What I'm Reading This Week #30

Happy Final Friday of July everyone!  I will not be sad to see this month in the rear view.  The Mr finished the HOA minion's job by checking on the basement wall crevasse of missing mortar pretty much every waking hour after he "filled" the hole.  I gave him a bamboo skewer to see if it hit the long bottom we saw with the camera.  Nope.  

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When he poked it, it drained away.  Every hour, he'd do the same and it kept emptying.  I had him check to make sure it wasn't pouring out the front of the house and thankfully it wasn't.  But if you figure that water has been etching away at the stairstep crack leading from the top of the hole then that goes down the entire length of the wall , so it had a long way to travel.  In the end not only did the Mr use one quart of the filler but had to buy another one and used 1/3 of the bottle before it finally started leveling off!!  If we'd left it to the HOA dude, an eighth of the bottle would've been used.  😡  It looks like there will be a good 6 months of monitoring to make sure there is no more water damage before we can feel confident to repaint with that God awful waterproofing paint on the back wall.  It's supposed to potentially rain this weekend so hopefully it'll rain hard and long enough to saturate everything so we can monitor the subfloor for the actual problem we called about.  

Thursday the roofing dude came out to verify the hole in the roof we updated the HOA about when the Mr was checking the attic hatch.  Now we know that some holes in the roofline are needed for venting but this was not that.  (The above HOA dude said something about that and I wanted to smack him Mr T style and say 'shut up foo')  The roofer did mention it but he said he did see something up there and was verifying which vent it was closest to.  Since we'd just read our June happy year the night before, I mentioned how there was a massive storm with such high winds we were certain we were going to lose the tree out back.  So I did mention that storm to him and said the hole wasn't there before that so we're thinking it might've happened then and he said it was very possible.  *Looks around*  You're not going to fight us on that??  I even messaged the Mr after he left to either delegate or get materials "did I hear that right, did he say he saw something up there?" and the Mr said yes.  We were completely shocked!  Now let's do something about it sir.  We're just so used to going in for a fight every single time.

Now for a garden update.  Behold, my bush bean harvest:

Me thinks this is not the bean feast Veruca Salt spoke of.  Sigh.  "Super easy to grow."  I can only think that the container is not deep enough.  They come up but they don't get higher than a foot, is that normal?  Plus some bug eats the leaves and I've tried insect soap.  I guess I'll need neem oil at night.  Here's a peek at a few other things.  First are the seeds I planted 2 weeks ago, I might need to pull the mulch off of them to get more to pop up quicker.

The sweet potatoes are doing well since I put the insect mesh bag over it.

The potatoes are starting to sprout so I'll need to hill those to get more harvest, I guess.  I don't know what I'm doing.  We'll see.

I pulled out the extra cantaloupe vine from the bucket and noticed the one left behind had a few surprises for me:

I can't wait for them to get big enough (hopefully) to actually eat.  In the meantime, I have knee high pantyhose at the ready to tie them to get support as they grow.

Finally, we actually got to harvest a banana pepper for the Mr's salad!!

This is the plant I moved because it got too big for the cage and it went into transplant shock.  Thankfully, I was able to baby it for a few days and it bounced back well.  He was a happy boy Wednesday.  I see another one is waiting in the wings so he should be happy next week too.  FINALLY something we can actually pick other than lettuce.  (Which oddly the lettuce in the normal spot is suddenly not germinating with the new batch so might need to try a few more seeds and maybe move it to the sun to give it a bit of a start.  Always somethin')

Now let's move into:

Lifting This Much Weight Could Predict Your Healthspan — Can You Do It? (This is a must read.  I was a little despondent when lifting this amount somehow became a bit harder the other day after not doing shoulders the week before.  A big note to self that shoulders must be weekly no matter what.)

Doctors Are Rethinking Weight Loss Advice. Here's Why The Old Rules Don't Work Anymore—And What Does ( And in 10 years they'll tell us they were wrong 🙄)

Triceps Exercises You Can Do at Home with Just a Set of Dumbbells (They don't get the love they deserve)

The #1 Thing to Avoid If You’re Trying to Lose Weight  (Well I don't know what to tell ya because unless I get lumps handed out Pete Puma style by Bugs Bunny, it's 5 hours no matter how exhausted I am or what time it is.)

‘Fascia Flossing’ Is the Little-Known Secret for Improving Your Mobility—Here’s How To Do It (Definitely want to incorporate this as often as possible.  I have been suffering from a really horrible sensation on the outside of my knee when I kneel and I'm pretty sure its the end of my IT band.  So it's been a few days of digging with my wood tool and will need to use my scraper tool.  Don't be like me and wait until there's a problem.)

The Puzzling Gap Between How Old You Are and How Old You Think You Are  (Very interesting and true)

14 Subtle Ways Having A Toxic Parent Affects You As An Adult  (Um...wow.)

47 Hobbies for Couples Looking to Connect and Have Fun  (If you're doing the stargazing one, go out this weekend.  While it's not peak in August, there will be a full moon reducing visibility by 75%)

Y'all, we need to talk about 'y'all'  (Y'all know I'm a big fan!)

Funny GenX memes (I refuse to use the actual title of this article as 1) it was misleading and 2) it took THREE late twenty somethings to enter "1980's memes" in chat GPT to assemble it.)

Miss a post this week?  Catch up below!

Crumblin' Down Weekend Recap

Does Banging Your Head Burn Calories?

I'm not sure what's up for the weekend.  I'd like to get outta here but not sure where because it's going to be swamp ass hot...again.  If anyone has suggestions, I'm all ears.

Any plans for your weekend?

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