[Saturday 9:3: 6 miles run/walk in Starkville; Monday 9/5: 5 miles run/walk shaffer’s chapel; Wednesday 9/7: 2.5 miles track workout in Starkville]
Alabama Senior Olympics is coming up November 12th in Tuscaloosa. I am signed up to do the 50/100/200/400 meter events. I contacted Mississippi State in Starkville and they are graciously letting me do some workouts on their track. I hope to improve my results from the summer 2021 Iowa event.
With that in mind, I have also started to do a better job with my eating and weight. I am down a few pounds from early summer but still much heavier than I want to be. I definitely feel a discomfort if I get above 190 but I really would rather be around 170. And “trim” would be more like 155 (or less). The only method that really works is to do a food diary and count the calories. And I’ve made a couple of fitful starts at that. I wish they hadn’t corrupted the myfitnesspal.com app with all sorts of money-making hurdles. But that is just an excuse.
We went and looked at a house on 10 acres over near Pheba, northwest of Starkville. It is much more remote than the place we live now. The land is a good setup for having a few cows or horses. But the house is older and would need some improvements. And they long ago converted the attached garage to a family room, so no garage of any sort. I don’t think we will go any farther on that opportunity.
One impressive thing though: they had installed the new gigabit fiber service from the electric REC. We have that also. It is a great opportunity. So, you can buy 10 acres and a house in rural Mississippi that has community water and fiber internet service. For someone wanting to work remote and escape the rat race, it would be great.
Speaking of home improvements, our hardwood flooring has finally arrived at the installer’s place. Sometime in September we are supposed to have that put in. We ordered it back in February!
I’ve done a bit more on the MG Midget. I believe the engine is locked up. Whether it is just stiff or really broken is not yet clear. There was some antifreeze in the oil. And the engine had been recently painted. I’m wondering if they did some kind of home overhaul and didn’t get things buttoned down correctly. I need to get the head off and look at the head gasket, see if there are any cracks in the block. On another front, I was able to get the car registered in Vermont which gives us a method for having a title in Mississippi. I don’t know why but having that paperwork and those license plates in hand feels like a win.
The F-150 is running well since I sorted out the check-engine light EGR issue. I just picked up some new motor mounts for it. I need to get those installed. No plan yet for tackling the fuel gauge issues.
We had some travel scheduled, it would have been this weekend. It was to an ultra-distance race in Kansas. But my wife has been having some serious running setbacks, just no energy. And it finally broke through to me when she started talking about having “heartburn” while running. We started ramping up a bit of mild panic, even spent an evening in the ER having her heart checked out. And at this time it looks like she may have some kind of blockage or A-fib issue. She has a cardiology appointment in a couple of weeks. So she is running but keeping it low-intensity until then.
Running is not considered a dangerous sport, like maybe race car driving or rugby or boxing. But the news has been full of the story out of Memphis about the woman getting kidnapped during her 4 am jog. What kind of bad guys are up trolling around at 4:30 in the morning? Maybe we will eventually hear about that. Online, runners are shocked and sad about it. And every once in awhile someone at a race event will push to the limit and have a heart attack or stroke. I guess the whole thing comes down to risk/rewards assessment. I hope to do well in my sprints in November but I’m not expecting to have any lasting harm from participation. My goal is to see how well I can do without causing damage. That may be naive in some ways.
We recently purchased a treadmill. The old one we had before went to the trash (?) when we moved. This new one is much better. I’ve run on it a couple of times when the weather was bad. I don’t expect to use it a lot but it is nice to have the option.
I am slowly swapping the power supply capacitors in this Fisher X-100-3 model tube stereo amplifier. I bought some new multi-section caps from hayseedhamfest.com. I have a couple of other small issues, then more cleaning to do… and I hope it works!
It has been interesting to see the water supply troubles in Jackson, MS back in the news. As someone who spent 20 years baby-sitting a utility billing system, it gives me some validation for the effort. Jackson had a big flopped water billing system project. They sued and recovered $90 million from the vender, then spent the money doing other stuff. The news reports are saying they have about $100 million in unrecoverable customer debt. Some of that I think is because they couldn’t produce reliable bills, neither in calculations reliable nor in frequency of arrival. So no, the customers probably aren’t waiting by the mailbox for their utility bill to arrive. But they are counting on a transparent and fair process. Jackson has other problems, like ancient infrastructure, lack of trained employees, and dwindling population since it is kind of a sucky place to live. My impression is that the community leaders have let things go so that it will default to a higher authority like the state or FEMA or somebody (hey, they did it for Flint). But I don’t have any inside information.
The last few days have seen the passing of Tom Whatling and QE2. Tom was 90. He was the cousin of my father-in-law and someone I would run into at church and family occasions while living in Des Moines. He and his wife had moved to the Dallas area a few years ago to be around their eldest daughter for support. I think that worked out pretty well. They had three children, I think all older than me. Their daughter is in Dallas and their two sons are still in Iowa. They have at least 5-6 grand children and I don’t know how many great grandchildren. Here’s the official obituary.