February 5 Sunday
Today was an odd duck of a day, sort of. Trouble getting to sleep again last night, leading me to fall asleep eventually at around 11:30 am or so, I'm guessing. Janice worked noon to 4 and came home, I woke up, and we hemmed and hawed a bit before we both figure we might as well take a nap before heading to the gym. Well, the thing there is, we had a kind of long nap, sleeping till around 8 pm, so we threw out the gym plans, figuring we'll just wind up making it home handy to midnight and still without having had supper. Which turned out to be a Kirkland pepperoni pizza from Costco, with added mozza and bacon crumble. Tasty and easy. * Janice had a Bailey's and I had a CVZ and a DCD - took my supplements and realized I'm out of Zoloft. It certainly won't kill me to miss a day. We watched Question Period, which was relatively bland this time if I'm being honest, and then 'The Last of Us', which got back to the trials and tribulations of Joel and Ellie. Interesting to watch the bonding of these two develop. Ellie's chipping away at Joel's tough exterior with her wit and humor - it's quite funny to see. It looks like it's setting up for some trying times ahead on their journey to the middle U.S. * After that we took in 'The Unexplained' with William Shatner, talking about the early development of the U.S. and the landmarks around Washington, D.C. with its connections to Freemasonry. I knew George Washington was a Freemason, but I didn't realize he was also a devout Christian. Interesting trivia. * I guess the U.S. shot down the balloon China was flying over North America, first collecting tech info on it before shooting it down over the water. Can't wait to hear the conspiracy theorists on this. It can't simply be spy equipment, can it? It must be a balloon filled with a virus from Wuhan sent to infect us all. Gasp. * We finally had a shower tonight! The water actually started working late last night, so we're in the clear for cleanliness. The gym will be tackled tomorrow once again for Charms Day. * Not much more to report for this rather uneventful Sunday - ah yes, weather-wise, it was cold and kind of blustery, but not like it's been. Now we're down to the single digit minuses, and there was a little snow, a handful of cms. It's cool tonight, breezy and minus 6. Marbles is all cozy on my lap and it's time to try to sleep. * And that's the kind of day it's been.
February 6 Monday
Honestly, I don't know what the weather was like today - I assume it was with temps in the minus 6 to minus 8 range, and clear, I think? Nothing like it was last week, anyway. It's just nice that all the water is running in the house again and we don't have to jigger with thermostats all the time. We burned some serious oil last week. * Last night was positively lousy for sleep, because I felt awful. I came down with something that I've yet to explain or understand why I got it. My guts were cramped out big time. Numerous trips to the bathroom with just a general total feel of being uncomfortable. Like I'd eaten something that was just wrong for me. I just got over Covid for frig's sake. * There didn't seem to be anything I could take for relief, so I just had to lay around and endure it. As the day progressed, it made me feel worse, and it got harder and harder to muster up the energy to get up to go to the bathroom. By mid afternoon, I was shivering, still running to the toilet, and just not feeling right at all. Janice got home and felt my head and thought I was running a fever or something. Like, what the friggin' hell? Somehow, I managed to fall asleep in late afternoon, Janice crawled under the covers with me and swore off the gym for the day so she could look after me - bless her. I don't know how folks who live alone endure being sick with no one to look after them. I mean, God bless them. Times like this really make me feel for those people. * We woke up handy to 8 pm or so, and Janice had gotten soup for me at the store and some bottled water, and Kraft Dinner for herself for supper, since a full-fledged meal wasn't going to happen tonight. I opted for a can of Chunky Chicken Noodle with crackers, to see how it would go down. I wanted to eat something. We dined on our food, I had my water and Janice her DCD, and we watched our usual Monday programming in Rachel Maddow and Global News, and hiked upstairs to the Promised Land. * I was still making trips to the bathroom. What is it the joke was on 'The Last of Us'... Ellie asked Joel, "did you know diarrhea is heriditary? It runs in the jeans." Well, I came close a couple of times. I gave it some thought about where this must've originated. I pinpoint it to two things: These Doritos that I tried, a new flavor called sweet barbecue - of which I only ate maybe five or six; and the other more likely culprit being the chicken that I made the other night. The chicken itself was fine, but the cleanup... maybe I wasn't as thorough as I should've been, which I always make it a point to be, so it's unusual. Janice did not get sick at all, so it comes down to those two things. So, Imodium and Gravol it is. * My guts are still raunched out, but not as bad, but enough to make it tough to sleep. Which is why I'm laying here at 4:26 am typing this. The bright side being, at least I'm not throwing up. I can't take that at all. When I was a little boy, I got sick a lot. Like, a lot a lot. One time during the holiday season, I was so sick, I couldn't stop continuously barfing for a whole two days. I still remember my brother Peter having to carry me to the bathroom downstairs to do my business. With all this in mind, and this kind of thing happening a lot when I was young, I feel like I might have some kind of PTSD thing with vomiting. I can't help but panic and fear for my life. I know nobody is a fan of it at all, but cripes. Anyway, I didn't have to deal with that, it seems this is strictly a bowel thing. * We laid in bed and watched some Seth Myers DVR stuff from last week, before I decided it was worth a shot to try to sleep. I think I slept 45 minutes or an hour. And here I am. Janice and me both have dentist appointments at noon Tuesday - and I pretty much have to go, because the receptionist will freak out if I cancel day-of. She's done it more than once with Janice and me. * That's the kind of jolly day it's been. Gotta love Mondays.
