2018: Day 63 the one where I watched Stargate Origins and went to Costco
Word count 148,420 + 2,005 or 150,425 of 1,000,000
Dear Reader,
This post pretty much came together in three writing sessions. This last one included the need to start from the top and move to the end one sentence at a time. Today is a day where it made sense to add to what was already written. That is not something that normally happens, but it is something that needed to happen today.
This morning started out well enough. A donut and some Starbucks coffee were on tap. My tall flat white with an extra shot of espresso was disappointing today. It just had a middling degree of watered down coffee flavor and was completely and utterly forgettable. That donut thought was pretty darn good. I feel bad for not sticking to my Soylent regime today, but sometimes a donut just has to happen. I may have to order a new case of the Soylent 2.0 drinks directly from the folks at Soylent. That is where my thoughts are at the moment. I’m committing to another 36 days of drinking Soylent. I’ll reevaluate my decision at that time and see if I’m still going to continue consuming meal replacement drinks for breakfast and lunch. My efforts so far have worked out fine. Day 52 of this journey was my first day with Soylent. That was February 21, 2018. That seems like a long time ago. It was not that long ago. Strangely it really does feel like that was forever and a day ago.
Let’s talk about my favorite pair of jeans. That is not a topic that needs or deserves consideration, but it seems to be something that I want to write about. Right now I’m wearing a pair of bootcut Levi 517 jeans in a style called ficus. I have no idea why exactly the ficus style is my favorite. Strangely enough it really is my favorite style. Searching for some combination of the words, “Levi’s 517 Ficus Finish Stretch Boot Cut Jean,” takes a lot of effort. It seems that even the Levi website does not have the ability to sell them to me. I just searched the entire Levi website for the word “Ficus” and no results were returned. I know they exist. Right now during the course of writing this blog post I’m wearing a pair of them, but they seem to be vanishing off the internet. It would certainly be fitting that after I finally found a pair of jeans that I really like the manufacturer would stop making them. It looks like a few western wear stores have them in stock online. Maybe now is the time to buy up a few pairs to save for later.
I know that based on my recent economic concerns going to local western wear stores near me and buying the jeans would be the right thing to do. That presumption of the right thing to do is based on my thoughts on the subject at the moment. It would be a lot easier to just order some new jeans online, but that seems like a path that I need to reject. It really would be easier. I guess that is not the point. I have spent a lot of time thinking about economics and the very nature of how the economy is going to move forward. That is something that has been at the forefront of my thoughts. It has been something that deserves a lot of attention. We are at a real crossroads where things are going to change in the next ten years in ways that are both expected and very unexpected.
Topic 1: Stargate Origins
We subscribed to Stargate command. Whatever Stargate command happens to be it is the service that allows me to stream Stargate Origins. I really thought it would be a complete series. It had so much promise. We have watched 7 episodes so far. They are very short at around 10 minutes. Overall the concept is probably verging on being ok. The execution at times is really questionable. I’m happy to be getting more Stargate, but this slow release of very short episodes is not exactly the format that I expected. We will see what happens. Maybe at some point a major network will pick it up and produce longer more satisfying episodes. I really meant to write a lot more words about this topic, but at this point in time I do not have a lot to say about Stargate Origins. That is probably what will make this series fade away. It is not creating a very strong emotional reaction in me after watching 7 episodes. Maybe it just needs more time to unfold some better plot components. I’m not sure this webisode format can introduce a lot of emotional connection.
Topic 2: My Soylent diet failed today
Today was not a good day for my dieting efforts. Some onion rings snuck into the mix and breakfast included a donut instead of Soylent. Tomorrow will be a better day. Breakfast tomorrow will for sure include a round of Soylent. I would say that my steps for the day made up for my poor diet, but that is not the case. I’m only at about 5,400 steps today. How exactly that happened is a bit of a mystery. I felt like a lot more things happened today. Maybe my movement was really economic and the lower number of steps does not reflect a lack of moving around today. My diet plan is very simple. I’m reducing my caloric intake for breakfast and lunch by eating Soylent meal replacements. That is pretty much the basis of my diet plan. It is pretty simple.
