Routines Are Good
My day usually begins anywhere from 5:30 to 7:00 when Toby wakes up and lets me know it's time. His most effective method for waking me is a fake sneeze that sounds like the real deal, but I know it's not. We head downstairs and I let the pups out, standing with them in the front yard while they do their business. The occasional coyote or fox is enough of a threat that I don't like to leave them unattended. We go inside and I turn on the gas fireplace in the sunporch to take the chill out of the air so it's toasty warm when Tammy comes down a half-hour later. The pups prance at my feet while I fix their main meal of the day.
I reach over and flip on the TV to Morning Joe to get a recap of the previous day's happenings. I like my news shows to offer a variety of opinions from people across the political spectrum, and Morning Joe does that. During commercial breaks, I'll switch to some of the other competing morning shows to see what they're discussing. Two minutes of Fox and Friends is all it takes to confirm that they're still nothing more than hard-right propaganda (not that I was expecting anything less). Their man-in-the-field from somewhere deep in Mexico this morning was reporting that the caravan of asylum seekers working their way toward the U.S. on foot was traveling at the rate of 200 miles (322 km) per day and will be arriving at our southern border in San Diego in one week to ten days. That's impressive! I couldn't do that on my bike, much less walking while carrying a toddler. I think to myself, how dumb do they think their viewers are?
While the pups devour their mix of dry food and refrigerated food, I'll typically have a bowl of cereal or I'll thaw out a frozen breakfast sandwich (90 seconds on level 3 in the microwave followed by 45 seconds on high) and a glass of OJ or milk to wash down my daily dose of meds and vitamins. I almost always wake up with a song on repeat running through my head: Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears was today's offering. This has been a favorite of mine for the past 10 days or so since posting this video to my Facebook account.
Routines are good and this is my routine.
Usually, I'll have an idea for how I want to fill my day but not always. I like to get my workout done in the morning but since I have no afternoon shift at work to be mindful of, I'm content to take it slow for the first hour and see which way my day wants to unfold on its own. The past few days I've been good about getting down on my indoor trainer and knocking out my workout along with a few thousand others on Zwift before noon. Yesterday's ride was London's Triple Loops course—a favorite of mine that starts out flat and fast but makes up for it in the last half with a good amount of climbing.
My OCD is such that I typically need to try and get up every last leaf before the snow begins to fall but I seem to have been caught off guard this year. I was going to vacuum up leaves one last time but a covering of snow has descended on us and unless I can get out there before Tuesday (our last compost pickup of the year), the leaves will remain until spring. The long-range forecast has us well below freezing until the middle of next week so it's not looking good.
I took some time to change the oil in my mowers and give them a bath after I finished mowing/vacuuming last week. That simple act will help to assuage any lingering nags about a leaf-free yard. For those scoring at home, my final tally for the year was 63 bags of leaves!
The midterm elections are over and Democrats made some impressive gains across the country. That's a good thing but it's not enough, not when I ponder the fact that there's still half of the country out there that supports this most corrupt administration and is content to put party over country. But the winds are changing and what has been a strong headwind has undeniably diminished some.
Tammy and I attended a protest at the Capitol in St. Paul last night with several hundred others who showed up in light snow to protest Trump's* firing of Jeff Sessions and the (likely illegal) appointment of Matt Whitaker to take his place and oversee Mueller's investigation. It's estimated that there were 900 such demonstrations across the country last night by people who truly care about our democracy.
That would be us.
Time to get on with my daily routine and see what course I'll be riding on Zwift.
That's all I've got.
I reach over and flip on the TV to Morning Joe to get a recap of the previous day's happenings. I like my news shows to offer a variety of opinions from people across the political spectrum, and Morning Joe does that. During commercial breaks, I'll switch to some of the other competing morning shows to see what they're discussing. Two minutes of Fox and Friends is all it takes to confirm that they're still nothing more than hard-right propaganda (not that I was expecting anything less). Their man-in-the-field from somewhere deep in Mexico this morning was reporting that the caravan of asylum seekers working their way toward the U.S. on foot was traveling at the rate of 200 miles (322 km) per day and will be arriving at our southern border in San Diego in one week to ten days. That's impressive! I couldn't do that on my bike, much less walking while carrying a toddler. I think to myself, how dumb do they think their viewers are?
While the pups devour their mix of dry food and refrigerated food, I'll typically have a bowl of cereal or I'll thaw out a frozen breakfast sandwich (90 seconds on level 3 in the microwave followed by 45 seconds on high) and a glass of OJ or milk to wash down my daily dose of meds and vitamins. I almost always wake up with a song on repeat running through my head: Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears was today's offering. This has been a favorite of mine for the past 10 days or so since posting this video to my Facebook account.
Routines are good and this is my routine.
Usually, I'll have an idea for how I want to fill my day but not always. I like to get my workout done in the morning but since I have no afternoon shift at work to be mindful of, I'm content to take it slow for the first hour and see which way my day wants to unfold on its own. The past few days I've been good about getting down on my indoor trainer and knocking out my workout along with a few thousand others on Zwift before noon. Yesterday's ride was London's Triple Loops course—a favorite of mine that starts out flat and fast but makes up for it in the last half with a good amount of climbing.
My OCD is such that I typically need to try and get up every last leaf before the snow begins to fall but I seem to have been caught off guard this year. I was going to vacuum up leaves one last time but a covering of snow has descended on us and unless I can get out there before Tuesday (our last compost pickup of the year), the leaves will remain until spring. The long-range forecast has us well below freezing until the middle of next week so it's not looking good.I took some time to change the oil in my mowers and give them a bath after I finished mowing/vacuuming last week. That simple act will help to assuage any lingering nags about a leaf-free yard. For those scoring at home, my final tally for the year was 63 bags of leaves!
The midterm elections are over and Democrats made some impressive gains across the country. That's a good thing but it's not enough, not when I ponder the fact that there's still half of the country out there that supports this most corrupt administration and is content to put party over country. But the winds are changing and what has been a strong headwind has undeniably diminished some.Tammy and I attended a protest at the Capitol in St. Paul last night with several hundred others who showed up in light snow to protest Trump's* firing of Jeff Sessions and the (likely illegal) appointment of Matt Whitaker to take his place and oversee Mueller's investigation. It's estimated that there were 900 such demonstrations across the country last night by people who truly care about our democracy.
That would be us.
Time to get on with my daily routine and see what course I'll be riding on Zwift.
That's all I've got.
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