Happy Halloween

I expected that there would be no Halloween of any kind this year, to tell you the truth. There were all kinds of ominous signs that portended a sad outcome Halloween-wise this year. 

Before September even arrived, the Houston mayor said we ought not to celebrate the holiday, and our time would be better spent huddling in our basements waiting for the end to come. 

The news was filled with experts telling us to stay home and commemorate the holiday with a different kind of celebration. Why not have an Easter egg hunt instead? Or what about a scavenger hunt inside your home with your own kids and no one else's present? Or why not try putting on your costumes and marching around the neighborhood in a parade...but by yourself without any other kids, and not stopping at any of the houses to collect any of the free candy they were giving out? Or, the best suggestion that I heard all month, why not just gather the family around the table and celebrate the season by planning out all the fun things you could do next Halloween?

Costco put out their Halloween costumes on the last week of July (as they do every year). Usually, they disappear faster than bacon slices on my breakfast plate, but this year they mostly remained unpurchased as we moved into August, then September, and even October. There was still a bunch of them left on the actual day of Halloween this year, and I've never seen them even make it to October first.

To me, all this meant that we'd be sitting at home Halloween night, wishing there was something we could do to have fun like we did last year, but being unable to do so. I kept waiting for a government official to drop the hammer, to come out and officially ban the holiday like he was the Burgermeister Meisterburger or something, but even if they never did, would any people be willing to celebrate? If we went out trick-or-treating, would they have candy to distribute or would they just come out yelling at us for putting their lives in jeopardy by knocking on their door? My plan was just to sit and wait for the time to arrive, and if we saw kids in the street, we would join them.

My wife thought she would invite some friends over to hang out with us, but when she called them, they turned the tables on us and invited us over instead. They had already made some plans, but were willing to include us in them. They have a daughter that is my son's age, and the two of them get along really well, so they could trick-or-treat together, while us adults stayed at the house and distributed the candy to anyone brave enough to venture out.

We went out shopping to grab some kind of dessert to bring to the party with us (as well as groceries for this week), and found that the stores were packed. Walmart was mobbed, especially the costume area. It seemed as though a lot of people were looking for last minute costumes. I think a lot people were like me, expecting Halloween to be banned, and now it had arrived, they weren't prepared, but they realized they couldn't just do nothing. So they ran out like last-minute Christmas shoppers in search of holly, mistletoe, and good cheer; but grabbing all the skeletons, gory makeup, and moldering zombie limbs that they could instead.

We needed a wig to complete my son's mad scientist costume. We'd been unable to find one before, and now that the stores were ransacked, we found even less selection. On Friday, when he went to school in his costume, we just had to spike his hair up with gel. A little less effective than we'd hoped. 

While he was at school in his costume, he also lost his safety goggles, so his costume was a little more lacking. We had to do something. We found a beard that, with some bobby pins might be pulled into shape. It was only three bucks, so we bought it. When we got home, my wife went to work, and turned it into something that looked pretty decent. She added some black makeup to his face, to make it look like an explosion had gone off in his face, and he looked...well, not his best costume, but not too shabby either.

My daughter invited her best friend over to watch horror movies at our house, so we tasked her with handing out our candy.

We went over to our friends' house, and while we waited for their oldest daughter to get home from work and take out the kids to trick-or-treat, I decided to do a street or two with Simon. My fears were totally unfounded. The street was full of kids. And while a lot more houses than usual were dark to warn kids that trick-or-treaters weren't being served there, there were still plenty that were open and inviting. Most people had set up tables outside to set their candy on, and were sitting out wishing everyone a happy Halloween. It was pretty nice.

In the end, my son got a pretty normal Halloween. I know plenty of kids that didn't. His best friend went camping with his family instead. Another friend he plays with often probably sat down with his family to plan all the fun things they could do next year. But my son got to trick-or-treat like he does every year, and he came home with a whole bunch of candy too.

With my older kids, we always had a competition to see who could get the most candy. We would weigh it at the end of the night, and declare someone the winner. Now, those kids are too old to trick-or-treat.

