Thank you
@graoumia .
February 11:
60 Days of HIIT: another day off
Power Hold: day off
running: 3 km
hiking: 9 km with Shelby & friends
A bit colder again this day, but still not bad for February. Shelby and I got started half an hour earlier than on Saturday, in the hope we'd get to see the whole gang in the park. Then we got waylaid by a neighbour.
Shelby's kitty friend Buddy had been sitting with the guy who lives next door to the lady who's been looking after Buddy. When Buddy came out to the road to see Shelby, the human followed him. This is not a human I am particularly fond of, for various reasons. One of which being that he regularly bitches about having to pay taxes. But then he also bitches about our social services not being greater than they are.
I said to him, "You do realize that the one pays for the other, right?"
He responded by going on a tear about how, after he's paid his mortgage, paid all of his utility bills, bought groceries, bought new clothes for himself and his children, paid for their extracurriculars, put gas in his multiple cars and paid for their insurance and upkeep, taken a vacation, replaced all of his aging technology, and contributed to his retirement fund, there's no money left from his paycheque because the mean ol' tax man took everything else.
He did not appreciate my asking him WTELF he needed more money for if he could afford to finance all of that.
Unfortunately, this guy is also so lonely that every time he sees me he manages to forget all of the times I have given him my not-at-all-humble opinion that his complaints are stupid, and he tries to act as if we are the best of buds. He is also an alcoholic, and I suspect his brain is quite addled from all of the alcohol at this point. He is younger than me. But he comes across as very confused most of the time. On this day he tried to tell me about what a great neighbour he has been to the lady next door (the one who feeds Buddy) because he's been mowing her lawn for her since she got sick. Only trouble with this claim is that this lady only became ill a month ago, and nobody cuts grass in Ontario in January!
Eventually I just cut him off, saying, "We have to go," and then just walked away with Shelby.
When we finally made it to the park where all the puppies gather, there was no one else there.
I was afraid we had wasted too much time being talked at by our neighbour and missed the gathering. But then, just as we were nearing the woodlot at the back of the park, Shelby's best puppy friend Hendrix showed up with his human. (They live on that side of the park and so enter via a back path, whereas Shelby and I enter from the road in front of the school.) We had not seen Hendrix or his human since before my birthday. So that was a happy re-union. We walked 3 extra kilometres (doing laps of the Fit Park trail across the road from the school) to walk with them for a bit. At one point Hendrix decided to play a rebellious teenager role. This made Shelby especially happy because she LOVES to show everyone that she is the GOOD DOG in comparison to other naughty dogs.
This was once again a yoga day in which I didn't do any yoga. When the weather is nice enough for running in February, I feel that I should take advantage of that. So I did. And then I ended up not having time to do anything else. (I perhaps should also be trying to take advantage of the fact that I currently have lots of space in which to practice yoga. And this is unlikely to be the case by the end of the year. I don't know. With the running, I know it's something I'll always be able to come back to. Sure, the weather may be unfavourable for a few days, even a few weeks at times. But bad weather never lasts. And the more I take advantage of the good weather to get out for a run when I can, the better conditioning base I'm able to maintain, making it easier for me to return to running after each period in which the weather forces a break. But I could potentially be moving into a multiple years long period of not having enough space in which to practice yoga soon. Part of me doesn't want to have a regular yoga practice now, so that won't become yet another thing I'll have to give up, another thing I'll miss, when I lose my current home.)
writing: short story
new fiction words: 1831
fiction YTD: 20,596
story-a-week challenge: 4 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 4 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 2384
consumable YTD: 45,451
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 85,008
deficit: 39,557
So I got my story done, and submitted with 3 hours and 17 minutes to spare. Not awesome. But at least I still made it to bed before midnight.
The story ended up being not at all what I had intended at the outset. (As in: I had meant to write a dark fantasy story. But I ended up writing a science fiction story with androids and FTL travel with a humanity-learns-to-become-one-with-nature type happy ending. Maybe I just don't have enough angst to write dark?) Also: I think it is more of an exploration of something I want to tackle in a significantly longer form, not something I'd want to release as it stands now. But this is okay. I got words written and a story done, and that's what mattered for this day.
I did manage to reduce my word count deficit slightly on this day. But my count for the week overall was still too short. (And for the past two weeks now has been less than what I managed the final week of January.) So I need to pull up my socks here. I did at least invest more time into research and craft study this week. So that's a win. I'm definitely still experiencing resistance to getting my BICHOK and just getting started though. Even though I like the writing once I'm in the middle of it. I really think I need to commit to getting my writing (or at least a good chunk of it) done first every morning, before other things have a chance to move in and distract me. (Of course this requires me to actually have a plan for what I'm going to write the next morning when I go to bed the night before, instead of being up late trying to finish up that day's/week's work. Or else just start writing cold on Monday mornings and accept that my dark fantasies will keep turning into happy-ending SF ecopunk.)
French: Netflix
GOBOT
GBOT
Streaks:
Consecutive days of working out: 99
Consecutive days of French study: 1181
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 18