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Just like that…
And nine months have passed this year. Wow! It already seems like an age ago I returned from my US trip.
Things are going okay in this part of the world. It’s supposed to be spring but after about a week of really lovely weather, the temperatures dropped and it’s been rather chilly most days. Today there was a chance of rain but I don’t think any fell around here. Now it’s just cool and windy and feels more like winter. The tell-tell sign of spring is the massive amount of pollen flying about. A week ago, the Scientist suffered terribly after he got out with the line trimmer to cut some of the long grass in the backyard. I was trying to follow along and do the mowing after him. Between the two of us, we got a lot accomplished. But he was in misery by that evening and suffered for a day or two afterwards. We still have a lot of work to do out there but it’s enough to be able to sit in that corner of the yard and enjoy the sun in the late afternoon.
In nine days it will be Game Fanatic’s birthday. He is 28 this year which seems so old. But then it really has been that long since he was born. I’ve been in Australia that many years now and even that seems a long time ago. It used to be I felt like everything before I came here was a lifetime ago. Now I guess it’s more like two lifetimes ago? :D
I’ve been in a period of difficulty with my exercise. I’d been in a regular habit for a few weeks and it was all going well. But then something stops things working and now I am trying to regain a habit. I am still exercising but not getting to the gym as often. I’ve spent more time walking the dogs and a little bit trying to run short distances. It’s more a challenge than anything and I doubt I will ever do more than run for a couple of minutes at a time. But it’s an interesting shift in activity. I also haven’t gone to a pilates class in a while. I still have clinical pilates with the physiotherapist every second week. But I haven’t attended the class through my fitness center at all recently. This is one of those habits that broke, mostly because I found it really difficult to do the pilates on Thursday night and follow with clinical pilates the following morning.
Relating to the dog walks, we had to take one to the vet recently and when she was weighed, she had lost at least 1kg since her last visit. So the short walks we do with her are helping with the weight, which should also help with her arthritis.
I got a new iPhone when they were released last month. My old one was three years old so it was time. Or maybe it’s more like I was fed up with a couple of issues on it that I hoped would be better now. The issues haven’t been resolved the way I hoped but I think there was no chance of getting the resolution I wanted. So far I am really liking the new phone. The case is one thing that I’m getting used it. It’s a clear case to show off the lovely dark purple of the phone. But the material it’s made of doesn’t feel quite right in my hands. I will be getting a different case to use when I’m cycling and I feel sure that will feel more comfortable because I have already had a case like it for the older phone. The camera on this has major improvements but I must admit I haven’t used it all that much yet. I suspect I find it a bit overwhelming as it’s far more powerful. I remember the first phone I got that had a camera and it was supposed to be really good. But it wasn’t any good at all. This one is quite wonderful and I could even get super high resolution if I wanted. I have plans to upgrade the watch sometime soon too.
I had an MRI done on my liver a few weeks ago. I have continued to have deranged liver function tests and nothing has been determined to be a reasonable cause. The numbers aren’t that terrible but there are three that have been out of range the last several tests. I had a CT scan early this year that said my liver looked just fine and there was no mention of the fatty liver that showed on earlier ultrasound scans. Of course, my liver function tests looked really good too at the time. The MRI is supposed to check into that but I haven’t got my results yet. By the time the test was done and the results came through, my doctor was away on leave. I have an appointment next week to discuss the results. I’m not really that worried about it but I am curious if anything shows up.
Our deranged smart light continues to cause trouble. The Scientist got rid of something that might have been causing a conflict but it continues to occur. This past night it was the worst ever. Normally after a number of times turning it off, it will remain off. I woke up several times in the night and every time the light was back on. It even continued into the morning, which I don’t think has happened before. We actually have two different types of smart lighting so our next effort will likely mean we remove the current bulb and use one from the other type. That has a couple of downsides but it would be doable.
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Awkwardness
While I was on my holiday in the US, I did a road trip and visited various friends and family along the way. This particular story relates to a visit I had while in Pennsylvania.
I spent three nights in Pennsylvania with my aunt and her husband and during that time I had a visit from my cousin. Actually, it’s my mom’s cousin but she is my age. We grew up calling her a second cousin but I’m not too clear if that’s the right terminology. My grandmother had eight younger brothers and sisters. This cousin is the daughter of the second youngest brother.
