Checked my online weather site of choice just after lunch. Holy smokes, temps in the high fifties! Took my first exercise-walk in a month (or so). It winded my and made me light headed, which I don't recall happening before. Heart reading soon afterward shows blood pressure okay at 109/65 but pulse a little high at 95.

Otherwise I've done no projects worth mentioning, my time still being spent playing the game Mashinky.

The weather here has been gorgeous this weekend! Yesterday saw temps in the high 60’s and today we are in the 70’s!

An on-again off-again project of sorts, normally doomed to failure: I successfully slept in my bed, lying on my back, several hours during the night. The first is now a rarity, the second almost unheard of any more. What's more, I woke circa 0430 to a neck in appreciably less pain than usual. (Neck pain has since returned, but is not (yet?) as pronounced as is my norm this days.)

This came about because I woke from sleeping on my side on the sofa at 0230 to a neck hurting even worse than usual. I wanted to get in a bit more sleep but knew I couldn't tolerate the sofa any longer. I hesitantly and with some reluctance decided to give the bed another chance. I know my bed mattress and add-ons to be a poor choice for side sleep, but in its current configuration untested for back sleep. I gave the latter a go. To my surprise, none of various shoulder, upper and/or lower back pains that normally afflict me while lying abed did so. Next then I know I wake and see its 0430. No back pain. No shoulder pain. Greatly diminished neck pain. (I also have neck pain to some extent, though it can be ignoreably insignificant. More stiffness than pain.) Quite a pleasant surprised, and very refreshing.

A little snooze inducing history:

1) From the mid 80s up until circa 2013/14 I slept on a waterbed mattress that was ultra comfortable to the point of being therapeutic and possibly curative. It was a dream to sleep on. One of the best purchased I ever made.

2) From at least my teens until again circa 2013/14 I always slept on my back, never my side.

3) Sitting at the computer on day circa 2013 I was out of the blue hit by severe posterior pain. My rump had gone out on me! It was not temporary. I suffered posterior pain while sitting or lying on my back for several years. When lying abed this pain spread to my lower back and part way down my thighs. (I could tolerate sitting only by placing a very thick pillow beneath me, and then found it hard to endure sitting for any great length of time.)

4) Due to posterior pain I began, for the first time ever, to sleep on my side. This reduced posterior pain to tolerably levels, but took a long time to adjust to.

5) As luck would have it, during my lengthy bout of rump pain and while still adjusting to side sleep was when my beloved waterbed mattress gave up the ghost, developing a significant tear along one of its corner seams. None of my repair attempts lasting more than a month or so, if that. I at last reluctantly admitted it had to go.

6) Due to posterior pain and still not use to side sleep, I found that I could not "audition" mattresses. In the end I made my best guess and ordered a memory foam mattress online, using my waterbed's designation as Extra Firm as guidance. (It was also 95% waveless.)

7) The mattress I bought turned out to be far too firm for either side or back sleep.

8) Over the next several years I bought three different mattress toppers to soften the bed. None worked for back sleep, either alone or in combination. I could, however, sleep reasonable well on my side.

9) During my bout of TMJ syndrome I was required to do jaw/neck exercises several times a day. These exercises ultimately messed up my neck so that side sleep in bed became problematic.

10) Sometime last year I admitted defeat and begin sleeping on the sofa. Not overly comfortable or pain free, but better than bed.

11) A few months ago I tried yet another bed topping placement experiment. Directly atop the mattress I placed my 2" gel foam pad. I cut my 2" memory foam topper in half lengthwise, placing the two halves one on top of the other positioned mid bed width wise. This gave me 6" of padding. Alas, it proved no better for side sleep than other softening attempts. I returned to the sofa.

12) Last night's neck pain forced me to try something not done in ages, lie on my back in bed, with those six inches of padding in place. As mentioned, to my utter surprise it worked!!!! But is it a fluke? We shall see. I'm pessimistically hopeful.

ADDENDUM: BTW, my rump pain finally began to reside after buying a decent quality computer desk chair and a special purpose thick seat pad to place atop it.

