Category: To Occupy my Time

Move Quiz Results

Battleship Cinematic Universe was a team of two this month, but we had a great movie quiz! We got 12th place! I think that might be a record.

The team names were fun as usual. I enjoyed A Complete Known and also the three plays on Nosferatu: Yesferatu, Nosferatu Fast 2 Furious; Nosfera3 Tokyo Drift

Matt was a big contributor to the score. It turns out the only time travel objects I can identify are the time turner (though I wouldn’t have known from which Harry Potter movie it came; Matt knew) and the magic mailbox that allowed Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves to communicate with each other. Unfortunately, I thought the name of the movie was the Beach House, not the Lake House, so we missed that one anyway.

Got my Year of the Snake Badge

I did some activity on a holiday I don’t celebrate, and Garmin rewarded me with this pretty badge.

There is also a Lunar New Year’s Eve one; I earned that one too.

I smugly thought that I had earned a badge every year, but I see I missed 2021. January 25, 2020, I did not yet have my Garmin watch.

Here’s to the new year.

I Discover Time Guessr

Hank Green, of the Vlogbrothers, was killing time on a video (for algorithm reasons?) and so played through some of the games he plays. One of them was TimeGuessr. I was intrigued.

In this game, you are given a photo and then must guess when and where the photo was taken. It’s quite fun.

And I did really well my first time out, like here where I was only 241.4 meters off! (Though 5 years off.)

And like this where I was only 4 years off, but amazingly 12.1 miles away even though I had no idea what I was looking at except it was somewhere in Asia that used a lot of English in their signage.

I don’t have a lot of room in my schedule for daily games, but I would like to dip into this one now and again.

American Son at Twilight Theater Company

Matt and I bought tickets for our first outing to the Twilight Theater Company. That’s our neighborhood theater; it’s an 11 minute walk.

Jeri Haile was great as Kendra Ellis-Connor. She is apparently new to Portland. I look forward to seeing her in more things.

The play gave us a lot to talk about on the walk home. It was a good evening at the theater.

Matt Has Attended 500 Classes

Matt came home with an exciting prize from his gym:

We took the official picture and then both realized, “Wait. It’s been way more than 500 classes that he has attended at MeFitness.”

We concluded that he had attended 500 classes since the switch of the scheduling system. Well done, Matt, for attending 500 classes beginning from a random point in time.

Two Terns at a Bike Rack

I was at Kaiser getting some imaging done, and had fun comparing and contrasting my Tern bike to the one already parked.

I observed that the other bike did not have the folding handlebar mechanism and that the light was down on the front fender rather than on the handlebar.

I also checked out the locking method. I use three: a front-wheel lock, a U-lock and cable, and a U-lock on the back wheel that also holds my helmet.

The other bike used wo U-locks and two cables. It looked like it worked well and was fast to set up.

Keeping Me on Track in 2024

Getting things done didn’t come as naturally to me in 2024 (and 2023, (and 2022, and 2021, if we are being honest)) as it had before. Early in 2024, I made two sheets of basic stuff, one for my stuff, and one to stay on top of my aunt’s finances.

The sheets took probably 10 minutes to make, and they worked very well. You will notice the additions that appeared as the year went on. The delimitation for books and movies was particularly important. It’s really hard to catch those up in one session at the end of the month so switching up the goal to the 15th and the last day helped.

With my aunt’s stuff, it was nice to cross things off as I canceled things no longer needed.

You will notice that I gave myself the last week in December off. A just reward after a year of good work.

I’ve drafted new sheets for 2025. Let’s see if they work as well as these did.

Matt Completes the Fun Puzzle

Thad passed along this unique puzzle, and Matt puzzled away, completing it in a short amount of time. (Some evening game time was sacrificed. And perhaps some normal bedtimes.)

The puzzle mechanism has a surprise, which has not been photographed so the vast readers of this blog don’t have the surprise spoiled. But I was glad I got to see it.

A New Year that Begins in Zero or Five?

Why yes! It’s 2025! That means it’s time for a new five-year standard diary.

Look how shiny it is!

This brings my time using the standard diary total to 20 full years.

Usually my favorite part about the five-year diary is reading back through the entries of the previous years as I complete each day’s entry. But 2020 through 2024 were rough, and I didn’t often read back as I filled in the 2024 days.

Here’s hoping 2025-2029 will bring smoother sailing.