We still weigh the candy, but we can only compare it year to year instead. Last year, his candy haul weighed in at a family record of 6 lbs. 7.5 ozs. This year?

He had so much, it kept falling out of the bowl, and we had a really hard time getting it all to remain in place long enough for the scale to tell us how much he brought home.

But, he managed 6 lbs. 7.4 ozs. That's right, one tenth of an ounce less than last year's record. I don't think you can call that anything other than a good day. It was a Halloween miracle, instead of a nightmare before Christmas. I suppose 2020 hasn't been all bad.

The Dunesteef Ain't Dead

What the heck? Is this an episode of the presumed dead Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine? Guess, it's not quite dead yet.

"Look, isn't there something you can do?"

 

"I feel happy! I feel--" (thump)

 

 

"Ah, thanks very much."

 

"Not at all, see you on Thursday."

 

 

Follow the link on over, and have a listen to "From Another World" a collaboration between myself and my co-host Rish Outfield.

Handiwork Of The Necromancer

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A Short Showdown

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Droning On

I got a drone for Christmas all the way back in 2016.

We played around with it a bunch back when it was new.

Then I put it in a box, and kind of forgot that it existed for a while. This past week, however, I remembered it again, and got it out, charged up the battery, and got it flying again.

I decided that I would take the little guy out to the school field so we could fly the thing around for fun. We tested it out at home, making sure we had it all figured out, and then put it in our backpack, and rode our bikes to the school.

We pulled the drone out, started it up, and launched it. It flew about fifteen feet off the ground, then immediately settled back down to land on the soccer field again. I tried to launch it again, but it wasn't having it. Apparently, getting it all figured out at home was enough to wear out the battery. I hadn't charged it for very long.

It was disappointing, but not a dead end. We just had to charge it back up for a while. So, we went home, plugged it back in, and waited.

We went for a bike ride to a spot where turtles are know to congregate. We went to the gas station and had some ice cream from their machine. Then we went home. After all that biking, turtle watching, and ice cream eating, the drone was charged back up. So, we loaded it back into the backpack, and went back to the school. This time, it flew around a while longer before running out of battery (still not very long, the battery just doesn't have that long-lasting of a charge). I flew it a little, and I let Little fly it some too.

He made sure we got some video while we flew it around. He chased the drone, and posed for the video, but unfortunately, the camera wasn't pointed at him for very much of the time.

It didn't take long for the drone's battery to run out again, and need another charge, so we put it back in the backpack, and went home.

We plugged the drone back in, and let it charge overnight. Sunday afternoon, we went back to the school to see how much more fun the drone would be if it had a full charge. It was a little windy, but I don't know if that really affected the drone's navigation. Something else seemed to be wrong with it.

Little launched it first, and it immediately flew sideways for fifty feet or so before crashing into a tree and coming down hard.

Then we tried to fly it again. The first time, it didn't even really take off. It just flipped over, and grounded itself immediately, putting its propellers into the grass. It did the same thing a second time, and I was starting to wonder if the drone was broken somehow.

This was a bummer. After all that charging, it was pretty anticlimactic to be unable to even really fly it. The drone had a climax planned for us, however.

I tried to launch it one more time. When I pressed the joystick upward, it took off straight up this time, not flipping over at all. It kept going up and up and up. I tried to steer it around, but it didn't respond to the remote control at all. It just kept flying away. It was up really high now, above any of the trees around the school.

There's a button on the remote called the autopilot button that is supposed to make the drone come down to a soft landing if you pressed it. I did, but the drone kept flying away. 

There is a button on the remote called the return assistance button, that is supposed to make the drone return to where the remote is located. I pressed that button, but the drone kept flying away. 

If you move both joysticks to the outside corners of their rotation at the same time, it's the emergency shut off function that cuts the motor, and the drone falls from the sky. I did that, but the drone kept flying away.

