28.1 was a simple lunchtime outing to Kettleman’s Bagels. I like the idea of Andrea and I treating ourselves once a week to “something” that gets us out of the house. And with J at school, it means a simple outing for just the two of us, a rare occurrence.
28.2 was a meal planning outing, with Supperworks for September (three split meals, a couple of sides, and a few lunch options for Andrea and I). Oh, sure, I also got groceries at the same time, but that was just normal stuff. Pre-assembled meals that we like is a treat.
28.3 was organizing my new stretching routine more formally, and making up a new “workout poster” to follow along while doing the stretching. I’ve been lollygagging the last few days, time to get back to it in full tomorrow.
Most of my day’s self-nudging was linked to writing and being better organized.
27.1 was some extra blogging today. I wrote about my guide to astronomy as well as an article I liked way back in 2012.
27.2 was somewhat simpler, which is that I have never really done a deep organizational dive into OneNote. I used to use Evernote long ago, I liked how it was going initially, and then they changed their business model and I said sayonara. But with my writing heating up, I feel like I would like a better organizational approach to taking notes, even on my phone. I condensed some of my workbooks down to one main one, and now I’m going through and moving things around as necessary.
27.3 was a bigger writing exercise. Some time ago, I developed a rough outline for my “PolyWogg Guide to Astronomy”. Except when I did some rejigging of everything, I accidentally deleted the table of contents and outline from my blog page, thinking I had a separate copy on my hard drive. I didn’t. Sooooo, I recovered the old one from an old backup, and then added to it substantially. But I finished, and I have now sent out the ToC for feedback. Maybe some people will give me ideas, maybe they won’t. But my first stage is done.
I have been doing this series for the month, and while it had a clear purpose at the start of the month, I’m not as convinced the blogging is as relevant as when I started. I wanted it to hold my feet to the fire, to ensure I was making good planning decisions to nudge me forward, and it did that at the beginning. But now that I’m bopping along, the accountability requirement to blog almost seems redundant. Certainly anti-climactic. And, when I’m blogging about other things, this type of post is not necessarily at the top of my list to do before bed. Take this entry, for example. I didn’t write it Friday or Saturday nights, as I was too tired. Instead, I held off until tonight to close out all three nights at once. To be honest, I wouldn’t even do it tonight except my memory starts to fade.
24.1 was from Friday morning, which started off with dropping Jacob at school. With Jacob’s AFOs out of the picture for the foreseeable future, I think I’m likely to be running him to school most mornings, at least until we can figure out ways to get his endurance up (if possible). I followed up with a detailed conversation with the physiotherapist, and we have a way forward on his exercises. In the meantime, he’ll take the bus home, and most days we’ll try to meet him near the stop to help carry his backpack home. I need the exercise anyway.
24.2 was sort of “post dropoff”, running a bunch of errands to get things organized at home, with a pharmacy run for example.
24.3 was looking towards October and what I might blog about regularly, if anything. As I said above, I don’t need to post daily on my nudging behaviour, weekly at best, but I do have an idea that actually was sparked by an episode last week of New Amsterdam called “More Joy”. A little cheesy, I know, and it isn’t really tied to the episode, but we’ll see how it goes.
25.1 was the first item of Saturday morning, which was my full-body workout. I did my stretching exercises, and then went to the BowFlex system. Annnd, it was time for an step-up in my training. My body has been reacting well to the movement, the weights are about right, but for a few exercises, it was clear the reps were not up to the right level. Soooo, I boosted 8 of the 9 exercises from 1 set of 10 reps to 3 sets of 10 reps (most were already at 2 sets anyway), and for three of them, I boosted it to 3 sets of 25 reps (they too were already at 2 x 25). My body resisted a little bit, but overall, it was fine with the extra weight and breaking more of a sweat. I do, however, realize that I seem to be much better at doing the exercises in the morning. By late afternoon, or early evening, my motivation is way down, and I’m often tired with a burgeoning headache tied to allergies or blood pressure. Not a great time to jump on the weight machine. So mornings look like my best time.
25.2 was a small issue with Jacob’s setup of his Minecraft server. It’s generally working well for everyone, no lagging, but there’s a tweak needed for Jacob’s laptop and we haven’t quite nailed it yet. I did some research as to potential options, gave them to Jacob to try, and spoiler alert, it didn’t fix it. But at least it was a start.
25.3 was a blog entry about potential monetization of the sites. Or, more accurately perhaps, why I DON’T monetize the sites. I enjoyed writing it and was grateful for the organized input from another source to help me structure my thoughts.
