OK last update of 2022

Let’s get to the big one first: Mrs. the Poet has tested positive for COVID, and so has my youngest daughter, and I need to test again Saturday to make sure I didn’t catch it when I kissed Mrs. the Poet.

Another thing, I have had my last 2 dinners delivered because I got gift cards for Whataburger and I have the delivery app. Last night I had the patty melt because I love the taste of caramelized onions with the creamy pepper sauce on it, and a chocolate shake because I only needed one more thing to get double rewards.

Something I’m embarrassed to admit, I bought a male sex toy because Mrs. the Poet is halfway across the county in a different city. Well this sex toy didn’t work. It functions perfectly, but it just doesn’t do the thing for me. $58 after tax and shipping, plus another $4 for lube so it would function, and it doesn’t work, in fact it leaves me numb after a few minutes. One thing it does do is get me hard enough to get off without visual stimulation. So it wasn’t a total waste of money, and it did feel good on lower settings, just not “that good”.

The weather is much warmer now, currently 65°F with the same “feels like” temperature, they are forecasting a 40% chance of rain with a warm front passing through. Locally NYE is expected to have clear skies and warm weather. Another statement about Texas weather, if you don’t like it hang around for a few minutes, it’ll change. See you in 2023!

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My part of the game was so easy

Basically I had to role play asking orc and troll gangs who are predisposed to help me because I killed all their previous leaders by myself, for disturbing my peace and harshing my mellow, if they would back up my Shadowrunners taking down a gang leader playing cop in south Dallas. My negotiation rolls were 5 and 6 hits on my social limit of 3, with me only needing to hit my social limit to make the roll with a dice pool of 21. I was pretty much guaranteed to make the roll, but I wanted to role play anyway, because That’s What The Game Is About.

I’m tracking the packages I’m supposed to be getting from the jungle site tomorrow, and they must be in a local warehouse because none of them have shipped yet and they are supposed to be in my hands by 2200 tomorrow. I’m getting filters for Mrs. the Poet’s vacuum cleaner, the power supply for testing the lights, and the test leads for connecting the lights to the power supply. And I clicked on each one and the test leads are coming via USPS and have already shipped, but the other two haven’t shipped yet. And as I was composing this another package with a delivery date on the 25th through the 29th shipped from Ontario CA US, unlike the headlight buckets and backing brackets that shipped from Ontario CA in the Great White North. The one from Cali is my throttle bodies for the manifold I dreamed about.

I’m still eating those single-serving frozen dinners because Mrs. the Poet’s tummy is upset and she can’t eat regular food yet. Tonight was meatloaf and mashed potatoes, which TBH was on the bland side for meatloaf with almost tasteless gravy and barely there garlic mashed ‘taters. There was a hint of garlic in the potatoes, but not a very strong hint. Processed frozen foods just really don’t have much flavor unless they’re pizza, because it’s really hard to ruin pizza unless you use non-pizza toppings. I’m also having the last of the Waterloo sparkling water we bought last month when they were BOGO free, and all they had was mixed berry.

One other thing coming up is Mrs. the Poet’s rescheduled trip to NY in September instead of July will leave me alone on the 21st anniversary of getting killed and my 64th birthday the former more important than the latter by an enormous margin. Not everybody has the option of celebrating the day they were murdered, and I don’t want to celebrate my Deathday by myself. But this was the schedule we moved her trip to when she got too sick to take the trip and the dates didn’t ring any bells until the next week, which is this week. I guess I can muddle through with my friends and without Mrs. the Poet.

And this is long enough for now and time to put this post to bed.

Mrs. the Poet is recovering and other stuff

Mrs. the Poet is a really good patient except for her complaining about things I physically can’t do, like scrubbing the floors. One of the cats has been having tummy problems and there are little dribbles of poo all over their bathroom that needs to be cleaned up somehow. I know how I can do it but I have to get Mrs. the Poet to tell me which rag she wants me to throw away after I use it to scrub up all the poo off the floor. The other thing that held me back was I needed something I could use to spray cleaning solution on the floor on a stream, all our current spray bottles are set up to only put out a mist rather than a stream. I picked up one yesterday that has a stream setting so I can target individual spots instead of spreading a light mist of cleaner over the whole floor.