The drone just kept going. At this point, the remote was beeping constantly at me. I don't know what the beeping meant, but my guess is that it was telling me that the drone had gone out of range of the remote. Pretty soon, it was over the trees, and completely out of sight.

Little and I ran to the school's fence, and tried to find the drone. We went in the direction that it appeared to be headed when it disappeared. 

I was really freaked out. This was an aerial projectile now, and completely out of control. It had to come down some time. Would it fall on someone's head? Would it break a window? Would it hit a car driving down the road, scaring a driver into crashing their car? Any of those things were possible, and the prospect freaked me out.

Little and I walked along the street, looking for a crashed drone, but we never saw one. The thing had utterly disappeared. I assume it eventually came down. I hope it did so softly, and harmlessly. It could be lost in the woods somewhere, or it could be in someone's backyard. I have no idea.

Most likely, I'll never know. There is a micro memory card in the slot for recording the videos with, and if anybody found the drone, and retrieved the card, they might possibly be able to get in touch with me to let me know they found the drone, but I don't expect that to happen. I'm pretty sure I'll never see it again. I guess I'll let you know if I'm proven wrong.

A New Skeleton Crew

Found these at Ross, and added them to the Halloween display. These are the 1/18 scale (or four inch tall--think same size as GI Joes or Star Wars guys from the 80s).

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Do I Keep Going With This Thing?

 So, on day 28 of my #75Hard journey, I totally blew it, and forgot to both read my book and take my progress picture, ending my streak before I completed the 75 days.

Let me tell you that I have been totally bummed out about the whole thing since I realized that I had done such a thing. I was putting on my shoes to leave on my daily walk when I realized what I had done, and for a few moments, I debated whether I should even bother to go on the walk.

It had become enough of a habit that I did it anyway, though. I decided to try the same path that I took the day before. Yesterday, things had been all screwed up with the GPS or something, and my log was wrong. I wanted to see what it would be like if things went right, so I gave it another shot.

After the first mile, I realized that I was walking pretty fast, and I decided to do my best to keep that up the whole way. I walked three full miles, and a little change on top of that, and here's what my log said:

Pretty awesome, right? A way longer walk than usual, but I still did it at a much faster pace too. Basically a minute faster per mile than usual.

When I got home, though, I continued to brood over the fact that I'd totally f@#$ed up, and was going to have to start #75Hard over again from day one. 

I admit that I gave in, and allowed myself to eat some cheese, which I don't allow on my diet during #75Hard. This of course developed to allowing myself to eat some chocolate, some soda, some Red Vines, and so forth. That was dumb, but I was back at day zero. I was mad. Did I want to go back to it? I would have to start over again. Did I even want to do that at all?

There's a lot of good that comes with #75Hard, but a few things that I hate. The exercise is probably necessary, even though there's a whole lot of it. The diet part is pretty crucial as well. I even think the daily reading is really beneficial as well. It's good to slow down and read on a daily basis. I think it helps to keep me grounded.

Do I need to do the hated things though? Maybe if I did it this time, I could skip the water thing, and just drink water when I'm hungry. Some days I might drink a gallon of water, but others I wouldn't, because I didn't need it.

See, I believe our bodies are made to tell us when we're thirsty...or hungry...or when we need salt, etc. There are drinks we can guzzle that have no value to us, like alcohol or soda, and those circumvent our natural ability to know when to say when, but with water, food, and salt, we always know when to stop. A lot of people have so screwed up their ability to recognize their hunger and satiety signals, however, because they eat mostly garbage that can't be classified as food, but when you only eat food, your body tells you when to stop. As it also does with water.

Pretty much nobody binges or overdoes it on water. You could, but it is difficult. If you're not thirsty, water just isn't appealing to you, and several times during #75Hard, I had to force myself to drink the water even though I didn't want it, and knew that I didn't need it.

I could also skip the daily progress picture, because it's kind of worthless. I mean, a starting picture and an ending picture is useful, but what's the point of a picture every day? There's no change from one day to the next. I could ditch that too, right?

