Tomorrow is a federal holiday so I believe I have the day off. They didn’t really say and I don’t get paid for days off but I can’t work when they don’t? I don’t know, if there’s no mail I don’t have to be at work as far as I know. Also I may have been laid off on Friday, I don’t think so but who knows. I’m not going to sweat it and I’ll be back at it on Tuesday.

I didn’t make my steps yesterday and it wasn’t looking like I was going to do it today either but I took charge and got on the treadmill and knocked out 2.5 miles. It was enough to close all the circles. It was also enough to knock me out for an hour long nap. It was nice though.

The temperature made it up to 46 and we ventured out to Target, they had a 10 pack of t-shirts for like $22. It was nice to just walk around. We didn’t spend a bunch of time there. We’ve both felt really lethargic today, maybe it’s just the cold but it’s nice to have a down day.

It was also a fairly lazy day. We did make it over to see mom since she’s out of the hospital. It was nice, I sat next to her on the porch and we watched some buzzards pecking at a dead possum. It did sort of bother me that mom had to shout out to anyone walking by to leave it (buzzards, carcass, et al.). I guess the days of her having a filter are gone. I was able to live in the moment though and not think about the inevitable.

When we got home we jumped on the bikes and went for a ride over to the east side of Hurst. We were over by the shopping plaza at Pipeline and Brown Trail and stopped in for lunch at El Patriota #1, I believe we were the only English speakers in the place but it was nice. We split a large Patriota (Cheese, Pork, Chicken, Turkey, Pastrami, Mayoketchup, Lettuce, Tomate and Potato stix chips), we definitely enjoyed it and wouldn’t hesitate to stop back in.

It got cold while we were biking, a front moved through and you could feel it, from the time we left from eating lunch, to the time we got home the temperature dropped about 10 degrees and the wind was gusting to 20. We stopped by the Dollar General for Oxyclean and Shout and tore home to get out of the weather. Got the hoses drained and put the freeze guards back on them as it’s going to be cold the next week.

Happy to have Friday here. It was a rough day, I got up and started at like 5:30am but I’m getting damn close on the project I’m working on. There’s an issue that the HTML is being rendered in cp1272 instead of UTF-8 which sucks because things like the ‘right leaning apostrophe’ don’t display right. I’m close to figuring it out but I have no place else to test it except for the server at work. And I have to add the pictures. They’re not showing up now but I think that’s because we’re using the full URL, I think I need to change up the href so that the image is local and we should be good. Hopefully.

Still a little chilly today. We went to the mall at 7pm to do some walking and people watching. The younger crowd was out, just being young and stupid, wearing house shoes while shuffling around the mall, all that energy and they can’t even put on shoes.

Mom made it back to the house, we’ll go see her tomorrow. It’s supposed to be a 70+ degree day so maybe a bike ride is in the future.

Mom fell again, at least nothing is broke but she’s black and blue in the face. Old people falling is an epidemic that we need to address. I probably shouldn’t say anything else I’ll have it worse than anyone else. Roger died after a fall. Mom’s been falling more and more and she’s been extremely lucky but the next time who knows!

Kodi’s mom died this morning. And with Nichole’s passing fate is looking for a 3rd, although I think it’s going away, I mean I never actually met Kodi’s mom that I can remember. I hope it’s waning anyways.

So the property that Sarondy is about to aquire is going to be in court in a week. Well not the property itself but the guy who claims to own it. To that end he was served papers by a constable, from what Ron said, he went back inside, retrieved a baseball bat and proceeded to attack said constable. No wonder he had me get a PO Box.

I spoke yesterday of drinking half a gallon a day and I think I need to say more about that because I think that I like what it’s doing. I hate drinking water, there’s not much more to it than that. Kool-Aid, milk, juice, coffee, tea, gin, anything but water. But I think I’m getting used to it. I’m drinking 64 ounces in 16 ounce increments from when I get to work at 7am to 11 am. This also coincides with my 10 minutes walking every two hours @ 9am, 11am and 1pm.

I feel more fluid with the extra hydration, pun intended. I feel like I’ve got a little more energy too. Not sure I’m seeing the glowing skin and such but it’s also exercising my bladder, so far it’s not helping the overnight bathroom trips but there’s hope that it can once the body adjusts to adequate hydration.

As a side note, I had leftover rice and thought it would be tasty just reheated with some butter, as I was snacking on that a thought crossed my mind to add some sugar, no, brown sugar! I have to say I was impressed and will be doing that again.

