The work hours really started to add up so decided to take a soft vacation from work last week and also take even more advantage of the long weekend. I still went in for some hours to keep some of my reports current but all in all, I only worked for 10 hours in total. Man I needed that break though, but I will be playing for it next week as I will have to catch up on all that worked missed #progressdoesn’tstop
With all that free time I made a fruit and veggie smoothie. Usual breakfast is either Mcdonalds or 2 fried eggs and twp pieces of bacon. I figured I could be eating more veggies and ingesting more micronutrients can only be helpful for my overall health.
Smoothie Ingredients:
kale
Chard
Spinach
Carrots
Apple
Blueberries
Homemade Kombucha
Strawberries
Avacado
Chia Seeds
This recipe does taste a bit earthy but that can be fixed with the ratios of fruit to the ie mix. I’m going to try and keep refining this recipe t make it a little thinner and try and achieve a fruitier taste to make this my weekday morning breakfast.
We also had a couple of cold days this week. I realized that I am no ready for summer to be over yet. I still wann get out and play some more golf. But Fall weather means football season is just around the corner and hell yeah I am ready for that.
It was a whirlwind golf week with my Tuesday Golf league getting rained out. There are very few weeks left which makes this a big loss. last-minute invite on Sunday to play 9 holes did help soothe that burn for a missed round. We even ended up playing those 9 holes at Jackson Park. I played the first 4 holes really well. My swing was on plane and I was able to keep the ball off the tee and hit the fairway or just off the edge which I believe helped me keep my swing intact by not hitting a difficult lie. That is what usually throws me off a good clear mindset and lets the doubt and mistrust in my own swing for me. Typical mental midget stuff for me I guess, this is why I need to really get back to drilling the swing at home. If I can keep this swing all the way to back 9 were talking about personal record-breaking scores 🙂
In other news a huge upgrade to the home office this week. I purchased one of that mechanical stand-up desks. https://www.autonomous.ai/ So far so good, It was a little bit to set up. It took the better part of the afternoon. It took even longer to wire up all the cables to keep them as hidden as possible. To be fair I am a little OCD when it comes to hiding and tucking wires so that’s where most of the time was spent. The desk does look good and works well so I pretty dure this was a good purchase.
To cap this week off I was able to finish off my Udemy Microsoft Excel course. It took a while the as the course is just over 17 hours long and does come with a bit of homework but I was able to keep up with the course while the instructor was explaining the projects. I wish I had taken this course way earlier in my working career. I always knew that there was a lot more power to Excel than what I was using. but most of my work project only required my novice level of skills. This course did teach me a lot of basic level information that will increase the speed at which I can build worksheets. that alone was worth the price of the course but, the real added value of this course. It has opened my eyes to what the next levels are to this program and where I can direct my attention to further advance my skills and become an Excel Jedi Master.
The weather was pretty nice this week and suddenly had the urge to go for a run. only went for a little under 2 miles. It was nice to get outside and do something active. I performed a lot better than I expected so I should keep try and keep up jogging especially now that the temperature isn’t in the high 90s anymore. We’ll see if I can stick with it. My heart Montier also just kinda gave out in the middle of my run so that was a big bummer as I like to look back and evaluate my effort and to see if I’ve made any progress on the fitness side of things. Had a great time on catching up with a long-time friend on a Sunday BBQ. keeping up with high school friends that move away after college can be tough some times but we always try and sneak in some hang out time with golf trips or other excursions but mostly it always comes down to sneaking in a few hours during the holidays in between family parties. It always feels a bit rushed but, not this visit. We had almost 4 hours to catch up and watch some golf on the couch for what felt like the whole afternoon. We already started to plan our next golf trip. time to break out the golf trip spreadsheet and get planning. Just feels like I’m putting in a billion hours of work every week and its starting to wear on me. Especially getting up early to go for work cuts into the time I would like to be with my family. Before the kid, my mindest would be to just work as many hours as possible but now that mental math of how much it’s it worth to spend time with family or make another hour pay is a real struggle sometimes
The car trouble has reached a new level as the winding and grinding sound has increased in volume and also my anxiety that this is something way more than a loose pulley or belt issue so I had to pull a hot route and drop it off at the dealer on Sunday after work. It wasn’t too bad of job dropping the car off. it was close to the red line and was also able to score a mocha right before I jumped on the train to head home.
I also put in some serious hours of work this week. Working 7 days in a row only means that ultimately I will end up working at least 13 days in a row maybe even 14! I will do my best to keep these days to the smallest amount possible because I do not like working this much even if it means earning that massive overtime pay.
I was made it out the Jackson Park Driving range for an hour and a half range session which I was able to bring the GoPro and get a down the line recording of.
I will be cutting a video of this practice session but I am going to switch editing software but haven’t decided which one I would like to move forward with. There will be a learning curve with any choice I make so I will need to do some due diligence to make the right choice. I would like to start making more higher-level production videos with titles and such. This should also enhance the content of this blog as well.
