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Retained stiffness

Posted on April 12, 2022 by backuphill

Or maybe it’s retained soreness?

Last weekend I began working on building a planter by the new patio. It’s going to be one that has a short retaining wall to keep the soil and such contained. But, to get the project started, I had to dig out the area first. That part wasn’t actually as much work as I expected (the soil was mostly sand) but there was still a couple hours worth of shoveling and wheelbarrowing the soil away.

Once the initial groundwork was done, I put down weedblock fabric and the shoveled and wheelbarrowed drain rock to form the bed of the area where the planter is being created. Again, it went faster than predicted. I then sorted retaining wall blocks already on hand to see what I had versus what I was going to need for the plan in my head.

I stopped at this point though, for several reasons. One, it was starting to get late into the evening and my stomach was telling me it was time for dinner. Two, it was getting much cooler since the sun had gone down over the horizon. Three, my body was really sore already.

Here we are three and a half days after I worked on the project and I am still feeling the soreness, stiffness, pain(?) of the weekend’s work. I can probably chock all this up to the fact that I am “old-ish”, out of shape for such a physical activity, and well, it’s hard work. But, mostly because I am out of shape.

Not that I will probably do anything much about it. I am just complaining.

I want to try and work on the next steps this week after work, but I am not sure the weather will cooperate and a holiday weekend is fast approaching. There are likely other chores that will need to be tended to first.

Cookies tossed

Posted on April 4, 2022 by backuphill

Last night was miserable. I started feeling a little dizzy around 5:30-6:00pm. I decided I better take it easy and retired to the couch for the evening. When I closed my eyes the world would spin like I was in one of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Cups, the ride at Disneyland. So, I tried to watch the TV and hope that it didn’t get worse.

It was about an hour later that I realized that my stomach was not good. Here comes the TMI portion….one trip to bathroom for the runs, then 20 minutes later a trip to toss the cookies (there goes some of dinner!). About 40 minutes later, more dinner and a toilet full of vomit. Needless to say, my stomach was not a happy camper!

I normally have a pretty iron stomach, so if I am tossing my cookies I know something isn’t right. Perhaps I picked up a little food poisoning after stopping at a DQ on the way back from eastern Washington the previous night. I haven’t a clue.

So, off to bed I went. Preparations were made just in case I found that I couldn’t make it to the bathroom… The room only spun for a little while and it wasn’t long until I was out.

A storm came through last night so other than about 30 or so minutes in the middle of the night, I slept most of the night and slept pretty well. Perhaps I was a little extra tired? Maybe. Perhaps my kneck is really really out and I was feeling the effects of being misaligned? I suppose that is possible too, though that doesn’t explain the evacuation of the bowels…anyway…

This morning, it seems things are back to normal. Coffee has been consumed and I haven’t had any issues keeping it down at this point. I guess it was just a passing storm in the stomach too.

End nearing

Posted on March 28, 2022 by backuphill

The end of the staycation is here. It seems like the week (plus) went to fast that it is hard to think it was a week. I had so many plans, so many projects to work on, so many things to…well, get done.

As I ponder the return to work tomorrow, I wonder if I should just relax today or use the day productively and end the week with a bang. I have a few more projects that need to be done, so I could work on those. I wouldn’t finish any of them, but at least I would have made a good start. OR…I could just use the day to relax and just shuffle some papers around, clean up the email and desk at home. I can’t really decide what I want to do today.

I was successful in knocking a couple of the projects off this list this week. It wasn’t like the vacation wasn’t productive. However, several planned projects that I would like done outside didn’t get done, but it is raining today and I don’t really feel like going out and getting wet and muddy. I have a few small projects in the house and garage that I could do, but the motivation seems to be waning today…

So, I think I’ll mix it up and do some relaxing and small things today. Nothing that requires a lot of effort. Mentally prepare for returning to work tomorrow.

Does anyone else like to have a “buffer day” between vacation and returning to work? I have discovered that I kinda like it and purposely planned it that way. It’s a good way to make that transition, I think. What do you think? How do you like to use the last day of your vacation?

Line drawing

Posted on March 18, 2022 by backuphill

Some people have a pinchent for drama, for creating their own problems, for causing more trouble than they’re worth. Sometimes those people are family members, sometimes they are just friends or acquaintences.

In all seriousness, how do people live that way? You would think that it gets really old, really tiring. I know it does for everyone watching. Everyone who is watching the sh*tshow from afar. Everyone who is mouthing “WTF?” in their heads. Everyone throwing their arms up in silence as the comedy of errors repeats itself over and over and over again….

At what point do you draw the line for banging your head against a brick wall?

At what point do you stop talking yourself blue in the face because listening, understanding, and following through were just never learned or reinforced?

At what point do you wash your hands of the situation, the people, and just move on?

At what point do you stop cutting off your arm or any other appendage to help?

At what point do you stop bending over backwards to even make suggestions?

All rhetorical questions, but questions that have to be asked any time someone you love (or maybe just even yourself if you are reading this) goes through any of the above exercises. You hate to see people flounder, but at what point do you just draw the line and say, “I don’t care any more?”

