After being out of town last weekend, it was time to do some house work at home. Laundry, changed sheets, cleaned the kitchen from the schnitzel debauchery last night, cleaned the carpet in the bedroom. It was a productive day.

Kind of needed to get stuff done today as we’re going to the botanical gardens tomorrow. I really have no desire to go but Sandy wants to, why I’m not sure. I wanted to go early tomorrow and she’s pissed because I wanted to go when there were less people. Like we should wait until it’s packed so we can people watch at the botanical gardens… Oh joy.

I need to clean my office. That’s on the agenda for tomorrow hopefully. I need to clean the garage too and I was wanting to get car work done this weekend but that just doesn’t look like it’s happening.

I checked in on the RV today, loving the dehumidifier with the hose into the sink, no more forgetting to empty the water. It’s nice and dry in the RV, keeps things from getting moldy and smelly. It also cools down nicely when there’s no humidity in there.

Lastly, my weight goals are slowly but surly coming to pass. I’m down 8 pounds from my high and steadily heading down. The big difference is that I’m making smart choices. No cookies or candy and moderating my sugar intake. It feels good to get skinnier and I’ll be excited as more of the pounds fade away. Hopefully next week I’ll be firmly into the 180’s. I’m even thinking about changing from whole mild to 2%. I was blown away realizing that a 12 ounce serving of whole milk is 225 calories. Sigh, that one hurt.

Yey, Friday is almost here. I actually have enough to do tomorrow to make the day fly by hopefully and then it’s the weekend. I hope to get a lot of things done so I should probably make a list and prioritize what to do. Car work, house work, cleaning, carpets, laundry. Always stuff to do and I’m thankful for it.

Work went well today, finally got the hours turned in so maybe they’ll quit complaining.

I forgot to mention that I got the hard drive expanded yesterday using Gparted, I needed to expand the underlying partition and then I could expand the root partition. The later in Mint, prior was booted to.

Oh and I got the pictures up on the photo site from our trip to Virginia. Some of them came out pretty cute.

More tomorrow cats and kittens!!! Be thankful for the yarn!!!

I made a pick up order to stock up the freezer. Got about 10 pounds of skinless/boneless chicken, 2 packages of polish & 2 packages of smoked sausage and half a pork loin. Got ripped off with the chips that I thought were on sale but weren’t. Oh well, I just need to pay closer attention. This is also an oddity in that I bought chicken without picking it out. The logic is that it’s prepackaged so even if they’re just grabbing what’s on top there’s a good chance they’ll get something decent. It worked out.

The chicken has been portioned and labeled along with the sausage and is in the freezer. I do like having a stocked freezer with labeled food for dinner.

I didn’t freeze the loin as I’m going to try to use it to make pork schnitzel tomorrow.

I also found 4 extra cold oat jars while looking for cables, now we have 10 total. We’re going through some oats and I’m happy about that because it’s rather healthy. I think that we may even try the oatmeal cookie recipe that’s on the oat can.

While this post has been all about food, I guess that I should include an update on the diet. Made it down to 192.2 this morning but today was a 3 meal day. Oats for breakfast, Chic-Fil-A for lunch and fried eggs with toast and sausage for dinner. And ice cream for dessert. So I’ll be up tomorrow but I’m moving.

I do have an issue with my right foot on the outside bottom, it hurts and I’m not sure why. I’m not a big fan of this growing older thing, but, it sure beats the alternative.

It’s back to work today. Evidently my time is now going to be approved on a monthly basis. I mean it makes no never mind to me but I’ve got payroll yelling at me and my approver approves on a monthly basis. Sigh… I guess if that’s the only issue I’m blessed.

I picked up a new gun today. A Hi-Point 45 ACP gen 2. It’s a cannon for sure. But it has some goofy issues with the grip, it digs into your skin. I’ll have to sand that down. It’s heavy and it’s pre-threaded for a suppressor. I hope to shoot it within the next calendar year.

I also picked up a new SSD for the Mint Linux box. I had a 512Gb SSD in it and kept running out of room. Best Buy had a 2Tb SSD for $109 and I could pick up a holder for it to mound it in the 3.5 bays. I used foxclone to clone the drive and spent the evening tearing it apart and dusting it out and putting it back together. I messed up and put in a 3Tb instead of the 8Tb but I’ll mount that in tomorrow.

