One of the things I have learned over the years is that I have to take a rest day here and there and have nothing to do with the gym, the pool, and fitness for a day. Today was a rest day, tomorrow will be a full pool workout. Today started off like most of my weekends, taking Res and Climber for their walks. I decided to take them together today because it going to get too hot by the time I got back with Res and go to take Climber.
Of course about 1/2 way through our walk Climber heard someone using a nail gun on some remodeling work that they were doing and it scared her…. She HATES nail guns and any loud bangs with a passion. So, she decided we were going home! There was no if, and, or buts about it. We were going home. She took the lead position, knew all the turns to get back to the house, and pulled the entire way back. Res was like, “slow down girl, where’s the fire!”
After we got back I had to run a quick errand to Dick’s Sporting Goods to get a new swim suit as mine are starting to get all stretched out, which is not a good thing. Chlorine is a killer on all of them, and it also doesn’t help that I have lost a lot of weight since I bought my last ones. I am right between Large and Medium in suit sizes, sucks as they are either way too tight, or too loose, and either direction is a problem. But, life goes on.
I got back to the house and it was time to torture the dogs…. well… in their world, torture the dogs. In my world, make the dogs smell less like dogs. Res and Climber got a bath. Climber was first, no photos were taken because she as a total wimp and let out the “greyhound scream of death” as soon as water touched her. You would think she was melting! Then I got another scream when I was rubbing her down with a towel. She did get scolded because I am not going to entertain that game. If she gets away with murder I will be fighting this every time she needs a bath. I can also promise she will not go another 9 months without one.
Res was next. Res just jumps around a little when he gets wet, but it is no major issue. Once you start massaging the shampoo into his fur he just stands still like a perfect gentleman. Rinse him off, he is good, and he almost falls asleep when he is getting his towel rubdown. Then, he comes back into the house and makes sure all his fur is in the right place. Takes him a few hours to lick it all back into place.
They are now both asleep and they are over it. After that Jesse and I spent some time outside. Had to water the tomato plants, and the hydroponics and then cut what little grass we have in the front lawn. I then ran the mower around the pitiful excuse for the back lawn and Jesse edged it with the weed-eater. I also pulled some weeds from around the squash plants and some of the other areas of the rock portion of the yard.
By the time we were done with that, it hit 100 degrees here in the Mile High City. I can’t believe it, it’s almost Florida temperatures. At least the humidity is not as nasty as it was in Florida. Tomorrow we are supposed to have another 100 degree day, maybe a little hotter. I just know I hope these temperatures break sometime soon. We got our last months power bill today and all I can say is I miss the solar panels and will be solving that problem here eventually.
There still be snow in the mountains, actually a little more than the last time I posted, last weeks storm brought a nice coating to the higher elevations. Anyways today started off as my weekend days normally do. I was able to get up, get caught up on some system things I needed to take care of, both on my own servers and the work learning management system. Yes, I know it’s Saturday but this is the best time to do updates in case I need to roll them back and recreate the world. I had a small issue with a major update last week when it required some Apache server reconfiguration that took me a while to figure you.
Then I was able to get Res out for his weekend morning walk. We managed to do a little over 3 miles in a little more than an hour. Res is Go Go Go Go Go until he figures out that we have turned around and are heading back home. Then he slows down to “snail pace” and does not want to end his walk. The problem is that I still need to walk his sister. I am thinking we may do a dual walk tomorrow rather than a singleton walk.
Climber was next on the walk list. She didn’t do all that well either, she was a little pokey today. Maybe it was a full moon or something last night, but regardless we did a little over 3.5 miles and then came back home. She is the opposite of Res, when she is headed home she is Go Go Go Go, she would drag me back to the house if she could.
After Jesse and I had breakfast (or more accurately brunch) it was time to head to Lowe’s to pick up some supplies I needed to put together our expanded hydroponic system for this year. With this years water restrictions we need to be really careful on how we are going to be watering the gardens and the property. Last year we had tremendous success with hydroponics, so we decided to add a little more to the system for this growing season and move some of what we did in the gardens last year into buckets for this growing season.