My cousin K and I made arrangements for her to visit me at my aunt’s house one afternoon. She came there with her partner, much like she did the last time I saw her. We had a pretty nice visit while there and caught up on a few things in the family. It was going okay until we started discussing her brothers. One of her brothers had been in the hospital at the time with issues that hadn’t been diagnosed at the time. We talked a bit about that and suddenly she decided to phone him and put him on to speak with me. This is where it gets awkward because I have seen cousin K2 since we were children, maybe teenagers at the oldest. There’s another brother, my cousin, K3 that is pretty much the same. So there’s nothing quite like speaking to a virtual stranger for a few minutes. We did exchange a few words and I wished him better health and all that. But it was super difficult.
My cousin K and I spoke a bit more and then she decided I needed to speak to her other brother and put me on to him too. Another awkward conversation followed. It was slightly less awkward since he wasn’t in the hospital but it was a strange conversation.
I love my cousin but I guess this is part of her character and she is totally clueless about the situation she put us in. My guess is the brothers have been put in this situation many times before.
Fast-forward a few months and I see my cousin has posted on her Facebook account that her brother has lung and brain cancer. :( She and I aren’t close but I was watching for an update on her brother. I had kind of thought that whatever issue that had existed had resolved. Apparently not. I can’t imagine a double diagnosis like that has even a hopeful prognosis. I know brain cancer is particularly difficult to treat in a lot of patients. Knowing that he is unlikely to survive this makes me really sad. And partly sad for the fact I don’t really know him. Not that it’s possible to know all those in your family, especially when there are large families involved.
A couple of days after that post, she posted her other brother had gotten married. She also put up a bunch of photos of the bride and groom. Mostly there were photos of the bride’s family. There was one with my cousin and her brother with his bride and one of her partner, I think (It was a blurry photo). All the rest were of the bride’s family and friends. Maybe my aunt and uncle weren’t there due to the health issues of the other brother? I think this was the cousin’s first marriage and I hope it’s a happy and long-lasting marriage.
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More on Fitter
There was one point I meant to include in my last post. Normally my diet and exercise fall off the tracks a bit during the winter. I think this is the first time in many years that I have managed to maintain a reasonable amount of exercise through the season. So yay to me! The weather is already shifting towards spring and I am already in a good place. And that makes me kind of happy. :)
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Fitter
Yesterday I went to the gym and did a “session” on the recumbent bike. I’d done it before but I found it was a bit of a struggle at times. This time, I must have been having a good day because it felt like very little effort at all. I think I also have built up a bit of muscle from doing these sessions and maybe I am just that bit stronger? Anyway, it was a good feeling to be so improved. Except I came back feeling like I hadn’t really done any exercise and it felt like I cheated. LOL
The recumbent bike is easier than the upright but I have been doing the harder workouts there too. I will feel more accomplished once I can complete a beginner workout with the beginner settings. At the moment I find it too hard to maintain for long so I decided to adjust the settings to make it do-able.
I feel like I have settled into a routine with my exercise lately. My goal is to do two weight sessions a week and that’s happening pretty regularly. I do one on the weekend and one during the week. On Tuesdays I have tai chi and fan/sword practice for 1.5 hours. On Thursday evenings I go to a pilates class. The other days I do cardio exercise, which is when I tend to use the bikes and treadmill. There are rowing machines but I haven’t used those for quite a while now.
For the weights workout I had one of the trainers update my list of exercises for a longer session. But I found it got a bit too long so that I was at the gym for nearly two hours. I’ve now managed to shift a couple of those exercises to my workout two and hopefully it will be more balanced.
On the treadmill I have mostly been doing interval work where I walk for a while and then I either walk really fast or do a bit of a jog. I was trying this fairly often and found I could manage with the breathing and heart rate. My feet and knees are a bit trickier to handle so I have cut back on that.
In addition to that I have been attempting to take the dogs for a walk much more often. One of the dogs is overweight and has arthritis so getting her walking is definitely an improvement. I can’t say I get that much exercise from walks with her. But the other dog moves quickly so I can get a good half hour in with him. So it’s good news for all of us. :)
I also started back to clinical pilates every fortnight and so every second Friday I have that class in the morning. Last week I had some tough exercises and I was so sore afterwards.
Overall I feel much fitter and balanced than I have in a while. I also have allowed for rest days when my muscles are particularly sore and that’s okay.
