Category: Exercise

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: #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.