It’s back to the old format today, hopefully I can start doing interesting things in “normal” life to keep the momentum I gained in Europe.
Today’s Daily Challenge
While marching in place, bend forward at the hips and extend your arms behind you fifteen times.
This quick exercise will loosen your upper body, especially after a long period of sitting. Whether you’re at home or work, getting up and moving your arms and legs can help you burn calories, lower your blood pressure, and boost your energy level.
A Weekend Of Little Productivity
I joined my boss and a former coworker for drinks after work on Friday. We started the afternoon at Benchwarmers and migrated to Lucky’s Burgers And Brew to visit one of our new favorite bartenders. I have little recollection of the rest of the evening because I drove home, unpacked briefcase, and then promptly passed out on the bed.
I kicked around the house for awhile on Saturday before finally getting out to grab lunch at Fellini’s in Candler Park; it was weird when I realized that I have been eating at different locations of Fellini’s for twenty years. Without a plan in mind I drove around a little while afterward before returning to East Atlanta. I took a good nap, did some coding, and finally emerged from the house again for dinner. Sadly I wound up on Buford Highway eating crappy Chinese buffet. On my drive home Saturday night the Jackmobile’s dashboard “Brake Lamp” dummy light illuminated. Using my iPhone’s video capture capability I was able to determine which light had burned out with just a couple taps of the brake.
Even though there are three auto supply stores within spitting distance of East Atlanta I used the burned out bulb as an excuse to escape Dodge on Sunday morning. I drove all the way up to Chamblee to go to Auto Zone and then ate a predictably tasty lunch at El Norteño (aka Pollo Norteño). Again with no plan in place I tooled around town in the Jackmobile, now with 100% brake light illumination, and returned to the ‘hood. This time I kicked around the house, wrote some code, and finally got my ass out to mow the yard which had thankfully not turned into a gigantic weed farm in the three weeks since I last performed this task. After showering I noticed a text message from the boss who wanted to go out and exercise. Since I had just showered I decided to stay home instead and wrote some code before the finale of “Halt And Catch Fire” was to air.
ITP Flickr Pic
“Amsterdam, Netherlands At Night”
Yesterday I managed to process the few shots I took with my Nikon 1 V1 while touring Europe. As the title says this is Amsterdam at night; I have no idea what the building is, it just caught my eye.
Halt And Fizzle Out
If you’ve followed this space during July you’ll know that I’ve been into this AMC TV series Halt And Catch Fire, a story about a small Texas company that is trying to create an IBM clone “portable” in the early 1980s; I believe that the story is “based on a true story”.
Because I am an old computer nerd I have really enjoyed this series, including trying to determine where in the Atlanta area some of the scenes were shot. Last night’s episode left a gaping hole in my heart however as all it seemed to do was set up story lines for a potential second season. I won’t spoil anything here in case there is another old-time nerd out there who has not watched this episode yet.
Oh well, you pays your money you takes your chances.
My Urge To Purge
I woke up this morning with one, focused thought — “Holy shit. I own way too much stuff. How am I ever going to get rid of all this stuff?” Figuring this out will be my biggest personal project in August. Realistically I want to downsize to about half (or less) of the space that I currently occupy. In order to do this I will have to make some very tough decisions, but I must keep in mind that this is all just “stuff”, much of which has served no better purpose than making a house look lived-in for over a decade.
I might start a “Craig’s List / Freecycle” space here on the blog until the house is sold. I will post photos and descriptions of items, and the first one to claim the item in the comments gets the first shot of getting the goods.
Today’s Personal Project
Tonight will bring one of two activities. If the “birthday girl”, a friend of my boss, doesn’t flake on us we will be joining her for drinks and dinner at Henry’s Midtown Tavern. If she does flake, the boss and I have agreed to knock the racquetball around for awhile; I hope that my weekend of rest has provided sufficient time for my legs and feet to heal.
Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – okay, though I feel as if I wasted the weekend
Current Music – silence at the moment
Website Of The Day – When it comes to writing I know that I do not follow the rules, including the way I capitalize my titles. If you are an English nerd you probably don’t need the service of TitleCase the way I do.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – nothing
Morning Weigh-In – shit, should have jumped on the scale this morning
Monthly
Foot Mileage – ~0.0 miles
Wheel Mileage – ~0.0 miles
Gym Visits – 0 (0 cardio)
Marta Rides To Work – 0
Bike Rides To Work – 0
August Goals
– clear out a room’s worth of things I no longer wish to own for the rest of my life
– hire a plumber to come in and fix the “small” repairs
– contact a realtor to make a hit list of things that need to change before the house can be listed
2014 Goals: Measurable
– Get my weight down to 190 pounds so that I can wear a 36″ waist pants comfortably
– Completely read ten books, audio books permissible
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Completely run at least one 10k
– Fix all (or at least most) of the things which are wrong with the ITP Estate
– Sell the ITP Estate (tentative)
2014 Goals: Unmeasurable
– Continue to simplify, simplify, simplify
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem
– Eat smaller portions
– Start, and continue, to make my own bread using my bread machine as well as using the technique outlined in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking
– Read and discard magazines during the month in which they arrive (even digitally)
Books I’ve Read/Heard In 2014
- “Johnny Carson” by Henry Bushkin
- “Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative” by Austin Kleon
- “Chaos: Making a New Science” by James Gleick
- “What’s So Funny?: My Hilarious Life” by Tim Conway
Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]
You have the urge to purge? Tell me about it. The yard sale is this Friday and Saturday and there may need to be another one! So much crap to lose.
