Woke up  aand got out of bed this morning, and our house was cold. This was the first night since spring where the temperatures had dropped below 50. And apparently, sometime this summer, our heater's thermostat automatic timer had reset to a weird time. So,  even though the house was cold, the heat hadn't turned on, because it thought it was 3 am. Fixed that.  I was a bit reluctant to get going this morning, but I did make it. I was past my goal time, but still in my grace period time. Pretty proud of that win. It was the first fallish morning, with grey skies, and a cold house.  Later on in the day, the sun came out and it was a lovely fall day.   Today was apple picking day. In the spring, we put panty hose footing on them to keep out apple maggots(yuck) so picking apples means not just picking the apples , but taking their socks off! It worked pretty well, with about 3/4 of our apples being worm free, Had a couple of conversations with neighbors, who were walking by, and wondering what I was doing.  The apples are big, and look gorgeous! I didn't get as many steps in , but I am tired.

Grewynn, in all her 200 years of life, has never seen anything like the strange parcels on the ground. With her hand at the sword prepared to fight if needed, she bends down  to peer more intently at them. Besides here she sees the bear begin to fight the spiders. Grewynn is thankful that Ursina is keeping the spiders occupied so that  she and Shava can study the strange objects  .   I will do the good mornings.  I did a few this morning. I was hoping to do more, but now I'm tired and it's unlikely anymore will happen. Tomorrow is rest day, so  I can do some sets for a good stretch.

Week 2 Plan This week, I'm planning workouts for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Weekend. Technically I could fit something on Friday as well, but I kind of like leaving that open so I can just do some bouldering for fun if I feel like it.

GET THOSE SPIDERS!  

Woot!  

I mean, we recorded in the visitors’ centre, because our recording engineer said the dome where the science happens was so resonant we would get a muddy sound. But it is so cool!    ~~~ Special reward for taking the cat on a backyard wander instead of vegging out after work: late late late black raspberries! The main crop was done in early July!  

Not only trying to lowball us, but also being super picky about things. I guess his wife is extra super sensitive to mold, and their mold test got messed up and had to be redone, so even if we had agreed to the nonsense, it's entirely possible he would have still walked away.   Thankfully, after a more angry call than we would have liked, we were able to get our agent and relo person to understand that we did in fact understand what we were doing and did not want to play these games, and they finally got the mutual release. The house is back on the market, and we have already gotten more people looking at it than had before the ill-fated sale attempt. I really hope someone gives us a nice offer on it soon.   Because that's where the good news ends.   The large union (not mine) at the company I work for rejected the in actuality not so great contract offer and are now on strike. Things have not been going well for this company for a while, and this is not helping. So, there's lots of speculation about what sort of effects this is going to have on the future of the company. And management seems to be taking the tact of scaring the non-striking employees in what I can only guess is a misguided attempt to get us to pressure the people on strike to just accept the offer. That, or they're trying to put stuff in place to try to have more leverage when it's the engineers' union's turn for contract talks. Whatever their goal is, they're certainly doing a great job of destroying any morale that was left.   And, we just got an email from our agent about a stain on the ceiling in the master bedroom, which wasn't there before. So, it's very likely the tornadoes that went through the area damaged the roof. 🤞it's an easy fix and we don't have to replace the whole roof. Because we can't afford that, but will have no choice but to do it if it needs to be done.   At the moment, it's seriously looking like the only upside to this whole new job and moving thing is being back in the union, so I'm safe from the threats of furloughs.   And, I have not been keeping up with the exercise plan, because we've been busy plus jet lag has been kicking my butt. I definitely fell asleep at my desk a few times! 😬  Going to make a big attempt to follow the plan this week and then see if I can slot in the missed workouts somewhere before the end of the boot camp.

I used "picking up the milk" (20 points for Duird tasks) as an herb-gathering excercise. I have many many empty bottles to return, so I chose the ones highest up on the shelf and set them in a bag on the floor, holding when I got lower down.  At the milk location, I repeated that for each of the three half gallons (in glass -- those babies are not light, but aren't onerous). Thinking of it as yoga helped me find my way through.    After I put the milk away, I drove downtown and kicked off the Women's Pinball Fall League. I hung out for practice, group assignments and other announcements (20 points for Social), then came home to log in and do the release. This is the right balance of things: social, work, and rest.    I am tired, and am going to bed as soon as the release is done.  Might watch an episode, might just turn off the light and be done with today. Today was a good day. 

Ursina looks at her flip flop and then pulls a sword out of her backpack instead.  She stuffs the flip flop in her bag. She looks to the group.   “Are we still being stealthy? I’d like to roar now. But I will continue being stealthy if we need to be’”.  With wild , slashing movements, she cuts down three spiders. She repeatedly stabs the fallen spiders until they stop twitching. Slowly she turns to the others with a toothy grin, still speaking in a whisper.   “Roar”.   

Rough start this week. Today was a big caregiving day, and it went okay. It was very family heavy weekend and I feel like I need a break.      Maybe what I really need is to break it down a bit.   My visiting uncle was annoying, but I really got around it that everytime he would be tough I just sang “Be a man” in my head and I found him a lot less annoying that way. I didn’t really deal with him too much, but he and my one Aunt kept talking about how I needed to take care of all of them, and I finally just said “I love you but my plate is full.”  When what I was thinking was “I’m not taking care of anyone who isn’t taking care of themselves.”   Speaking of not taking care,  my great Aunt,  whom I’ve refered to here as The Troll Queen passed away yesterday from heart and kidney failure at 78 which was AMAZING she lived that long considering she never exercised and only ate fast food. She was colorful, obnoxious and loveable. She used to dress up as Mrs. Claus on Christmas and work at the mall with Santa, and it’s hilarious because she hates kids. My mom was really close to her, so she’s been understandably sad all day.  She has some great stories though and it was great to realize we have so many good memories of her.    I took my dad to get a hair cut and lunch and he wanted some cookies at walmart so I guided him in.  and he caught his foot on a pallet and went DOWN and he pulled hard on my arm as he went so I was trying to ease his fall and if I hadn’t moved quickly, he would’ve really injured me. Luckily he wasn’t injured at all, and though my shoulder and arm are still a little sore, it’s going to be fine tomorrow. Thankfully a really strong man came and got Dad back on his feet and that really saved my arm from serious injury as Dad was pulling hard again to get back up. Thank you strong man at Walmart. I love you forever.  And before the fall, Dad and I had a really great time with lunch and the hair cut and we’ll probably do lunch again in a couple weeks.    That helped. Thanks. All together, it was a little too much, but when I can break it down, it’s not too much.    We added a half mile to our morning walk, bringing us to 2 miles in the morning.  I did my mini-workout but FIRST I got my mom’s thick dowel rod that she uses for balance exercises and it was my sword for the West-Marches exercises. AW YEAH! That felt really good on my sore shoulder and arm too, and it was a good warm up but by the third time, I was feeling it and it was FUN. What a cool idea! Thank you @Sovalis and @DarK_RaideR for organizing such a fun adventure.    Bert is back and I’m really glad he is. He’s a pleasant person to talk to and be around, and he’s really happy to be back too. It was make your own dinner night so the folks were going out and Bert cooked up some chicken tenders and tater tots for us and we had a serious discussion about the importance of ketchup with fried potatoes.    This is a big update! I’ll close up for today. Thanks for listening!