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Books I’ve been reading
Like many other habits, my reading slowed down quite a bit while I was in the US. I’ve been making goals on Goodreads each year to finish 100 books and I’ve been behind on that for most of the year. But I am just about caught up now.
I recently read My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan and I immensely enjoyed it. At first, it seemed to be a contemporary romantic comedy but about a third of the way through I discovered it was not quite the light read I expected. Also, it wasn’t an original story but one based on a script for a movie, I think. This one is about a young woman who gets a Rhodes Scholarship and goes to Oxford for a year while also working on an election campaign back home in the US.
I read The Venice Train by Georges Simenon very recently for Netgalley. I know of Simenon for his series of Maigret detective stories although I haven’t read any of his work before. This one turned out to be a psychological thriller of sorts. It has such good pacing that it has you on the edge of your seat much of the time. It’s about a man who leaves his family’s holiday in Venice to return to Paris by train. On the way back a stranger requests a favor that upends his life in the most negative of ways.
A non-fiction book that was quite good is Secrets of Women’s Healthy Ageing: Living Better, Living Longer by Cassandra Szoeke. The author is part of a long-term research study on women’s health here in Australia that has been running for thirty years. There are a number of important takeaways but for me, the most important one was to keep moving. It seems keeping active will affect most areas of life positively, from blood sugar to bone health to mental health. There’s a lot of interesting information with regard to research into women’s health too.
Also non-fiction is the memoir by Hannah Gadsby. I first read this as an ebook and then it was available as an audiobook so I checked that out and listened and it was quite good. There’s some pretty tough material in the book and Hannah narrates in a similar way to her comedy and it worked really well for me. I had listened to another memoir from another Australian comedian and it just didn’t sound quite right. I think I would have enjoyed reading more than listening. This one is done beautifully.
Lastly, I am currently rereading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. My parents had this book on their shelves and I read it probably during my teenage years. It really left a big impression at the time which has remained with me since. I decided enough years have passed that it’s definitely worth a revisit and I started reading it on ebook. I’m only a couple of chapters in, but I will note the beautiful language used to start the book. I don’t suppose I appreciated this so much at the time I first read it but it is really well written.
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Techno Trials
We got our first internet connection years and years ago and for the most part, it worked well in those earlier days. Even in more recent days, it hasn’t been the worst it could be. Problems began when we added in wi-fi to our connection as we have some signal issues from the office (at the back of the house) to the living room (front of the house). There have always been some iffy spots in the living room where connections were tricky. Earlier in the year, we finally broke down and got a mesh system to extend our wif-fi. That was a pretty expensive set-up with the improvement being fairly minimal. But we stuck with it until an update to the hardware changed something so that we could no longer connect. The mesh system was taken back to the store and it was sent off for repair. Weeks later, we hadn’t heard anything so the Scientist checked up on it and it seems the manufacturer wasn’t interested in repair. We got our money back.
We opted not to go back to the mesh system and to investigate getting a couple of extra access points. The Scientist got some quotes and we had someone out this week to do the installation. I am happy to report we have some massive improvements at the front of the house and it’s now possible to sit anywhere with our devices and access the internet.
Meanwhile, we have an ongoing problem with our smart lighting. We got some smart light bulbs a few years ago for most of the rooms in our house. They fall on two systems but mostly worked okay for us. Some of the systems have been enhanced by using automation apps and those have had various rates of success. But mostly we just used voice commands to turn lights on and off. In recent months, we’ve turned off the living room light by voice or through the app for the lights and the light will come back on within seconds or minutes…with no obvious reasons. I got an email from one of the automation apps I once used so thought perhaps I had some routine on there. But there were two things listed, totally unrelated. I deleted those and the app and thought the living room light issue had been solved. Alas, it continues to cause problems. We can turn it off through the app ten times and it will pop back on shortly afterwards. Or just after you feel it’s safe to do so. We assume there must be some other automation that is conflicting but can’t figure it out. So the quest to fix this issue continues…
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I’m back!!!
I had fully intended to post many times over the past several months but I never managed to fulfil the intention.
I went to the US at the end of March and was there for seven weeks before returning to normal life. I hope to post more about my trip at some point and not just the flying parts.
I’ve been home for about three months now so it now seems like my travel was in the distant past. Overall, it was a good visit and I got in some quality time with my parents and other family and friends.
