As seems to occur more often than not, within a few minutes of my younger brother sitting down in his favourite chair to watch T.V. with me last evening once he was home from wherever he had been drinking, he passed out.
He wasn't out too long, but it was enough ─ I cancelled out of the episode of Wynonna Earp that I had been streaming via our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box; then I turned off the Android TV Box; and finally I switched the T.V. over to the basic cable package we subscribe to.
The sorry sot would not have my company any further that evening. And since he doesn't know how to operate the Android TV Box, he would have to settle for whatever limited fare of interest he could find through the basic cable package.
I don't think that it was yet 9:00 p.m. when this took place, but I'm even fuzzier on just when it was that I actually got into bed ─ possibly around 10:00 p.m.
Initially I had felt somewhat sleepy, but I allowed my mind to dwell on my financial and marital woes, and the consequence of that was a delay of sleep.
But sleep did come.
Then perhaps around 12:45 a.m. or thereabouts I found myself awake enough to be checking the time, and I decided to rise so that I could get at the day's content assignment for the post I am working on at one of my six hosted websites.
It is a rare thing to complete such assignments in as few as three hours, and that certainly did not happen last night. However, added to that time are an initial check of accumulated E-mails since my last previous check; and roughly midway through the website work I have of late been taking a break in order to perform a plank.
Since June 24 my target has been 5½ minutes (plus a few extra seconds for the comfort of assurance that I have indeed reached that target). Yesterday I was overzealous and inadvertently achieved six minutes because I apparently counted excessively slowly ─ you see, instead of constantly staring at my cellphone's timer, I have started relatively slowly counting off to 300 (300 seconds are of course five minutes).
Today I was a little more accurate. I deliberately try to count slow enough that when I do reach 300, I am usually several seconds beyond the five minutes, for that reduces the amount of time remaining for me to hit the 5½-minute mark.
I find that a plank break invigorates me well into the second half of the website work, but it's not a perfect fix. I can grow most taxed, for I am essentially remaining up through much of the night.
Oddly enough, I now cannot recall if it was around 4:30 a.m. that I returned to bed, or 5:30 a.m. ─ I suspect and hope the former. Sleep was somewhat fragmented, but I was almost deliciously comfortable in bed, and seemed to dream a lot.
I remained abed until around 10:00 a.m. before rising to go downstairs and fix my day's first hot caffeinated beverage. My younger brother was at the dining table and reading the Saturday morning edition of the Vancouver Sun that I subscribe to.
I came back upstairs here to my computer, and eventually got around to checking the progress of the status concerning the very last two Quarter-finals games of the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup.
The first match had ended earlier this morning, for it had a 6:00 a.m. start (my time here in the Pacific Time Zone). The Netherlands blanked Italy 2 - 0.
But the second game was into half-time with a 1 - 1 tie between Sweden and Germany.
I decided to go downstairs and alert my brother to these two developments.
Very soon thereafter, he tuned in the latter game ─ the second half was in progress, and Sweden had already scored a second goal. I decided to join him.
Ultimately, Sweden were to outlast poor Germany, and the games were over for that soccer powerhouse.
Both of today's winning teams ─ the Netherlands and Sweden ─ were behind Canada's exit from the games, for both of those teams gave us our only two losses.
Yet I bear no grudge. I like both of those European teams. Thus, I have absolutely no idea which of them I am going to sympathize with when they meet this next Wednesday in a Semi-finals match. What will likely happen for me is that if one team begins to be clearly losing, then I will most probably side with it.
Maybe I'll align with the Netherlands ─ my father was stationed over there during World War II, and I know that generally, the Dutch still bear an enormous gratitude to Canada for the war effort back then. It is one of the few countries that I would love to visit...but it is unlikely that I will ever manage to travel again.
Such is the debt my wife has me in. Besides, I am nearing the age of 70, and it is becoming less and less likely that I will be wanting to travel as further years add on ─ even if monetary cost was irrelevant.
Right now it is 2:48 p.m. My brother left some time ago to end up drinking somewhere. I want to have myself some bedrest. If it is at all possible, I would like to get out awhile later to check out the 20th annual Surrey Pride festival being held about a mile from where I live, and officially running from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
I would have to walk, for I don't drive. It is unlikely that I will go, but I definitely will not go if I do not get some rest.
oooooooooooooo
Well, I'm going nowhere today.
Oh, sure, I napped well; and then I had my day's second hot caffeinated beverage.
But it's just not in me to get out and hike anywhere.
Also, today was my workout day with my 43½-pound dumbbell. That's a two-session workout, meaning that I have several hours in between the two sessions.
For much of my adult life, I was able to exercise with that weight in one gruelling session, and it involved three different exercises.
I have dropped one of those exercises, but only because it was never the challenge the other two are.
At the age of 69, I just don't seem to have the reserves of strength that I must have once had, and I can't seem to gain back or build up those reserves.
The first exercise session I use the dumbbell for are bent-over one-arm knee curls. I tend to have to do some heaving of the dumbbell, but I try to be fairly slow in the execution of both raising and lowering the weight.
