June 11, 2014
Happy Birthday Pappa Dawg! Today my father in law turned seventy - seven. He says to me " I can't believe I made it this long."
I said "I can't believe someone hasn't shot you by now". Love the guy but, his personality can at times be, shall we say, abrasive. Particularly after a half bottle of red.
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| Birthday Boy? |
My day as usual starts at 8:30. I made the mistake yesterday of doing my workout after breakfast. Never again. It's way easier on an empty stomach.
First I do my four stair stretches, to get things loosened up. Then I do my ten girly stair push ups. Now comes the scary part. As I told you yesterday, I finally did a sit up. Lisa stands on my feet and I go for it. Lisa slept in today. I couldn't do one without her. Pappa Dawg says, when he was in the army you had a Buddy who held your feet down while doing them. So I don't feel so bad. Ten sets of ten crunches are now a breeze. Literally pain free. Except for the fact I'm doing them on a piece of carpet on a concrete floor. Lisa at this point came down stairs and I asked her to take some pics of me working out.
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| Where am I? |
I don't know where I am in this photo, perhaps hiding behind some of Joan's emergency canned goods? A good shot of the concrete floor too!
We are out in rural New Jersey so going for a walk is not easy. No sidewalks and a two lane highway. Also no Iron Maiden! I have instead the long forgotten, basement dwelling "Don't tread on me mill."
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| I'm walking , yes indeed. |
This treadmill goes up like your on a hill. Then speeds up. Then goes down and repeat. Yesterday I had it running flat at three mph. I did thirty minutes and felt pretty good. It has a heart monitor and I was peaking at 120 bpm.
Today I did one of the preprogrammed circuits. Up hill to a long plateau then down again. It takes ten minutes to finish a circuit and it was hard. My heart rate went up to 140 bpm. I did it twice and that was enough! I turned off the program and set it at four mph. That's pretty quick for a fat guy. I took one mph off every minute as a cool down. By the time I was at one mph my heart rate was 79 bpm. This is way tougher than The Iron Maiden. By a mile!
After a shower and a shave, I made some scrambled eggs with cheese and tomato lettuce wraps for breakfast. I don't know if I mentioned that we have bird wars going on here. These two birds keep trying to build a nest in the corner of the ceiling on the front porch.
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| The Issue |
It takes them maybe ten minutes to put one together. We go out and knock it down, they wait till we leave and do it again. Lisa came up with a medieval contraption to keep them out.
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| The solution |
They pushed it onto the deck and rebuilt. Lisa, not to be outwitted by a bird, put a honking big rock on it to hold it in place. It might just work we thought. Wrong! They went to the other end of the porch and built one there. It has now become personal for Lisa. She put together another bed of nails for the other end of the porch. It was time to go.
We are taking Poppa Dawg to the CIA, where Lisa went to school, for his birthday lunch. We have a one o'clock reservation in the American Bounty Restaurant. They have a great menu and the food is prepared by the students. I asked for the GPS and Poppa Dawg said I already programmed it. Cool. The CIA is at Hyde Park in upstate New York. It takes about an hour and a half to get there. We left Joan's at eleven, lots of time. There is however a New Hyde Park, also in New York State that we were unaware of. That's right It said we were sixteen minutes from our destination at 11:50. That's when we crossed the George Washington bridge into New York City. Fourteen dollar toll!
"May I see that GPS" I asked . "We shouldn't be anywhere near here" said Poppa Dawg. "It's not my fault, I didn't put in the directions" said Lisa who was driving. To make a long story, and a longer car ride, short. It was 12:25 and when I put in the proper address, we were 100 miles from our destination. We knew we wouldn't make our reservation but decided to go up to the school anyway. It's a beautiful spot along side the Hudson River.
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| Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park New York |
We arrived at 2:20, the restaurant was closed and everyone but me was starving. These people,"don't do breakfast" Lisa is an alumni so they were kind enough to fit us into Cantina de Medici their Italian restaurant. Lunch service was over but they had a small menu for students between shifts. Panini's and Pizza. That's it. Joan and Lisa had Pizzas and Poppa Dawg had a Panini. I had coffee. After last weeks Pizza episode, I wasn't taking any chances.
To summarise, we drove 200 miles in 3 1/2 hours for food I couldn't eat. Then we drove back to Joan's in the right direction in 1 hour 15 minutes. We had forgotten our camera at the house but no problem, Pappa Dawg had his. Lisa took lots of pictures of the food and the river and all kinds of interesting things, all without realising the camera was broken.
When we got back we found our camera on the floor of the car. I made a couple of ham and cheese lettuce wraps, then went the 6 miles to the grocer for some salad stuff. When we got back I made the salad and prepped some broccoli.
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| Salad Man |
The meatloaf was in the oven and we retired to the porch only to discover.... the birds had built their nest on top of the rock. Held in place by the nails. Birds one, Lisa zero!
When the rice was ready we sat down for dinner.
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| Birthday Dinner |
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| No rice for me! |
We had bought a small cake for Pappa Dawgs birthday. "No thank you, none for me" I said "it's bad luck if you don't at least taste it" said Joan. So I stuck my pinkie into the delicious cream center of this amazing looking strawberry fruit cake thingy. At this point a picture would be appropriate. I went up stairs to get our camera and
when I got back, they had already eaten the amazing looking strawberry fruit cake thingy. They tell me it was good, bastards!
After five hours in the car and a good meal, everyone but me was bagged. It's ten o'clock and I'm all alone to write my blog. I only sleep about five hours a night. Last night I went to bed at 3am. I guess as you get older you don't want to miss anything. So far our trip has been great. Family all around us, and adventure around every turn. I gotta get back on the picture thing.
That's all I got.
Till next time
Peace Out Y'all
©2014 Dave Squatch Ward
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