Comedy of errors…you can’t help but just laugh at how ridiculous some people can be.

Guess I’ll just grab a beer, make some popcorn, and watch it all over again.

Horizon gazin’

Posted on March 16, 2022 by backuphill

I am finding myself not being too productive these days. Admittedly, I have a crapload of stuff to do at work and the list of “to do”s are adding up at home. It doesn’t really matter though. I am looking forward to the future and I have been diagnosed with “short-timer’s disease.”

That’s right! Vacation is on the horizon and the short-timer’s disease is real. The rest of this week and a half day next week is all that remains to arrive at the 7.5 day vacay. It’s been a long three months since the last one and I can’t wait to knock some things off the list at home.

Concentration, gone. Focus, kapoot. Productivity, none.

Anyone feel me? Anyone else seeing a vacation on the horizon and just want to check out of everything before it actually arrives? Who’s with me? Who is struggling to get there?

It’s on the horizon people. There is light at the end of the tunnel and that ain’t no train.

Anyway, just thought you should know, and be envious…

Not really doing anything special. I was supposed to be soaking up the sun and taking in some baseball in AZ, but the late arrival of Spring Training cancelled those plans.

So, stay-cation it is. I’ll try to find some balance between knocking off list stuff and having fun. We’ll see how that goes.

Truth be told, I’d rather be riding off into the sunset with the whole work thing, but I’ll setting for a vacation for now. I have my eyes on the horizon though. Keeping my head up…

Internet spies

Posted on March 9, 2022 by backuphill

Have you noticed that the internet is spying on you? We joke about it, but have you been met with ads on social media shortly after you were talking about something, something that you haven’t ever looked at or shopped for previously?

Have you noticed that your electronic devices seem to be listening even when you aren’t using them? We’ve seen or heard examples where the “assistant” we willingly allowed in our homes have responded without prompting.

Freak you out a little?

How do airlines know to send me an email reminder about booking a flight I have looked at on their webiste but didn’t actually log into the website? I was just browsing for curiousity sake. Dreaming. But not 30 minutes after looking I receive an email asking or reminding me about booking the flight. Weird?

The fact is, any sense of privacy we have these days is an illusion. We like to assume we have privacy but in reality we don’t. We are beind spied on everywhere we go. Our phones track us. Our apps track us. Our computers track us. Our watches track us. Our tvs, appliances, gaming systems, streaming services, security cameras, cars, etc etc etc track us. Our spending is tracked. Our health is tracked. Our eating is tracked. Our exercise (or lack thereof, in my case) is tracked.

Can you name something that isn’t tracked? I bet you have a difficult coming up with a list of things that are free of tracking these days.

Sure, we allow it. We invite it onto our bodies, into our homes. We have asked for it to a degree. But at what point do we look at all of it and say enough is enough?

We trade privacy for convenience. Plain and simple.

Our assumption is that we have privacy and we have to blindly trust that it won’t be violated by the things we allow into our lives. We all know it is being violated though. We all know they’re lying to us.

So why do we keep doing it?

Internal combustion

Posted on March 7, 2022 by backuphill

There are a lot of things going on right now in the world and I suppose this little title could apply to the the various technologies that use fuel and internal combustion to run them. Damn, gas is getting expensive! This post is about a totally different subject, but what reason in hell were we buying Russian oil for when we could completely rely on our own source of oil but refuse to tap into it?

Anyway…

The internal combustion I am referring to is actually inside of me.

Someone said the other day said that they thought something was going on inside of me that maybe I hadn’t recognized or identified yet. They had noticed that my usual level of grumpiness had increased to a level I might not be aware of but that others were noticing. It was mentioned that perhaps it was my newfound age of 50, or maybe it was something at work, or maybe it was…nothing else was pointed out.

I said that I didn’t think that I was all that grumpy, at least not that I was aware of. It was news to me if people thought I was grumpier than normal.

As I thought about it a bit more through the day, I thought that maybe there was something going on. I don’t know if I have really put a finger on it yet. As I am thinking of where I am in life at the moment and current circumstances, I can see (or feel) that I am unsettled. I am finding myself frustrated with everything that has to do with my current situation. Daily life has become a chore and finding joy in places that one would think it could be found just isn’t providing it. Instead, those places are kinda killing the joy.

As such, there may be a little internal combustion going on as I am trying to keep a lid on the unhappiness, the joylessness, the irritability, the frustration, the distaste for my current state. It’s not that I want to tear everything down, torch it to the ground, or start completely over. It’s just when I look around me, I don’t know how I got here and I didn’t envision myself here, and I don’t want to really stay here. Does that make sense?

Call it a mid-life crisis? Nah, I don’t think so. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t think it is.

The internal combustion inside of me is keeping me moving (hopefully in a positive direction) but the fire in me sometimes gets rather dim when I am tired of being the rather responsible one. It gets tiring being the one who carries everything on his shoulders and keeps the plates spinning and keeps the wagon train headed in the correct direction. The one who hold it all together, all the time, every time.

