Well…sure hope I can figure out what the heck I did last night but I was able to breathe and didn’t wake up til 6:30…and have just a hint of a headache and I’ll take that all day long…oh, and Happy St. Patrick’s day! I do have some Irish heritage so I may lift a glass later today…not sure what is going to be in the glass but I’ll lift one just the same…not making any corned beef and cabbage this year since I couldn’t find any that isn’t way too much money…I mean I got it for 2.99 a pound last year and this year it’s 4.99 and I really don’t need to spend that cash when I can get chicken for 39 cents a pound…we’ll see if it goes on sale after today and then I may buy a small two pounder…it was nice to get outside on the bike yesterday and it is warm enough to get out right now but it’s still too dark so I’ll be back on the indoor bike this morning…I do want to wash the car after the ride and then get the outdoor ride in before Michigan plays in the tournament at noon today so I’ll need to get going to get everything done before then….sill need to get some work done in the bathroom today, too, so I guess I should get going….going to finish up the leftovers today and cook some chicken later that I can use for a few things…probably some chicken tacos since I have the pepper and tortillas leftover from the pork….more later….
Feeel pretty lousy today…
Well…after getting on the downstairs bike this morning with little pain, I felt like it would be a good day to take a second ride outdoors and step up the intensity a bit..but, after I got back here I started to feel like crap and still feel that way…feel warm and exhausted and have that damn headache back again…even though I have been masking up again, I wonder if I may have gotten covid somehow? I am contemplating using one of the 8 tests I have here just to make sure that it isn’t and is just my allergies going into overdrive with the warmer weather…I know I have been under a bit on calories the past two days…but is some pork shoulder, and spoonful of potatoes and gravy, and a pork soft taco with no cheese too little? It is close to 1200 calories and today I had a small rib and a handful of oven fries and that’s it…so I know that 600 calories is not enough with doing two rides but I am not hungry at all right now and I probably should be….crap…oh, well…at least my grocery bill for the week is under 30 bucks…but I may go out to save a lot Friday since they have a special of chicken leg quarters for 39 cents a pound…so, ten pounds for 3.90? Don’t have a lot of space in the freezer but how can I pass that up? Oh, well….I’m tired…
Putin looks like he’s going to lose this war…
Well… I have been trying to avoid commenting on the point that Putin is going to lose in Ukraine as there are still untold war crimes he and his troops are committing there by targeting civilians and continuing to kill thousands of them…and it seems to be disrespectful to sit here on my soft warm couch and opine while Ukrainians are fighting for their lives…but, it does appear that with the latest round of support for the Ukrainians from across the globe, the tide is turning as they start concerted counterattacks on the Russian invaders. One of the things I find most stunning is that the Russian military, once thought to be one of the best in the world appears to be a hollowed out shell of itself…incapable of the things that normal armies do as a matter of course…I mean they are even using cell phones and commercial walkie talkies to try to talk to each other and even those aren’t working to coordinate attacks like a normal army does….and it is clear they can’t supply the army with even the basics of food and water as the videos of Russian soldiers stealing chickens and looting grocery stores show….and this just supports what I proposed in an earlier post, that 2 squadrons of A-10 attack jets could defeat this whole Russian invasion all by themselves…and if a NATO army was brought to bear on the Russian forces with all the force that entails, it would take a day or less for Russia to be defeated and driven from Ukraine….one last thing to remember is that Putin is now going to be isolated in Russia and will never be able to leave there again or he will be arrested and taken to the Hague for trial on the war crimes his troop have committed…this is a far cry from the superpower that he postured Russia to be…and maybe this will be his end…we can only hope…
No voting rights but bullshit…
Well…I guess the senate has devolved into a ceremonial body that can’t or won’t take on the true problems plaguing our country but are just so damn happy to work on nonsense to make it look like they are doing something. I’m sure you’ve followed the saga of trying to get a federal voting rights bill through the senate but Manchin and Sinema just don’t think it’s important enough to protect our democracy from the repubs who are trying to steal elections all over the country…but, just yesterday, they found something they could get behind as being so important that it needed action now…I wonder if you can guess what that was? Still thinking? I guess I’ll have to tell you…with the advent of daylight savings time this week where we moved the clocks forward to where they would be if there were no DST, enough people whined and bitched to their senators who thought this was the most golly gee important thing they could be working on and got right to it…and passed a senate bill that would eliminated DST right now and make sure that people don’t have to be subject to the horrors of having to reset their clocks twice a year…and with that, the country is saved! Yeah, that’s a bit of sarcasm on my part since I am so damn frustrated that the real issues in the US are not even being talked about in the senate…but they have time to get to bullshit like this that just doesn’t matter and pretend that it is important…and that’s one problem with the senate these days…the fake bipartisanship that is displayed when it means nothing but doesn’t happen when it does…and that sucks…geez…
March 16th
Well…damn, that was a 2:14, 4:44, and 6:02 night last night and I am feeling it today…still can’t figure out how my allergies have gotten so bad so fast this year but I did notice that the trees have buds on them already and will probably start the pollen explosion in the next couple of weeks…my eyes are so full of stuff this morning that they are blurry and that is a pain in the butt trying to do this…and will suck heading out to do the grocery run this morning…oh, well…it is a little strange how many different muscles are used riding the bike outside as inside…my core muscles hurt today and I wonder if it from the bike ride or from wedging myself into the corners in the bathroom? Whatever it is, I can live with it but there may be the need for ibuprofen later….it will be interesting to see what hurts when I get on the indoor bike here in a minute…it is supposed to be in the mid 50’s today and I may just get out in shorts for the ride if I wait til later in the afternoon….not much to do today…need to do the grocery run and then wash the car and I may take my rubber shoes with me and do it between Meijers and aldis unless I have to go over to Sternberg road this morning….more later….
