Apr 29 - riding on the spot

Yes, that's what I did yesterday and I was bored after 30 minutes. No, I take that back, I was bored after 5 minutes but endured it for 30 minutes. It's interesting though, riding on the spot, as an exercise, tends to get my heart rate up more, or perhaps I just notice it more ... hmmm.

I did a number of things yesterday with my "free" time, since I didn't spend 5 hours on the bike. I put the little boat into the water, gave the 9.9 Johnson a run; I cleaned up the yellow bike, prepping it and mounting on the trainer; I put up three bicycle hooks in the rafters of my workroom, and at one point had three bikes hanging there; I adjusted the front derailleur of my Hummer bike; I ran some more speaker wire over to where the wire from the outside speakers comes into the house and installed a four speaker Radio Shack switch that I've had since we lived in Port Credit and just brought up from Florida where it had landed (four speakers are workroom, darkroom, games room, outside; ... I'm sure that I did other things too ... this was all puttering.

The reason that I postponed getting in a decent ride is that it felt cool (what a wimp!) and it's going to be warmer today.

Sandy did some raking, which she will probably regret, and some tidying (oh yeah, I unpacked all my bike clothes and suitcase too). Bonnie and Jim came over around 5pm to visit and we had a drink, some snacks and some conversation while I uninstalled Kaspersky anti-virus and installed AVG anti-virus on her laptop.

I caught up with some bills, read and wrote some emails, did my blog, and no ... I did not have a snooze. Just because I'm retired doesn't mean I'm lazy !

What else did I NOT do -- I haven't gone fishing yet.

Oh yes, I re-piled the two woodpiles that had fallen down. The one on the back-side of the woodshed was piled too high and the snow load caused it to fall over. The three-row pile of hemlock at the end of the driveway is piled on some 1x12's that are themselves not stable. I re-piled the outside row that had fallen over with the snow ... it's still not very stable and needs to be held in place somehow or re=piled on a more stable surface. What a bore. I thought that I would pound some pipes into the ground and put a board in front of the pile to stop it from falling ... no luck, I hit bedrock after about 6 inches.

I fixed the garage door on the boathouse -- when I opened it the other day it took several tries with the automatic opener and finally I had to lift it while it was going -- one of the anchor pieces had pulled its screws out of the 2x4 at the front and had bent, causing the spring to detach.

So you see it was a bop-around-the-place kind of day, doing miscellaneous things. One of those days where you'd have to have a Twitter account to note everything that you did, and of course you'd also have to have wireless connectivity so that you could carry your twitter-able device around with you to constantly make not of what you're doing.

-- I'm walking up the hill
-- I'm walking down the hill
-- I'm getting my DeWalt drill
-- I'm putting the battery into my DeWalt drill
-- I'm putting a drill bit into my DeWalt drill
-- I'm drilling holes in a 2x4
-- I'm haning the 2x4 from the rafter

The only thing missing from this sort of thing, of course, is:

-- I'm spending half of my life recording the other half of my life

I was reading that, despite the enormous attraction of Twitter, over 40% of users drop off after the first month, perhaps not considering their lives interesting enough to keep up the constant Twitter. Even Oprah had not Twittered for several days. For many people, blogging is the same -- not worth the effort. They must all have better memories than me or perhaps they're slower typists ... I actually use my blog to find out what the heck I was doing on such-and-such a day.

Here's something interesting though -- as I was typing this, I expected several of these words to be flagged as spelling mistakes ... twitter, twittered ... nope, they're already in the Google dictionary.

The birds are going crazy at our feeders. I filled up the sunflower seed feeder and it was to the bottom in half a day. That's the second time in two days. That is amazing, since it usually lasts weeks. The small birds are here in flocks. The ground is carpeted with them under the feeders. Clearly some of those seeds don't make it into their bellies, rather being kicked onto the ground for later foraging. The thistle feeder was also emptied in a couple of days. It usually lasts most of a season ! Clearly the birds are here before the trees etc. are producing any food for them and they like our easy pickings !

We had chicken-breast-on-the-barbie for dinner last night, along with zucchini and sweet potato -- yes, all on the barbie. What would we do without a barbie ? Could we ever live like Norm and Patti on the upper floor of a condo without a barbecue ? Nope. We're addicted to those carcinogens that are produced from stuff cooked on high on the barbie ... and then I have to drink enough red wine with its flavonoids to counteract the effects of the carcinogens (I was obviously reading on CNN again) so that statistically I had not reduced my expected lifespan. Biking at night is probably more risky than cooking on the barbie ... but then again, at some point, something's gonna get you !

I just found out that "gonna" is a word too, according to Google. Shudder.

Ok, enough chatter/twitter/blog/blah blah blah ...