Alas, last night's bed sleep didn't go a well as hoped. It started out okay. Then sometime during the night I woke to a bit of shoulder blade area pain. Stayed awake just long enough to switch from back to side sleep. I have a vague memory of having done so. It wasn't desired move but rather an auto response. At any rate, I woke again at circa 0400 with neck and shoulder pain from side sleep. Not giving up just yet. I'll give the bed a few more days before throwing in the tower returning to the sofa.

Otherwise, I've no projects to report.

Just got zapped by the outlet the clothes dryer plugs into. Wasn’t nearly as alarming as it should have been.

Am downloading and installing Windows Updates for my Win7 PC. Am not going to do anything to slow the downloads so no YouTube vids until its finished.

Had a scare on my primary PC. Checked for new emails first thing this morning. Not only wasn't there any new mail, there was no mail at all. All email and folders were gone. Had a few minutes of worry, but thankfully signing out and back in to my account mail everything visible again.

Several weeks ago, following an illness of some sort, my voice went all raspy in its upper range. The lower range was fine. Since then it's never gotten better or worse to any appreciable extent. Until this morning. I woke with raspy voice throughout my entire range!!!!! I can sort of speak recognizably if a keep to a whisper, and even that's no so good. Gonna call my doc's office right when it opens this morning and set up an appointment, though this being a Friday I almost certainly won't be seen until next week.

ADDENDUM: I see my Doc about my throat early Monday afternoon. That realistically about as soon as could be hoped for, barring Urgent Care. As there has never been pain associated with whatever is going on, I assume it to be non urgent. Famous last words? We shall see.

Errands today:

Drove to local Post Office for book of stamps.

Drove to Best Buy for TurboTax.

Walked to Barnes & Noble for the 2018 edition of Great Model Railroads...they were either out or don't carry it this year.

Drove to Primary Care Phisician's clinc. Was prescribed a steroid for my voice loss and told to contact them again if it doesn't return within two weeks. Was given the second two pneumonia vaccines Medicare authorizes.

Drove to Walmart to buy groceries and pick up new prescription med.

Drove home. Put away groceries. Logged today's expenses into my computerized account register.

Installed TurboTax first thing this morning. Transferred old yearly return files from the i7-930 to my "new" PC. Progressed in preparing this year's return until I needed info on my two mutual funds. The form is missing. I checked online. Turns out it won't be mailed until mid February. I'm dead in the water until then. No biggie. I "officially" do taxes during February in any case.

Added a number of mods to my primary Oblivion install, residing on my secondary computer. Some were performance enhancers, some character/NPC animations, some odds and ends.

Balanced my computerized Checking and Savings Account ledgers. Checking gave me a bit of a problem. Was originally off by $55.xx. The bulk of that was spotted right away. I'd mistakenly marked one debit as "cleared" that hadn't by the bank statement's cutoff date. The remaining 22 cents took while to trace. Ended up being an AT&T payment I'd entered wrong.

Yesterday......let's see..... Hmm...

Figured out how much state sales tax I was due to pay on Jan 2018 internet purchases (the Steam games Mashinky and Kingdom Come: Deliverance). Prepared payment for posting today (which I already have).

Was going to participate for the first time in my town's new "pay your monthly city utility bill online" option. Registered at the website. Went to its bill pay page. Discovered it costs $4 extra per payment in processing fees to pay online. To heck with that!!!! I'll continue to drop off payment in person at city hall as I have in the past. It's all of a five minute walk from my house, for goodness sake.

Registered at their respective sites to pay monthly electricity and gas fees online. So far as I can tell there is no processing fee associated with either of these.

That's about the extent of it. The rest of my day was spent in goofing around on the computer, mostly gaming.

This one needs sharing.

Last week I realized that one of the hoses on my washer was leaking, so it was time for a new set. It turned out that the end connectors were the problem, having been made from plated steel, instead of brass. So they'd rusted, and that meant the ends no longer rotated independently of the hose, to unscrew them from the faucet and the machine.

My first attempt to remove one twisted the rubber hose like a spring, and when I was unable to hold it any longer, just unwound the twist, and screwed the connector back into place.

Then I just cut the hose, which was going to be discarded anyway, and solved the problem. I wish I had a video of that first attempt, especially the part with the hose screwing itself back onto the faucet.

