python modules work and etc. Maybe Monday. For lunch I am decadent with fish and chips (heavily salted chips). And have a slow day checking out the start of the ice hockey playoffs and poking around with the new reinforcement learning Python module.
I start Monday with a 74 minute run. I feel good if a bit tired from various running and cycling later. After the run I weedeack the rose beds to keep them clean and grab a warming shower. Since the cancer and radiation I've dropped from about 200 lbs to 150 lbs and now I'm cold all of the time. The doctors want me to gain weight to near 170 lbs, but I don't see that happening. After the shower I have sweats on again as today should maybe make 70F or maybe not. After reading the news and seeing that the pope has died, I go back to the reinforcement learning AI that I started working on recently. I make a bit of progress but there are many things to be done that I have never done before so this will be a good learning experience. And considering the trial and error, at sometimes, I can't think of bdd word that I've used during this effort. Approaching 1pm I have vegetables and rice as left over from last Saturday's BIG pot and already have raw vegetables and rice to make another BIG pot for when this one is empty. I get a call later from the prosthodontists who says that the clay impressions that they took for my permanent brdige did not work out and that O need t come back in and have them done again. At least it will be this Thursday without a long delay. And I casually ask the adminstrator how often the impressions are unaccaptable and she says she would guess about 5% of the time. She gives some reasons why they may not be acceptable and fortunately the patient is not the cause.
Tuesday starts with the typical extended loop ride on the road bicycle. It involves a loop around Long Beach but with an extension up the San Gabriel river trail past Imperial highway. It's a good 70 kilometer ride though for the first half I can tell that my legs are still tired from Saturday's long, hard ride. After a shower I run an errand or two, work on the Long Beach Human Traficking Task Force website to filter out spam email coming from Russia, and then I play a bit the new reinforcement learning AI though I am stuck a bit with the Python implementation. I take a break to watch some documentaries on a (temporary) Amazon Prime subscription and then grab lunch. Later I watch some of the Dodgers' game and vow to make Wednesday a batter day.
I'm awake before the alarmgoes off, as has been happening lately, and I get out for a mountain bicycle recovery ride to the old yacht club and back to home. My legs are very tired and they are looking forward to an off day on Thursday where I'll lift weights and get new dental impressions made (and maybe get to the library). After a warming shower where I stay in the shower for an extra 30 seconds for the warm water I get to the grocery store for cravings - bananas and tomatos and a few other things. I read the news and markets and pay some bills and do some reading on how to form a Python module (which is needed for the reinforcement learning effort). Later as the day winds down I watch some ice hockey playoff games and part of the Dodgers' game.
On Thursday I get out for another 74 minute run before trimming the roses, grabbing a shower, having breakfast, and reading the news and markets. Near noon I take the motorcycle to the main library in Long Beach to return three books and check-out six books - the most I've ever checked out. I just stumbled upon six pretty ney books and grabbed them all. I take a slow motorcycle ride along Broadway in Long Beach since I haven't been down to this area for years. I make a U-turn and make another pass to check out the old stores and new stores and old clubs and new clubs. I go to the prosthodontist who has called me back to redo the mold for my bottom teeth because he thinks he can get a better looking set after seeing the previous mold. I rush on home to visit the retired schoolteacher who is expecting me to make all of her decisions for her and take care of everything. When I've answered one question three times in five minutes I start to get frustrated. Eventually I go home to grab dinner and watch ice the ice hockey playoff games. And today I go to bed early to start reading the new books and hopefully get an early start on a road bicycle ride though there is possible drizzle in the forecast.
I'm out the door a bit after 6:30am for a good road bicycle ride up to the Santa Fe dam and back to home for a total of 100 kilometers. The entire ride down the San Gabriel river trail was against a nasty headwind but I keep cranking along with a slight break a time or two with an easier gear. And then I turn for home on Del Amo and sprint to make a few green lights (though one was already red for a couple of seconds when I went flying through it). I grab the quickest shower on record and drive like a maniac to Vons to pick up the heavy groceries and get back home. There's already a phone call from the retired schoolteacher and I run over there and note that she has about 15 tabs open in Safari. Many of these are facebook tabs or gmail tabs of which she does not have accounts. How did they get open? I get rid of all of those tabs and get her to her favorite podcate and as I'm leaving on this very short visit, I say, "You know, you can google 'what is the difference between a PPO and an HMO' and get answers from various sources since I don't really know the difference". Will she google it? 95% chance no. I read the news and markets, chop up many vegetables for one of my vegetable stews, and watch FP2 for both MotoGP and Moto2 from Spain and relax for a while. I bring in a ton of carnation blooms to sweeten up the house and then watch some ice hockey playoff games intermingled with some of the Dodgers' game. (Today I was going to take my new laptop to a coffeehouse and play with it and get it set up better, but I wimp out and decide to do that on Monday.)
