UpLife

Last week was pretty miserable due to a severe case of insomnia. I couldn’t fall asleep before 3:30am every night.

Saturday we had a workday at the Church. The workday was from 8am-12pm, but I got there about 10:30am. I did a small cleaning project at the church before going over to the Annex (a house across the street, which is also where my office is). We recently had a new security fence installed and it needed staining. I spent about an hour doing one side of that.

After staining, I ate some lunch and then helped David Curtis, and two of his relatives, finish putting up siding on the back of the house. We worked on that till 4:15. Not gonna lie—nail guns are a lot of fun to use. I’m also glad I don’t do siding for a living—it would get really old after about 2 days.

After siding, I ran home to change and then went to play ultimate frisbee for a while. Later that evening, my friend Nathan and I went to a Sockers game at Grande Stadium. This is their inaugural season in Midland.

Sunday I went to church, and then afterwards was a Church Social. They grill a lot of burgers and hotdogs on a huge grill outside. The food was good (and it was free—bonus!). Sunday afternoon I did some house cleaning and laundry.

I planted my mini-garden a couple of weeks ago. I planted chives, green beans, and green peppers in it. Sunday afternoon I noticed the green beans were starting to break through the dirt. It was pretty amazing; I would go out every couple hours and I could see them growing bigger and bigger. As of today, they are now about 3-4” tall and mos of their leaves are out. The chives are also emerging, and yesterday there was one little pepper plant, but it looks like it burned up today. Those take a little longer to germinate, so I’m still holding out hope for them. Overall, I’m very impressed that this stuff is growing. I didn’t expect anything to grow—but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Now the test is to see what sort of quality veggies they will produce.

This week I’m determined to tire myself out each day (if I don’t get some heavy duty exercise, I won’t sleep well—like last week). Tonight, I went on 14mi bike ride west of Midland out to Mid-Cities Community Church. You can view the route here. Here are the full stats:

Full-screen

Total Distance: 22.24 km (13.8 mi)
Total Time: 1:10:06
Moving Time: 1:02:50
Average Speed: 19.72 km/h (12.3 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 21.24 km/h (13.2 mi/h)
Max Speed: 32.40 km/h (20.1 mi/h)
Min Elevation: 832 m (2730 ft)
Max Elevation: 869 m (2850 ft)
Elevation Gain: 122 m (399 ft)
Max Grade: 9 %
Min Grade: -8 %

Stats are courtesy of my T-Mobile G1 and the application My Tracks.

I was surprised at how well I did. I haven’t biked much this year, so I was expecting this to be murderous, but I felt pretty good afterwards. I was hungry though. I ate two fried egg sandwiches, a bowl of rice, and a plate of french fries, and a chocolate rice crispy bar.

It’s 10:30 and I’m going to take a shower, finish winding down, and then hit the sack. I got to bed before 11:30pm last night and I’ll do the same (possibly even earlier!) tonight. This is pretty different for my body—but I think it likes it. It certainly makes getting up for work in the mornings a lot easier.