26.1 is a big outstanding item, namely organizing the garage. Andrea and I got started on this way back in the spring, and part of it was in anticipation of my future observatory. When that died, so did some of my interest in the garage project. There are three major things that have to get done once I even get it organized, and it is the next major step in the overall set of projects. I had promised myself that I would do 30 minutes solid on it this morning, which turned into almost 2h+ instead. I’m happy to get as much done as we did, but my lower left back wasn’t too happy with me when we were done. Still, nice to have a major “chunk” out of the way.
26.2 was a simple outing this afternoon after an afternoon conference call to do some shopping for Jacob. He needs a new fall coat, some gloves, a new toque, maybe a few other things. We didn’t have much luck on the coat side, at least not at SportChek, but we ticked the box for the rest.
26.3 was some more research on alternative exercises. On Saturday, we did an outing for a massage for Jacob’s legs, and as part of the outing, we came up with five new exercises to replace part of our workout regimen that wasn’t working as well. While I had a great set of diagrams earlier, the replacement ones require a bit more work to finetune. I’m also considering going to see a local kinesiologist in order to figure out my workout options for me, and we have a PT coming who will likely have some fine-tuning ideas for Jacob’s routine. In the meantime, I downloaded some images I can use to remember each exercise.
Item 22.1 on Wednesday was some more fall TV premiere planning. Mostly getting my “tracker” set up so I know when shows are on, if I want to watch something live.
Item 22.2 was going out for dinner with Andrea for her birthday followed by dessert afterwards.
Item 22.3 was figuring out the stupid passport-on-my-phone links. I do not know what is going on with my iPhone as there are two things lately that SHOULD be working one way but when I try to access those menus, it throws up its hands at me as if it has never heard of those options. I got the files there no problem, but trying to create simple links to them on the home screen was WAY more complicated than it should have been.
Item 23.1 for Thursday was an appointment for Jacob. This was a crapfest unfortunately for outcomes. What we thought was a simple fix to his orthotics has turned into a need for other appointments first, which we can’t get until later this fall/early winter. Which leaves him without his AFOs for the foreseeable future. Which leaves him with limited endurance. Admittedly, Andrea did most of the legwork on this one, I was just the chauffeur.
Item 23.2 was related to the first one…I called the physiotherapist we used previously with Jacob and tried to book someone to help us figure out some detailed / targeted stretching for him. Guess I’ll wait for a callback.
Item 23.3 was giving Andrea her birthday presents. I confess that Jacob and I had been relatively stumped for a gift idea since she doesn’t want “stuff” that takes up space in the house. Jacob had the idea for a Van Gogh puzzle, and while we couldn’t get it in the exact size we wanted, we managed to find two other puzzles that were a bit interesting. So we passed those over tonight…a day late, unfortunately. Sigh.
I ran out of time on Monday and Tuesday to blog this week, partly as I’ve been under the weather. I took yesterday and today off work, and I don’t really feel like I’m whole again yet.
Item 20.1 was a bit of fall TV premiere planning. Every fall, like a fantasy football league or something, I look at all the new shows coming out and predict whether or not I think they’ll make it to S02. I hadn’t had a chance to really go through them for 2021/22 yet, but I went through 27 of them for a quick review. My “sources” didn’t have all the shows in them, but they had most. There are at least another six that I’m tracking for possible review, while ditching another ten that are just too niche for my tastes.
Item 20.2 was a related item as I actually took some time last night to watch 3 new shows and 1 returning show. Right up until the TV service cut out for some needed maintenance. Now I have to watch the ending of what I missed. Oh well, it was fun to just veg.
Item 20.3 was a light stretching workout as I basically got Jacob and Andrea organized so they could do a routine.
Item 21.1 was the decision to call in sick today. I was feeling like crap this morning and I ended up going back to bed until almost 11:00. Feeling somewhat better now, so probably just a light bug.
Item 21.2 was active blogging. Notice above that I said I “planned” my shows and watched three new ones? Well, I also did the reviews for them today.
Item 21.3 was forcing myself to workout today properly. I worked out on Saturday, so I skipped Sunday, and didn’t even do my stretching. Yesterday (Monday), I slipped as I was getting out of the shower, and I felt like I compressed my lower spine on the left side. Nothing super serious, but it hurt for a few minutes. Jarring almost. So I stuck to just a light stretching routine (mentioned above). But today, I really needed to get back into it, and I did the full stretching routine around lunch and a full workout around dinnertime. I almost felt like it was time for a nap, but I applied some new planning levels for # of reps, sets, total weight, etc. It went well. I pretty much doubled my routine from last week as I was comfortable doing two sets of reps for all of the exercises, and for two in particular, I also either upped the reps per set or for bench press, I actually upped the reps and sets. I’ll likely hold at this level now until November 1st. Seemed like a good set up today.
