Fri Dec 1 = Today I decided which elements I particularly liked in the seven line drawings Nadia Tolstoy had sent of me for possible T-shirt designs, came up with a few more ideas and emailed them to her.
- Before supper I started Roomba cleaning the whole house. I had to leave for Chandler before Roomba was finished and it was ready to pause, charge itself and then finish the job... after dark and unsupervised (for the first time). When I got home, Roomba was on its charging station and the phone app reported that the cleaning was canceled and the bin emptied, "Something went wrong." Probably Roomba couldn't navigate in the dark house."
- This morning I had looked at comedians appearing at the seven major Phoenix comedy clubs and decided on Geoffrey Asmus way down at Mike Drop Mania Comedy Club in Chandler at the 7pm show. It was just like visiting my old home place, having been about a year since I had been down that direction for comedy. Casey Currier, the owner, and his wife and I exchanged hugs. Others there were some of my old comedian friends, including my waiter. Unfortunately I didn't have time to catch another nap before leaving home so was not allert enough to enjoy Geoffrey to the fullest. The audience did laugh a whole lot, as they did for the opener and feature comedians. I was privileged to get Geoffrey as my latest fan?
- When I got home I got serious about trying to find the
ICD
little stereo Sony ICD-UX560 voice recorder that I use for taking notes and for recording the audio of all my comedy appearances
I lost several weeks ago, and focus on the van's between-the-seats cup holders. I did not find the ICD, but did find the Oura Ring I had quit wearing about four months ago. Living life and going to gyms works so much better without the ring, but I decided it would be handy to get its sleep information.
- That and blogging put me to bed late :( Got to bed at 12:14am for 8:53 hours of sleep
Sat Dec 2 = Strike while the iron iorn is hot, or in my case work on comedy when your mind is actively thinking about it. That was the case at 5:00 this morning when I thought of a new routine about ... beds.
- A bucket of worms resulted when I tried to get my Oura Ring working this morning with their app on my Pixel 7. First of all, after logging on, the app said, "Restricted mode; only factory reset is possible." I went through a whole bunch of steps and the ring did not work :(
Factory resetting your old ring
Setup will take approximately 10 minutes.
Make sure you have a stable internet connection. Your existing data will be safely backed up.
To repurpose or transfer ownership of your old ring you'll need to first perform a faactory reset.
Make sure your old ring is at least 50% charged, as this may take a few minutes.
- I sent Emilio Figueroa, a comedian friend of mine, a FaceBook message encouraging him to enter a B&W sketch in my T-shirt design drawing. Thursday at The Wayward Tap House he came up with a pretty neat idea, but it was in green pen.
- As I have mentioned before, getting the media files from my new
Mac
the MacBook Pro I got in May 2023, with an m2 Max processor 64GB of memory and a 2TB SSD hard drive
The little Alcatel Plus 10 10" Windows 10 computer I bought to get me by in Tobago in 2017 after my Dell laptop died. It's tight, with only 2gb RAM and a 32gb SSD hard drive, but the 128gb micro SD card I have in it helps.
has not worked, and I need to play the files as part of some of my comedy shows. Somehow the Mac ruined the files.
- Last night, in the middle of the night I got the idea of finding a media player that could simplify my life by taking the place of the Alcatel. This morning, I found and ordered this little device: NEUMI Atom Cast 4K UHD Dongle Stick Digital Media Player, Wi-Fi Screen Mirroring Video/Photo/Music Casting and DLNA/UPnP Streaming, Reads USB Drives and Micro SD Cards, HEVC/H.265 4K/30fps, HDMI . We'll see if it can access the files from my Mac.
- This evening I went to Planet Fitness for a slow heavy torso workout and two new fans, bringing my total to 1,019 so far.
- Got to bed at 11:31 for 8:59 hours of sleep
Sun Dec 3 = Nadia Tolstoy emailed me another revision of her T-shirt line drawings. So I phoned her over in Stockholm Sweden and we worked out some more details. This is getting exciting. We'll see if what she comes up with wins out over my contest submissions.
- A little more cardio than usual today. Naturally being enthusiastic in the morning and anxious to get the day off to a good start I jumped on my elliptical for a quick fast ride. Yesterday evening I failed put the little note on the elliptical reminding me to save the ride until after I sunned at noon.
- So after I
sunned
I lay in the sun for 10 minutes on my back and 10 minutes on my stomach at solar noon when the sun rays are maximized for the skin's production of vitamin D
for another 2 minutes.
