Captain Cliché

I am starting Twenty Twenty-Three out in classical cliché style with a declaration that I must lose weight.

Today I weighed in at 232.6 pounds. I have shirts that I cannot button, dress slacks that are really hard to button, and at least one pair of cargo pants that I really like that I cannot fasten as of three weeks ago.

I am going to go through my closet and purge and I need to take another one of those fat pictures to post here for the purpose of shame.

I'm also going to continue my project of cleaning up and organizing the Carriage House. It is the perfect place for me to work on projects but it is so full of crap and so disorganized that it is essentially useless. 

It was only a week ago that I needed to find my roof heat cable that came off the roof  a year and a half ago. I have come across it several times, even going so far as to wrap it around an extension cord sling, only to be completely clueless as to where it may be now.

I've been this way for 65 years it I think it should end.

I have three chores I want to complete today.

Number one is to get the vacuum into the basement and clean up the area near the boiler chimney flue. I also need to get the flue door duct taped into place.

The second item is to shred a bunch of paperwork I have here in this designated office space in the back bedroom upstairs. However, I am unable to shred until I empty the shred chamber. 

Before I can do that, I need to clean out the fireplace, which is my third item. I will throw all the shredded paper I have in there in order to facilitate the making of fire as well as the total disposal of all this shredded material.

4:23 PM: I think I did pretty good. I managed to burn up the shredded material by just feeding it into the fireplace. There was still some burnable debris in the firebox. So I threw in a bunch of newspaper, kindling and then shred.

The shred does not go up in flames like you might think.

I finally finished fixing the Flue Flap.

I'm happy with what I've done. How permanent and durable it is remains to be seen.

I have started a cleaning initiative for the Carriage House. That's how serious I am about it. It's an Initiative! 

I call it "One Item a Day". I shall pledge to make a strong effort to endeavor to make a significant change to one item in the Carriage House.

That means finding a better place for it or throwing it away.

Today I moved our camping tent and a big Dutch oven into a good spot upstairs and threw away an old cordless phone set. That gives me some much needed storage space under the work table.

I've also gotten a good start on Blogging for the year.

   

2022 Final Post

It's the last day of the year so I have to get in some sort of post. And here it is!

I would like to note that this is just the final post for the year, not for the Blog. If that happens, then I did not have a great start to the New Year.

We are having guests over tonight, having a little dinner, a night out at the movies , and then we'll all return here to bang pots and pans.

If it sounds like the same thing we did last New Years Eve, it is. That's what we call a "Tradition".

I'll try to return to this during the day for updates and cool fun facts about me. In fact, here's a cool fun fact about me now. I'm 65 years old.

1:50PM: We are heading to the Hub to watch a little Gonzaga (Ranked #10) Basketball.

5:16PM: Zags won. 111 to 88. The Zags have now beaten Pepperdine 44 consecutive times. Time for a nap!

11:50PM: Don't have time to write anymore. I've got to get downstairs to ring in the new year.  

December BP

 

Ski Day #3

We held off skiing last week because the temperatures were sub zero. No thanks to that!

So we made it up today. Rob brought his daughters Tamany and Natalie, both are visiting for Christmas.

I observed on the website that it was pretty foggy at the lodge and that was the case when we got up there. Rob and I took a run to the top while the girls went through the line at the rental shop. They took almost two hours.

Our first run was disastrous. The fog was so thick you could not see the terrain in front of you. You just had to ski along and hope it was flat. I fell twice.

We took the next several runs on the beginner lift because you could see.

When Rob's daughters finally made it out, we headed for Chair Five (the beginner chair) and then over to Chair Three. We were hoping to ski back to Chair Four. When there is fog on the hill, Four is usually clear. And it was today.

I had fall number four and the Number Four Face. It was another one of those situations where I wore myself out just getting back up.

You might be wondering about fall number three. That occurred on Chair Five when Tam and I were loading. I'm not really clear on what happened, but I guess a lift operator was riding down and kind of stumbled when he got off. That caused the chair to swing waaaaay around and then hit me. Knocked me right on my ass.

I'm okay and I don't feel like I got any bruises from the incident. I didn't really even know what happened until Rob told me on the next lift ride.

We got in eight runs before I gave out. Rob took the girls to Chair Six and did a couple of runs there.

My cost per run for the season so far is at $15.21 as of today.

Now, it is time for bed. I am really beat!

 

Ski Day #2

We chose today for another Ski Day because it looked like it was going to be the best day of the week for it. And we were right.

The first few runs were above the fog and sunny. It had snowed about an inch overnight so there was some nice snow to float on.

On the seventh run, The fog thickened up dramatically. So dramatically that I lost Rob. I was waiting for him at the start of this run that goes to the Number Four chair. It was really foggy and while I knew where I was, I thought Rob got lost. I finally decided to head on down.

Within four turns, I realized I was on the wrong run. I was on a run that was steep, ungroomed and chunky with large moguls. This was not going to be fun. 

I was able to ski short distances and then stop too rest. I fell a couple of times, which wore me out even more.

Rob ended up waiting for me for close to 15 minutes. We took the chair up and decided that was going to be the last run.

The fog had not let up at all. I couldn't see the terrain in front me and just worked my tired ass down the hill as best I could.

With 8 runs for the day, we have our per run costs down to $22.69.

I got home and was a veg for the rest of the day. I'll be in the hot tub first thing tomorrow.

Ski Day #1

 The threat of snow in the forecast was not enough to keep Rob and I off the mountain.

I have just gotten home from our first day of the season at Mt. Spokane. We got up there about 9:30 and it was partially sunny and clear. We knew that snow was coming and we just decided we would ski until the snow started.

We got seven runs in by noon. It started snowing on our fourth run. It was gentle and didn’t hinder us at all. We wanted to get in at least six runs.

I am definitely feeling it. I stopped quite a bit while we were skiing. At times, I thought my thighs we going to ignite, thy burned so bad.

We managed to cover the whole mountain during our seven runs.

All in all, a good day followed by a visit to the Hub.

November BP