If I did that, though, could I say that I completed #75Hard at the end? I mean, I could say that I did, but I suppose I would be lying if I did, right? Maybe I could just make up my own name for it, and say that's what I was doing instead.

I have a real problem with that idea, though. I came to this program to develop mental toughness and fortitude--the ability to say that I took on a very hard thing, and I conquered it. If I soften the program in any way, then did I conquer it? No. 

Will I develop the confidence that conquering a hard thing should give me if I am dishonest in this way? I don't think so.

The point is not to just say that I achieved it. Not if I'm lying. Hell, I could just do that right now. The point is to gain the mettle in the trial by fire. The point is to believe in myself more, to feel like I can do whatever I put my mind to. I can do hard things. If I can beat #75Hard, then I can do so much more.

I think I have to go ahead and start from zero, and push forward until I get to 75. And if I screw up again, then I start over again, but I don't give up until I finally win. That's the point of the program, and I'm going to keep going, because I want to achieve that. So, I won't quit. Tomorrow is day number one again. We'll see if I can manage even better this time.

I think, though, that maybe I ought to make reading my book the first task each day, so I stop blowing it by forgetting it late at night.

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

Over the last few years, I have acquired a bunch of Halloween related toys to use for sprucing up my den during the joyous fall season. 

I have to admit, however, that this years I just didn't feel like putting them out. It was going to take a bunch of work, and nobody cares about Halloween this year anyway. 

It's already been banned in all sorts of towns across the country, or just discouraged if the local politicians don't feel like they have enough of a mandate to ban it outright. 

What is the point of putting up decorations? Just to depress myself with a constant reminder that Halloween is cancelled?

Some people along my street didn't have the same depression about it all that I did, and just went ahead and decorated for the season like it was 2019 or something. At first it didn't help much, but at last, my neighbor across the street put up one decoration that I liked so much that it made me want to contribute to the decorations. 

I blogged about it at little, and said that if I did finally get around to putting up my decorations, I would post about it on here.

Well, last weekend, my family decided to put up the decorations for the rest of the house. They had a good time doing it, and it inspired me to haul my box of Halloween toys out of the closet, and start sifting through it. This is what I felt like:

Seeing all those toys again, remembering the way they spruced up my shelves last year, just made me happy. I couldn't deny them their place on my shelves any longer, so I got to work putting them in their place. It took me a whole week to get them all up, but here are the promised pictures I swore I would supply.

It's getting to the point that there are no spaces left for non-Halloween related toys during the Halloween season. I've bought a lot of stuff. The only thing that isn't at least Halloween adjacent in that picture is the scout walker. I wonder if I could come up with a way to make it scary.

I put the Ghostbusters back on the main shelves. They used to be there all the time, but other, newer toys came along and superseded them. At least they fit in the context of Halloween. And that Ghostbusters symbol behind them is glow in the dark too.

These guys are Fortnite toys. I don't play Fortnite. I never have once, but I love guys dressed in skeleton costumes. There were two kinds of skull trooper toys made for Fortnite, one that is glow in the dark and one that is not. The glow in the dark ones are the ones with the black heads, and the one with the white head is the standard issue. I decided to make a crew of these guys, and putting that crew together sort of gave me an idea for a novel. It's still in the germination stage, but now that I can easily write every day, I am certain that I will definitely get around to getting that story written someday. Eventually, you will hear me advertising on your Facebook feed or something about my new book, "The Skeleton Crew."

This one is new this year, or at least partially new. The dollar store had these little coffins available this year, and my son put this skeleton guy that I'd bought a year or two back together with it, which was perfect, because he's just the right size.

I got this zombie Viking as a birthday present from my friend. I believe he had already bought himself a zombie Packer, and liked it so much that he thought I would enjoy the Vikings version.

Funny thing was that a few days later, another zombie Viking arrived. When I asked him if he meant to do that, he said he had been ordering the first one, and his computer did something weird, and he assumed that the order hadn't gone through, so he came back later and ordered another when his computer was working again. He told me just to keep them both. I usually only keep one on the shelf at a time, but when Halloween arrives, there's no need to limit my zombies.

