Cav's Place

Sunday morning it was past 5:20 AM when I went to bed, again worried about the right side of my mouth, though the pain I felt then seemed to come from one of the bottom teeth, so it’s an additional concern and things aren’t getting better. But it was, and still is, just a little pain and it wasn’t like I could do much about it then, so I went to bed and, somewhat surprisingly, only woke up for the first time just before 11:05 AM, when I decided to stay up, quickly grabbed something to eat and left to vote just before noon.
Nobody took my temperature, though it should have been required, and two women were standing on either side of the door of the room I had to go to, which didn’t allow me to keep the distance, but they told me to come in and otherwise things were quick and fine, with just one other person being in a booth when I went in and one more coming when I was retrieving my ID card, the person who was there telling me to get the sticker and place it on the card myself, though the other one had again gone against the regulations and handled it herself. I also used the pen that was there, since I had my own but wasn’t quite certain it was blue, and when I moved to take it out of my pocket I was asked if it was blue, and when I said I wasn’t sure I was told to use that one, since they’ll apparently get in trouble if signatures were in any other color. The somewhat interesting bit happened before and after I voted though, since as I was heading in, someone came out of another room, asking whether anyone had taken an ID card, and when I got out I saw her talking to the gendarmes who were there, who were advising her to go to the police and report that her ID card was taken.
Had a quick look inside this Mega Image on the way back, finding nothing interesting, and was back at 12:10 PM, taking a shower soon after that. Later, I finished Thief, put together the quick review for it, and advanced a little more in Witch’s Wake as well. So I guess the day was somewhat productive, but the next one was probably more notable from that point of view, since that’s when I finally managed to clean my room a little, and Tuesday I also changed the sheets.

Since I got to Tuesday, it snowed again then, so I took the opportunity to go out. It’d have been better to do so the next day, some more snow falling overnight and less of it melting over the day, but I couldn’t know that then, so I decided to stay up after waking up the second time, at 11:10 AM, and left at 12:45 PM. The snow was again melting by then, and it was even drizzling, so there were puddles and slush to deal with, but if the main idea was to take a slightly longer route to the Kaufland at Vitan, to look for a glass baking tray that was on sale, once outside I decided to first go to this Carrefour from the park. Didn’t find anything interesting there though, but then I also decided to make another detour, to that Auchan as well, because dad had said that Micky needed more food and, while she still had enough for the next few days, I was worried he’ll buy more at a higher price. However, I was the one who ended up paying more, getting a few and later finding that they were going to have a significant discount at Kaufland just when he planned to go there with my mother, on Thursday.
He hadn’t brought the next Kaufland catalog from anywhere, and while I had checked the next sales on their site the day before, the fact that they had reintroduced daily sales wasn’t listed there, so I just grabbed one of the catalogs after getting there and was left shaking my head when I saw that all pet food was going to be 30% off just on Thursday. But there was nothing I could do about it at that point, so I grabbed this month’s National Geographic and then went to look at that tray, carefully taking one out of the box and ending up discussing it for a bit with a woman who had stopped next to me. I asked whether she was waiting for me to take it out and she said she was, and after I did and we both had a look, she pointed out that the two trays were made to fit, so they won’t slide away when one will be used as the lid. Then she asked about the price, since I was standing in front of the label, but walked away without getting one for herself just then. So I had a closer look, and while I spotted a possible tiny issue, I thought it wasn’t worth opening another because of that, so I just put it back in the box and used the self-checkout without problems.
When I got out of there, it seemed to be snowing again, or perhaps it was sleet, and since I had the box in a bag, it got quite wet by the time I got back here, but I doubt we’ll be returning it for that to be an issue, and it probably shouldn’t be even if we will. Either way, I also stopped by that cheaper pharmacy, and after again spending some time waiting outside, even though just two people were ahead of me when I got there, the cashier also charged me the rounded amount, not giving me 0.10 RON as change. That struck me as odd, since they are so careful to fix their prices to always be 0.10 RON below those of that other pharmacy that I’d otherwise prefer to go to, since you can get many of the products yourself from there, without having to ask, but I couldn’t get myself to actually ask for that change and just walked away, getting back here a bit after 3:50 PM… And only then realizing that my mask had been on backwards, as in with the colored part towards my face. I have no idea how that happened when I don’t recall making such a mistake even early on, when I was just starting to use masks, but it did.