For the first time in a long time, my skin got so burnt that it has actually started to peel off. Now it’s not what you think as I did liberally put on sunscreen, but there was a section on my back just below my shoulder blades that my hands couldn’t reach. I did ask for help applying the lotion. Yet, I was a bigtime idiot and told my helper that I had already covered that area. well after something like 9 hours in the sun playing in the sand and waves of Lake Michigan the strip of exposed skin fried like a piece of chicken at KFC.
But at least my sunburn will heal back. In other news, my car has started to make an awful noise from 0 mph all the way to 25 mph. I think it has something to do with a belt or pulley when both the electric motor and gas engine are working in tandem to get up to speed. After having some friends take a look at the car and see if they could help diagnose the issue. They all agreed it was something with the belt system or a shaky pulley. I tried to book some shop time with the dealer since the car is still under the 60,000-mile drive train warranty. But, alas the earliest they could get me in was August 21st. This was a problem because I was several hundred miles over 59,000 was getting dangerously close to having my warranty expired. I wasn’t to too worried though since I was pretty sure it was something small but you can’t be too careful when it comes to these manufacturers warranty because they will not touch your car if it’s even a 1/10th of a mile over that magic number. For now, I’ll try and keep my car in the garage and conserve as many miles as I can to make it all the way to the 21st.
Was nice to get back out on the course and play a league round with the group. even though it was 4 club challenge day I still was able to carry over some of the stuff I learned on the golf clinic I had just gone to.
This week league night game was a 4 club round. I chose to keep the 4i,6i, PW and finally my putter. The 4i and 6i are my two most shapable clubs so even though they are pretty close in loft IO am able to get the ball where I need it to be or at least in the general direction of the green.
I caught some grief on the first tee when I declared my 4 clubs. the rest of the group either took their driver of 3 wood. I knew it would be a very long day if I wasn’t hitting my driveway even halfway decent so I played it safe with my 4i that I could hit off the fairway and tee it on the tee box plus I can hit my 4i just about as far as the other guys hit the woods and drivers.
The other iron I kept in my bag was my 6i due to me being able to hit a ball out of the rough with it as well hit a fair bit of distance or check my swing down or add some loft to achieve the acquired distance
Even with only being able to hit 4 clubs, I was able to hit a 103, which isn’t under a hundred but for only being able to hit 4 clubs this is a big win for me. If I had to speculate I think conservatively I could have hit 7 or 8 shots better assuming I did not use my driver at all and stuck with 3i of 4i off the tee.
Still, Haven’t figured out how to cleanly post an excel table in the blog. A bit frustrating to be fair, but I will keep trying until I can figure it out. None the less as I’m super psyched to say that I shot my best score of the season. It was a wild as I had no idea I was on pace for the result I scored. It honestly felt like I wasn’t playing that great. If you can see my scorecard I just played a stoke better here and there and seemed to scramble and get up and down. I still chucked a few chips, but also didn’t skull them across them over the green.
A few stats from the round:
Started out with Birdie on the first hole
Shot a 48 on the back 9 instead of my average
2 Pars and 5 Bogeys the rest double or worse
Didn’t shoot 9
Score distribution of my round played on 7/23/2019
There is a trend in my past 4 rounds and its trending the right way for me. Still, need to drill at home more and maybe even get to the range to work on my aim. Let the trend continue!
This was the biggest week of golf I’ve ever had outside of some of my past golf exurions during the offseason here in Chicago. In total I played 3 Rounds and had a total of 5 hours of instruction. I came of my best round of the year on Tuesday and was invited to a very last minute golf clinic here in the Chicago area.Â
The first day was at the Mistwood Golf Club. Mistwood heavlies advertise this golf course and I kinda found tht to be a little off putting and had stayed away from playing there and it turns out this clubs is nice with a pretty challenging course that really put me through the ringer. I really enjoyed their practice area that is integrated with a full bar. Gotta think if I was a suburburb guy this is where I would spend quite a bit of my free time. It looks like they do have the ablity to offer all grass range, but on the day I was there it was hittng off a permanate mat.Â
Driving range at Mistwood Golf Club
The first day was dedicated to chipping. They basically reworked my whole chipping style and moved to me to use the “bounce” of the club when hitting the ball. This took an about 10 attempts at a 10-foot shot but after that this new move really clicked and then gave me a quick run d down of when to use my PW,52,56(SW) and my 58 degree wedge and where to land the ball in relation to the hole and pick a landing spot and use the rollout of the ball to get within 5 feet of the hole.