- When I got to the office, my computer greeted me with a window on my
Mac
the MacBook Pro I got in May 2023, with an m2 Max processor 64GB of memory and a 2TB SSD hard drive
announcing that GIMP (the photo editing program I use) had crashed. I went through the trouble of creating an account with Gnome and reporting the crash, hoping it will help GIMP and the world.
- My Channelmaster over-the-air DVR has not been working the last few days and tonight I looked up the instruction manual and checked online. Nothing helped get the DVR going beyond "DVR+" in the middle of the screen. Next thing I found how to reset it to factory. The preferred way was to do it through the menues. Problem was no menues were available. Second option was to hold down the power button.
- As I was posturing to do the deed, the thing started working... and all my recorded programs and schedules were there :)
- This evening's trip was to LA Fitness for a light fast legs workout and a new fan:
- For bookings today I focused on American Legions in the Santa Clarita Valley of California. After a leaving a couple voice mails on generic recorders, I made three rewarding Bookiing phone calls. No one I spoke with was able to make a booking decision but they were interested and carefully took my information.
- Got to bed at 10:52 for 8:58 hours of sleep
Mon Dec 4 = This morning's project was combining the video from five cameras from the Santa Toy Run for which I headlined last month. Processing the video went smoother than previously, in part, because I had already trimmed the clips and loaded them into
FCP
Final Cut ProX the fancy video-editing software I got for my MacBook Pro from Apple in Sept, 2023
.
Clip switching is more precise than with the Cyberlink Power Director 18 I was using with my
XPS
Dell XPS-13 laptop computer with 13.3" touch screen, 60WHr Integrated Battery, Windows 10, Intel 7th Generation Core i7 CPU, 16gb memory and 1TB SSD that died on tour in Texas in April, 2023
.
Also Cyberlink was limited to four cameras. Five cameras is a piece of cake for FCP because it can handle up to 16. So far the audio synchronization has been flawless.
- Here is the great crowd of 85 generous and hard working people who came to help out with the Santa Toy Run and laugh.
- Before supper I drove up to Costco for gas, back by home because I had forgotten my phone and then down to EōS Fitness for a fast light arms workout and four new fans?
- Got to bed at 11:25 for 8:42 hours of sleep
Tue Dec 5 = You don't want to be over scheduled because you never know whit is going to crop up. This morning Lance, my landscape maintenance guy came over to look at trimming a little dead out of my shrubs and putting in six plants. Of course that meant that I need to get other bids on the job, so I spent the rest of the monring researching and contacting some landscaping companies in the area.
- Don't we love the government! While outside, I visited with a dump truck driver parked beside my house. He explained that they are replacing all 42,000 handicap ramps in Phoenix in order to add bump-pads - probably to meet some federal requirement. At $4,000 to $6,000 each, we're talking about $210,000,000 of our tax money for the project, and a blind person will probably never "see" 99.9999% of those new ramps :(
- This afternoon I updated my Resources for Comedians, which included removing a broken video link and updating my Comedy Classes web page.
- This afternoon finalized and went over my routine for tomorrow evening's show at
Rick Bronson's House of Comedy. It will be my 13th time on stage there and the first in over two and a half years. I posted about it on Facebook, Twitter and Instigram.
- Before supper I made my grocery list on Google Drive and then headed out. Along the way I got some new fans: three at Crunch Fitness and one at Walmart.
- By the time I did the gym, all my shopping, got everything put away and did my teeth, it was pretty late.
- Got to bed at 12:18am for 9:04 hours of sleep after sleeping in
Wed Dec 6 = Today's big event was the delivery of the Digital Media Player. I didn't have time to do more than unbox it, getting ready for tonight's stand up comedy show.
- I try to get things to come out even, like the microposters I pass out for some of my shows. I had made a about 100 of them for tonight's show and had only 12 left over - about right.
- For this evening's trip I forgot to take my clipboard to the House of Comedy. The clipboard contained the routine I worked out for my five minutes. I managed to get everything in for my set anyway.
- I did remember my body mic and remembered to turn it on for my set. We'll see how it turns out with the five camcorders I used, plus maybe a sixth angle from a guy who videoed the entire show.
- Daniel Bridge-Gadd's monthly show was a good one. My new Christmas Hearing Aids Routine didn't get as many laughs as I had hoped..
- On the way to the show I stopped by Mountainside Fitness for a
poster trim
weekly trimming of my beard, eye brows and little quiff so I match my poster photos
and shower. To eat it before it melted I ate most of the protein frosty I took with me, but didn't have time for the workout.
