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I have trouble sleeping from Monday night into Tuesday morning. I'm awake and can't fall back asleep at 3 am. Finally I get a phone call from Vietnam at 4:30 and talk with my friend. I do end up falling back asleep and then staying in bed until almost 7 am. The legs are still tired so I go for a long walk to get the blood pumping and then do paperwork activities around the house before going to LBCC for class. When I get home I start in on the annual paperwork that is needed to be filed for the non-profit.
On Wednesday I go for a long wwalk to get the dat started. I continue with the non-profit paperwork until it is time to go to class. I meet another one of my classmates who is a refugee from Eritrea (formerly Ethiopia) and we talk about various ideas. When I get home I edge and mow the lawn in preparation for a few more days of heavy rain. And though many pieces of this new lawnmower are plastic, it runs and feels better than that last mower did from the very first day. After a short break I lift weights by dropping the weight some and increasing the repetitions to avoid stressing the soft tissue in the joints as much. And then I finish off (I hope) the annual paperwork needed for the non-profits and just have to get it sent off in the mail.
On Thursday I get out for a two hour ride on the mountain bicycle and have to wipe it down at the end because the roads and bicycle trails are so wet and sandy. I go to Long Beach City College early to get some reading done and meet a student from Ecuador and we talk about my recent trip and I also meet some pre-engineering students and I discuss with them their plans and how to succeed. We have a good class in atmospheric science and then I go on home to relax.
Friday is supposed to be a monster rain day, so I run some errands and drive very early to Cal State Los Angeles to meet up with senior design students. I have the meetings with both teams - one team is way ahead of schedule and making good progress and the other is way behind and floundering. In fact, the floundering team appears to have not accomplished anything of substance since three weeks ago. So I try to get them back on track. Despite the heavy rain the traffic coming home is not bad - everyone seems to have heeded the warnings to slow down. But when I get home there is some monster rain and wind and my DirecTV dish is broken or knocked out of alignment and I'm only getting half of the television channels. But I'm glad to be home at night, safe and warm and dry, and not have to go anywhere.
Saturday morning is also raining but I've committed to a Long Beach beach cleanup, so I put on warm and dry clothes and drive down to the meeting point. It's simply walking along the beach and picking up everything that people have discarded (either intentionally or accidentally) or that has washed ashore. After the cleanup event there is a raffle for a prize and I win. Again. It is a basket full of goodies and before I even receive it I ask if I can donate it back to some organization. The organizer says its a basket of goodies for a dog, so I turn to one of the dog owners (who has brought their dog along for the beach cleanup) and give them the basket. I hope the doggie is happy! When I get home I continue to transfer VHS tapes to digital format, do a "once per hour" workout for the abdominals and lower back, and just have a slow day cleaning up after the monster storm. And later at night I have two long telephone conversations with friends and work on the fuzzy rule data mining effort.
I sleep well on Saturday night and take the mountain bicycle out for the loop ride. I do not ride the road bicycle because I do not know the conditions of any of the roads and trails in terms of water, mud, and debris. It's a good ride and it is a bit dirty - so the bicycle gets wiped down again after the ride. I'm sweaty now so I clean up the roses and take down two pieces of rotted wood on an overhang that shades my house. This entire overhang will probably have to come down at some point. After a shower I work on the fuzzy rule data mining, cook vegetables for the week, hard-boil some eggs, and then put together lunch.
On Monday, Presdident's day, it is raining. So I work on the fuzzy rules data mining routine and start seeing results. At mid-morning I get in a decent workout with the weights and then try to debug the old, broken lawnmower. There is nothing wrong obviously wrong with the upper drive train so I am a bit puzzled. I quit working on the lawnnmower and give myself a chace to think about it. The DirecTV man shows up after the nasty rain and wind that we had. He is Cambodian and we talk about my trips to Cambodia and my friends in Cambodia. He has to replace an LNA/LNB and then secondarily replaces both of them with a super LNA. And now I have all of my channels back. I am yelling and screaming with joy and jumping up and down that I have my F1 channel and MotoGP channel back. He doesn't know what to do, but goes along with excitement. Life is good! And later I make some minor changes to the fuzzy rules and promise to advance the technology with advanced rules soon.
Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday are school days again. I get in some bicycle rides and enjoy the dry weather. I am enjoying being on campus with the young kids in the one class and the older felons and ex-junkies in the other class. I continue to work on the fuzzy rule data mining algorithm in binges. And when I get the valves of the lawnmoer available to see they look fine. I'm still puzzled as to why the oil was blowing out both the exhaust and carburetor and in the cylinder. I can only think now that the head gasket was blown. So I let it set for another day and decide whether to put in a new head gasket, put it all back together, and see what happens. The Thursday morning ride before class is very windy and I'm being buffetted and tossed around a fair amount. But I get in a good 48 miles and go on to class.
