Beer Goggle Dreams

March 24, 2009 11:10 AM 3/24/09

Worked out on the Wii yesterday for 20 minutes and my Wii Fit age went down to 36! Cool! Of course it also said I gained 4 lbs between yesterday and the day before. Not too concerned because that happened the last time I got in shape due to muscle mass and increased blood flow. I can’t wait to see what it says when I get on it today. :-)

The damn thing tired me out last night so I went to bed pretty early so I didn’t get anything but the dishes done.

Things are getting a bit better organized at home. I’m going to move the wireless router and re-wire a couple of things so that the small printer is in the library. That will leave the wire in the third bedroom free for the large printer and be a little better wired.

Now that the plow is off the lawn tractor there’s a little more room in the garage for me to work so I can get more organization into that. I need to have work space for both computers and everything else. I really need to get moving on that because once planting season hits I’ll be too busy.

Worked out the basic solar/thermal design in my head. I’ve got the original sketches done so now all I need to do is acquire the building materials. Not sure where I’m going to mount it for testing but a southern exposure will obviously be best.

The Vicodin isn’t helping with gum pain. I’m taking a generic ibuprofen at work but I don’t want to take too much of that for obvious reasons. The suture is still in my mouth and hasn’t dissolved yet so it feels like there’s something stuck back there when there isn’t anything but the suture. Still got to be careful about eating but I can eat out of the left side of my mouth for now and be okay. Have to flush my mouth with water after eating which turns out isn’t a bad thing to do anyway.

Been taking my full complement of vitamins the last few days without issue. I shouldn’t have a problem continuing that as long as I remember to eat before taking them in the morning.

Still non biting my fingernails (Yay!) and typing has become interesting. I’m filing them okay but it’s still weird having that extra pressure when I hit a key on the keyboard. Never thought fingernails would be an issue...

Back to work for me!

March 19, 2009 11:38 AM 3/19/09

So today is the day I remove some wisdom from my head. Not that I have that much to spare anyway. ;-) That will leave yet another hold in my head for a while until it grows over. ^_^

Regardless the oral surgeon’s office wants 20% paid at time of service so I’m kind of glad we’ve got those funds lying around.

All that aside I’ll be glad to get rid of the regular pain this thing has caused me.

( There's a hole in my head dear Lyza dear Lyza... )

March 9, 2009 11:09 AM 3/9/09

We had our first real thunderstorm yesterday. Spring is on its way...

I’ve volunteered to teach Plants 101 to my sister-in-law which shouldn’t be too hard as she’s pretty bright. She’s interested in growing her own tomatoes so I’ll start with that and walk her through the entire process including making the upside-down 2-litre planter as she has very little horizontal space in her condo.

Anyway to teach her this stuff I’m going to have to clean off the one workbench. Thankfully I need to do that anyway so I can set up the starter tray with the pet bed heater and the LED grow light.

DIdn’t eat right this weekend really. Ate far too much food and a good portion of it not good for me. I did try stir-frying some extra firm tofu but that didn’t turn out well. I’ve had some friends a number of years ago prove to me that tofu can be meat flavored/textured properly but at this point I don’t believe them and think they were lying to me at the time because what I cooked yesterday tastes nothing like meat

It’s supposed to be colder and rainy the rest of the week so no closing the valve on the rain barrel yet but soon...

We ordered the Wii Fit yesterday from Amazon. That should be here some time this week. Supposedly it kicks all sorts of ass - including the players. It’ll be interesting to see how it works out. I’m curious to try the yoga for some reason.

No sign of the other E-Bay items I’ve bought yet. I’m hoping the brain bucket and gloves will be in this week because I want them for when it gets warm enough to ride again. The rest of the stuff cane trickle in as it will.

No cuts needed in my posts now...no time to write long stuff...

February 27, 2009 11:14 AM 2/27/09

So they did layoffs at work today. Thankfully I’m not among them but due to my being in charge of certain things I had to know a couple days ahead of time. That kind of ate at me because it meant I had to work with people I’ve known for quite some time, several years some of them, and not say a thing. Act like everything was okay.

I hate doing that shit. I know it’s necessary but I hate it with a passion. *sigh*

( No pie today despite what it says below... )

February 13, 2009 11:08 AM 2/13/09

Just rescued a small computer for a friend of mine - an interesting little thing called a Pied Piper system. A small desktop from more ancient times. ;-)

I don’t mind rescuing things like this as they are truly part of people’s heritage even if they don’t think so now. In another decade there won’t be near as many old computers around thanks to people scrapping them with great speed.

( Speaking of computers... )

February 5, 2009 11:57 AM 2/5/09

So after getting annoyingly sung to by the restaurant staff I got balloons in my cube and a banner that my co-workers signed. That was okay.

Needless to say I’m glad that’s over with...

It was a nasty -1 degrees out this morning when I left the house. That was fun. Not.

( Garage puttering and squirrel mania... )

January 30, 2009 11:07 AM 1/30/09

The cold medicine is helping really it is! *shudders at the taste*

So we’re pretty close to some organizational milestones at home. I truly hope I can get the garage/third bedroom stuff sorted out this weekend. That would allow us to shuffle loose stuff from the rest of the house into that room and clean/organize the remaining stuff.

Having the house nice and clean will allow us to tackle other things without having the main house stuff on our minds and it’ll be easier to keep clean as well.