- To really earn the frosty, I stopped by Mountainside on the way home, did a slow heavy legs workout and got some new fans.
- Here is Daniel's line up for the show and five new New fans I got on this trip: Three at House of Comedy and two at Mountainside Fitness:
- Got to bed at 11:24 for 8:56 hours of sleep
Thu Dec 7 = I got around early this morning, under the auspices of
,
to take Joan to see her dentist. She wasn't anywhere around and had canceled her appointment without telling Duet or me. Not too bad, considering this is the first time this has ever happend in all the years that I have been volunteering.
- At noon I
sunned
I lay in the sun for 10 minutes on my back and 10 minutes on my stomach at solar noon when the sun rays are maximized for the skin's production of vitamin D
.
- It arrived! It took two months to get the T-shirt that I ordered through my website. If anyone else has had a similar problem, I haven't heard about it. I'll be checking with the suppliers to find out why.
- Also arriving were two sets of magnetic spice racks, good for holding about anything, with STRONG magnets.
- At Wayward Tap House, on the patio before tonight's open mic, I got two new fans:
- For the show I did an entirely new set that included the history of beds. Fortunately no one went to sleep during my set.
- Got to bed at 11:27 for 9:03 hours of sleep
$100 Competition for Line Drawing Winner
First of all I would like to thank everyone who submitted their line drawings. I am privilaged to consider all of you my friends. Sorry all cannot be winners. Also thanks to those who helped me pick the best drawing. Hopefully, in a few weeks you will see some T-shirts that include the new design.
And the winner is... Nadia from Sweden!
Fri Dec 8 = Today I hooked up the Neumi HDMI player. All the features I tried worked. However it has some shortcomings: I can't control the order in which the files play and cannot display pictures and videos intermixed. Good things: It plays a bunch of file formats (more than my Alcatel) including weird files from my Mac. The IR remote control works well with its IR extender.
- Tweaking my sleep involves monitoring it so I came up with another, better version of my Sleep Study chart. This time with two columns, a single line for each sleep session to make the information scannable and preprinted headings to save time. First is the previous version from two years ago and the tops of the two latest versions:
- Tonight I made and printed out a sheet of the three final choices for my T-shirt design to take to the gym for some opinions. By the time I got that done it was getting late and I had not yet posted the winner for the $100 Competition for a Line Drawing, and I had to do it. While I was at it I made the backgrounds of the positive and negativity images transparent because they look so good on my website that way. Then I decided not to use the transparent version of the negative drawing. You can see the result where I announced the winner before today's blog.
- Got to bed at 11:54 for 8:52 hours of sleep
Sat Dec 9 = This morning Kevin Trett, recommended by Summer Winds Nursery, came over to look at my front yard plants. The upshot is that I will not replace any of the six missing/dead ones at this time and wait until the weather starts warming up and then maybe cut all of them down to the ground to start over.
- Later I sent an email to my HOA about my plan. The management company tends to be controlling, picky and, in my opinion, unreasonable. We'll see if they reply and what they say.
- My trip after supper had two purposes. One was to do a slow heavy arms workout and the other was to get help making the final decision for my new T-shirt image. I asked 38 people at two gyms which of three drawings, of me, they would chose. Drawing #10 won at 52%; #12 got 26% and #8 got 21%.
- Oh, yes. I also got Tim and Katelyn as new fans:
- The Good Life: Life-Changing Lessons from the World's Longest Study of Happiness by Robert J Waldinger and Marc Schulz is an interesting book I am reading (on my Kindle, of course). The book is sort of dry but the topic and information in it are VERY interesting: In the 1930's some researchers moved away "from a research focus on what made people sick to a focus on what made people healthy." I am now reading the section about young adults. The book talks about those still living at home. Some countries have a name for these creatures:
- NiNi (ni estudia, ni trabaja) is what they are called in Spain - don't study; don't work
- NEET (not in education, employment or training) is what they are called in the UK.
- Got to bed at 11:07 for 9:03 hours of sleep
Sun Dec 10 = This morning I made some booking contacts.
- At noon I was fleet of fingers and registered for Wednesday's Stir Crazy show. Next, after I
sunned
I lay in the sun for 10 minutes on my back and 10 minutes on my stomach at solar noon when the sun rays are maximized for the skin's production of vitamin D
under a thin overcase and had lunch, was to add Stir Crazy to the schedule on my website and make 80
microposters to pass out before the show. I already had the posters printed up and just had to add the date with my
date stamp and cut up the posters.
