This is my little journal from the government shutdown.  Today is day 2.  Click here to see all of my government shutdown journal entries.

I woke up at 7am this morning.  I guess my circadian clock doesn’t keep good time since I usually get up around 6am for work. I went to my computer to check the status of the government shutdown but my Brighthouse home wifi was not working.  The same thing happened yesterday morning.  Before I could get my act together and call Brighthouse to complain, it started working again.  That’s two strikes for Brighthouse.  They better be careful!  🙂

Then I went outside to get a little exercise.  My mind and body are not very fond of jogging, so I typically fast walk when I am able to find time to exercise.  I stretched my muscles and then fast walked for just over 3 miles.  I used an iPhone app called NeoTreksGPS to track my route and to collect stats on my performance.  I haven’t really shopped around for the best exercise GPS app, so I can’t say whether this app is better or worse than all the hundreds of other choices out there.  I also used the Pandora app on my phone to listen to my Duran Duran station so I got to hear lots of 80’s dance club music during my fast paced walk.

This first screen grab shows me walking by my church.  The app uses Google satellite images and overlays your current position (the blue dot) and where you’ve been (the green dots).

This second screen grab shows my stats after I was all done walking.  I was going for a pace of less than 15 minutes per mile.  I exceeded that goal with 14 minutes and 43 seconds per mile.  That’s a walking pace of over 4 miles per hour.  Not bad for someone who doesn’t exercise much.  🙂

 After I stretched out again at home, I stepped on the scale to get a baseline for the government shutdown.  Since I’m off my regular work schedule, I should probably be careful that I don’t snack too much or eat too much junk food or I could end up gaining some unwanted excess weight.  My baseline weight ends in 3, so I will try to stay at or below that weight throughout the furlough.

Then I relaxed in my front porch Adirondack chair with a banana pineapple smoothie.  Did I mention that I love my Adirondack chair?  I made it myself.  But that’s for another blog post because I’m considering making them and selling them.

Then I watched a couple short DVDs that needed to be watched because they were burned from old VHS tapes and I needed to verify that they were in good shape before I deleted the source files from my computer.

Then I went to the driving range and hit a large bucket of balls.  In the past I’ve always gone to the driving range just for fun, but I’ve been meaning to get more seriously into golf and to start taking my kids along with me.  My youngest has sort of a knack and even has his own set of clubs that my dad gave him this past summer.  So I’ve been meaning to drive some balls and actually pay attention to how far I hit with each club.  I’ve never paid any attention to that before.  I don’t know how typical this is or not, but I was hitting around 90 yards with my 9 iron, around 120 yards with my 7 iron, and around 140 yards with my 3 iron.  My 5 iron is too short, so I’m not going to be using it any more.  I did not hit any woods today.  I’m not real good with them anyways.

I must have looked pretty bad at the driving range today because two separate guys came up to me and offered unsolicited advise.  It was all probably very good advise and these guys were obviously well intentioned, but some of their advise really messed me up.

I had a quick lunch at Burger King … why Burger King again?  I thought I was trying to not eat junk food during the government shutdown!  Well, I realized the other day that I have a gift card that I should probably use up before I forget about it in my wallet again and it expires or I lose it or something.

After I came home, I installed the final piece of trim into our office, thus completing that to-do list item from yesterday.  Then I started working on the trim pieces around the living room fireplace.  I got it about one third installed when my wife noticed that it looked funny.  It was the wrong color.  Silly me.  Now I will need to go to Lowe’s and exchange the white fireplace trim I bought the other day for the wood colored trim and start the install over again.

At this point, it was starting to get too late in the afternoon to start something big, so I relaxed again in my Adirondack chair (did I mention how much I love my Adirondack chair?) and read a couple magazines that I haven’t been able to find time to read.  They were Smithsonian Air & Space magazines.  What a great magazine.  I can’t say enough about this magazine.

Then I took a shower and made a sandwich for one of the boys since my wife was busy working with the other boy on his homework.  I skipped dinner since I wasn’t hungry yet from my big Burger King lunch.  Those BK fries are quite filling.  Then we dropped the kids off at church and went to a friend’s house for a couple of hours for family life group.  Then we picked up the kids and came home and I ate a small dinner and now I’m writing this blog post.  That’s pretty much day two of my unplanned furlough slash vacation.

My to-do list had 35 items on it last night when I went to bed.  Tonight it now has 38 items on it. I crossed several off today and did some tasks that were never on the list and I also added several new items to the list throughout the day. This to-do list is a battle that can never be won, I’m afraid.  Just as long as I get a handful of stuff done each day, the list is worth maintaining, though.  Otherwise important stuff would slip through the cracks.

What will tomorrow hold for this furloughed government employee? Stay tuned! 🙂

Kurt