Status report on project to return to sleeping in bed rather than on the sofa and also to resume back sleep rather than side sleep. Roughly one and a half weeks into the project there are my observations:

In general, this is my most successful attempt to return to my old sleeping practices since the onset of posterior (and eventually other) problems forced me to begin sleeping on my side and ultimately on the couch (due to it being softer than the bed mattress and thus better for side sleep). I seem to have hit on a decent combo of mattress toppers, with relatively minor drawbacks mentioned later.

Posterior pain:
This has pretty much faded over the years so that it isn't as much of a concern as it once was. Lying abed on my back does not trigger posterior pain, as it once did.

Lower back pain:
The new topper arrangement seems rather neutral in this regard. It has not yet triggered a return to lower back pain when lying on my back, but is not "restorative" as was my beloved waterbed mattress before it went belly up. I'll settle for neutral. (The sofa use to be the clear winner here. No longer.)

Upper back / shoulder blade:
I still get occasional mild to moderate pain in this region lying on my back in bed. I do NOT get this pain lying on my side on the sofa, or rather not often.

Rear of neck:
I still get minor discomfort and occasionally pain in this region, more so than on the couch. But the couch isn't perfect here either.

Sides of neck:
Minor, largely ignoreable side of neck discomfort and occasional pain in bed on my back. This is the sofa's weak area. I tend to get pretty bad neck pain on whichever side I sleep on on the sofa, pain that bugs me much of the day. After sleeping in bed on my back the sides of my neck tend to feel stiff and a little sore throughout the day but no worse. Bed wins out.

Drawbacks to bed sleep:
As currently configured, several of my stacked mattress toppers cover only the middle portion of the bed so that my arms don't rest as naturally as I'd prefer when positioned at angles away from my body rather than straight to the sides. Too, four extra inches of topping on an already high mattress make getting into bed a bit awkward. (The bed continues to utilize my old waterbed frame due to its many below-mattress storage compartments. But that does place the mattress higher off the floor than a conventional frame.)

Perhaps one of those foamy mattresses could help you, Decrepit? Guess they are a bit spensive though...



No real project of mine to report on. Well, other than my Japanese learning but there it's business as usual at Duolingo. More Kanji now so I guess I could mention that. For some reason I cannot fathom, I read most Kanji taught well and good, but suddenly have trouble with Hiragana where I have to stop and think which ones there are. Pretty amazing considering I love the Hiragana characters, they were the first thing I learned and I did it one year ago...!

My main project yesterday turned out to be waiting for phone/interest service to be restored. It cut out sometime during my mid-morning grocery run and lasted until part way through supper. The forced switch to U-verse makes these outages harder to endure since I no longer have a working landline phone to report line problems and check on status updates. Mid afternoon I finally had the sense to drive to "city" hall and ask if this was a known issue. They'd heard nothing of it, but kindly called AT&T for me. Found out that yes, it was known and being worked on.

My "bed sleep on back" project has had a setback. Night before last and yesterday night I experienced neck and shoulder blade pain. Gonna experiment with head-pillowing and see if I can find a solution that alleviates or at least lessens it. I've been this route before with no success, but ya never know.

ADDENEDUM:
Forgot to mention that once internet was working again I went online intent on paying my electricity bill. Turns out I was wrong. Entergy DOES add on a fee for doing it that way. Back to conventional paper checks and snail mail I went.

Odd time for me in that a number of "projects" hit all at once.

First, spent a day waiting for Kingdom Come: Deliverance to download. Took from 0400 until just after supper. Was too mentally exhausted from hours of Mashinky to do much with KCD that evening. Spent a good bit of time trying to figure out how to set up its large number of controls to my liking. Finally decided to exit the game, find a site that has the defaults spelled out, write it all down on paper, and take time to figure out what hopefully works for me. Didn't finish that until sometime next day. Also needed to bump graphics quality way up from what the game defaulted me to, which was rather mediocre.

Next day I was notified that my Mutual Fund tax reporting forms are finally available online. Did my Fed and State Tax returns in TurboTax. Alas, I'm getting much less back this year. Much much less. Sometime like a thousand dollars less back from the Feds, and two hundred less from the state. So far as I can tell its all due to far less of my Social Security income being tax exempt this year. (Almost none of it is, where last year most all of it was.)

