time time time

. . . see what's become of me.

I've had so many things enter and slip away which I've been meaning to write about, but never seem to find the time to do so before it slips away into the ether again. Most has been life happening while making other plans, but part of it is my (fault) re-immersion into the world of Eve Online. The recent upgrades/changes/rebalancing has made it too good to resist playing again. Which leads into why my social life has taken a total dive. I've not tried to keep/maintain more than the bare minimum of relations over this past winter. I feel only slightly guilty over my total lack of social interaction effort.

In all of this my health has been wavering despite my healthy physical activity. A lot of somethings have been happening to me and after a lot of discussions with coworkers and some deep self evaluation. I'm getting fucking old and it sucks. My body has been handling most of what I do fairly well, but I'm realizing that I need a little more time than it used to take to recover.

In the immediate future I've got an appointment scheduled in a few days. Seems I may have contracted a bug that's going around which, in turn, has led me to make an unexpected discovery regarding my health. Nothing life or death, as far as I can tell now, but am going to get checked out all the same.

walk

Late in 2014 I started using the Google Fit App to track how much walking I was doing. After a few months I had enough data to get a decent baseline. From that I learned that I walk three to eight miles a (working) day. My average total walk time is roughly three hours where I also average 14,000 steps. So just for fun I decided to track the year of 2015. In that year I walked a total of 1040 miles. This is based on a conservative estimate that I walked at least four miles a day. It also doesn't take into account all the weekend hikes that I'd done as well as the occasional mountain biking excursions. The actual mileage is probably closer to 1500. Like a mailman I walk regardless of weather conditions. This terrain here is made up of soft sand and/or rocky ground during the warmer months, but hardens in the winter until it snows. Walking in sand/snow makes you work harder which equals better health benefits. I've also worn out three pairs of shoes, not that this helped my health per se but I felt it relevant. I really need to find something more durable to invest in for the warmer months. During the winters I break out my Muck Chore boots which have held up beautifully after two winters. I'm not sure how much I'm in the sun, but I know it's more than the recommended 30 minutes per day to get your daily vitamin D dose.

All of these things add up to a very healthy year for me from the simple act of walking. Wow!

california screamin'

 "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."

Obi-Wan Kenobi

The drive in wasn't too bad. I mean up until we crossed the state border. I drove through the Mojave Preserve instead of camping there for the night as planned. Turns out the northern route into the campgrounds I was headed for was closed off. This wasn't posted anywhere on or offline so I drove in most of the way before discovering this. My only other way into the campground was to go through the entire preserve drive eastward and then back north again. I opted for plan A because the detour costed us a little over an hour. Plan A was Joshua Tree. I was too tired to bother setting up camp and opted to just sleep in the truck.

Driving into OC we were greeted with the first of many stark reminders of why we loathe and left the state years ago. By we I mean myself. Bridgette could care less about where she's at so long as she's with me. She has been far more emotionally expressive about seeing the people/dogs/places that she's familiar with. I didn't expect how much I would want to leave after only just arriving. I don't mean to sound like a total shit. I'm insanely happy to see my nephew/select family members/friends (soon), and am already partaking of the foods I miss most dearly. 

My sister informed me today that she and my nephew are officially sick and contagious. His birthday party for this weekend has been postponed until next week. I feel bad for the little guy because he's been looking forward to this. 

This place has already started to damage my calm.