Category: Daily Blog

This is my Daily Blog category.

Early To Bed, Early To Ride

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily Blog, ExerciseLeave a comment

I’ve been going to bed relatively early every night like 9 or 10pm which is odd for me because I’m usually up until like 1am but I’m making an effort to beat the heat to ride the bike to get my exercise.

It’s actually not that hard getting used to waking up at 4:30 in the morning and leaving by 5am and back around 7am.

It’s really nice being out there that early though because it’s in the 60’s or 70’s at 5am, there is no sun yet so the city hasn’t had a chance to get hot yet.  By the time I get home it’s still nice out even though the sun has been out for at least 45 minutes by that time.

I think that it’s going to be easy to get my exercise done and over with by going so early every day.  I just need to learn to take naps during the day to catch up.

Pedals, Mirrors and Shorts

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, Daily BlogLeave a comment

Well I just came home from Snider’s Cyclry.  I bought brand new pedals that are metal, not the cheap metal ones either that cost $7.  No these were $20 and they are a lot heavier than the cheap ones.  Weight on a bike is a huge issue but when it comes to something like that you need them to be as sturdy as possible for standing up on.  That’s why the pedals that came with the bike are breaking, from having 230lbs of weight standing on them.

I also bought a helmet mirror.  When I was trying to put it on, I was having a hell of a time finding a good spot because the mirror isn’t that adjustable that I can just put it anywhere I want to.  I wanted it to stick to the plastic on the outside but the arm on it is so tiny that it had to be on the Styrofoam part in front of my face.  I finally found the perfect spot for it and stuck it on.  I had to go stand outside on the sidewalk, or more in the street, more the gutter really to be sure it was right.  It was so I stuck it on and then looked again without my arm being in the way.  The only problem is I have to look up with my eyes to see it.  That kinda hurts my eyes lol.  So for tomorrow mornings ride (at 4:30am that is) I’m going to bring both mirrors so I can see which one is better.  Who knows, I might need both.

I went to the thrift store before I went to the bus stop to look for shorts and to see if they had any bike shirts at all which they didn’t.  I picked out 2 pairs of shorts but they were so big and I went to hold them up to myself to see if they would fit but wasn’t quite sure.  They don’t have any dressing rooms there so you have to look at sizes and hold them up to yourself lol.  So annoying.  Anyway, I just took them to the register and figured if it’s too tight, it will fit me eventually lol.  One of them was $7 but the tag says $2 and I said well forget it then.  I know they have to charge the lower price, well, I know that applies to everywhere else you go lol but apparently not there.  I said forget it because I didn’t really like them anyway.  So I got 1 pair of shorts with a Hawaiian print on it.  It was only $2.  It’s a bit tight but… it will fit me eventually lol.

Awake Too Early

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I woke up at around 4:15am this morning.  I tried going back to sleep but it was a no go.  It’s now 1 hour later and I’m wide awake.  I think this is a good thing though.  I’m going to use this opportunity to get my body used to waking up early for summer bike riding.

It’s not hot outside yet (even though my bedroom is hot) but I can see on this weeks forecast that it’s going to be in the 100’s this week.  99° today, 103° tomorrow, 101° on Monday then Tuesday and Wednesday are like 93° and 94°.

Right now it’s a nice 63° out but this is the perfect time to go riding.  Today however is not a riding day.  No, instead I’m going to take the bus this morning to the bike store to get some new pedals.  While I’m there I’m going to see how much it would cost for a rack and if they have the grocery bags, if not then that’s fine, I will just get them from Nashbar.  I may just get the rack from nashbar too if they are the same price as Snider’s.

While I’m out I’m going to see if the thrift store has any bike shorts.  I doubt it but you never know.  But I do need some other shorts to go on my ride with.  I have 3 pairs of shorts that fit me but they all have their faults.  One pair rubs against my knees, another pair is too light (it’s beige) and get dirty fast and the 3rd pair is just too freakishly big and will only stay on with a belt.

We have like maybe 10 more pairs of shorts but they fit me like 10 years ago (some 2 years ago) so they are obviously too small.  I will eventually fit back into them as I lose weight but for now I have no options.  I need to find at least 3 pair of black shorts that fit me that I can wear on the bike that aren’t too long, aren’t too wide and aren’t too white lol.

UGH!  I’m starving so I’m gonna go get breakfast, make some coffee and start my day.  I’m thinking about just buying the things I need on nashbars website instead of going to the bike store.  Although, I still need pedals before tomorrow when I plan on riding again.

Cooler, Movies, Mall, Video Games…

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

We got our day planned out.  First we gotta go borrow the ladder from the store next door to our house so we can service the tenants cooler, well, I’ll be changing the cooler pads while Darrin is cleaning the cooler on the ladder.  I hate heights.