So, this is what our plan is this year. It is all assembled and I will leak check and start running the pumps tomorrow. I need to give it a good rinse before we can add plants and fertilizer. We will probably start planting tomorrow.
Today starts off as any other day does. Up with the dogs, let Res out, let Res in, let Climber out, let Climber in. Give them their morning snacks. Put together mine and Jesse’s coffee. And start on my never ending email list. For some reason my Technical Support task list exploded over the weekend. I am not sure why, that will take me a little bit to go through.
I did spend some time on maintenance on this WordPress site this morning. I finally broke down and installed the Redis caching server and it took me a while but I was able to get WordPress to recognize that. Maybe that will speed up the data base operations a bit. We will see. I also had a few security related items I needed to take care of and those are now done. Updates and stuff like that.
I have decided that today will not be a swim day. I think I may have overdone it over the weekend. Tomorrow is another day. I was able to get out for a walk for lunch, I tried to take Res with me but he decided that he only wanted to go 1/2 way around the park and made me bring him home.
After I was done for the day I took Climber outside for a while, thought she may want to play ball, but not really. She wanted to be in the sun more than anything else.
And then of course Res had to have his turn. He wasn’t all that energetic and just wanted to go out and smell around.
And then back to work for a while for me. And then our usual afternoon stuff, their 1/2 mile evening walk, dinner for them, dinner for us, and that’s it for today. Not all that much exciting.
A FaceBook memory from this morning. The pack 10 years ago. I think Ranger and Mindy would have loved Colorado. I don’t think they cared all that much for Florida. Mindy would have had me walking all over Aurora and probably the Front Range as well. She used to love her long walks.
Someone asked me why I hold myself accountable for making these daily posts, especially since it is possible that I am the only one that reads them. Sort of a rude question, but a valid one. I am not sure how many people read them, I have them open for comments, but that has yet to happen with the exception of some spammers, and those get deleted. Here’s the thing, I do have family out there, they are not part of my life right now for a variety of reasons, but I like to think that someday they, or their kids, may like to know a little more about me. The other thing is, that there is so much negativity on social media these days that my posts, that are really just about life, may offset some of that. Why don’t I post directly to Facebook, BlueSky, Twitter, X (or any of the others)? It’s about advertising dollars. The social media platforms for years have made a ton of money from our intellectual property. It’s sort of the contract with them. They use your content, use your thoughts to stir up controversy that causes other people to click on like,dislike,love on your posts. Then they feed you advertisements. It’s in their algorithms. Well, if someone is going to use my content I want it to be linking to my site, where someday I may be able to get some advertising dollars directly on my own (not that I am holding my breath on that as Google has told me my site “lacks relevant content”). I do try and cross post to the other platforms, but my intellectual content stays on my sites.
Anyways, Good Morning! I think I am going to write today’s post in parts today. Started off the day as usual, got up a little late, it’s Sunday – I’m allowed, dogs out, in, and snacked. Res is still being picky about his snacks, I am not sure what’s up with that but I wish he’d stop. I really think he is just bored with everything. I think Angel Ranger is up there at the Rainbow Bridge making the case to take Res’s Greyhound Card away from him. It must pain him to see all of these missed snack opportunities. And, since Climber has to loose 9 pounds I can’t keep giving her Res’s leftovers.
Once Res and Climber had their food, I spent a few minutes doing some site maintenance on my WordPress block (this one), and I do need to go update the Learning Management System for work (Alpine Intel University) as I don’t like doing that one during the week. Too much risk for downtime when someone is actually going to be using it. Today some of the plug-ins had to be updated, then there was a security release to Moodle itself, and then there were some app upgrades for the Ubuntu back-end system. One of these days I probably need to do a distribution version update, but I try to avoid those like the plague….. the server is a VPS on Digital Ocean and I try to avoid the distribution updates until I really need to do them. The VPS that this site runs on is a little more forgiving, and I keep this one current more frequently.
Res got his walk, he did well. We did 3.5 miles, a little over 5K. He wanted to go further but he has a little soreness on his pads that I am watching.
