Tag: alarm clock

Busy All Day

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Wow I’ve just been busy all day long without 1 moment to catch my breath.  First off I woke up late.  I didn’t set the right time on my alarm for some reason.  The alarm clock has 2 alarm settings so if your spouse or whatever has to wake up at a earlier or later time then you can have them both set differently and both turned on.  Well, I have them both set for different times and the one that I needed wasn’t turned on lol.  I guess I just forgot to turn it on the right one.

So I woke up on my own at 5:30am and went out, Dell DJ battery was almost dead so naturally I had to charge that up.  6:30am comes and I leave the house.  I’m on my way home and my brand spanking new tube for the front tire blows.  UGH!  I’m like 5 minutes away from the house (not walking, by bike) so I have to pull over and put some air in the tube, just enough to get me home.  I come home and feel the tire and it’s goin’ down hehe.

I get in the shower immediately and then walk over to Albertsons to buy a bike repair kit.  My bike repair kit sucks, the patches aren’t patching lol so I needed a new one, one with that glue.  But Albertsons doesn’t have them so I go to Walgreen’s and get it.  Of course I had to go back to Albertsons anyway for other things.

I come home, put the new patch on the tube and I take one of my old tubes that the patch didn’t work for and I just cut it all the way around and since it has that green goop stuff (which doesn’t work by the way lol) I have to wash all that out, throw away all the chunks and then get it all off by hand in a bucket of water.  So then I wrapped that around my tube, the one that I just bought yesterday that already has a hole in it that I just patched up lol.  So hopefully this patch will keep it patched and if I run over another sticker then that extra tube in there will take the impact of it and not let it go through to the new tube.

So now it’s 11:45am, I’m going to drink my slim fast shake but then I have to go next door and clean the rental.  We were going to do it over the weekend but Darrin was just too exhausted to go over there.  He slept the entire weekend lol.

Hopefully it won’t take me too long, I’m going to bring my alarm clock and set it for 2:50pm so that I can come over here and watch Stargate SG-1 at 3pm.  If I still have more to do then of course I’ll go back but I don’t think there is too much to clean.

LATE!

On By Michel McDonaldIn ExerciseLeave a comment

ARGH!  I woke up and it’s 5:30am because I set the wrong alarm.  My alarm clock has 2 alarms on it and I set the wrong one lol.  I didn’t even wake up from the alarm, I just woke up.  I looked at the cable box to see what time it was and I was like OMG!  I’m LATE!

Then I go to fill my camelbak with ice and water and I think hmmm, I wonder.  So I turn on my Dell DJ Mp3 player and the battery is dead lol.  Great!  Perfect!  Well, it had 0 bars but it wasn’t dead dead.  I could listen to the radio on it but I prefer music.

So Since I’m already late I might as well wait until it’s charged up a little bit more.  I’ll leave the house at 6:30am which is about the same time I usually come home from riding the bike.  According to the weather channel app on my computer, 6am will be 70, 7am will be 71 and 8am will be 73.  Since I won’t be coming home until 8:30am I might as well mention that 9am will be 76 so between 8am and 9am the temp will go up by only 2 degrees so I’m not concerned about the heat catching up to me.  That’s the only reason I ride so early, to beat the heat.

Oh well, it finally gives me a chance to fully wake up before actually starting my day.  Or… does this mean that everything else this morning is going to go wrong and I should just stay home?  LOL

Early Morning Bike Ride

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike, Cycling, ExerciseLeave a comment

Well, I did it.  I set the alarm clock for 4am and of course had to push the snooze and when it went off again in 10 minutes I decided ok, I need to do this, I need to wake up and get ready.  So I got up, went and got a bowl of raisin bran cereal.  I read my emails which weren’t that many since the last time I read them last night lol.

I like to eat then wait 30 minutes to go, so 4:45am came and I left the house and it was pitch black outside.  Thank goodness for bike lights.  Although I didn’t realize until I got there that the back light wasn’t working at all.  It wasn’t until the sun came out that I realized that it was because the wire snapped off.  UGH!  It’s easily repairable.

What I especially liked about riding that early is that there are absolutely no cars.  0 cars.  Well, there were a couple but none that I had to worry about.  Of course being that early I had to stop and push the walk button because certain lights just won’t turn green unless the sensors detect a car sitting there and they don’t detect bicycles.

While I was on the bike trail that early in the morning before the sun came up there were no other riders which isn’t odd for me not to see anyone because in the daytime there are barely any other riders.  So it really didn’t make much of a difference.  But when the sun did start coming up I did start to see a couple of riders.

Even coming home with the sun up at 6am there still weren’t any cars.  I finally got home at 6:22am so I was gone about an hour and half but my total time was 1 hour 5 min.  Hey, I have to take a break during my ride lol.

Now that my muscles are getting used to riding I’m gonna experiment with going out again tomorrow and then the day after that.  I want to go out every day, not just every other day.  I want to get as much exercise in as I can because the weight is coming off.  So, we will see tomorrow if I go out or not hehe.

Bicycle

On By Michel McDonaldIn CyclingLeave a comment

I woke up at 7am with the alarm clock with the intention of leaving the house at 8:30am or when Darrin left for work.  But then I realized that I might be getting a package in the mail any day now so I just decided to wait another hour for the mail.  It’s a good thing I did because she left a big package on my doorstep and didn’t even ring the bell.  She just left it there.  If I wasn’t home when she dropped it off then someone could have taken it.  It was the Big City Slider Station from Publishers Clearing House lol.  Yeah I know, I could have gotten it from Wal-Mart but I can pay for it over the next 4 months.  I don’t have the money to spend at Wal-Mart right now.