Here's another one of my divided shelves. At this point there's only one partition that still has regular toys in it. By next year, I bet there will be none.

This one has more spaces with non-Halloween guys, but it surely won't last long either. So many fun skull-faced toys.

This is a gigantic Man-Bat from one of my favorite lines of toys, the Titan Heroes...although I think DC had some other name for the line which was totally forgettable. I love the toys, because they are usually super detailed sculpts, and if you have the time and patience, you can usually turn these very cheap toys into something that looks much more expensive. Man-Bat is a kind of silly Batman villain (as opposed to Condiment King who is legitimately menacing), but he looks good as a Halloween decoration...a kind of vampire bat-man of sorts.

I got Ghost Rider as a Halloween decoration originally, but the figure was so awesome, I decided to leave him up year round. I did move him over to this side of the room (the clean side, as opposed to the messy side on the other wall) during Halloween. My favorite part of this shelf, however, is Snake Eyes, who I replaced the head with a skull to turn him Halloweeny.

The skull on Spider-man here is from the dollar store. They came in a big bag of skulls. My wife used most of them to fill some jars in her regular decorations, but I thought they would look great in place of my larger figures' real heads. I like to try to come up with cheesy pun names for these ones. So, how about "The Skull-it Spider?"

And this one is Iron Skull (yeah, that's taken by some version of Red Skull in an Iron Man suit, but I don't care. In fact, I like it better because of that).

And this one is Skullbuster...another one that's already taken, but I don't care.

I also have a big Captain America that I put one of those skulls on last year, and named him Skull Cap, but he hasn't been on the shelf since the Fourth of July this year, and I don't feel like pulling anything else off to bring him in. Instead I used the other skulls on these guys.

Yeah, I know, they're totally silly. The heads are about as out of scale as possible, but I still love it. Skull-clops and Skull-verine are having a good holiday this year.

 

This one is one of my favorites that I put together last year. They came out with these cartoony versions of the most iconic scary movie guys, and called them Toony Terrors. I thought they'd go perfect with Scooby-Doo characters, so I made this Jason vs. the gang from Mystery Inc. For once, Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scoob found a bad guy that they probably shouldn't have meddled with. 

 

The blood and guts are made from Play-Doh. Might be funnier if I got some more realistic looking gore, but then again it might not. I like it the way it is. They're cartoon characters after all, they likely don't have realistic looking innards.

 

Lastly is this masterpiece. I made the two trees and the graves. The fog on the ground is from pulled apart cotton balls. Does it look like fog to you or just snow? I can't decide if it works or not, though I can't think of any other option to replace it with, so it likely doesn't matter.

These are Mythic Legions figures. I like to think that the story behind this is that the demon sorceress and her vampyre consort came to this graveyard and raised these skeletons from the dead to help them go forth and fight their enemies in yon castle. Now the Deadites roam the world. Where is Ash when we need him?

Thanks for running through my Halloween decorations with me. I hope you enjoy them at least half as much as I do.

Day 28 (75 Hard)

I decided to try something a little different with my walk today. Yesterday, after biking around with my son, I was looking at the map of the trails, and I noticed that there were some spots where I could make a loop, rather than just turning around and heading back to where I started from. I had to walk a little further to manage that, but not a ton further, so I gave it a shot today.

My runtracker app (I'm not even sure what it's called...the old program I used to use back in the day was called runkeeper, but that seems to have died off since I last did running/walking on a regular basis) was having some issues today. After the first mile, it told me I had been walking for 27 minutes...which I knew to be false, because I've never even come close to taking 27 minutes to walk a mile, even on my worst days.

Also, there's the whole segment where it seems to not even know where I was, and it just drew a straight line from the end of one reading to the start of the next. Maybe my GPS wasn't working well today or something. I think I actually walked closer to three miles today than 2.5, because Google Maps said that the route should be 3.2 miles long. I guess I could try it again on another day, and see how it goes.

