On Tuesday I start the day with a reasonable 30 mile road bicycle ride. I stay close to home throughout the day working on the grant proposal for the city of Long Beach, the Statement of Qualifications for the non-profit in San Gabriel, the Fair Trade Long Beach website, and the n-dimensional elipsoid effort.
Wednesday starts with a recovery 90 minute road bicycle ride followed by a shower. During the ride I run into a rider that I've seen riding for quite a few years and today we are going the same direction so we introduce ourselves and chat. His name is Mike from Kansas and volunteered for service in Vietnam and is now a financial planner. But he has some wild stories to share, that I reciprocate with, and I hope that someday we hang out off the bicycles and share experiences from the past and into the future. I send the Statement of Qualifications to the San Gabriel non-profit and go meet Manny, a fellow geek, for lunch. We talk about Python programming and business and non-profits and politics. Afterwards I rush on home to work on the Python n-dimensional elipsoid problem (realizing that I'm really working on n 2-dimensional elipsoids now and need to convert it to a true n-dimensional elipsoid). I'll concentrate on finishing up the city of Long Beach grant proposal on Wednesday.
I'm out of enthusiasm on Thursday morning, so I grab a library book and walk all of te way down to the local library branch to return the book and come back home. After a shower I make super progress on the n-dimensional allipsoid when I find someone who has done something somewhat similar but much different. Before I know it the time is 10:30 am so I go edge, mow, trim the lawn and sweep up the trimmings. I take another shower to cool down and go back to work on the ellipsoid problem. We've receied word from the latest non-profit that their sponsor "wants to stick close to home" and so I eventually have to call the non-profit and tell them that we are not their orgaization for this effort. It's a shame that people don't want to innovate and try new things, but rather stick with things that sort of work, but don't reach as many people as they could and/or are not efficient at sharing as they could be. I prcorsatinate this call by watching some golf for the US Open and laer continue with the ellipsoid programming. Late in the afternoon I go do some strength and stabilizing exercises for the Achilles tendon which is not completely recovered yet.
On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I get out for good bicycle rides, get to the library to return two books (one was good and one was in the 10% that I return unread) and pick up two new books, and do a lot of little errands around the house. I'm also at a bit of a loss right now, so it's a quiet, reflective weekend.
On Monday and Tuesday I have the blahs. I manage to get out for long walks on both days and work the abdominals and lower back on Monday. I also spend some time working on the n-dimensional ellipsoid and get it working with a few minor tweaks left. Now I have to try and figure out what the results mean when I use the n-dimesnional ellipsoid to categorize or classify data. I also work on the Fair Trade Long Beach website and spend time finsihing up the non-profit grant proposal to be submitted to the city of Long Beach. I look at the fedderal human services grant website and see that forms and documents will not be available until 3 July. That doesn't leave much time for submission by the 3 August deadline. So I'll have to start working on it ahead of time.
I sleep horribly on Tuesday into Wednesday. Nonetheless I start Wednesday with a long walk to the library to return one of the books that I checked out this past Saturday. It was a work of fiction taking place in Ocofrd, England and had quite a few plot twists and turns and was fun to read. After a shower and breakfast I ride the motorcycle down to Huntington Beach to meet with Joseph - an assistant principal at a high school that I've known for 25 years. I need his signature on these grant proposal documents since he is one of the officers of the non-profit. We spend almost two hours together talking about business opportunities, when we should bid and not bid, and other fun things. When I ride home with his signatures I switch over to the car and go to the grocery store for heavier supplies that would be awkward to carry home on foot. Afterwards I start in on an exercise plan for my Achilles tendon to do 25 weighted calf exercises every twenty minutes for the next six hours. In between these exercises I scan the documents that Joseph has signed and I also cook vegetables like I used to do when I was working - this 8 quart pot of vegetables should last quite a while. During all of this time I have some old Ramones music playing and then I switch over to tribal house and dance music to keep the energy high. I finish scanning and assembling the grant proposals and now the team can think about it for a week or so before submitting it to the city of Long Beach.
