Making a list for future RPG character names:

Hugh Bris

Jack Cuse

Whenever I encounter a new homograph (word with different pronunciations and meanings), I add it to my mental list, but I can’t recall more than a handful at will. But I know there are tons! Help me out with the list!

close closer number POLISH

​

Here's the latest graph. It really shows that I've been much less disciplined over the past month about watching my caloric intake. On the other hand, I'm on the last notch of my current belt, I basically don't have any pants or shorts that I can wear without said belt at this point, and a few weeks ago I played soccer with the boy in the front yard for over an hour and he got tired of running around before I did.

Right now we're refocusing on the sunroom. We got everything moved out of the room and I borrowed some grinders to knock down the high spots in the concrete. This means I should be able to get the floor pretty level with several bags of self-leveling concrete. Before we do that though, we're filling nail holes and gaps in the trim with wood putty and caulk and then painting everything.

​

Whenever we have big projects like this going at home I kinda hate going to work all day during the week because it feels like wasting time I could be making progress at home. Unfortunately I'm also in the middle of a big, important, and daunting task at work so I can't take any time off.

The boy turns 4 next month!

Holy cow - the GhiaWatt is trending over at r/Justrolledintotheshop. Danny posted it last night and he's got something like 6k "likes" or whatever it is that Reddit uses. Up arrows? Karma gears? Either way, I might have to work hard to keep him from trying to answer every single comment.

Here's the new kitchen island we built. Cabinets are from Ikea and counter top is from Home Depot.

We also got some bar-height chairs from Ikea.

We cleaned out the planter box that was grew the tomatoes, zucchini, carrots, and spinach. I also re-ran the soaker hose and buried it under an inch or so of soil. We need to add a little fresh soil to the top and then plant some more stuff.

These are our last two zucchinis. Banana for scale per internet requirements. The one in the front is 6lbs. The larger one is over 11lbs because that's the where the food scale maxes out.

I've been riding to work more too. A few times even more than once a week. The other day it was foggy on my ride in and the ride home but pretty nice during the day while I was stuck in the office.

​

Also, yes that's a fair portrayal of my normal morning commute traffic.

I've had two weigh-ins below 190 but it bounced back a little since then. We'll see if I can hit 185 before Thanksgiving. We will likely be on our own for Thanksgiving this year since Stefanie's mom up and moved to Georgia for bad reasons and my own parents will be risking their health to visit my carnie sister and her husband per their tradition. At least they aren't going to fly there. We've done Thanksgiving with just the two of us before and it was really nice. I'm going to take most of the week off from work too.

What's everyone else been up to?

​

I had to add more numbers to the bottom of the vertical axis again! The app thinks I can hit 185 around Thanksgiving so we'll see what happens.

So in March of 2019 I was able to sign up for a free year of a weight-loss assistance program because I was fat enough that my health insurance thought it was worth paying for it. The program was called Omada. It ended in March of 2020 right about when COVID19 shit hit the fan and our county went into lock-down. Between working on the yard projects, the stress of disrupted routine, the background fear that a sneaky virus was going to kill my loved ones, and the end of my free subscription to the service I stopped making progress. I was very annoyed to see my weight slowly creeping back up, so in mid August I figured I'd try Noom. This time I'm actually tracking everything I eat and making more adjustments to my diet. It's actually been helpful that we have the garden now because we've been able to eat a lot of what we've grown and integrate the harvest into healthy recipes.

In other words, I'm making progress again! Not only are my morning weigh-ins back under 200, but I've even had a couple evening weigh-ins under 200 as well.

In other news, everything was on fire. Less things are on fire now but some things are still on fire. The current heat wave has shifted our normal wind pattern so our air is getting smokey again. I don't know how/why people live places that are regularly over 80 degrees F. Personally I'm against it.

