Well…okay, I should hurt a lot more than I do with three hours of cleaning the garage yesterday….I really thought my elbow was going to be immobile after all the abuse but it’s no worse than it would be if I didn’t use it…weird…but, I did forget to hit the timer button on the coffee maker so I sit here with no coffee for the next 15 minutes or so and I know I don’t like it…oh,well….even with 50 sunscreen on yesterday, my face got scorched and I had to use aloe last night and it’s still screaming red today but what more can I do? That happened even with the new 50 that I got wed…I wonder if all the water and sweat washed it off? I was completely soaked through from the heat so I guess we’ll see when I get on the bike here in a few minutes and use it again….that work took so much out of me that I skipped the second bike ride yesterday but I think scrubbing for three hours used enough calories to offset it…okay, my elbow is not okay…just poured a cup of coffee and the weight of a full carafe stabbed it with pain….not much to do today…I have to clean this place up some and figure out what to cook today…I may go out to get some pork chops and tomatoes at Meijers but I probably could just take something out of the freezer and save the trip…we’ll see…more later…

Well…damn, I’m sore….after getting 15 miles in on the bike early, I decided to clean the front of the garage since it was covered with dirt and mold and looked pretty gross…so I got out the ladder and bucket with a 6 inch scrub brush and took to scrubbing the whole thing by hand…I had no plan to do the entire exterior but the front looked so good when I finished it that I just kept going and did the whole damn garage….after the first three sides, I started to feel pretty lousy with the heat  and going up and down the ladder and almost had to quit and leave the last side for another time but then I just sucked it up and finished it….the whole thing took almost 2 1/2 hours and my hands are still wrinkled from being in water so long…but I have a clean garage and can’t believe how nice it looks…and I think I’m skipping the second ride for the day…still feel pretty lousy even after having lunch…I thought that was part of hitting the wall but it doesn’t look like it….maybe some more water will help? Now I need to do the house….yow!

Well…darn, just can’t get started today but it is nice that the humidity is down a bit and there is a cool breeze blowing through here….I could get out on the bike right now but without coffee that’s not going to work….we did get some rain out here yesterday but I don’t think it was enough to green up my lawn very much with the sandy soil…may have to feed it again this week…I may have to accept that I might not get to the nice, green lawn I’m used to but that’s okay….but I have the rest of the summer to keep trying….I think I am going to have to take a day off the bike soon just to give my body a rest….I feel like I’m wearing out and I don’t think my elbow is going to heal unless I stop using it completely for a few days…yeah, I don’t know how that is going to work with everything that needs to be done around here….but, it’s healed up before so I have hope that it will again….I think I may have fixed this neighborhood…at least I have my fingers crossed that I did with all of the noise calls that I’ve made over the past 6 weeks or so…have had a full week of quiet up here and it is so nice to not hear that thump thump bullshit that permeated the place once the weather got warm…hmmmm…I think I’ve talked about this before….so I won’t anymore….not much to do today…I need to clean this place up since my son and his wife and their dog may be coming out this weekend and it really needs a once over…but, I can’t get motivated to do anything right now so I think I’ll just have more coffee and read some…I feel like a car that just won’t start…grinding on the starter with no fire….and the battery is now dead….more later…

Well…with testing the water temp last week, I knew it was close to being warm enough to go swimming…so today, it was so warm that I took the car out to the lake and laid in the sun a while just because I could..and the water was just warm enough to go swimming…so I did…and this is the earliest that I can remember getting in Lake Michigan…it was still pretty cold and I didn’t stay in long but I did get in and that keeps my record secure for another year…every year since I was five, I’ve gone swimming in Lake Michigan at least once a year and that’s been a long, long time….but, the one bad thing that happened today is my right elbow, that has been giving me lots of trouble, got worse today and now it is stiff along with the pain and I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it…I haven’t found a doctor out here yet and I don’t want to drive back to GR to have it looked at… so, I guess I’ll have to just suck it up and take some more ibuprofen…darn…

Well…darn, running late again this morning with not getting out of bed until after 7….and I feel worn out today…might have to re-think going so hard as I get older….but, if I start slowing down will that start the inevitable decline that I dread so much? Or, should I go harder and try to up my capacity? Who knows? I do know that I need a day off so I may go out to the beach later this morning after the first ride and the grocery run…..I think I’m going to try to swim soon since I saw people in the water yesterday in the fog and that was kind of cool to see….it is going to be hard to take a day off  when I have so much to do around here…I think I need to unclog the gutter on the front of the house since it was overflowing in the downpour yesterday…maybe that will be the work to do today so I don’t feel guilty? That one runs under the front stairs so it will mean taking the lattice off to get to it and I’m not sure I want to do that yet….we’ll see….maybe I can just run a hose down it and see if that will work….but right now I just want to have coffee and read some news before I get going…more later…