I did not hit the ball off the tee well at all(I know the same story different week) for the whole round and found myself hitting three on my second shot for 10 or 11 holes. I posted a score over 100 but I chalk this up to all the adjustments to my seeing that were made to my swing right before our tee time. I did gain a lot of knowledge during the playing lesson. My course management skills continue to increase which has been the main factor in my league scores as well as some improvements in my seeing that have taken away really bad misses and have limited them to just bad misses. to put that in easier terms, instead of being two fairways over I’m only one over.
The second day was at Harborside, a course I’ve played over 20 times. Ball striking improved off the first day and I actually starting hitting my driver down the fairway for more than a few holes in a row. This was a successful day. even though on the back 9 I think I found every bunker. It always seems that once I hit one bunker I’m going into the bunker the rest of the day. Come to think of it maybe I am focusing on those bunkers to much and not at the playable landing spot that I should be aiming at.
Quick League Recap
I also shot a 98 in the league this week, and this was also the best round of the season for me. Pretty jacked up to play again but I will take this weekend off to spend some time at home and chill a little bit and string dong the golf drills at home to really ingrain the new movements into my muscle memory and continued
A long weekend at the Lake
Had a last-minute opportunity to drive up to Holland Michigan and spend some time with all of my Aunts and Uncles plus cousins at Lake Macatawa. The weather turned out to be great on Saturday and Sunday. Lots of time in the sun and on the beach and actually got to bogey bord on Friday afternoon with the winds kicking up 2.5-4 foot swells. The waves weren’t exactly great for bogey boarding but we got the job done and caught 4 really good rides.
Also tried to track down a good iced mocha spot in the downtown area while we were picking up some ice and few incidentals. We googled a place and looked for a place with cool-looking photos and chose the 205 Coffee Bar.
Iced Mocha at the 205 Coffee Bar in downtown Holland Michigan
Website: https://205coffee.com/
We got home very late Sunday night to be able to squeeze in as much time at the beach before the work week came upon us. This was one of the best weeks of the Summer for me and I’m ready for more.
Finally actually made some time to start learning to code in Python. I created an account on Udemy and purchased a course called “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python Programming” I did some quick research and found on a couple different forums that this course was mentioned everywhere as a great place to start cold without any type of programming knowledge. I’m only about 90 minutes into this course and still excited to complete it. It is a lot of new information for me so I will have to pace myself to be able to comprehend all of it and hopefully put it to good use in the near future.
I finished the book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain-John J. Ratey, Eric Hagerman  This was a fast data packed book, The audiobook length was just over 8 hours. The main theme of the book is how exercises/physical activity increase the quality of life thought your whole life. It even goes into detail about how exercise will help the deteration of your brain by actually growing it in you later years. I Might do a full book review on this one in the future.
I got invited pretty last minute to play in a golf outing at Cog Hill with the Disabled Patriots Fund This was a pretty fun outing that had a bunch of fun event holes along with the usuals like Longest Drive and closet to the pin competition. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate all day. It was a 9 am Shotgun and it drizzled all the way until the 12th hole and the sky’s opened up and dumped a bigtime downpour for the next 5 holes. We tried to play through it but at one point the everybody that was still on the course and to get cover under trees for about 18 minutes. This was kind of fun as we had about 9 carts all huddled under 4 huge oak trees. After the big down pour then sun cam out for the rest of the wholes but everybody was soaking wet and with hot sun and what felt like 100% humidity the rest of the round was kind of uncomfortably swing and walking in super damp clothes. It did get to smoke a great cigar while we played though and hey if you can’t golf in the rain your cutting your golf season even shorter.
AVO cigar on the 8th hole on course #3 at Cog Hill
Its time for me to start eating better. Ive have been ona fast food and take out diet for the past 6 weeks. Going to subscribe to one of those pre packaged meals services. avoiding the the trips to the grocery store and and trying to manage the quantity of food needed is the main advantage of these meal servies. Havibg all of the ingredients measured and ready to go like a cooking show will allow for a faster perp to table time. Faster cook times will also help gain a couple moinutes of sleep each night with should pay divideds all around.Â
My car also got a nail in the driver side rear tire which was a bummer but Costoco was able to plug for less than $20 dollars #Lovethatplace This causeed me to Divvy(bike) the 4 miles home form work one day it was also the hoyest day of the year so far so I promblty counted that a workout first one also in 6 weeks. I’m going to trying a bike more to and from work to get some light cardio in to get some fitness back in my life. On this same note I downalaed a strecthing app to help meet one of my new yeers resoultions goals. If work settles down just a bit i shuld be ablke to carve out 15 minutes in the office to strech it out.
I also noticed that if I bring my own breafast I am not craving a mocha so the Mocah coutn for this week is down. Two thumbs up..we’ll see if it lasts lol.
Capped the week of with a rainy Sunday evening in the burbs to celebrate the gradulation of Highscool. Always fun to head out to the burns and walk barefoot in the grass without fear of stepping in grass and dogpoo. A few beers and some good tacos and old friends really hit the spot.Â
