Josh's Thoughts

Hello faithful reader, if there is in fact one.

I have been struggling with keeping my strict schedule of diet and exercise and I am starting to feel the effects. I am so busy keeping track of every little thing that goes into my mouth, how many calories, and carbs, what about that drink? Now my employer, which shall remain nameless, has thrown me a curve ball. Apparently they want to eliminate 4 of our positions. I have been told and “reassured” by my manager that I am not one of those, but I can tell you, it doesn’t make the stress and anxiety go away.

On top of that I have a HUGE project starting and the comments are beyond outrageous! They infuriate me to the point of almost throwing in the towel. AND! And my wife and I are repainting our kitchen and that entails a lot of muddling/patching/sanding and caulking! She wants me to work on that when I am done with work! HA!

So what do you get when you combine a tight schedule, feeling stressed and then overworked? A person that just wants to shut the world out, hide under a blanket and read a book to escape from this freaking world. Ugh. *le sigh.

I know, the strict schedule is self imposed. I built it and I can destroy it. The problem is such that if I break from for even a single day, then I will have a hard time getting back into it. It’s that fragile! I can let a few minor items skip a day or two, but that is it! I have to get my steps in (10,000 of them at least) and keep my exercise rings going. (Stand and Calorie are the easy ones.) Those are the important ones.

I need to find some time to do something for ME. I exhausted myself last weekend with house upgrades (putting new windowsills and case molding around the windows, and patching about a 1000 tiny dings/holes/scratches in the drywall) and shopping for the paint/construction supplies. It was a HUGE drain on me. Now my wife wants me to sand them all and caulk the windowsills and patch the ceiling so we can paint it this weekend! I need to go to my happy place and recharge.

Sorry for the emotional baggage dump, but I had to get it off my chest. Thanks for being here. Or there. Whatever.

TTFN.

Hiya Reader! How are you today? I am feeling better and better every day. After I completed the last Chief Pontiac Trail hike I have been reinvigorated to get in a state of better health. Yeah, Yeah, I know that I have tried this before, but honestly this time I really want to drop the weight and get into a better shape than round. I have gained so much weight and lost so much of my endurance that it just isn’t healthy. I need to lose about 50lbs. Pray for me.

I’ve started this new direction by getting my Daily Journal another go. I’ve updated my calendar and tasks with new items to help me keep track of my daily meetings and tasks. I’ve restarted my Diet Diary in an Excel spreadsheet (for the 7th time since 2004)! The last time I tried to keep track of my weight and diet I used an app called MyFitnessPal and it was nice but it wasn’t in my face all day, like the spreadsheet is. I’ve thought about coding/programming a new page on this site that incorporates the Diet Diary AND my Daily Journal pages….Yeah….I know….I need to learn how to create a database and maintain it on this site….help!

In other news, my wife and I are now on Season 6 of Game of Thrones and it is starting to get a bit formulaic. The earlier seasons were much better. Waiting for Cersei to get her comeuppance is getting boring.

Last but not least, my reading struggles are finally coming to an end! I have been slogging through a terrible trilogy since last year. It’s called The Darksword Trilogy, written by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman and published in the mid-to-late ’80s. It sucks. Plain and simple it sucks. It had potential but I can tell which passages/chapters were written by which writer. Tracy Hickman’s chapters are full of action and the pacing is wonderful. The words just seem to flow together and my attention is captured and enraptured. Margaret Weis’s on the other hand….well….my momma always said that if you don’t have anything nice to say then you should say anything at all. That being said, her prose is labored and overly flowery. She tries to focus on the characters and their internal conflicts while attempting to build their relationships. Ugh. She rehashes the same dialogue or just freakin beats to death the same character traits. One of the characters, Simkin, is a drawn out jester type with magical powers and he has SERIOUS diarrhea of the mouth! Even the characters tell him to shut up! SPOILER ALERT – I was so elated when he died! Yeah. I said it. Suck it Weis!

TTFN!

Dear diary,

It’s day 246 of quarantine and we have run out of ketchup. I’m gonna start using barbecue sauce for my frozen tater tots. My dogs have started talking us and I think they have the answer to perpetual motion.

My wife discovered the BBC show, Ghosts. We started watching it from the beginning and we are enjoying it. Only 3 series (seasons) of it are available because it is still in production. Up next is Game of Thrones. We’ve never seen it.

I know, I know. I hear you. How can someone who loves fantasy and swords and sorcery not have seen Game of Thrones?!? Well, I’ll tell you. We didn’t have HBO when it originally aired. AND I heard some pretty bad reviews from fans of the books. I’ll keep you posted on our thoughts.

HAND UPDATE: Finger still hurts but it is getting better. Slowly.

TTFN!

Hello reader. If you’ve been following along the last few weeks we have been living it up and having a raucous time. Well, that kinda bit us in the behind. You see, COVID came to my home and struck us all. It all started on New Year’s Eve with a tickle of a cough, kinda felt like allergies. I was playing Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on my Switch all day and by mid-afternoon it was a cough. I told my wife and kids that I shouldn’t go out, something isn’t right. But they persisted and we went out to my Sister-in-law’s house for a party to ring in the new year. Yeah, that didn’t turn out so well for everyone.

By Monday morning of the 3rd, everyone that was at the friends Christmas party was sick with COVID. By today, everyone at the New Year’s Eve party is down with it. This sucks.

I felt like I was in a fight with a grizzly bear, my back and stomach muscles hurt bad. The fever and chills were worse. On the evening of the 1st into the 2nd I went to bed early and shivered violently most of the night. I had not taken any ibuprofen to allow my immune system a chance to fight it off. The next morning (2nd) I checked my temp and balked at the 103.6 staring back at me. Holy crap! That was high! I started a low dose of ibuprofen for the headache and pains.

I tested positive at my Dr’s office, while the wife and kids all tested positive at the rapid test site (Aquatic Center). 10 days of quarantine, and an appointment for monoclonal antibody infusion along with steroids and antibiotics for me, thanks asthma! Pray for us.

TTFN.

Hello faithful reader. This has been a really sucky evening. After dropping my beloved wife off at Cooper’s Hawk for a girls night out, I was on my way home and decided to stop at our local Lowe’s home improvement store to return a defective power strip. It was during this jaunt that I was involved in a fender bender. Yeah. Wrecked my wife’s car two days before I was to take in my own truck for maintenance! WTF!

In an effort to make a long story short, I was struck by a 16-year old as he left a parking lot onto a side street without stopping. He kept saying the same thing, “There was no stop sign!” God weeps for our youth. Apparently they don’t teach these kids that you are supposed to STOP the vehicle and look both ways before entering a roadway EVEN IF THERE IS NO STOP SIGN!

Still, I walked away with a minor injury to my left hand. My index finger tendons were wrenched and it hurts. We’ll see how long this takes to heal.

TTFN!