- For Thursday's show on my schedule I found, resized and made this transparent logo for
Wayward Tap House - Today's trip was after supper to the Cave Creek Rd EōS Fitness for a workout and three new fans:
- I forgot to take my phone. Back at home, my punishment was taking extra time to adjust the high resolution picture which Josue took in the mirror and email it to myself. I had to flip, crop and reduce the resolution of the picture to 2% of it's original size.
- The Google crawler found one broken link on my website - not bad at all. I removed the link. It was associated with a hover pop-up for the Sammple Contract on my Press Kit.
- Google also found "Duplicate without user-selected canonical." I'm not sure what that means, but, on my website, I found no duplicates of the files they mentioned.
- Got to bed at 10:42 for 8:29 hours of sleep (up @ 5am to make booking phone call then back to bed)
Mon Dec 11 = This morning I spent about an hour Zoomed in with Injoy Hearing and Peytra, a Phonak tec. We tried lots of things and never got the MyPhonak hearing aid app to work properly on my phone.
- As slick as snot the Handbrake app on my
Mac
the MacBook Pro I got in May 2023, with an m2 Max processor 64GB of memory and a 2TB SSD hard drive
converted the Windows propriatary WMV video of my San Carlos Kiteboarding to the standard MP4 format. Now the video plays on my new neumi HDMI thing.
- This evening's trip was to Basha's for Romaine lettuce and a Bartlet pair (both on sale), Walmart for a Bic 4-color pen to replace the one I lost several days ago and Crunch Fitness for some light fast working out. On the trip I got three new fans.
- Got to bed at 11:18 for 8:57 hours of sleep
Tue Dec 12 = Two trips today: First was, Under the auspices of
,
to take James way down to the Mountain Shadows area to see his doctor.
- The second, toward evening, was the oposite direction to Mountainside Fitness for a light workout.
- Two final tweaks on my T-shirt head drawing were to make it narrower (like my head) & modified the quiff slightly so it appears to be in front of the head arc.
- Got to bed at about 11:40 for about 9 hours hours of sleep
Wed Dec 13 = I checked the weather for my Christmas celebration excursions to Payson and Flagstaff: Maybe a little light precipitation and cold.
- The main event was comedy at
Stir Crazy over in Glendale.
- On the way I stopped at two gyms: It was my first time at the Glendale Planet Fitness where I did the first part of a slow heavy legs workout and passed out a few Stir Crazy fliers. The second gym was the LA Fitness in Peoria to finish the legs workout, pass out a few show microposters and get a new fan - probably my tallest yet.
- I should have kept up with my comedy show topics. I was excited about the boxes set I had come up with for tonight's show. Before I went up, for some reason I checked my past comedy appearances and found that I had already done that set recently. It is hard to plan a set while listening to other comedians, but that's what I tried to do. For my 3-minute set, though, I fell into the grove and did some of the boxes stuff.
- Got to bed at 11:43 for 8:48 hours of sleep
Thu Dec 14 = This afternoon Nadia emailed me the finished product: high resolution headshot drawings. She did a good job and the drawings are great.
- The Wayward Tap House had a good show tonight. I did the Boxes routine because I had not done it before there and because the killer punchline is about an avalanche. I forgot the killer punchline about an avalanche and even had a little time left over in which I could have done it.
- I showed my comedian friends the winner of my Line Drawing Competition and took preorders for the T-shirts. Got five pre-orders.
- On the way home I stopped by Albertson's for some Romaine lettuce, using a 10% off coupon from when I got my last vacine.
- Back here at home, I inventoried my regular Stool-Logo T-shirts, thinking I would order more tomorrow. It turned out to be sort of a waste of time because it makes sense to order only my Headshot shirts. I'll plan on ordering more Stool-Logo shirts when I start running out of them.
- Got to bed at 11:20 for 8:59 hours of sleep
Fri Dec 15 =My goal today was to get T-shirts ordered with my new headshot line drawing on them, but I didn't make it due to several poor choices.
- First, making some accessibility changes on my
Mac
the MacBook Pro I got in May 2023, with an m2 Max processor 64GB of memory and a 2TB SSD hard drive
disordered and scattered the desktop icons over two different screens instead of keeping them neatly arranged where I keep them on the laptop's screen. I decided, then and there, I should arrange the icons back where I wanted them.
