Category: Health

A Day in the Life #17694: B’s Back in Town, Mail Call, Spices, Halloween, Exercise

On 2025-11-07

In Belgium, Brussels, Daily Life, Exercise, Food, Horror, Music

In my last post (The Pillow Washing Incident), I mentioned a bit of a catch up. This post represents that, mostly. I’m sure I’m leaving things out but to kind of enshrine a log for myself.

B back in Town

Barbara’s school had their annual “adventure camp” conclude today. It was a week-long trip somewhere in Belgium [I, oddly, do not know specifics, though I am sure I have been told] where the school as pretty much a whole — minus the early year students and some others that have opted out for various reasons — goes and does a lot of camp-type stuff. Swimming. Playing. Music. Talent shows. Eating in camp cafeterias. That kind of thing.

I’ve never exactly been to that kind of camp. I have done some volunteer work where we go out into the woods and clean up a bit or fix old playgrounds. Kind of similar, just a bit more hammer-and-nail and less friends-playing-games. And I’ve gone camping plenty of times. Lots of hiking and such.

I’m glad she got to experience it. She said it was mostly ok. Food was her biggest complaint.

Oddly enough, she seems to have more energy than I do now that it is concluded.

Kaz and I had a week to ourselves but we got the edge of a cold and for other reasons mostly just hung out and took care of a few things around the house and rested up. The parent paradox. Kids are gone for a week and you just choose sleep. Well, sleep and watching The Substance (my second time, Kaz’s first).

Take this as advice: it is a terrible date night movie.

It also ranks up there with Under the Skin as far as movies go where you get to see someone who is undeniably attractive in the nude and the overall vibe just outright punishes you for it.

Mail Call

On the left is the UK Blu-Ray of Southbound. On the right is Florence and the Machine’s new album, Everybody Scream, the “Chamber Music Edition.” Not pictured, because I picked it up digitally, is Robert Rich and Markus Reuter’s Incubation.

I have watched Southbound once, years ago. Likely near the time of release. Back then, I liked it better than the V/H/S movies. Ironically, I ended up rewatching V/H/S a good bit more. I have been doing a rewatch of that series and kind of felt like Southbound should join. I’ll likely write up my thoughts at some point on Doug Talks Weird.

As for Everybody Scream, I’ve been a fan of Florence and the Machine for a good while and am excited for this one. I have heard a couple of the singles and they fit well into my expectations. A good witchy album. We’ll see how the “Chamber Editions” of the songs go. It was supposed to hit on Halloween but there was a delay so I got it a week late. That’s ok.

Halloween

Speaking of… Halloween is not quite a big deal here in Belgium. There are lots of parties and lots of decorations. Schools have costume wearing events. I’ve heard there are even haunted corn-mazes and such. Here on our sleepy street, we were pretty much the only one to do anything.

That’s “Sam,” my very quickly done pumpkin using Sharpie. I decorated him on Halloween evening and put him out in a chair with a little hat because it was quite chilly. The hat got deeply rained on so I tossed it into textile recycling but still have the pumpkin. Not sure what we’ll do with him. Maybe consign him into the garden and let nature take its course.

Barbara (and Kaz) went to a classmate’s house and did some minor trick-or-treating. It seems like a few neighborhoods organize stuff.

She was Rumi from K-Pop Demon Hunters. She is of the age for that movie to hit big and wide. Got her the soundtrack and everything.

Spices (and Beans) from Foods of Asia

One of the things Kaz and I did while B was out of town was hit up Foods of Asia in Brussels/Evere and dropped around 100€ on spices. I am not talking any crap at all about Belgium, which actually has an ok assortment of spices in most shops, but there were a few that I really missed getting in proper bulk. I don’t like the tiny little jars of spices when I want to cook.

We got cloves, coriander, cumin powder, whole cumin, nutmeg, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, asafoetida, and some other similar things. Also some ramen and a mid-sized bag of jasmine rice.

Oh, and butterbeans, which I grew up knowing as limas. It was a pretty big staple for our family growing up (only bested by black-eyed peas in the legume category). We had a bean we called butterbean which was probably just baby-limas picked fresh. I don’t know.

The only bean that I have not been able to find, precisely, is pinto beans exactly like what we had in the Southern US. There are pinto beans here, but maybe just a bit more mature? I’m not sure. They taste a bit different and are a bit harder. It’s not too bad, though. Just a minor shift in cooking.

Alright, that’s probably enough note-taking. It’s sunny here in Grimbergen. I’m about to get out and go blink at this so-called “day star”.

OH, before I go, here’s my bike ride stats. Pushing to over an hour. Roughly of an average of mid-20s km/h. Intensity up to around the half-way mark on the bike (equivalent of mild uphills). The middle of the ride was more intense than the end but there’s no way to take a picture of the whole route so I just have the snap of me doing the wind down to finish out to the 17mi mark:

A Day in the Life: #17673, Mostly Music Stuff and Sickness Stuff

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-17

In Health, Music

For the second time of this Autumn/Winter season, we are starting to fall into sickness [pun!]. Barbara was the first to go after a week or so of having sniffles. Kaz and I are getting hit about the same time.