After walking was yoga, here's me doing a back twist thing. I don't know if this position has a name or not. Rodney Yee doesn't call it anything like Warrior 1 or Mountain Pose or anything.

The rest of the day was pretty typical. I drank my water, a liter and a half of it was a Topo Chico that I got at the gas station on the way into work. Work was totally normal, and then I went home, and hit the sack. I slept well, though morning seemed to come earlier than I wanted it to. The daylight savings time changeover must be coming soon, because it's about pitch black at 7:00 AM when I wake up.

I got my son ready for school, then got dressed to go for my walk. I sat beside my bed to put on my shoes, and saw my book sitting there on my nightstand. Suddenly, I realized that I had just gone to bed last night without even thinking for a second about reading my book, or, for that matter, taking my progress picture.

Holy crap! I blew it! I forgot to read my book again. That's the same thing I did back on September 12th when I blew it the first time around, but that was only five days in. Now I was 28 days in when I blew it. That's a whole month of effort down the drain.

Now, to be fair, the effort is not down the drain. All of the benefits that come to a person when they eat right and exercise came to me for those 28 days. But, now I have to start over at day one, with 75 more to go in front of me. Do I still want to do this? I guess I'll have to think about that a little bit.

Prime Day 2020

Everything has been wonky in 2020, but it’s nice to see that we always do make sure to celebrate the most important things, even if it takes us a while to get around to it. Happy Prime Day, everyone. Remember, he died that all sentient beings might have freedom!

Day 27 (75 Hard)

Today, I didn't want to have the same trouble that I had yesterday with the late workouts. So, I got out the door first thing in the morning, and walked my 45 minutes.

 

Notice the time on my log is better than yesterday, since I got to walk in the morning.

 

 

While I was out walking around, I came across the bridge that I usually cross, and found that we had ourselves an adventurous little turtle that had gone walkabout.

I decided to go down and get a closer look at him, to take a few pictures, and he did what turtles are known for, sucking back inside of his shell as far as he could. So, I stood there for a long time, to see if he would give up waiting for me to attack, and come back out of his shell.

He very slowly emerged.

Then he got adventurous enough to start moving again. I switched over to video, and took some of that too.

I really like turtles a lot. My brother had a couple of them as pets when I was a kid, and I just thought it was so neat to see them swimming around, chomping on goldfish. I find the wild ones here in Houston to be equally amazing. I've always found it kind of midboggling that turtles can survive in the wild, frankly, but here they are, proving to me that it is possible. 

There would be more turtles before the day ended, but first, I went home and did my yoga. This is me doing tree pose. I suck at this. Balancing on one foot is not easy for me. I'm endlessly tipping over.

After yoga, I was talking with my wife about how I do yoga two days in a row on Sunday and Monday. I do weight lifting three days a week, and I do yoga three days a week, but since there's seven days a week, I have to do something on Sunday. She suggested that I ought to try to fix my bike, and maybe I could do biking on Sundays.

That seemed like a good idea. I'd finally found tires at the bike section of the store a few weeks back, and bought inner tubes and new pedals for my bike, because all of them were shot. I'd left my bike in this state of disrepair since before we moved to Texas, but now was the time to change that.

I started working on it, and at that moment, Rish called me to chat. So, I put on my headset, and talking with him as I worked on it. I'm not particularly mechanically inclined, so I don't do very well with tasks like this, but somehow, with only small and surmountable setbacks, I managed to change both inner tubes as well as both pedals. By the time I was done talking with Rish, I was ready to go for a bike ride.

My son learned to ride his bike after we moved, so he's never been on a bike ride with me. He's always had to go with his sisters on the one bike (other than his) that was in good repair. He was excited to hear that my bike was fixed, and wanted to go for a ride right away.

I had to make him wait until I finished eating my meal for the day, and then we got out the door and started pedaling away.