- Secondly, I used my T-shirt inventory figures, along with additional research online to figure how many of my original Stool Design T-shirts to order: not necessary because I am not running out of them yet.
- A necessary task: downloading my shiny new head shots from Stockholm Sweden and adding "arizonalou.com" and a copyright symbol and uploading the result to Design A Shirt's website.
- At solar noon, I
sunned
I lay in the sun for 10 minutes on my back and 10 minutes on my stomach at solar noon when the sun rays are maximized for the skin's production of vitamin D
- It took much of the afternoon to find various quantity prices for T-shirts with my new Head Design. It was complicated with the five custom pre-orders I had taken on Thursday. It was 4pm by the time I got on the phone with Design A Shirt. Instead of taking my order over the phone, Stephany (who does not usually take orders) informed me that their website was having trouble with design uploads and asked me to submit my order by email and include my artwork. Of course by the time I got that done Design A Shirt was closing, which means I will have to wait until Monday to place my order with Kaylee, who understands my situation. Unfortunately that will put me behind and the new shirts may not arrive before Christmas.
- After supper I found and fixed the three broken images on my Fans web page. Evidently I had failed to upload the emages to the Internet and did not discover that fact because I had not checked them online on my Fans web page.
- It took me 22 minutes to do my monthly credit card payoffs. The slow part was logging on to Chase.
- The Asics shoes that I wear as my comedy stage shoes have one porblem. They came from Goodwill with an extremely tight overhand knot in one of the shoe laces which was particularly inconvenient because it interferred with adjusting the shoe laces shorter so they wouldn't drag on the floor. Before leaving for the gym tonight I cut the knotted lace off at the knot (12") and used section of small marine-grade heat shrink tubing as an aglet. Now the shoe string is a perfect length. After that worked out I did the same with the other shoe's lace.
- This evening I made it to the Moon Valley LA Fitness for an arms workout and two new fans. It is the first time I got fans from their aerobics and training area:
- I'm glad I put it down in my
Mac
the MacBook Pro I got in May 2023, with an m2 Max processor 64GB of memory and a 2TB SSD hard drive
Notes file. The computer screens kept jumping around, so I went to my notes and figured how to disable Quick Corners, which I had activated at the recommendation of Mikah Sargent, one of the Tech guys.
Apple Menu
System Setting
Desktop & dock
Hot Corners (bottom button)
I removed: UL Desktop; UR Applications Windows; Lower L Mission Control; Lower right Quick Note
At least I gave Hot Corners a try!
- Got to bed at 10:06 for 8:59 hours of sleep
Sat Dec 16 = This morning I had Alexa wake Roomba up to vacuum the whole house.
- Also website maintenance this morning: I got an email from Google that my website had "Duplicates without user-selected canonicals." Checking it out, they listed 14 files. Today I attacked the index files and deleted about 12 old versions that Google may have considered duplicates. I also deleted a large system folder that mysteriously got in with my Fans images.
- I was handicapped at Planet Fitness because I forgot my phone. I got two new fans who used their phones to take selfies and email them to me. For some reason the selfies never arrived. I hope they send them to me again through my website.
- I asked for it. All evening I spent inputing information into a spreadsheet about active Pennsylvania American Legion posts: 156 pages of information. My database spreadsheet now has some information on 194 posts out of the more than 800 in Pennsylvania.
- When I got home from the gym I had a somewhat painful sore throat on the left side, so I started doing some serious gargling with saltwater, taking it easy and getting a little more sleep
- Got to bed at 10:45 for 9:13 hours of sleep
Sun Dec 17 = I was so anxious to order my new T-shirts that I got up early (before 8am) this morning and phoned
Design A Shirt before I realized it was Sunday and, of course, they were closed. (#4 on the
Alzheimer's List
. So I reorganized my T-shirt ordering email to make it a little clearer.
- At noon, I was a little slow switching from my sign-up practice to the actual
Stir Crazy over in Glendale website. By the time I got to their website all the slots were filled. That is just as well, because I won't likely be feeling like going.
- The next few days will be mostly spent moping around the house trying to shake this cold. I took a long nap this morning and another one this afternoon.
- Also, so far as meals are concerned, I'll be eating smaller amounts and eating more slowly and being sure to chew my food completely, as I am experiencing slight stomach discomfort.
- I bundled up for the night and got to bed at 9:43 for 10:17 hours of sleep with a bedtime temperature of 100.7° F and a maximum during the night of 102.1° F at 6:30am. I then took off some covers and went back to bed, which resulted in a temperature of 99.6, which is still a little high for me.