Then we’re gonna go to the mall and go see the new Star Trek movie.  Then when that’s over we’re probably going to go back to the mall to eat.

The most important thing is that I got a $25 Game Stop card so I’m going to pick out 2 used games.  I’m sure it will go over, that’s ok, I’ll just pay the difference.

I hope I get 2 good games.  Since there are 2 game stops in the mall I’m probably going to have to look in 1 to see what they have then go to the other to see what they have before I make my final decision.  It’s a process lol.

Preoccupied

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I haven’t been blogging the last few days but I’m still here.  It’s unusual for me not to blog since I typically blog 1-5 times daily lol.  But I’ve been preoccupied with other things.

We just had new tenants move in on May 1st and so I helped them carry boxes in the house from the U-Haul truck and I’ve been watching TV.  Catching up on Stargate SG-1 on Sci Fi as usual.

I have noticed some weight loss thanks to my new way of thinking about eating and stuff.  Before I was just riding hoping that would be enough to lose the weight considering I lost nearly 20lbs last year with exercise alone.  It doesn’t seem to be enough now so I’ve been measuring my food and drinking slim fast for lunch too.

I’m afraid of talking about my progress because it seems to never fail, I talk about how much I’ve lost then the weight loss stops completely then I plateau for a couple of months before I give up.

About maybe 5 years ago I was eating nothing but salads and snacking on sliced cucumbers and baby carrots and I remember I was 212lbs and then one day after about 2 or 3 months of this diet I decided to weigh myself and I was 172lbs.  Well from that day forward the weight stayed the same, it just stopped then I got frustrated because I plateaued then gave up and the weight came back almost as fast as it left. That’s because I started bragging about how I lost the weight.

All I’m going to say is that I’m working on it.  I’ve decided that by not talking about it I’m not bragging about it and if/when people come up to me and tell me OMG you’ve lost so much weight I’m just going to say thanks and move on from there.

As long as I’m eating right and not over eating and exercising I think I’m going to do good and lose the weight I need/want to lose then I can get back on with my life.  But not talking about it lol.

Todays Work

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

OMG What a day this has been. Ok so right after I blogged this morning saying what I was going to do I got up and got dressed and got my bus pass and went to the bus stop and as I’m walking towards it the bus going the opposite direction passes me which means the bus I needed to catch already left. The bus I needed always comes before the bus across the street. I look down the street and see it way past the grocery store. All I see is the back of the bus. So I figure I could either sit here for 20 minutes and wait or I can go back home and get on my bike and ride there.

So I rode the bike to the mall. I get to the Sears Key booth which is like a little building a little bigger than an outhouse lol. I hand the lady the keys and say I need 2 copies of each. I wasn’t paying any attention to what she was doing. I pay, she hands me the bag with keys and I get on my bike and head home. On the way home something hits me. The price is like $2.59 for a key (yeah I know, when did that happen?) and she said they had a special buy 3 keys get the 4th free. So I’m thinking great, I’m getting 8 keys done so 2 of them are free. But when she charged me it was like $10 something. I didn’t think anything about it because I’m just happy the price isn’t really high. But as I’m on my way home I think about it a little more and realize that 3 keys would be $7.77 right? I also bought these 2 .50 cent keychains to put the sets of keys on. So I pull over and look in the bag, there are a total of 4 keys in the bag.

CRAP! I gotta go back there. Luckily I hadn’t gotten too far away from the mall so I went back. I got back to the Sears Key outhouse and I have to wait in line because there are now 2 people standing there. I finally get up there and tell her “I said I needed 2 copies for ALL of the keys on this keychain and you only made 2 copies of only 2 of they keys. I need then ALL copied”. She apologizes but of course I get no discount. Whatever. Total I paid about $18 for keys OMG! Good thing 2 of them were free.

So I get back home and by the way that counts as exercise lol. So anyway hehe. I get back home and start right in on my “chores” for the day. I clean the patio which took maybe an hour, maybe 2. I also hose the back yard too because it was dusty. Oh and I opened the side gate and the neighbor used his blowy gardening thing to blow all of our leaves in OUR yard over into a pile. I guess I can appreciate that because I just have to shovel it in to the green can but on the other hand who asked him to do that? When he did that most of the dust and dirt got in my back yard. UGH!