Early this week I broke down and did something I've been contemplating for years, ordered one of those DNA Ancestry test kits. (23andMe had a nice sale on at the time.) It arrived today. Have my saliva tube filled and the return package ready to send out tomorrow.

During all this I've also been learning how to record Mashinky footage with OBS. Am also trying to refresh myself on how to edit raw footage in Filmora, which admittedly ain't going so well.

Been doing some volunteer work at my church with making videos for them. I'll present my work to them Sunday.

Sent off my saliva vile to 23andMe yesterday. Had I been 10sec faster out the door I could have handed it to the postman, who was just pulling away from my mailbox when I opened the front door. As it was, I drove to our local Post Office and dropped it off there. Gonna be weeks or months before I learn anything. While I have some expectations at to where my family came from, it matters not at all to me if results paint a vastly different picture from what little I know of our past. On dad's paternal side, it is assumed our ancestors came from the British Isles. My maternal grandfather had an English last name, which is all I know of him. My maternal grandmother had a Germanic last name, which is all I know of her. I know nothing of my paternal grandmother, though I can look up her maiden name easily enough. Thing is, both dad's parents were dead by the time he was in his teens, and mom's dad died of lingering WWI related health issues when I was but a wee lad. The only grandparent I "knew" was mom's mom, who we didn't visit much. (Dad wasn't overly fond of her, as I recall.)

Found out that Filmora is "supposed" to have a blurry editor preview screen, deliberately reducing resolution to make editing go faster. Sure enough, when I rendered a Mashinky test video the output looked just fine. I now have visuals for one Mashinky video done, including opening and closing title cards. My stumbling block is that I don't have a mic to record commentary. Well, there's the mic built into a set of headphones used on my third computer (which hasn't been turned on in months). But that mic's a piece of crap...prone to crackling so frequently it's all but useless. Don't want to spent much on a good mic, since this video creation business is likely to be a passing fancy, as it proved to be back in early 2014. (To be fair, that first time I suffered a series of unexpected setbacks that kept me from producing videos. I might have stuck with it otherwise.)

I really ought to finish up my tax return. But getting so much less back this year has robbed me of all enthusiasm for the project. No biggie. My goal is to have it done and over with by the end of February, which we're only half way through. I just need to make sure I don't forget and let it slide.

If you find out that we are related; I'll let you loan me your PC while you fix mine; relative!!!

Hmmm...well, we do hail from the same broad general region, and I've a number of relatives in your state. Go back far enough...say the Neanderthal era...and there might well be some vague familial connection. (BTW, 23andMe reports our percentage of Neanderthal ancestry, if any.)

Your PC went bad? Have you mentioned this before? What is it doing, or not doing? Symptoms? Possible cause(es)?

I was just teasing around, I actually don't hail from this area. It actually amazes me how much you do know about your roots; your history. I don't have anywhere near that much info.

We can trace ourselves back to a 1790 US census but no further. (Don't know much of anything about those Revolutionary era people other than that they are almost certainly direct ancestors. So far as I know there is no known provable link to our pre US roots, at least on dad's side. I used to Google my last name every now and then and at one time found a farm in England bearing our name, but later searches couldn't find it. Likewise I've found those with our last name spelling in some British census reports and other records, but nothing to prove a definitely connection. Uncommon as my last name is, there's some chance of at least a remote family relationship. (Again, this all refers to dad's paternal side of the family.)

I don't expect 23andMe results to shed much light in this regard. Unless others with similar ancestral results happened to allow their info to be added the knowledge pool. But who knows? Maybe I have an ancestor of renown, as if that matters. More likely, our family's greatest historic accomplishment is more along the lines of "Third runner up in Yorkshire County's village-idiot drooling competition for the-month for April 1285."

Addendum:
Well poot. This is supposed to be errand day. Groceries of course. Also, I decided to at long last take the plunge and buy a mic for the computer. Know what I want, or rather what I can afford that's half way decent. Best Buy carries it, so I printed out an Amazon page for price matching and headed out. First stop, gas the car. Pulling in to the pumps I heard a loud ka-chunk as the car came to a stop. Hoping it was something else I went about my business...then drove a block to our Post Office to test the breaks. Ka-chunk. Drove to our local mechanic. Left the car with them. It'll be late afternoon at the earliest before they can tell me what's up. So much for errands and a PC mic. Hopefully whatever's wrong will be simple and cheap to fix. I've enough food in the house to hold out today and tomorrow but not much past then.

