Running, moving furniture, mowing and burning brush

Running notes

My first half-mile was slow. I clocked it at 7:30 (15 minute miles).

The two-mile mark was 26:22 and the 2.6 mile time was 33:35. 

My plan is to run the 2.6 miles and walk the last 0.4 miles as a cool-down. While 2.6 miles looks like an arbitrary number, it isn't. From the end of my driveway, up the center of the road and around the block to a very large White Oak on the top of a hill is precisely 2.58 miles. Rounding gives me 2.6 miles.

The time it takes to run 2.6 miles at a 12 minutes/mile pace is 31 minutes. If you take out my very slow first half-mile, I was running at a 12:25 minutes/mile clip.

Moving furniture

Two hours by the clock. One hour of actual hands-on furniture.

Pulling weeds and lifting weights

Neither happened.

I pushed a lawn mower for 89 minutes. I was shooting for two hours but I felt a sudden sharp pain in my left, Achilles' tendon.

An academic would have puzzled over the phenomena. He would have opened up scholar.google.com and performed multiple queries. He would have posted rambling essays on his Facebook page. If he noticed many insects boiling out of the ground at his feet, he might have been inclined to snap photos and use an app to determine the species. If his degrees were in the social-sciences, he might have asked them if their aggression was due to childhood trauma while lecturing them on the evils of systemic humanistic biases.

I, on the other hand, am a redneck and this isn't my first rodeo. I SPRINTED out of the area pushing the mower ahead of me. Yellow-jackets are assholes and run in gangs. It is a good day, relatively speaking, when you only get stung by one of them.

After popping into the house to down two Diphenhydramine (Benedryl), I dragged a hose and flopped the end of it down by the hole that the Yellow Jackets were buzzing around. Then I turned the hose on.

Everybody has their favorite method for eradicating ground-nesting bees. Mine is to drown them. I flood the hole for half an hour and then I back off on the rate of flow. I will turn it off completely in the morning. 

Plan B

B is for burning

I burned brush for two hours. My enthusiasm for pushing a lawn mower  or pulling weeds had evaporated.

The branches from the Honey Locust tree that have been drying for three weeks needed to go away. They burned but it was with all of the enthusiasm of a kid going to the dentist.

Two adult beverages were consumed while watching the fire and contemplating the wickedness in the universe. 

German Engineering

 

Weed processing facility liquidation

Short notice Liquidation sale. Ends this evening.

Cash-flow issues are probably the #1 cause of businesses failing. Buying items in bulk because of the huge discount and "I will use them someday" bites a lot of business owners. Part of the issue is that if you need to generate cash, you get pennies back on what you originally paid when you try to resell them on secondary markets.

 

Chalk that up to "Practice"

Yesterday, I replaced the battery in a wristwatch.

I opened it up about a week ago. It required LA1130 or 389 batteries. I could spend $5 locally to buy a single battery or purchase on-line and spend $3.99 to get ten. So I bought on-line. 

The batteries showed up yesterday. I opened up the heavy-duty, gallon, zip-lock baggie that I had stored the disassembled watch in. Then I went to work.

Everything went as well as can be expected. I lost one of the four screws that held the back on. That was in spite of using a ceramic donut magnet to hold them.

Miraculously, I found that tiny screw on the carpet. The screw was about 1/8" long and I need tweezers to hold them upright while starting them with the microscopic Philips screwdriver.

The watch face illuminates. All the buttons worked....

and that is when I noticed that the buckle hardware that is supposed to be on  one end of the wristband was not there.

I guess we can chalk that one up to "Practice". I still have 9 batteries.

Summer is winding down

Some spinach seedlings.

The last several days have been misty and hazy. Nothing is drying out. The grass keeps growing.

Our biggest project of the summer (should) be wrapped up this week. After that, I can turn my attention to maintaining the deer stands. 

I expect to start seeing more of Quicksilver this week.

