I was inches away from tearing down this website. OK, that is a bit dramatic. I mean, if there was an option to cash out with my $9.32 balance, I would have taken it—I dunno, pick up some clamps from Harbor Freight. Yes, I am coming up on its 6-year anniversary: Created: 2017-04-06 05:46:04 UTC. For those of you playing at home, that is just after midnight in the Central Time Zone. I was ready to trip over the plug to the server.

Technically, this site has been up as long as my Mac had its lid up, because I run that local, Jekyll install. And here is food for thought: are static sites ever running? I do not expect other text files to do a song and dance.

I maintain the site solely out of my own amusement. Its existence seems to play out as a catalyst for me to do stuff. There is an illusion that it requires a lot of my time—I don't think it does, well, not principally. Yes, creating content is a time suck. Make no mistakes about that! But, how do I use this space? To flesh out ideas—not for the site—to wave my wand and zap stuff for my own life. To highlight takeaways for my own life. This site is wholly self-serving. It is why I choose "diary" to catalog prior blog posts—that is what they are! I do not entreat the user to persuasive dialog—I could do that:

1. Eat real food; gnaw on a cow-you think mankind has pulled Cheez-Its out of a box for 1000s of years?
2. "Get dope out your vein and hope in your brain...You wanna get your lesson and wanna be smart in school? Get rid of the (sugar). Get away from the in crowd. Get'a close to God."

But, even that nostalgic, local commercial application is not particularly persuasive—it is the outline of what I am doing!

And now with a segue with what I want to do for my life, yesterday, I watched this trailer for the upcoming release, Cities Skyline II:

YouTube Link

It’s time to start from the beginning, yet evolve into something new. This city has a story. Envision a world created by you. Your chance:

• To shape the future;
• To create and inspire;
• Expand way up high;
• And bring life to your creations;
• New worlds to explore and pursue.

Here, you are the visionary. You, are the creator. You make cities.

Sorry Texas, I am Your Tennessee Tornado

These days come off so repetitive. It seems like there is one big thing that happens each day along with a bunch of maintenance items: write a post, wash the dishes, wash the dishes, wash the dishes, make food, make food, make food. Day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month. Time passes.

I look and I wonder whatever became of time. This is how you approach 45. The lunch table kids tell us what to wear, what to listen to along the way. They're replaced by cooler kids. But, it is all the same nonsense.

My body's repair crew joined a union. I do not bounce back with the same gusto as I did at 17 on that wrestling mat. Still further, long ago were the days when kids held up the ball carrier just so that I could plow them all over onto the ground.

The ol' left glutes have been sore for a couple of days now. It felt like the after effects of a good workout, that same, day-after feeling. But, I haven't done jack! (And to isolate one side for a workout just gives me giggles.) No, the other day, my body just reacted on autopilot and hurled a 11x7 IKEA serving dish as if I was launching an Aerobie in a kickoff in ultimate frisbee. Yeah, my body hurled that sucker against the WALL from across the kitchen! And lemme tell ya, IKEA leads you to believe they do things in a cheap but smart way, but that dish did NOT have safety glass! Shards everywhere!

Why did I do that? I have no idea, because "I" did not do it. Generally in that scenario, I do the tuck item and roll—OK, OK, I need to explain the setup. I went to grab the dish from the cabinet. I turned and realized my sandal was caught by my other foot. My center of gravity saw a squirrel out the window and off I went; I was in an uncontrolled fall.

I like to think for a bit when I tumble, like I did in 2021 with my elbow (which I nearly recovered from the nosedive and purposely leaped forward thinking I might rally). This time, nothing was sent my way to mull over. My arm holding the dish decided to swing forward and whirl behind me to protect the fall and release that dish like a banshee. And when I fell and bruised that glute, I hit that same darn elbow from 2021 AND...broke skin from the impact on the FRONT of my left knee. So, in one unassisted action, I simultaneously bruised the front and back of my body in one whirling motion. While frying up some bacon.

I got the moves
That really move them
I send chills
Up and down their spine
I'm just a sexy boy (sexy boy)

-Jimmy Hart & JJ Maguire

"Hey, shouldn't I ought to get extra credit for rolling into the fall with my hip?" I ponder. "Nope, but you did come away with a participation trophy. Congrats."

"The Same Thing We Do Every Night, Pinky. Try to Take Over the World."

I am ever reminded of the necessity of a physical regimen. I love planning, I do. Hey, it is an earmark of every INTJ out there—plans and contingency planning! It is ever so delightful. But, these days—well, it is basic economics: unlimited wants in the backdrop of scarcity. This is why in one avenue, I have applied to Harbor Freight. I can bring more of the same value at a lower price point. If I went with all DeWalt, I would lose out on greater value as it relates to my endgame performance.

With this mindset of resource scarcity, whether it is time, talent or treasure, I turn my focus onto training. It is the sort of thing that we cannot only say, "In two weeks, I am going to rock it like the Energizer bunny." Sure, I live in what on the surface looks like a hoarder's cardboard dream. But, I gotta do something today. I do not want to risk injury leading up to the move, but I want to ramp up my activity for the move AND what lies ahead. Critically interwoven into those plans, contrasting our prior pool inspection that was our stiff canary for that house purchase, we have a green light; all things are go.

Harbor Freight Trip 04 of 2023: A Light

I followed up Thursday's table saw with a shop light on a stick.

OK, so this wasn't a planned purchase. This was the result of the power going off at 10:24 AM with no prospect of it returning as the night approached. I recently threw out a couple of jar candles from Kroger because my system goes whack-a-doodle after inhaling them for a bit...fun stuff like an unnerving, rapid heartbeat with waves of nausea! Oh, but how I do love candles. I wonder if I could make them out of bacon fat?

I haven't owned a flashlight in some time because of that multi-tool phone. But, as my phone dropped to 1% power, that option was out.

However. I knew I had a fully-charged cordless drill, so I figured I'd get a lamp that could use its battery.

20V Cordless 280 Lumen Stick Light - $26.99 with a 15% off coupon

While there, I didn't even plan to get that, I was choosing this $20 model, but audibled for the superior solution.

I got home and lit up the kitchen like a Christmas tree. It worked great for all of 15 minutes that it was needed. The power popped on at 6:09 PM, almost 8 hours after the circuit was broken.

Wire Safe? No is Arc.

And speaking of circuits, I found this elucidating YouTuber, specifically for this video, Electrical Wiring Basics set to 1.25x. He confirmed what I always kinda guessed, but I don't trust my Kinda Guesses. As an 11 or 12-year-old, I took apart a small color TV to see if I could link the speaker to something larger, when I got shocked and turned the thing to a Smurf-o-vision—it became a blue-and-white set. My hand was groovin' on its own for awhile.

And then at Grand Canyon Railway, I was a smart guy for unplugging the UPS unit to upgrade its batteries. I had to switch out some bad batteries in the case. As I was listening to Metallica's 1983 The Four Horseman, a big ol' flash knocked me back and blackened the tip of my thumb. Yes, I was removing a few, dead batteries, but clearly, some were ready for an 80s full of gnarly ROCK SHOW.

(Normally, I'd link to that 2007 story, but like so much, it's just another blog lost to the Net gnomes of the past.)

I also watched BrettleyBuilt's bit on GFCIs, which is something I'll be doing because the new has some ugly outlets in the water-seeping garage. I'm pretty KISS tour schedule included several of those outlets.

I never liked my Kinda Guesses anyway.