Fingers crossed, our showing from the “downsizing couple” went very well and they will hopefully be submitting a contingency offer shortly. The 62 acre plot they live on should be snapped up rather quickly, so this my happen pretty quickly!!
And except for running to “the city” to meet up with the CMB’s to get boxes and Sublime Donuts (!!), the weekend was spent cutting grass, cleaning and staying out of the house!
Tour of Utah starts today on some NBC network.. not sure which. Lots of friends posting lots of beautiful pics of SW Utah- the race coverage should be stunning.
Guess I’ll sign up for that one next year.
I want a report on Henry’s… looks like a neat place but I don’t want to go by myself at lunch.
-FP
Wow Steve – that would be great if the house sold quick! (except the moving part & all that crap).
We spent a very busy weekend with relatives. I’m exhausted.
Went tubing with 6 adults & 5 children on the Cartacay yesterday, it actually went much better than I expected it would. Katrina (& Kevin) had a friend come down for the weekend from VA, she used to work with Kevin at TIAA Cref & then with them both at Garmin. It was interesting talking about the Tour of GA & other old bike team stuff.
And now we are going camping today thru Wed. Luckily for me I am at work today, I will get there after everything is set up.
Looks as if the Tour of Utah is on some obscure sports channel on Dish that I don’t think I get. Oh well.
If I make it to Henry’s I’ll give a full report tomorrow.
Good luck with the downsizing couple. I am going to try and push myself to be ready post-Labor Day.
Family is still here, about 24 hours to go. It has been ‘challenging’ to say the least. My sister, bless her heart, seems to thrive on drama and dissects every word I say looking for some hidden meaning…apparently in over 40 years she hasn’t figured out that I’m a pretty straightforward sort of person.
On top of that, the family isn’t what I would consider early birds, the BIL sleeps until about 11…so I’ve only been able to do about half the stuff I had planned. Well I could go on, and on, and on… 🙂 We have had some fun, the Zoo, Stone Mountain, hitting the pool (Jenka again THANK YOU, even though the visit created some drama…ask me about it next time we have a drink). We are planning on the Aquarium today…we will see what time we get moving.
Good luck everyone with the purging…we did a lot of that before the renovation. When we moved back we realize some stuff had been packed away for a year…I guess we really don’t need it.
It’s amazing how odd black coffee tastes when you’ve all-but given it up for two months.
Martha – fun times with family – right? Does the BIL stay up super late, or just like to sleep? Luckily for me, my family doesn’t look for hidden meaning, we just argue & fight like we’ve always done.
Katrina has actually veto’d some of the stuff Allan’s mom wanted to do with the kids, that’s how the tubing ended up happening. She wants them to be outside having fun, not just going to see exhibits. (they’ve been to Aquariums before, so they might get bored quick and whiny & it might be a waste of money).
I’m trying to do a bit of both, there is no equivalent of Georgia Aquarium close to Indiana…but otherwise, I’ve been trying to get them outside and moving.
He stays up late and then sleeps in, bugs the bejesus out of Jerry…so much so he hid the remote for the tv last night…so everyone went to bed at a reasonable hour. 🙂
We don’t really fight, Karen just pouts…then it’s up to me to figure out what I may or may not have done. Was I too nice or was I to mean? Did I offer her too much or not enough…she cries over everything and nothing…
Don’t even get me started on meal time…holy hell, what a pack of picky eaters this crew is…
I’ll stick with horses and dogs, TYVM.
There’s a free museum here. Take home samples of shredded currency! Watch the robots move cash in and out of the vault. Tons o’ fun.
Glad everyone survived the river…
oh wow Steve – if I had know that, we could have brought the kids there. They would probably like that, for 5 or 10 minutes.
The plus of living in close proximity to family is no sleep overs! My sister frequently suggests a group vacay, uh yeah never gonna happen!
Our potential contract seems like a long shot since their property isn’t listed yet. It is a prime area for a high end development, but those buyers don’t come along every day. Thinking positively though, I’m eager to return to my normal (lax) housekeeping ways.
And yes, the purge is ON! Waiting on the guy that’s buying my rower now.
And in other news from “As the Farm turns.. ” Debbie called me Friday- “The gate stopped working!” Oh great, something else to repair. The website for the gate folks has gotten much better than the last time I used it, and it gave me specific directions to isolate the failing component, which has been ordered and will be replaced this week. Woot!
hey Paulie – the painting company that you used has started on our house today. Had totally forgotten about them, until they knocked on the door right before 8am thiss morning.
Allan should be headed up to the campground, ir be there by now. Bob & Travis are joining us, so the next 2 days will be 4 little kids, & 7 adults.
Steve, I feel your pain. I haven’t even started getting the house ready for sale and new things break — utility room light, garbage disposal, master bath toilet — all in the past month.
Good luck with the painting job Barb.