Week 01/2025
- This is one of the ongoing weekly notes, as per Thej.
Well, we publish this first weekly note two days late, hopefully not a harbinger.
Work
- To be honest, too many outstanding issues for both research and implementation. I have corralled all the scattered notes (e- and p- based) and am compiling and compressing them into something actionable.
- The week as the unit of effort makes much more sense to me. Daily notes are too scattered and ad hoc, and an archive of hundreds for a given year is simply a recipe for ignorance. I've turned off the Daily Notes feature in Obsidian, and now write into a single weekly note, that then gets recycled. These weekly notes blog posts will help with summarizing for the week. Let's hope I can keep up the momentum.
Health
- Task: redo glasses prescription --> Put off until 2026, as I do have two working reading glasses and two working distance glasses.
- Doing the jogging and pilates (wow, out of shape much?), almost daily at this point. Will continue.
- Started some great bicycle rides, early morning solo and early evening with the boys. Now that both boys have proper 6-speed bicycles we can go a lot faster. They don't keep up with my normal cadence, but they are much better than when Jon had a single-speed bike (and would peddle furiously to get up speed).
Bicycling
Getting the new bike for Ben and having Jon use Ben's old bike means that all of us have multiple gears on the bike, and we can go faster now. The small boy has a higher muscle-to-mass ratio and so is actually more eager to speed up than his brother whose "legs hurt" (though not due to bicycle sizing or gears). I was able to go significantly faster than we used to and both boys caught up. Our latest iteration of bicycle lights (front and back, rechargeable USB-C), and water bottle holders are quite good.
However, I've hardly ever worn bicycle helmets throughout my life, and the small boys have never (though there was a toddler bike helmet long ago for the boys). Since the theme of this year is health and safety, bicycle helmets (and perhaps gloves) are on the itinerary. I've always bicycled with the boys, first focusing on their tricycle, push bike, training wheels, real bike, and now geared bikes. Sometimes they have interest in things like skateboards and scooters (two wheeled variety), but frankly I want to do the play / exercise with them, and not just watch from the sidelines. I love bicycling and for many years it was my primary transportation as a teenager, and in my 20s. Even in Hawaii for 7 years, a bicycle was eminently more practical (and great for exercise, especially riding up and down the Tantalus-Round Top loop).
In Chiang Mai, I used to live closer to Doi Suthep and rode up and down that mountain quite a bit (about 75 minutes round-trip). Closer to home (Hang Dong), we have the short but steep Wat Doi Pa Pao and the longer (and steeper, though only a small part of the loop) Wat Phra That Doi Kham. I only travel to the entrance of Doi Kham, not ascend the insane grade along with the insane drivers. Still, the leg from Bang Pong School to the Doi Kham entrance is fantastic (and joyfully tiring).
Outstanding
- My bike needs new tires (worn). Get at Decathlon. Forgot to do that when we got Ben's new bike.
- Need to figure out bicycle helmets (and maybe gloves?)
Motorcycle project
- No progress on this yet, though I have identified the welding shop I will use.
Eating and Food
- I will post more on this next week, as my thoughts and references are not complete.
The holidays got me going into cooking and baking mode, which hasn't left me yet. I'm expanding into Japanese food, which we all enjoy, including: miso soup, miso salad dressing, onigiri (rice balls), baked potato wedges, and more to come. I've just done another cheesecake (2-for-1 cream cheese on sale I was not able to resist).
The boys and I continue our adventure of trying the many Ramen shops in our area.
Creative Tasks
Still ongoing (not yet completed):
No progress on these as of yet...
- Get the eGPU working and install and configure Stable Diffusion
- Read Stable Diffusion book and workbook
- Soldering Christmas ornaments with boys (ha, well, it will still be fun, post-christmas)
Urgent Needs
Going through possessions and either refurbishing, disposing (if not salvageable), or redistributing. This is ongoing (daily / weekly), and some good progress this past week. I still have energy and progress on this. The idea is to put in some time every few days, and that is working out. I am leaving this note here as it still applies, happily so.