Well…running about on time this morning and didn’t get up until almost 6 so I guess that’s progress…but I don’t like the idea of taking sleeping pills every day so I don’t think I will…just needed a couple of days of sleep to recharge so I don’t feel exhausted all the time…but we’ll see how that worked as the day goes on….I do have a nagging left hamstring pain that has been there for a couple of days now and I’m not sure if I’ll take something for it before getting on the bike this morning….don’t want to get back in that habit if I can just work it out by going a little easy for a couple of miles…didn’t get much done yesterday but cook some and watch sports all day after fixing the bike but I do have stuff to get done today….need to go over the shop to have the new muffler hung at 9 and I hope that goes well…I’m a little concerned that the flange on the cat is corroded too much to have it seal and I sure don’t want to buy a new cat until I have the car in the garage over the winter so I’m going to keep my fingers crossed…then I need to get back into the normal routine and head over to the house to fix the storm door on the front of the house that the previous tenant screwed up…but, it looks like just moving it a little on the door frame will do it….hope so…more later….
All posts by James DeVol
It’s been a day…
Well…this day started out okay with getting a ride in early and then getting into what I had scheduled for the day…and I ran the instant pot and the thighs came out great after I took the skin off first and seasoned them, then let them set in the fridge for a couple of hours before cooking them…very tasty and I think that will be the way to do it from now on…but, with that working out good, I had problems with the bike today and had to do repairs in the woods just to get back here when the nut that holds the sprockets on came loose and, even after fixing it, I still only had up to 6th to ride it back here…so when I was fixing it, I noticed that there was lots of wear on the 7th and 8th gears and I think that was part of why 7th had started to skip today…so, I changed out the entire cassette with one that I had on the old bike that had the same ratios but is chromed which makes it really hard to the point that it has virtually no wear on it after more than 5,000 miles on the old bike…I am a little disappointed that this cassette only lasted 7,000 miles before the teeth wore out…but, the chrome one looks pretty cool on the bike and worked great on the test ride so I can get back to normal tomorrow…now it’s veg time with races and the Lions playing in an hour or so…
September 8th
Well…running a little late today with wanting to get the bike ride in before the F1 race and just getting back here a minute ago…it’s strange how busy I am once I decide to get on a certain schedule for the day…I know I don’t have to be busy but I can’t be a slug, either, and I feel better when I try to get something done…I did take an otc sleeping pill last night for the first time in almost a year due to the frustration I’ve been feeling with not getting any sleep over the past few weeks…but I’m not sure if it has helped or not since I still feel exhausted but I have just started my morning coffee so that may help…I know I can still feel the aid and that will make me sluggish until it wears off…didn’t get a lot done yesterday but cook and I made some chicken for lunch that I had in a dry marinade overnight and that came out really good so I think I do that for the thighs I’m doing in the instant pot this morning…and I made some fettucini alfredo that I had been thinking about for a while so I’ll have leftovers for most of the week…not sure if I’m going to clean today or not but the bathroom sure needs it so I may try to do that today…who knows? More later….
Impeachment is coming….
Well…finally…with the news from the past couple of days, it appears that the 6 committees that are investigating trump have agreed that they need to vote on formalizing their investigations into a single impeachment investigation…and that vote is going to happen next Wednesday…and with dem control of the house, the vote will pass. One thing to remember is that there is enough evidence to impeach trump even before the bombshell revelations this week that trump is blackmailing the Ukraine into faking evidence that trump wants to attack Biden by withholding 250 million dollars in military aid that congress passed to help Ukraine protect itself from Russia….yep, naked blackmail that is being run by Rudy Giuliana…corruption on an epic scale that can’t go unanswered and that will now be part of the impeachment investigation. But, it’s not the only recently revealed corruption that trump and his cronies have been perpetrating…just yesterday, it was reveled that trump has ordered the air force to use a failing airport near his Scotland resort for refueling to keep it from closing and making it hard to get to trump’s resort…yep, trump is buying fuel for military planes at retail using taxpayer’s money to prop up his resort in Scotland….and the cronies he has put in charge of the military are going along with it…is this enough, repubs? Is this damn enough for you to convict after this crook is impeached? In any normal time, it should be…but with Moscow Mitch in control of the senate, there won’t even be a trial and trump will be able to continue to line his pockets with taxpayer money while the repubs close their eyes and destroy the rule of law. We can use Mitch’s behavior in the 2020 election, though, and maybe send him back to turtleland…now I can say this again…impeach….
