The number of times I've forgotten to weigh myself on weigh in day is starting to astound me. I ended up weighing myself this afternoon after I finished up with trying to build the shed (more on that later).
With daylight savings ending I was up at 6:30am today, I made breakfast for my kids one of which was already up when I got up and the other wasn't far behind me. I started by unpacking the floor kit and discovered that I needed to buy some tin snips so I could cut some of the parts into separate pieces as they were still joined together. I ran up the road to the hardware store and bought some snips, I took a look at the drivers that they had but they were too expensive. I really want to get one of the Makita ones as I've used them before and they are great.
Putting the floor kit took a lot longer than I expected. I finished with the floor around 2pm and then decided to make a start on the shed itself. By 4pm I had made the front and rear walls of the shed and decided that it was time to pack up and have a beer or two. This is when I realised that I hadn't weighed myself so before cracking a cold one, I jumped on the scales, I was wearing my shorts, t-shirt and socks and being later in the day probably means that my weight was more than it would have been if I'd weighed myself first thing this morning.
Weight:110kg
Steps for the week: 62,626
Average daily calorie burn: 4,246
I noticed that I put the wrong figures in for last week, I must have copied them and pasted them without updating, the graph was right just not the written totals. This week I was spending a lot more time at my desk so I need to make an effort to get moving more during the day. It's not a bad week I guess, but I didn't hit my targets and that's not good enough.
Bomber
I got 10K steps today so the week is starting off right.
Tonight the clocks go back one hour. That's the end of daylight savings. It will be a shame to see the sun set so early but the mornings have been really dark recently so it will be nice to get it back to some sort balance for the colder months. As I used daylight savings as a kind of excuse for not going motocamping, it's a little disappointing that I didn't manage to get out motocamping once in the last six months. Yes lots has happened in the last couple of months but the three or four months prior to that, I really don't have a great excuse. I've at least managed to stay on track or at least get back on track with some of my more minor goals but I need to try harder.
My return and earn recycling effort has worked so far. Ive successfully managed to fill a plastic tub in the garage with cans and bottles that came with a 10c refund if returned. Now I've just got to remember to actually return them. Our normal recycling bin is still being filled up with left over cardboard and paper from moving, that stuff that wasn't of use at least, all the boxes that were reusable were passed on to someone else. I'll probably have to make a special trip to the recycling centre to get rid of what's still lying around.
I need to start focussing on my other goals and making plans to achieve them. Looking at the list of goals there is one in particular that I want to try and achieve within the time frame I set myself and that's to do some adventure motorcycle training. I probably need to start looking at what's currently available or in planning as it's deadline is only six months away.
I'm certainly keeping myself busier over the weekends like I wanted to, but at the moment I am feeling a little time poor to be able to get everything done that I want.
My wife managed to tick some of the tasks off yesterdays list already. The outdoor furniture is clean and she moved some of the pot plants around. I probably need to move a couple of the heavier ones tomorrow but that has taken some of the pressure off me and will give me more time to put the shed together. Tomorrow weather is meant to be pretty nice, not cold, not windy and partly cloudy.
Bomber
It's all good, I don't ask too much of myself.
I think that Friday may have to be list day in the future, I wasn't too sure on the idea before but I think that it is a good day to plan out in my head what I need to do this weekend, if nothing else. There won't be heaps on today's list but I plan on writing a lengthy list of things to do in the near future.
Most Saturday afternoons are a bit of a write off with lunch at my Dad's and then we now go straight from Dad's to the kids swimming lessons. That means that we're not home until around 4:30pm so it is getting a little late to start on anything, especially now that daylight savings is ending on Sunday morning. This weekend I actually have to work on Saturday so that rules it out completely. Sunday is going to have to be a day of action if I want to achieve anything around the house.
I'd like to put the shed together this Sunday but I know my wife is keen to make the house presentable for visitors so she can start showing off our new place to her friends and family. Like I mentioned on Monday, we've unpacked all the boxes, we still can't find a couple of things but they are most likely hiding somewhere. We've also hung all the pictures and I just have to put up a mirror in the dining room for the wife and then the inside will be finished for now.
We still have all our pot plants on the front porch, they are all just dumped there from the day before moving in. I need to find better homes for most of them and then we need to give the outdoor furniture a good clean so it is ready for entertaining, or at least so it doesn't look unloved if someone comes to visit.
I guess my list for this weekend looks something like:
- hang the mirror
- sort out the pot plants
- clean the outdoor furniture
- start building the shed
- take motorcycle/camping related photos for Instagram
I'm not sure if I'll have time to complete the entire shed as I need to build the floor first so the shed can sit on top. I haven't figured out if I'm going to use ply or slats to complete the floor, it will probably be whatever ends up being cheaper, I may be able to use recycled pallets or something like that. Once the shed is up I can start moving stuff out of the garage and into the shed.
Bomber
I think I like lists a little too much
My shed arrived late yesterday afternoon, now I know what I'll be doing this weekend. The box it came in is about 2m long but only about 40cm wide and 30cm deep. That means that to make the shed look like the picture each door and the panels either side of the door must be two or three narrow panels screwed together, so eight to twelve panels each side and the roof would be the same. I've purchased a floor for the shed too, that just is the steel frame for the floor, I'll have to go and buy some plywood sheets to put on top of that for the floor. I probably have to buy some more shelving too as if I move the old shed shelves out of the garage I'll need to buy more for the garage. I just need to work out what sort of shelving is best.