Mon Dec 18 = First project this morning was to contact
Design A Shirt, finalize and pay for the order. It cost a little over $500 and should be delivered Jan 2, 2024 and give me a supply of headshot T-shirts as well as replenish my youth extra small stool logo supply.
- The rest of the day I made a few booking phone calls and made some minor improvements on my website like an
Alzheimer's List
popup. and the image of my T-shirt with a Headshot.
- After supper I could hardly stay awake so bagged and froze about four pounds of grapes that I got on sale last week.
- Tonight, really trying to shake my cold/sore throat/runny nose/fever situation, I went to bed early. I adjusted my covers to not be two warm, figuring a little fever is necessary to fight off the infection, but not too high. During the night it got up to 100.8° F
- Got to bed at 8:15 for 11:15 hours of sleep
Tue Dec 19 = Today I had to beat around the bush a lot to get my new headshot drawings to be high resolution with a transparent background in both positive and negative formats in order to work online. What a job! I think I may have gotten it all to work right. We'll see how things look online and what the actual orders look like.
- This morning I was rummaging around my website and ran across the following two videos from 5 years ago. The first one is 2.5 minutes of pop bottle fun and music. The second is 19 minutes of how to make good decisions when you can't know all the facts and the kind of people you should seek out for advise and the pitfalls of outcome-bias.
... and if you like that, here is a 1:24 Talk at Google where Annie Duke takes the concept further with more interesting details.
- Got to bed at 9pm for 11:18 hours of sleep, with a fever, getting up to pee 5 times.
Wed Dec 20 = How do you think it looks? I finally got my headshot T-shirt available online along with my old stool logo, both in ten colors.
- One phone call made my day. I called Dr. Nancy, a clinical psychologist in Mesa, to see if the T-shirt she ordered online from Etsy through the link on my website was delivered OK. She was enthusiastic and delighted to hear from me. Evidently she had me in her contact list because she answered with, "Arizona Lou!" She said that she got the shirt OK and that she proudly wears it and explains what I am all about when people ask. We had a lovely short visit.
- I am going to contact people more (likely by phone because that's my style) as a result of my reading The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. I recommend the book.
- Got to bed at 9:45pm for 11:09 hours of sleep
Thu Dec 21 = Check out my updated Etsy Shirt Shop!
- This morning I ordered a shirt through the shop to make sure that everything is working correctly.
- Not wanting my body to deteriorate completely, yesterday morning and this morning I road my
slowly (35 RPM) for only one minute, climbing a scant 65 feet and getting my pulse up to only 111.
- After lunch I took a long nap - still running headache and a fever.
- My project this evening was to start an outline of what I would like to cover in this year's Christmas letter. I started going through my 2023 blogs, month-by-month, and picked the topics and selected some pictures for the back of the letter.
- Got to bed at 10:04 for 11 hours of sleep
Fri Dec 22 = Since I was running a fever this morning at 10:00, I textd
Anne
My daughter, Roby her husband and their two daughters Ren and Brooke who live in Flagstaff, AZ
that I, sadly, would not be going to Payson to join the big Hayes Christmas Party.
- I spent most of the day with my Christmas letter - not writing it, but organizing it and the associated pictures.
- This afternoon I took a 1:09 hour nap - still feeling sick with a fever.
- Wanting to keep in touch with some old friends, I gathered information about the Valdosta AMVETS where I did a show a year ago May 10th. No one answered the phones. At least I got to recall some fond memories.
- A little research helped me to find out how much longer to plan on being miserable. According to averages, my fever should lessen starting tomorrow and end by Christmas Day. The other symptoms may linger through New Year's Day and beyond. Of course I added this chart to Smart Stuff under health and fitness.
- Got to bed with a mild fever at at 8:40 for 10:27 hours of sleep
Sat Dec 23 = When I got up to pee at 4:53 this morning my temperature had broken, so I decided to go to Payson. I had to get a lot in like:
Turning on the water heater
Going back to bed
Up for another pee about 7am
Drawing a tub of hot water to heat up the hall bathroom
Fixing an oatmeal breakfast while waiting for the tub to fill
Back to bed until 8:40 when awakened without an alarm
Eating the Tuna, Grapes & Tomato portion of breakfast
poster trim
weekly trimming of my beard, eye brows and little quiff so I match my poster photos
and bath
Pack up for cold conditions if car trouble
Get gas at Costco
Dirve to Payson (188 mile, one and a half hour drive)
Stop by the Payson Walmart for rolls, olives and beans
Arrive at
Rose Anne
My X wife who lives in Payson by a lake
's at about the same time as everyone else.