September 7th
Well…damn…a 4:57 morning and that is with getting to bed at 11:30 and being up and down all night…oh, well…but, I’m not too sore this morning so that’s something…and I had an okay day yesterday with getting two bike rides in but not doing too much else…oh, I did get the microwave cleaned on the way to cleaning all the counters in the kitchen and the stove top…and, I should do the floors, too but I’m not sure I’ll get to it today…or maybe the bathroom…who knows? I am going to cook today with all of the leftovers gone but I think I’ll do the instant pot later…did a dry marinade on some chicken breasts over night and want to cook them for lunch to see how the rub tastes…I may even make some homemade fries to go with them…haven’t done those in a while….It’s kind of a pain to have to wait to go out on the bike until it gets light and that time comes later every day….need to get out before 7:30 so I can get back here before F1 qualifying starts around 9 and it is still cold out there, too….hope we get one more warm spell before it turns to fall…more later…
A mish mash of politics…
Well…as promised, I am going to do some political ones over the next few days and I thought I’d start with a sort of a mish mash of different topics since nothing is really grabbing me right now…let’s start with the debacle of a trip the second idiot had to Ireland over the weekend where they could not have planned it to be worse…maybe they should have planned for it to be a shitshow and then, because they are incompetent, it may have turned out good? The whole mess started when the second idiot and his staff booked their rooms at, of course, a trump property that was 180 miles away from where the conference was being held that he was attending…and it is quite hard to get 180 miles away from anything in Ireland but these morons did it…and they said out loud that first idiot trump “suggested” it, continuing to line his pockets with taxpayer money…by contrast, when Joe Biden visited Ireland for official business when he was VP, he stayed at the ambassador’s residence in Dublin at no extra cost of taxpayer money. After this grift was reported, trump’s staff tried to walk back the fact that he “suggested” Pence stay at his property saying that they never suggested anything…but we all know they lie about everything so of course they’re lying about that. Oh, and while there, Pence just had to weigh in on Brexit, praising Boris Johnson…and telling the Irish they should listen to him, completely oblivious to the fact that Ireland is staying in the EU and that Boris Johnson has nothing to say about Ireland at all…just another ignorant comment from Pence while he tries to keep trump happy by parroting trumpisms everywhere he goes. Okay…I guess this one is just going to be one topic and I’ll have to come back for a second one in a while…weird how often that happens…
September 6th
Well…that was another crappy night of sleep and it shouldn’t have been…but, I just figured out part of the reason…forgot to use flonase last night and I am miserable this morning with my nose completely plugged up…and I have a low grade headache to go with it…so, I won’t forget that again…and I may even use some this morning before I get on the bike since the goldenrod is blooming along the my entire route…I am a little happy that I am going to have an enforced weekend off the house and everything else with the car being down…I have made enough progress that the house will be un condemned as soon as the windows are in and I got the feeling yesterday that it is finally a house again and not just a project with finishing the bathroom and getting the furnace running…along with testing the downstairs fridge which started right up so I could move into it any time and live there so, with almost two months until my lease is up, that takes a load off and makes this a no stress weekend…I do have to cook some after today since I still have leftovers to use but I need to think what I want to make…and I do have to finally clean some around here…or not…might just take the day off completely…more later…
Not the best of days…
Well…yeah, I’ll get to a bunch of political ones tomorrow and over the weekend since the car is down for the count until Monday…had a hanger connected to the pipe just behind the cat rot out on the way home and the car is now too loud to drive so I will be carless until Monday morning when I am having the new pipe hung by the same guy that did the last one…but the hanger that rusted out isn’t even on the new one so I hope the rest of it fits…it still has 4 hangers on it and I’ll keep the one from the old pipe and weld it on if I need it…so, Tom…I may have to use your welder but I think it will be okay without it but we’ll see…so, I have an enforced 3 day weekend off the house and that’s a bit of a pain just when I was making some good progress…let the furnace do a cycle and it turned on and shut down just like it’s supposed to and I got the belt on the blower adjusted so it doesn’t make any noise anymore and I oiled the bearings in the oil caps…yep, it’s that old, and it is pretty damn quiet so maybe it was an okay day…it’s just hard for me to have to wait to have the car fixed but I’ll take some deep breaths and just ride the bike and amuse myself some other way…okay…I’m going to try to repair it…just found a clamp that is big enough to fit around the pipe but I don’t have any beer cans so I’m using six layers of folded aluminum foil that should deform into the hole and make it usable in an emergency…..and the hole is only about a half inch across…okay, closer to an inch but I’m going to try it anyway…
September 5th
Well…got all the way to 5:45 this morning and that is just damn unusual…but, I’m not sure that helped much since I am just worn out right now…and I forgot to make coffee last night with putting the coffeemaker parts in the dishwasher so I am running late today…I’m not sure what my schedule is going to look like today with it only being 49 degrees out there right now and I am not going to get on the bike with it that cold…so maybe after it warms up some but that will mean no house until after lunch today…I do need to hit HF to get some more supplies since I ran out of painter’s tape yesterday and I still have the front door to paint…I did get the furnace running yesterday…after a fashion but it seems to be out of time and I think I’ll have to have someone come and look at it…I did get two rides in yesterday but my right hip is killing me for some reason and I don’t remember hurting it…must have done it at the house or maybe I’m just getting old…who knows? More later….
The incridble shrinking “president”…
Well…how much more childish and small can a 70+ year old man get? Just yesterday, after the idiot trump lied (or was confused) about the hurricane forecast for Dorian, saying that Alabama was in danger even though no forecast from any weather organization even mentioned that it hitting Alabama was even a remote possibility…I can’t even believe I’m typing this…trump took a sharpie and marked up one of the NOAA maps to make it look like he was right…yep, just a black sharpie balloon added to the possible storm track to make trump look like he was right…and since the rest of the track was not in black, it was really quite clear that it was the drawing of a 4 year old toddler that was pouting when he was called out for being wrong. Now, did he think no one would notice a hand drawn appendage to a computer generated map? Is he so damn insecure and delusional that he thought that altering the map would prove him right? To use the words of Kamala Harris…”dude gotta go”…and right now…