Well, February is over, punctuated by the U.S and Israel attacking Iran for still unclear to me reasons. Not that there’s really ever a good reason to indiscriminately bomb a country and its people. Sending another generation of soldiers to die in a needless pursuit who even knows is sickening. It’s all so disheartening: an executive branch that is not only clueless but deeply stupid, a compromised judicial branch, and a congress filled with do-nothings on both sides of the aisle.

My cat Bernard soaking up some sun

Bernard soaking up some sun.

Anyway, the week. It’s been a little warmer and a little sunnier, but these Minnesota winters have a way of lingering.

I’ve kept my Peloton activity streak alive for another week, up to a total of 59 days now. I didn’t have as much desire to ride this week which concerns me a little, so I’m going to redouble my efforts there. I rode the bike twice: one 30-minute power zone ride, and a 20-minute Tabata ride. My goal is at least three rides a week, with one them being 45 minutes or longer. The rest of my workouts were stretching and meditation.

I’ve decided on a side-objective related to fitness: being able to get into a Yogi squat or Malasana. For some reason videos about it started showing up in my YouTube feed a few weeks ago and finally won me over. Being able to get into the pose seems to be a good indicator of flexibility and over all mobility, and the practice is apparently good for folks like me who spend most of their days sitting.

In weekly retro # 4, I wrote a little about migrating my friend group’s Discord server to another system like Matrix. This week I came to the conclusion that we won’t be moving after all. Ultimately it came down to two of my principles colliding: right to privacy and community. Community won out. I decided it just wasn’t worth the friction of having everyone move to a new tool, especially when the features we want are half-baked or non-existent in many of the Matrix clients. Discord even announced it was delaying the announced age-verification changes until later this year, so I’m hopeful there will be positive changes there.

On the medical front, I’m still experiencing the chest discomfort. I’m probably halfway through the 50-tablet bottle of Pepcid I picked up the day of the office visit. There are days I think it’s better, but others not so much. It doesn’t seem to be getting worse. It freaks me out though, especially at night for some reason. It also seems to get worse at night. Sometimes I think it’s psychosomatic or anxiety-based. Other times I worry I’m downplaying symptoms because I’m afraid to acknowledge that something might be really wrong.

Things I enjoyed this week