{"id":573896477,"date":"2023-12-20T21:58:11","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T02:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573896477"},"modified":"2023-12-21T01:36:06","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T06:36:06","slug":"marginally-productive-for-a-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2023\/12\/20\/marginally-productive-for-a-wednesday\/","title":{"rendered":"Marginally productive, for a Wednesday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After a morning spent doing work stuff, I went downstairs to ride the bike. This would be ride three this week on Zwift. I did two short rides Monday, then last night&#8217;s projects got away from me. So I was going to ride long today. I am trying to ride all of the stages in the game, which is something I started last year. I&#8217;m almost there!<\/p>\n<p>And so today I was riding Surrey Hills, in London, when I hit the wrong button. The game let&#8217;s you do a lot of things as you ride. You can send messages to other riders, you can change the &#8220;camera&#8217;s&#8221; perspective of your avatar. You can take screen grabs and more. The later is how I get the images I sometimes share here. (And I won&#8217;t do that as much this year, promise.)<\/p>\n<p>Another thing you can do is hang a U-turn. When you do that you end the route. So there I was, halfway through it when I hit the wrong button. Human error. But there were too many other things I wanted to do today. <\/p>\n<p>First, after a late light lunch, because I did get in 25 miles, I got cleaned up and set out to take on the world. Things to do! Items to scratch off the list!<\/p>\n<p>I took out the garbage. Third time I&#8217;ve been to the inconvenience center in the last week, I think. Then, I visited one of the local hardware stores. This is a small place. A mom and pop place. An everyone talks to you place. A no-one-rushes-you-at-quitting-time place. In the back corner I found some cotton rope, which I need for an upcoming project. And then, just to mess with the guy, I asked about the zip ties. <\/p>\n<p>He told me where they were. I looked them over and then said, <em>Nah. You don&#8217;t seem to have the industrial strength version I&#8217;m looking for. Maybe,<\/em> I said as I arched an eyebrow while staring at the rope <em>next time.<\/em> <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec23\/dec34.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>And then I got my haircut. Clumsy woman, but at least I still have both of my ears. I thought she was going to take my eye, and it wasn&#8217;t even when she was attacking the waviest part of my hair. But she was nice. She&#8217;s over Christmas music. No need for the standards at Halloween in her book. She likes Prince. She told me about trying to understand &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nickiswift.com\/385857\/the-real-meaning-behind-princes-raspberry-beret\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Raspberry Beret<\/a>&#8221; as a kid. She started telling me the story about asking her mother about the lyrics. But I don&#8217;t know this woman, or her mother. Am I supposed to ask about this? <em>Prince,<\/em> I said, <em>was a clever one,<\/em> and I left it at that.She still goes to the mall for her Christmas shopping. (Is that a thing people do?) I was hoping for some last minute tips, but instead I heard about her brother who is an expert at guessing about what&#8217;s inside each present. It was all a blur. They don&#8217;t waste a lot of time on a guy&#8217;s haircut. No need, really. <\/p>\n<p>Come to think of it, she didn&#8217;t even show me the back of my head via the customary handheld mirror.<\/p>\n<p>Be right back. <\/p>\n<p>OK, it is still there. <\/p>\n<p>And almost every task of the day was achieved! Things put off until today were successfully addressed! If I could do that two more days in a row we&#8217;d have momentum. <\/p>\n<p>Sounds stressful.<\/p>\n<p>What else is still hanging around? This brief snippet of a video that I shot earlier this week, but haven&#8217;t shared yet.<\/p>\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;left:0px;top:0px;overflow:hidden\" frameborder=\"0\" type=\"text\/html\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dailymotion.com\/embed\/video\/x8qq4ym\" width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\" allowfullscreen title=\"Dailymotion Video Player\" > <\/iframe> <\/div>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/blog\/banners\/bannermarker.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>This is the 20th installment of We Learn Wednesdays. I&#8217;ve been riding my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. Including today&#8217;s installment, we&#8217;ll have seen 39 of the markers in the Historical Marker Database. This one marks a 19th century building. <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec23\/dec35.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>It is appropriate that there&#8217;s only wonderful, and generic, National Register plaque. I can find almost nothing about the house or its original owner, John G. Thackeay.<\/p>\n<p>It was built as residence and store. It features three stories in a T-shape, and parapet chimneys. There are transom lights,  broad pilasters and paneled shutters. The Greek revival style building went up in 1847.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec23\/dec36.jpg\"><\/center><\/p>\n<p>It could be that this wasn&#8217;t John G. Thackeay&#8217;s place. There&#8217;s a John G. Thackray that lived in the area during that time. The dates, at least, make sense. But in the marker database, and some ancient county document that&#8217;s been uploaded to the web, they use the E spelling. <\/p>\n<p>Thackray, though, was listed as a merchant in the 1860 census. His wife and four daughters were there. Two teachers, a hat maker and a servant were listed at his address. In the 1870 census, his last, Thackray is listed as a retired merchant. This house was a story, maybe that&#8217;s our guy. <\/p>\n<p>He was laid to rest about a mile away, and almost all of his family is buried there as well. Today, his place is a store again. Hardwoods and carpeting.<\/p>\n<p>In next week&#8217;s installment of We Learn Wednesday, we&#8217;ll go to school. If you&#8217;ve missed any markers so far, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/we-learn-wednesdays\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">you can find them all right here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a morning spent doing work stuff, I went downstairs to ride the bike. This would be ride three this week on Zwift. I did two short rides Monday, then last night&#8217;s projects got away from me. So I was going to ride long today. I am trying to ride all of the stages in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,5,32,47,10,102,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573896477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-errands","category-history","category-markers","category-photo","category-we-learn-wednesdays","category-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573896477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573896477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573896477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573896479,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573896477\/revisions\/573896479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573896477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573896477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573896477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}