Tag: activity app

Weekend Work Live Blog

Should I live blog my Saturday evening work experience?

No. No, I shouldn’t.

I logged in and did about an hour and a half worth of prep. I’ve been waiting for the go ahead to actually start for almost two hours, and it’s probably going to be another good chunk of time before I can actually start.

I just watched this week’s episode of What We Do in the Shadows and it was freakin’ hysterical. Now I’ve said before that I am willing to consider the idea of naming Matt Berry the funniest man in the universe. That’s still true. (he was so freakin’ funny on The IT Crowd that it is hard to describe) However, I am starting to think that Colin Robinson is the best character on that show, and maybe on all of television. He’s a vampire but he isn’t a normal vampire. He’s an energy vampire. He doesn’t drink blood like the rest of the gang, he feeds off of other peoples’ life force. Basically he feeds by boring the crap out of everyone. Just watch the show, you’ll understand.

What else, what else, what else……..

I just queued up a bunch of podcasts to listen to on my iPad. I have a couple of songs for 50/90 ready to mix. I didn’t do any car singing today even though I should have. I had a shitty night sleep last night and I just couldn’t get out of my own way when I got up. If things continue as they are right now I will probably be oversleeping tomorrow too. Not sure, of course. Should I try to mix one of those songs while I wait? Should I try to wait until I sign out of work? Oh boy, the questions.

Oh yeah, and I still have to do all 30 minutes of today’s activity app exercise. Yay!

Okay. I am going to post this now. I am not Live Blogging my work night, but I am likely going to get pretty bored while I wait and when I’m bored I tend to blog… or something.

Hooray, babie.

Back At It-Ish

The five day weekend is over. Not that I had a five day weekend, but I digress. I’m still isolating in Harry’s room, and today is the first day that I will be on video conferences with folks at work. I’m going to have to explain the Harry Potter book cover poster on the wall behind me. It’s actually not a poster, it’s a puzzle. Harry was able to put it together and hang it up without having it fall apart. How amazing is that? What the camera can’t see is the Star Wars poster off to my right. That one would need no explanation.

I have the windows open and the mini USB fan on low. The goal is to keep the air moving. Something about all of that time at my parents house in the sweltering heat with fans blowing right on my face all day has made me really want to have the air moving around me as I work.

I closed all three exercise rings yesterday. I weighed myself today. Closing the three rings once did not magically reduce my weight at all. What the hell? It was my first weigh in since mid August and I was up a pound and a half since then. I think we can probably attribute that to stress eating over the weekend so I think maybe what I have learned is that Intermittent Fasting is helping me hold my weight steady more than it’s helping lose weight. I will take that as a huge win. Now the exercise can start lowering that astronomically high weight total, and then we can throw in some diet and some bariatric surgery to get it down the rest of the way. Wait, what?

Okay. Punching in to work. Have a good Tuesday, everyone. Labor day is past, summer is over, it is officially winter in New England. Bite me, Mother Nature.

Until next time……

Two Therapy Sessions

I was able to sneak into the cellar and play the guitar twice today.

I got a lot done for 50/90, which was nice, but I reached the point on the second go-round where my hands just wouldn’t do it anymore. That’s actually not a bad thing. I really need to build up more stamina, but I’ll get there.

On a gear note, I have my little recording nook in the master bedroom that has my current recording pedal board and my little 15 watt Fender amp. My big use-with-the-band pedal board and my Vox 15 watt amp (and my 30 watt Fender amp) are all in the cellar because Covid was slowing down and I thought they would be traveling to Mike the Bass Player’s house soon… and of course that hasn’t happened because the universe has intervened. The upside is I could set all of that stuff up in the cellar to keep working on 50/90 while I’m locked out of my bedroom. I bring my new Les Paul and my MacBook Pro up and down with me, as there is no way in hell those puppies are staying down there in the humidity. I set everything up far away from the flood zone, but you may note from the previous pictures that none of the electrical stuff is actually on the floor. The pedal board is, but the pedals themselves are not. That’s for flood damage prevention reasons.

So that is what I am doing to keep 50/90 going this week.

I also wanted to start with the exercising again. I started a couple of weeks ago and then fell off the wagon. I wanted to start up again today, what with it being a Monday and the iPhone Activity app starting its week on Monday. Jen wanted to do the same thing and she totally kicked ass all day today. Me? I was at two minutes of exercise as of 7:00pm tonight. Looked like I was going to fail for the day. Well, screw that folks. I’m up to 17 minutes now with 3.5 hours left in the day. I’ll get to 30 minutes, you betcha.

