{"id":573895989,"date":"2023-07-26T21:39:31","date_gmt":"2023-07-27T01:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573895989"},"modified":"2023-07-28T01:41:53","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T05:41:53","slug":"ray-stevens-was-an-overdue-mention-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2023\/07\/26\/ray-stevens-was-an-overdue-mention-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray Stevens was an overdue mention anyway"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We started this morning with a bike ride. OK, I started this morning with a PB&J, and then<\/em> we went on a bike ride. The first 10 miles felt great, just following my lovely bride, jumping ahead on the little hills because I can, but sitting up and waiting for a second or two for the red flash to come through.<\/p>\n

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The corn is nice and tall. The sun is high. The roads are quiet. Everything is going great.<\/p>\n

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Somewhere around mile 13 my legs reminded me that they have been underused of late, and they stopped pedaling well in protest. It was squares from there on in, and I have to ride more, I know it, and my legs do, too. But the views were lovely.<\/p>\n

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And even though my ride was feeling clunky, I did remember to take a photo of this sign which surely means … something.<\/p>\n

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I think it’s recounting the local legend of the bird that celebrated the building as a deity, and brought it fish sacrifices, in the hopes that the building would give plentiful thermals in return. Silly bird.<\/p>\n

Around mile 18 my legs rallied, if only for a moment, and then they stopped being productive at all. There was no more hanging on the wheel. No more catching up, not even on the gentle rollers. I was merely dropped. I managed to set four PRs on Strava. She set PRs on five Strava segments.<\/p>\n

After that, The Yankee went for a run.<\/p>\n

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I sat in the shade.<\/p>\n

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Today was, I think, the first day I didn’t do anything involved with house settling. That’s about the tasks, not the mentality. That may take a while, I guess. But I did make a list of things to do tomorrow. And a long term list of things we might want to do, one day. Also, I did some paperwork for work, but there’s not really a good tale emerging from paperwork. Not one like this … <\/p>\n

Late this afternoon we took some garbage to the garbage taking place. <\/p>\n

The waste people decided they don’t manage service in this neighborhood anymore, despite having just closed a contract with the previous owners. And despite evidence — actual garbage cans that will go out tomorrow — of all of our nice neighbors receiving said service. We called this company twice on different days and times, just to see if that was a fluke, but it was not. Not sure what’s going on with that company, but I invoked Smith’s First Rule of Economics.<\/p>\n

Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you. <\/p>\n

So I found another company. Feeling very proud of myself, I shared this information. I didn’t know what the relative rates were, but it turns out this contract will save us a few bucks. They’ll start pickup next week, and deliver one of those giant cans later this week, supposedly. Which meant we took a few bags and some recycling to the transfer station today. <\/p>\n

Transfer station being a term that sounds better, but isn’t necessarily an improvement in the olfactory region.<\/p>\n

Being a warm summer day, we enjoyed our evening outdoors, and then had a fine steak dinner. It was a wonderful day, thanks for asking. I also introduced my lovely bride to Ray Stevens today. It was a topic that just evolved from a regular conversation. To my great relief, she found him funny, too.<\/p>\n