On Thursday and Friday I get out for a good road bicycle ride and lift weights. I have avoided lifting weights for more than two weeks because arthtitis pain in the shoulders. But on Thursday the shoulders feel good after lifting (along with ice packs and tennis ball massages against the wall). After Frriday's morning exercises and shoulder rehabilitaton I drive on out to a different library and pick up two books to read and then proceed to a coffeehouse to work. Since school is out, the crowd at the coffeehouse is down, but I get in some good work on the n-dimensonal ellipsoid and a recently-discovered similar effort regarding ellipsoid-based confidence levels. I'm at the point where I have to do some rudimentary programming to re-sort the ellipsoids and then it will be more clear what they mean. I drive on home with an intermediate for "bad" supplies and then relax on Friday night.
I wake up on Saturday and there is drizzle and wet pavement. Thus I forego the road bicycle ride (because I just wiped down and clean the road bicycle) and start out on the mountain bicycle. I run into a beginning cyclist near the Los Angeles river rail and though he is on a road bicycle, he keeps saying, "This is faster than I usually ride". I take him past his usual turn-around point and show him how to get to various other trails so that he can become a cycling addict as I am. We end up doing the loop ride and I hope that we are able to ride together again for the next 6 weeks before his wife gives birth to their first child (which they have intentionally decided not to determine the gender of). After a shower I start in on qualifying for the first FrenchGrand Prix in many years (and at a track that I attended back in 1985). I pause the qualifying results a number of tmes for conversations with Ruby about job opportnities and a long conversation with a new friend in the Philippines. Throughout the afternoon I make a little bit of progress on sorting the ellipsoid classification algorithm based upon a Gaussian statistical distribution and make some decent progress. It is almost ready for public viewing.
On Sunday I have a very sad day for no appraent reason. I wake up and have no motivation to cycle so I watch an interesting Formula One race from France - the first race back in France for 10 years. After the race I get in a good session with the weights where I am going to very slowly rehabilitate the arthritis in the shoulders with light weights, ice afterwards, and tennis ball massages against doorstops. I completely waste the early afternoon and then proceed to a Fair Trade Long Beach meeting. We meet at Senator Lara's district office and discuss outreach, the website, events, and further plans. Because the regular minute-taking person has accidentally hit herself in the eye, I take the meeting minutes. When I get home I work on mapping out the Fair Trade retailers that we currently have agreements with and I transcribe the meeting minutes and get them out the door before I lay down for sleep. I'm readng two books simultaneously with one being a series of short stories that presents bizarre circumstances and has me laughing out loud at the twists and turns in each story. And the second book about self-help and overcoming addiction. (Not really - it's not a self-help book. But it's a women's narrative of how she overcame multiple addictions and I am hoping that can learn from the book.)
I start Monday with about an hour long walk and I stop in at the grocery store for supplies. I then water the impatiens and roses and pull the road bicycle out and clean it up quite nicely. I use an old toothbrush to clean the deraillers and gears and use Lemon Pledge furniture polish on the carbon fibre components as the bicycle store owner had suggested. After a shower I start working on the n-dimesnional ellipsoid which has recently "come alive" with results and I start writing up the results for publication. I take creative breaks to go put the brand new rear tire on the road bicycle and I'm a bit disappointed with myself when I pinch the tube during installation and it doesn't hold air. But not too disappointed because I know that the tube has been ridden for two years with no problem. Thus I take a break and go out later and install an unused tube and it is fine. I just need to go buy a new tube to carry with me as a spare on my rides. The bicycle looks brand new and I am happy to be finished with this cleaning up and maintenance (though I should probably install a new front tire in the coming week or so). I continue working on the n-dimensonal ellipsoid algorithm and paper and have a relatively quiet Monday evening.