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Daily things 5️⃣ The Sunday Afternoon Club

Spent all afternoon, and part of the evening, cleaning out the garage. This included assembling a garage cabinet, where I can store some of the things that now clutter walls and flat surfaces, and eventually remove shelves on one wall where I'd like to park the mower, hang brooms and shovels, and the like.

Thursday is garbage day. We have two garbage totes, and I've been told not to put anything in them because we need their capacity for when we clean the fridge out this week. So, now there's eight bags of styrofoam and other trash sitting along the side of the house. (My otherwise "green" municipality doesn't have styrofoam recycling.)

Our house was built a few years before building codes required drywall on attached garage exterior walls. The garage now looks kind of like like Walt Kowalski's garage. Eventually I'd like to cover exposed walls in pegboard.

walt kowalski garage.jpg
 
It’s going to rain late this afternoon so I decided I should mow the lawn. Saw a few light patches of grass so I decided to overseed & then put down some fertilizer.

As I was putting everything away a thought came to me. I’m helping my lawn grow, which means I’ll have to mow more, which means I’ve just created more work for me. I’m an idiot.
 
It's been a strange kind of weekend. On Friday I decided to take on the overgrown hedges near my back door. I thinned them out considerably but early on I got stung/bit by something. I think it was a wasp as there were several orbiting around but whatever it was that got me was in the bush itself. At first I thought I stuck myself on a thorns but these bushes don't have thorns. I pulled my hand out and it looked more like a bug bite on the backside of my hand, close to the wrist. It hurt pretty good.

The welt was red and within a few hours spread to a patch of about 2" x 3". By the next morning it covered the whole of the back of my hand, from wrist to knuckles, but didn't spread beyond that into my fingers or up into my wrist. Just the back of my hand which looked visibly puffy compared to my other hand and itched like the dickens. It was no worse this morning and it appears to be receding a bit, but the bit itself still itches a lot, kind of like a bad mosquito bite or a fire ant bite.

So I haven't done much else this weekend. I slept in late both Saturday and Sunday due to the Benadryl hangover.... that stuff wipes me out.

My son and his wife came over yesterday to look at a bicycle. It showed up on a FB group, a used 2020 bicycle, marked down about 30% from its new price. Seemed like a good deal, especially since it was an XL frame to fit my 6'-3" son. He bought the bike. Then my sons, daughter-in-law, wife and I went out to dinner together (ate on the patio of a Thai restaurant).

So basically after working hard on Friday, I haven't really done diddlysquat since.
 
It's been a strange kind of weekend. On Friday I decided to take on the overgrown hedges near my back door. I thinned them out considerably but early on I got stung/bit by something. I think it was a wasp as there were several orbiting around but whatever it was that got me was in the bush itself. At first I thought I stuck myself on a thorns but these bushes don't have thorns. I pulled my hand out and it looked more like a bug bite on the backside of my hand, close to the wrist. It hurt pretty good.

The welt was red and within a few hours spread to a patch of about 2" x 3". By the next morning it covered the whole of the back of my hand, from wrist to knuckles, but didn't spread beyond that into my fingers or up into my wrist. Just the back of my hand which looked visibly puffy compared to my other hand and itched like the dickens. It was no worse this morning and it appears to be receding a bit, but the bit itself still itches a lot, kind of like a bad mosquito bite or a fire ant bite.

So I haven't done much else this weekend. I slept in late both Saturday and Sunday due to the Benadryl hangover.... that stuff wipes me out.

My son and his wife came over yesterday to look at a bicycle. It showed up on a FB group, a used 2020 bicycle, marked down about 30% from its new price. Seemed like a good deal, especially since it was an XL frame to fit my 6'-3" son. He bought the bike. Then my sons, daughter-in-law, wife and I went out to dinner together (ate on the patio of a Thai restaurant).

So basically after working hard on Friday, I haven't really done diddlysquat since.
Has the swelling and redness gone down and stayed down?
 
Has the swelling and redness gone down and stayed down?
My Sunday was typical. Run a camera at church during the morning, go work out for 2-2 1/2 hours at the Y. grocery shopping, laundry, back to church for evening service, gas up for the week, chill for a bit then bed.
 
Has the swelling and redness gone down and stayed down?
It was still sore, itchy and swollen yesterday. Doing much better today. The skin on the back of my hand is still slightly swollen but the features underneath (veins and tendons and stuff) are starting to appear through the puffiness again.
 
Walked the dog
Did some deck repair
Milkshakes for Mrs. P & me
Watched the Euros ⚽️
Grilled a couple steaks
Mrs. P is now picking movie

All Good.
 
4th of July

Load of laundry
Running the dishwasher
Shredded documents


Neighborhood fireworks
 
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Not a good week for miles this week. Weather and other things disrupted by ride time. I did put in 50 miles today for the Fourth of the July though.

Patriotic display in Burnett Park in Downtown Fort Worth
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Airfield Falls
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Downtown Fort Worth from the trail across from Rockwood Park. The floodgate on the left is painted with a mural of birds. There are dozens of floodgates along the trail levies and during the pandemic many (perhaps all) had murals painted on them.
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So I had breakfast with my fraternity little brother. I hadn't seen him in about 35 years. His daughter is going to med school here in Ft Worth and I guess they have a ceremony at the beginning of reach hear. She is now an MS2 (her second year as a med student).

