Sooooo, instead of riding in Portugal for the 5th winter in a row I was allowed to stay in my house in NH. I decided that I might as well put my “reflections” on this time here instead of its own topic on tompears.com.
I lost 100s of dollars by having the cancel the trip. I had everything locked in, flight, night in Lisbon, 2 week in Lagos, night in Lisbon and flight home. I got some money back or at least such is promised. I feel terrible for the businesses in Lagos. I don’t think they run with enough margin to handle this.
Wife Kim has retired. The retirement was set to coincide with her trip to California to become a Grandmother. The grandmotherhhood happened, but no the trip! Our daughter Emily and her husband Kevin and their first sprout, Thomas Pears Williams no less, have been wonderful about skyping. Kim has spent many long hours online with them and our younger daughter Elizabeth. I would consider it quality time in that we are all concentrated on the moment instead of having a lot of other things going on, but I am sure that not yet being able to actually hold Thomas has been a real disappointment for Kim.
I have had a hard time putting this enforced empty period to good use, i.e. posting here, dealing with Squirrel and Kawanhee history. I would have to say it is a form of depression. In order to do productive work, I have to have a certain amount of self image and confidence. Those are the wrong words. Maybe energy is the right word, I lack energy. I just want to drag through the day until the 5:30 Martini. Today is Sunday April 5th. Kim and I do a puzzle each day and we are on puzzle 22? Before we “locked down”, I figured I needed a month of beer, 3-4 cases. Then the next day, as the news got worse, I decided I needed 2 months! and 3 months of Gin. At any point they could decide that liquor stores were “not essential” and have them closed.
I have been reading books. I’ll detail them in a link below, but I am reading them in a very non-tcp4 way. I often in other times have more than one book going but now I am up to like 5! I’ll read a page or two and switch books!
I have been getting out on the bike. Probably averages every other day. It is still cold, just warming up now. I’m only riding 2/3s of my route, 14 instead of 20 miles. Hopefully that will soon change. Or I could say Hopefully that will change soon? Sometimes it would be fun to talk to someone about writing. What is my style and how could I change it to be more SOMETHING? What would I want to be? More attractive to a reader! Certainly content is important as far as attracting and retaining readers but maybe there are simple changes I could become aware of that would allow me to share my ideas with a wider audience.
I don’t really love riding. As I have said 1000 times in these pages, I ride in order to support my drinking habit. Riding is just the form of exercise that seems to get the job done. I do keep tract of the miles, especially here in NH but I also weigh myself after each ride and write it down. Years ago the weight would dip into the high 170s in the summer. Now I am lucky if it dips into the high 180’s and it is hovering around 194 now. I believe that keeping it down, down below where it is NOW! helps prevent me from being declared a type two diabetic. The doctors also look at the blood sugar, A1C? Mine is up like 6.1 but it seems to stay there with the drug mmmmm?, so they have backed off my case.
Have had a little technical fun the last 48? hours. Peter Cinelli at Squirrel, who sends out the blast emails, reported that it had come to his attention that his blasts had stopped going to hotmail users, of whom I am one. I did not jump on it right away but after a few emails and back and forth put a ticket into microsoft asking about it. They have been very responsive. I needed Peter’s help to get them some more information. I had to understand the whole process that Peter uses to send the blasts. This conversation with Peter prompted him to write up the process as he is the only one who knows it.
I have also put a ticket into the people at our end, Superb.net. They host squirrelisland.com and the email blast mechanism. They too have been responsive but it is the weekend and we can imagine that the higher level techi who might be able to help with this has not been available.
Something to keep me interested, we will see what happens.