Play ball...

Facebook: "I have finally seen the process...You throw the ball to the cat, the leaps for it, wrestles with the ball and then pushes it under the sofa, never to be played with again. Or until I decide to lift the sofa and take out the other 20 ball stuck under there."



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Muffins...

"I think I have too much on my mind right now. I've been thinking, what would a blueberry muffin taste like with peanut butter spread over the top? I have a taste for one Right now! And a cup of coffee, of course!"



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Coffee, it's back...

Fred Green: "I feel great now! I went out and got a 12 cup Mr. Coffee maker. I just have to drink 12 cups in the morning or figure out how to make just four cups...naw, I'll drink the 12 cups!!"



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Getting my racquet on...

Fred Green: "It's been about 5 months...I played racquetball today. I hurt my arm last March and it still hurts, but I can at least lift my arm up and swing the racquet without a lot of pain. I just have to learn to dink the ball more."



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Sky Rasins...

"OMG!! Tom, my cat, just ate a spider, a Sky Rasin! I guessing it had to be tasty!"



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The grass is alway, wait I can't see the grass...

"Have you noticed how good your lawn, the grass, looks...in the darkness of night?"



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My Monday Morning Moment...

My Monday morning moment: I got up with a desire for a nice cup of steaming coffee. I washed the old-time percolator out, put in a brand new filter, tenderly added three scoops of coffee and then put the pot on the stove and turned the fire on.

I then went and turned on the boob tube to watch the news. After five minutes, I smelled something burning. I went into the kitchen, checked the stove and noticed nothing. There was steam coming out of the pot, or what I thought was steam.

I went over to the cat and had a conversation with him for a couple of minutes, but that burning smell was getting more distinct than it was a few minutes before. I looked at the pot and noticed that the steam wasn’t steam at all. It was something burning in the pot. I took it off of the stove and noticed the weight. I had put no water into the pot.

The filter had practically burned up, on the inside, and the little plastic knob on top melted. I stood there watching it and not noticing that I had forgotten to add water.

Oh well, no coffee for today, so don’t ask me anything, for the time being.

Coffee...and keep it coming!

Coffee…and keep it coming!

My new Keurig, 3 years ago

I woke up this morning thinking what am I going to do about getting my serious morning energy so I can go out and be productive in this world? Or just run three miles…(considering that I went hiking and then kayaking yesterday and this morning I was so sore I didn’t want to get out of bed, and I have no drugs to deaden the racking pain in my shoulders, back and places I didn’t know muscles existed.).

This is day four with my broken Keurig Coffee maker. I had to buy a cup of coffee on Thursday night and I decided that I would just chew the coffee grounds and see how that works. It didn’t. Then, like a true light going off in my head, I remembered that I had a nine cup Aluminum Camp Percolator! I dug it out of that big green duffel camping bag that was sitting under my kayak.

I pulled it out of the box and washed it out, considering I hadn’t used it since June, might have had bugs living in it – hey, it happened before, a couple of years ago. Anyway, when I got it clean enough to use I filled it with my coffee grounds and fired it up. However, I forgot the filters to put into the brewing cup. (I found that I did pull the filters out with the percolator but I put them in a place where I forgot where I put them.)

In the end, the coffee tasted good. Not as good as the DD store bought coffee, but it did wonders for me. My cup is large, two and a half cups large, so I had two…actually I just drank all the coffee in the percolator, since I didn’t want to waste any of it

Now, if I can remember to put the filter in the brew cup, tomorrow, I should be good to go, at least until I can find the instruction manual for my Keurig and fix that darn thing. 

My feel good Friday...

 "My Feel good Friday:
I hiked 5 miles and took in all of what nature had to offer...
I wrote a couple of pages, my book and my blog
I had dinner with 6 friends in an restaurant I've never been to before
I Kayaked 6 miles, two miles in the dark, lit only by moonlight"



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I want my coffee back...

"Chewing coffee grounds just isn't working."



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Never, never, ever say...

Fred Green: "I heard someone say, you should never say what else could go wrong. My coffee maker died this morning and I said to myself what else could go wrong? Well my glasses broke now I can't see, more or less I can't read anything. Oh well Life Goes On, I mean, what else could go wrong?"



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Coffee, Oh Coffee...

 "I'm gonna die!! My coffee maker is dead, dead, dead!! I'm gonna die!"

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Too sweet for me…

It has been about six days since I decided to stop eating sweet sticky stuff, you know, like donuts, cake, pies, and cookies and of course, my favorite, ice cream…vanilla. It had just occurred to me, even though I have thought about it many times in my lifetime that I really need to quit the sweets.

I figured, in 2015 and the earlier part of this year, for all the exercise I do I could at least have something sweet once a month or once a week. I really went overboard last year, though. However, I was doing three times more things last year than I am doing this year.

Another thing that just hit me, three weeks ago I weighed in at 199. Six days ago, I was at 208! During that time span, I had consumed three dozen cookies, a couple, half gallon, tubs of ice cream and a couple donuts. Eight pounds! The peanut butter cookies were 150 calories each and I had four with my coffee every morning.

Six days ago, I decided to pick up my walking and run at least one mile in between. Yesterday and today, I ran most of the three miles. As of yesterday, I weighed 202 pounds. I really haven’t included any extra activities this year, yet but I really think I need to. In addition, the best way to help drop those pounds, lift weights. 

Earlier this year I hurt my shoulder, playing racquetball, and it still hurts today, but not as bad as it did in March. That is the reason I stopped lifting. However, I stopped the lifting part and only walked, every day.

