Whole Lotta Stuff

Yesterday was a very full day for me. I managed to swim (pool was hot, I was slow; but back and glutes felt great) and run (glutes hurt like hell--back seemed to do OK; running on concrete didn't help!), cleaned up Bitchie, stretched a little bit, did some lawyer-y stuff, chatted with the guys building the new bathroom, accepted 3 separate deliveries (!), and worked (work work) my ass off. See how much one can accomplish with very little sleep?

I didn't sleep much again last night--partly because I'm sleeping on the sofa bed downstairs with strange blankets, partly because my back is pretty gnarly (but that hard sofa bed actually seems to be good for it), partly because I'm still so jazzed about the remodeling, partly because there's a whole lot of estate activity, partly because I'm paranoid about Thanksgiving coming and do not want to get sick or more injured, and partly because there's other shit I'm dealing with personally right now.

But I am letting the sleep thing be, because I know that if I stress out about not sleeping it will get worse. So instead, I've been using the "extra" time to my advantage, knocking out all sorts of things, so that once the remodeling is done next week (although big surprise--I may have some flooring work done!), I will only need to rake up leaves over the Thanksgiving weekend!

I really enjoyed cleaning up Bitchie--I always do! There is something about cleaning up a beautiful bike that just puts a smile on my face. I especially enjoyed getting into her crotchal areas and lubing her up. I ended up putting new rubber on her, too, as the old stuff was pretty worn. Below are shots of her from various angles, ending with the finished product in front of one of the new doors in my family/rec room. Sadly, I have no plans to ride her until almost June, since I leave LGL on the trainer for the winter. But who knows? There might be a surprise winter trip to someplace warm, and I just might decide to take her along!

Front fork, stem and bars. I love her front crotchal area!

Bottom bracket and crank, baby!

More bottom bracket and chainrings

Here she is flipped over prior to the final lubrication

Here she is with her new rubber!

One of the items that was delivered to my house yesterday is this chinup bar. One of the benefits of remodeling where one of the guys is really into fitness is that we talk about this and that, and one day I was talking about the prison workouts (which sadly I've needed to abandon until maybe December), and how I'd been doing chins at the Y, and Jared mentioned they now make bars that mount over the door frame. So I found this online and got it and it's DA BOMB! It's not attached to the frame at all--it has a piece over the backside of the top of the door frame and then the large bar that holds it in place. So now everytime I go by or into the laundry room, I'm going to see what I can do. I can also do hanging leg raises on it. This will be a great addition to my fitness routine to strengthen my upper body, eh?



Here's my little area on the sofa bed downstairs where I've been sleeping and also working. This morning, I moved the computers back into my office, since the dust level is way down in the upstairs bathroom.

Here is the bathroom at the end of the day yesterday. Electrical and plumbing were completed, and walls, floor and ceiling put in. I now will have tons of light in there, and the entire ceiling is high up since the stupid lowered ceiling over the tub was knocked down. Today's work will include taping and possibly some tiling. The guys say it will be finished tomorrow, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed! That will mean vanity, cabinets, faucets and toilet installation and painting. I'm so excited!


Another item that arrived yesterday is the towel sets I ordered online. They are not what I expected--I thought they were mostly zebra with red or black accents, but when I opened the box, I really liked that it's exactly the opposite, and these are going to look so nice in the new bathroom:



The custom shades for the office and spare bedroom also arrived, but they are just in a really long box right now and so there's no need for a picture of that! In other remodeling news, I received a call that my new garage door has arrive, and we set an installation date for Tuesday, 12/2.

In addition to remodeling and working, today's activities for me include biking on LGL, putting custom stickers on LGL (I've had them for months now--she's now ready to be christened with her given name, La Gazza Ladra!), fantasizing how the new bathroom is going to look and how the living room will look once the zebra carpet is unfurled, miscellaneous chinups, a core workout, a massage, some legal paper signing and a trip to the post office.

Something that was funny yesterday was that the guys left around 6:30PM, and I actually had the TV on! Ken remarked that he wasn't sure the TV actually worked! I told him that I'm only watching it because I've been relegated to downstairs for working, sleeping and bathroom usage (plus trainer riding now, too), and since I'm getting so much done in the early hours of the day when I could be sleeping, I now have a little time to actually watch the fucking TV. But what's funny is that Monday evening, when I normally get a massage, I didn't go (they were doing something funky in the school that Mike said I wouldn't benefit from), so I was home and free to watch my very favorite TV program, Chuck (what can I say I identify with nerds). So I actually watched that, and whatever was on afterwards, I just fell asleep watching, which was around 7:30, but I woke up around 9, putzed around a bit, fell back asleep and was back up around 2:30AM. I'm glad to have developed a habit of doing without TV, because I just ordered a bunch of vampire fiction to read over the winter, and I like reading in bed, and I'll like it even more now because I just decided this morning that the former bathroom mirror is going to go on the wall in front of my bed instead of behind the headboard vertically. I don't know why that makes me smile or has anything to do with reading, I guess I was just talking about my bedroom!

Time to get to work. Hope everyone has a great day!