February 7 Tuesday
What a difference a day makes. Feel so much better today, after a pretty rough go of it yesterday. What I did that was the deciding factor was take Gravol - it fixed me right up. Calmed my gut and allowed me to sleep, although not really long, because I had to get up and go to the dentist with the wife, where we both had checkups and cleanings. * And that had mixed results. I wanted to see if I could break my one-in-a-row record of clean checkups (a clean bill last time), but nope, I have decay in a molar on my lower right side. I had no idea, I couldn't feel it. But there's that, and the broken tooth just on top of it that I have to get fixed next time I go, which will be - sometime, I guess. The dentist wants to put a crown on the broken one, but has to see if insurance will at least partially cover it. Then there's doing something about the missing choppers. Janice has kind of the same scenario, a busted tooth and a cavity that she needs fixed, and she needs a crown too. Cha-ching cha-ching... all this ain't gonna be cheap. * We made an unscheduled trip to Costco after that, in the middle of the daytime, which was pretty weird for me. I wanted bagels. We haven't had them in literally years. As is per usual with Costco, we walked out with no bagels because they weren't fresh enough, but got all kinds of other stuff, including store-made chicken salad, Janice insisted on getting their store-made strawberry cheesecake, waffles of course...I should say that when I refer to 'waffles', I don't mean Eggos or anything, it's the Belgian waffles they have in the bakery section; and they had Lay's Swiss Chalet sauce flavor chips we got a bag of. I'm not a big potato chip guy, so this is an indulgence. Janice loves gravy style chips, but it's not something we do a hell of a lot. This bag'll last us a month. I also got this three-pack of body wash...that's what it's called, 'body wash', Sandalwood scent. It was cost effective, so I'm good for that now for quite a few moons. And we got this Kirkland shampoo that we like. It'll last us a year and a half to two years like the last one did. We got cheese too, because it's destined for my bagels when I eventually find them. * Off we go, then, to Great Canadian Bagel to get what I originally wanted. I got a half dozen cheddar & herb ones, and Janice got her half dozen everything ones. Really fresh too. Then it was off to Sobeys where we got garlic spread and Janice got a cream cheese tub for hers. * Then it's home, where we made a bagel each. Janice had hers with her cream cheese, and I put garlic spread on mine and topped it with shredded marble cheese and broiled it in the oven on parchment paper. Mistake! The bagel was fine. Great even. But Mike, you dumbass, you don't use parchment paper for broiling in the oven! It stunk up the house for hours. Janice had to listen to me bitch and moan about the stink until we went upstairs to pass out for awhile. We gave Marbles a little snack too, and we passed out for awhile. He follows us everywhere we go, such a loyal little guy. * We slept for a little bit, maybe two or three hours, and Janice had to head back to work to relieve Alexandra, who went in for her at 11:30 so she could make her dentist appointment. I slept off and on, no biggie, since I want to sleep at some point during the night. When Janice got home, it was chicken salad sandwich time. We had that and a bit of cheesecake, and got a slice of it along with a sandwich each for Alexandra, Cole and Janice's Mom. Janice got me some Soleil Oil too, a 50/50 blend of CBD and THC cannabis. This should help with sleep going forward. Maybe. * I want to mention in my journal here, too, that a few people actually reached out with support after I posted last week's entry. My brother Rick related to my sinus issues, saying he's dealing with the same thing the last month. So have many others - it's kind of nice to know I'm not alone there, but honestly I don't want anyone else suffering. Michelle D offered advice on the sleeping issue, remembering that my old Green Gables days working night shifts back in the day probably contributes to my night owl-ishness. And brother Pete thought I was getting into sweet potatoes. Can't say that's ever gonna happen. The thing I had in my hand wasn't a potato, but cookie dough. I wish I liked those potatoes, but I never acquired the taste for them. * Anyway, then it was the State of the Union address that was all over TV. Good showing for Biden. And it was cool to see Bono from U2 in attendance, sitting