These weeks are flying by even thought the days may drag. This is the last weekend we’re in town until after the wedding so hopefully get some cleaning done so when we travel we’ll come home to a clean house with nothing to do. That is the true joy of coming home after traveling. A clean house, loving pets and nothing that needs done.

My friend Tim came over today. We are brothers but wow do we have different world views. I’ve already given up some friendships over it and I’d hate to do it again but I’ll be damned in I’m going to fall in step with fascists but it’s good to see friends.

Sandy went and got her hair done and the poor thing was not happy with the results. I think it looks fine but what do I know? She’s supposed to go back on Monday but may not have the time. She was trying to tell me about it but I didn’t understand it, sounded like they scheduled her for a procedure they didn’t have time for. I really want to make it better for her but there’s nothing I can do and that’s frustrating. I try to listen but it kind of makes me mad because of the incompetence, and again, nothing I can do.

Leaves on the stream, the serenity prayer, the art of not giving a fuck. These are the mindsets I need to add to my repertoire. We live in a world where it’s really hard to care because there’s not a hell of a lot you can do about anything.

I’m happy that we’re almost to Friday again. This week wasn’t nearly as active as last when it comes to work. I’m not complaining. This is our last weekend in town until the end of May. We’re off to Virginia for the wedding next week. I’m not sure how I feel about it, I haven’t flown in a while and it’ll be over a crazy travel weekend. I’m not looking forward to that aspect but it shouldn’t be bad.

It’ll be good to see Brit and Austin. Bobby will be there too but he’s father of the bride so I imagine he’ll be busy. I won’t know anyone else there. I think that I get to meet Sandy’s sisters. I’m not sure how I feel about that, I’ve heard nothing good of them but I’ve only heard one side of the story. I guess we’re sitting at the same table for the wedding reception. Oh well, I’m glad that my family isn’t like that, too small for drama like that.

I’m tipping the scales at 198.4 today. But the junk food is beginning to wane also. The last of the cake is on the table and we’re almost out of cookies. Down to the last gallon of ice cream too. and I’m under 800 orange tic taks too LOL. I’m looking to lose about 40 to 50 pounds and I’m looking at about 8 to 10 pounds a month so we’re looking at about 6 months. That puts it right in time for the holidays. I get to put some weight on and get it off by spring time. I’ll have to find someplace to show it off:)

My food addiction has taken a disturbing turn, the cake I made the other night is being devoured one long slice at a time, I’m not even using a plate anymore, I cut a slice about 1.5 x 5 inches and spread frosting over one end and devour it over the cake pan. Yeah, it’s kind of primal and I’m washing the whole thing down with milk from the gallon. I think there’s even grunting and moaning, it’s so wrong but tastes so good.

There is a means to an end. I’m going on a diet. I’m not sure if diet is the right word, I’m going to start eating well and I really hate wasting food so I’m eating my way through all the bad food and won’t be replacing it with junk food. No more chips, cookies, or candy. Want a snack? Fruit, bread & peanut butter, jelly, or honey. Cut the sugar and fats and go heavy on the fruits and vegetables. Historically, I’ve disliked eating so much that it was just a matter of survival to eat anything. Now it’s time to start eating for health. I need to drop to at most 170 and I’d be happier with 160. I simply can’t keep carrying this much weight into the future.

I’m very grateful that it’s Wednesday and that the day is at an end. It’s not that it was rough or anything and I’ve been getting better on getting things done but I’m just ready for the weekend. I’m hoping the long weekend coming up with snap me out of what ails me. Peace be unto y’all, until we meet again:)

It’s the middle of May, but outside, it sure feels a lot like late June or early July. My watch is telling me it’s 94, the new meteorological station is telling me it’s 98. Either way, it’s pretty warm outside. But I do have to say that I am impressed that the air conditioner is not only keeping it at 75 inside it’s not running constantly. So I have to say that the blown insulation into the Attic was a good idea and a winner! I also replaced the filter and hosed off the outside condenser unit as a general maintenance item. Hopefully we won’t have to remortgage the house to pay the electric bills this summer.

I’ve been highly unmotivated today, and I’m not quite sure why. I guess it’s just taking a breath between projects. I forgot to mention yesterday that we had the Western Skylight that has leaked the entire time I’ve owned the house, removed. I hate losing the extra light in the kitchen, but I’ve also gotten sick of it leaking every other time it rained. I need it leak free so I can begin the process of remodeling the kitchen.

