Today’s the first day of fall. The full Harvest Moon approaches on Monday, and baseball season is giving way to the playoffs. The Phillies almost made it this year, but were eliminated by the Braves, who clinched the division unfortunately for Philadelphia fans. Once again, there’s always next season, or the season after next. etc.
The N.Y. Yankees clinched one of the two American League wildcards tonight. The National League wildcards are still up for grabs, as well as the remaining two National League division champs. Since Philly is out of it, and I don’t like Atlanta at all, I’m hoping for a World Series matchup between the Yanks and the Cubs, or a rematch of last year’s Fall Classic between Houston and L.A. We’ll see.
The weather has turned cooler, much to my relief. What a dreadfully hot summer it had been. Reports are stating that this year’s fall foliage is expected to be spectacular, based on the conditions we had last season. Looking forward to pulling out and putting on the old leather jacket, and photographing autumn’s forthcoming splendor.
An apartment building, which is in the next court north of my flat, had a horrible blaze on Thursday afternoon, destroying six apartments, injuring two firemen and one tenant. The other inhabitants of the scorched structure escaped unharmed, but lost everything in the inferno.
The fire started in the basement and spread rapidly straight up three floors. Fortunately, no fatalities occurred. The part effecting me is a shared gas line between both buildings, theirs and mine, which had been shut off and damaged during the event. As a result, I’ve been living without cooking gas, hot water and heat. Luckily it’s still warm out.
Took a very cold shower yesterday morning and today. As of this writing, we’re still without gas, so looks like tomorrow morning I’ll be turning blue for a third day in a row. Been using the microwave oven for cooking whatever I can. It doesn’t come out and taste the same as from the stove top. Ordered pizza for dinner tonight. Will probably go out to eat supper tomorrow.
The complex’s management office claims that PECO, our electric and gas company, has been working on restoring the service as soon as possible. That, to me, is like saying, “The check’s in the mail.”
By the way, speaking of checks I received the towing reimbursement finally from the Mini service center for the problem discussed in a previous tirade. Goes to show you, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Also, I received a free smartwatch called Fitbit the other day in the post, sent for my responding to an e-mail purportedly from Amazon, for completing a survey about my experiences with their online services, even though I had to pay for shipping and handling, plus an extra charge for upgrading the color of the band.
After figuring out how to charge the device via USB, downloading an app onto my smartphone which connects to the watch via Bluetooth, I had to set up the functions to register how many steps I’ve taken during each day and how many calories I burn while doing so, the distance walked (or ran), how many heartbeats per minute, how long I’ve slept in either deep or light sleep, and how many times I’ve awoken.
The watch keeps the time and date too.
While entering my personal data, like age, weight, height and how many steps daily is my ultimate goal, I did an Internet search to find out how many steps per day is recommend for a healthy lifestyle, which claimed 10,000. However, the CDC recommends 7,000, which is what I inputted.
The first day’s total was from yesterday: 1,597 steps, .74 of a mile covered, and 90 kcal burned. Today’s tally so far is 1,255 steps and .58 miles, while having burned 71 kcal. I’ve got a long way to go for reaching my goal. That means I need to walk about 3 miles per day. Bwahahahaha!
I’m doing well with sleeping, however. Yesterday I slept 8 hours and 38 minutes: 3 hours and 19 minutes deeply, 4 hours and 37 minutes lightly, while 2 times awoken. Today’s session was for 6 hours and 52 minutes: 4 hours and 32 minutes deeply, 1 hour 21 minutes lightly, and awaken 4 times (drank a couple of beers before going to bed). The reports say my quality of sleep is excellent.
Well, that’s all for this week’s drivel. Thanks for stopping in to read this nonsense, and, as always, thanks for your continued support.
The Harvest Moon, both the tune and photography, was from last year in early-October. Music and singing was performed by yours truly, accompanied by the multi-talented Rie Waits.
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