Okay. I need to go get a bottle of water and do another few minutes of exercise.

Looking for the bright side of self isolation. It’s tough to find, but it might be out there. Probably not, but maybe I might be able to pretend.

Season 11

I had a moment just now where I thought I missed the premier of The Walking Dead’s 11th season, but that doesn’t actually happen until next week. Whew, eh?

I closed all three rings in my activity app tonight. That means I closed all three rings every day for a week. The app calls that a perfect week. I’d be much more excited about it if my legs weren’t in so much pain.

This has been a really good weekend for the three of us. The only thing missing was my step daughter. She’s coming down next weekend and we are going to get to spend some quality time with her. This weekend though was all about Harry and it was wonderful. I’m so excited for the next chapter in his life to start in two weeks but I’m also crushed that he has to leave us. I want to make the most of the time we have left.

For now though, let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow’s a work day.

Sweet dreams, internet.

“Exercise”

The clock was fast approaching 10:00pm and thanks to our glorious flake day I still hadn’t closed two of my Activity app rings. Move was about 3/4 done, but exercise… I had five minutes from going up and down the cellar stairs for laundry and flood clean up, but that was it. Five minutes down and 25 to go.

When Jen went to bed I went down stairs to check on the flood situation. While I was down there I “exercised” for 15 minutes. That’s the longest I’ve gone at once since I started this whole ring closing push two weeks ago.

After that I went upstairs to the bed room and gave my back a good 20-30 minutes of rest before getting up and finishing with 10 more minutes. Kick ass! I had all three rings closed at 11:00, with a full hour to spare.

I’m going to be busy tomorrow so it’s not a guarantee, but I’ve got a shot at my first perfect week in a long time.

Kick ass, dude.

I Love My Family

I love my family. They are the best. You will never meet finer people.

Knowing that I am going to be at my parents’ for two whole days and that I won’t see them at all during that time, they asked me if I wanted to play a game of Ticket to Ride Online with them. We all have it on our iPads and figured it would be a nice thing to do together even when we aren’t together. Look me in the eye and tell me that isn’t the nicest thing anyone has ever done. I mean, seriously. How wonderful are Jen and Harry? I know Bellana’s not a big fan of that game, but maybe we can find something we can all play, assuming we can sneak it in around her work schedule as she is working up a storm in the final weeks before school starts.

I’m not sure who setup the network at my parents house, but I am pretty sure they have a firewall of some kind that is blocking online games. I’ve mentioned my troubles with World of Warcraft in the past, and tonight I had to switch from the wifi to my iPhone’s hotspot in order to connect to the game. I know my sister’s kids were doing some of their remote school here last year. I wonder if they put something in to keep them honest.

Speaking of online games, Jen and I have been playing World of Warcraft for the last month or so. WoW is owned and operated by a company called Blizzard. Blizzard has been getting demolished with charges of various kinds of sexual misconduct in the work place. I believe their CEO resigned over it recently. Karmically speaking (I do not believe in Karma, but the principal still applies) we are both starting to feel uncomfortable supporting the company so we’re looking for something else to play. Jen was looking into Star Wars: The Old Republic today. She won’t have to twist my arm to play that one. A game where I can be a Jedi? Sure! A game where I can get in touch with my dark side and be a Sith? Sure! I’ll have to download that one when I finally get home from this nana/papa sitting shift, sometimes in 2043 or so.

Last time I was here I mentioned that the only place I feel comfortable doing my “exercise” is in the cellar, and I don’t like going down there and leaving my parents alone without having a legitimate reason to go down stairs. There is laundry to do tonight, so I have my reason. I didn’t have a chance to start it until a little after 9:00, and only had five out of 30 minutes done, but I think I can close the ring. I have been down stairs once and I got my time up to 15 minutes. I think I will have two legitimate reasons to go into the cellar before midnight and I think I can get in the 15 remaining minutes. We’ll see. It’s really hot here and the humidity is unreal. We’ll see.

