After 45 years, I can now say I am finally and officially retired. I should be able to find more to say, but that about sums it up. FINI! I am on permanent vacation now.
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As I look over my archive list, I see the posts are getting scarcer and scarcer. Why do I bother? I thought I would find more to write about, but I guess I was wrong about that, too. I could use this as a sounding board to complain about all the injustices being heaped on me and the world in general, but since I'm the only one who reads these stupid blogs, I already know. This is like talking in my head, only slower. Well, I'm going to go and find something intelligent to do, like play solitaire.....seeya.
It's been almost a year (once again) since I made an entry into this stupid blog. I wish I'd never started it because I don't have the fortitude to keep it up. There is so much going on in my life that I can't dedicate the proper amount of time to make this worthwhile. And all these events are the perfect fuel to keep the blog machine running. I know, it's not that hard. They say you always find the time to do the things you really want to do, so I guess I don't really want to do this because I sure can't seem to find the time. There is so much to tell, yet every time I make an entry, I don't really say anything intelligent. I guess I'll have to take this more seriously and put forth more effort, but if I was to put more effort into writing, wouldn't it be better spent editing my last novel, or starting the next one cued up in my brain waiting its turn to escape? I'm going to have to give this more serious thought and get back to you. See you again next year....
Searching For Photos If I wasn't such an accomplished procrastinator, I would have many more photos to share on my website. It took the house fire to make me regret my laziness. I lost the majority of my 40 year accumulation of slides and all of my newer 8mm videos. The older VHS tapes survived because they were protected in totes. Most of our photo albums survived, but some are smoke damaged. If I can ever find my film copier, I will be able to put my remaining slides and photo negatives onto the computer and then onto my website. Problem is, I don't know what happened to the darned thing! I know it survived the fire, I'm sure I saw it, but where the heck is it now??? And what happened to all of my photos from our European trip. They were taken before the fire. They are probably on one of my two damaged external hard drives. Hopefully not the one that got toasted. If it's the other drive, I just need to do some delicate soldering to reattach the USB port. Yeah, I've been putting that off, too.
It's pretty sad when the most exciting thing I have to write about is running on the elliptical. After the doc told me my sore back was a muscle issue and ordered physical therapy, I got back on the elliptical ending a six month hiatus. Three weeks of PT and no improvement, other than running 35 miles, that is. Doc suspects it isn't a muscle issue now and ordered an x-ray (thanks for the opportunity to do PT, it didn't help, but probably didn't hurt, either). Good news! X-ray shows I have arthritis in my lower back! That explains the clunking sounds. I'm still running. I will until I can't anymore. Like the words of wisdom at work for our stretching program, "Don't do more than you can." My response, "How could you possibly do more than you can? It doesn't make sense. If you did more than you can, then you could do it and therefore weren't, right?"
Last November I bought an elliptical so I could put a fire under my growing laziness and wage war against my burgeoning flab. Things were shaping up until mid-December when my back went out (again) after climbing in and out of a 40 inch high crate about two dozen times while packing parts in it. My days on the elliptical came to a halt. It took two or three tries to get out of bed in the morning. I am no stranger to having a bad back. Every year or so, it goes out for little or no reason. After a week or two of pain ranging from nagging to agonizing, it goes away. Well, this time it has lingered for more than four months. Being the prudent soul that I am, I finally decided to go to the doctor (in this case, since I don't have a doctor [I fired her], I saw a nurse practitioner). After admonishing me for procrastinating, she examined me and decided my problem was muscle related and ordered physical therapy. Oh, the clunking I feel and hear in my lower back is arthritis, according to her, so I guess that is good news. I feared it was disintegrating discs or something equally horrible.