Next is Climber’s walk. She did much better than yesterday in terms of pulling on my shoulder. She was actually pretty good. She did 3.48 miles, slightly less the Res, though I am not sure why. It could have been the walk back to a trash can that I had to do with Res. We did make a stop along the way so that I could submit a report of a water leak along Buckley.
After a good breakfast/lunch/brunch I went over the to pool for an hour. I was planning on a 1 hour swim but was forced to take a 15 minute “safety break”. That is such bullshit, and it makes it impossible to get a good swim in, but I guess that is something I am going to have to keep in mind going forward. I am hoping they realize that the policy normally ignores those swimming laps. I am having a lot of problems preparing for my Mountain Swim if I can’t get an hour in the pool.
After I got back from my swim I decided it was time to get the hydroponic supplies out of storage and get an inventor of where I am at with supplies this year. I also wanted to build the double buckets we are going to try this year for our cucumbers and maybe some other vegetables. We were planning on adding some additional raised beds, but I just can’t see that happening based on our current water restrictions. I think the better idea will be to do most of our planting in hydroponics where I can control water use and chemicals (fertilizer, food, etc).
Take some 3 gallon square buckets, drill holes in the bottom of the top one, to allow fast drainage into the bottom bucket. Put a bulkhead type fitting into the bottom of the outside bucket, making sure it is low enough to let the other bucket sit inside of it, and then stack them.
I have to give credit on this idea to DIY Hydroponic Gadens by Tyler Baras. We have done hydroponics for about 10 years now and I ran across this book one day when I was traveling to Portland, Oregon and decided to stop at one of my old hangouts, Powell Books, and I came across this gem. Lot’s of new ideas and some that will be an improvement of things that I have done in the past. Lot’s of new experiments this year. We have 5 of these buckets built.
I still have to add the supply and return piping, but here is this years basic setup, minus the reservoir and the supply/return.
The buckets still need to be put up off the ground. I am going to use a 2×6 on cinder blocks for this. I have the 2×6 and all I need is the cinder blocks. Once that is done I have to run my return line across the bottom back to the patio, the resevior will sit on the patio itself at the base of the retaining wall so we have natural drainage. I am going to use PVC from the buckets, I will also be using a horizontal PVC pipe across the bottom of the rails at the edge of the ledge. We didn’t have good luck with the hoses last year and I think I want to make a change in that regard. I also think I am going to be putting some valves into the drain lines from everything so I can better control the level of the water around the roots.
Had a Salmon, Asperigus, and Shrimp for dinner this evening, and now we are having a relaxing evening with both dogs sleeping off their day.
I have been remiss in posting for the last two days, the bottom line is there was not much going on. Today, however, was a busy day. I didn’t get everything done I wanted to get done, but that’s OK, it was a Saturday. I started off the day with my normal get up, have coffee, let the dogs in and out, give them their snacks, and then wade through my personal email. do a quick check on work email – I always make sure nothing urgent.
When Jesse got up I too Res on his morning walk, today was a lone walk and we did about 3.25 miles. It was a good walk until Res noticed that I was starting to turn him back to the house, then he changed speed from bunny speed to snail speed. He likes being out and about and when I turn back to the house he notices.
When we got back home it was now Climber’s turn. I took her on a slightly longer walk because she walks a little faster than Res does and she needs her exercise, she needs to loose 9 pounds. We have cut her back on her food a bit. I am being a little stingy on her treats, and I am going to start figuring out how to start giving her more outside time during the weekdays. Anyways, her part of the walk was really good, except for something that I will describe after her walk gallery.
I love our Prairie Dogs, the are cute, they are funny, and even Res and Climber love to watch them. They are harmless. They build their colonies in empty fields, they do not build in peoples lawns, and they have family units. So, imaging my surprise and horror when I see some asshole in the field next to one of the churches up on Tower Boulevard in the middle of the Prairie dog colony.
What this idiot was doing was using a shovel to seal off one end of the tunnels and then he was sticking a long hose with a funnel into the other end of the tunnels and dumping something, I assume poison, down the hole and then sealing the colony into the holes. The way he was approaching it, he has done this before. As soon as I saw what he was doing and started taking photographs of him, his actions, and his license plate, he suddenly put his stuff away and got really nervous.