I've two Mashinky rail excursion videos "in the can," lacking only commentary (thus the need for a PC mic). They've gotta be the ideal cure for insomnia. Even I fall asleep watching 'em.

Still in a holding pattern awaiting car repair. Called the shoppe after supper yesterday. The only person present didn't know exactly what was going on, other than it was something to do with the breaks and that the car "should" be ready sometime today (Tuesday). Hope so. Gonna start running low on food soon. Plus, this is our last half way decent weather day for some time. Storms and rain are predicted beginning tomorrow. (Today too, but not many and not when I need to be out and about.

Captured a bunch more Mashinky footage. Hope to have two or maybe three videos ready to add commentary to by the time my car is ready. (No PC mic until I can drive into town.)

Called the auto repair shoppe around 1000 yesterday. Was told to call back at 1400. Did so. Was told my car had been returned and was parked in my driveway. Doh! Drove to the repair shoppe and paid my bill, thankfully only $141 for rear brake work. Drove to Best Buy Bought a PC mic. Paid more than intended. They were out of all Blue Yeti's except for one cobalt blue. My price match printouts were for black and silver, those being Amazon's cheapest color variants. Thing it, Cobalt Blue was the color I liked best when examining all Yeti's at Amazon. As Blue cost no less at Amazon than Best Buy, I ruled it out. Once in Best Buy I thought and thought and finally decided, to heck with it, I'll go blue. Might come to regret it, but when all is said and done the price difference is only $15-20, depending on whether had I settled for black or silver.

Drove to Walmart for Groceries. This week's food bill, circa $38.

Drove home. Arrived right at suppertime.

After supper I logged the day's expenses in my PC account ledger. Unboxed the Yeti. Connected it to my PC. Attempt to add voice narrative to one of my shorter Mashinky videos. What a disaster! I soon realized it was hopeless. Unplugged the Yeti. Spent rest of my evening online (along with a short amount of Mashinky play).

Woke this morning knowing that yesterday's failure was due in large part to me trying to wing it. I am not and have never been a naturally gifted speaker. Extemporizing narrative on the fly isn't my thing. I knew I'd need to do as I did with my old Oblivion episodes...write out scripts and read 'em aloud into the mic. Even that's a challenge, the end results sub par, but at least I'm able to provide usable narration of a sort. Working the entire morning on it, I've maybe half that short video voiced. Gonna try and crank out the rest by day's end, Nine give me strength.

Sounds like we're two apples in an orchard with regards to speaking-witty-on-the-fly abilities, Decrepit

I narrated my first finalized Mashinky video uploaded it to YouTube yesterday evening. I'll not link it here as I've already done so in our "Now Watching" sub-forum. It won't win any awards for scripting and narrative delivery, but I'm more satisfied with the results than I expected to be (My expectations were admittedly low.) Unlike my old Oblivion episodes, visual quality is quite nice when viewed full-screen at 1080p.

I'm already at work narrating a second Mashinky video. This one is over twice as long as my rather short first upload. It's proving hard to think up things to say to fill so much time. Then again there's no great hurry. I doubt these vids are destined to make me the next breakthrough YouTube "star." (Other than possibly some of you guys I suspect they'll get no views at all.)

As preparing the upload consumed almost the whole of yesterday I've nothing else to report, project wise.

Oh yeah, I remember to curb my trash this morning.

Got email from 23andMe this morning saying my saliva sample arrived. Still 6-8 weeks before I get results, according to them.

Worked off and on yesterday voicing another Mashinky video. Not overly pleased with this one so far. It's hard to fill a circa 13min clip with entertaining narrative when you have only about two minutes of interesting info to relate. Too, this journey isn't nearly as visually appealing as the first was, in my opinion. Thankfully, the next Mashinky video I have in the can for voicing is quite short and more visually interesting. That won't help me think up something worthwhile to say, but it's something.

