Month: April 2022

What a day. Friday was game night, I tried to reel it in a bit because of today’s activities, so I only stayed up till 1:30. Apparently I made a friend on the Tarkov servers when they saw my name. NFT talk needed to be squelched in favor of in-game coordination. I was not on my A-Game.

Elder woke me up at 6:30, she had a Saturday field trip for school. They had raised trout at the school and released them into the wild today. So she was gone all day.

Younger and I went to the rock gym, again it wasn’t my best performance, but Younger did great while I belayed her. I did manage some tricky routes that I hadn’t done before, but my arms were not strong today.

After the gym we went to DQ for her hot dog and ice cream. She fell asleep on the ride home. We went back out after a pit stop and bought her a mountain bike, then we grabbed mine and went to the local BMX track for more intense activity. I was really proud of Younger, both at the gym and the track, she’s such a trooper. Hopefully she’s going to sleep real well tonight. We also went by the store and bought a card and some gifts for Missus’s birthday next week. Younger bought her a jar of pickles.

We picked up Elder from school, then I called in Thai food and went home. I’m beat. Gonna watch Moon Knight and maybe turn in early.

The week has been going well, but today was very good. We realized a mistake in our understanding of the sabre/snapshots program was completely wrong, and that much of our worrying was for naught. We just cleared some major obstacles for development. Also, I finished filing my taxes today.

I’m not too happy about the later. I basically accounted for all fiat transfers from my exchange accounts into my checking account, and labelled the proceeds as short term investments with zero-dollar cost basis. Somehow I still wound up with a federal refund, so I told them to keep it and apply it to next year’s return. I didn’t even bother with business deductions either. Wound up paying a half-thou in state taxes. That’s as good as it’s going to get for now.

It just goes to show how fucked up crypto-taxes in the US are. And I hear news like Panama removing capital gains from BTC investment. Oh, if only.

Yesterday was rough. I think I may have over extended myself on Sunday. Not only did I do a very strenuous bike ride (road and trail) in the eighty degree heat, but I also did some canoeing during the hottest part of the day. I wound up taking a nap on the couch in the morning and still was so sluggish that I had to take another one mid afternoon. I was just so tired. Today seems OK though, I got plenty of sleep and, according to my Whoop, am fully recovered. I actually regretted taking a shower this morning as it’s such a beautiful day outside that I really want to go for a run.

I was actually productive yesterday, in spite of my sluggishness. A colleague and I converted technical requirements to tasks for the web team, so we’re making progress there. I also handled a lot of my personal business, ordering food and other supplies. And I finally started in earnest on our taxes.

I’ve given up on the CPA I hired. I don’t think I was willing to go through all the bullshit that they wanted me to do. Turbotax is just easier for our W2s and Missus’s real estate. CoinTracker on the other hand, is a complete mess. I am well and totally fucked.

The current gains calculator is showing that I have over two-hundred thousand dollars in profit for 2021. This is just ridiculous. I pulled some seventy grand out in USDC last year, but there’s no way. CryptoTaxCalculator shows some three hundred grand… I don’t even know what to say. I haven’t heard from the NFT.cpa guys in several weeks, so I’m just going to have to figure this out on my own. I think I’ll start by claiming the distributions that I took in fiat and filing my return based off off that. But the way it stands, based off of a couple calculations that I did, is that I’m going to owe Uncle Sam somewhere between twenty and fifty thousand dollars in tax payments. FUCK.

So another week is in the bag. This one went pretty smoothly, for the most part, and we managed to get some fun in. Yesterday we took the girls to an “outdoor enthusiast expo”, but there really wasn’t a lot to be said for it. There was a lumberjack game demonstration, rowing competitions, paddle boats, a hot air balloon, and a bunch of inflatable obstacles for the kids. We probably spent most of our time at this parkour obstacle course. I never knew competitive tag was a real sport, but here you go:

We took it easy last night, Younger and I are up. I’m brewing coffee and waiting to hear back from my brother so we can play some Tarkov while the girls are at church. I plan on going mountain biking with my friend later this afternoon.

Speaking of biking, I scoped out some used bikes for the girls on Friday, and am looking forward to picking up one of those for Elder so I can let her get out on the trails as well. I’m going to have to find a decent trailer that can take four bikes…. (I just spent a few minutes researching these and just figured out that I’ve been using my bike rack wrong. I’d been trying to mount the bike underneath the bar, which has been awkward to set up, but the bikes probably go on top of the rack. Duh me.)

We don’t have a lot going on this week, except for taxes. I haven’t heard from my CPA in weeks, so I’m just about to fire them and do it myself using Turbotax and CoinTracker. I’m not looking forward to it, but it seems doing it myself is the only way that I’m going to get it done — and save $5k in the process.