On other things I have been getting stuff like canned soups and canned pastas that I can heat up and have enough to feed two people. There has been a lot of those put on the market lately, so Mrs. the Poet won’t starve too much. I’m having a hard time getting her to eat because of what the general anaesthsia did to her sense of taste, nothing tastes right to her, even raw fruits and vegetables “taste weird”. When oranges don’t taste like oranges, what can you do to improve her nutrition? And the case of meal-replacement shakes our daughter bought are even worse, because they didn’t taste “right” to begin with, and add the messed up tasting to that and you wind up with Mrs. the Poet hacking and gagging trying to drink her protein. Not good.

In really funny news I bought a part for the Sprint-T with a warning that trying to eat it could give me cancer. There is some kind of a law in CA that requires everything that contains cancer-causing chemicals to carry a warning either in the package or on the item that consuming it might cause cancer, so I had this tiny sticker on my steering wheel mount warning me not to eat it. It’s polished aluminum billet that clicks onto a steel shaft adapter, how the hell am I going to take a bite out of either part?

And because of the COVID19 outbreak there is no racing on any channel except reruns from last year. I’m so in need of my racing fix after the end of racing from last season. I mean sure there were a few NASCAR races in February and early March, but now there’s literally nothing when we should be having NASCAR, F1, and Indycar at the same time or one after the other. But the people I feel really sorry for are all the ones who are heavily invested both emotionally and monetarily in the NCAA basketball tournament that was cancelled. Races can be rescheduled, that can’t be.

This was most of dinner tonight

Notice the wording with this, it’s not “This is not healthy to eat after this date” but more “This won’t taste as good after this date”, and the date is more than 3 years after I bought the product, a well known canned meat product.

The holes were added by me to get the product out of the can in a single piece after several minutes of shaking and tapping the can on the plate failed to dislodge my dinner for cooking. So I found something with a sharp point to add a vent to keep a vacuum from forming behind the meat product and allow air to get back there to equalize pressure on both sides so I could heat my dinner.

And then I ate it and chugged a liter of Cherry Coke. The End.

We survived Non-family Thanksgiving

One of the traditions we have here at Casa de El Poeta is dinner the Sunday after Thanksgiving for people who either don’t have family or who live too far away to visit their family on Thanksgiving. I don’t think I ever actually mentioned it as a thing we do because it’s just like “this thing we do”, and I never thought it was out of the ordinary because we have done this since I was a kid. So I guess you could call it a family tradition. Some years we couldn’t afford to feed ourselves so we couldn’t feed other people that year. But when we have enough to buy the food, we do the thing.

We had 24 pounds (10.88 kg) of turkey that took almost 5 hours to cook, (a) yam, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and tea. And only one guest. I guess that means lots of turkey sandwiches the next few weeks…

After the meal the guest brought a DVD to watch (Solo) so we watched the movie (not bad 👍 ) and then had pumpkin pie about 2 hours after dinner. I ended up eating too much, but unlike Friday I don’t feel like I swallowed a large farm animal whole today. I had a “cup” of coffee (my insulated cup holds a full quart now) and a package of PopTarts. Later I will have a PBJ and a diet cola for lunch. Maybe. Maybe I will just skip until dinner.

Off to stuff my face, Happy Thanksgiving

And a pleasant Thursday to the rest of the world. I’m not going to bore you with a recitation of traditional Thanksgiving dishes I hope to consume, just assume if you know of one that is generic across the US I will probably consume some today, plus some Texas-specific dishes like Jalapeño corn casserole. This is kind of a group dinner with one person coordinating the menu and sides, someone else cooking the turkeys and other meats (smoked brisket is a popular Texas Thanksgiving entré) and the rest of us bringing the assigned sides.

We finished the Egyptian Run and brought back the Pyrite Cube of Great Power and up next is the barbecue and followed by Glorious Training! (trope stolen from dozens of anime and specifically Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki a goofy web comic that hasn’t updated in months but the creator assures me will update “soon”). I really need to upgrade my blades and pistols skills and also develop the Observe skill. I forgot to include that at character creation, so I will spend Karma points and nuyen to get it now. The group decided to go out for dinner and bought me some too, which was nice of them because I think I’m down to about $15 until the end of the month in my checking account, and while we have food at the house last night was the first calamari I’ve had in years. Of the group I had the cheapest dinner which gives you and idea of what kind of dinner they bought, everyone else had a pound of snow crab plus something else, and I got some of that too because who really eats that much crab in one sitting unless they have been starving all day. I should also mention for the sake of full disclosure that I had calamari since the last time I had crab of any type, so I was out of practice at extracting the meat from the shell.