I want to point out that there are so many things wrong with this. First, poisoning entire colonies of Prairie Dogs is wrong. Second, he did not mark the field so no one knows what chemicals he was using. Third, if another animal gets one of the poisoned Prairie Dogs they will die was well. Poison is forever. Third, this is baby time, this is the time the young ones are born and in the caverns. Given where he was, this apparently is a sanctioned activity by the Church. Perhaps someone should sit down and read a few passages in the Bible about compassion and all that stuff.
I will be filing a formal complaint with all my photos to the State Wildlife Department, the Aurora Police Department, the Aurora Animal Control department, and the State Department of Licensing (wildlife control is a licensed activity and I somehow doubt this idiot was licensed.) There is nothing I can do for that colony of Prairie Dogs, but I can sure follow-up on this and make sure at least this idiot’s actions are seen and noted.
So, after I walked back home from that little discovery, I sat down and had breakfast with Jesse. And then I decided I wanted to go swim. I got to the Central Recreation Center, and believe it or not, got a lane pretty quickly in the lap pool. Unfortunately that did not last long. I had just gotten about 300 yards in when there are kids jumping into the lap pool without looking. It turns out that they had to close the main pool because yet again someone had a bathroom accident in it. This is now two weekends in a row, and that means that the pools will be bad tomorrow.
I gave up and decided to drive over to the Utah Indoor Pool that just re-opened and everyone keeps telling me that I should try. It’s a 25 meter pool, a little longer than the 25 yard pool I have been swimming in, But, it’s about 6 miles from the house and takes me a little longer to get to. I was able to get in a nice 2000 meter swim. I was annoyed, but recovered. I haven’t swum in a 25meter pool in a while so it took me a while to get used to the wall that had moved (25 yards to 25 meters — do the math kids.)
When I got home I decided to tackle putting the irrigation system box in place for the right side of the backyard, one more step to remove some heavy water use from the system (we are moving to drip and micro irrigation for anything that is not lawn area. It’s just not an easy thing to do as the yard is clay and I have to find the lines that I can disconnect and the ones that I need to tie into.
Anyways, then it was time to take Res and Climber on their afternoon walks, and feed them, feed us, and relax for the evening. I managed to get the laundry done, well actually waiting on the last load to finish drying, but one less thing that I do not need to worry about tomorrow. On my list of things I really want to do tomorrow is to dig out all of my hydroponic planting stuff from the shed, figure out where it is going to live this year, and then I want to build the double buckets that are now sitting in the living room still packed. This will be a part of the hydroponic setup this year, and I think that should keep me busy most of the day. I may skips my swim tomorrow, not sure yet on that one. I will see how I feel in the morning. Nothing’s wrong, but I do want to get some stuff done around here at the house.
Anyways, Res and Climber say goodnight and maybe we will see you all tomorrow.
I have been slow in posting for the last couple days. This post is for April 6th, that would be Monday. Not much to write about today, basically the painters “finished” on the house and Climber had a well visit at our new vet.
First, Climber’s well visit. Yup, she has officially been told she is overweight and needs to go on a diet. She needs to loose 9 pounds. Ooops, that may be my fault, but I also blame Res. We will work on it and maybe at her next vet appointment she will be back to the weight she should be. She has a build a lot like Lady did and she can put on weight before I even know she is.
Then, the painters have wrapped up the outside of the house. Well, sort of…. they have a bunch of touch up to do as they were sloppy on their last day of work. But, we went from the brown trim to our awesome burgundy that we have used on other houses.
This is going to be a short post today. I got up late, took the dogs for their walks, and really didn’t do much else for the rest of the day.
The above is Res’s walk, we did what he wanted to do and by the time we were done it was about 3.66 miles. Not bad. He’s asleep now.
