It’s almost 5pm on Saturday, March 3. According to my calendar, I should be multiple rum-and-diet-cokes deep during a day of hop-on, hop-off revelry provided by the Old Town Trolley in Savannah. We’d probably be talking about where we’d want to order takeout from to have delivered to our shared Airbnb as we prepare ourselves for a ghost tour bar crawl in America’s First Planned City. It’s our friend’s 40th birthday celebration and Katie and I were supposed to be there, partying, laughing, playing games and knocking back a few mimosas.

Instead, we’re home. We’re still ordering takeout but it’s because we’re lethargic and still getting over pretty serious cases of the flu. We’re still seeing ghosts but they’re in the form of scary movies streaming on MAX. We’ve taken many naps, we’ve huffed about not having the energy to do chores and indulged in a variety of our favorite comfort foods. We’ve worked while we felt up to it and laid down when we didn’t. In the name of celebration, however, we’ve taken plenty of shots (homemade health tinctures and NyQuil) and consumed a decent amount of drugs (antibiotics prescribed by our local walk-in clinic and ibuprofen). 

And while our party isn’t anywhere near as much fun as the one we had planned with our comrades, we’ve both found ourselves feeling pretty fortunate to have the other nearby, also on the mend, also unable to exercise or stop coughing, snotting and moaning. A 1,500 square-foot home seems to get smaller and smaller with every day you’re unable to leave it, but being cooped up with my rockstar wife makes it so much more bearable.

Not the way we wanted to end our extended February this year but the month wasn’t a total loss! Let’s discuss.

Goals I’ve Kept Up With:

40 + Clean Eating + General Health

Hard to believe this has gone well considering I’ve been out of commission for the last week. Funny thing is that I stressed about how I was going to get in all my workouts this week since I wasn’t going to be in town four out of the seven days. I carefully planned how I was going to get in each run and add sets of later-week exercises to my early-week workouts so I’m not actually skipping anything.

And then I started missing workouts on day one. I’ve neither ran nor picked up a single weight since last Sunday. I’ve also lost an additional five pounds since having the flu, which isn’t exactly how I wanted to make it happen but whatever.

Sick week aside, I otherwise haven’t missed a single workout or run session, rain or shine. I’m currently down 10 pounds and according to my (pre-sick week) progress photos, I’ve been kinda killing it so far this year!

Continue Learning Italian

I’m 110 days into my streak! Though, I have to admit that I needed to use some of my streak freezes during this sick week. The streak still counts, though, so that’s cool. I think we’re only like six weeks out from our trip now! WILD!

List on the Other Page

I knocked out my immediate chores, including clearing out the bulk of the clutter in my office, removing the carpet from the studio (though I have yet to haul it off) and build the new utility sink in the laundry room. I also finally got around to installing the new showerhead in our guest bathroom shower. Kinda killing it here!

New Goals:

New List on the Other Page

Spring is almost here so my new projects are going to include building Katie a new, rather large, raised garden bed and building a durable firewood shack where we can keep both our fire pit and my smoker stocked with fresh fuel. I’m hoping to get started on my new guitar build project as well, which I intend to fully highlight here in the blog when the time comes.

Al Pastor

That’s about all I can say other than I bought a new toy last week and I can’t wait to show you what it can do!

Goals I’m Letting Go:

Zip!

Rad Things From February:

This month, Katie and I enjoyed a fun date day looking through consignment, junk and antique shops in search of unique items for her future business endeavor, I added a delicious (and healthy!) sesame chicken recipe that I make entirely on the Blackstone to the meal plan rotation, we took a fun street taco class at the Cutting Edge Classroom to celebrate Valentine’s Day, I made another Beef Wellington that wasn’t my best but was still pretty good, we got the new flooring and baseboards installed in the studio and I apparently lost 10 pounds with the help of Influenza A and an ear infection to boot.

Earlier today, I reclined in my favorite chair with my headphones on and kitty in my lap. I had my eyes closed and I listened intently as I studied Lou Reed’s 1978 record “Street Hassle,” hoping desperately to find some kind of strong motivation to write some music since that’s one of my goals this year. I wasn’t moved to start writing, but it was nice to close my eyes for half an hour and listen to music in a way that I rarely ever slow down enough to do these days. Maybe that realization is what this damn virus was supposed to teach me?

Don’t you know things always look ugly
To me, they always look the same

Ever onward,

-JS