Random tip

This showed up in our church bulletin. This tip is probably most valuable for people who are living alone. We used to carry lists in our wallet/purse of the prescriptions (brand-name, chemical name, dosage, frequency) for each of our kids. One of our boys was a frequent-flier in terms of E-Room visits and having a legible list the staff can photocopy saves time and aggravation.

Today's Work-ticket

Run 2 miles (stretch goal 3 miles)

Help Southern Belle move some furniture

Lift

Purchase 1/2 yard fill sand

Mow some of the yard if the grass dries out

Pull some weeds

I am 99% sure that I am not going to get all of these done. 

The difference between Democrats and Democratic Socialists

 

Nobody saw that coming

A friend emailed me that his neighbor's son had just committed suicide. Please understand that I am not in a position to share many details.

The son was 30 years-old and it was totally out-of-the-blue. In retrospect, the only (possible) tell is that the son moved all of his useful tools and equipment from his garage in one state into his dad's barn on "the farm" in a different, nearby state.

This graphic understates the risk of suicide. A casual observer would think that the risk drops dramatically after age 12. What is really happening is that other causes-of-death are increasing and thus dilute the share caused by suicide.

US data shows that the crude death-rate from age 20-through-84 is 18/100k per year, +/- 3. It is a bit lower than that through the teen years but coroners have been known to rule deaths "accidental" to protect the mental health of the parents.

Prayer and prayer-like practices

I was listening to a video about dementia and how prayer seems to help knit the shattered neural links back together. I sent this link to a friend going through a rough patch. I took the liberty of jumping into the video mid-way to minimize the amount of material he would have to wade through to get to the material that applied to him.

Cutting to the chase, prayer (and similar practices) slows down the process that runs the accelerator-pump that gooses cortisol FIGHT/FLIGHT production while simultaneously feeding the regions of the brain that help us feel "connected" to people and the regions of the brain where we conceptualize continuity of past/now/future. 

Since he has a lot of animosity toward Christianity and "organized" religion, I also took the liberty of sending him some links to a channel that posts inspirational prose that are (mostly) NOT Biblical:

"Many good videos HERE

The man in the arena by Teddy Roosevelt (Run-time 6:20)

Desiderata by Max Ehrmann (Run-time 3:30)

IF by Rudyard Kipling (Run-time 2:50)

The Road Less Traveled by Robert Frost" (Run-time 1:45)

Do what you can

It is pretty clear that the young man who chose to commit suicide had been planning it. In the note, he left all of his "things" to his dad.

It is almost impossible to stop somebody who has fully decided to commit suicide. The window of opportunity is BEFORE they make that decision.

It will be useful to me and to other readers if you shared some of your favorite pieces of prose in the comments.

Wanton Destruction

Stop Oil protestor gluing hands to pavement during London rush-hour

Wanton destruction, in spite of frequent, noble-sounding rationalizations, is motivated by the unholy glee of a sadist inflicting pain upon others.

Spoiled children destroying art works that cannot be replaced

"Climate Activists", or whatever they call themselves today, are rejoicing that Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) lost $26 BILLION on all Electric Vehicles.

Ford lost $19 BILLION.

GM lost $10 BILLION.

"They deserve to lose money" is how they brush it off. 

That money could have been used to create long-lasting jobs in Michigan and Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. But now that money is gone and the spoiled children don't give a shit about families where the primary breadwinner got laid off.

They don't give a shit about anybody except others in their tribe.

Stopping construction equipment. Nothing says you care about people more than stopping the flow of oil

 

Nothing demonstrates your intelligence and moral superiority more than taking selfies as you breaking-and-entering into a bank.

And what is most incredible to me is that these same tantrum-throwing children are now running for public offices and their patterns of wanton destruction are not being talked about.

We were deeply distressed when they were seven years-old and throwing performative tantrums in the grocery store checkout lane ahead of us but now millions of people are voting to put them into offices where the gleeful sadists will control the flow of billions and trillions of dollars. 

What is wrong with people? Suddenly, being a viral nuisance and destroyer are qualifications to lead?