Saturday is a very weird day. It is supposed to rain a bit later in the morning, so Iget out for a 17 kilometer run, rush through a shower, and put the bicycle out to go to the store for AAA batteries and wine. By the time I am ready to go the rain has hit, I put the bicycle away and drive to the store to pick up supplies. I start to install a universal box which will allow me to replace DirectTV and pay NOTHING for television coverage of about 1000 channels. I work on the U-box and dry the car off with a leaf blower and towel and let it sit in the sun for a bit. By the time I get to a convenient installation stoppping point for the U-box, it is raining again and I've missed my first chance to put the dry car into the garage. I continue to install the U-box with the absolute worst user interface ever developed and plow through it. At some point I get it working (without a VPN yet) and can get all sorts of channels that I never even knew existed. By now the rain has stopped and the sun is out, so I use the leaf blower to blow the standing water off the car, towel it dry, and put it into the garage. And then I continue playing with the U-box but I can easily get all of the television channels that I typically watch plus many more, so I go put DirectTV on pause. (DirecTV allows you to put your service on pause for a number of months, by which time I will have decided whether to dump DirecTV or not at zero cost since I don't have to pay directTV $100 per month which will cover the cost of the U-box). And I relax after today's long run with ice hockey playoff games and check out U-box television channels at random just to check out for a few minutes.
I start Sunday with a mountain bicycle recovery ride in damp and threatening conditions. I get in a good ride and feel a handfull of drops of rain along the ocean. And as I return home north on the Los Angeles river I don't feel rain but notice there are a few kilometers of the trail where it is is very wet - so a quick rain shower has dropped rain between the time I started the ride and now am finishing it. At home I trim the roses, grab a quick shower, take the bicycle to the grocery store for supplies, and stop at the UPS store where a lot of construction has been happening and ask one of the workers if it will still be a UPS store. He doesn't know, but I hope it remains a UPS store. In the last few years in this shopping center we've lost a Thrifty/Rite-Aid, a CVS, and a Vons which were always convenient for me to walk to. I start in on the Tissot sprint race for MotoGP and am disappointed that the shock pole sitter crashes out on the second lap and my favorite rider finishes just outside the points in 10th place. As I start some brown rice cooking I manage to get a VPN installed on the U-box and now I am happy and I am convinced that this will be a longterm zero-monthly-cost solution to pick up 1000 television channels and my ISP will not be able to figure it out. Near the lunch of vegetables and rice I switch between the Dodgers' game and the ice hockey playoffs and start writing down my favorite channel ID numbers (out of 1000 channels) since they are certainly different from DirecTV that I have had for 25 years. Today I get in one of my once-per-hour workouts for the abdominals throughout the day and quit at eight sets. And later I watch most of the Los Angeles Kings' ice hockey playoff game.
Though I woke up early, I lay in bed and finally get out of bed at 6:30am. This has been a planned day of from cycling or running. Earlier than usual I get in a good session with the weights with only the bench press being a struggle. I quickly change my clothes and pick up vitamins from Trader Joe's, fill up up the gasoline tank on the World Rally Car, dropp off cross country skiis and golf clubs at Goodwill, and pick up a bottle of wine at CVS. Neither the cross country skiis or gold clubs have been used in more than twnety years, so it is is time to give them away. And I also toss into the paper recycling bin a number of Ben is Dead zines from the old days that did not sell on eBay. At home I carve out a wooden spacer that I can insert between a spring and stop on the lawn edger to make it work better. I'll give it a real trial tomorrow or Wednesday on the lawn. Inside the house I have an 80 minute phonecall with my eldest cousin who I have not spoken with in a few years and then I watch the Moto3 race from Spain. Later I watch some ice hockey playoff games as I continue to think about the implementation of my Python code into a useable module for the AI code.