So to recap, Happy Thanksgiving to my US readers, happy Thursday to everyone else, and all you still hanging on from when this was a bicycle safety blog, this is a good day for a ride.🚴‍♂️ 👍🏼

Forcing myself to ignore the news and do things that make me happy

And I’m only achieving half my goals. I so far have totally ignored whatever noxious bile has spewed forth from the media, completely unaware of current events. I also read some comics, which sorta makes me happy, or at least doesn’t make me unhappy.

I have been plotting various means of financing my hot rod. One thing I have considered is pitching it as a program for Discovery networks, watch the Witch on a Bicycle try to conjure a car from nothing or less than nothing. Poverty chic, as seen on TV. One thing is for sure, robbing banks is out as I would be caught before I got out the door since I can’t move faster than a slow walk. I have never been a smooth talker so conning people out of money isn’t going to get me anywhere. Not to mention my ethics won’t let me unless I was stealing from thieves. As a Chaotic Good player character in this game stealing from Evil NPCs doesn’t conflict with my alignment, but my low Charisma stat is keeping me from doing con games.

Segueing to my life as a D&D character, I would be a terrible adventurer. I have a high Int and Con, but my Speed is very low and as previously mentioned my Cha is practically a dump stat, along with Wis. My Str used to be pretty good before I got old and beat up. If I was a D&D character I would have to be some kind of a magic-user class, because I would never make it as one of the fighting classes or a rogue. Seeing as I have died and come back, maybe some kind of necromancer? if there was a way to be a necromancer as a Chaotic Good alignment. I don’t know really what I would be as myself as a D&D character. That would be an interesting psychological test. Looking it up, there is no way to maintain any kind of good alignment while creating undead. So I could be a necromancer but I couldn’t raise undead and stay Chaotic Good. But as a character of Good alignment I could control undead that others had raised. Much like Real Life (which is a terrible game BTW), cleaning up after bad is still considered to be Good.

Being even more random, I have discovered that when making lentil stew I need to start the lentils 2-3 hours before chopping the rest of the vegetables and putting them in the pot. I started the lentils this time at 1100 and had the rest of the vegetables chopped and in the pot by 1120 (I had to find where Mrs. the Poet keeps the veggies after I got the lentils started), but the lentils lack hours being properly done at 1545 while the other veggies are either done or nearly done. BTW the other veggies are a medium potato per person and half a large carrot and a slice of onion. The slow cooker is almost full which means enough food for both Mrs. the Poet and myself. This was an experiment to discover the proper amounts so we have discovered that the amount of time to done is broken into 2 segments. It’s all data, experiments are meant to obtain data, and I can still eat my mistakes, so it’s all good and I know better for the next time. I really need to find out why the lentils I get at my local store take so long to cook down into a gravy or sauce state with this cooker. Research (Google is your friend) says that lentils take up to 10 hours to reduce to the gravy state in a slow cooker, so this cooker is just not transferring the heat to the food as quickly as the old cooker with the fixed crock, but is in line with the characteristics of other cookers. Basically it boils down to “I’m impatient”.

I found a resource for doing the initial design and setup for the TGS2, and later sorting after testing with better understanding of why things do what they do in response to changes in setup. I plan on devouring it at a later date, but I just did a cursory examination today. I discovered that my personal research and derivations are mirrored in this site so I know I was on the right track doing my own thing.

I survived the trip to pay bills

Well it wasn’t easy but I managed. Most of the bills are caught up, and I managed to get fed and stayed hydrated and even managed to get a naughty treat. There was a new flavor of milkshake available at the Whataburger so I got the smallest one as a treat/dessert. And then farted all night long.😨 Did I mention I discovered I have been lactose intolerant for the last few years? It is not a big deal, I just get really gassy and it has to come out somewhere, right? Interesting story about how I found out, we ran out of milk for my coffee so I had to use non-dairy creamers for a few days, and I noticed I wasn’t gassy, then when we had milk again I was gassy again. And by ran out of milk I mean everything, there wasn’t any plain milk, yogurt, cheese, whipped cream, anything dairy in the house. That was the first time in years we have been without anything dairy.

