#237 - Cheaters and Cartridge Refills

We slept in this morning, me longer than Robyn, who was reading her book on her phone. It took me longer to give up right to keep my eyes closed. I forced myself out of bed and made us bacon, eggs and toast. Making breakfast in bed for my wife is my love language.

We put on a couple of shows to watch and took a few breaks in between shows. On one break my tart cherry juice and magnesium glycinate arrived, which I will be testing this evening to see if it helps me get to sleep faster.

On another break my vertical plant growing bags arrived. They are bigger than I expected but they are made from a durable material. I’ll be able to reuse them for four or five years at least. I was going to plant begonias in them today, but the weather has been foul all day. It’s been raining cats and dogs all morning. I’ll do it tomorrow instead as a break from writing.

Robyn and the kiddo went out to see an afternoon movie. I watched all the new YouTube videos that were posted like an addict. I should have been writing of course, but the exhaustion from the week is a real thing.

I knew the other two would order chicken strips at theatre. They make really good chicken strips there. I started to obsess about them, so I ordered some chicken from Dave’s Hot Chicken. It was a little spicier than I wanted, but it was tasty and hit the spot.

I took a bubble spa to help me self care and recover from being sick and tired. It always seems to help for a little while anyway.

Shortly after that, Robyn and the kiddo returned from the movies. Robyn and I continued watching an episode of Imperfect Women. We managed to finish the series before she had to leave to do her support worker job for an hour.

I had started the Martin Short documentary on Netflix last week and decided to finish it while Robyn was away working. It was a touching look at his life and even more so, it was a love letter to his late wife.

I read a bit more of the CSIS book, but my eyes got tired very quickly.

Finally, I grabbed my laptop and got started on some writing.

And then my pen refills for my new Zento Signature arrived from Amazon. The pen shipped with black ink 0.5 mm roller ball. I prefer blue ink and the larger 0.7 mm size. The smaller size left me with a feeling of disappointment.  I worried that I might not like writing with this pen, which is a shame because I really like the design and how it feels in my hand.

The new replacement cartridges have completely changed that for me. Now it feels great to hold, looks good and writes well. It can safely replace my favourite disposable gel pen, the Uniball Vision Elite.

I took a break from writing and put up the documentary about chess masters Magnus Carlson and Hans Niemann. I play at least one game of chess everyday and admire Magnus and the other top players. Cheating is not something a chess player puts up with in any way.

There were allegations of vibrating anal beads being used to receive information from a chess computer to aid in cheating. Not kidding.

Chess.com found evidence that he cheated online but ran the same algorithms on his over the board games and found no evidence of cheating. He then sued Chess.com and Magnus for one hundred million dollars.

I remember when they next met in a big tournament. Everyone was talking about it, at least the people who love chess, and if Carlsen lost this game, it would be a big blow to his reputation.

The game started, and Carlsen mopped the board with Niemann in short order.

Even chess can be on the same level as a good murder mystery now and then.

I see the Duffer Brothers have a new series out on Netflix. I’ll maybe give it a look tomorrow on one of my writing breaks or before I get started. I’ll only have time for one episode as the writing has to take precedence.

And speaking of writing. This is my 237^th consecutive blog post since I started writing daily. I have managed to keep the streak going for months. Back when I started this streak in October, I didn’t know if I would be able to keep this up. And now it has become a daily occurrence, like brushing my teeth. And some of you might find it as entertaining as watching me brush my teeth.

I have participated in the 2026 words a day challenge since January and written over 276,000 words so far, which is almost double the count of 2024 and 2025 combined. And the other streak I have managed to maintain is my chess-game-a-day streak. Tonight I played for the 126^th day straight. I lost the game miserably, but I played!

You can’t win them all.

As I have documented in these pages, I have broken the reading streak more than once, but I am happy to report that today is the ninth consecutive day of reading daily. I hope to build that number up as time goes on. One of the big changes in the reading streak was to sync my kindle app with my physical e-reader. This has allowed me to read more on the train or during wasted time chunks that occur in everyone’s lives almost daily.

Removing resistance to the thing you want to do is one of the ways to succeed.

A YouTube video I watched today was talking about how to get things done. And an interesting line was, if you want to journal or write, commit to writing one sentence per day. Have the writing instruments ready to go, whether that be a pen and paper or a word document.

If you want to go to the gym, commit to putting on the workout outfit and shoes.

These are all things that are too easy to fail at. You don’t have to work out, just put on the clothes. You are more likely to get the exercises if you have removed the resistance of getting your clothes changed.

Resistance to starting something is always greater than when you are actually doing the thing. Once you write that one sentence, you’ll keep going.