It’s Friday, thank god. This week has been ok, but Younger has been home from school sick the last two days, and she had enough of a cough that Missus decided she didn’t need to go in today. Day one was ok, and fun, day two I just let her watch PBS all day, and today, well today I’m out of patience. All she wants is to eat, but of course she doesn’t want anything healthy that I cook. Nope. I managed to get her out for a bike ride on Wednesday to see Momo, and she’s been playing with her friends in the afternoon, but mostly she’s been building pillow forts in the den and getting mad at me when I tell her to clean up. We’ve already had a fight this morning, and I sent her to her room. Missus is telling me that she’s going to take over after 1PM so that I can get ‘deep work’ done, but there are meetings and town halls going on today.

I’ve been good this week. Wednesday night was a bit of bender, but the rest of the week I’ve been good. Missus wants to abstain from drinking this month, until we get to Hawaii, so it should be easier for me to refrain also. Still, tonight is Girls Scouts and game night, and my current habits and triggers might make me trouble. I do know that I’m pretty well rested and ready for some physical activity, but if I stay up tonight I’m not likely to be up for whatever challenges we have tomorrow. I had planned to go to the climbing gym, but there’s some sort of outdoor enthusiast event across town in the morning.

I’ve been running and biking this week, no weight training. I actually rode my bike to the store Wednesday with my three-day tactical bag and rode back with two sixers, some wings, and a loaf of bread. I’ve been trying to figure out if I can get some molle-compatible bags to connect to it, maybe something for a IFAK or other storage. I bought a 3L water reservoir this morning for it, but I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to take a laptop along with me. The idea of travelling with only a single backpack appeals to me, but then the challenge quickly becomes to figure out how much stuff I can pack or lash to it. I have to remind myself that I’m not going on any expeditions.

Life is good. Last week’s anxiety has resolved itself and things are pretty chill right now. Lots of important work to be done, but nothing is terribly urgent that it’s putting me out of sorts.

This week is going pretty well. We’ve managed to avoid any real quarrels at home, and have been finding a renewed focus at work. I’ve been getting a good amount of sleep, and I even went for a long run today. So far so good.

Tax day came and went without a word from my CPA. I’m not sure that they want my business; I think I might actually be better off doing them myself. I’m sure it’s my fault, somehow. An initial pass on the automatically calculated tax program shows an inaccurate cost basis for most of my stack, probably by about two to five times what it actually is. Enough about that.

We started watching The Batman. I’m not sure how I feel about it, other than it is three hours long. I was watching with Elder yesterday, thinking about how many Batmans there have been since I was a kid: Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney, Bale. This certainly isn’t The Dark Knight. It’s not as bad as the other DC movies though, that’s for sure. I’m just wondering if there’s going to be a Joker tie-in with this series. That would be interesting, but probably not.

Yea, things are going well. Sticking to good habits, living my best life.

I did my best to recharge this weekend. Friday ended on a bit of a sour note, so all I wanted to do was put it behind me as much as possible.

I took Younger to the rock gym Saturday. I took Elder last week, and wanted to give little sister the same attention the first time. I still can’t wait to go back next weekend. I didn’t exhaust myself, but did a lot better on the runs I did. I also watched Free Solo, about the guy that climbed El Capitan without a rope. So I’m going through a bit of rock climbing excitement.

Today I went mountain biking. Alone. There’s a reservoir about twenty minutes away, and they’ve got a lot of open land out there. It’s multipurpose, so people bring their horses out there, and they have a trio of bike paths as well. I hit them all, and rode over the rest of the area, about eight miles total.

I don’t assume that these trails were too hard, I do live in coastal flat, but there was enough elevation change around the river that I had a few oh shit moments. The last time I was out at the place was in my twenties, when I was in college. I’m pretty proud of myself that I made it through.

According to my fitness tracker, today’s ride was actually more strenuous than any other activity that I’ve been doing, whether running, climbing, or whatever. It was very fun, but my bike is so old that I thought it was going to fall apart. I was living on the edge also in that I didn’t have any spare parts for my bike. The brakes held up though, even though I thought the tires were going to fall off half the trip.

There were a couple of places that stood out. A lot of the trail was exposed roots, and was very rough, and at one point I came up to a heavily forested area that had a mass of pine needles, making the ground very smooth and soft. It was flat too, and I remember it as a bit of a respite after coming up through a particularly harrowing section. There was another area that had these waist high plants poking up through the ground. I don’t know what they were, but the greenery was striking against the rest of the undergrowth.

I think I caught the area during a very beautiful part of spring. It was Easter, after all.

All I have to say is that it is a very beautiful day outside. This morning’s routine with the kids was very smooth, I came back and meditated then joined Missus outside on our back deck and enjoyed some coffee. It’s the perfect temperature outside (for now) and we were able to listen to the birds, watch the wind blow through the trees, and talk and joke. Beautiful.

Today I’ve got our weekly PM and dao feedback meetings, tomorrow is end of sprint at Star Atlas which means engineering demos and happy hour. I spent all day yesterday working on a project proposal pitch deck which I’ll be presenting over the next day or two.

