My eyes are in especially bad shape today. I hope that it's only due to my recent poor sleep pattern, and not betokening anything more sinister.
I was to bed especially early last evening ─ definitely before 9:40 p.m. However, in tjime when I was likely well on the approach to falling asleep, my wife sent me the first of two texts related to financial matters that required responses to.
I know enough about the harms (where peaceful sleep is concerned) of staring into a brilliant cellphone's screen in the dark that I would not otherwise have engaged the activity, but I felt that it had to be done.
When I did get to sleep, it was the usual fragmented variety. And perhaps five hours after getting to bed, I made the choice to rise and get to work on the post I am constructing at one of my six hosted websites.
To be honest here, it surprises me that as many as five hours may have passed by the time I rose for that duty. It is possible that I am misremembering just when it was that I did rise...and maybe even when I first went to bed ─ might it have been before 9:30 p.m.?
Whatever the case, I was not to be finished the website work and able to return to bed until after 7:00 a.m.
I had 'celebrated' the approximate midway point of the content assignment by performing a five-minute plank as a means of reinvigorating myself.
It was also the second consecutive day in which I have done a plank for five minutes. And when I was done, lying face down afterward on the carpeted floor, I had an unexpected degree of difficulty elevating my torso from the floor in order to rise.
Forget trying to push myself up!
I want to try and make a five-minute plank a daily exercise. Yet I've read it claimed that no one even needs to be doing two-minute planks on a daily basis.
One so-called authority claimed that anyone doing a plank for as long as a minute was not performing it properly (see Can you hold a plank for a minute? You may be doing it wrong).
But that's nonsense.
Sure, a person can use such a level of muscular contraction and tension that reaching a minute would be impossible, but that's the same sort of thinking that would make doing curls with, say, more than 20 pounds also an indication that the exercise is not being performed "correctly."
A really strong man can use a very light dumbbell and be wiped out if he is performing an exercise with it in ultra-slow motion, and applying an excruciating amount of muscular contraction / tension throughout the few repetitions he would be able to manage.
There's no denying it.
But it's more satisfying mentally to use a heavier weight that is challenging enough to quickly pump up the muscles because of the effort that is being naturally used.
The same applies to performing a plank.
Just because a person can wring so much agonizing tension from their contracted body after a few seconds that it quickly becomes impossible to endure the posture does not mean that this is the correct way to be planking ─ not anymore than doing curls with hardly any weight and using the same type of focussed tension makes curling with heavier weights the incorrect way of exercising with a weight.
Heck, if a person focussed with the extreme effort necessary, just curling with one arm without any weight at all could soon have that person grimacing and straining with the effort when each repetition is torturously extended in the performance.
A single repetition of a single arm curl without any weight could be so controlled and concentrated that the duration of a full solitary repetition could take as long as a minute to perform.
Who the hell wants to be doing that every day? It's far more gratifying to be challenging onesself with the lifting of actual weight.
Likewise with planking. I'd rather be able to claim that I am doing five-minute planks on a daily basis than trying to convince someone that my single 10- or 15-second all-out daily planks are just as good or somehow even better than the much longer ones.
So it is incorrect to declare that someone doing a one-minute plank is not really doing the plank correctly. That person is just not wringing everything out of a plank that could be done with the concentrated effort applied for a far shorter duration.
That by no means makes the longer plank incorrectly performed. It just is not being performed with ridiculous and unnatural muscular tension.
But enough on planks.
After returning to bed, my sleep continued to be of the broken variety, but I remained in bed until after 10:00 a.m. ─ I had no reason to be rising any earlier, and I was perfectly comfortable where I was.
We seem to be back to sunny weather, but I am not going to do any sunning today ─ my third such consecutive day so uninvolved. Instead, I want to try and get out late in the afternoon and get two or three errands accomplished.
I do not drive, so the walk will expose my shaven head to a fair amount of Sun ─ if I actually motivate myself to go.
I cannot rely on doing all of this tomorrow, for it is very possible that this evening will be a repeat of last Saturday evening. That is, my brother may well come home with his girlfriend Bev to spend the night.
That will require me to sit up late operating our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to find entertainment for us all to watch ─ my brother doesn't know how to operate the device.
Last Sunday, I just didn't have it in me to get out and go anywhere by the time my brother and Bev left.
When a person has to walk everywhere, it takes far more resolve to hike a couple or more miles than it does to just climb into a vehicle and drive somewhere and back.
Concerning our Android TV Box, I just learned today that the Android 8.1 OS (operating system) that we have is not the latest edition. Apparently for some months now, there has been an Android 9.0 on the market.
Even Amazon Canada has models that cost under $80, but I don't feel much pressure as yet to be upgrading. Our Android 8.1 is extremely satisfying. Ours has four gigabytes of RAM and 64 gigabytes of ROM ─ the Android 9.0 systems out now are not offering any more memory than that as far as I can tell.
Something else on the home front is the demolition taking place this afternoon of a house just two homes away from us ─ only a neighbour's home separates us from the victim house.
That is the sort of buyer that I hope we can attract when the time soon comes for my brother and I to sell ─ a buyer (or maybe a developer) whose only interest is ripping down the house and having something new constructed in its place.
Ever since my wife's two sons came to live here in September 2008, I have lost all motivation to try and keep the place tidy and clean. Consequently, rather than have to try and make the interior appear presentable to a succession of new home buyers who want to come in and tour our home, I hope that we can essentially just sell the house and property to someone or some entity "sight unseen."
I am going to have to psyche myself up for that errand outing I wish to sally forth and accomplish, and I will probably first have to lie down and summon forth some reserves for the hot hike.
It is already nearly 5:00 p.m., so my afternoon is wasting away.
I do want, however, to post the following collage of some photos that were taken a year ago when my wife flew to Italy to visit a sister of hers who basically lives there.
Google Photos automatically created the collage today from five photos that it randomly selected that it believes were taken on this day (June 15) back in 2018. However, the photos were taken with a digital camera whose date setting had not been adjusted for that trip.
In other words, it is only an approximation that the photos used in the collage were actually taken on June 15, 2018, but the date won't be too very far wrong.
Here is the collage. Please note that I am no longer embedding the photos in such a way that clicking on them will open them up into a new tab or window ─ you will have to right-click the photos and have that happen for yourself:
That is my wife in the image at the bottom left.
I think that I located the original images that Google Photos used.
Let's start with the top row ─ your guess is as good as mine as to what is on display, for I have never been to Italy:
And now the bottom row:
Okay, I must break off now and ready for that hike.
oooooooooooooo
Well, I got everything done that I hoped to. It was 6:33 p.m. by the time I was on my way, so the Sun was getting low ─ I was in shade for most of the round trip hike of at least three miles.
I had my brother's 50% share of the annual home insurance to deposit in an outdoor ATM at the Coast Capital Savings Federal Credit Union building over by the King George SkyTrain Station maybe 1¼ miles from here.
Then I continued along King George Boulevard into downtown Whalley and shopped for some things at Save-On Foods (Google map). There, I was able to check and confirm that a scratch lottery ticket was indeed the loser I believed it to be.
I returned home, walking past Surrey Place / Central City where some heavily attended outdoor music event was taking place just outside of the complex ─ apparently the event is called the 5X Block Party (it is also described at SurreyNowLeader.com: 5X festival to bring ‘Block Party’ of South Asian music to Surrey).
I am so socially isolated that I never attend things like this ─ there is no enjoyment when one is all alone.
Anyway, I was back home just ahead of 8:00 p.m., and thus far only my two stepsons are here.
I am going to proofread and publish this post, and then have some supper.
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