It’s funny, strange or just real…in 2014 I didn’t eat sweets at all, (at least I don’t remember eating any sweets), and I dropped almost 80 pounds. 2015 was a different story.

I am not doing this to look slimmer or great, not saying that I don’t all ready, but in 2013,  a visit to the doctor and I found out that my sugar level was super high, my cholesterol was super high, and my BP was elevated, higher that I have ever experienced in my life. The doctor put me on blood pressure drugs and I am not into drugs. So, I stopped the drugs at the end of 2013 and started my workouts.

Now, I am afraid to stop, well, not really, I enjoy working out, sort of. I would love to ramp my routines up, a lot, though. This, so I won’t be as weak as I was at the beginning of this year, I am going to join one of those gym, the $10 a month gym and stay on the bicycle so won’t get as tired and I’ll be ready for those long, long bicycle trips. 

I know I am not going to live forever, (most of my aunts and uncles, on my mother’s side have lived into their 90’s and the last living aunt is 98 and still gets out and dances and enjoys life), but I want to make the most out of the life I have now and if it means getting out and running, walking, hiking, kayaking, biking, softball, racquetball, and golf, (all the things I do now), then that’s what I am going to do to stay healthy and do away with sweets and stuff…oh yeah, and potato chips, too. 

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Rain, rain...stay a little longer...

 "If it weren't thundering and lightning I would go outside right now and play in the rain!!"


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If you build it...

Facebook: "Talk about progress; On my walk yesterday I noticed a bulldozer had been parked at a house, about 1 kilometer away from where I live. I paid it no attention, I figure that it was there to dig up the driveway or something.

As I was on my return the bulldozer was starting to rip into the garage. I thought that it was just going to tear the garage down. Today, on my walk, the house was torn down! My guess is someone is going for a bigger house! That is the second house, on my route, that was torn down and rebuilt."



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Box em out...

Fred Green: "I don't know why I keep trying; I put a box, a real box, out so my cats could play it it. They use to, but that box has sat empty for the last three days, they just don't want that box...While folding clothes today , I noticed that Tom decided to stay in my cloths tub until I finished and then some. Why do I spend money on my cats when they would rather have whatever they can find to play with..."



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Sleeping the night away..

"Why is it that every night when I get ready for bed, I lay down, about 11:30ish and fall right to sleep with all the lights on and a cat's butt in my face. Only to wake up about 12:20 a.m. or so just to get up to brush my teeth and turn off the lights and listen to my cat yacking non-stop for a good 10 minutes. Then when I get back into to bed, I can't sleep! Last night I remember seeing 2:10 am! Oh well, no more late night coffee for me! (It was decaf, at 9:30, I love the taste of coffee!!)."



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If it breaks...

Facebook: "I gotta hand it to my son, sort of. He kept reminding me that in order to fix something around the house and you don’t know how to fix it…Look it up on YouTube. Why I keep forgetting to do that is a question…I keep forgetting.

About four months ago my water filter cleaner, even though it was turned off, broke a seal and billions of little glass-looking balls leaked into my cold water line. After going to the water company to find out what those things were, they told me to turn off the valve on the filter. It took me a while but I finally had figured out where that valve was and shut it off.

Now, the problem was to flush my water lines out, which took about an hour or so of flushing. In the meantime, my only real problem was my kitchen faucet was stopped up, completely. At the time, I tried to take the faucet off but I couldn’t quite get up under the sink to pull the thing out.

So, I just decided that I would use the dish washer until I purchased a new faucet. This one was on the cheap, only $80. A new one would cost about $120! So, like a typical man I would use all of the plates, cups, pots and pans and when I had enough to fill the dish washer I would turn it on, cleaning the whole lot twice a week or so.

This went well during that time. Individual plates and cups and stuff I would go to the bathroom, next to the kitchen and wash them out in the sink. All this time it started to get on my last nerve, then, out of the blue, like a bolt of lightning, right in the head…I remembered YouTube.

I just happened to have the exact same faucet as the one the guy was working on and I played it and watched it and did what the guy was doing. Of course, it only took him a few minutes to check it out. Me, on the other hand about a half hour to finish the task.

Yes, the little chamber was filled with those stupid little balls and was totally clogged up. It just took me, almost forever to get that plug out, my fingers are too fat. Nevertheless, work it out I did.

It had occurred to me though, “I am not a plumber, I’m a writer.” But, Thank you son and YouTube. Now if I can just remember to use YouTube when something else breaks around the house."



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Cats, what are they good for...

Facebook: "My Cat Tom is an A-hole!! I just bought a "Big old bag of Catnip...". I gave it to Jerry, at first, but Tom took it from him and went nuts with that bag. Jerry just sat there looking so sad that he couldn't roll in it. 30 minutes later I took a look at the old bag and Tom had peed on it...I guess it's his now."



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Coffee, coffee, coffee...Meh, sometimes

Facebook: "I have no idea why the coffee I make in the morning taste like, "MEH"! And no idea why the coffee I drink in the evening taste, "Great"! This morning I tried the K-cup (decaf) and it tasted great, but I now feel, MEH! I just don't want to buy 100 K-cups for $30 when I can get 5 pounds of Folgers for $8...Oh the sacrifices..."



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Losing it...

Fred Green: "I am not losing my mind, yet! While cooking lunch today I just happen to pour hot sauce on my pancakes. I put that s$@% on just about every thing! I really gotta stop drinking in the morning!"



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