ADDENDUM:
Now evening, I got further than expected voicing my second Mashinky excursion video, then hit a brick wall not far from the trip's final station and can't for the life of me come up with anything worthwhile to say. Gonna call it quits for the day on that project and hope something comes to me tomorrow or the day after.

Finished up tax returns after lunch. Started afresh (though I was all but done first time I tackled 'em) due to getting so much less back. Wanted to make sure I hadn't done something wrong earlier. But no, same results...very little back this year. I suspect I'll owe EXTRA next year, as the Gov has decided to take out less taxes from my Military Pension. I'll probably modify that so more is deducted again. Course if my mutual funds don't do well this year (they did VERY well last year) it's all beside the point. Well, maybe it is or isn't, depending on how the new tax scam affects me.

The more I listen to my second finished Mashinky video the less pleased I am with its commentary. Not so much what I said, though that could stand improvement for sure, but delivery and audio quality.

Placed a smallish order at Amazon for cheap mic accessories first thing this morning. (Meaning cheap accessories for a mic, not accessories for a cheap mic.) Man have I cut my "spending money" allowance close this month! $18 left to see me through today and tomorrow. I have funds allotted to a "slush fund," but that's reserved for utility and other mandatory payments that come in over budget for the month, as well as unexpected emergencies like this month's car brake work. Yes, I do sometimes use it to help pay for costly "luxury" items, but try to keep that to a minimum. At any rate I should be able to vegetate at home these next two day, venturing out only to check mail, so be safe.

Normally I'd be getting a "generous" tax refund this month, so this would all be beside the point. But as mentioned, I'm getting next to nothing back this year.

My "bed sleep" project isn't panning out. Returned to the couch last night. That's not so great either, but what can ya do?

Upcoming project: replace my lawn mower's drive belt. Dread it. I'm no good at this sort of thing. (One of all too many things I'm no good at.) Bought the belt at Home Depot while running errands yesterday, taking advantage of their military discount. One step officially requires a torque wrench, which I don't have and can't afford, certainly not this month. I'm pretty sure dad, who was a talented handyman, had one. I drove to my brother's house (he inherited the family home and possessions) but couldn't find it in the carport utility room. There's an outdoor shed it might be in, but I don't have a key for that and my brother wasn't available.

Project for the day:
This evening I need to figure out how much internet purchase tax I owe the state, fill out paperwork and prepare the results for posting tomorrow.

Took my first post winter exercise walk yesterday. It went well enough, but boy did my knees remind me they ain't what they used to be. Up until this morning I assumed I wouldn't be able to walk today or tomorrow due to predicted rain. Now it looks like I "might" be able to squeeze in a walk this morning though I'll need to carry an umbrella to be on the safe side. Tomorrow afternoon has a few theoretically semi safe hours.

ADDENDUM:
After posting the above I donned walking shoes and looked out the living room window. Steady sprinkle and partially waterlogged street. So much for weather reports. Thankfully, rain stopped before too terribly long. Sky still solidly overcast. Water covering patches of street. Grabbed my umbrella and headed out. Experienced no weather related issues during walk, which went well, especially considering this was my second session after several months of inactivity.

Military discount, eh, Decrepit? And I guess you can also pull the senior citizen card? Do you even have to pay anything at all?

Nice idea!!!!! You need to talk with the local establishments I do business with about that. Sadly, the way it seems to work is that only one discount is allowed for any one purchase. Also, only a couple of the relatively few such places I frequent have any sort of discount whatsoever. Subway Sammichs officially offers a senior discount, or did when I officially became a senior. But my local Subway said they don't honor it. Just as well. Their offerings aren't all that tasty in my opinion.

Woke too early this morning. Far too early. Used some of that time to advantage redoing some of my second Mashinky video's voicing. More needs to be redone, but the longer bits just aren't worth the effort. Nor is improvement guarantied. At any rate I've got the video rendering now. Depending on how that turns out I may upload it today or tomorrow. It's not as good as my first Mashinky upload, but considering how few will see it I suppose that's of little consequence.

Balanced Feb's PC checking and savings account ledgers yesterday afternoon.

Was able to get in an exercise walk. Had to wait until mid afternoon for my street to lose enough of its water layer to safely navigate. Today promises no such obstacle, though it's going to be colder.