I got back into workouts at the gym after I got home and I am in a nice and regular pattern of exercise. I am doing a strength workout about two times a week and cardio a couple of times. Then I do tai chi once a week and pilates on other days. I do clinical pilates every second Friday which involves the equipment and then I take part in general classes as part of my gym membership when I feel like it.
My work has been a bit scattered since I got home. I was doing relief work for the other support workers for a while but I am mostly back to my usual schedule.
We are nearing the end of winter here in Western Australia. Earlier it was dryer than usual and now it’s been quite wet for a few weeks. Also, the temperatures haven’t been as cool overall as usual. Our yard is in desperate need of mowing and I’m hoping to get on to that after a few days of dry weather now.
I discovered my iron levels are still good after a blood test last week. Several of my liver enzymes were elevated though, and I just did a follow-up blood test to investigate further. I think they took 8 or 9 vials this time. Phew! I’m having results emailed to me so I may get those before I speak to my doctor again.
I had my fourth COVID vaccine in July so I guess I now wait for the fifth one. Of all the jabs, this one caused me the most trouble. My arm was throbbing a few days afterwards for this one and was sore for well over a week. All is good now, though, and to my knowledge, I haven’t had it as yet. Mask mandates stopped ages ago but I am still wearing one when I go out to most places. The exception is the gym while exercising. For the most part there usually aren’t large numbers there anyway, but I do still try to keep some distance.
I guess that wraps up my summary of things since my last post. I plan to do a couple of in-depth posts about my travel and some other posts about random things.
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Open
As of today (March 3rd), Western Australia is open again. For those who are vaxed, no quarantine is required unless there are positive covid tests and symptoms.
The numbers continue to increase but the current prediction is that our peak will be in the next couple of weeks. It seems the vaccination may be helping keep numbers down. There was another death reported today but the hospitalisation rate is quite good. Today there were over 2400 cases reported and I think only 22 are in the hospital.
We do have more restrictions in place now, which limit some events to the point they have been cancelled. I just saw that one of the food truck events will stop running for the rest of the season as the logistics are too hard to work around. The fair we went to last year was also cancelled at some point, which is a shame because we really enjoyed that. But we had a covid free state at the time so things were different.
One thing I have noticed is that the hot spots almost all are outside of the Perth area. I know there are cases locally but it would seem they are worse in some of the country towns. At least that’s my impression.
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Finished
I finished Where the Crawdads Sing today and I must admit it was a bit of a disappointment for me. While I enjoyed listening to much of the story, I got hung up on some details and couldn’t get past it. Mostly the constant reference to Asheville as the place people went to reach the big town. Asheville is a good seven to eight hours away and there are so many cities that would be better suited instead. I just kept thinking why they had to go so far away…and how could they afford it? I also found the ending just didn’t work for me on a couple of fronts. I kind of see where the writer was coming from but it just didn’t fit the story (for me) even though I kind of saw it coming.
I was reading a review of the book from someone who lives in the coastal area of NC and the Asheville thing was also mentioned. I honestly thought more people would speak up about that but perhaps not many know much about NC geography. I once drove from Winston-Salem to Elizabeth City (which is still probably an hour from the coast) and it took me five to six hours going and longer coming back (due to terrible fog) and it’s a long drive.
That review also mentioned the fact they don’t call them fireflies there but lightning bugs. I didn’t notice that when reading but that is the term used in the area. It’s details like this that seem to precipitate sayings about writing what you know. It just doesn’t seem the writer knows the territory very well. That said, I read she now lives in Asheville so perhaps she does have a clue now.
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Much better
I made the second banana bread last night and it was a huge success. It didn’t sink when finished and the texture is lovely. Not to mention the addition of the chocolate chips. The recipe I used is the same one I almost always use, from the Woman’s Day Cookery Encyclopedia. It’s a multiple volume set and our family had one while I was growing up. Our set was missing the last volume. I found a set decades ago in a secondhand shop and bought it and it’s still sitting on the shelves. I have to admit I don’t use it all that much but there’s such nostalgia connected with it that I don’t want to let it go just yet either.
Anyway, the recipe for banana bread has been a favorite for many years. My only difference is that I don’t add nuts because I don’t like nuts in my bread. I have done this recipe so many times I don’t have to look it up. But yesterday I decided to mix the ingredients in a different order than usual. I added the baking powder and soda, salt, and vanilla earlier so they could be mixed more thoroughly. It seemed to work really well for me so I might just follow this variation in the future.