Inside The Perimeter

I forgot to mention yesterday that I took two photos for my “Home Was Where the Hearth Is” project. The two newly discovered freestanding hearths were inside Clinton Nature Preserve. I haven’t uploaded the photos to Flickr yet, but will soon.

I didn’t do a whole lot yesterday, feeling blah and all. I did manage to finish the book “The Last Devil to Die”, the fourth in the “A Thursday Murder Club Mystery” series by Richard Osman. These are easy reads, and my virtual copy is due back to the library this week, so I wanted to finish it. I wound up making a squash soup last night. I roasted a large north Georgia candy roaster squash along with a small butternut squash, and the proceeded to make the soup using the, as the base. The soup is good, but could possibly use a few enhancements like a dash of cream.

Today I will travel to one of my old work neighborhoods, Perimeter Mall, to make a few shekels by doing a product evaluation. I picked a 9am time slot to limit the possibility of spending the money immediately on food and/or beer.

May or may not ride tonight depending on my energy level and the temperature. I do have to show up regardless since I have a bike stand to give to one of the guys. My buddy Chip was getting rid of this bike stand, so I offered to take it off of his hands and find it a new home.

I solved today’s Wordle in five attempts; my starter today was HYENA. Life has been no laughing matter for me the past eighteen months, but I decided to start with this word anyhow.

Recently I have been too depressed about my weight gain to weigh myself. Henceforth I did not weigh myself again today.

Happy belated anniversary to this blog. As of yesterday I have been spilling my guts for nineteen years.

It was a “different” weekend for me. Friday and Saturday mostly involved drinking beer at a bar. Want to take a stab where most of my money is being spent?

Speaking of spending money, I thought my hand was going to be forced into buying a new iPhone on Saturday when my trusty “old” (four year) iPhone XS refused to wake from its slumber. I finally used some Google Foo to learn the button sequence I needed to press in order to shake it back to life, and I was never so relieved to see that Apple logo appear. I intend to get a new iPhone soon, but have been dragging my feet due to “Heatgate” and trying to figure out how I can lower my monthly cellphone bill.

Yesterday I did my first Meetup hike. It was a bit confusing figuring out where to meet the meetup group since Clinton Nature Preserve in Villa Rica has a couple of different parking areas. The phrase “look for people pretending to stretch” entered my head as I scanned people wondering if they were Meetup participants. The small group, perhaps twelve of us, equally divided amongst men and women, hiked eight miles at a fairly fast pace (at least for me). It reminded me, perhaps too much, like hashing. I liked Clinton Nature Preserve, and was surprised that I’ve never hashed there. I’d bet a lot of money that the hash, specifically Black Sheep or Wheelhopper, has hashed there, but I have not. I was told that normally a subset of the hiking group goes out for beer/dinner after the hike, but this was not the case yesterday. Since I was “in the neighborhood” I intended to head to Hixtown Brewing in Villa Rica, but then I saw a text from Dean/Jackass inviting me to Flat Iron. Since I have been a bad friend, I decided to drive back to East Atlanta to meet him instead.

Although it pleases some, I’m not ready for this cooler weather. My body doesn’t handle abrupt temperature changes well, and I’m suffering from the ramifications of this today as I don’t feel particularly well. The house temperature just reached 65°F, so my heater kicked on. This might be the earliest I’ve used heat in many years; normally I can get into November before the heat comes on.

I solved today’s Wordle in five attempts; my starter today was STARE. My statistics told me to start with a different word, but I ignored that.

It was a busy morning yesterday. As I mentioned, I ran errands. Last night I joined up with a few guys for the weekly ride from CVS in Decatur. It was one of “those” nights where people around us seemed to be trying to interfere. We had a car honk and pass us at high speed as we rode up Springdale toward The by Way. We had a guy stop in the middle of the sidewalk outside the Botanical Gardens and impose his “duty” to get in the way as he informed us that “people walk here” (no shit asshole, we have eyes). And then there was the car that pulled a u-turn in front of me at the Botanical Gardens entrance gate as I was going downhill and exiting through to closed middle exit gate, forcing me to hit the brakes hard. My body was mostly fine, though I did “feel” my right knee more than I wished.