So one of the wonderful things that happen when we age is that our metabolism goes to hell. So where as we could eat anything we wanted and not gain any weight when younger, that simply isn’t the case today. And all the times I said that fat people just needed to ‘eat less’ has come full circle and bit me in the butt.

I’m not a fat blob but I’m pushing 200 Lbs and that’s heavy for me, or was before the ‘new normal’ started kicking in. So now it’s time to start paying attention to it. I already exercise and I no longer smoke or drink, so watching what you eat should be easy right?

Not as easy as you’d think. I’m notorious for eating one meal a day. It’s a rather large meal at the end of the workday, we’ll call it old people’s dinner time. But I’m fooling myself into thinking that’s all I eat. I was peckish around noon and normally grab the Doritos and noticed 12 chips are 150 calories. I counted my chips and my normal setting is a lot more than that. Pretzels are the same way and then don’t get me started on my real addiction, candy…

So today, I had toast and peanut butter for lunch, then a pork chop cut up with rice and an egg. 150 calories of chips and one Pepsi. And I got my 64 ounces of water down too. Day 2 on that health conscious attempt.

It was a perfect day to not get out of bed. It was overcast and cold. I didn’t sleep well last night to boot and it made for a long day. Well not too long and I even got the news that we’re moving forward with the custom steps so we’ll get some things done and I’ll have work to do. While they can say that they can’t believe it’s that old, they’re working with UltraEdit and OxygenXML and both are almost as bad of a hindrance as not having anything, the latter can’t even see mapped drives, literally WTF. They’re just slightly ahead of nothing and pale in comparison to Notepad++ or VS Code. Both free BTW and a hell of a lot more useful than the aforementioned titles.

We had broccoli, rice and orange chicken. We actually cleaned off the kitchen table and had dinner together at the table. Aside from going out to eat, I can’t remember the last time we did that. It was nice.

Spent the rest of the evening sitting around resting. This working for a living is for the birds but I’m very happy to have this life of ours.

In a game no one outside of Philadelphia or Kansas City wanted to see, the Eagles and the Chiefs are playing. I’ve hated Philly so long that it’s almost a no brainer about who to root for but I can’t stand rooting for KC either. And why the hell is it still on a Sunday? While my partying days are mostly over, a good football party on Saturday allows for all the pomp and circumstances they want and a bigger party.

Oh well, the commercials are the true hero’s here. So far the best has been the Dorito’s UFO one. Very entertaining. The Coors light one with the sloths was pretty funny too. And rounding out the top three is Uber Eats with Mathew McConaughey

The temperature is 35 degrees colder than it was yesterday. No biking in this weather, so we went to the mall and did a mile and a half there. It was enough to get all my steps in and circles closed.

Tomorrow, it’s back to the grind and I don’t know how things are going to shake out on the new gig since I had to tell them that the legacy app is just about dead. I’m not sure what to do, I did my best to explain the situation as best as I understand it. I can do little else.

Sandy’s back from training and I decided on Thursday that we were going to take a bike ride. I found an athletic complex in Irving that turns out to have been a place where I had played softball years ago when I was with PDS. My memory of the place was mosquitos to be honest. But we were just there to hit the trails. But, Google took us to a road that just didn’t exist, fenced off and unused for years. Got back to where I remember play softball and it was locked up. We managed to find a place down the street that got us to where we needed to be.

It was a nice ride but we got seriously burnt. Both the wind and the sun type burns. I also hit 1500 miles on the journey. It was exactly what I’d been looking for, miles and miles of paved trail with the only caveat being that it’s in the flood plain so there were parts we had to traverse water, well we rode right through it.

We finished the day trip off with a late lunch at the Aspen Creek Grill in Irving. Not the easiest place to get to but it was nice. I had the chicken fried steak and Sandy had a salad. She started getting cold in the restaurant so we didn’t doddle but the temperature seriously dropped. It was 86 or so at 1pm and now at 6pm it’s dropped to 58 and will plummet when the sun goes down. The high tomorrow is 47 so 40 degrees colder. That’s why we biked today and will mall walk tomorrow.

This one also took me by surprise. Nichole Anderson died yesterday. Passed away in her sleep. Not a bad way to go. Her daughter is a very talented singer. Not that I’ve heard her but you could tell the way Nichole posted about her how proud she was of her daughter. I had always hoped to hear her sing. Although that still may happen.

In any case god speed Nichole, and deepest condolences to those you left behind.