The first usual harbinger that announces I am getting ill is that certain smell/taste that my sinuses get. I don’t know how else to describe it but to say it is something like stale turpentine plus a kind of organic earthiness. Like a cup of black tea left out for a couple of days in a rainy pine forest. Can you picture that smell?

The second harbinger is a bit grosser. Not lose your lunch gross but I’ll be kind and obfuscate it: q mgX o XPu5B 1OVX OC igVI 1O3V 1KgoX. bPusB “CgigV 1KgoX.” qX 1POK1 3H Bust OC VostOfUI ost u1 VosB XO fg. q’ig oHOUOmuxgt FgCOVg oFO3X uX XO HgOHUg F3X OXPgV1 Poig XOUt fg XPgI 5os’X 1fgUU uX. bPg Fg1X q 5os m3g11 u1 XPoX uX 5Posmg1 XPg 313oU 15gsX gsO3mP XPoX fI FOtI XoBg1 uX o1 1OfgOsg gU1g’1 1fgUU ost uX XVummgV1 o Vgi3U1uOs.

The third harbinger is when my bones feel like that weird disorientation that your brain gets when you feel deja vu. Know what I am talking about, like your brain is in a hole slightly too large for it but yet your brain fills it? That, only it also slightly hurts.

Usually fourth harbinger is just getting sick and by then we are pushing the definition of an harbinger pretty hard. If the fourth sign that God is showing up is He is standing next to you, you are perhaps past Revelations.

I’m somewhere between #2 and #3. The last sickness that passed through the house, my body decided to fight it off long enough for me to build up a huge viral load and then I got knocked around with bonus dice.

Here’s hoping my body just compromises this time. Just get it over with. Don’t be a hero, body.

Music Stuff (at least, part of it)

I was actually going to talk about some of the new music and stuff I was doing today but in typing that it up, I realized it was really its own post. I’ve cut-and-pasted into a different post and will work on that one tomorrow.

The tl;dr is basically that I am back to getting physical CDs where I can and have been playing on ripping those to both AAC and FLAC formats. FLAC goes to my file server for longer-term storage. AAC I then keep on the computer and upload to my media server. Also copy over to my phone. I miss OGGs but enough players whine about having to touch them. Feck it, maybe I’ll just switch back, anyhow.

While doing this, I ran into the ghost of an old problem I had practically forgotten all about. Back deep in my Linux days {which I miss}, mplayer was my boy for playing music. Then, as I started using more devices, I gravitated to VLC for most of it since it was more compatible with more things.

Only VLC still has issues with gapless playback despite years [decades?] of people requesting it. For a lot of things, such as shuffling your playlist, it won’t matter. For some albums where each track is supposed to blend the next track, it starts to annoy having that quarter second reset.

The long and short of it is that I decided to give foobar2000 a spin. My very short “have played it for around 2-3 hour” review is: it works. It’ll take longer before I know for sure if it is for me but I don’t really see why not.

I guess that exposes a lot more of my musical tastes than I was planning on but I doubt anything is a shock.

Quick Review of the Two Albums Shown

Two of the four “test cases” for the workflow of backing up things are shown in the active playlist: alt-J’s 2022 The Dream and Ado’s 2024 Shinzou. The other two albums were Paul Simon’s Graceland since that’s one I’ve ripped a couple of times (first into ogg, later back into mp3) so it was a good baseline and Babymetal’s Metal Galaxy (I got their Metal Forth, recently, and really liked it so am moving back through their catalog).

The two I have played the most are the two shown, a couple of times each. My quick reviews are…

Ado’s Shinzou

Absolutely phenomenal album. The concert video is also top notch and immense fun to watch, but has enough flashing lights to make it a bit rough for me to watch in a single setting. The double CD that came with it has the audio-only portion and there are so many moment’s to love. The screaming her voice to the brink and then bringing it back down.

It’s hard to explain how entertaining she makes a concert designed around not showing the star, but here’s a sample (just keep in mind that whole “flashing” thing I was talking about):

alt-J’s The Dream

I have enjoyed playing this album but something I noticed on the second round through is that there doesn’t feel like a single song that really reaches out and punches me. The album feels more like a whole, a sustained mood that satisfies the “alt-J vibe,” but one where the whole fits more into the background of the day. Looking into it, there does seem to be singles from the album but even listening to them out of context feels kind of off.

A good album to space out into the liminal.

Also, the limited edition comes with a cool facsimile copy of the handwritten notes leading up to it.

Credits

“Forest Tea” is Photo by Олег Мороз on Unsplash.