Not much planned for this weekend. I am hiking on Sunday with the Meetup group mention by David waaaaaay back in January. It’s amazing that it’s taken me over nine months to finally sign up for one.

I solved today’s Wordle in four attempts; my starter today was TINGE.

Does anyone remember what the elders called “rain”? Wee Little Farm could certainly use some rain, with none in the immediate forecast.

If today is going to follow this week’s trend (Monday was lazy, Tuesday I rode a century, yesterday I did nothing) it will be busy and full of productivity. To start my day I am out running a lot of errands I have been ignoring. Since it’s not going to rain tonight I will most likely be mounting my bicycle again and going for a significantly shorter ride. Today I will also attempt to curtail my overeating problem.

Next year I am going to finally do a little crop rotation. I harvested five cucumbers yesterday, four were fine, one had a worm hole. The four edible cucumbers came from a garden bed in which I’ve never grown cucumbers (and this is a volunteer plant), the wormy one came from my normal cucumber raised bed, the same one which has had other worm problems recently.

I solved today’s Wordle in five attempts; my starter today was DRAFT.

It was a hard day of riding yesterday, and I am proud of the effort everyone put in. I am noticeably sore this morning, as to be expected. At one point in the ride the outer part of my right knee popped, which since tearing a meniscus three years ago always worries me. It occurred as I was moving my knee out the way to access a water bottle, as innocuous of a move as when I tore a meniscus bending down in REI. The knee is tender, but I will let it rest today and see what becomes of it. After the ride a few of us celebrated with beers at Reformation Brewing before heading to Chattahoochee Food Words to have a beer at Dr Scofflaws and dinner at Fox Bros BBQ. Even riding 104 miles, I doubt that I lost weight yesterday. Lol

Needless to say, I am in recovery mode today and don’t expect to do much physical activity.

I solved today’s Wordle in three attempts; my starter today was SPENT. I thought I was headed for another deuce today.

In the end it was a very boring Monday. I didn’t make the Lowe’s/Target/Kroger run to Edgewood Retail District as expected. While I did putter around WLF, I did not get around to cutting the wire for fall row covers. And I took a couple of naps. The most exciting thing was making dinner using some of the eggplant, pepper, and okra I harvested from WLF.

Setting you up for the spike: I find that I do worse in Wordle when the word is happy or joyous. For instance, MERRY never entered my mind yesterday. I had the same difficulty last week when the solution was SMILE, though at least in that case I got to the answer.

I’m headed for Silver Comet today with some trepidation since I am not in the physical condition I should be in to undertake a long ride. Wish me well…

I solved today’s Wordle in two attempts; my starter today was CLASH. Don’t call it a comeback, but it was a much-needed boost after yesterday’s failure.

It was an interesting, and somewhat expensive weekend.

As expected the Braves game cost me an arm and a leg. I certainly wasn’t expecting parking to cost us $40, for which I paid half. Hell, that wasn’t even the most expensive lot I saw advertised; that honor goes to The Boy Scouts who must have earned their “Price Gouging” badge by charging $60 to park in their lot. And then I drank beer and ate food…

I stayed in Athens on Saturday night. That was perhaps the only good decision I made that day. The hotel at which I stayed was three miles from downtown, and because I am feeling fat and cheap these days I decided to walk (and sweat) to Creature Comforts. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I did not have my drivers license with me when I arrived at the brewery! A call to the hotel confirmed that I left it at the front desk when I checked in. Ugh, so much for saving money as I then had to call a Lyft to take me back to the hotel and a return trip downtown because I would have been damned if I walked the three miles in that heat twice. I did make the walk (stagger) again sometime after 10pm after consuming way too much beer and two slices of pizza.