Topic 3: Vignette part deux
All of that effort and the word count is under 1,000 words. That pretty much means now would be the right time to just open up another vignette and start the day over. Things just hit 19:00 hours and before long it will be 22:00 hours and this blog post will be live and online. Somewhere in the hours in between another 2,000 words need to leap into existence. I could probably spend the rest of the night writing about the academy awards. That would have been one way to go. That is really not my path and I’ll leave that one alone. Tonight my focus has to just move from being tired to being focused on writing. It has been a long weekend. At this point I’m ready for a vacation from my weekend. That is probably not a 100% fair assessment, but at this very moment that is how things are stacking up.
Neilson is monitoring over the air broadcast homes. That is interesting. I’m sure they have a different set of viewing habits than subscription based viewing. We are using an antenna to watch an over the air broadcast of the Oscars right now. It works just fine. Sometimes we have to move it around a little bit to get the signal to work 100%, but that is not a very big deal. It seems like I should setup my Google Home mini speaker in the family room and use it to control my Chromecast Ultra for streaming. That sounds like an interesting little experiment to complete. Tomorrow that is on my to do list. Yeah —- I know… I’m not a big fan of to do lists, but right now I cannot walk downstairs and get that setup. I need to sit here and grind out a lot more words. My day does not have enough time in it for messing around with voice integration for Chromecast viewing. Sure that is probably something that will be good for March Madness and basketball viewing in general. I’m not going to keep my subscription to YouTube TV. That means that the streaming will really only be valuable for the rest of the month. I guess that is enough time to setup the device and see what happens. I already own the Google Home mini. It is not even plugged in at the moment.
You may have noticed the thumbnail today. It features my new sunglasses. They are from some company called Shady Rays. I apparently bought a pair of polarized sunglasses the other day from them online. I like them well enough. They are going to be a solid backup pair of sunglasses to have for traveling. My current sunglasses were made by Ray-Ban and work well enough. They also happen to have prescription lenses. It is a very minor prescription, but on really long drives that works in my favor. My new Shady Rays seem to be working out well enough. I wore them throughout the day. You can imagine that sort of looked like the thumbnail. Even after a lot of searching my regular glasses are missing. I have done better at not losing my sunglasses. It was not the best photograph that I have ever taken, but it is here today as a thumbnail. Tomorrow I will try to do better.
These last four days have been a rush of wildness and emotion. This month has been grooving right along and my efforts to write 3,000 words per day have been successful. Right now the march toward 22:00 hours is winning compared to my word output for the day. I need to figure out how to work back to having a one day buffer. Right now I’m listening to an audiobook and that is probably not helping anything at the moment. I’m going to need to switch back to listening to music here soon enough to help finish out the night. At the moment, things are only about half way through the writing plan for the night. Two hours are left to engage in writing tonight.
Topic 4: Rounding out the night
I’m not even sure another block of words is coming tonight. Maybe the fear of failure and the availability of time will be enough to push things forward. Right now I need to get back into a writing groove. Rounding out the night it will take a certain amount of energy and effort. The time exists tonight. It is set aside. I’m ready to engage in a lot of writing, but something is wrong. Something is not happening along the way here tonight. Maybe the spark of creativity is missing. That is entirely possible. Maybe somehow it is something that I can change. Tonight my focus was not on anything in particular. Focus is not really on the menu tonight. Even our trip to Costco did not focus my energy today. It was a very busy trip. For some reason on the weekend that Costco is always very busy. People are buying all sorts of interesting things.
Dr. Nels Lindahl
Broomfield, Colorado
Written on my Storm Stryker PC and or my ASUS C101P using Google Docs
P.S. Maybe thinking about writing and moving along is a good way to close this blog post out. Maybe it is a fitting postscript. That could be a good way to move things forward. It looks like tonight is going to end up just being a simple 2,000 word post. It is going to fall short. That means that this month in general is now going to be a little bit under the target. That means that tomorrow I’m going to need to produce more words to help push things back to the target. Maybe things would have worked out better. I could have grabbed my Chromebook and focused in on writing more this afternoon. That probably would have helped. At the moment my only thoughts are about going to sleep and starting a new week. That is really not a good way to focus in on writing. Sometimes that seems to be a very double edged sword. Writing at the breaking point of exhaustion can sometimes produce some really epic long form prose. Sometimes writing at that moment can help move things forward.
Tonight things did not go all that well. Tonight only produced part of what was needed.
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