On Friday morning the house is 58 degrees inside. I guess I should have turned the furnace on before going to sleep. I check a few things and then sweep the hardwood floors before deciding at the last minute to lift weights before going up to CSULA. I have a decent workout - it isn't my best and it is far from my worst. But it gets the blood pumping. I ride the motorcycle up to CSULA to meet with senior design students. I'm curious to see how the "lagging team" will have performed over this past week where I tried to give them specific guidelines and questions to answer to get them moving again. The "doing fine" team is still doing fine and I help them push the ball farther downfield towards their design project completions and graduations. The "lagging team" has taken my suggestions to heart and made significant progress! A few details remain, but now I tell them to start building SolidWorks models of the three concepts. We will work on the details of the story a bit later. The team leader takes me aside and thanks me for my private guidance since he had emailed me in private and felt that he was lost in direction. The concepts that the team has and the calculations to back up the concepts are looking promising for two of the three concepts. I rush on home after the meetings to clean the roses and to spot fertilize some areas in the yard that seem to want a bit more noursihment for the coming months. Later in the afternoon I continue working on a paper for presentation at a January child abuse and prevention conference in January in San Diego but I am getting disillusioned as I am the only one working on the paper and I'm receiving no feedback from any of my partners of the overall project lead/funder.
It is very cold over Friday night and into Saturday morning - down to 40 degrees F. I get out on the road bicycle and fight the first few miles to warm up. But then I get going and have a nice conversation for a few miles with a young kid that I've caught who races bicycles and works a menial job. Crossing through the nature reserve I see the biggest coyote I have ever seen cross the bike trail - it is BIG!. But I keep going and pull a rider up to the Santa Fe dam and turn around and pull another rider back down to the Whittier Narrows dam. I continue on home and lose a bit of energy and momentum towards the end but its a a good solid 56 miles or so. After a shower I recycle some cans, run some errands, buy some groceries, and then get home to have some wine and have some food - I am dangerously low on energy. Throughout the rest of the afternoon I sip wine and work on the fuzzy rule data mining routine. I still have not heard from others who are supposed to co-write the conference paper and I'm getting disappointed with the response. And late in the day I talk with friends in Vietnam and Thailand (since it is their Sunday morning) and continue to re-load the body energy sources.
I'm suprised to wake up and see the pavement wet and rain coming down on Sunday morning. This was supposed to miss Long Beach. I take care of a few things around the house and step outside occassionally to scan the sky and see if it is raining. Twice I get ready to ride the mountain bicycle and it starts raining. Finally, near 9 am, I can wait no longer - it is now or not today. I get on the bicycle and it starts to rain within a few miles of home. Just a light rain. I get down past the aquarium and ride along the ocean trail and now the rain is coming down moderately hard - not dangerous, but enough to irritate a rider. Today I just go to the end of the beach trail and turn back from home. The rain gets a bit harder and I notice a number of cyclists stopped and huddled underneath awnings or overhangs where available. And I have one cyclist yell to me as I go past, "Do you want to sell your jacket?" - referring to my water-resistant or water-proof cycling jacket. I just give him a big smile and keep going. As I approach home the rain lightens up and the pavement is barely damp. But I had fun on the ride and the slightly shortened ride was good for the legs after Saturday's long ride. I run a few errands and then hunker down at home in warm clothes in case the colder, wet weather riding is going to send a cold or worse in my direction.
On Monday I'm hungover from bicycle rides (and perhaps other substances) and I read some news and play around with the fuzzy data mining process for a while. Soon I get in a lightweight, high repetition weights workout - it kicks my butt but I have no joint soreness. Perhaps I should stick with this workout for a while. After a shower I take the car to get washed, buy some groceries, and go to Long Beach City College for counseling. I'm not sure I need personal counseling, but I might was well talk with a counselor and I get extra credit for completing six counseling sessions. The counselor recognizes my intent and I am honest with her about my inability to form long-term, lasting, loving relationships. We'll explore these ideas in future sessions. When I get ready to go home it is raining and I am glad that the carwash place has told me that they offer a rain-check guarantee good for 24 hours. I'll try to get the car re-washed on Tuesday. When I get home I continue to work on the fuzzy rule data mining effort and feel that I am really close to having a workable algorithm.
I get up on Tuesday and get out the door for a good two hour mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and with a few extra miles thrown in. There is some wind today so it makes it a good workout. After a shower I study for an upcoming exam in the atmospheric sciences class before riding the motorcycle (for the first time) to the LBCC campus. It's another good classroom discussion where the instructor is very concerned about student learning and knowledge as opposed to memorization which will disappear in a few weeks. When I ride on home I stop at the grocery store for harmfull substances and wend my way through the afternoon and evening. I finish waxing the World Rally Car (except for the gold rims) and then catch up on email and a few other little things. By now I am starting to lose consciousness and I receive word that a Northrop Grumman higher employee is retiring. And I immediately think that I have to reach out to him to convince him to sit on the Board of Directors as an active member of the non-profit. Now I just have to figure out the proper wording of the email introduction/opportunity and see what happens from there. Theoretically, though I do not practice Catholicim anymore, it is the day before Lent starts and that is my excuse for buying harmfull substances from the grocery store and being completely incoherent by about 6pm.