And hopefully I’ll be able to start the garden plants in the garage soon as well. Some of the things like the pepper plants just have to be set up and started by the end of February if I want a decent harvest from them. I’m not doing like I did last year and start too late and plant too early. ( I love my heated garage... )

January 22, 2009 11:09 AM 1/22/09

So I got a few more things on my list done last night but there’s still more to be completed. Tonight I will hopefully compress everything in the third bedroom so that tomorrow I shall be able to move the bedroom/office stuff that is in the garage into that room. Then this weekend I re-organize the garage (among other things) and move the compressed stuff out there.

It’s sad how long this is taking me - truly sad. I should have had this done the middle of last year. :-(

I feel so old sometimes because I’m moving so slow on these things. When I first became an adult I used to move quickly, get what I needed to do done, and then go back to fun things. Then for some reason I’ve slowed down.

The weight of age and the weight of myself. It almost feels like I imagined Bruce Wayne felt in the graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns. I used to be able to just DO all this stuff and now it’s like I’m a shadow of my former self.

I know I’ll get some of that back once I lose the weight but it’s more than that. Huh. Sounds like a genuine mid-life-crisis but late. Figures. I’ve been a late bloomer with everything else in my life. :-/

Regardless I need to handle the situation and handle it soon or I’ll wear myself down beyond the capacity for repair. And that would suck most mightily.

I need to get things in order so I can go back to the fun things. And I’ve got a _lot_ of fun things I want to do. ;-)

But then I suppose that’s true of a lot of people. So many hours are wasted by doing things that suck. Star Trek style replicators and self-sufficient power can’t come soon enough for me. Having those would reduce quite a bit of strife in the world in my opinion. Not all of it obviously but it would certainly but probably enough that we would be able to take a breath as a species.

Still working on the garden plan in my head but not that much more as it’s pretty much finalized. Now I just need to get it all on paper and then start acquiring/producing the materials. Yet another reason to finish the garage organization.

I really would love to do something like help someone build a hydroponics system in large-scale. I’d love for someone to fund something like taking one of the old empty manufacturing plants that abound in the Midwest and convert it for growing food hydroponically. I think it could easily be done especially if the building was not used to manufacture anything toxic. (The seller/donator would have to pass an EPA inspection on the building which I think they have to do anyway.) One of those single-story, long and flat, old-style buildings would be perfect. Put in a bunch of solar cells for power and LED grow lights along with the flood pumps and all the other stuff and you’d be able to grow almost anything productively.

One plant of that size could grow year ‘round and thus make money year ‘round. And in a declining economy the one thing people are going to need is food. You’d be able to under-cut the competition on whatever you could grow during winter, it would be locally transported only so you wouldn’t have any bug fuel costs, AND did I mention that it would be an insanely longer growing season?

Geeze. This is a great idea and would be perfect for a co-op of people to get their own business running. Get it together people! C’mon!

Because if you don’t _I_ will. ;-P

January 20, 2009 11:05 AM 1/20/09

I’m at the restaurant today but I really shouldn’t be because we can’t really afford for me to eat like this any more. Money is tight this week.

As usual we overspent a bit but that is correctable and we have enough to pay the bills still. I need to get my office stuff set up pronto so I can get a handle on the paperwork. I’ve been slacking. And anyway I’m not going to do all the money related stuff outside anyway for security reasons. It’s not any more or less secure in the garage than the average home I just feel funny about it.

I couldn’t get to sleep last night - the mind just kept racing. But then I also have been busy and forgot to take my vitamins the last week so I’m not surprised things aren’t working right. ( (And yes I’m well aware of the fact that the vitamin situation is similar to having to take “meds” every day. The irony is not lost on me.) )

January 6, 2009 11:36 AM 1/6/09

Macjournal just horked and I had to restore from the copy stored on my thumb drive. (A copy that I will promptly update as soon as I post this.)

So it looks like I might have to update Macjournal just in case.

In other news....it’s snowing again. Thankfully it seems light at the moment so I’ll probably wait until it accumulates a little before plowing.

It’s okay getting back to work and I’m getting things done but *shrug*.

So other than almost losing everything I’ve ever typed into Macjournal things are moving right along.

Considering paying off the one personal loan in a few weeks here then letting the auto-deducted money go into savings. It’ll take time to build up cash but that should be okay.

My wife’s back is killing her and she should be at home in bed but she’s not going to do that because she needs to save vacation time for our trip to Montana this year.

I finished the basic layout of the garden plan for this year on the computer yesterday. Now I just need to accumulate bricks and eventually topsoil. We’re expanding it out to the end of the garage and replacing the fence with a better one. I’m also going to put down weed guard and rocks between the back of the garden and the neighbor’s fence so I can get behind the climber beans I’m going to put there AND so that I don’t have to trim the weeds there as well.

I’m trying the L-Tryptophan for sleep aid this week. So far it hasn’t kicked in but we’ll just have to wait and see. I know that melatonin keeps me awake for some reason so I can’t try the valarian/Tryptophan/melatonin comb unfortunately.

I need to seriously get cracking on the garage so I can get set up to start plants in there soon. I need to be able to do that and still be able to move the racks out of the way for vehicles if they need to be repaired. (And I still need to make a place for the “ugly green couch” as my wife calls it.) Getting organized is high on my list because after that it’s all maintenance and improvements.

Back to the grind after the holidays... *sigh*