We are at the point where we are ready to make some remodeling decisions about the house. We have to do the kitchen, the living room, both bathrooms, and the laundry room is kind of thrown in with the kitchen. We already did the electricity, so that shouldn’t be an issue. Although now that I say that, Sandy did blow a fuse in the bathroom by having the heater running and also a hair dryer plugged in and going. I’m pretty sure that would blow a regular circuit, let alone the goofy ones we’ve got here.

I took my bicycle ride this afternoon over to Redbud Park. They are supposed to have the latest and greatest and newest and best exercise equipment being installed at that park. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about but at this point they’ve just demolished the small pads that were there for the exercise stations and our building much larger ones that have a mesh cover over them. I need to figure out what that mesh is as I’d really like some to put over our garden so it doesn’t burn up like an asteroid in Earth’s atmosphere. Today’s pictures are from Redbud Park and the ongoing construction for the new exercise equipment.

I can’t imagine life without these two, my house was just a building until it became a flop house for these shedding machines. My kittens are 7 years old today! While I’ve sang happy birthday to both of them, they’re treating the day just like any other. Snacks, naps, pets, and purrs. Kind of hard to do anything special for them considering they’re pretty spoiled to begin with.

None the less here are some pictures of the birthday duo that I hope bring a smile to your file like they do for me on a daily basis.

So this evenings blog is being written from the RV. I finally got around to defrosting the refrigerator here in the RV. I’ve been meaning to do that since we got back last Labor Day. I’m also in the process of cleaning the inside. But while I was in here I realized I had to do some tree trimming before the limbs rubbed a hole through the roof. So that was kind of my starting point this morning, getting out the ladder and heading up to trim the trees above the RV. That went fine, and I got it knocked out, although I still have to cut down the limbs and tie them up so I can put them to the curb. Some are actually large enough to become firewood.

The next order of the day was to cut a piece of plywood to cover the whole in the kitchen that the skylight shines through. Considering it’s going away come Monday, I needed to put something there so that the garbage from the roof doesn’t fall into the kitchen. I’ll still need to clean it from the attic, but that will be a bit easier than cleaning the kitchen.

I also got the sheets on the bed changed and into the washing machine. Did a load of towels as well as all of my laundry. Now, the last thing remaining to do are the comforters and sheets from our guests the other week. Then we should be all caught up with the laundry, which will be nice.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and we’re headed over to Mom’s with a rack of ribs that I had cooked for Thanksgiving and froze. I’ll just warm them up on the grill, and Cortney is making potato salad and will bring over some baked beans and have a nice picnic type lunch for Mother’s Day. Sandy got Mom balloons and flowers. Sandy got a balloon from Brittany for her birthday last week, and she says every time she looks at it, it reminds her of Britney and makes her smile. I think that’s a good piece of information to know and note.

I’m just about ready to call it a day, but it’s been fun watching the house down the street have their party. I remember the days when I could do that, that seemed a long time ago. Oh well, as long as they don’t keep me awake all night, everything will be just fine. I’m going to go get some companies on and maybe see if I can’t watch a movie. I was browsing the movie collection and forgot that I haven’t seen most of the 2000 movies I have. Hopefully, I have many years to watch them:)

I am super happy that this week has come to a conclusion. Not that it was bad, but using my brain that much hurt. This evening, I installed a new meteorological station that I got from vivor.com. so far so good, I was able to mount it to the fence between my neighbor’s house in mine so it’s in a good place and it connects with the panel indoors just fine but it seems to have an issue connecting to the wireless network. Once you connect to it and feed it the information for the SSID and the password, it joins the network, but from everything I can gather, it signs itself to 192.168.1.1. If that’s not the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of, I’m not sure what it is. Every router, with a possible exception of two, that I’ve ever owned has used that as the default IP address. I still have to do my due diligence, but I’m very unimpressed with its web wireless setup.

I started cleaning yesterday in a little bit today. I even pulled the slide out on the RV and started cleaning inside of it. I really like the cordless vacuum that we got for the RV. It’s nowhere near the class of vacuum that the Dyson is but if, God forbid, the RV gets destroyed or broken into and that vacuum goes away I’m not losing any sleep over a $60 vacuum. I need to get on the roof of the RV tomorrow and cut some limbs back that are rubbing the roof. We certainly can’t have that.