Right now I’m recovering from yesterday, trying to make my back stay out of spasm, which is easier said than done. The strangest things will trigger a spasm, like a big yawn or turning wrong or bending over to pick something up off the floor, or passing gas. Don’t ask why passing gas causes a spasm, I haven’t the foggiest notion of why that happens. The other stuff I can at least figure out why I get a spasm, usually because I tense up muscles when I do them, and the back muscles don’t like to be tensed up. I have to say I have sympathy for other people with bad backs, because I can get so painful I can barely move, and that’s with my pain tolerance, the guy who pulled his own teeth and walked around on a broken tibia until it healed two months later. So when I say something hurts a lot take my word for it I really hurt.

I was mentioning I was being kept awake because my mind won’t shut down and keeps coming up with crazy ideas that it won’t let go of. Well last night was a doozy: Transplanting the FWD minivan drivetrain as a FWD drivetrain on the bucket. You think I’m having weight distribution issues with the drivetrain in a mid-engine configuration you don’t even want to know what happens when you hang all that mess 10″ in front of the front axle! It doesn’t just add weight to the front wheels it actually reduces weight on the back wheels because of leverage effects. The minivan gets away with this because it has almost 2 tons distributed over the 4 wheels before driver and payload are added. So it ends up with a controllable understeer that’s mostly from the effects of driving through the wheels that steer the car. But this crazy contraption would spend most of its time getting towed out of ditches it had slid into nose-first. So, sorry sleep-fighting mind, this one is never going to even get sketched.

One that I wish I had the time and money to build was the A-Mod Solo racer with the V-twin engine. The quick-and-dirty calculations on that one are scary quick with even balance and extremely low moment of inertia. The weight distribution would be exactly 25% on each wheel. I would actually have to add ballast to make minimum weight. And it would cost less than $10K to build with a little watching Ebay auctions for a good price on the engine. But it ain’t gonna happen while I’m “p’ ” which means “too poor to buy a vowel”.

And now I have to get to bed.

Witty headline goes here

OK I am surviving Mrs. the Poet’s absence after my first grocery trip and second dinner. The bad thing is I am making way too much food for dinner when I make dinner so far and single-serving dinners cost too much. I’m having leftover pasta from prior to Mrs. the Poet’s departure and there is adequate leftover beef and broccoli from last night for another dinner plus some more rice. So I ain’t gonna starve to death. I might give myself food poisoning, but I won’t die hungry.

I finally got another long walk in and I feel pretty good. I have some lingering foot pain and stiffness in my right glute. That I’m beginning to think is my new “normal” without using a lifted left shoe. There is something about the leg length discrepancy that makes the glute on my long leg work harder than on my short leg. Some medical researcher needs to use that as a data point, a 17 mm discrepancy causes pain and tightness on the outside part of the glute of the longer leg.

Not ready for pictures yet is the sub-scale mockup of the TGS2, because I didn’t take any yet. I laid out the pattern for the floor but I’m still not happy with the clearances for the front tires, and I’m really not happy with what I have for the front tires. The width is pretty close but the diameter is way off on the high side for all of the tire combinations IRL, like 1 to 4 inches off. Looking at the history of this car I’m thinking I’ll design for a diameter and a width and worry about the wheel sizes when I get around to buying the tires. Literally make the model wheel/tire just a black cylinder the right size and hope there is a tire close to that size that fits a wheel I can afford for my car.

I just faceplanted in the keyboard again, so time to end this and get some sleep.

I need a recipe

I need something to graze on. Requirements are high fiber, low fat, moderate carb, salty or sweet depending on preparation, And simple enough for a guy who can use a slow-cooker and a rice cooker and hates complicated prep work. Crunchy if possible, but I could also go for chewy, but not mushy. Scalable so I can make 50 pounds at a time if I want, or a single serving. And it has to keep for extended periods of time for when I don’t feel like grazing right now.

And it has to be cheap to make. I don’t have tons of money for snack foods even if they are healthy enough to eat all the time instead of meals. Basically we are looking at creating Bachelor Chow from the TV show Futurama, Now With Flavor.

Opus the Unkillable (but hungry)