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.

Fruit is free

Ignore the title, you still have to pay for it. Or grow it yourself, but that means you're spending your time, so whatever.

I lost a fair amount of weight over the past year. Going to the gym certainly helped, but when I started recording everything I ate I was able to better control it. For example, I would put the bowl on the food scale, then add some ice cream. I put in the amount after scanning the bar code, and after realizing how many calories and how much sugar I was about to eat, I would take some back out until the numbers looked better. My kids eventually figured out the look on my face and would stand nearby to receive the newly rejected scoop into their conveniently available bowls.

Smart kids.

Sometimes I'd hit my calorie limit, but I'd still be hungry. Eventually I learned what foods filled me up, and which ones filled my limit without doing much else. Then I realized something.

Fruits and vegetables didn't count.

Oh sure they do, they're always healthy and whatnot, but the calories they added were always minimal. So I concluded that fruit is free. Veggies are free. Don't bother weighing and adding them into the record. Once I did that, it got easier. 

It doesn't help me reach my protein, but I'm down three pants sizes, so I count that as a win.

And then she moves

So, my Tiny One just finished college in Buffalo, and has a job at Johns Hopkins - which is in Baltimore. From one apartment to the other is 384 miles, which is over six hours driving a Uhaul truck.

Driving the stretch through New York is fine. It was mostly long stretches of big roads with the occasional jaunt through a hamlet. Pennsylvania was the same - until I got about halfway through. After that, all the convenient travel plazas just disappeared. Maryland... sucks. The drivers are needlessly aggressive, and seemingly unaware of their own mortality when facing a heavy laden box truck. Nonetheless, I got there without any issues.

Do you know that the cab of a Uhaul truck is loud? It's almost as if there's nothing stopping the noise from that big engine from digging right into your ears. No aux cord, either. There was no way to get the sound from my phone (GPS) to the vehicle speakers, so I just had to wing it with the phone speakers - newsflash, they're not great when mixed with the rumble of the engine. And they don't have cruise control. I understand why, but it still sucks.

...nobody rents those things for the luxuries.

I don't envy anyone that's moving - it's one of my least favorite things to do. Packing, hauling, unpacking. And you're completely unsettled during the whole process. Unpacking isn't even that easy because you have to decide what goes where and everything feels off until you finally settle in.

I'll happily drive the truck, though.