When the walk on which I was going to go yesterday was canceled due to Davey’s injury I thought that I might tour some breweries that I either have not been to, or have not been to in awhile. That thought changed when I awoke with a hangover from too much consumption on Saturday night.

I registered for BRAG Spring Tune Up yesterday.

What is the opposite of the Midas Touch? Whatever it is called, I have it. This weekend all of the teams for which I root — Green Bay Packers, Florida Gators, Werder Bremen, and New York Jets — lost. On top of that I sat amidst loud UGA fans as they came back to win a game they very well could have lost. Maybe I should start rooting for the Atlanta Braves and UGA to bring their programs back down to earth?

I failed to solve today’s Wordle; my starter today was SHARE. Apparently my anti-Midas Touch is more powerful than I imagined.

For about a week I have been contemplating signing up for an overnight backpacking/camping trip at FDR State Park at the end of October put on by REI. The workshop was priced at $299 which is why I was hemming and hawing about whether to join the two others who had already registered. When I went to see if anyone else had registered I couldn’t find the event, which apparently means that REI has cancelled it.

Last night’s outing was fun. Harold (Bwana) drove down to the ITP Estate and I drove us up to Little 5 Points. We had beers and dinner at Wrecking Bar before walking around to Variety Playhouse for the Rick Beato show. On Beato’s YouTube channel he often breaks down a song, explaining why it’s great. Due to the ridiculous copyright laws he has to avoid songs from many bands, including The Beatles (who you’d think have enough money at this point), lest the video get demonetized or his channel gets a strike placed on it. Live however, he can do as he pleases, so he broke down The Beatles’ song “I am the Walrus”.

It was twenty years ago today when the path of the Atlanta Thrashers started its decline. Twenty years ago today Thrashers superstar Danny Heatley lost control of his car while speeding up Lenox Road, injuring himself and subsequently killing his teammate Dan Snyder.

I solved today’s Wordle in four attempts; my starter today was WHITE.

Yesterday I was notified in an email that the price of my Disney+ subscription will be bumped up again, this time $4/month, to $18.99/month. At the beginning of this year the subscription went from $13.99/month to $14.99/month. I will have to make a tough decision about this since I watch Hulu and ESPN+ a lot, but rarely find myself watching Disney (even thought the vastness of Disney’s content is what initially spurred me on to subscribe). This weekend I will need to do some cost analysis.

In my attempt to replace my fancy pants can opener I realized this was the perfect use case for Bed, Bath, and Beyond (RIP).

Last night I made my version of Jenka’s Roasted Garlic and Potato soup. I used WLF potatoes, some store-bought garlic roasted in the air fryer, and chicken stock cubes with the water. The soup was incredibly delicious.

I solved today’s Wordle in five attempts; my starter today was GLOBE.

To steal a line from Steve, “I fooled them again!”. I made it through yesterday’s dental appointment with no new issues.

And then to celebrate I ate a Chinese buffet lunch. I ate a ton of meat, mostly chicken, and dammit it was good. I allowed myself this indulgence only because I knew that I’d be riding last night.

I then returned home, where I paid a 33% “convince fee” to buy a ticket for a concert in December at The Eastern. This was the fee charged by Axs, which I assume is a subsidiary of Ticketmaster / Live Nation. I needed to buy the ticket online instead of at The Eastern’s box office because it was a ticket presale.

Once again I struggled to get enough oxygen when I exerted myself riding last night. Things have not been 100% since I was sick three weeks ago, and to be honest it’s a little worrisome. I definitely can’t ride a century next Tuesday with this sort of respiratory issue. I hope that what ever is lingering, if that is indeed the culprit, clears out soon.

This week I started rewatching “The Morning Show” from Season 1. Often I want to watch the back catalog before heading into the new season, especially if it’s been awhile since I watched it originally.

I solved today’s Wordle in four attempts; my starter today was SCREW.