Maybe I am just burned out on life right now.

My engine isn’t running at it’s prime, that’s for sure.

Perhaps I am just one cycle from failure, explosion, or implosion.

Marry Me

Posted on February 24, 2022 by backuphill

A movie review. What the heck am I doing while the world burns around us…? I don’t do many of these and I am trying to clean out my “drafts” folder.

I recently watched “Marry Me” on Peacock, because it was free (at least to me). Why not watch a free theatrical release instead of paying too much at the theater? Boy, am I glad I didn’t pay to see it in the theater, not that I would have but you know what I mean.

The movie stars Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. If you don’t know anything about it, check out the trailer on your preferred search engine. I am not going to do a whole synopsis, but basically it was a Hallmark movie but not on Hallmark. Love, break up, new love, break up, happy ending. Blah blah blah…

What really stuck out to me about this movie wasn’t really the plot line. It was pretty generic and formulaic. What stuck out what the total and complete, blatant, product placement. It was like watching a commercial without watching a commercial!

First and foremost, the movie was basically a two hour music video for JLo’s (latest?) music. She pretty much plays herself, except that she goes by a different name. LOL The glamour, the glitz, the celebrity. All highlighted. Then there was the product placement throughout the movie. It seemed like every 5-10 minutes you were blatantly confronted with a well known product by a company that was using the movie as an advertisement. The characters fawned over the products, played pitch-people for the products on social media, learned about the product from another character, sent or gave products to other characters.

Maybe I’m weird, but I was really distracted by the commercialization in the movie. I kept saying, “There’s another one” and “Wow, that was obvious product placement!” It’s probably a good thing I was watching this at home because the theater likely would have kicked me out because I couldn’t stop talking about how the movie was being used. Obviously, this movie was paid for by a lot of corporate sponsors who all had their brands used directly in the script.

Is the future of movies? Blatant commercials DURING the movie? I have noticed this more and more in TV shows too. We can’t escape any longer.

I hope I didn’t ruin your movie or TV experience by making you more aware of the advertising. I still enjoy both forms of entertainment. This one just struck me with how obscenely obvious it was.

Subtlety has been lost.

Dreaded tasks

Posted on January 24, 2022 by backuphill

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

I spent the weekend doing stuff I just really dislike. Chores that probably really need to be done and I can do so that I don’t have to pay someone else to do them, but chores that are not a pleasure to do by any means.

The washing machine (front loaders really do suck, don’t buy one even though they are being pushed like hell) hasn’t been working all that well as of late, so it was time to clean out the filter and rebalance to see if that helped. Disassembled, adjusted, cleaned, water everywhere (there’s no good way to keep that from happening), and then rebalanced (never mind the fact that the house isn’t level or square). All of that to find out that, other than cleaning out the filter) that it pretty much operates the same as before all that effort.

Cool. I hate life.

Then it was the dryer. Time to clean out the dryer vent.

Shop vac, cleaner brush tool, drill, duct tape, and hours of effort. Good lord! There was a ton of lint in there! CLEAN OUT YOUR DRYER VENT AT LEAST ONCE A YEAR! Anyway, that part was relatively easy. But, as I was putting it all back together I realized after starting the dryer back up to blow some of the remnant lint out of the line that it wasn’t pushing air like I expected…which means it was disconnected some place under the house. Damn. So, another 30 minutes getting ready the supplies I would need under the house and then moving everything in the way to get to the crawl space. Sure enough, disconnected. So, I put that all back together and got it all cleaned up. Not it works like it should.

Today I am sore and stiff.

I am too old for this crap.

I truly hate doing these kinds of chores. I am also cheap, so paying someone to do them isn’t even a consideration. I just suck it up and deal.

But seriously, why does it always have to go sideways every time? There is always an issue. Always something that needs to be repaired or adjusted after doing it. Why can’t it just go smoothly and with zero hassle?

Anyone else hate certain chores or tasks that they do because they don’t want to pay someone to do it? What are they?

Season’s greetings

Posted on December 22, 2021 by backuphill

Season’s greetings to all you out there who are vaccinated. The White House would like you to know that you are safe and can go about your business as usual, regardless of breakthrough infections everywhere.

If you’re unvaccinated, no season’s greetings to you. We wish death and destruction, to you, your families, and the hospital system you are surely going to overwhelm for the umpteenth time.

The White House and the President need to work on their messaging.

Might have as well said, “Happy Apocalypse!” or “Merry Death and Destruction!”

That sure makes up for all the missing “mean tweets” we haven’t had in a while. Let’s just make it an official statement direct from the big house.

Seriously.

“We’re the party of inclusion – except for you, you, and your family too.”

Mixed up your messaging much?

Oh, wait, there never was an ACTUAL belief in inclusion unless you follow along, tow the line and not resist. There is room for you in this party…do as we say and you won’t get hurt. Don’t do as we say and we’ll cancel the hell outta ya (even if you’re one of us).

*eye roll*

Happy holidays…and keep your head down.