It was a lot of fun. We rode through the same trails that I walk on each day, but were able to go much further due to our extra speed. We wound up at a bridge that I found on the map called Turtle Bridge II. I guess it was a sequel, I don't know.

Here's a video I shot at the bridge.

We stood there looking at the turtles and fish for just a little while, then started back the way we came. I didn't use my running app that tracks your distance, but when we got home, I got online and and checked the distance on Google Maps. It said we did six miles round trip. I'm pretty sure that was true, because the pain in my butt from the bike seat attested to it.

The rest of the day I was tired from all the exercise I did, but I still managed to get in the water drinking and reading and picture taking. One extra thing I did today was take a bath with Epsom salts in the water. That's supposed to help give you magnesium, so I thought it was worth giving it a shot.

We'll see how I feel tomorrow. Maybe I'll start doing it all the time.

Day 26 (75 Hard)

My wife's friend from work was getting married today, and it was happening relatively early in the morning, so rather than taking my usual early morning walk, I had to put on a tie and a dress shirt, and drive almost all the way to Galveston to watch his marriage.

When the wedding was over, they said there were light hors d'oeuvres to eat afterward. I was thinking something like little sandwiches or something similar to that, but no, what they meant was Halloween candy and cupcakes. Needless to say, I waited until later to finally eat. I did have a glass of water, though.

I didn't get out for my walk until well into afternoon. It was much warmer than I'm used to. The morning temperatures have been pretty good recently, but this late in the day, it gets pretty hot.

Here's my walk log. A little slower than yesterday, surely that was due to being completely worn out from creating all that sweat.

After getting home, I went straight out to the garage, and did my weight lifting. I was pretty tired for that one too. I took a much longer break than usual between each lift. I don't really care, though. As long as I finish, that's all that matters. Here's me doing push ups.

I looked up the other day just how much weight you actually lift when doing push ups, and the internet says that it's about 75% of your body weight. Kind of amazing that I can push that much weight up at all.

After working out, I went inside and sat on the couch. I wanted to go take a shower, and get ready to go grocery shopping, but I was just kind of tired. Instead of doing anything, I fell asleep there on the couch.

I had the weirdest dream. Me and my wife were in the visitor center of a state park or a national park or something, and we were about to enter the park, but we had to pass a screening test for Covid-19 before we were allowed. 

Up until this moment, I had been fine, but when the lady asked me if I had experienced any of the following symptoms, I was suddenly overcome with an intense dizziness.

I had to sit down, but that wasn't even enough, because I fell off my chair. The weird thing about the dream was that the dizziness was real. I could feel it the same way I would have if I had been awake.

For the next while, I wallowed all over the floor, insisting that I was okay, but then falling over if I tried to get up. It was so weird and unpleasant. When my wife woke me up, and I realized that it was just a dream and not real, I was so relieved.

There's something absolutely horrible about not being able to control your own body. It's like they say, if you don't have your health, then you don't have anything.

Is dizziness a symptom of coronavirus? I don't think so, but I guess I'm sitting at the computer, I could look it up.

Nope, looks like the symptoms are:

• Fever or chills
• Cough
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Fatigue
• Muscle or body aches
• Headache
• New loss of taste or smell
• Sore throat
• Congestion or runny nose
• Nausea or vomiting
• Diarrhea

So, I guess I was safe even in my dream...from Covid anyway, there was possibly something even worse wrong with me, but wakefulness healed me. Hallelujah!

Anyway, I managed to get my book read, picture taken, and water drank, despite the dreamed dizziness and wedding time waste. So, I've made it through day 26.

Day 25 (75 Hard)

Today was another hurricane day. There's been a bunch of them this year, and this is the second one since I started #75Hard. Well, that's not quite true. The first one, Beta, was just a tropical storm not a hurricane. 

So, I had to head out into a rain storm for my outdoor exercise today. It wasn't bad, however. The storm hit way over in Louisiana, basically the exact same area that took the brunt of the even fiercer Hurricane Laura about six weeks ago. They haven't even gotten all the debris cleaned up off the side of the roads yet, and they're already getting hit again.