One of the other pieces of advice was to change only one thing at a time. Trying to do too much will ultimately result in doing too little or nothing at all.

I’ve used these ideas to get myself to do things where I face resistance.

And finally, the video broached the idea of the streak. And that once you have a few successes under your belt, you won’t want to miss a day.

And importantly, if you do miss a day, you can only miss one. You have to get back on the horse the following day and not try to make up for the day before. You simply keep going and try not to let it happen again. But if it does, you must start back up the next day.

The starting the next day is an interesting rule to apply to this. I make sure you keep achieving your goals and allow for failures and the unexpected. I think I’ll add this idea to my streak challenges.

The book I am reading about CSIS continues to give me some ideas for my novel. One section talks about the rules of collecting and storing information on a case. There are laws in place the mandate the storage of evidence for so many years. And the problem starts when you are talking about storing things like the contents of a suspect’s garbage can.

In one section, the author described that they were required to take health and safety courses about rummaging through suspects' trash and that you couldn’t do it without watching a video first.

I immediately thought of a scene where my character must is forced to do this. The banal and bureaucratic nature of CSIS is mindboggling and could be very humorous to illuminate.

The number of people they used on an operation is higher than I would have imagined.

A job to add tracking tech to a subject’s car might employ a team of ten plus additional support from the surveillance staff who were tasked to monitor the perimeter. Maybe its all those movies than have me thinking it’s only three to five at the most.

Reality is truly stranger than fiction.

I’m going downstairs to drink my tart cherry juice and take my 400 mg of magnesium glycinate. I love cherry everything, so I am excited to have that, but those magnesium pills are huge. Not sure why they couldn’t have made them 100 mg pills instead. But I’ll have to tamp down my gag reflex with these bad boys.

It’s coming up on eleven PM and I already feel tired. I have yawned a few times already. Our room is nice and cool, and I have been reading for the last half an hour to wind down. The Tv has been of and the lights dimmed. These are all things that are supposed to help you get a good night’s rest.

Well, the cherry juice was tart, but not unpleasantly so. The pills went down a lot easier that their girth suggested. All in all, it went fine.

I don’t have any kiwi fruit in the house, so I’ll have to see about getting some tomorrow during the day. I’ve added it to my Listonic app in case Robyn heads to the grocery store without me.

One of the other things the video mentioned for better sleep quality was the use of an eye mask. I already happen to have one that I can use. I’m not sure if I’ll make it through a whole night with it on. I typically use it when I have to go to bed early and Robyn has the lights on or is watching tv or reading in bed.

But maybe with all the other things added in it might help get more sleep. I am very light-sensitive and a light sleeper as well. It’s worth giving it another go.

I read a new article that says recent studies show that D2 supplements can decrease your D3 count. I had to go check the vitamin D gummies I have been taking for the last few months. Luckily, they were the D3 variant, so I should be okay.

The kiddo has left the house to walk to the closest Dominoes to get himself some garlic bread. He does this all the time. Not only does he love their garlic bread, but I think he likes the quiet walks in the dark. I used to be like that too. The world is calmer at night for the most part.

It’s been raining all day though, and it still is. Not my kind of night to do a snack run.

But to each their own.

Another video I watched today was about how to get rid of visceral fat. The fellow recommended taking dandelion root tea with lemon juice in the morning. The bitterness was to activate your bile production, which helps your liver get rid of the oil and fatty deposits that it absorbs. And when it is full of junk, imagine a sponge impregnated with bacon grease; it can’t flush itself out. I might pickup some tea and give it a try.

Plenty of us Westerners can’t handle bitter-tasting foods these days, and manufacturers are constantly making all our food sweet as a result.

I saw in the entertainment news that they are thinking of doing more Planet of the Apes movies soon. It wasn’t clear if these would be continuations of the current timeline or if it would be a brand-new take on the series. I like the last batch of films that focused on the ape, Caesar.

I thought they were well done, and Caesar was a very believable character that you felt for.

It’s coming up on eleven thirty. The cherry juice and the magnesium should be influencing me soon. I have been staring at a laptop screen, but it is set to a night mode to avoid blue light and down to its lowest brightness setting.

The feeling of sleepiness is there, but it’s always there so that isn’t really an indicator of success.

There were shots fired into a house not far from where we live. There seems to be an increase in violent crime in the area lately. The shooting wasn’t too far from the housebreaking and car theft that happened a few weeks ago.

And there were also shots fired near the White House in Washington today.

Too many guns around these days.

On that note, it’s time for me to bust a cap in this day and call it a night.

Until tomorrow.

here