Wow, time is absolutely flying. I had most of this post ready to go yesterday and then got tired. I really gotta rearrange my life to accommodate my ongoing needs. Study, eat, sleep, clean, exercise, socialize, chill. Room for incidentals. Is there anything else? I’m not going to remember this thought. Anyway, things’ve been busy and I’m still playing catch up, so let’s check this week in.
Follow-ups: In my last post I mentioned that I was going into a busy stretch and made a list of stuff to work on when I had time. I got to almost none of it. Let’s look at the list and cross off what I actually got done.
- Basic clean-up of my condo
- Sift through my mail pile
- Double-check all bills are caught up
Re-pot my poor, sad orchid- A handful of car updates
Algebra Final Prep / Study- Flutter Project Progress
Re-finish my carbon steel pan- Bass guitar kit progress
- Soldering kit progress
- Start House Maintenance Schedule
- Start Auto Maintenance Schedule
- Read (at least 30 minutes)
Exercise- College stuff – FAFSA, grants, enrollment, etc.
I should give myself some credit, I have been putting off the orchid and my junked up pan for quite a while. Fixing that pan ended up taking a couple of sessions and I had to use a sander, rotary tool, and chisels. Yes, chisels. I needed to chip away at the carbon, rust, and otherwise burned in clumps of yuck with chisels. Don’t worry, I wasn’t using any of my nice ones. In fact, the chisels I used are themselves in need of some rehab, but that’s a further off project. But hey, my old Lodge 8″ carbon steel is back in action, and looks better than ever.
Fitness / Health: So I tried to switch health providers and after waiting forever for feedback, they just denied me with no second chance. So I guess I’m just stuck with it for the rest of this year, and now I need to find a new dentist, primary care provider, and cardiologist. I suppose I could have seen that coming and should have already done so by now. But I haven’t. So that’ll be a project that needs finishing ASAP.
Anyway, I’ve been getting back on track with the fitness of it all. I am back to walking most days, running at least a few times a week, and keeping up with my strength training. I’m also trying to catch little extras here and there. I’m not ready to post the routine just yet, but probably will some day. I’m pretty sure I posted one of the previous routines… did I? I’m not going to check. Anyway, it’s a modified Push, Pull, Legs leaning on supersets. I’m always interested in what other folks are doing, especially if our situations seem similar and their routine is working. It seems to me that I should at least to try participating in the sharing part of this equation. Though it’s too early to tell if my recent routine adjustment is working, so we’ll wait until we see some progress before that. It feels like it’s working, so at least there’s that.
I also finally started making those diet changes. Some of this is just returning to what was working for me last year, and some of it has been reevaluating some of those decisions given what I’ve learned. The whole foods are staying, but I’ve been putting off adding a few new ones because of my perception of the hassle involved in preparing them, like cooking beans from dry. That’s arguably the best way to go, the caveat being that canned or otherwise ready to eat beans are, well, ready to eat. But I tend to put off even canned beans, which is pretty silly. I know folks with family bean recipes and a sort of “bean culture”, if I may, like folks with “rice culture”, where they just are going to eat like that every day. I could totally crib recipes and meals from them, but haven’t. And I know beans is good. It’s like those somewhat overblown “Blue Zone” diets. Yeah, there is some BS in the hype over them, but what’s not BS is that they are food cultures that tend to just get in their veggies, and lots of them, every day. And without even having to think about it. I’ve been there before, but I’m not there now. So I’ve been working on that. I’m also finally giving in on protein powder, because I am in fact struggling to get in enough without. At least, if the current popular guidance on this nutrient is fair. Some of them are saying I should eat my entire weight in grams of protein every single day. 250 grams a day? Surely, this is a miscalculation. Also fiber, which I’ve been aware of and agree with the need, but also struggle with hitting that target every day. This week, I really haven’t, which has at least partly been due to being better at managing my sodium intake. So much of my food is from scratch anyway, so I can afford a few processed, sodium filled ingredients.
America has had a massively overblown obsession with protein for the past few years, which I’d imagine comes from hustle-bro culture. I don’t love that, but meh. I think followers of this advice rarely see how many of their advocates don’t live much past the age of 60. I am aiming to make it at least a bit past that, so you know. Vegetables. Those seem pretty good.
Academics: I’m at the end of that Algebra course. I have a 97.1% right now. The final is 60 questions in 2 hours, not exactly proctored but with more restrictions than the previous exams, and while it is “open book”, I’d like to be a little less reliant on looking stuff up. . So I’m spending the better part of this week studying up. It’s funny, I had planned to finish this course at the end of this month as a fallback, thinking I’d easily be able to finish by the middle of April and even finish earlier at the end of March if I pushed myself. Well, I didn’t exactly push myself, so that’s a bust. Now I’m in the middle of April and I’m certain I could finish it like, today. But I’d rather give myself the best chance of a high score on that final. The other thing is that I need to make sure I’ve got the important parts on lock before I move on, and for how I tend to study, it’s best that I do that before closing the book on this class. ‘Cause I’ll just move on when it’s done, you dig?
I paused on filling out the FAFSA. Something confused me or maybe spooked me, I don’t exactly recall, when I last left off. That was before the busy weekend, which is why it isn’t coming to mind. Anyway, I don’t think I’m going to get much from the FAFSA itself, which I think might be what bumped me. But I’m remembering that I’m not actually trying for anything from the FAFSA itself, but rather that by finishing it, that opens up my ability to get scholarships and grants. So I’ll need to get back to that work this week.
You know what, I’m going to call it there.