Before the mail came I thought that I would go to Albertson’s real fast and see what they have in the way of energy bars.  When I get to a certain point my stomach starts hurting because all of a sudden it’s like I’m starving or something.  I don’t know why it does that so I wanted to get some energy bars.  They aren’t too bad I guess, most of them are a bit expensive like $1.50 – $2.  But then I saw the Tiger’s Milk bars which were only .89 cents but they also had a tag that said buy 1 get 1 free.  So I bought 3 of them and got 3 for free.  I’m going to have to go back later and buy 20 more for $10 lol.

So then I went to the bike path and didn’t stop for any rest, I was going to just rest at a Yokuts park just before Beach Park but then I figured that Beach Park is right next to Yokuts park so I might as well just keep going to Beach Park.  When I got there I sat on the cement bench and grabbed my Tiger’s Milk bar and enjoyed it.  My stomach was a little tiny bit hungry but it wasn’t too hungry but this Tiger’s Milk bar filled it.  I sat there for probably 15 minutes then I went on my way back the way I came to come home.

When I got home I took the bicycle computer off and when I opened the back door the dog (toy chihuahua) was jumping up for me to pick her up and I did then I started walking in the door and went to reach for the doorknob to close it and the computer fell out of my hand.  OMG!!!  I picked it up and it was flashing numbers as if I had just taken the battery out and replaced it so it wanted me to set it up.  This means that I had lost all my information.

Luckily I had looked at the info before I got home so I kinda knew what my trip odometer was.  It was about 10 miles which was the same exact amount of miles I went on April 17th so I just wrote down the same miles.  Also I looked at my average speed and it was 12.2 so I wrote that down on my sheet (and in the bike computer stats in the Spark People page).  My time was about the same as April 17th also so I just put 52 minutes and no seconds.  I don’t know how many calories or fat calories that was but I’m not really concerned.  The reason I say that is because going 12.2mph burns more calories than going 11.8mph.  Not that much but still, the numbers wouldn’t be the same.

So that’s it.  Tomorrow I’m going to leave at the same time as Darrin since I’m not expecting anything in the mail.  Well, I did buy him some ties for Church with crosses on them but I’m sure they will be in a small enough package that they can slip it into the big box outside.

Satellite Clock

On By Michel McDonaldIn Products I Like1 Comment

I bought this satellite clock from Publisher’s Clearing House last year because I wanted to increase my chances of winning money hehe.  I know, buying doesn’t increase your chances blah blah blah.

So I’ve always wanted a satellite clock ever since they came out but I really don’t NEED a satellite clock that much so I just never bought one.  I don’t really look at a regular clock, I always look at a cell phone or the cable box or the clock on the computer and all those clocks are basically satellite clocks.

I didn’t have an alarm clock though so I bought this from PCH.  I haven’t had it long enough for it to require a time change from the stupid twice a year time change.  Right now it’s “Spring Forward” but my clock didn’t spring forward like it’s supposed to.  I took a picture to show that it is still at 11am when it should be 12pm.  I put it outside and pressed the sync button to see if it syncs or not.  Here is a picture of what it looks like so you can beware not to waste your money on it.

satellite-clock

The only way that the camera was able to take a picture of this so you can see the display was from an angle.  In fact, the only way I can see what time it is is to tilt it so I can see it from this angle.  Otherwise the LCD display looks blank.  It always looks like the batteries are dying even though it has brand spanking new batteries in it.  It does have a lovely blue light when you press the snooze button so you can see it better in the dark.

I could set it manually but that’s not way I bought it.  I bought it so I wouldn’t have to.  I’m going to go check on it to see if it’s changed or not.  It’s been out there for about 10 minutes….  OK good, I just went and got it and the time has indeed changed to the current time according to my cable box.  It is currently 12:23pm.

It would be nice if it set itself in the house and I wouldn’t have to take it outside to have it set itself properly.  But you know, it’s only twice a year and during battery changes that I have to deal with this crap.  So I guess I take it back.  Buy it but beware, you have to tilt it to see what time it is and you have to take it outside to sync with the satellites.

Tomorrows Goal

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cycling, ExerciseLeave a comment

Tomorrow morning I’m not going to wake up to an alarm clock telling me that I have to get up at the butt crack of dawn to go bike riding.  Instead I’m just going to wake up when I wake up then I’m going to have something to eat, maybe a bowl of corn flakes, then wait a little while maybe an hour, they say to eat 1 hour before exercising.  I wouldn’t want to give myself a cramp.  Then I’m going to do some stretches for my legs and then get on my bike and go to Beach Park.  This time I have a goal to get there and then collapse onto the grass and rest while listening to my music for a bit, maybe call Darrin and tell him I made it.  Give my legs enough time to rest so I can make it all the way back home.

I think this is a good strategy.  See the reason I haven’t made it all the way there yet is because I kinda figured I’d get there then immediately go home without stopping and it was just too much for my legs.  But all I have to do is think about it in a different way and then I can do it.  I need to do this.  Then I can say hey I made it all the way to beach park and I collapsed on the grass and gave my legs enough time to rest before getting up, I looked at how pretty it is and I looked at the bike path but I will save the bike path for another time.  Yeah, that’s what I’ll say.

The one thing I need is encouragement to do it.  Well, on that note I think I shall go to bed and rest up for tomorrow.  This is good because it’s only 11:12pm and not 2am lol.