The new drive is in but I’m having an issue taking advantage of the new space, it’s unallocated but not letting me use it. I’m sure I’ll figure it out. It’s nice to put it back together and clean it up. I didn’t realize the space I had for drives in that case. And it looks like it can handle 8 devices instead of 6. Nice…

We got back today and I’m exhausted. My day started at 3:45am in Virginia Beach and after 8 hours I made it back to DFW, I was fit to be tied but we made it.

We had to fly around a storm system so we went due south to Mobile, AL and then to Houston and then up to DFW. So instead of a 2:45 hour flight, it was closer to 4. Then we landed in terminal B but that’s under construction and I took us the wrong way. Ugh.

I napped for about 2.5 hours and I’m still exhausted but it feels so good to be back in my own bed.

And flying, on Memorial Day weekend to boot. Normally I’d be bitching about this but I think I’m in dire need of a break. I’ve been on duty for the FRB job since 1/13 with no days off except what they take off. I’m taking one personal day and lining it up with the Memorial Day holiday and viola, a four day weekend. Now the problem with this is that everyone else gets a four day weekend and wants to go places too so they will be in my way… No, they will be along my path and I will enjoy people watching 1000’s I will never see again, this is a gift I’ve been given that some don’t get. Enjoy it and make the most of it.

To that end, I’ll try to put together a blogging protocol that can be used in other vacations allowing for blogging to be seamlessly integrated with the trip. Had I thought about this, I should have set up a inbound VPN. Oh well. There will be other times.

I’m good and sleepy today so I’ll keep this on the short side and bid you a fond farewell.

We’ve made it through Tuesday. For someone who’s become mortified of their own mortality, it’s odd that I celebrate the passing of the days like I do. But in my defense, these days are the ones you have to go through in order to finance the days of doing what you want. So what do I want? At this point in time in my life, I want at least 10 acres with a whole bunch of trees on it. Preferably a water feature also. I want to create a trail that switches back and forth around the property so that I may go for a long walk and not have to run into anybody. I want to have nice little house, a big detached garage/shop, RV hookups, and little guest cabins. If I were to win the lottery, I’d buy a couple hundred acres in the middle of the Woods and build a hotel in the middle of it. Maybe not a hotel per se, but cabins around a central point that has a huge fire pit and a covered kitchen facility.

But here’s the thing, I’m getting older, to the point where I’m actually incapable, physically, of doing some of the things that would be required to have this dream of mine about having property. My friend David bought his dream property and built the dream house on it 7 and 1/2 years ago. He’s calling it quits now, moving back to Suburbia. Closer to neighbors, other people, and I guess medical facilities. And unfortunately, that may be what it comes down to. You start having chest pains in the middle of the Woods, and you may as well lay down, look at the sky, and hope that’s where you’re headed.

I think I have to try it, though. I won’t rest peacefully until I figure out if that’s what’s going to calm my soul. Part of me is even thinking about the Caribbean. If I were to liquidate all my assets in the States, surely I could buy an acre or two in some tropical paradise. Although, in the last paragraph, I talked about medical needs as we age, in the Caribbean is just not known for that.

I think I’m supposed to die in the appalachians, I have a feeling I’ve done that before, a lot of times. There’s an affinity I feel going through those mountains. I don’t feel that way with the Rockies. Don’t get me wrong, though. I love the Rockies. They’re just a little young for me.

I’m super thankful for where I’m at now, I just feel that there’s some place else I’m supposed to get to. Sleep well world! We’ll catch you tomorrow!

It was a nice day today, I got started early and was out on the bike by 7am and did 13.5 miles by the time I got home. I asked Sandy if she wanted to go to Brahms for a breakfast sandwich but she didn’t. I decided to go myself and I doubled up on the sausage and that just shot the proportions. I’ll have to keep that in mind.

Got home and got some laundry done and took a great nap around noon. Played some video games and did some cleaning.

Finished up the day with a new teriyaki chicken recipe (listed here) with some rice and broccoli. So my daily intake today was a double sausage egg & cheese biscuit. Half a pound of chicken with a quarter pound of broccoli and 2 cups of rice. Oh and my grape soda with dinner added another 150 calories. And I guess about 50 tic taks adding another 150. Tomorrow is a fasting day, we’ll see how that goes. Oh and sit ups start tomorrow, ugh.

It’s been a good day and I’m looking forward to getting Monday behind us and on with the week.