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Throughout the days on Sunday through Thursday there are great, but windy, bicycle rides, work on Karl's new website, work on my sprinklers, and visiting with other friends. When I go off to my classes Karl either goes swimming or playing tennis or dealing with his business. Late on Wednesday we go to visit the Long Beach Ping Pong club were Karl plays various people and I just hang out and relax and talk with people. It turns out the club is 83 years old and is one of the larger ping pong clubs in the area.
On Friday Karl gets ready to go back home and I get ready to go to the fostercare hackathon in West Los Angeles. Karl takes the trains to Los Angeles International airport to go home. At the hackathon there is a lady who wants to take control of our sub-group, but we just go off on our own and work on what we think is best. Pretty soon it is 9:30 pm on Friday night and I'm a long way from home. I guess I am not going home tonight. Soon it is 1 am on Saturday morning and my partner and I are coding html, css, js, and Perl to get our website working. Some team members take leave but three of us continue on. At 2:20 on Saturday morning a teammate tells me the time but I ignore him and we continue on. At 4 am my teammate tells me the time and he lays down on a couch to sleep. Fifteen minutes later I go lay down on a couch for some sleep. It turns out my teammate cannot cleep and continue on while I slack off for 90 minutes of sleep. There are alarms popping off at 5:45 on Saturday morning so I go re-join my teammate to continue on.
On Saturday morning various team members re-appear and work on PowerPoint charts for our presentation as one teammate and I put the finishing touches on our website that allows adoptive children, foster kids, and social workers to find resources (shelter, homes, food, schoo, financial help) to enhance their lives. Finally the final presentations are made and I'm not sure why, but halfway through my short presentation people start cheering and clapping and I have to shush them down so that I can finish demo-ing our product. We've done very well! There are discussions with various people afterwards but I just keep hoping that the speakers will stop talking quickly so that I can get home. More than 36 hours after I have arrived, I walk out to my motorcycle to ride home on 90 minutes of sleep (and two Red Bulls). As I ride home I keep telling myself, "Just take your time, there is no hurry", and I follow my advice and just want to get home safely. At home I take a shower since I haven't had one in 40 hours, water the lawn with the new indoor-controller, and watch qualifying for the Russian F1 race. With the lack of sleep, I don't know what time it is let alone what day it is and the evening is very surreal. I'm in bed a bit after 9 pm and I read until 9:30 pm before dropping off for sleep.
On Sunday I am still "hungover" from the hackathon and do not get out cycling. Instead I walk to the grocery store for supplies, do some dusting around the house (My least favorite task in the entire world!), do some detailed work around the sprinkler system installation, and watch the Formula One race from Sochi, Russia. Though there is not close action, it is a very strategic race and my favorite driver comes home a close second with a strong surge towards the end of the race. I go mow the lawn, trim the roses, and trim around the backyard. Though I didn't ride today, it is still an "active" day if not a long bicycle ride, a long run/walk, or a session lifting weights. I get cleaned up and cut and cook vegetables for the upcoming week and then sit down to answer the emails that I've ignored during the hackathon. As the day wears on I start picking back up the homework for the various classes that I have and work on some interesting ideas that I had from the recent foster are hackathon.
I start Monday with a good bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back (with a few extra miles thrown in). The legs feel pretty good after the hackathon. After a shower I finally get a haircut, return a book to the library, do some grocery shopping, do some homework, and finally watch the Moto2 race from 8 days ago. I'm supposed to clean the kitchen floor today, but I run out of steam and hopefully will get to it on Tuesday after school.
On Tuesday and Wednesday I do many little tasks around the house cleanign and tidying up. I also get in a good workout with the weights to get started again and go for a long walk after class on Wednesday. After Tuesday's atmospheric sciences class, the professor asks me if I would sit on a panel encouraging students to get involved in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering. And of course I accept the offer for later in May. I've had the blahs for a couple of days but I feel them lifting on Wednesday.
I start Thursday with a super road bicycle ride. I am feeling extra strong from the riding that I did with Karl when he visited. At one point I catch up to another rider and pass him and he tries to hang on and is barely able to do so. I am up one gear from my normal riding and feeling strong! I finish with a good 48 miles. After a shower I trim the roses and then go to class. The professor has asked me to sit on a STEM panel and he gives me the date - it conflicts with my Wednesday human services class but I email the professor and she agrees that this is a worthwhile absence. And, it turns out, I have a dentist appointment at 3pm, so I call the dentist and start the process to change that appointment. When I get home from class I go buy supplies from the grocery store and Person T_U comes by with his "new" car - a 2010 Lexus with 72,000 miles. New? But it is very nice but pulls to the right and alreadys needs to have the right front A-arm replaced as if the previous the owner hit a curb or pothole very very hard. Why doesn't Person T_U buy a brand new car?
For the first time in quite a while I have trouble sleeping on Thursday night into Friday. I wake up at 2 am and don't really get back to sleep until 4 am 9with some reading thrown in). I ride the motorcycle to a restaurant/conference facility near CSULA for the senior design project expo. Both of my teams give very good presentations though one team has just blown through every milestone and exceeded every expectation and the other team has fallen short. After the expo I rush on home and get in a good session with the weights and hope that sleep comes easily on Friday night.
I have a hard time sleeping again on Friday night into Saturday morning - waking up at 3 am nd not falling back asleep for a while. What's going on here? I wake up before the alarm goes off and check the weather forecast. The drizzle/rain has been moved later to 9 am, so I take the mountain bicycle out for a two hour ride. I stay dry for the ride but note later that as I am running errands there is drizzle coming down. After a shower and more phone calls to asian countries, I go buy more drinking glasses (since I've broken so many over the last couple of years). Let's see how long these 16 glasses last. I also do some grocery shopping, clean the roses, and clean the bathrooms. I'm out of control as I cannot sit still even with a very intense playoff ice hockey game on television that is going into sudden death overtime. I keep washing stuff and clothes and bed linens and just cannot sit still. Later in the evening I do calm down and watch some ice hockey and relax.
On Sunday the morning is drizzly and I have a fever of almost 1 degree, so I do not get out cycling. I watch a relatively boring MotoGP race from Jerez, Spain and then go lift weights. I add a set to each exercise and thus it is a very good workout. After a shower and some phone calls, I go through the garage and box up old chemicals and electronics for another recycling event on Saturday. And then I relax with the day - studying a bit for one class, working on some websites, wacthing a bit of television, and I also watch a fun Moto3 race. Just aiming for a slow day to fend off any potential illness coming on. Late in the afternoon, as I am waking up from a nap, the rain starts coming down pretty hard. Though it is short-lived, I check the weather radar and see that there is hail reported in the area. But we just get a weird late season rain storm to help out our water situation.
On Monday I am still a bit lazy. But I get in a walk in the morning and later a workout for the abdominals and lower back. I spend most of the day making enhancements to the website that we will be showing to Los Angeles county people next Monday as well as working on another tool to parse data from a common format (into something that would be easier for me to work with). I also catch an exciting Moto2 race and finish off the last of the books that I have on my nightstand.