Weekly Mileage #195 and an Acrylic Project

detail of the etching

Monday was cold and rainy. I had planned on taking Max for a run, but decided not to. I enjoyed staying in bed a little longer, then got going on tasks for the day. 

I engraved a cutting board, then figured out how to buy shipping labels for two packages through my site. This took longer than I wanted, but it was good to play around with the backend and see that I actually need to set up my shipping settings better. 

Playing with engraving settings also took awhile, then I did a full test engrave on a tester cutting board, which is when I found out that the full engrave takes an hour. I still had the final engrave on the nice cutting board, which took another hour. Since the engraving took a lot longer than I anticipated, I didn't make it to the UPS store until after 5, but they were still open, so still a win. 

After dinner I finished uploading and editing past posts and am finally caught up. I need to stay a little more on top of things- I ended up losing mileage data for two weeks because I wasn't pulling it off my Garmin for the posts. Everything else was ok (I jot notes about each day on a daily basis), just that data was missing.

frozen puddle on our run

Tuesday I went for a cold trail run with Max. It was below freezing, but the soggy trails were already thawing out, so it's good we didn't go any later in the day. I'm sure they were pretty muddy by afternoon.

After music lessons and speech therapy I did the grocery shopping I didn't have time for on Monday since the cutting board took so long.

That evening I cut up oranges, lemons, and apples with the boys and put them in the dehydrator to make a dried fruit garland.

Wednesday we woke up to wet, icy conditions, which ditched my plans to run before the snow started. I had no desire to drive on icy roads. We ended up with a very wet, icy snow/sleet mix that day. The forecast called for 2-4",  but I think we only got about 1/2".

Max thought the snow was great

as did the boys, of course

River insisted on strapping on his snowshoes (Christmas present last year) and heading outside. He didn't care that the snow wasn't deep enough and was way too wet, he wanted to try them out!

After my accountability call, I worked on my course. I'm still finalizing projects and steps for the tutorials I need to write up. As I work on those, I'm making sure the tools are correct and materials are correct.

leather for the projects

Thursday we still had icy conditions. The roads were fine, but the ground was slushy and icy and not great for running on. I worked some more on the course projects, refining the order of instructions and other details.

We did get a little bit more snow during the night, but not much.

Ocean had a blast playing in the melting snow and making a mess, as he does. 

Our YW activity that night was to make salt dough ornaments via zoom, which was pretty fun, all things considered. I used wheat flour since gluten free flour is too expensive to be using in salt dough ornaments, but it made me a bit paranoid about touching anything, like my computer. 

Friday I finally sorted the boys clothes. They've been wearing shorts that needed to be put away till warmer weather returns and they've also been wearing pants that were too small. They just keep growing!

I finally got a non-blurry picture of Max!

I also worked on a custom notebook cover. I totally forgot that I had agreed to do it and it needed to be delivered the next morning. It was a pretty straightforward order, so I was able to get it done in plenty of time.

Saturday morning I went for a run with Max after handing off the notebook cover. The buyer was a nice guy who's made an effort to buy gifts from local makers this year, and he was heading out of town that day, which is why I needed to hand it off that morning.

There was still a little snow on the ground, as well as some frost.

That afternoon I worked on acrylic designs for light covers for my sister. I had a little bit of a learning curve while trying to cut them so they'd jigsaw together, but I got it to work. Eight designs took most of the day. The prep work on the images to get them ready to cut, then cutting each design twice- first from colored acrylic, then from clear acrylic. A couple also had a third cut from a different colored acrylic. And the clear acrylic sheets had to be cut down into four pieces before the shapes could be cut out of them. Time consuming, but not super difficult. Eventually I'll do three more of each design, but after a couple more tweaks I'll send these ones out to her to make sure they fit properly on her lights and look good.

My two favorites (with their paper backing still on):

I totally forgot until late evening that we'd planned on helping lay wreaths at a veterans cemetery. It was on my monthly calendar, but not my weekly calendar pages, and it'd been a few days since I checked my monthly calendar pages, so it was totally not on my radar. That was frustrating. Sunshine was supposed to use it for some of the service hours that she needs for rank advancement. It's hard to find service hours right now- everything has so many limitations.

Sunday I went for a hike with Max, though afterwards she still had a lot of energy from not enough exercise this week.

the fog was burning off by the end of our hike, but it was still pretty

After online church, I dropped off some treats for my ministering sisters, then relaxed a bit, which is highly unusual for me these days. 

I also finally got around to working on our ornaments to send to family members. It's been on my list for weeks, months maybe? I just haven't had time. They'll definitely be late this year. With everything that's been going on this year, I didn't do Christmas cards, either.

Jeremy got called up for jury duty. In our county, jurists are called for a one month period. He was given specific dates to contact the court house within that time frame to see if he'll be needed that day. His first date was Monday the 21st, but they didn't need him then. In reading through the paperwork he got last week, if I ever get called up, I'll have to get a doctor's excuse to not serve. You have to sit, pay attention, and not eat, drink, or have a cell phone during the proceedings (which makes sense), but those are all things that I employ to stay awake when just sitting. I'd be asleep so fast or struggling to stay awake and missing most of what's being said. It's sad, since I do think it's a civic duty we should be willing to take on, but it just wouldn't be physically possible for me.

Weekly Mileage

Tuesday- 1.62 miles run and hiked

Saturday- 1.50 miles run and walked

Sunday- 2.01 miles hiked

total- 5.13 miles

2020 totals

67 hikes towards #52hikechallenge
0 kayak miles towards #365milechallenge

266.19 outdoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
22.50 indoor foot miles towards #365milechallenge
310.0 bike miles towards #365milechallenge
598.69 miles total