As threatened, I uploaded a second Mashinky railway excursion video overnight. It is now available for view. I'll not link it here, as I've already done so in our What Are You Playing? thread.

Surprised myself by finishing voicing what will be a third Mashinky excursion video first thing this morning. I don't plan to upload it until sometime next week.

As might be imagined, playing and recording Mashinky have kept me too occupied for much of anything else. I definitely need to visit a laundromat soon. Gads I hate going to those. I miss those long gone days when my little town had its own. It doesn't help that I hold out as long as possible. When I do go, I've a good six or more loads worth of dirty clothes and bed linen.

For awhile, there was only one laundromat in the large town / small city nearby, where my brother lives in. It left much to be desired. Not well taken care of. Outrageous machine prices. No staff on duty to make change. Change dispensing machines usually broke. Was afraid I'd have to buy my own washer and drier. Luckily, an old laundromat reopened under new management. It's cleaner, normally has someone on duty, and its machines are reasonable.

My "sleep on my back in my bed" project failed. I'm back to side sleep on my ancient sofa. Had a strange sleep last night. Became super groggy not long after supper. Kept nodding off at the PC. Decided to lie down on the sofa a bit. Did so. Next thing I know it's midnight on the nose. The alarm on my little Atomic Clock, which stays on the sofa with me, apparently got pushed into the back cushion and turned itself on. (It's happened before.) By then I'd already gotten in at least four hours sleep, more than I often get overnight. Turned off the alarm, visited the PC long enough to check a few emails and shut everything down, returned to the sofa, and almost immediately fell asleep!!!!! Woke again at 0439! Or rather what I thought was 0439. Not until sometime later did I realize the Atomic Clock had bumped itself up an hour. I actually woke at 0339. No biggie, except I ate breakfast an hour early before noticing the error. Even taking into account the time mistake I got in way more sleep than normal. Maybe double. Not sure if that's good or bad.

Been able to walk daily since it became warm enough, except day before yesterday when I walked only a third my normal route due to cold and wind.

No other active projects. Well, not that's I'm actually working on. Made a tentative start voicing a fourth Mashinky video, but just couldn't get into it. (I've not yet uploaded the third video, which has been "in the can" for days.)

I bought a new mattress today. I am going to take the day off Thursday to have it delivered. W00T!

Yeah? What kind? This is something Khajiit is afraid he is going to have to bite the bullet and do soon.

It is a Eureka Lux Firm Mattress. Queen-sized, since that is what my bed is. I liked it the most of the mattresses they had. They gave me a new bamboo pillow too. I have one from the last time I bought a mattress, and I love them.

You’ll have to let us know how it sleeps.

Sigh...wish I could afford a new, high quality mattress. The couch will have to do for me, I'm afraid. Even could I afford one, a problem I have is that I can sleep on a mattress for hours/days before my body acclimates itself to it, Lying down in a showroom 15-30min does no good whatsoever. Certainly not enough so to form a trustworthy opinion. Looked yours up online. It seems very nice...and very expensive. Hope it works out for you.

I decided to go shopping at ToysRUs for the last time so I got the largest playset I could find so I got this beast. It took an hour an half to assemble it. Now this thing if 4 feet tall, I'm 5'11.

You went to ToysRUs? If the picture is to go by you already live there


Cool, and big, addition to the collection!

Well I'm about to be evicted from WeeBee's* so looks like I'll have to go to Wally World or Target .





*
WeeBees=ToysRUs
Wally World=Walmart.

My bro was supposed to be here now doing his taxes on my primary PC via TurboTax. He called an hour or so ago to inform me that he is unexpectedly swamped with work so will prepare his return tomorrow. Which reminded me I ought to check on the status of my Federal return. On the other hand, I get back so little this year it's not that big a deal.

Checked with 23andMe yesterday evening. My saliva sample is still being analyzed. Sure is taking a lot of time. But then they advertise it as a potentially months long process.

Been able to exercise-walk every day. Possibly won't tomorrow due to bro visit and potential rains. Likewise Monday might be too rainy/stormy. We shall see.

I have started up two new projects.