next to Paul Pelosi, Nancy's husband. I would say he's probably the most important rock star on planet Earth, because he's always advocating for good. He talks the talk and walks the walk. Republicans were largely respectful, actually, except for the extremists like Marjorie 3 names and Bimboebert, and George 'it may be my name and it may not be' Santos acting like the colossal asses they are. And like most asses, lots of shit came flying out of the holes in their faces. * Speaking of, Trudeau and his Liberals pretty much struck out with their bid to offer a paltry amount to prop up our country's heatlhcare issues. $196 billion over ten years, knowing full well there's no way the Liberals will be running things for that long. This is typical, shady politicking with a thin ice pledge designed to shut people up that never, ever works. * Turkey is trying to recover from a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that's so far been found to kill over 7,000 people and injure thousands more. What a sad, tragic scene, seeing children and babies being pulled from crumbled buildings. There have been aftershocks that are nearly as bad as the earthquake itself. Turkey is a hotspot for terrible earthquakes. It makes me wonder why people live in such prone areas to that kind of risk. * WWE alum Jerry 'The King' Lawlor suffered a stroke recently. He's not a young guy, I think in his early 70's, and he suffered a heart attack on the air during a segment of Monday Night Raw about ten or fifteen years ago. That was scary. Apparently, though, it's looking good for a recovery from this stroke, as he's regained movement in all four limbs, and he's speaking, although limited, which is expected. * We've hit the Promised Land with MMH, and sleep will be in order shortly. Ah yes, the weather today was good. Sunny and single digit minus temps; a bit chilly at night but certainly nowhere near how it was last week. Weather is apparently on the way in the next few days. * And that's the kind of day it's been.
February 8 Wednesday
Chilly out in the minus 5 range, but sunny mostly. A standard day for the season ahead of what could be dicey weather ahead. * Another long night last night, that actually stretched into today. It's actually not so bad as long as I'm not sick or anything, which is something that's been challenging me for awhile recently, but ... knock knock knock... I may have turned a corner. I think I eventually passed out around, handy to noon hour? Janice got home from work around 4-ish, and we both passed out again for a little bit. Maybe a couple of hours. Or a few. We just kind of laid around a little, surfing the web and whatnot, before finally deciding to hit the gym. Kind of late, too. We got there around 9:30 tonight, and I had a little change to our routine planned this time. We hit the treadmill for a ten minute warm-up, doing around a mile or so. Then we went right into our Charms workout. We did our chest stuff with drop-sets - that would be dumbbells on the bench for flys and bench presses, 3 sets of 12/10/8 reps with weight increasing each time. Then we do it again, except on an incline. I managed 30, 40 then 50 lb dumbbells, and Janice does half the weight of what I do most of the time, including tonight; so 15, 20 then 25 lbs. Man, she's tough. Then, hit the treadmill again for another mile. Back to weights... to the cable machine where we did drop-sets again for arm curls, 40/50/60 lbs for me, Janice did her 20/25/30. Then tricep pushdowns on the cable with the same weight and reps. Back to the treadmill for another mile. One more round of arm stuff to go... barbell curls, drop sets, with me using 40, 50 and 60 lb preset barbells; Janice doing 20, 25 and 30 lbs. On to the bench for skullcrushers, a tricep exercise, with 20, 25 and 30 lb dumbbells for me in drops again. Janice would do 10, 15 and 20 lbs. DON'T mess with this woman! Back to the treadmill for another mile. Finally it would be a dealer's choice kinda thing to finish; I chose machine crunches with 50, 60 and 70 lb resistance, 20/15/10 reps. Janice did ab stuff in the stretching area. We stretched everything after that, and it was back on the treadmill for one more mile. We wound up leaving at 12:30. Time actually flew when we did it this way, I think because we broke up the monotony of the long treadmill sessions. * Back home as we hit the chilly, lonely street of Mountain Road, got in and promptly took our showers, then it's suppertime. At 1 am! But it was very easy and relatively light. We toasted