- What a fun group. I'm so glad I was able to make it. Becky, my neise brought in a bunch of wrapped gifts for a fun exchange, with steeling all around. It was neat to catch up with all the goings on with everyone.
- Before heading down the hill home to Phoenix, I took a 40 minute nap in the back of my van.
- I got home for a small supper and
- Got to bed at 10:00 for 10:32 hours of sleep
Sun Dec 24 = Today I rode my elliptical slow for one minute.
-
Anne
My daughter, Roby her husband and their two daughters Ren and Brooke who live in Flagstaff, AZ
suggested I take a COVID-19 test before heading to Flagstaff tomorrow for Christmas. I found a test in the Swag Bag from the Deleware Veterans Home. That BinazNOW antigen self test showed me as positivve, so I canseled Flagstaff for tomorrow and let everyone who I saw in Payson know. I do not think I exposed anyone to COVID-19 because I had only mild cold symptoms and avoided breathing around other people's faces; and my "cold" started a week earlier (Dec 16th with a sore throat).
- The best price had the worst website - or at least a broken website. I found 5 sources of NOW Whole Psyllium Husks but Pure's website kept giving an "unextected error," so I gave up.
- This evening I didn't get very far with
FCP
Final Cut ProX the fancy video-editing software I got for my MacBook Pro from Apple in Sept, 2023
on the House Of Comedy videos from Dec 6th.
- Got to bed at 10:21 for 9:43 hours of sleep
Mon Dec 25 Christmas Day = Today I stayed home, took it easy, took a couple of naps and Zoom'd with
Anne's
My daughter, Roby her husband and their two daughters Ren and Brooke who live in Flagstaff, AZ
.
- Also my son, Scott, phoned from back East.
- I am not particularly proud of this video. I did it more as a learning exercise for
FCP
Final Cut ProX the fancy video-editing software I got for my MacBook Pro from Apple in Sept, 2023
.
- Got to bed at 9:21 for 10:29 hours of sleep
Tue Dec 26 = Today I made the T-shirt links & image more efficient at the top of Comedy Home to facilitate readability and also to enhance SEO.
- Today's outing was a big one, considering I hadn't gotten out of the house for several days. It was the repeatedly-delayed semi-monthly shopping trip to Winco. Then Walmart let me down. They had neither the right size of zippered money (3x9") bag nor any boxed Christmas cards. I'll learn to first go to Big Lots where I got an additional two-year supply of boxed Christmas cards.
- Got to bed at 10:06 for 9:38 hours of sleep
Wed Dec 27 = Today was Christmas Letter Day: I got all the picutres on the back identified and labeled. Then I wrote the front, the text side and then pared it down to fit one page.
- I have been a bad guy, having not kept up by informing my followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that I have had a cold and have not gone to any comedy shows or open mics in the last two weeks, so after bedtime I posted on all three.
- Got to bed at 10:45 for 9 hours of sleep and up to pee 3.5 times
Thu Dec 28 = Christmas letter, final day. I got all addressed, stamped, hopefully without too many mistakes. Here's the back (picture page):
- I found two broken images on my blog for Dec 6, 2022, so fixed 'em. Turns out I had miscapitalized the source folder when calling up the LiFePO4 images. While I was at it, I improved the arrangement of the presentation.
- For vitamine D and exercise I
sunned
I lay in the sun for 8 minutes on my back and 8 minutes on my stomach at solar noon when the sun rays are maximized for the skin's production of vitamin D
a game I devised to score when I work on booking comedy shows
a little today. I only scored 45 , which isn't too bad, considering I have done no booking since Dec 22nd.
- This evening's trip was to pick up B B at the 99 (bread and bananas at the 99¢ Only Store).
- Got to bed at 9:43 for 9:58 hours of sleep, not counting an early morning booking phone call.
Fri Dec 29 = At my 6:42am pee I spent 20 minutes making the booking phone call to PA - Bubber had already left :( I went back to bed until my alarm
- After breakfast I hit pay dirt with a phone call to the VFW Post 5954 in Red Hill PA. All in the one phpne call we booked a show and worked out all the details. Thank you for your time, Kathy.
