I finally got back up to 405 lbs. on the leg press. God willing, I want to start squatting again after we get to Texas. I would like to dead lift and bench, too, but my glory days of lifting are pretty much over now, not that they were so glorious even back in the day. Still, felt pretty good to be over 400 as my working weight–3 sets, 10 reps each.
I spend too much time on social media and have decided to start doing some things to reduce that. One of those things is to read more books. There is one in particular I want to finish, Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. The problem is I packed that book away for a possible move. That gave me an excuse to buy a couple more cheap books. I bought two novels–I had been trying to move away from reading non-fiction. When I was trying to figure out what to read, it dawned on me that I want to continue reading more non-fiction books, but really miss reading fiction. I used the excuse that we are headed into a very busy few months if we sell the house, so I did not want dense reading, but something way lighter until we get settled. When the books arrived, I decided I need to keep some fiction in the mix, just because of joy. I will try to find fiction that is fund, but also a little more meaningful than the spy thrillers I have read in the past. We will see how that goes.
It is Father’s Day today. Lorena and I were reminded, yesterday, that our Heavenly Father cares for us and sees us in our need. Julia sent us some great pictures taken by our Finnish Grandmother, Ida Jenkins. When I saw this with my sister, Julia, and my father (Milo), it reminded me of what a gift we had in a father who truly loved every one of us. He was unique, born in 1929, the year of the stock market crash that marked the beginning of the great depression in the USA. He never knew what it was like to do anything other than work very, very hard and he actually loved doing that until the very end. I hope to write more about him in other posts because he lived an absolutely exceptional life. He had lots of faults, but certainly not more than me. He made up for all of that because of his kindness and love, not only for us, but others.
We had a showing at our house yesterday and the buyer said it was situated wrong on the property, was priced way to high, and gave it a rating of only three out of five. Lorena and I have been putting way to much stress on ourselves about this sale. We want to get on to the next phase of our lives where we settle in to what is our version of retirement, but we do not even know what that is. I did not sleep much last night just laying there thinking about it all. Lorena and I had a super healthy talk about it this morning. We do not know where we should be or what we should be doing, but we spent the last several months reading about what made the good kings good in the Old Testament–all of them were blessed when they threw themselves at the mercy of God, asked his direction, waited for the answer that often came from one of His prophets (they did not hear from God directly, but through the prophets), then did or did not do what God gave them to do. We decided we need to quit stressing, wait on God, and leave it completely open with respect to where we should go next or what we should do not. One answer might even be “stay where you are” and “do not do anything different.” We DO know that we do not know, so we will do our best to be happy, patient, and at peace until we know.
After that talk, we got a text saying we had another showing in 40 minutes, so I am now sitting at Panera again, still with no Wi-Fi, but that consolation. It is not lost on me that Lorena and I have values that are very much aligned and very much centered on following Christ. For that I am eternally grateful.
Unbelievably bad timing. Lorena dropped me off at Panera to work on GRIME3 only to find their internet is out. I checked in my backpack for a cable to tether my phone, but I had taken it out for some unknown reason. Now Lorena is running to Kroger to get me a cable so I can work while she shops and we both wait for our house showing to be over.
It was not so bad to resolve this. Kroger had what we needed and it took all of 15 minutes to get up and running.
My brother Doug and I were huge fans of Davy Crockett when we were kids. It was because of the Disney TV program about him. I think it must have been at the time of the one of the rebroadcasts of the program because the short series was filmed in 1955, before I was born. This all got brought to my attention when my sister Julia sent us some pictures she had scanned in from our wonderful Finnish grandmother, Ida Jenkins. The picture is of the Davy Crockett outfits my mother bought for us one Christmas. We cherished those outfits and the toy rifles we got to go along with them.
I have exclusively used Xubuntu Linux on my personal (home) computer since 2012. It was a struggle to do everything I wanted to do for quite a few years, but little by little, the issues faded away until now there nothing I normally do that is not easily accommodated. We use Linux on the instruments we make in my day job, so I do not have to spend anytime at all on Windows or Apple. Right now, I am on version 24.04 LTS, but will move to 26.04 LTS as soon as it has a chance to stabilize a little more. I am a little wary about changing versions, but the move from 22.04 LTS to 24.04 was absolutely painless. Hopefully, I will be able to remain on Xubuntu for the rest of my computing days which, admittedly, are not that many. It is truly impressive what the Ubuntu ecosystem has become. The same is true for Linux as a whole. My brother, Doug, who has been exclusively on Windows for decades is making the switch to regular Ubuntu right now and is amazed how easy it is to install and use software and especially amazed with how fast things run without all the Windows bloat-ware.
I emptied all the books from my bookshelf and packed all the other books for the move after throwing away about half of them. Now, the house has been slow to sell, we have a three day weekend coming up and I have nothing to read. I just ordered a couple of novels from ThriftBooks, but they will not arrive here in time for the weekend. Serves me right for not reserving just one or two books for just this kind of a situation.
Still fat, but doing better. Still a few weeks from my intermediate weight goal. I was hoping I would make it by the Independence Day on July 4, but I really do not think that will happen. Still, my leg press is back up to 385 lbs. for 3 sets of ten reps. I am hoping to hit 405 lbs. and then just stay there for awhile. I am thinking of moving away from the chest press machine to do real bench presses. I am not sure where I am with that. It would be nice to be able to get back to my one time working weight of 225 lbs., but that might be a bridge too far. I am currently doing 3 sets of 10 reps at 170 lbs. on the chest press.
Kelly and I had an interesting chat session this morning about work and vocation. We did not actually call it that, but realized that was the core topic when I thought about it afterward. No one in our family is very comfortable with not having work and income. I fell like that is true and this is what I wrote to her:
I get it. It is your life and our family in general is kind of like that. Sadly, I think we have about 5 generations of that built into the family culture going all the way back to Finland in the mid-1800’s and even the family that moved out to Oregon in the mid-1800’s. I wish we could break that cycle a little. You (and all of us) are in not danger of starving and being uncomfortable is not a bad thing if it leads to something great.
I think it would be very sad for any of us to not follow a vocation given to us by God. Of course, one has to put beans on the table, but it is also true that a vocation given to us from God will do that.
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