I’m hoping to take the kids to the community center today so that they can do some swimming. It’s really an excuse for me to do some weightlifting.

Other than that this week has been going really well. I got word that my raise is finally in effect, so that’s going to be nice.

So I’ve been wearing a Whoop fitness tracker for the last three months or so. It’s geared toward high-performing athletes, and it’s very useful for tracking heart rate during athletic activities, as well as sleep and recovery. Although I’ve been running and exercising regularly, I’ve been unable to push myself far enough to meet the level of strain that the app says is necessary for significant cardio load.

For example, a run I did on Friday, 2.3mi at a t 9:11/mi, 21m total, comes in at a 10.9 strain measurement. That equates to 18m spent at 80-90% of my maximum heart rate. Strain between 10 and 13.9 is considered moderate, that is, the cardiovascular load is significant but not strenuous.

The best I’ve been able to do was a 16.8 on a run, the GPS was messed up so I don’t know exactly how far, but I believe it was about 5.5m. 58m running, 50m at 80-90% of my max HR. That was a pretty good run for me, although I don’t have the pace. Yesterday though, I did the same run and hit a 17.4, which is enough for the device to tell me that I need to take it easy today.

It almost killed me.

The weather was really warm yesterday, so much so that I was able to go running shirtless, up to this point in the season I’d been dealing with cooler temps, but I actually felt like I was getting some sun yesterday. That was sort of the point, to work on my tan. Now I don’t know if it was the fact that I run 2.7m the day before, a light one for me, or the heat, or something else, but about halfway through the run I knew something was wrong.

The mantra I’ve been telling myself on these runs is that all I have to do is put one foot in front of the other. As long as I don’t hurt myself I can finish. Maybe I bit off more than I could chew, but I’ve done this very same run on at least four or five occasions and have had no problems. Not in warmer weather during 2PM in the afternoon.

I kept going as long as I could, at one point I was jogging at no more that a walking pace, bursting across intersections and driveways where cars were pulling in and out. About a mile from my house I had to start walking. I tried to give myself some time to cool down and gave it one more push when I got onto my street, but I couldn’t do it and had to finish under a walk.

I got home, grabbed some water and sat on the porch to drink and started feeling lightheaded. I tried different positions, putting my feet up, or my head between my knees, to alleviate what I suppose was something like heat stroke. It lasted no more than ten minutes.

I was fine the rest of the day, but was probably the worst I’ve felt following an exercise. So today my recovery score is super low, and the Whoop is telling me to keep my strain below 13.8, which would probably take a three mile run to hit.

This thing is going to kill me. But if you’re a professional athlete or just someone who wants to get in shape, this thing will Whiip you into shape.

So I realized yesterday after I hit published that I had failed to mention the most important news of my day, that my mom and her husband of twenty-three years are separating. She texted me yesterday asking for ten minutes of my time, so I called her and she broke the news. Now I’ve never been close to my step-father, so much so that I didn’t even call him my step-father until a year or two ago. I was eighteen when they got together, living with my mom in an apartment when she told me she was moving in with him, and that I needed to find my own place.

I didn’t really see them all that much after that. They had a house about twenty minutes away and then moved three hours away a few years after that, where they’ve been living for some time. My brother lived with them for a few years after he graduated high school, before taking a job in Germany.

My stepdad is a nice guy, but like I said, we were never close. We shared some interest in investing and finance, I tried to get him into crypto, but I don’t think he ever did. Anyways, now my mom is telling me that he’s moving out but still wants to continue to see the girls. I don’t know how that’s going to work. Awkwardly, most likely.

This is all against the backdrop of my brother coming home from Germany for the first time in seven years. We were trying to arrange our weekend with them, and were hoping to crash at my mom’s. My dad was hoping to fly out my eighty-year old grandmother as well, but I don’t even know how that’s going to work now. We’ll figure it out.

Appropriately enough, I wound up listening to a bit of this lecture by Alan Watts, on the divine madness known as falling in love. He gets into it about romantic marriage being a recent historical anomaly, and how basing this type of long-term contract on something resembling temporary insanity is well… a bit insane itself. I’ve always been conflicted about the idea of staying married for ever. There’s enough social science on the subject out there, mainly my doubts are around what Watts terms the monotony of monogamy, but I’ll leave that for now.

I used to make jokes (Why is divorce so expensive? Because it’s worth it. What’s the number one cause of divorce? Marriage.) to my boys when we were hanging out, but someone in SAIA announced they were getting one after a decade or two and they were obviously hung up about it and it wasn’t the right tone to set. No such jokes with my mom either. I think the fact that Missus and I are going on our twelfth year married might have something to do with it as well. I’m not sure whether each additional year together increases or decreases our chances of staying together, but we’ve passed the seven year itch. The average marriage in the States is eight and a half years, so we might be doing ok.