- My Bookings database spreadsheet had many of the fields arranged in the order in which I thought of them. I spent some time re-arranging the columns in a logical order for: the show, the facility, the arrangements, the van parking and the publicity. It took about an hour, but now my booking should be more efficient... and logical.
- Today's trip was before supper, looking for a 2-year pocket calendar - not at Dollar Tree or Basha's but at Office Max. For each stop I parked accross the parking lot and ran to the store. Gotta keep my body working. To make up for the added exertion, I took 20 minute naps in the morning and afternoon.
- I got my mitts on the first Arizona Lou Head-design T-shirt today. It is a big XL white one with a black line drawing. It arrived in my mailbox from Etsy, eight days after I ordered it.
- For a fifth camera, thinking about taking a third tripod on my tours, I extensively researched nine of 'em. The final conclusion is that the SunPac TravelLites that I have are the best because they are fairly light, pretty sturdy, are one of the shortest when fold up and the tallest when fully extended. All of them, including mine, have a ball joint instead of a regular tilt head. My TravelLites also have a fluid pan feature which is nice.
- My shipment from DesignAShirt of about 50 normal colors is expected tomorrow :)
- This evening when time to floss/brush/watch-a-monolog, my TV had no audio through the built-in speakers or through the optical output, which I feed into my component stereo system. Nothing seemed to fix it until, after about 15 minutes, it decided to start working again.
- Got to bed at 10:20 for 9.5 hours of sleep 3.5 pees
Sat Dec 30 = After two weeks, I'm getting closer to my over-the-cold normal self. For this morning's elliptical ride I went 38rpm and upped the drag from #11 to my pre-cold #12. The next week or I'll be working my way up to my pre-cold 49rpm.
- For breakfast I added blueberries and yogurt to my grape nuts mixture: a tasty and healthy treat.
- Being a member of Amica Mutual insurance, I emailed my proxy today for their Feb 8th, 2024 board meeting.
- Around noon on social media, I posted that I got my mitts on the first Arizona Lou Head-design T-shirt yesterday and that I'll have the new-design shirts at the
Wayward Tap House; 1028 Grand Ave;
Phoenix, AZ 85007 on Thursday for their 7pm show.
- William Patterson, my roofer, came by today. We went up on the roof and he put back the few "flat" concrete tiles that had been dislodged by a windstorm. He also took an inventory of the tiles that were broken (about four). He will return in about a week to replace them.
- Delivered today: My order of 50 T-shirts from DesignAShirt (mostly new headshot design) and 4 lb of Now whole psyllium Husks from Capitol Nutrition, that I had ordered from mysupplementstore.com. At .3oz/day they should last 213 days, through July.
- Just before supper I drove to LA Fitness to show off a newly-arrived Headshirt T-shirt to my friend Tim at the Power Station "juice bar" there. I forgot that he was closed on Saturdays. I did get in a light legs workout and a new fan:
- This evening I set up emergency information on my cell phone, hopefully now accessible when the screen locked.
- I about strained my brain processing all my new T-shirts. The order was complicated with tiny shirts and five special order shirts for some of my comedian friends. Now my warehouse (west end of my couch) has two stacks of shirts: old Stool designs and new Headshot designs.
- Got to bed at 10:35 for 8:42 hours of sleep with 30 minutes up at 5:24 to pee and make a booking phone call to a VFW post in PA and speak with Bubber. Total of three pees
Sun Dec 31 = This is better than finding your phone by having Alexa call it. https://myaccount.google.com/find-your-phon rings my phone, even if its ringer volume is turned all the way down, the phone is on vibrate or if set on Do Not Disturb.
- On my fancy electronic sewing machine I hemmed the sleeves on my new polyester headshot T-shirt so it looks a little better. You can't probably tell in the two photos below.
- After a second nap I drove down to the Cave Creek Rd EōS Fitness. It was a little embarrassing, for the first time, for me to wear my own headshot T-shirt, but I got a couple complements and two new fans:
- With the compulsion to finish a challenge, I solved what I could of AARP Magazine's crossword puzzle. I got 57 squares correct out of 109. That's 52.3% and that's probably the first time I really "did" a crossword.
- Armed with my high powered blow drier, this evening I installed new industrial strength self-adhesive Velcro (that has been lying around, unused, for about 10 years) on the van's refrigerator that keeps it from tipping over during left turns. Hope it holds. The regular quality velcro only lasted about 10 years before it came unglued.
- According to Google, here's where I traveled during 2023, Never getting out of the USA:
- Got to bed at 10:23 for 9:21 hours of sleep with 2.5 pees