Got some work done, too…
Well…it has been quite a busy day today with the two bike rides and I even got some work done in the bathroom, too….got all of the trim masked off to start working on getting it ready to paint…and that meant sanding about 8 feet of the baseboard and then doing all of the filling on that section since it had huge flaws in it from painting over the paint that was chipped off in places….but, I’m not sure if sanding is going to do it for the trim around the back of the toilet with how crappy the paint job is and how much plaster and filler it has all over…so, I may wait til I get the heat gun and peel off a bunch of it instead but we’ll see, once I get started on a job, I don’t like to wait for anything so I’ll probably try to wedge myself in there and try to get the sander on it and see how it comes out…I am sore from just the two hours I spent on it today with how I had to contort myself to get into the small places….will be back at it tomorrow…maybe, I do have to wash the car in the morning after the grocery run so the work may wait a bit….
Icebergs on Lake Michigan…
Well…damn, I am getting tired of resting my thumb for a week and having the bad pain start right up the first time I use it all…but that’s not what this is about…I did get out on the outside bike this afternoon for only the second ride this year and it was not bad…it is just so different from riding the indoor bike and with all the shifting, braking, and leaning….it is not boring at all…pretty messy with all of the snow melt, dirt, sand, and crud being thrown all over the bike and me but it is still nice to see everything….and I did see some big icebergs on the lake but the coolest thing was how quiet it was out at my water stop on the boardwalk…I took my earbuds out just to see and the only sound was some gulls a long way off so you could barely hear them…I have never heard it so quiet out there and a big part of that is the road is still closed so no cars or the noise they make. Muskegon Lake is the lowest I have ever seen it…okay, this is the first year I’ve been able to get close to it this early in the year but seeing it 3 feet lower than during the summer is pretty strange….it does look like I’ll be able to get out there again tomorrow and maybe on Thurs, too but we’ll see….still going to ride downstairs until the weather gets to the point that I can do two rides outside in a day and that may get me close to my 600 mile goal on that bike….but, right now, it’s almost time for Man U and I want to take it easy for a while…for some reason, the outside ride took a lot out of me today…
Back to the mask….
Well…darn, just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in…that line from “Godfather 3” really describes this pandemic and the new variants that continue to evolve and explode across the world….over the past few days, China has basically locked down over 100 million people in 4 cities across the country and the trend is that South Korea and other Asian countries are going to have to do the same…and that all but guarantees that the recession that has been looming on the horizon is going to happen when all of the computer chips manufacturing from the affected areas in China just stop…as they have just yesterday….and one of the biggest contributors to this explosion of virus in China is that the Sinovac vaccine is not really effective against Omicron2 and they have not been getting boosters into arms there…there is even a huge spike in cases in Europe where they have lifted all covid restrictions just like here in the US and you can see where that is leading us…another “wave” just like the original Omicron and another quarter of a million deaths that I am not going to be one of…so, back to masks for whenever I go out around people starting tomorrow…I do have 26 N-95’s that I haven’t started to use yet and will probably hold off on until it gets bad around here….and I will get the 4th shot as soon as it is available to boost protection against getting sick…and my second set of free covid tests are supposed to arrive today so I can know what is going on if I do get sick….and then I can protect people around me by using the n-95’s or just staying home….here we go again….
Tried some oven cleaner…
Well…as I sit here having my last cup of coffee for the morning, I thought I’d talk about something I discovered yesterday on the internet while I was looking for methods to get the registers cleaned up and ready to paint…one of the suggestions was to spray them with oven cleaner…even the new stuff that you can handle without gloves…and the weird thing was it worked better than the paint stripper I bought last week…still didn’t cut all the paint but it did more than I ever expected and that made me laugh a little….but I am still going to buy the heat gun when they get them in a couple of weeks from now….but I may check on it tomorrow if DD has anything that I want since they are right across the street from each other…and I need some sanding pads for my detail sander and another roll of painter’s tape even if they don’t have the heat gun…almost time to get to work….
March 15th
Well…that was a little better…slept okay last night and didn’t get up til around 6 or so and I’ll take that any day….and I can breathe better this morning with no headache so I wonder what is going on with that? Still think I may have a bug of some sort since I do have some crap in my lungs and cough occasionally but my allergies have the same symptoms so how do you tell them apart? Oh, well…going to make them worse today with getting on sanding the baseboards and trim in the bathroom this morning to get ready to fill and smooth them…I did have another brainstorm yesterday…and no, it didn’t hurt…not much anyway…instead of getting a propane torch to remove the paint from the heat registers, I remembered that they make heat guns for just that purpose and it may be a better solution…but the one I want from HF is out of stock til early next month…only 16 bucks and I may be able to get away from stripping with chemicals altogether and may have some extra uses for it that will eliminate the need for sanding and filling on a lot of the trim….it is a slow process but the areas I have to do are small so we’ll see how it works…damn, the headache is back….not much to do today…going to get on the bike early and work some on the bathroom…then I’m going to suit up and try to get an outdoor ride in today and that will make for a 20 mile day…and Man U plays at 4 this afternoon so I need to have everything done by then, grit my teeth and watch them lose again..damn, I wonder why every team I follow sucks so much? More later…