It’s Mother’s Day weekend this weekend. I think tomorrow Sandy wants to go to the Botanical Gardens. She wanted to do that last weekend for her birthday, but the Mayfest was across the street, and I really didn’t want to deal with that kind of traffic. Hopefully the weather will play nice and it will be gorgeous again. Next week, we’re already going to be up in the 90s. I guess it’s about that time of year, and I’m honestly dreading it. Oh well, I won’t be in Texas too much longer, hopefully.

It’s time to get some rest so I can get on and get stuff done with the weekend. I’m looking forward to it even though I know it will go by too quickly.

What a week, just wow! Monday started out well enough, I was getting ready for a data warehouse preview I was going to do on Tuesday. Then Tuesday rolls around, and it seems we need a whole bunch of mock data that can be used for testing. I had already half built Integrations to populate the ancillary data but was nowhere near having anything end-to-end. So Wednesday was a complete hackathon, and today was doing the same thing, but putting it in a logical order so it can be done again if needed. Of course, putting it together in a logical order and having it ready to replicate means it will not be needed.

It was actually nice to be running at full bore again. It’s been a hot minute since I put things together like that. It felt great to be useful.

I’m trying a new methodology of writing posts that doesn’t have anything to do with writing. I’m just using the WordPress app on my phone to dictate the post. This has some great advantages in that I don’t have to be in front of a keyboard to create a post. For someone who earns a living working with computers, I sometimes don’t take advantage of the modern marvels that we carry around in our pocket and the technology they offer. I’m going to work on that.

Tomorrow is friday, Sandy will be back, and it’s Mother’s Day weekend. I need to catch up on inside stuff, and the lawn probably needs to be cut again if the weather cooperates. I also have the roofers coming on Monday to remove the leaking Skylight in the kitchen and shingle over. Hopefully, that stops the leak, I can make the repairs and move forward with the kitchen remodel.

We also have a new pope today. Hope Leo the 14th I think, he’s also the first pope from the United States. I guess they figured if the Antichrist is running the United States best to get someone from there to be God’s messenger on Earth.

Life is good and I’m looking forward to the weekend!

We rocked it today. I dragged Sandy out of the house and over to moms house for breakfast. It was nice, they get the best eggs. After breakfast mom wanted us to eat cake for Sandy’s birthday, so after all those years it turns out when you’re 53 you can have cake for breakfast. We were too stuffed to do so but she’ll freeze it and we’ll have it next weekend for Mother’s Day.

We bolted out after breakfast and then I went for my usual bike ride around Hurst. Got some pictures of Indian paintbrushes like we say hiking yesterday. Today is the last day for the water tower to be on the base of the tower. It’s supposed to raised tomorrow and I’m hoping to get a couple of pictures of it going up.

When I got home Sandy was already doing yard work. I got changed and joined her. She does the front yard with her electric Ryobi mower and I do the back with the gas mower. So we mowed, edged, trimmed, blew and she trimmed the holly’s in the front and I trimmed the bushes on the east side of the back yard. Finished bagging it all up and called it a day at about 1pm.

Then just joined the cats in being lazy and enjoying the day. I feel exhausted but we got a lot done this weekend and the house looks great. A good nights sleep and we’ll be ready to rock Monday’s world!!!

As I’m terrible at planning anything, we did a spur of the moment trip to the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge for some hiking. I think that we decided that I haven’t been there in 45 years. I remember being in elementary school and having a field trip there.

We did almost 5 miles, most of the river side trails were underwater but we still hiked al over the place so it was nice. We did forget the hiking bag so we lacked the binoculars and water. We did have a packed and iced down cooler and as soon as we got back to the Xterra, I slammed an ice cold ice tea, wow it was the best drink I’ve had it a while.

After that we headed to Little Germany for some good German food and after a hike like that we were starving. Unfortunately they were out of good German food and it wasn’t very tasty. The schnitzel was wafer thin and tasteless, even the sauerkraut was lousy. Sigh, there’s just no good ethnic food in Texas unless it’s Mexican.

We finished off the day with a trip to Brahms for ice cream and then home. We did take a quick bike ride down to the plaza where they were having a parking lot sale but it ended before we got there. Oh well, less junk for us.