Today 20Sept2023

It has been a hard day, but my luck has held, and I have a negative COVID-19 test. Yay!

But, at Susie’s place, the Alliegence hummingbird house, they are partially locked down as the residents are coughing and showing cold or flu symptoms. Susie, specifically, is exhausted and sneezing all the time. I am having muscle aches, exhaustion, and sneezing too. Pooh! Today has been a struggle to focus and do the usual stuff while working from home.

The day started with me climbing out of bed, which took five minutes; oh my! I filled the electric kettle with water and turned it on. I boarded the Immobile Schwinn bike and could only do fifteen minutes and 3.3 miles. I am trying to get back to thirty minutes. All day, I was struggling–likely a cold or light flu.

I composed a breakfast of a cinnamon roll I made last night. I used the hot water to make coffee in my French Press: Liberal Coffee. I consumed this bounty while reading my emails, Slack channel updates from work, and the news. I started my usual battery of hours of Zoom status meetings that paused at 9ish. I then slipped out of the home office and got a shower. I am still trying to get used to the new shower head and only once washed the bathroom floor! After being presentable, I had more Zoom meetings and even used the camera.

I made lunch early as the sugar high, not a good thing for a diabetic, faded, and I was hungry. I reheated the Swedish meatball I made yesterday, got an apple (store-bought), and cottage cheese (small curd) with pepper, sea salt, and smoked paprika. I added a spoonful of the lingenberry jam to go with the meatballs. Quite nice and soon gone as I was hungry.

While eating, I watched some YouTube stuff on board games and shipwrecks and tried to wake up. I was drinking a lot of hot tea, and I was just dragging. Next, I called Susie on Alexa and talked for a bit. They are partially locked down, not from COVID-19, but from flu and cold–everyone is coughing or sneezing.

I read some more work stuff and sent out some questions and requests. I finally stopped about 4PM but checked in a few times (and have a 10PM meeting tonight).

For dinner, I boiled some gnocchi that was starting to age and heated a jar of pasta sauce. While inexpensive, the product is qulovelynice (I left that in as it was funny–Grammarly sometimes gets mixed up with the WordPress editor), more like freshly made. I drained the gnocchi and just mixed the two. I then got some Parmigiano–Reggiano cheese and broke off bits with a knife (I occasionally buy a piece at Whole Foods). That was dinner with buttered bread. It was excellent, and I was very hungry (also a sign that I was ill). I continued my rewatching of the extended version of the LOTR movies. Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers has the nearly perfect mix of tension and laughs. Peter is even in the film at Helm’s Deep throwing a javelin.

I decided to finally write this blog and take tomorrow off to try to eliminate this exhaustion.

I also have been reading The Shortest History of the Soviet Union, and I strongly recommend this book. It is so condensed it never feels boring or slow going. It is good to review all of this to get my memories checked.

I also had a snack of, yes, more cinnamon rolls.

Thanks for reading.