So I’m done with the patio and the back yard. So I go to the garage and start moving boxes in there to make some room for the boxes from the shed. It doesn’t take very long, I had to sweep the inside of the garage first. So then I put the lawn mower and the pressure washer inside the patio so nobody would steal them in the driveway. I then start carrying boxes with the dolly from the shed to the garage. What back breaking work that is especially with all the crap we have. Plus my dolly had 1 flat tire. Just a bike pump doesn’t work, you have to use compressed air to put air in a dolly tire, well at least ours anyway. There is no inner tube, it’s just a tire so the compressed air forces the tire against the metal wheel. But if you hit a bump the air comes out and you are left with a gimp wheel lol.

So I get most of the boxes into the garage and 3pm is coming so I decided to take a 1 hour break to watch Stargate SG-1 and to rest my breaking back and painful heels. When that ended I felt better enough that I could continue for a little while longer. I go back to work and I quit for the day at 5pm so I only had 1 more hour in me. But the good news is that I got about 90% of the shed into the garage. Unfortunately now there is absolutely no room in the garage now lol. That means we gotta really go through our junk and get ride of most of it. Use it, sell it, trash it, maybe burn it lol.

At least I made an easy path to the Christmas tree and the Christmas decorations boxes. Which remind me, I found 2 more Christmas boxes so this year we will have even more crap on the tree lol.

My back and my heels and legs are in SOOOOOOO much pain right now. I need to get to bed. Later.

Busy Day For Me

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I hadn’t planned on doing anything today, just resting my legs for tomorrows bike ride but then something came up.

Our new tenants are moving in tomorrow and there isn’t very much that Darrin can do over at the little house because of his job.  So, he had me go to buy some keys for the new tenants, 2 copies of 4 keys.  That’s fine, I was going to take the bus but I decided to ride my bike instead so I got some exercise in today.

But then he dropped the bomb on me.  Our shed is filled with boxes and furniture.  Well, the new tenants want to use the Shed and Darrin told me that he told them that we have our stuff in it.  I told him in all fairness that shed does belong to that rental so they should be able to use it.  Me and my big mouth.

So, today (right after I click the publish button) I gotta go put our stuff from the patio inside the house then hose the patio and hose our back yard too because our lovely neighbor blew all of our dead leaves from our grapefruit tree all over the place to make a big giant pile for me to shovel into the green cans.  I guess I appreciate it but I would’ve liked it if he didn’t get all the dust and dirt all over my back yard.  Anyway, off topic hehe.  I have to hose our patio and back yard.

While the patio and back yard are both drying I gotta move a piece of furniture from the living room to the bedroom (it’s a dresser and there was a dresser taken out of the bedroom so this is just going to be put in its place.  Then I gotta start carrying the boxes from the shed to our patio which is the space between the house and the garage.

Once all the boxes and furniture is in our patio then I gotta start pulling the stuff out of the garage and going through boxes to see if we need any of that stuff then start stacking boxes from the shed in the garage with our other boxes.  UGH!

I just ate a Tigers Milk energy bar so that should give me a little bit of energy.  Plus I got some coffee already brewed and waiting for me.  I’m taking this time to blog to rest my legs from that bike ride to the mall and back before I start this BS mission lol.

Make Your Own Cigarettes

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I woke up this morning to the sound of my doorbell.  I stumbled out of bed and went to the door and there was nobody there.  I said “hello?” and the neighbor kid popped his head out and said “oh did I wake you up?”  I said “yes, you did”.  He said “oh well never mind” I said “wait, you woke me up, what do you want?”  He said “I just wondered if you would do something for me but I know you probably won’t want to do it”.

Kid, if you know I won’t want to do it then why are you waking me up?  SIGH!  – by the way, he is 21 lol I call him a kid because he acts like one.

Anyway, he wanted me to go to the store to buy a pack of Newport Cigarettes for him.  Not just the store next door to my house but the store a block away.  I don’t think so.  It ain’t happenin’.  I told him no because I quit smoking in 1996 and I swore that I wouldn’t go running errands for people wanting to buy cigarettes like I did for people when I did smoke because I’m trying not to support that habit.  Yeah I know, douche ex-smoker right?

So I remembered when we first moved to Bakersfield we met this guy named Troy and he rolled his own cigarettes with this little hand-held machine where he placed a cigarette tube with a filter on the end (it looked like a cigarette but it was empty) and he put the tobacco in the machine and he did a slide motion with the machine and pulled the filled cigarette out.

So I went online and did a search for it and found 2 products.  They aren’t cheap.  I didn’t find the hand-held one but these are still good I guess.  There is the PREMIER Excel Cigarette Injector Machine at Amazon for $34.99 or you can buy it used for $20.  Then there is the Top-o-matic Cigarette Making Machine W/handlewhich is a bit more expensive for $79.99 but you can buy it used for $35+.  I’m sure that any cigarette store sells these for less than you can buy them at Amazon, who knows.  I haven’t been to a cigarette store because they opened right after I quit smoking.