Well…yeah, I know I haven’t been doing a lot of political ones lately and I know that is why a lot of you come here…so, I promise tomorrow I will be back on the rants and outrage….I feel I have been so damn busy lately that this at times has become an afterthought and it shouldn’t be…like today…got out on the bike before 8 and got a nice ride in but the humidity was just brutal and I feel like I have been soaked all day….then mowing the lawn and trimming the bushes by my garden, then putting weedkiller on the lawn…then back on the bike for another 15 and there was still fog out there that was obscuring the beach even at 3 in the afternoon…then I walked down to the main drag at the bottom of the hill to take in the car show that was going on and then back here to make some dinner and now I have just sat down to do this and it is after 6…so, yeah…on the go almost constantly since 8 this morning and I thought I was retired…and I still feel guilty that I haven’t made any progress on the house other than the outside but when would I do that? I’m just tired….but, back to it tomorrow…

Well…darn that was close…as I was mowing the lawn, the sky kept getting darker and darker with  a stray spit of rain, and just after I finished and was trimming some bushes along the fence, the sky just opened up with huge raindrops pounding down…just walking from the garage to the house soaked me completely and it is still raining now a half hour later….so, I didn’t get the weedkiller on the lawn and it appears like that will have to wait for a couple of days now with the rain that’s forecast….I did get to sit on the porch couch after I showered with a  cup of coffee and some news and that was really relaxing…I have made it quieter up here but there is still a ways to go…but I’m up for it….oh, and Lake Michigan was gone when I got out there this morning…the fog was thick enough that you couldn’t see that there was water there and that was pretty cool…

Well…running a little late again today with not getting out of bed until almost 7….and I looked outside and there is fog out there…not too thick but it’s supposed to be foggy all day today…I rode through a cloud yesterday at the high point of my ride out by the lake yesterday…I guess you’d call if fog but it wasn’t diffuse like fog normally is but a discrete cloud that was moving in off the lake…and that was pretty cool…going to get out here in the next hour or so and ride out to take a look at the lakeshore and see how the fog is out there…there is even a dense fog advisory for the day and tonight so I have my fingers crossed that it gets that thick…got a little work done yesterday on the yard and garden and got the tomato cages put in and I need to mow and put weed killer on the lawn after I get back from the ride…..and I may put some more seed in the bare spots with the possibility of rain the next couple of days…it would be pretty nice to get some storms tomorrow so I can sit on the porch and watch them….we are so under in rainfall this spring that it could rain for 3 straight days non-stop and we still wouldn’t get back to normal…at least it shouldn’t be dusty mowing today with the showers that came through yesterday…not much to do today…just lawn work and riding…and some cleaning in here but that’s enough, isn’t it? More later….

Well…as you know, I’ve been trying to figure out how to fix the outdoor faucet to stop it from leaking and had settled on trying to glue a piece of inner tube to the hardened gasket inside of it…but, this morning, I had a brainstorm that gave me a simple fix for it….when I was at Menard’s getting weed killer, it hit me that I could just buy a screw on hose valve that I could turn off and on to stop the leak without shutting my water off or tearing the faucet apart or cutting the faucet out and sweating on a new one…so, five bucks later, I have a non leaking outdoor faucet that I can now leave the hose hooked up to…and the valve is a really nice one with a big off and on handle that makes it easy to control…so, yay for me…my brain still does work…sometimes….and I even went out to get some new t-shirts from target and repaired a slit in the top on the car that I hadn’t noticed before…and now I’m waiting for the rain to move through so I can put the weed killer on the lawn….and, I got thirty miles in on the bike…is that enough for the day?

Well…that was okay…didn’t get out of bed until 6:30 but feel kind of slow with having a couple of cocktails last night….it is nice to have a breeze blowing through the house this morning after having to have a fan on last night to keep from sweating my butt off…and it looks like that is going to be the weather for the next couple of days until it rains Wed…..so that means I should seed some more of the bare spots in the lawn before then but I still don’t have any motivation so we’ll see….I think we’re over 5 inches under the average in rainfall for the year so far and my lawn looks like it…it is turning yellow but I am not going to spend the money to water it but I really don’t know the cost since my water bill has been the same 24 bucks a month since I moved in and I am dreading when they actually read the meter and bill me….I think the pain in my right elbow is arthritis instead of tendonitis since it now has a big lump right on the bone that is sensitive to touch…and that is keeping me from working around here since the pain is pretty intense when I do anything with it…there is going to be a point where I’m going to have to suck it up and get working but I just don’t feel like it right now….just pouring coffee sets it off and I’m think I may have to take something for it this morning….not much to do today…I think I’ve figured out how to fix the leaking outside faucet using one of the bike tubes that I have downstairs but it will mean shutting of the water for an hour or so and I am not ready to do that today…need a different adhesive that I’ll get on the grocery run wed….so today I think I’ll just clean some and get the two rides in…and I have some chicken thawed that needs to be cooked so that will be my day….more later…..