Boom boom boom

The town of Clay did their fireworks display last night. It started about 9:30 pm, ran for a good half hour. The mall parking lot has three exits, and it was at capacity. Took over half an hour just to get out of the lot. Once we got home, there was little protest from my kids about going to bed. (They were up before 4, so they were tired)

I normally get up at 3:30 to get to the gym on time, so going to bed at 11 means I take a day off. I'm surprised I had my wits about me with how tired I was.

Just about fell asleep during the show. We were as close as you could get. Bright flashes and LOUD bangs, yet my eyes were as heavy as you could imagine. I woke up around 5:30 and I'm still feeling it.

I remember in my 20's I could stay up until 4am, then sleep for 2 hours and be ready for the day. I actually remember doing that for a full week before my body shut me down and I fell asleep the moment I got home from work. I woke up the next morning, a full 12 hours later, still face down in my work clothes with my shoes on.

Yea can't do that any more.

Switching it up

When this school year began, my oldest son had a 6am extra-curricular that I had to drive him in twice a week for. Puts a cramp in the schedule when the gym opens at 5 and work starts at 7. What I had to do was switch my gym routine so that I went in only three days a week, but I hit it pretty hard when I did. It worked, but near the end of the school year, I started to plateau. 

The new routine was not met without protest. My body had become very efficient at doing what I was doing, and as a result was not doing what I wanted it to. I swear my body is designed to be as lazy as possible. Whatever I do regularly becomes easy, and any growth or other changes I want to see just don't happen. I have to keep myself guessing.

I think I'm the only use case for a workout app with a randomize feature.

Surprise

Four years ago, back in January, my wife told me she was going to throw me a birthday party. It was a milestone, so not out of place, but it still felt odd to me. I haven't had a birthday party since I was a kid. A small kid.

Some nonsense happened four years ago and that party never happened.

I suppose she doesn't like unfinished business, because what I thought was going to be a literal walk in the park turned into finding a pavilion filled with my family and friends surprising me. At first I was confused, because running into someone I know at a park is not unheard of. But then to see a bunch of them all in one place, seems like I stumbled into something. So when they all saw me standing there, they started singing happy birthday.

Normally I can tell when she's up to something, but she got me.

School in June

Here in the state of New York, school starts in September, after Labor Day. For some dumb reason, it ends at the end of June. After the first day of summer, the kids are still in school for another day or two. 

It's obscene.

They have this pointless week off in February called 'mid winter recess' that came around in the 70's because of a spike in energy costs and they didn't want to heat the buildings or something, and I remember as a kid looking at the school calendar wondering why we still did that. I looked at all the random days off, and decided to add them up and put them at the end of the year. It would be ending two and a half weeks early if we did that.

I need to petition someone about how ridiculous this is.

GPS foolishness

I don't generally like using a GPS. I learned how to drive in the era of paper maps. First you had a poster sized book with dozens of maps, all organized by what state you were in. Later, we printed directions from Mapquest and hoped there weren't any detours or other diversions that would take you off your inkjet delivered guidance.

My wife had a saying. "Oh, I got lost here once"

When we first moved to Buffalo, she used that phrase a lot. I bought her a standalone GPS for Christmas that year. (The phones still flipped back then), and she used it to stop saying that old phrase. I, however, would go online and look at a map, figuring out which turns I needed to take to get anywhere, then just remember, finding my way around. One occasion, we needed to get to someone's house. I had never been there before and didn't have a lot of time. She put the address in, and so I followed it.

It took me on some wild loop circling town until we arrived. When I saw the cross streets, I realized I could have taken a far more direct route in half the time. I opted to not trust these things until they worked out the problems.

And so I did, at least until they started adding problems.

I drove my son out to some event last summer, and wound up stuck in a traffic jam because of an accident up the road. Many others at the event didn't know about the accident, only that their GPS routed them around the area. I hadn't realized they were doing that now, and decided to join in. The phones stopped flipping long ago, and now I had a built-in GPS so whatever. I don't use it for most drives, but for new locations or longer drives (even if I know the way) I just decided to use it. It started warning me about speed traps, too.

Nice

But then, when I knew the way and all I wanted was a warning about a speed trap, I found it was trying to direct me on some circuitous path that made little sense, even if it did bring me where I wanted. Surely there couldn't be a traffic accident every time. So once, I just ignored it and went the way I always did.

Nothing. No accident, no road construction. Turns out the little bugger was picking some 'eco friendly' way that was supposed to use less gas or something. Adding 10 minutes to my drive isn't going to do that, I drive old cars - I am burning way more than I should be.

Now I have to find that setting and fix it.