A very happy birthday to one of my Utah peeps. 🥳
Hope the day was a little slice of heaven on earth. 🤗
Stayed nice and toasty warm last night. Don’t think it got below like 18°, so it wasn’t bad anyway.
The real tests come Tuesday night, Wednesday night, and Thursday night, with lows as low as the negatives.
We’ll see how I do. It’ll be a great test.
🛌
Was pretty slow getting going today, mentally, at least. I didn’t really want to leave the Hill. I wanted to keep working outside just because I prefer that. And it’s so much nicer in the winter with no bugs. 🙃
Makes me actually consider staying.
But that’s just 4 months a year 😅.
After that, when tick fest arrives, and bugs, bugs, bugs, massive horse flies dive bombing you…
Easy to forget during these more enjoyable months.
Anyway, I did get my little butt to working on JustAnswer stuff out of the gate, despite dragging a bit otherwise. 🎉
I didn’t really ever focus in hard to try and answer a bunch of questions. I just pretty much let whatever came come, all day, as I did other things.
As of this writing, I’m sitting at 24 for the day, which I would say is too shy of the new goal.
Though I’m behind on the new goals, I’m definitely well on pace to obliterate my previous best month, so that’s something.
🎉
With work being the steady background noise, so to speak, my main focuses were on my work van today. We’ve got four to 12 inches of snow coming tomorrow, which will fall just as the temperatures begin to fall off a cliff.
My thought was maybe trying to figure out where the leak is coming from in the front. Whenever it rains, I have leaks that drip down from the front ceiling trim right next to the windshield, and I have leaks at the rear door as well because the weather stripping is worn out.
I keep forgetting about that leak in the rear.
Anyway, so I spent a good little while removing the ceiling board, removing the paneling, the Sun visors, the lights and whatnot–everything above the drivers and passengers heads.
That was a bit of an adventure because the upholstery wraps from that ceiling board all the way up above and around into the compartment above, so you can’t just pull the board out and set it aside. It’s sort of swings down because it’s attached to the rest of the upholstery. So it took me a little while to get my driver seat forward because the motor doesn’t work properly, but eventually, I was able to get both the driver and passenger seats far enough forward and tilted far enough forward that I could swing the headboard back.
It actually makes quite the nice privacy wall. 🙃
Not quite as convenient for getting from the front to the back nor transferring stuff from the front to the back, so it’ll be going back up when this little experiment is done, but in the meantime, I’ve got a privacy wall. 🙃
Anyway, I pulled off the headboard panel and found, I suppose unsurprisingly, a fair amount of rust where the water has come down and sat and rusted out the metal. It’s not swiss cheese, but it certainly not great.
Fortunately, it should outlast the life of the rest of the van, I would expect, all the way I am coming to fall in love a fair little bit with Rover.
It’ll be hard to say goodbye when it’s time to bid farewell. It’s already been my home for basically 7 months. It’ll have been my home for 7 months this Saturday.
Nutty.
And I like it more and more each day instead of getting claustrophobic and wanting more space.
I would enjoy a little bit more space, and that’s coming when I can offload some of the things that I am carrying around with me, but it’s great. I rather enjoy my little rolling home. 😊
As hoped, my pile of coals that I heat up around the leftover stump managed to eat their way all the way through the stump, so when I went down to inspect this morning, it was just a big pile of ash and coals with no wood left over.
🥳
The other thing I did with Rover relating to the water intrusion was to get my tube of black gasket maker and, after cleaning off the surface a little bit, put a bead of gasket maker all along the entire front end seam where the topper screws into the roof.
Each time I’ve remembered to do that in the past, it’s only been either during or right after a rainstorm, and I didn’t want to seal in any water, but it’s been at least a couple days since it last rained / snowed, so I figured today was a good day for it.
I kept answering questions as they popped up in the background, but my main focus was trying to seal Rover’s front leak.
I’m guessing that leak is the cause of the cruise control not working, as the water leaks down right onto the cruise control buttons.
Not that I need cruise control, but it is nice on cross country road trips, which, are not a rare thing with me. 🙃
What else…
I got my power station charged up. If I didn’t mention it already, this power station has exactly the same problem as the previous power station.
It doesn’t live up to its specs in the cold weather.
And interestingly, the owner’s manual disagrees with itself. One part of it says that it can both charge and discharge to temperatures as low as negative four degrees Fahrenheit, but a page later, it says that it can only charge down to 32° fahrenheit, but it can discharge down to as low as negative four degrees fahrenheit.
Well, apparently, it can’t do anything below freezing.
[sigh]
I’m not sure what to do there.
I’ve toyed with the idea of buying a mini wood stove, but right now I just don’t have the room for it, and spring is almost here, so I don’t really want to invest in that right now when this next storm is probably going to be the last of the super duper cold for the season.
Of course, I might eat my words there…
After charging up my power station, I headed into Rogers and to the gym.
I worked out. I worked. I worked out some more. I upped my weight on three of my four bicep/back exercises today. Chin-up lap pull downs, pull up let pull downs, and seated rows. The only one I didn’t move up on today was bicep curls, and I purposely didn’t try because I was already moving up in three other exercises on the same day, which, I was surprised that I was capable of doing.
Of course, I have very long rests in between sets, so if I were to only have like a minute between sets, I would likely be lifting a fair bit less.
Probably the highlight of the gym experience today was during a brief cardio experiment. I had been texting one of my brothers earlier in the day about exercise and cardio stuff, and I was reminded to focus in on my target heart rate. So I spent some time doing some research about that.
Target heart rate isn’t an exact science, and perhaps not much of a science at all, but it is a generally recommended guideline, and I was happy to find out that my level 5 stair stepping machine has me at 149 beats per minute, which is only one beat per minute shy of my maximum, vigorous, target heart rate.
Supposedly for my age, my target heart rate for moderate exercise is 89 to 124 beats per minute and 124 250 beats per minute for vigorous exercise.
I’ll take it.
I mentioned to my brothers that I was happy to find out that, contrary to what I expected, I didn’t need to be super uncomfortable in order to have meaningful cardiovascular gains. My heart rate at level 7 was above the recommended rate, even for vigorous exercise.
🥳
That means, #1. It’ll be easier for me to discipline myself to do my cardio exercise. #2. I won’t sweat nearly as much. 🥳 And if I’m not sweating a whole crap ton, I won’t need to shower nearly as much.
Sorry if that’s gross for some of you, but I was born with gratefully not very smelly genes. It’s generally rare for me to smell after getting sweaty or working out. I don’t have much in the way of bo. Every once in awhile, I do, and I think it has something to do with whatever I ate.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to not getting as sweaty, looking forward to not dreading cardio so much, and looking forward to potentially not having to shower every single time I go to the gym. 🤞
Kept working well at the gym. Texted back and forth with one of my brothers about a bunch of different things from politics to exercise and beyond.
Watched a whole crap ton of YouTube videos about what’s going on these days politically and economically and technologically and all that good stuff that I spend so much time paying attention to.
Just hit 1:00 a.m.
Pretty sure I’m forgetting something significant from the day, but I can’t remember what it is. I did commit to one of my brothers that I would finish my taxes by the end of the day saturday.
I’m procrastinating that because it’s always been this big thing in the past, and though it’s easier this year, it’s still not just simple. I have lots of work to do. Most of it’s already done, but I still have plenty more to do.
But, I committed to do it by the end of the day saturday, so having that extra motivation will help me get there.
Gotta keep the commitments.
I’m grateful.
10, 10, 10
Loves and hugs. 💚
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 