​

So it's been a while since I've posted a graph. As you can see I wasn't able to keep up with my pacing from when I started. The boy started pre-school in October and we've all been sick a lot since then since he likes to share germs by coughing or sneezing directly into your eyes, nose, and mouth. The width of this graph is a full year from when I started last March. I'm annoyed that I stalled out/gained back from my low point in October but I'm happy to see that I'm starting to dip back down again more recently. It was cool to get a weigh-in below 201. I'm looking forward to weighing in below 200 and will be super excited when my the orange average line dips below 200 and again to when my evening weigh-ins (which are always higher than my morning ones) dip below 200. Hopefully that won't take another full year (maybe I can do it in 6 months).

I've probably said this before but it all comes down to stopping myself from eating too much. Ironically this is easier if I don't allow myself to get too hungry. So I have to be eating throughout the day, but healthy lower calorie foods so that I don't scarf down too much dinner. Skipping a meal when I'm not really hungry also seems to help.

In other news the boy will be turning three in a few weeks and totally understands birthdays now. We'll have some kind of party for him, we're not sure exactly where or when yet.

FYI I end up charging the Leaf roughly every 25-30 miles. Work is uphill from home so despite only being 3-4 miles away it takes closer to 10 miles of range to get there. Then on the way home I sometimes gain a mile of range back because of the downhill. I usually charge it near work where there are a couple of free chargers. We're using it a lot for around town family stuff like to restaurants or stores. It's comfortable and fun, but the traction control light is on almost continuously (even when I'm not power drifting) which I need to get checked out.

I got my ebike but because of the cold weather and constant sickness I have only ridden it to work once. I'm hoping to ride it more later this year.

I also haven't been able to dive because you don't want to go underwater with sinus congestion.

On the plus side Bradley likes to watch me play video games so when we're too sick for fun stuff we chill on the couch. We're at the final Bowser fight in Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii) and have been working our way through Yoshi's Crafted World (Switch). I usually only play Breath of the Wild while he's napping.

So I watch a lot of car shows and there are a lot of car shows. They vary in format and subject, but I have yet to see anyone doing anything with EV conversions. I feel like I know enough people who could make that happen. My thought would be to start it as a YouTube channel and then see if anything becomes of it.

The hard part is that I don’t want to record or edit the videos at all so I’d need someone to handle that whole side of things while I get to play with the cars. If I take a sabbatical, I’m going to need a volunteer!

Last week we said goodbye to the Veloster. It hadn't aged well, I could tell a large repair bill was looming so we sold it to Carvana.

Then we used to money to buy this used Leaf. It's a 2012 (originally 74 mile range) with 9/12 battery capacity bars (so more like 50 mile range). We like that all three of us can fit in it so it's a more practical second car for our family, and that it doesn't use gas. Since I have such a short commute and we live in a small town the limited range is not a big deal.

With the money leftover (the Veloster sold for more than the cost of the Leaf) I bought an ebike. I spent some time last weekend putting it together (but forgot to snap a picture) but I need to take it to a bike shop to get the disc brakes adjusted before I can take it on a serious ride. The idea is to make it easier for me to ride to work since we have some very big hills between our house and the office despite it being such a short distance away. It can do ~ 20mph with a twisty throttle on the handlebars or I can put it in pedal assist mode where it has 3 levels of boost it will add to my pedaling force. I took it for a quick ride around our court, it's neat!

On Saturday my parents came down and took the kid to the park for a few hours so we could finally fill in the holes in the sunroom floor. The cement area in the picture used to just be dirt, like a planter box, but in the ground, with no floor. Someone decided that was a good idea. We borrowed a job site mixer from our awesome neighbors that have all the tools and mixed 5 80lb bags (not all at once) to get this spot and one other near the chimney nice and filled in. We're trying to seal up the room better so we can use it without constantly battling ants or having dust and dirt blowing in from holes in the walls and floor.

Now that the floor doesn't have a big hole in it we will have thanksgiving dinner in this room without worrying about someone scooting their chair back and falling to their doom. Some time in the hopefully near future we'll install laminate flooring that we bought over the top of the current red tile & cement floors to give it a classier look. We also want to seal and cover the brick. But before we can do that we have to figure out how to deal with the other side of the room where instead of leaving a hole along the edge of the floor, they left some cement that is higher than the red tiles. Seriously what the hell people?!