#2xx (2/26/23) - recap of February 2023

 Been reading a book called Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, very easy to read, thoughtful, well done.  Looking forward to reading more by him.

Watched The Mole and Physical 100 on Netflix, also rewatched Yakuni Tatsu, which is now on Netflix called The Full Time Wife Escapist. They did a New Year's special in 2021.  Everyone looked older, except for Hoshino Gen who looked exactly the same. 

Been trying to read a book called Cain by Jose Saramago and watch a Netflix show called Hot Skull about a language virus.

The Last of Us in coming out now on HBO, but I am holding off until I can watch all of it.

In the meantime, I found a show called The Soldiers on Korean tv, a reality competition for ex-special forces agents, that includes endurance and physical challenges but also milsim - hostage rescue, underwater bomb recovery, red-on-blue team battles. This lead me to SAS: Who Dares Wins, another UK based reality show about the SAS selection course, but this time for random participants.

SAS: Rogue Heroes is a show on hulu? based on the book by Ben McIntyre about the formation of the SAS in WW2, north africa.  Kinda like Generation Kill meets The Dirty Dozen.

I have not missed a single workout at Planet Fitness, 3x per week, since we started in mid-January. We do at least 1.25 hours and sometime 1.75 hours, including 15 mins cardio and 10-20 minutes of hydro/massage after.  This leaves about 45 minutes for weight training and I usually manage to get in 4 sets of 15 on 4 different machines each time.  Noticing some gains.  Felt a lot stronger suddenly at the 6 week mark.

Bought a new car on Feb 11, Saturday. A 2020 red Hyundai Kona with 41746 miles. Been loving having a new ride that feels so clean and shiny and new.

Had a lovely date night with Ben on Valentines, went to Garcias and had a quirky heart-shaped pizza with cookies. Then we came home and watched Physical and ate ice cream. Been seeing him a lot and having a terrific time, going to breakfast at Harvest Market on Sundays, or staying in with takeout wings from BWW and watching stuff on Netflix. He made up Japanese curry one night and it was fantastic.  He wants us to make sushi sometime and also wants to make bread with me. We talked about going on some day trip or going to Chicago museum or aquarium for spring break. 

We also went to Sun Singer and Hamilton Walker's during restaurant week and had the prix fixe menus, pretending to be foodies.  It was great fun, delicious food. He says he doesn't know many restaurants in the area that are not on Green Street. We also tried San Maru and went back to '83. I took some cute pics of him.  But there are no pics of us together.

This is a very hard semester at work because we have 6 practicum teams, that all meet on Friday - yes, 6 back to back Zoom meetings in a row!  Also, I am teaching my MLF course as an elective, but only got 8 msfe students and the other 9 are a mixed bag, ise ms, or phd.  All good students, but it still stresses me out with little time to prep for class or grade.

Saw Yang and Leo for dinner at Mandarin Wok as Leo left for his job in NY.  Heard from Josh (IB) up in Madison.  He is hoping to get a job closer to here and wants to visit.  I should go see him one weekend.

Have an eye infection for the past 2 weeks in my right eye.  It was starting the Friday before I bought the car, 2/10.

Two weeks to spring break.  I want to go somewhere sunny and relax and eat shrimp, drink wine and sleep on a deck chair next to the pool. 

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