Me (giving empty electrolyte supplement to my wife to carry back to the kitchen): I had foot cramps in the night last night.
Jackie: You had [mumble mumble]?
Me: Foot cramps.
Jackie: Oh. Okay. That makes sense. I thought you said foot prints.
Me: You mean, like foot prints at a murder scene?
Jackie: I hadn’t thought of that. I was thinking maybe muddy footprints on the carpet.
Ashley is pleased with her new toy, but perhaps not as pleased as Jackie. 🐕
Jackie and I started baking sourdough long before the pandemic, baking a loaf pretty much every week since the early 1990s.
Today’s loaf: citric acid, ascetic acid, salt, diastatic malt powder, olive oil, honey, oats, bread flour, prairie gold whole wheat flour.
I was busy most of the day. In the morning I took Jackie to her (last!) physical therapy appointment, and in the afternoon I had my usual Thursday visit with some former co-workers. But in the early evening (after fourth dog walk) I sat down and wrote a few hundred words. I’ve also updated the progress tracker in the sidebar. (And, if you’re reading it, wrote this brief post on my day’s progress.)
Three things I should do soon (they’re on my schedule for “before November 1st”): Write a logline, short synopsis, and long synopsis for the story. I don’t know that I need to do all three, but I should definitely do some thinking about what the story is about before I spend much more time writing.
Probably just the sort of thinking to do tomorrow while walking the dog.
Today was something of a trial run at what I’m hoping to do during NaNo 2.0. I did first dog walk, ate breakfast, and did second dog walk. Then I sat down and banged out a few hundred words on my new novel. Then I did my morning exercises, followed by a workout.
Going forward, I’m hoping to be able to spend some of the afternoon and evening writing as well. At least, that’s the plan I’m hoping to follow all November.
Today we spent a big chunk of the afternoon enrolling in new Medicare Advantage plans, because the insurance company that we’ve been using for nearly 20 years is closing up shop. We had been very happy with our old health insurance. We’re approaching this new plan with a degree of trepidation. The signup was a one-time thing, and the fact that I had to spend my afternoon that way doesn’t mean that I’ll be unable to write future afternoons. I hope.
Now it’s evening, and I got a tiny bit more writing done.
All told my day’s writing came to 879 words. That comes to only about half of the 1667 I’ll have to average to get 50,000 words by the end of November. But that’s okay. I’m just getting started.
The workout was my first workout in more than a month—since Jackie had her surgery, and I got very busy. (There were only a couple of weeks when I was nearly a full-time caregiver, but even after that period was over, it turned out that just the odd hour here and there taking Jackie to physical therapy and such put a hole in the day that was hard to work around.)
Anyway. Words! Go me!
Jackie has an Old Fashioned, while I’m drinking a 3 Floyd’s Zombie Dust, a decent pale ale that sounded more interesting than any of the IPAs on tap.
Every time before, when we were ready for lunch after visiting the Art Institute, the Berghoff had a line, but this time not, so here we are. Both of us are drinking their session ale, called Globetrotter. Good. Refreshing. Jackie likes it better than All Day IPA.
Jackie and I are in Chicago for the weekend, staying in the Palmer House. We came to attend the opening of a tapestry exhibit at an art center in the West Loop, put on by the American Tapestry Association. The exhibit includes a piece by one of Jackie’s teachers, So Jackie particularly wanted to see it.
After a period where I was being a bit casual about them, for the past few months I’ve been doing pretty well at getting my workouts in, and I didn’t want to let that go, so I went to the fitness center here at the Palmer House. It’s pretty good!
I cranked through a slightly reduced version of my usual morning exercises, then went to the main room of the fitness center for the workout proper. They had an adequate set of kettlebells, so I did two exercises with those:
Then I found a barbell and loaded it up with a pair of 45 lb plates and did 2 x 5 deadlifts. I’m super out-of-practice with deadlifts, and would not have wanted to do more weight or more reps, but that much was okay.
Having done the tapestry thing, we’re looking to do some other Chicago stuff. Probably the Art Institute. Maybe one of the boat tours where they talk about the architecture. Maybe the Field Museum. Maybe something else! We’ll just see.
My brother Steven and his son Daniel are visiting, so we’re taking them out for lunch to celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary.
Me, to our dog Ashley: “You’re such a good dog! I don’t know a dog that’s good gooder!”
Jackie: “Good better.”
Me: “Man, English is hard even for native speakers.”