A Day in the Life: #17665

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-09

In Coding, Daily Life, Exercise

While I would call the current sky approaching noon as “Mostly Just Gray,” there have been a few moments where a color apparently called “blue” and an object that Wikipedia tells me is “the sun” have been visible. Such wonders!

It is actually supposed to be sunny and clear in Grimbergen this weekend, but also the temperature is going to drop again. Win some. Lose some.

One Hour Workout Results

See what it looks like when I use a flash to illuminate the darkness? At least it doesn’t look like I’m working out in the unlit part of the backrooms this time.

Went ahead after yesterday’s post and decided to push it up to a full hour and a bit more speed while retaining the resistance. Final result was around 28km. At an average of speed of…well, I’ll let you math nerds solve that.

I’m not 100% I can keep it up on a daily basis because it definitely flexes the leg a lot but it is also not that difficult. I was more concerned about having to pee starting around the 40 minute mark and just how numb my ass got sitting on the metal seat that long. Tomorrow’s a different day but if I am not overly sore or having trouble with mobility after today I might give it a try.

Dickens of a Blog Reclamation Continues Apace

I have been working on the tech behind fixing up as much of the older Dickens of a Blog as best as I can. The Poetry section is “working complete” which is to say that I have cleared out around half the poems and focused on highlighting the ones I really like, and gotten all of those updated, but there are no doubt others that can be linked.

I’ve been using a mix of WinSCP and Notepad++ to do a lot of heavy lifting. I can copy and paste chunks of HTML and CSS into the backend and then do some document wide find+replace actions to reaching a decently stable point.

I finished up a rewrite of “8 Space” this morning and for now I think I’ll take mostly a break for the day. Give myself something to look at that isn’t just more HTML and terminals.

Having that focus on a single aspect for a couple of days has helped me to figure out the mechanics a lot and I hope I can do a lot more in a shorter time in the future. And if I have to go and do more fixes in the future, the layout should be stabilized enough that I have a better chance of just automating it.

“Mail Bag” Maybe Incoming

I have a small stack of deliveries I’ve gotten recently and wanted to give a shout out to some of them but I need to figure out exactly how I want to do that. I think I’ll divide them up and give myself space to go through more of them one at a time. Or just skip it. I don’t know.

I really need to shower. I still am covered in an hour’s worth of sweat.

Also, look at my hair just give up on me. That’s one way to get out of having curly hair.

Finally Working in a Third Workout Loop: Distance

By Doug Bolden

On 2025-10-08

In Daily Life, Exercise

Ever since my accident, my primary source of aerobic exercise has been a recumbent stationary bike. In terms of my lower body, and especially my left leg, the ability to sustain an increased heart rate in any other way is pretty slim. I can lift weights and such, especially those using just the abs and arms, but good cardio is a trick.

Working Out Just to Stay Alive

I fell in May 2022. Through the rest of the summer, I was mostly on bed rest with only short excursions. By September, I was able to be more active and was returning to work several days a week. I was starting to figure out stairs. Through October and November 2022, I was getting better at navigating slopes and ramps as long as I had assistance (be it mobility aids or someone assisting me).

As we got into 2023, there became an increased need for me to get more mobile in general. In January of that year, Kaz and I ordered a recumbent bike. It took a moment to get it and get it set-up but early on the idea was just to get on it and move. At this point, I could move using just a cane, later using a pair of Nordic walking sticks, though had to be very careful with any kind of obstacles or changes in height.

Early workouts on the bike were usually just me getting to something like 10-11ish mph (16-18km/h) and keeping that going for 10-15 minutes with nearly no resistance. Even that was wiping me out.

Getting into Trackable Patterns

I have been steadily improving while trying to not stress my legs so much that it leaves me too tired to move. In the last couple of years I have worked out two general loops: sprints and uphill jogs.

Sprints will be roughly 20 minutes, give or take, and will be pushing for speed with lower degrees of resistance. 20-22mph (32-40 km/h). Hitting somewhere around the 100w and up (I’ve seen 180w). The idea is to hit the 10km mark as soon as possible and then go past it.

This involves a lot of sweating. A lot of sweating.

I probably look like I have been crying in the rain after I get done.

The “uphill jog” will have moderate to high resistance but a slower overall speed, centered around the 16-17mph (25ish km/h) for half an hour with the focus on strength building.

Trying to Up Endurance

Today I worked in the first cycle of a distance-as-in-time. Pedal as fast as I want, or as slow as I want. Just keep going for the whole time. Keeping the resistance in the upper-low-to-lower-moderate range (for now). Began with just 40 minutes, but it went well enough that I’ll up the time to an hour next time.

Not too bad. Not great. Somewhere in between.

Ends up being an average of ~26km/h over ~17km. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes as I increase it to a full hour.

By the way, yes that image of my final results (and the image I took for the header) are a bit dark. Keep in mind that this is roughly what it looks like outside as I start my workout:

It’s dark. I could turn on a light but there’s something about being out of breath and sweating bullets in the pre-dawn light that is kind of meditative.