Day 2020

I kind of hate to admit it, but I love to track things. I track the weather. I use fitness bands to track my steps. I use apps on my phone to track where I go in the car. Probably this blog is just a way to track how I feel over a long period of time. At any rate, now that I've learned how to use an Apple Watch, I've discovered that there are whole new worlds of things I can track. The device keeps a continuous record of your heart rate and the calories you burn and sends them to the Health app on your phone. If you are so inclined, you can add WiFi scales, blood pressure cuffs, and lord knows what else so you can track even more. I'm not interested in the day-to-day, but the long term trends are fascinating. The number of miles I walk each day has been in a slow, steady decline for almost three years. My weight peaked about twelve years ago and has been very gradually declining ever since. I'm almost back to my college weight now and I don't really know why.

There was certainly plenty to track today. I kept moving all day long. Dot was tired and needed a rest, so I let Dash walk as long as he wanted. We walked about three miles and were gone over an hour. A little later I burned 150 calories getting the water off the roof. It felt like I should have burned a lot more, but there wasn't a setting on my fitness app for pushing a broom. I set the thing for a brisk walk instead. I have a feeling that I should have used the setting for the elliptical machine, or something more strenuous. All these fitness things on my phone seem to be very goal oriented. They set goals for you and then when you reach the goal, they set a new goal to push you a little harder. The first thing I do when I install one of these apps and turn all the goal reminders off. I'm a curious person and am interested in everything, but I'm not very goal oriented. I certainly don't need my phone telling me to work harder.

Dash doesn't understand the concept of sleeping in on weekends. For the past several weeks he has started getting out of bed about 6:30 AM and barking at the foot of the bed until he wakes everyone else up. Dot would be content to sleep a bit longer on her own, but when Dash starts barking, she always joins in. At this point it is useless to try to sleep any longer. The only good thing about these canine alarm clocks is it forces us to get up and walk the dogs while it is still cool outside. It warms up so fast once the sun is up, that even an hour delay in getting the dogs out can make a huge difference in how hot they get. Since we had a long walk this morning, it literally felt ten degrees warmer by the time we got home.

I'll probably need to mow the grass again tomorrow. The yard has never looked this green so late in the year. I'm surprised at how fast the grass is growing, since some years it doesn't grow at all in the Summer. I wonder how many calories that mowing the grass will burn? There's not a setting for mowing the grass on the fitness app either. When are these people going to learn that there are more ways to exercise than going to the gym and spending thirty minutes on the Stairmaster?

Space X is going to launch another Dragon 9 rocket tomorrow. I had an opportunity to go to Florida and view the launch with the NASA folks again, but the trip was too expensive and I didn't want to leave Dot anyway. Oh, well. For the time being, life has become too complicated for these kinds of trips. I guess I'll just watch the launch on my computer.

Rascal is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day