Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Thursday, August 8
A good day off today.
In step with the new reality, I was up at 0230 (see Sleep Log below), which regular readers of this crap know is actually an or so earlier than usual…No matter…As usual, the cat was attending me the second she heard me stirring, pleading for her morning canned yummy ration and, as usual, I made her wait until I had morning coffee going before issuing her ration…I got some project work done and was in the gym nice and early.
Ryan is making some changes, which is good for morale…There’s some new signage out front but the big news is he is rearranging things in the basement weight room…The corner near the entrance, once a storage area, was cleared out a while back and the floor scraped, primed and repainted and now holds the shoulder/bench press machine and two leg machines, and the double-ended cable machine, which I use for tricep work, is now in the middle and there have been some other changes, too…Ryan’s also made changes on pricing for the gym…New members pay the same $35 a month us old-timers do, but it appears Ryan now requires six-months up front, which is $30 a month…I guess the $45/month for new members wasn’t getting many new members…I still pay $35 a month, which is a pretty good deal, coming out to about $2 and change per workout.
I was very strong today…All the recently upped weights were felt good and I am ready to up side lateral raises and the ropes…Side lateral raises work the shoulders…You hold dumbells at each side, more or less at the seam of your shorts and raise them out to the side till your arms are parallel with the ground…Then you lower them…Today the final set was 25 pounds, but I could have gotten it up at least one more time and probably two more times, so next time I will up the final set to 30 lbs, which I think was my max back when I was my strongest. The ropes are used on the cable machine and work the triceps…You grab an end in each hand and lean forward and pull the ropes over your head…These can be upped a plate, too.
Despite a threat of rain, I got the lawn done today.
Afterward, The Wife packed up our rubber boat the Why Not and headed to a lake we’d heard about…It’s 25 miles or so due south of our small town as the crow flies, and a 36.2-mile drive that takes a bit more than an hour over mostly dirt roads.
It was as gorgeous as advertised…Small and we were the only ones in the day-use area, tho there were some campers…The only real problem was discovered when The Wife was unpacking:
Honey, where are the oars???
Back at The Shire as it turned out…The Wife, eager to get on the road, had taken charge of packing and had forgotten them…Heroically, she tried jury rig one with a long branch she’d found however neither her sandals nor the top to the first aid kit made a satisfactory paddle… This was of no particular consequence because it spared me the effort of putting air in the Why Not and having to lug it to the lake…Recall I was up early and had lifted and mowed the lawn and I was tired and, between you, me and the lamppost, I was content to sit in a chair and do some reading.
The only real blemish on the day came during lunch, when yours truly was attacked by a hummingbird, causing me to drop half of my sandwich (I had torn it in half for manageability’s sake) causing some dirt to get on the top slice of bread…A trooper, I dusted most of it off, added some more mayo, and ate it anyway…The wildflowers were in bloom and there were bees and other bugs all over the place, but I discovered if you don’t bother them they don’t bother you, even if they do sound intimidating.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1800 Wednesday until 0230 Thursday…A satisfactory 8.5 hours for the night and 31.5 hours for the week, another satisfying total that seems unsatisfactory compared to last week’s 34-hour total…I checked, tho, and 31.5 hours is the highest Thursday total since the last week of March, so there is nothing to complain about.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.
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