Finding October Well

Was up and out of bed near 615am, once again doing the one eye shuffle to sink where I quickly brushed my teeth, gathered my running clothes, then headed downstairs. It was Wednesday, which is a push-up day. After sniffing some fresh air form the deck, I completed sit-ups and windmills inside then back to the deck for push-ups.

The kids were out the door a couple minutes later. Me and the pug were right behind them, heading out for our morning walk in what was described as a foggy morning. Looked more like an ordinary cloudy morning to me. In any case, it was right at 50 degrees with an expected high near 70 with sunshine. The forecast ahead presents a hodge-podge of conditions: sunny and 85 Thursday, but rain and 70 on Friday (our first in about a month) and the chilly on Saturday with a high reaching only 52. Summer's gone!

By the time Eiknarf and I were back home, Mindy was on her way out. I topped off my coffee then played around a while longer on my PC. Guessing it was near 730am when I plopped down onto the floor for meditation and stretching. Near 750am by the time I left for a run. Ran 4.1 miles feeling superb.

At home again, I fried up a few eggs along with reheating the Milestone 220 brisket hash. Boy was that good! Of course I fried the pug and egg. To simply won't eat until I slide an egg in her bowl. i packed my lunch in that 20 minute timeframe too. I am very efficient workday morning's. Before heading off to the shower, I called Paul's Marine to schedule boat winterization along with paying a couple of bills online. Happy to get those things done. Winterization scheduled for this Saturday - drive-thru service. I prefer the drive-thru rather than drop-ff and pick-up another day avoiding the task living on any longer than necessary. Once the boat's put away Saturday afternoon I won't see it again until late spring '15.

Shower and ready to head out by 925am. Across town by 945am. Even a few sprinkles on the drive up but nothing sustained. Rain's been hard to come by last month or so. Given that it was October 1, I decided not to waste day or even a minute preparing September's monthly report. Grabbed the month's data and dug into the numbers spending pretty much the entire morning working on all of that. Come 105pm I made the decision to skip a formal lunch break and instead opted to do a working lunch. ON my list of personal to-do's was picking up a card and a gift for Bella's 12th birthday Thursday. I figured I could either stop on the way home or possibly even Thursday at lunch.

Stuck around the customer's campus until 435pm. Called Mindy once I was safely merged onto 270W. She shared how stressed she was having so much to do, and most of it that night despite it being a Jimaken night. She needed to run several errands relative to Bella's birthday. She also shared that we'd be having homemade chicken & noodles, which she boiled down the chicken the night before. Said she'd leave for her errands as soon as the two of us were done eating. It sounded as though I'd have a couple hours of alone time.

The chicken and noodles were scrumptious. We both had two helpings. As planned, Mindy left to run her long list of errands while I manned kitchen clean-up as well as a host of other smallish chores, including getting the trash to the curb and cleaning all the counters (still some dust from grout removal a couple weeks ago lingering under and around things). It was after 7pm by the time I was reasonably comfortable with how the house appeared. I spent the next hour playing guitar, relearning chord theory. A lot more to it than one might imagine. Very mathematical.

Kids were home very near 8pm. Despite me insisting otherwise, Bella for some reason convinced herself that the reason Mindy wasn't home was because I pissed her off. I didn't bother telling her she was out getting her b-day gifts. Sometimes Bella can be so much like that. Mindy was home a few minutes later I quickly headed out ot give her a hand. By then it was 9pm. Not sure what she was thinking, but she parked all the way over on the new driveway extensions which is never what they were intended for. Instead, and their purpose clearly communicated, was to allow foot traffic despite cars in the driveway. I gave Mindy and earful for it and then asked for the keys so I could promptly move it.

Tied and crabby, once I moved the Pilot into its proper position I headed up to bed where I tuned into MLB playoffs and NFL network bouncing back and forth as I saw fit. I was sleepy per se, but simply tired. By 930pm, Mindy was in bed too. She eventually wrestled the remote away from me, not so much to take over the TV but instead to shut it down once I was asleep. That didn't happen until almost 1015pm.