This week’s run was yesterday. I didn’t mean to run this week at first, but if there was a break in the rain yesterday afternoon, I went for it. The alarm was supposed to ring at 1 PM, but I saw 12:44 PM when I woke up the second time and got up then, having the usual stuff plus hazelnuts, the yogurt being the last of those “creamy” ones with 5% fat, and the sweet thing a slice of some cake received by dad, with added jam. The weather being cloudy, with a reported temperature of 4°C and possible continued drizzle, meant I had to switch to the old training suit, however, also having the t-shirt and undershirt I wear inside underneath, and had that thing I can wear on my neck on as well, pulling it up on the way to the park so I won’t put on a mask until after I finished running. Also had the old gloves and the jacket, the latter only for the walk, obviously being tied around my waist while running, and left at 3:30 PM, after leaving only the tiniest bit in the toilet, despite feeling like I had to go.
Well, that jacket and the changed clothes ended up being a problem, since I misjudged how tight I had to tie it around my waist and on sector two of lap two it started feeling like it was slipping, being pretty much on my butt and each step lifting it from the front as well by the start of lap three. Still, maybe it’d have stayed there if I’d have just left it as it was, but on sector two of lap three I tried pulling it up, and that unbalanced it, the stuff in its inside pocket making it twist around and start to unroll, soon feeling like it was about to slide down and trip me, and I also worried about losing what I had in the pocket. So I grabbed the side that was coming loose and held it, trying towards the end of the sector to stuff it under the sleeves that were tied around my waist, to free my hand to press the button on the stopwatch. But that made it even looser, so from the next sector I had to hold it constantly, switching hands a few times, and from the end of the lap I also had to hold the glove I had taken back off, to be able to press the button. And at the very end I wanted to make sure I’ll press it at the right time, since I couldn’t look at the watch as I crossed what I consider to be the finish line, and holding my hands the way I needed to for that made for a rather awkward running posture, so forget about sprinting and that little leap at the end, I was just sort of jogging. Without slowing down even more in that manner, I should have managed to just squeeze under two minutes on that sector, despite sort of just walking up those stairs and mostly jogging on the final straight, exhausted after pushing as hard as I had over sectors two and three of lap three in order to compensate for what I was losing because of the jacket and with my nostrils also closing in the cold air.
The thing is that, with the changed clothes, the low temperature and the fact that it was wet, so there were puddles to go around and the paved areas and those where leaves hadn’t been cleared away were a bit slippery, I was thinking that staying under 48:30 would be just great, and unexpected, so I’d be content with staying under 49 minutes and not terribly disappointed even if I’d just stay under 50 minutes. As such, considering the added issues with the jacket, I was quite pleased with 48:47.62, with sector times of 4:14.67, 5:08 (5:07.42), 6:01.09, 4:34.62, 5:08 (5:07.30), 5:58.48, 4:36.07, 5:05.28, 6:03 (6:02.08) and 2:00.61, making for lap times of 15:23.18, 15:40.40 and 15:44 (15:43.43). Just to show how hard I pushed while trying to compensate, lap three wasn’t much slower than two, and its sector two was actually the fastest. Admittedly, the one roadblock was on sector one of lap two, a guy from the edge of that large group stepping to fill the tiny gap I meant to use just as I was reaching them, making me need to slam on the brakes and go around, and also from the start of lap two I felt my toes going numb, those from the right foot more than those from the left, and that seemed to cause me to run somewhat awkwardly, at least for a while, since I tried to correct my posture after I realized it.

After the run, I put my mask and jacket on and jogged to that Carrefour, getting garlic and onions. Was hoping to be back at 5 PM, for ski jumping, but that’d have been next to impossible in the first place, and then it also took a while to pick somewhat better garlic from the pile and even more to get a quantity that added up to how much I meant to spend. Strangely, after finally managing that, I wanted to weigh the bag again on the way to the checkout, just to be sure, and the scales I used that second time listed the weight as being some 25 grams less, so I printed another label and used that, carefully placing it over the first one. It was just starting to drizzle again when I got out, but I meant to rush anyway, so I jogged most of the way back as well, and was here at 5:20 PM. And then, with dad working again, I made mamaliga in the evening, adding quite a few other things, most of which were spoiling there in the fridge, and really stuffed myself at night.

Otherwise, Tuesday I also started that booklet, and while it’d have been easy to finish in one day, I didn’t care to do so and only finished it two days later, also writing the quick review then, the one on Goodreads being in both English and Romanian. And, speaking of Thursday, that morning it was past 5:20 AM when I went to bed, so the fact that it wasn’t even 5:10 AM when I did so yesterday morning can be seen as a small achievement.
And now that I got back to yesterday, apparently my hosting provider migrated my site then, the e-mail I received only hours before the procedure stating that all sites on that server were being migrated. It said nothing should change in the vast majority of cases and I haven’t noticed any other issues, so if anyone happens to be reading this and does notice something odd, do let me know. However, the migration might have included a security upgrade, since I again find myself unable to access anything in Internet Explorer, when the plan was to probably switch the handful of other sites I still use it for to Vivaldi as of next month, when it’ll be a full year after it stopped receiving support, and pretty much just keep it for this one use, to keep this separate from any other browsing. We’ll see if it’ll just suddenly fix itself again or not, but for some reason, instead of trying to log on in that, in order to continue to separate it from the rest, this made me finally get around to uninstalling that old version of Firefox I still had last night.