Climber ended up doing a little bit of a longer walk, by about a mile, but that girl knows where she wants to walk and that is were we were going. No questions at all. I just sort of followed her, gave be a little bit of guidance when we needed to turn, and pressed the crosswalk buttons for her. The girl likes “going” but would go way too far, At least I got my steps in.
Today was a “no swim” day for me. Not by choice, I got to the Rec Center and the lap pool was full. I think the trialtholon group was in it again. I was going to wait for a lone, but… oops, helps if I remembered my swim trunks, so no swim for me.
Anyways, this one is short, I will see you all tomorrow, goodnight.
The photograph I am starting this post with showed up on my Facebook page today, it’s a set of photos I took 9 years ago when were in Florida. At that time we had six greyhounds, and unfortunately they are all at the bridge now. I firmly believe that I will be re-united with Mindy, Peanut, Ranger, Rambo, Lady, and Leona sometime in the future, hopefully far in the future. Missing from this photograph are three other Angel pack members: Raven (she hadn’t joined us yet when this was taken), Bracken (he was long gone by the time this photo was taken – he went to the bridge during a dental that I still blame myself over – I tried a newer vet, closer to the house that we should have never trusted with him), and Gizmo (she was hiding someplace). Sometimes Facebook memories are good, sometimes they suck. I think this is one of the better ones.
Started off the day at close to my normal time, well…. maybe 30 minutes late because I just didn’t want to. Did my normal routine, let the dogs out, gave them their snacks, and got my coffee. I did sit down and just preview my work email real fast, I had some techs that I had excepted some responses from and I wanted to make sure I received them. I am glad I looked, I had one urgent issue that I needed to take care of. I also made sure that I caught up on the last two days of new technicians and got them added to Alpine Intel University so they could do their training. Note to self, I need to send out reminders next week to techs that have not logged in yet to do so before they get turned off.
I do one of my normal “over the weekend” tasks, and that is to do my Moodle and system updates. I don’t like doing that during the week in case I have to shut something down, but over the weekend is always a good time to do Linux upgrades and Moodle LMS upgrades. Another one done and now everything is current. OK that’s it for work today.
After Jesse got up I started walks. Saturday’s and Sundays are lone walks for the dogs. I think it is really important to remind them that they can go places and come home without each other. We also work on walking manners and get some distance in. Res always goes first, today we did a little over three miles because he did not want to stop. For some reason he really wanted to do the same walk I do with Climber, it was almost like he knew where she went lest week and he pulled me in that direction.
It was a nice day for a walk and I listened to one of my Podcasts while we were out and about. He was a little slow near the end, but I think I finally may have figured him out. he likes to be outside and when we are heading back to the house he does not approve.
Climber was next, now Climber is a pup on a mission some times, she knows exactly where she wants to go and she makes it very clear when she is unhappy about our directions. I got to the end of the part today and I wanted to turn left and go down the hill as I had a specific walk in mind for her. Nope, that was unacceptable, she wanted to cross the street, turn right, and do our walk past the credit union. Actually, think she wanted to go further, but I vetoed that as I didn’t really want to cross that intersection with her this week. So, she got part of what she wanted, just not all of it. She was a little stiff today as well and I didn’t really want her to be hurting so I did the best I could to keep her walk under 4 miles, we ended up with 3.7 miles by the time we got back to the house.
She did give me a little bit of a hard time on the way back up the hill next to the park as we were headed to Power Line Trail. She did that the last 3 weekends. She is fine once we get past that spot, but for some reason that area is not good for her, and I am not sure why. She’s curled up asleep now, maybe I wore her out? Nah. Not a chance.
After Jesse and I had a late breakfast, I decided to take a chance and go swim. Why take a chance? Because the pool is a nightmare on Saturdays, it has way too many people and the lifeguards work real hard to make sure open swim in the general and kiddie pool does not spill over into the lap pool. Anyway, I was able to get in 2700 yards in a total time of 57:50 minutes. I should have tried for 3000 yards and done the hour, but I just didn’t feel like it. I think tomorrow I need to work on pace rather then distance, it may be an hour of so of 100 yard swims. If I can do 25 of each of Freestyle and Breaststroke I would be happy. But, let’s start small and see if I can even do that.
