One Year Anniversary — The Tugboat

Technically the anniversary was yesterday but I wanted to save it for today to point out. I’ve been posting daily in my Musings for a full year now. I never thought I’d see the day that I accomplished that. Nobody will care naturally because they don’t appreciate the care, the effort, the time, etc. that goes into doing this. I think I mostly do it for myself, something to look back on. I mostly will scroll and check out the photos but sometimes I’ll catch specific things and I enjoy looking back on them. I must have been celebrating that last night without realizing it. I woke up at six and was unable to get back to sleep. I tried, it just didn’t take. Call it three days with a failed nap in a row. I rolled around until around seven before getting up and doing ten minutes of stretching. I generally hold each stretch for six or seven seconds and do it three times. That makes for a long session of stretching. This made my body feel a bit better. My brain was fine after all the water I poured in it but my body was feeling a touch sluggish. Loosened up, I made my way to the kitchen to try and get some grease into me. When I look back on these past few weeks of my life I’ll have to remember them as the perogy period. I went back to the well again. This time it was just some generic Great Value branded potato and cheddar perogies. I did them in the air fryer, this batch needed about twelve minutes at 400F. As soon as they were done I followed up with some McCain’s breakfast potatoes to double down on starch. These are a new option and worth clicking the link on this one and learning what they are about. Bring cooked in the air fryer, these are the closest I’ve come to a restaurant quality breakfast potato. An unexpected treat for me. You’ll have noticed that I jazzed up the perogies with the last of the Great Value Tex Mex shredded cheese, some Cholula hot sauce and some Great Value brand dried parsley. It was a fantastic start to the big day.

Next on the agenda was to post a couple Musings drafts that I owed the world. I don’t get them up everyday but I generally put the photo for the day with some quick bullets of the high points. I got those caught up and then did some online shopping. I needed a small box for my painting supplies and I wanted to find another small canvas and stencil like my tiger painting to try. I also ordered a couple of books to keep myself learning. I had an interesting thought while I was doing that and that lead to me working on my backup character build for D&D. I was told it doesn’t hurt to have one ready, just in case you die unexpectedly. If you are ready to go the DM can get you game in there pretty quick if they are cool with that. So I started trying to put the pieces together. I think I have the broad strokes and I’ve started working on the background narrative of my character. I have a couple more decisions to make before everything can lock in. It’s a far different process than I did the first time where I had a back story and used that to make decisions for the character. There were some elements I regretted but that’s the game baby! When I had enough of that research and reading I grabbed my Mini and started playing HomeScapes. I was on a serious role. I’ve finished the garden and I’m working on the huge living room. It is going fast and furious, I couldn’t be stopped. Eventually the battery got low and I was actually stopped. It was after five by this time so I made my way to the kitchen. Without thinking I popped a chicken breast and the leftover potatoes from breakfast into the microwave to warm up. I had half a plate and with those two and needed to figure out a veggie. I was thinking about boiled cabbage last week and decided to go for it. I had no idea what I was doing but I put water in a pot then added cabbage. I likely boiled it too long as it started to disintegrate a bit. When it was “done” I drained it, added a knob of butter and too much salt. I stirred that a bit, not helping the disintegration aspect and plated it. It was too salty and too buttery but otherwise great.

I climbed upstairs to knock down today’s MSC challenge and felt like I had a brick in my stomach. I’m not sure which aspect was causing that. I played some extra games on the MSC before touching up my emails and checking on my fantasy sports. I talked about maybe re-reading the last seventy pages of The Never Army earlier in the week and decided to tackle that while I had the time. It was a very low key evening to top a very low key day. I finished those seventy pages around half nine, just about when the goons next door started up their Sunday night cinema. I got ready for bed then made my way down the hall to the guest room to try and get a quieter sleep than the cloud can afford me tonight.