a couple of bagels that we bought yesterday and I had chicken salad on each one with a bit of margarine, and Janice made a sandwich that way out of hers. She suggested cheesecake for dessert - but I vetoed it. We had our DCD, watched a bit of Chris Hayes, and took off for the Promised Land, where we watched a bit more of Alex Wagner before Janice ultimately passed out. I continued to watch Lawrence O'Donnell and Stephanie Rhule after that. It was good tonight, as they recapped the SOTU speech last night and tore apart republican talking points, aka lies. We found out that a school bus crashed into a daycare in Quebec, killing and injuring kids. I just don't get what makes people want to do this kind of shit. It was no accident, it was deliberate. * Then I loosened up a bit and watched AEW Dynamite. Some weeks, it's like watching a pay per view, the cards can be so good. This was one of those nights. Man, my Dad would be in his glory watching this stuff. * MMH is laying between his Mom and Dad sleeping, Janice has my shirt covering her eyes, and I'm gonna sign off. Not quite sleep-ready yet. * And that's the kind of day it's been.
February 9 Thursday
No big changes today... couldn't sleep at all last night. At. All. I laid in bed for hours with my eyes shut thinking that they'll convey the message to my brain that we've gotta call it a day. But nope. Questions running through my head like "is the area of a six inch pizza the same as half of a twelve inch pizza?" or "why do we 'park' in a 'driveway'?" just floated around my head. Or "why was Lise Saulnier so mean to me when I was a teenager?" "Why did Mr. Agnew at Queen Elizabeth School use the same cologne for... forever??" "Why did I turn down that first girl that asked me to dance in junior high?" Now that all that's firmly in my subconscious, I'm sure I'll dream or have nightmares about all of it next time I manage to sleep. Way to go, Mike. * Janice comes home after work and getting her gel nails done, and I'm still awake at 5 pm!! Laying there in the dark with the curtains drawn, STILL trying to sleep. She says she'll just go to the gym herself and do cardio while I try to get some kind of shut-eye. So she does, and I did. Three or four hours, anyway. We figured on going out, so I could at least get out of the house and see that the world still exists and I'm not stuck in the matrix or something, and we got carrots, a turnip and a couple of pizzas in the frozen section on sale... pronounced Juss Epp Ee. No idea how to spell that. I wanted to get Sudafed Advance because I'm running low, but that was locked off because the pharmacy was closed. And Janice got these Dulcolax chews that she hopes will get things moving. Earlier she brought home a 12 of Heineken, so we'd be doing a bit of damage to that when we have supper. * ...Which was, filet mignon, rice, and those carrots and turnips mashed together. The filet was surprisingly easy to do, and it was great. I took a cast iron skillet, heated it up real nice and melted butter, seared the meat on both sides about two minutes each, and moved the skillet into the oven at 415 F for somewhere between 6-8 minutes to get it medium rare, garnishing it with salt and pepper. It was really tasty and tender. Next time I'll experiment a bit with seasoning, maybe use coarse salt in the frying pan and some garlic. Marbles had his usual chicken dinner - he knows when suppertime is, because he shows up waiting for it when we sit down to eat. We each had a couple of beers along the way. I had to sort out my meds and supplements for the next three weeks, too. Before I cooked the filet, I realized the oven was a hot mess of blackness on the bottom, so I had to do a quick job to get the worst of it off. I thought I'd try that Dawn Powerwash stuff on it, to get the worst of it. And it did. Used that, let it set for five minutes, then used a scrub pad to get the vast majority of it off. Still needs an Easy Off job, but this was a great quick fix. * We watched Chris Hayes, then caught up on Seth Meyers on DVR, which we really record mostly for his 'Closer Look' segments. He's the best thing on late night TV these days. Then it was upstairs to brush our choppers and retire to the Promised Land. Which reminds me, today I found out I have approval for insurance to cover a fair amount for a bridge I need for my teeth. I don't know what's really involved in this, just that I'm tired of playing dodgeball in my mouth whenever I eat crunchy things. I think Janice will find out when I go back tomorrow...? Isn't