Weekly Round Up: Fireworks and a Snowman

 

A weekly round up: early retirement life, eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week I lived my best early retirement life and went on a four day road trip, there were fireworks, and Doggo encountered a giant snowman.

Early Retirement Life

I was thrown off my game a bit by the Cold from Hell, which was my main focus for the last half of November.  Now that it's pretty much hit the road, I hit the road.  I got another notch in my state capitol quest (story coming soon).  I'm weighing the weather right now, but I will most likely go somewhere warm next week and then hunker down for the holidays.

My self learning quest is unfolding as planned.

• I finished this year's continuing education for my CPA license before Thanksgiving, and I'll quickly step back into it right after the new year to get next year's credits out of the way.
• I'm 100% for doing at least one DuoLingo and one Pimsleur Spanish lesson each weekday, including during travel.  It's recommended to do the lessons every single day, but I decided to go with weekdays to start and bump it up later if I want to.  I'm a big fan of doing a lot of things most days, but the only thing that I want to do every single day of my life is to brush my teeth.  Once I finish the first unit of Pimsleur, I'll look to add in things like YouTube Spanish videos, Spanish TV shows, and maybe a simple grammar book since my learning methods don't involve a lot of writing.
• Oh yes I did it!  I know that Jenny was terribly concerned about my plans to study remedial math, but I moved forward and picked The University of Waterloo's grade 7 and 8 remedial math class as my starting point.  The first lessons are about integers and real numbers, and it's exactly like being back in real math class and asking, "when am I ever going to use this?".  Hey, at least I understand the concepts at this early stage!

[It's OK Jenny!  Friends let friends know when they could be making better use of their time]

I finished my deep clean and declutter of the upstairs of the house (specifically my section of our room, my office, and the two bathrooms - everything else belongs to other people who can deep clean their own spaces if they want to.  The decluttering was helpful, but otherwise 2/10 don't really recommend.  I'll continue the quest downstairs and in a few sections of the basement after the kids go back to school.

We got snow right before Thanksgiving, and even if we hadn't done the DNA test I think we would know that Doggo is 25% Husky.  Or more accurately she is 0% Husky for 75% of the year and 100% Husky in winter.  Girlfriend is here for the snow and spends long sessions with her belly on the ground playing with her frozen tennis ball.

Food

Nothing amazing to report.  I really like Recipe Rebel's creamy Italian sausage pasta this time of year.  It's easy to make, the colors are seasonal, and it tastes very fancy.  Just note that there is a typo in the recipe and where it says "2 and one half cups of broth" that really means 2 cups of broth and half a cup of white wine;-)

Hubs and I had a night out at one of our favorite local restaurants last weekend, and we just happened to be leaving at the same time that our city Christmas fireworks show started.  We've heard it but never seen it before.

Workouts

Lol, this is going to be more of a wellness section.  When I say that I'm retired I don't mean that I'm old, but my body is having a moment.

The pulled muscle in my chest is 90% better and coughing and sneezing are no longer painful.  That was my cue to slip on ice while walking the dog last Monday and do something awful to my tailbone.  One week and one day later it's much better, but still not 100%.

It was time for my annual COVID and flu shots, and c/o of my latest birthday I was also eligible for the shingles vax.  I've known a lot of people who have had the shingles, and it is high on my Do Not Want list.  But I also know from Hubs's experience that the side effects are fairly heinous, so I kept forgetting to schedule it because there was never a time when I was like "sure, I have nothing else going on for the next few days so I will volunteer to feel awful."

I was pondering all of this yesterday and realized that I didn't want to get my shots this weekend because the boys are coming home and didn't want to get my shots next week because I want to take a trip, and I also didn't want to wait until closer to the holiday because I'll be hanging out with a lot of people so I want to give the ol' immune system a head start.  That's when it clicked that right now was the time.  I headed out to the drug store and got 'er done.  If anyone wants to know, when you're doing the triple poke they recommend getting the COVID and flu shots in the same arm and the shingles shot in a different arm.  Since I'm left handed I picked that arm for the devils that I know and my right for the newbie.

Verdict: Of course I feel not great 24 hours later and both arms hurt equally, but it feels less awful than my first two COVID shots.  Triple dip FTW!  I'll report back on how the second shingles shot goes when I get it in a few months.

Anyway, this is all temporary stuff that will clear up sooner or later.  I'm back to doing very simple cardio on the treadmill.  I'm pausing all strength work until my pulled muscle, arms, and tailbone are back to 100%.  It was fairly easy to get the 3x/week body weight strength routine going so I'm not worried about being able to get back to it (and maybe seeing some progress???) once everything stops hurting.

Watching

If you want to be taken seriously, you need serious hair!  Aw yiss, I saw Working Girl while I was on my trip.  Apart from some 80's relationship and sex stuff that hasn't aged well, it's a cute movie and I enjoyed it.

Hubs and I have been on the lookout for another Hot Couples TV show, and we finally settled on Severance.  We've only seen the first episode so far, but we liked it.

And then of course there are always Alfred Hitchcock movies!

Reading

I finished The Correspondent on audio on my trip, and it ended up being a 😻😻😻.  As a reminder, when I tried to read the book it was a DNF, and as soon as I listened to the audio it clicked with me.  The ending made made me cry and there was a moment of tension since I only had four kleenex in the car, but thankfully it was a "two hankie" cry.

Then I read a really good book that I wish I hadn't read.  Do you know what I mean?  The writing was flawless and the characters came to life, but it was about unpleasant stuff.  If you are in the market for something like this, Dominion by Addie E. Citchens is your book.

Currently: I'm reading Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent, which I only know about from the Sarah's Bookshelves podcast.  It's a mystery set in the world of Oxford linguistics, and the only reason that I am reading it is because of the author.  I know her better from 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, which makes up a sizable portion of the YouTube viewing in my house.  So far I like the author a lot more than the book, but I'm sticking with it.

Peace Out!  See you soon to talk about the trip!