So, armed with this good news, I decided I wasn't going to let a little pain keep me off the elliptical. I started doing one mile runs and worked my time down. I started at eight minutes and went to seven, six and a half and then hit the six minute mile. I was just about to my limit, and decided I could shave it down. My goal was five minutes thirty seconds. After hitting five, forty-five, I knew there was hope. The next time I tried, I gave it everything I had. I pounded on that thing like a madman. I pushed until there was nothing left to give, I hit five minutes thirty-four seconds. Just four seconds away, they might as well have been hours. I saw no hope of going faster. I panted like a dog for an hour. Cindy was afraid I was going to have a heart-attack. After assessing my failure, I decided I needed to do some conditioning to increase my endurance before giving it another go. I broke the mile down into quarters and figured out how long it should take at the five minute thirty second pace to do one quarter mile, a half mile and three-quarters of a mile. I am going to spend a week or two on each stage of the mile, then go for the record once again. All this work to gain four seconds, but I will not be denied. For my goal, I need to do the quarter mile in one minute and twenty-two seconds. I hit it easily, I shaved a few seconds off, then some more. I wondered how fast I could do the quarter mile. Now I had a new goal. I did it in a minute fifteen seconds, then a minute eleven, then a minute five seconds! Could I hit one minute? I pushed with every ounce of my strength. I was doing 137 rpms on the elliptical. I couldn't sustain that pace, I was completely spent and slowed. I did the quarter mile in one minute and one second. Are you kidding? One lousy second way from my goal. I tried again, but at a slightly slower pace (125 rpms), one minute three seconds. I tried a little slower with a burst at the end, one minute five seconds.....hmmmm....that didn't work either. Tonight, I ran a slow quarter mile at two minutes, then followed it with a brisk one minute thirty second quarter, after resting a few minutes, I hammered that poor elliptical and nailed the quarter mile in fifty-nine seconds! I can die a happy man now, oh, wait, I start the half mile runs next week. I wonder what my goal will be. I can't believe it! It's been eleven months since I added another episode in the continuing saga of my exciting life. I am a bum. I can't do this, or anything with any semblance of regularity. Just getting from one day to the next is an accomplishment for me. So, I guess this is enough for today, sure, stuff has happened, but nothing earth shattering. I will come back later, hopefully this year, and write more, if I feel up to the challenge.
It's amazing how long I can go without adding to this stupid blog. It's not for a lack of things to say, or new events in my life. It's more of a lack of desire which is a rather common ailment for me of late. So, what to say....... I have lost all desire to finish my fifth novel. Haven't written a word since the house fire. I want to finish it, but apparently not enough to actually resume producing words towards that goal. I wanted to write something, so I resurrected an old project that had been simmering on a back-burner for five years. It is a non-fiction book about unusual events throughout history. I will have one for each day of the year. I have finished the research and am in the process of digesting it and writing the stories. Don't hold your breath waiting, it will be quite some time before I finish. I have only written one story and have three hundred and sixty-five to go. And, I don't feel highly motivated to finish this book either. I have ideas bouncing around in my head for six more novels and one more non-fiction book. Maybe I should start them all because it doesn't seem that I am going to finish anything. I probably don't have enough years left to finish them, so I question whether starting them makes any sense. Well, this has been another exciting addition to my fabulous blog. I really should find something cheerful to write about.
Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah.....stuff that has happened recently, well, for starters, our house is done and we moved back into it on April 2nd. We are still adding the finishing touches here and there, tweaking this, buying that, you know, mostly minor stuff. We now have a brand new home cleverly hidden in the shell of an old house. It still looks like the same old house from the outside, but the inside is beautiful! We made a few remodeling changes inside and Cindy is very happy with the house. That was my main goal.
What else has happened......I changed jobs. I still work at P&H Mining, well, technically, it's Joy Global now. I'm not happy about the name change, but I'll leave that for another day. After running the overhead crane for 10 years, I decided it was time for a change. Things were getting too stupid and it just wasn't fun anymore, so I abandoned ship. We now have a warehouse in Oak Creek with the prestigious title of Milwaukee Distribution Center, so I transferred there and am now a logistics clerk which is a fancy title for someone who puts away, fetches, packs and ships parts. It's simple work, but does require physical labor which has been absent from my life for 10 years and my body reminds me of that fact every night. Hopefully I will stop being sore on a daily basis sometime before I retire. And no, that isn't going to be anytime soon. I could go into details about the house or new job, but why? No one reads these fantastically interesting blogs. So that's enough mind-altering entertainment for one day. I know I have been woefully negligent with my wonderful blog. How long has it been? I can't even remember the last time I wrote, so that means it's been too long. So much has happened in my life recently that I haven't had time to brag, or complain about the latest events.....and I don't have time now, but, in the famous words of Arnold, "I'll be back."
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February 2020
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