Once the shed is sorted I can start looking at setting up the home brew area in the garage. This I'm a little excited about but I do think that the garage is going to be too warm in summer and too cold in winter unless I insulate the garage door. Thankfully there is a pretty easy polystyrene solution for that but I'm not so sure on the price. We've got 20 panels on the door and the standard kit is about $800. That's a lot. I want to look at alternate options that are cheaper, I can't see how one sheet of polystyrene could cost $40 considering it is usually a waste product used for packaging TVs and nearly every other electrical product and is thrown out. A $5 kettle from Kmart would come with $5 worth of packaging if it really costs that much. Yes quality is a consideration but I'm sure that if you buy a garage specific foam panel it will cost more than a generic foam panel.
Bomber
I'd hate to add up the actual cost of moving house.
I never managed to get out on the weekend to take some photos for my Instagram account. Hopefully I can find some time this coming Sunday. Because I've chosen to do the whole 360° thing and how I mount the camera to the bike, it is a little more involved than just whipping out my phone and taking a couple of shots, I need to be prepared.
I have some ideas for some shots that could look pretty cool, one of them will probably take a fair bit of effort and a little planning to get right but if it comes out the way I hope it will, it should look awesome. I may be able to plan some other shots using Google Street View, if I come up with an idea, I can quickly check the location and see if it could be worth the effort. It will also help when I think I know where I want to go but I'm not 100% certain of where exactly it is. There is a great location under one of the bridges in Canberra but it's now all marked as no stopping, even though there is masses of space to stop and even an area that is marked out as a parking bay. There are other places that may have changed since I was last there too.
My Instagram account is still attracting followers so it will be interesting to see what happens when I start posting to it on a regular basis. Unfortunately there won't be too many actual motocamping shots, but I have a chance in the next couple of weeks before it gets too cold to head off for an hour or two and try and have a go at taking some photos.
Bomber
I don't want to make any more excuses.
My wife and I were talking the other day about her work and how it's getting much busier. They are looking to take on an extra person or two and it is sounding like they will probably try and offer my wife a full time position at the end of her current contract. I think that if they offer her full time that she should take it as the last thing she'll want it to turn it down and then find out that they've hired someone else to help out and then they start to cut her hours as they only really need one person to do the work.
My wife taking on more hours is good for her and her career, it may not make that much difference to how much disposable income we actually have as we'd need to put the kids in after-school care each day and that's not cheap. The alternative to after-school care is if I get a car so I can pick them up each day. I'd be able to start work at 7am and finish at 3pm so they'd only have to wait in the playground for 15 to 20 minutes for me to pick them up. That would mean that I'd need to get a car.
Driving a car to work each day would mean that I'd have to pay for parking, it would also use more fuel than the bike and not to mention the registration and insurance costs. It would also mean that the bike would only be used on weekends,.
Riding home from work today I realised that I may have to face the reality of selling the bike. There wouldn't be much point in keeping the bike registered and insured for just a couple of rides a month and one or two motocamping trips a year. I'm going to have to do some figures to find out what costs more, after-school care or running a car and paying for parking. There may be a third option which is the kids catching the bus home each day, I'd still have to start and finish early so I could be home in time to meet the kids once they've walked from the bus stop.
Of course none of this may eventuate so I'm not about to rush off and buy a car and sell the bike but I'd like to be prepared just in case.
Bomber
Don't let it be over before it's begun.
... and we're done. Yesterday we unpacked the last few boxes and gave them all away to someone else who is moving house. We thought about trying to sell the boxes as we bought them all new, but in the end we decided just to pass them on and ask that they do the same when they are done with them. The old washing machine and some other old bits and pieces went today too which freed up a little bit of space in the garage.
What a crazy time the last few months have been. I think I've already gone through and worked out just how fast things have happened and posted about it at some length, but if we'd stuck with the initial plan of going to auction then we'd still be in the old house right now with a few weeks still to go before settlement. That is only if the house actually sold on auction day. If it didn't sell and we couldn't get the figure that we wanted then who knows, we may not have ended up moving, we most likely wouldn't have ended up in the house we're now in either way as it is unlikely that it would still be on the market.
Hopefully this will be the last time I use the labels, "House Hunting", "Renovations" and "Moving House" in this blog as I never want to move again if I can at all avoid it. I also don't want to ever look at doing an extension to this house. I may end up doing some renovations in the years to come but I imagine that I'll have at least ten years before I need to do anything and possibly twenty years before the kitchen and bathrooms need a facelift.
If some years into the future we win lotto or something like that and choose to move house again, I'm going to pay someone to do everything whilst I go on holidays. I mean just hand over the keys to the new and old house and bugger off for a week. When I get back all our stuff will be set up and working in the new house. That's how much I disliked moving.
Bomber
My kids will move me into a retirement village when it's time, I'll be cranky and I won't lift a finger.
