Posts Tagged → being a michigander-burgher-ite

The Inebriated Agenda

Yet another unneeded brief message from the President and CEO of thesoiledchamois.net, and Soiled Chamois Enterprises, Inc.™

Dear Reader, 

I apologize in advance for this post. I started it on Friday but then became slightly “under the influence.” So I shelved it until Saturday evening. But then I became under the influence again and shelved it until Sunday morning. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I tried to clean up this mess up as best I could, but I don’t care enough to work on it any longer. It also seems I enjoy being under the influence a bit too much. But we all knew that. I’ll let you decide which parts were written when.

— Management

As mentioned in my last unneeded post about nothing, I experienced a bit of knee pain while on the Dreadmill the other day. Well, thankfully, that pain didn’t stick around, and I was back to doing “sprint” intervals the very next day and actually felt really good (enough) over the 3 miles. 

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Life & How To Live It?

While this week won’t win me any awards for Life and How to Live It, it was a tolerable experience. And during a mid-Michigan March that is frequently filled with 45˚ days, 15˚ days, high winds, snow, ice, bright sun, freezing rain, standing water, mud, gloom, blue skies, spring-time inspiration, and winter-time funks —often all in one day—tolerable is way above average for me. So, yeah, mark it a win, dude.

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Italian Quesadilla Guilt

Thursday night, I made an amazing burrito filled with perfectly seasoned chicken thighs cooked in the air fryer and homemade refried beans made in the instant pot. Despite my apparent aversion to using the stovetop and newfound mommy blogger-like love of unnecessary kitchen gadgetry, I was pretty stoked with how it turned out and devoured the savory log of carby Mexicana like a pack of rabid wolverines near a shallow grave (What?? – Ed.).

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Using Gifts

On Wednesday, I took myself and my newfound, much-cherished improved mindset out for a walk with my camera. I took the Nikon Z50 with an old DX zoom lens mounted with the FTZ adapter. I also took an old 105mm f/2.8 Lester A. Dine macro lens; that way, if things looked stale, I could kill some time with some manual focus handheld macro shots.

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Saved by The Birds

Last week was another “lost week” for me; every bitterly cold gray day seemed exactly like the one before, and I couldn’t seem to find the point to anything or figure out what the hell I’ve done with my life. I could easily bore you (again) with the finer details of just how horrible that feels, but instead, I will just say that come Friday morning, I finally felt the urge to lace up my boots and head out into the sunny (SUN!!!) 9˚ morning for a hike with my camera.

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A Mitten Getaway

Why I keep this blog going is anyone’s guess. Back in the Google Blogger days, it documented my sub-par attempts at training for and racing endurance cycling events, however with age, medical issues, a complicated relationship with my bike, and a raging case of depression-inspired slack, it has degraded into I don’t know what. 

Blogging Times once referred to The Soiled Chamois as “unintelligible sophomoric word salad dotted with the occasional photo that doesn’t completely suck, written by a careerless, unlikeable misanthropic middle-class white guy.” 

All I’ll say about that is that if Blogging Times was a real thing, and I didn’t completely make their disparaging comments up, they would not be wrong. Yet here we are.

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One-Two Funk Punch

The week after the Christmas holiday, I was back on the Dreadmill in the Not So Stankment, pounding out daily 3-mile lumbers and intervals. After what seemed like months of being ill in one form or another, it felt great to get my heart rate up and to sweat again without a 101˚ fever.

So, after 21+ miles of lumbering nowhere slow, I was stoked to get back on the magic Zwift machine last Monday and get my legs back to doing what they do best. Or at least do better than running.

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Un-Celebratory

Anybody that has hung around this blog for more than a few seconds knows that I don’t have the sort of personality that celebrates a New Year. Or anything else for that matter, at least not without one eye looking at the half-empty glass about to fall onto the floor and break. And this year was my best year yet of non-celebrating: a few beers, some TV watchin’, food eatin’, and in bed by nine while Wifey fumed and mentally cursed me and my worsening attitude in the living room below.

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Righteous Vibes

Friday always has that “I might get laid tonight” vibe to it, even though, for me, Friday night usually means drinking a few IPAs in my comfy chair, some crap white trash cooking, and in bed alone by 9 PM because there’s nothing to do that hasn’t been done before, nothing to watch that hasn’t been seen before, and nowhere to go that hasn’t already been gone to or sullied by the never-ending pandemic and its variants.

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Keeping Promises

I promised I don’t know who I would try to keep things more positive here rather than dwell on the revolving door of suck mental and physical health that I’ve been stuck in for weeks now. So, I will just say this week has not exactly progressed how I would have liked; in fact, it regressed in many ways, especially in the mental health department.

Wow, that was way easier to write than the 750+ words I wrote and rewrote earlier before saying, “Nah.”

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