I am happy were I am at with swimming right now, but I really need to get some of my times closer to the 1:30 per 100 yard pace and down from the 2:00/100yd. I am pretty sure I could do the 2.5 miles needed for the Mountain Lake Swim, but I do need to improve my pace a bit. I also need to, for pool swims, not make a fool of myself when I work on my flip turns. Yeh…..I’ll think about it. Maybe.
Onto other news, we ordered the Droplet Water monitor from Hydrific Water and it showed up today. It clamps on the main water pipe coming into the home, after the meter, but before any splits and you train it to recognize what fixtures are being used and what fixtures are not being by identifying what is running over a few days when it is showing water flow.
I think it is a little confused on it’s first day and hopefully it will get much better at this. It is currently showing that we used 9.58 gallons today with a shower at 5:45PM this evening. There is just one problem, nobody has showered today yet, that happens in the evening, and more recently I am showering at the Recreation Center after my swim. I think it may have gotten the washing machine right, and I think some of the other appliances, but the shower???? Not really. Maybe that will fix itself in a few days.
Jesse and I are a little concerned about this Summer when our water use normally increases. Our water department, Aurora Water, has us under drought restrictions. This means that we are going to pay a surcharge per 1000 gallons over our Winter water use. We use an average of 2000 gallons per month during the Winter months. This changes drastically in the Summer when we start to irrigate the lawn and gardens. We have already made some changes to the irrigation system that will help, but we got a ways to go. As you can guess it also varies a lot with my travel. On weekends after I come back from a trip we have more heavy laundry. On weeks where I am traveling the daily usage is lower. We are also going to do a lot with hydroponics this year for our vegetable gardens and greens. So, I will keep you all posted on what’s happening with that.
Anyways, it’s time to wrap up today, I will be back tomorrow, I am going to sit back, relax, recharge my Garmin watch, and sit here read and watch TV for a bit. There is probably another 100 things that I need to get done, but I just don’t feel like it. Anyways, goodnight and talk to you tomorrow.
Not all that much to talk about today, it was Monday and work took up most of the day. For some reason I did not sleep well last night, Res was sort of unsettled, and I am trying to figure out why. He is out like the proverbial light bulb right now, but last night he kept getting started and boofing overnight. I didn’t hear much from Climber, I think she was letting Res take care of business.
But, got up this morning to a bunch of email and work projects. Yup, that pricing project I thought I got rid of last week…. it came back. I had to spend most of my morning to make it go away again. Hopefully it is gone for good this time. After I finished that I did a few Cause of Loss Determination requests, some pricing, and by that time it was 12:00pm. Lunch time, or should I say swim time.
Got to the Central Recreation Center, and found the pool disaster from yesterday was not done yet. The only pools that were open was the lap pool and the hot tub. Thankfully as I was coming in someone else was wrapping up their workout. I got a lane with only about 5 minutes of waiting. I didn’t swim as long as I wanted to today, but I did OK. I got in about 1200yards, a little short of the 1700yards I was hoping for. But, people were waiting and when they are having pool issues I try to be nice. I will make it up another day.
Also, as usual my watch is missing some pool lengths. When we look at the stats I can promise you I never end on a x75 yard. It is always on the 50 or 100 yard mark. I never end on the other side of the pool from where I started. I am not sure why all of a sudden my watch has decided to not count every length.
Of course the Garmin App has it a little different, which is OK.
After my swim I came home and worked for the rest of the day, while I was away from my desk someone left the Cause of Loss request queue and pricing requests alone in the dark and it had babies. I was buried for the rest of the day and worked until 4pm and then again for another hour or so when we got back from walking the dogs.
Dogs had their full walk around the park and then they had their dinner and now it is nap time.
I am working on getting caught up on Greyhound Data race entry, and once that is done, I am going to call it an evening. I may not upload them all this evening, but at least the time consuming part will be done.
Anyways, I am going to wrap it up for today and say Goodnight! I will see everyone tomorrow.