I start off with my left arm and do 10 repetitions, and then I put the weight down and stand fully erect ─ I may even lean back a little ─ in order to ease out some of the strain that my lower back feels from the weighted and awkward crouched position.
I only stand on that break for three or four seconds, and then I go down to do 10 repetitions with my right arm.
In all, I do four sets, alternating my arms, but reducing by a repetition with each successive set ─ so 10 repetitions for both arms, then nine, then eight, and finally seven.
The later exercise session involves standing shoulder-height one-arm 'presses' ─ I'm unable to just press such a heavy weight up, so I definitely have to heave the weight aloft to get my elbow straightened. But in bringing the weight back down, I do not rest it upon my shoulder. I hold it a little above the shoulder, and then rally and do the next repetition.
The totals for the sets and repetitions match what I do for the bent-over knee-curls; and when each set is done, I put down the weight and stand erect for a second or two before bending over and picking the dumbbell up with the other arm so that it can do its set.
These 'presses' heavily tax my breathing ─ by the third set, I am pretty much gasping.
When I first started using the weight again several months ago after a virtual layoff of a number of years, I couldn't even do a 'press' with my left arm because the shoulder had grown so weak from damage it has sustained over the decades. In fact, just hoisting the weight up to my shoulder would cause such alarming pain that I would have to bring it back to the floor.
Back in the (early?) 1980s, I had let my younger first-cousin-once-removed put that arm into a type of wrestling hold in which he stood behind me and more or less locked my bent left arm into such a position that my arm was elevated over my shoulder with my elbow fully bent, and my forearm held over and behind my shoulder in an arm-lock that my cousin then held firmly, but without applying pressure.
I think I had been drinking, and I refused to believe that my arm was immobilized by this weaker and younger relative. So, mustering all of the strength I could, I proceeded to power my arm free without using any twisting movements of my body.
It was a test of strength ─ me in my early or so 30s, and he in his late teens.
Well, there was a very audible 'pop' that caused my cousin to release his hold and step back, and there was also quite a lot of pain. And there in the midst of the top of my left shoulder was something rigid and about the size of a pea (or maybe a little larger) beneath the skin ─ cartilage, perhaps? I never knew, for I never sought medical attention.
For months, I could barely use the arm for certain things. For example, it was impossible for me to toss a pebble more than a few measly feet by just using a small underhand motion ─ I could only flick with my wrist, and not use much of my lower arm because it resulted in too much pain in my shoulder.
It seems to me now that despite the agony, I would still try to do certain bodyweight exercises such as the most partial of triceps dips between standing parallel bars, and I also did my best at chin-ups and pull-ups.
Push-ups, too.
I had to try to do whatever I could to try and maintain my fitness, for I have always been driven.
My arm has never looked quite proper since then ─ it seems somewhat out of position. This is most noticeable when I put my hands on my hips ─ the arm has the look of being somewhat flared or turned outward.
Recuperation took months and months ─ maybe even more than a year. But in time, I was able to do my full exercises again. That strange, hard 'pea' atop my left shoulder also eventually subsided.
I have had other more minor incidents over the years, but a half-dozen or so years ago I badly reinjured the shoulder by forcing out full-range and very controlled (i.e., slow) push-ups.
I had managed to work myself up to something like 75 of these full-range push-ups that involved lowering myself until my body was just brushing the ground ─ chest, hips, thighs ─ and then I would push myself up until my elbows and arms were more or less straightened out before I rallied for the next miserable repetition.
I don't remember now, but the full 75 push-ups may have taken around 10 minutes because each push-up was drawn out for a number of seconds.
I forced my poor shoulder one too many times to power myself up from the extreme lowered position ─ the stress was just too much for it to bear.
And there I was, basically crippled all over again.
As before, I never sought medical attention. Why bother? The only intervention the medical profession would be able to offer would have been surgery.
There is definitely something more amiss with the shoulder this last time, for even though it feels to be normal, occasionally when I innocently elevate my arm for whatever reason, there will be a searing pain that strikes from out of nowhere.
So it was only within the past year or so that I tried once more to do those so-called one-arm 'presses' with the dumbbell. Over the intervening half-dozen years, the shoulder had become weaker beyond anything I had realized.
But at least now I have managed to develop from not even being able to perform one repetition with my left arm ─ nor even to bear the weight after hauling it up to shoulder height from the floor ─ to finally being able to go through the full four-set workout.
Oh, gosh ─ it's almost 7:00 p.m.! I must bring this post to a close.
I am going to do so with a few more photos that were taken a little over a year ago when my wife travelled to Italy to visit a sister of hers who has essentially made that country her second home.
As I have explained before, the digital camera she took did not have its date setting adjusted for the holiday; and it may not even have been adjusted since our time here in the Pacific Time Zone went forward by an hour earlier in the year.
So although the camera metadata has the photos as being taken on June 7 (2018), that can only be a very good approximation.
This first photo is a selfie by my wife:
And that's all for today, folks!
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