Things I learned that I didn't know that I learned over breakfast:
  • He graduated a year early from HS and has an October birthday, so he was 16 when he started college. He didn't advertise that widely at the time.
  • When he was 17, he (inadvertently) stole another brother's 21-year-old girlfriend (he didn't know she was dating someone else). He and the other brother haven't spoken since.
  • One of our fellow fraternity brothers passed away recently. He went for a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains and was never seen again.
  • After a career of obscurity working as an IT guy, he recently became the CIO of a major graduate school and is making better money than he ever hoped for.
It was a fun visit and hopefully we can get together again while his daughter is still in town.
 
1) Kids had visitors this weekend. They are gone now. Great kid last though. Super polite.
2) I am going to rent a storage locker this week. I need to get extra crap out of the garage so I can start building stuff again.
3) Amazon order is running late. I get it though, shipping has become part of the employment issue.
4) Why can’t best practices and political opinion coincide?
5) Dog and I ran this morning. At the 4 mile point she decided that it was too hot to continue running. I would have stopped at 3 but she had kept going so I pushed through it.
 
The heat of the mid-Columbia has waned as Fall engulfs us, which meant a comprehensive day of yardwork. My wife cleaned both grills (they look brand new!) and we mowed the yard. I did some minor work on cars (filling of fluids, checking tires) and Costco was decidedly pleasant (I attribute this to going during the Seahawks game).

Now, I am wrapping up some proposals and taking time for self-learning.
 
It's a little snowy and cold. Chicken broth is simmering on the stove, and will be used for chicken noodle soup later.

A Galette des Rois will be baking in the oven soon. It's a different version of King Cake. Almond filling is sandwiched between two layers of puff pastry.
 
Going to Binghamton for spiedies. Got a gift card for someplace there, and with it being a slow-ish Sunday, it gets us out of the house.

21ºF/-6ºC out. Toasty, compared to the past few days. My wife went to get some water out of the garage, and it was frozen solid. Oh shit! I hope the beer that's out there hasn't exploded!
 
It's a little snowy and cold. Chicken broth is simmering on the stove, and will be used for chicken noodle soup later.

A Galette des Rois will be baking in the oven soon. It's a different version of King Cake. Almond filling is sandwiched between two layers of puff pastry.
In an amazing coincidence, I was looking up galette recipes just yesterday. I know where to find gluten-free puff pastry ...
 
21ºF/-6ºC out. Toasty, compared to the past few days.
It was a nice day for a bike ride here in Texas today. It's supposed to get down to 16ºF this week, but today was awesome.
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Thirty miles on my fixed gear bike. And... I'm down 10 pounds so far this year.
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The Galette du Rois will have to wait, as I'm heading out to visit my SIL for a few days. I'd been hesitant ... I look a lot like my brother, we share a sense of humor and gestures and facial expressions. I'd been thinking that having me around would bring up unpleasant memories.
But in the text conversation, she wrote, "you're welcome any time." So I'll be distracting her from the anticipation of a root canal, and ideally provide some entertainment. Hope she can take me to a beach, and to a restaurant that she's been wanting to try.

E n K n E.jpg
 
Dropped my son off at camp for two weeks. He's in the cabin I was a CIT ibn back in the 90s. The gave all of us lunch in the dining hall before we left- was a fun throwback.
 
There are a lot of rude & entitled people in the airport & on the planes.
I got pretty skilled at avoiding most of those folks and their crap when I was flying frequently for work (lots of flights in and out of ATL and LAX will learn you), but it's a bit more difficult to do when I'm traveling with Mr. Bubba (who travels maybe once a year for work) - she doesn't always understand some of the choices I make at the airport. Trust me, it's for the best...

....and I'll get out of this thread before I get into manspalining mode.
 
It's not Sunday afternoon yet, bit it will be.

You don't meet people with good old nicknames like Slim, Stretch or Shorty anymore.

I'm headed out of town for work this afternoon. I rented a little cabin instead of a hotel room. It's below the GSA rate and will be more comfortable than a hotel room.

To be honest, I don't want to be away from home. I used to see a trip like this as an adventure. I don't feel that way now.
 
Feels like we dodged a bullet with weather
Mostly sleet yesterday with some snow, about an inch plus
Nothing froze on power lines
Chicken & dumplings for dinner
Small window of freezing rain today but thankfully not a lot
Good sledding on our hill in the park & street
Chili for dinner
MrsP is starting puzzle #3 for the weekend
Watched EPL⚽️ this morning
Watched NFL🏈 this afternoon
Office closed Monday
Most importantly, we did not lose power!
 
*Sunday morning

Coffee run with the Mrs. - our Sunday morning ritual to DB and take the dog to get a pup cup. Dinner with her parents this afternoon - lasagna on the menu. We are in charge of dessert.
 
Cheesecake festival late morning. I tried Everything Bagel cheesecake and am satisfied. I'm making Taiwanese braised beef and noodles this afternoon.
 
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