All I'm getting is a little wet, so I can't complain much about that.

Here's my log, that's a pretty respectable time, 19:40 per mile. I wonder how long till I will feel like I can try running. I want to lose a lot more weight first I think. It may not happen until long after #75Hard is over.

Friday's means yoga, so I went home, put on my Rodney Yee video, and followed along.

Work was a little crazy today, as you might expect when you're covering a hurricane. At one point, I did get a second to go outside and get a picture of the angry looking sky.

It looks foreboding, but it cleared out not long after this, and we had a normal sunset a few hours later, unlike the poor folks in Louisiana.

It should have been easier night at work, because it's also high school football night, which, as you might have guessed, they go all out for in Texas. We do a ton of high school football highlights, and the sports guys edit that stuff themselves, but somehow I still stayed as busy as I would have been on a non-football night.

I've been trying to read my book on my lunch break, but I didn't manage to do that today because of how busy it was, so I had to do that...and take my picture after getting home. Sooner or later, I'm going to space it and forget to take my picture and have to start over. I am in bed most nights before I remember about the picture, and I have to get out of bed, and go take the picture before I can go back to bed and go to sleep.

Oh, today is day 25 too. That should feel more significant to me. I'm 1/3 of the way through this undertaking. Doesn't really matter to me though. Probably because most days, I have no idea what number I'm on. I have to sit down later and blog about it to actually find out (I'm writing this on day 28, so I missed the chance to celebrate, and it means little to nothing now).

It's funny also, because I have no idea when my actual last day is. I tried to work it out with a calendar, but I could be off, because there's always that weirdness about counting the day that you are on. Sometime at the end of November, I think. That's good enough for me. I suppose as it gets closer, I'll care a little more.

Day 24 (75 Hard)

I didn't weigh myself at all today. I was afraid that if I saw the number on the scale going up, I might change my mind about skipping fasting. Today would have been a normal eating day, but all days are eating days now. I got up and went straight out on my walk:

Here's my walking log:

Although it's pretty useless this time. I didn't take 55:20 to do my walk today, and I didn't have a 23:52 per mile pace either. I forgot to turn off the app when I got home. I was home for about ten minutes before I realized it though.

I've done that many times before, so a lot of the time the numbers are off.

One really cool thing that happened today while on my walk was when I saw a blue jay. I've never seen one before. They don't have them in the west. They don't range out into those dry, desert areas where I've lived my whole life. They had a bird that I'd always called a bluebird growing up, but apparently its technical name is the California scrub-jay.

I've seen Stellar's jays before in some of the national parks I've visited. Here's a picture I took the last time I was in California in the redwoods:

Before I moved to Texas, I'd also never seen a cardinal.

I was pretty excited to see one of those for the first time with my own eyes, but those things are drab and boring compared to a blue jay. Sadly, I don't have a picture of my own, but it looked like this one:

Wings and tail all covered in stripes just like that. It was so cool.

When I got home, I didn't waste much time, moving straight into my weightlifting routine. Here's me doing one of my most hated exercises, lunges.

I went inside and took a shower immediately afterward, and for good measure, I read my book as soon as I got out, and even took my progress picture early instead of waiting till the moment I head to bed.

The one thing I forgot to do was drink any water all morning long. I wasn't really feeling thirsty, so I never thought about it. I got hungry before I ever got thirsty. I made bacon and eggs for my meal, and ate that before heading out to work.

I struggled all day with water. I just didn't want to drink any. I wasn't thirsty at all. I had to basically force myself to drink all day, and I still had about half a quart to go by the time I was heading home from work. I usually leave my cup at work, but I had to bring it home with me so that I could finish it off as I drove.

Just to make sure I didn't have to wake up several times in the night to pee, I made sure to spend about an hour and a half editing on our October Dunesteef episode so that I could do most of the peeing before I went to sleep. That was probably wise, because I think I peed three times during my editing session.