Started off the day with a wake-up “call” from Climber. She was getting inpatient. The sun was up and her people weren’t. OK, I got up, let Res and then Climber out. Got them their snacks, and had my coffee. Spent some time trying to figure out a problem with APRS on my handheld radio, it will not auto beacon and it’s supposed to when it has a good satellite fix. After that I read for a while and went down the social media / YouTube rabbit hole. I really like the Savannah Bananas, I think they are the best thing that could ever have happened to Baseball. What a boring ass game, and they have brought life back to it.
After Jesse got up and I had another cup of coffee it was time for walks. Weekends are lone walks, I always take Res first. Res gets to go as far as he wants, within reason. He just hasn’t figured out yet that no matter how far away from the house he goes, he is required to walk back home. He also hasn’t figured out that we cannot stop and smell and pee on every clump of grass or tree he comes across. Doing so becomes counter-productive for this length of explorations.
And once Res and I got home after 2.8 miles, it was Climbers’ turn. Climber and I always do longer walks, she’s younger then Res and she is full of energy. Today she was a little bit skittish, the fire engines and loud car yesterday scared her a bit. But, we did a little about 3.8 miles, up along the park, down Buckley to the Power Line Trail, up the hill, around the school’s soccer field, and then back to the house. She did OK, but I am not 100% sure she was into it today. Once we get back to the park from the Power Line Trail she knows exactly where she is, and pulls me back to the house.
We spent a little bit of time cleaning up the backyard today, I think the painters are coming sometime next week and one of the first things they are going to do is power wash the entire house. Had to put a bunch of stuff away from the patio and around the shed. I think we may be tempting the snow Gods by putting away the snow shovels, but then again we could use the snow.
As I was wandering around the yard I found some new flowers and signs of Spring. Take a look here….
I just hope the apple tree is not flowering too soon this year. Last year it started blooming early and we had a frost while we were at Spring Meet in Abilene, KS and we didn’t get any apples. The Fall before, our first year in the house, we got tons of apples, we just didn’t know what to do with them. We found out near the end of the year that they made awesome apple sauce.
I did get a chance to go for my swim today. I was sort of crossing my fingers that I would get a lane, so when I came in I went and checked with one of the guards first, as 1 lane was closed for a swim lesson, another lane looked like it was also being used, and the two other lanes were questionable. He told me that the center lane was about to open up so I had a chance. OK, run to locker room, get changed real fast, and just as I was getting in the water all hell broke loose. They had to move a lap swimmer from the other lane to share mine (OK, that’s fine it happens) and then they had to do an emergency closing of the main open swim pool. Someone dropped a dirty diaper into the pool and left. So, it takes them about an hour to sanitize it, and make sure the water is OK. In the meantime they took two lanes of the lap pool, opened it for open swim, and then gave 1 lane for us lap swimmers, and left one lane for the one kid that was having a swim lesson.
Added another personal record on the 500yard today, still not where I want to be, but getting better. My main goal right now is not speed but rather endurance. I have 11 weeks until the start of the Mountain Swim Series with the Summer Solstice swim, and I need to get myself up to a 2 mile continuous swim. If I can do it in a pool I know that I can do it in open water. Actually, I know I can do it in open water, I have done it before, but doing it again after 3 years of being away from it is the issue. It’s a self confidence issue more than anything else.
Evening walks were cut short a little bit. Res really didn’t feel like it, I think he was still done from this morning’s walk. He did spend some time laying around in the back yard today, his favorite activity of all time, sunbathing. I always know when he doesn’t want to walk because he stops in the driveway, looks around, and is like, “OK….. maybe I’ll walk down to the park and back.” Only did 1/2 mile with them this afternoon.
I spent some time working on updating the SSL certificate for the mail server and all of my *.cmolnar.com domains. I am going to start dropping domains as time goes on as the costs are consistently rising to maintain them. Now it looks like we are going to have to be updating SLL keys every 200 days, and this is too much work for something I don’t get paid for.
Had an awesome dinner of salmon, asparagus, shrimp, and shrimp cocktail. Sunday dinners are always a good way to wrap up the weekend.
Now it is rest and relaxation time. I will see you all tomorrow.