But with these machines you can make your own cigarettes for $1 a pack.  That’s pretty good right?  When I quit smoking the generic cigarettes were .99 cents per pack with tax so about $1.07 total.  Hell when I started smoking in 1985 cigarettes were about $1 a pack for the regular brands.  Now cigarettes are like $5-10 per pack so I think that this is a good thing to suggest to my neighbor so he can roll his own for a lot less.

The reviews that I have read say that the cigarettes you buy and the ones you roll taste about the same.  All you do is buy your cigarette tubes with the filter already on.  Those are about $2 for a cartons worth of tubes which adds up to .01 one penny for each tube with a filter on it.  The tubes w/filters are all different.  You can buy full flavor or lights or menthol or menthol lights etc.

Then you buy your tobacco which is about $20 for a can or bag.  I actually don’t know how much they cost.  I went to PipesandCigars.com and found this one particular brand called Drum and it’s about $21.99 for the can.  I don’t know how many cigarettes or packs or cartons that rolls though.  But you can buy them in your local cigarette shop I guess, they will tell you how many packs you can make with each bag or can.

I am certainly not promoting cigarettes here but I can say that the government is screwing people out of their hard earned money by raising these bullshit taxes for cigarettes and I think that people should stop buying the pre-rolled cigarettes and just roll your own.  It’s time to give the power back to the people and let them decide how much they want to pay for a pack of cigarettes.

It takes less than 10 seconds to “inject” your own cigarette with these 2 machines I linked above.  You can make an entire pack of cigarettes in about a minute or 2.  Hell, you can just roll a whole cartons worth and use the box that the empty cigarette tubes came in to store all your cigarettes then go out and buy a tin that looks like a pack of cigarettes or a cigarette holder like they used to use back in the 20’s -50’s (remember I Love Lucy?  They always had those things).

Watch this video I found.  Oh, it’s not me by the way hehe.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LarY6qeopBY

Edit: I found out that the tobacco to make 1 carton of cigarettes is now up to $29.  YIKES!  But that still beats $45 for a carton I guess.

The Heat Is Gone

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I know the song is “The Heat Is On” but for us in Bakersfield, it’s gone.  This is for the time being.  The last few days has been really hot, like 95°F-100°F temperatures.

I went bike riding this morning and it was nice and cool but not too cold.  I thought for sure it was going to be a scorcher today but it wasn’t.  Although there were times that I had to pull over into the shade because the sun was beating me down.

I looked at the forecast until Monday and it’s going to be in the late 70’s to mid 80’s all week.  Then the 6-10 day forecast it shows next week is going to be in the mid 80’s too.  Even on May 1st which is usually the day the 100°F temperatures start coming.

Although, you can never rely 100% on the weather forecast because it’s not always accurate.  So perhaps by May 1st it will be so hot I’m gonna be bike riding at 5am.

Misuse of 911

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

911 is for emergencies only!  If your house is on fire you call 911.  If someone is robbing your house you call 911.  If your husband just had a heart attack you call 911.  If your child was kidnapped you call 911 IMMEDIATELY not 30 days later (Casey).

There has been some misuse of the 911 system lately.  A woman was at a Burger King trying to order some western BBQ burgers for her kids and they weren’t making it for her and she called 911 to tell them that they refuse to “make it her way” lol.

Then there was a woman who called 911 not 1 but 3 times to complain that she ordered a 10 piece Chicken McNugget and paid for it then they found out they were out and asked her to pick something else out and she said no and they told her well, sorry but no refunds.  Which in my opinion is fishy because I’ve worked for McDonald’s when I was a teenager and if they are out of something they refund your money immediately without hesitation.  So that particular McDonald’s must be owned by Adolph McDonald.

Now another person calls 911 to complain that this Chinese restaurant didn’t put enough shrimp in her fried rice.

Enough people!  This is getting way out of control.  If they let people call 911 for food related issues that can be resolved by calling a managers attention then there is no reason to call 911.  Just act like you are an adult and take care of it with some dignity.  It’s fricken’ chicken and shrimp people.  Give me a break.

The woman at Burger King was offered a refund but she refused it and the 911 operator said take the refund and go home.  The woman at the McDonald’s, why couldn’t she have chosen something else of equal or higher value then paid the difference?  I mean how much could a 10 piece mcnugget cost?  $3?  So get 3 chicken sandwich’s instead for $1 each.  Get over it lady.  And the shrimp lady, if you don’t like the amount of shrimp that is in your fried rice then ask for your money back and go to Panda Express.

Stop wasting 911 operators and the local police officers time and tax payers money with your stupid food related problems.  Deal with it yourself.