the dentist fun, though? You sit in this chair that you're almost sure you're going to slide off the other end of, get occasionally blinded by the tag-team-partner-to-the-sun lamp, endure a session with Sir Lance-a-lot with the freezing, and nervously endure the literal jaw dropping poking and prodding and drilling for what seems like a reverse time warp where you feel like seconds suddenly turned into minutes. And have a conversation with a frozen drooling mouth, which somehow the dentist understands every unintelligible word. And you have to remind yourself, "oh yeah, I have to breathe, don't I?" And if you're real lucky, you've got this trampoline thingy over your mouth that makes you feel like a dog with a rubber ball in his mouth because of all the stink of the fresh latex. Then it's "you're all done, Mike!" And I'll be "banks a glot, boc! slurrrp". Ah I can't wait. * The weather was standard today, I guess. Chilly with temps hanging around minus 5 or so, I think, and tonight it's chilling out more into the low minus teens. * And that's the kind of day it's been.
February 10 Friday
Nothing to write home about weather-wise, although it was messy enough to cancel schools and take the mail delivery off the roads. I wonder what the criteria is for making those calls now. It has to be getting more and more minimal. When I went to school, they cancelled for pretty paltry reasons then, too, but not like this. * Sleep... maybe I should make myself read what I'm writing about my attempts at it to fix it. It's freakin' maddening. I mean, I'm tired, but I can't sleep? My brain's on/off switch is broken. And it's off at the wrong times, too. I only got to sleep I think at 3 in the f**king afternoon! This is beyond frustrating. The saving grace is I don't have to work, but this is not how retirement is supposed to be, is it? Janice got home after work and shopping for her Mom, and crawled in bed with me as I slept. God knows she needs sleep. * We both woke up and agreed that we needed to do some gym time. So say we all. We got dressed to sweat and headed out to PF and arrived at 9:30. I noticed freezing rain had accumulated on the car's mirrors, so maybe those cancellations were warranted, if that's what happened. I think we actually got enough snow to warrant a visit from our snowplow guy, because he was around. Anyway, into PF we go. Pretty much started and finished the same way as last time - it was Machine Shack Day, or shoulders and back exercises on the appropriate machines. We worked out on 8 machines, heading to the treadmill for a mile after working on every two machines, so we both got upwards of six to seven miles in cardio. Plus I did a couple of farmer's walks and weight-resisted crunches while Janice did extra cardio. We did our stretching and out the door we went. * And while we were there, we saw on the TVs that Toronto mayor John Tory stepped down because he was boning a woman half his age during the Covid crisis. As bad as that sounds, he did the right thing and immediately stepped down, although only after being found out. Still, he was a far cry from the laughingstock that was Rob Ford before him. We also saw that another balloon was shot down off the coast of Alaska. Balloongate has been prolonged. * After we got home, it was up to the shower, not before realizing that maybe we overdid it at the gym, being there for over three hours. Thing about that is, it didn't seem like three hours. But we each felt like we overdid it with our knees, one on each of us. Janice's accumulated mileage on the year to date is now 105.23 miles, and going strong. Well, 'strong' might be pushing it after tonight for both of us. Anyway... after showering and having conversations with Marvellous Marbles Hagler, we headed downstairs for supper - at 1 am, no less - consisting of a bagel with garlic spread and shredded marble cheese broiled in the oven, along with a piece of the massive cheesecake we got at Costco much earlier in the week. We each had a Heineken followed by a zero-sugar pop, and we took in a little of the telly with 'Real Time w/ Bill Maher', which was better this week than last. Paul Begala was on the panel which always livens it up, with his sharp wit and humor. Even Bill himself didn't seem that cranky this week. * Up to The Promised Land we go to do our notations, then try to wind down, and spin the wheel and see what hour it lands on actually getting to sleep again. MMH got his tasty meatstick treat with a side of finger (ouch), and that's the kind of day it's been.