The first is creating to-do lists for each week, particularly for my classes and jobs. While I have gotten my work done that I need to do, I feel that I have not been as productive with my time as I could and should be. I am hoping that creating to-do lists will help me in that cause. As I go along I will figure out how best to lay it out and get the most out of my time. Hopefully it will lead me to finally setting aside time for other side projects I have wanted to do.

The second is a very personal one: tonight, I finally began writing a journal. Without going into too much detail, it is something that I have come to realize that I very much need to do. I started it for several reasons, particularly for clarification of things I am dealing with and trying to look at certain things as objectively as possible. Perhaps as I go on I will feel a bit more comfortable sharing some more things about it.

That sounds serious there Rader. Here’s hoping this brings you some clarity.

Thanks, Khajiit. I appreciate that a lot.

I don't mean to cause worry, though. Just a bunch of stressful stuff going on that I'm trying to work through.

Best wishes, Rader, and I hope the journal helps.

Thanks, Acadian. Much appreciated.

I hope to find out the status of my popped out crown today. As luck would have it, the dental office I use was closed all last week. It was bogged down with appointment yesterday so couldn't see me. Was told I'm luck they are able to squeeze me in today. Be that as it may, I'm hoping (against hope?) the existing crown can be reattached.

Checked with 23andMe this morning. They are one step away from providing me with results.

As to other projects, most everything is on hold until I get a better handle on my crown situation.

ADDENDUM:
The dental office called. My appointment is bumped up several hours. Hurrah.

Dental Appointment:
The old crown is toast. Can't be reattached. They're gonna add an artificial tooth to take its place to my current upper partial. Along with that they will obviously extract what little remains of my actual tooth. (Basically, nothing above the gum line.) They're also gonna fill a small cavity discovered on a tooth next to where the crown was. Surprisingly, to me, they say adding the extra tooth to my partial is super easy, and not overly expensive. I'll be without the partial only a day. For good or ill, that day will be NEXT Monday, as they can't get to me sooner.

Was prescribed pain killer to see me through until then. Once home I noticed they're Opioids. You can bet I won't take any unless pain becomes excruciatingly severe. So far what little pain I notice is very mild (and sporadic).

Ancestry / DNA / etc:
My results are in. And boring they are, for the most part. Ancestry wise, they are exactly what I expected. I'm 99% European, of which 97.1% is Northwestern European. Of that 97.1%, 60.3% is English / Irish, 26.5% German / French (my maternal grandmother accounts for German ancestry), 2.4% Scandinavian, 7.9% "broadly Northwestern European." There is also 1.1% Iberian (Southern European). Everything else is below 1%, comfortably within margin of error territory. The only other thing worth mentioning is sub-Saharan African, which 23andMe shows as 0.8%, all from West Africa.

I have 281 Neanderthal DNA variants. That's more than 56% of 23andMe customers.

23andMe measures the Carrier Status of 43 health concerns that I don't currently have but might be passed to my children. This is my one shining area, as I goose-egged it. The irony is that I have no children, want none, and at this stage of life will almost assuredly have none.

As to Genetic Health Risks, I have an ever so slightly increased risk of contracting Late-Onset Alzheimer's Disease. More people than not in my category DON'T get it, but the possibility is there. Otherwise, this category too gives me a clean bill of health.

Wellness wise I'm told...
...I'm likely to consume more caffeine than most, assuming I consume caffeine at all. I don't consume caffeine.
...my genes predispose me to weigh more than average. 23andMe shows the average 67yr old 5'6" male as weighing 173lb. I weigh a good 30lb less than that. But...I am indeed predisposed to weight gain. I just control it via diet and a little exercise (when able).
...related, the amount of saturated fat in my diet has little to no bearing on weight loss or gain.
...in the TRAITS section, 23andMe goofs in saying I'm unlikely to have a bold spot. Couldn't be further from the truth, sad to say.
...lots more in the TRAITS section, most of it spot on, or close enough to not matter.
...lots of other stuff too.

Wouldn't ya know it? I was gonna print out most of the results, but my printer now warns me I'm low on toner.

We now have a lot of info about Decrepit we can sell to Facebook - ka-CHING!


Sounded like good news though overall

Wow. I mean WOW. Was it really expensive to get that information? If it doesn't cost an arm and a leg I'd be very tempted to try that myself...