I left work for the day at 3:30 today so that I could spend some time with Harry before I came to my parents house. We watched the first episode of What If…? It was really good. I can’t wait for more! While we were busy with the Marvel fun, an email was sent to the whole company saying that our return to the office policy was changing again. Our requirement to come in approximate once a week has been temporarily put on hold due to the increasing Covid-19 numbers (which reminds me, I haven’t updated my spreadsheets yet). My boss called me a little while ago to make sure we were all on the same page. It’s looking like going into the office is off the table until (probably) mid-October. Obviously that could change at any time, but I feel much safer. It was pretty uncomfortable being there the last couple of times. I didn’t feel unsafe per se, I just didn’t feel comfortable. Tonight’s announcement was like a sigh of relief.

Okay, I need to update my MA and US Covid-19 numbers spreadsheets, and then I need to mix a song. All of that sandwiched around laundry and “exercising” and actually going to sleep and stuff. Here’s hoping the quiet night stays quiet. Fingers crossed.

The Ravioli Incident

My mother made a bowl of ravioli for my father for dinner. He ate about half of it and then dropped the bowl. Ravioli everywhere. Some of it splashed onto his foot so we had to get him a change of socks. Mom grabbed him a pair while I cleaned up the mess. There was a moment there when I thought he was going to have a melt down. It was like all of the shit he’s been going through was about to overflow, but we talked him back from the edge.

Selfishly, the upside to the ravioli incident is that there is laundry that needs to be done tonight. He only has two pairs of grippy socks and one of them is covered with tomato sauce. That means I have to go back and forth to the laundry room in the cellar. The laundry room is really the only place in the house that I can do my walking in place “exercise” without feeling like I am going to collapse the entire house. That means there’s a good chance I am going to close all three AppleWatch Activity rings today. I’ve already got two of them closed. Nine more minutes of exercise and I finish them all.

I really want to go home. I really need this to end. I don’t want to have a nervous breakdown, even though for all I know it might be fun. I just don’t wanna.

Exercise Fail

My plan to close all three rings on my AppleWatch Activity App died a quick and sudden (and more or less expected) death on day three. There just wasn’t time or space or mental stability enough to do any exercise at my parents house yesterday, and I doubt there ever will be. I could have done it all when I got home, but we can chalk that fail up to just the lack of mental stability. I just couldn’t handle anything beyond eating dinner and venting my misery to my beloved wife who was kind and supportive and wonderful to me all night.

I’m in the office today. The four times I came here in July all saw small spikes in the exercise ring. Apparently my walks to the kitchenette or the bathroom are enough to get my heart rate up high enough to trigger the app. Okay. I might be able to use that. So I won’t have a perfect month, or week, for August. Maybe I can still do something.

I’ll keep you updated because clearly you are all hanging on every exercise related word this particular lard ass spews out through his keyboard, right? Right.

Fans

It’s not particularly hot out today, nor does it seem to be particularly humid. For some reason though, I am covered with sweat, head to toe. I feel like I just jumped into the shower.

It started when I took the laundry down cellar before work started. Over the last four weeks or so, “laundry” has been code for finding an excuse to go down cellar and check on the flood. I actually do laundry on these trips but it really is not the primary reason for going down stairs.

I vacuumed up Lake Asshole, dumped out the wet vac, and dumped out the dehumidifier. I also did a load of laundry. An hour later I went back down to flip the laundry to the dryer, but also vacuumed up the latest puddles. An hour after that I went down again to bring up the load of laundry and did the same vacuuming update. At lunch I carried a huge desk from Bellana’s room to the cellar, and then vacuumed up the much smaller puddles and emptied the dehumidifier again.

I am drenched with sweat. I have the wall mounted AC in the bedroom cranking, and a second fan on the floor blowing right on me and still I am drenched. The upside of all of this is the exercise.

Yesterday when I mowed the entire lawn (ouch), I closed the exercise ring in my AppleWatch Activity App. Bonus! By the time the day was done I had closed all three rings for the first time in ages. That was a good feeling. Even better, my SleepWatch app numbers from last night were out of this world. Everything except the total amount of sleep time (six hours and 50 minutes) was as good as it gets.

It made me think… is it time to start closing those rings again? Yesterday was the first of the month… could I get back on the wagon with a perfect month? I don’t know. It’s tough to close the exercise ring when I am at my parents, and even harder when I am at the office. It might be a challenge.

With all the lifting and going up and down the stairs over and over today, I’m already about half way to my 30 minute exercise ring today. The 10 minutes of walking I did before work didn’t hurt. heheh

We’ll see how it goes.