February 11 Saturday
Janice had today off, her first day in a while since she was on vacation. Since her knee was sore (mine too, but hers is a whole other ballgame), we elected to have a non-gym day today and let her rest up. The work she does has some physicality to it. Not that it daunts her in any way. * She slept fine last night, though she probably could've done with a few more hours. I slept less. I passed out not long after writing last night's journal entry, but only slept for maybe two hours, and just couldn't get back to sleep. Thus I wound up being awake the entire morning until about one in the afternoon or so. Then I slept maybe four or so hours. I'm pretty wiped out right now. * Janice woke me up, having been awake for awhile. It took some time for me to get my brain to fully operate. The plan was to go get wings at Sobeys, make the coated variety for supper tonight and just take it from there. I figured, ah what the hell, let's go to the Sobeys in Shediac, so we took that drive out, just for a change of scenery. The skies weren't entirely clear, so that's a missed opportunity to get out of the city to see that green comet. It was chilly, probably around the minus 8 to minus 12 range. Shediac turned out to be a little busier than I thought, comparable to Moncton; that is, if you realize that Moncton night life on the weekend just really isn't that busy lately. Shediac has their new A&W up. It's funny driving by Golden Fry and seeing it closed for the winter - that's more often than not our main destination in Shediac when we go there. We got a tray of wings from Sobeys, anyway, and decided only after we left we should get some flour for homemade bread, maybe get some regular stuff too, for the wings and cookies and whatever. Onto the cold nighttime highway to go back to Dieppe, where we'll swing by Walmart at Champlain to pick up the flour. The Walmarts here are pretty much immigrant-central, as it seems no one else wants to work those jobs, but they're more than willing. And always friendly and appreciative. We make sure we treat them well, since they're really a part of us now, Canadians too. * We took Main Street on the way home to see what life was like on this icy Saturday night. There were a fair amount of cars around, not too much in the way of people that we could see, though. We turned over to Vaughn Harvey and drove down the brightly lit road to get home, taking in the winter vibe that was outside. There's a fair bit of squeaking going on in the back of our Elantra, we're wondering about the shocks. Our car is thirteen years old, after all. We have to get the oil changed as well as the oil pan itself early in the coming week. * Into the house we go, and I get things ready to make a fresh batch of... ginger snaps! But you already knew that. I whipped up the dough and put it in the fridge like Cindy advises me to, then I proceeded with prep work for the wings. When I make them coated like this, it's a bit more labour intensive, but it's worth it, especially if the wings are smaller, because they wind up plumper and juicier. Got that all done and cooked the wings in the fryer, while my lovely wife got a chair and stayed with me. We're pretty much joined at the hip when she's not working. We talk all the time, there's never a shortage of things to discuss or joke around about. She was doing the dishes behind me as I was dirtying them, because I kind of tend to make a mess when I work in the kitchen using a lot of pans or pots and measuring things. We sipped on a couple of Heinekens, flipped through the channels on the telly in the kitchen, and headed to the livingroom once the wings were all done. * We had Red Hot sauce with butter ready to be brushed onto the wings as we watched some stuff on DVR while we ate. 'The Last of Us' was on Friday night this week to avoid the scheduling with the Super Bowl tomorrow night, so we watched that. For a dystopian drama, it's pretty heart wrenching at times. We were moved to tears again by the end of the episode. There are some parallels to Game of Thrones in that they get you to know and admire characters, then things happen to them. Even when you know it's going to happen, it's still pretty crushing. * After that, it was W5, where it was about coastal erosion on the east coast, particularly Newfoundland and PEI, namely after hurricane Fiona when it ripped through late last year. Climate change is the reason that these coastal areas are slipping into the ocean, leaving even the staunchest deniers of it believing and convincing them - for the most part - that they're going to have to leave. Scientists have been warning us about this for the last 40 years, and it's accelerating even faster than they predicted. It's scary. * Into the kitchen we go for me to bake cookies. It was pretty straightforward. We cleaned up from the wing feed, baked the snaps and cleaned up the aftermath of that. Janice did some laundry, and Marbles summoned us up to the Promised Land. We put the laundry away, fed MMH his kitty chocolate after him doing his Kanga Kitty routine, and now here we are. * And that's the kind of week it was.
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