October 2023 – Car selling for no fun or profit

October 2023 was best described as interesting. I survived Halloween, found a new and exciting way to make my muscles complain and finally after months of angst, idiots and everything in between, I finally sold my old car while simultaneously enjoying the new one.

WHAT I WATCHED: Picard (brilliant), The Night Manager (Awesome), Loki series 2 (It might take a while to get back into this one given how strange it is..), American Horror Story (can be hit and miss) and Carnival Row (good so far.)

WHAT I READ: Mostly comics and recipes through the Supercook app.

WHAT I PLAYED: The incredible time sink that is Rimworld. I’ve spent hours plugging away at things and still have so much to learn/experience.

Firstly, the Subaru has left the building.

Well more it’s semi permanent spot outside the house. Parked there when the head gasket issue became a major issue and barely touched when it ran out of rego. After months of various communications with ghosts on Carsales, I finally bit the bullet and put it on Facebook where in less than 12 hours I had someone keen to take it off my hands.

Of course what would the last part of this tale of car selling woe be without one last hiccup? And on the day of saying goodbye to it, things broke down. Amusingly not on this car though – but that’s a tale for another day. The good news is it’s sold, it’s home in another state of the country, there’s a little money in my account…and now I’m chasing up the sellers details again because I forgot to put through a notice of car disposal through to Transport NSW. In my defence this is the first time I’ve ever sold a car in this state so consider October 2023 a month of learning.
And now I have space out the front to park other things.

Those other things include my far newer Mazda 6 bought early October 2023 which is super comfy, lovely to drive and not about to cook itself after about 10 minutes of driving around town. I wanted a little luxury with my next car addition and I’m happy to report that this is budget luxury at it’s finest. It’s no Beamer or Merc but I’m loving the space and comfort in this slice of Mazda Zoom Zoom.

(Although I was slightly weirded out by the fact that I was able to pay for this car by using my phone’s banking app, by the side of my best mate’s pool while catching up with friends the afternoon of when I took it for a test drive and fell in love with the thing. Hasn’t technology just steamrolled ahead by great leaps and bounds??)

October 2023 – Back on the mend (again)

I wrote last month that from AFL Grand Final day, everything went flatter than a level plate of stale urine. I haven’t felt that rough in a very very long time where even a walk up the work steps first thing in the morning was something my worn out body found quite the challenge. Low energy, sinus headaches, falling asleep on the couch constantly (actually the couch is quite comfortable so I didn’t mind this aspect of things at all) and low appetite. Getting back to some shade of where I should be has taken a good chunk of this month.

The good news is: I’m back exercising again. And this includes the occasional slow jaunt back on the bike now that I have a car that can haul the Frankenbike to nice places around town to go riding.

The bad news however: I’ve just discovered the Caliber fitness app and while I’m loving the science based workouts, there’s a couple of exercises in there my body has absolutely despised on account of never really doing them before and therefore using muscles that barely get any attention when I normally exercise. Even with the lightest of weights (I’m returning to form very slowly here), things really start to hurt when I attempt either one of these impliments of torture, sorry, exercises:

BULGARIAN SPLIT SQUATS

I once told my former strength coach ‘I hate squats and I hate you.’ (It’s fine, we’re still mates to this day.) Because while you feel like a god smashing your way through them, it’s the horrible pain while attempting to do anything the next day (or the next) while your legs scream in agony that puts squats and any of its cousins on my hate list. Especially when you’ve got a decent walk or stairs somewhere in your day(s) of recovery.

So you could imagine how thrilled I was to see this exercise on the leg day workout of the Caliber app. Especially after the first handful when one hamstring suddenly exclaimed ‘What in the flying f#&k are you doing to me Al?’ and decided it didn’t want to assist anymore. Ooh that was a fun pair of days moving slowly and going nowhere fast (it’s fine now until the next set I guess.)

SKULLCRUSHERS

Interestingly for an exercise with such an imposing name, my skull is fine. I didn’t manage to drop a single dumbbell on my noggin, go me! No it was my arms that yelled blue murder, specifically the muscles at the back of them that assist normally with everything else but were suddenly thrust on stage and forced to dance in the floodlights for this move. Boy oh boy were they ill prepared for this moment too as their’s still a little soreness there now (but that’s more than likely from the shoulder workout earlier this week too.) Yes I know they will get much more stronger as I keep doing this, it’s the sharp pain lesson as I acclimatise to things I’m not fond of.

But even with this going on – I’m getting stronger baby! (Again)

October 2023 – Tumbleweeds dance across my sales sheets

I’m shocked, Adsense hasn’t funded me a Ferrari recently at all. And I was just about to write off another month of zero book sales when someone read my newsletter (I think that’s how they found it) and figured they’d take a chance on the Hack Trilogy box set. Whoever you were, thank you times a million. One sale is better than no sales at all, especially off the back of a month of no buys previously.

Maybe the focus next year should be the video side of things? Because the writing side certainly isn’t taking me places at the moment.

Writing on the latest book is a bit sporadic I will admit but at least I’ve found a new use for my 3d printer: The kids school projects. ‘Dad, can you help me build a lake for a diorama?’ Three minutes later the printer was printing one out. And a bridge and a pond. It’s fair to say in October 2023 the 3d printer has had better workouts than I have.

Other events of October 2023 in brief

-I got my taxes done and the results were disappointing. It wasn’t because of my tax agent, more the lack of the low and middle income tax offset which would turn any dull return into a shopping spree. My tax agent tried, he worked hard, he earned his fee and it’ll pay for the Mazda’s first service so I guess that’s a thing. Still, a big fat return cheque is always a yearly highlight..

-My workplace has gone through some incredible renovations and while things are far from finished yet, there was a time where I thought things were shaping up to be one incredible Laser Tag setup. Disappointingly that’s not the case anymore..

-In October 2023 I found a Kenji jacket at a local op shop for a low $10. It fits well, it’s comfy and it turns out it’s actually lamb leather (and worth quite a bit more than the tenner I paid. Score!)

-I’m writing this post on October 31, Halloween here in Australia. Posing for this photo with a cheap mask from KMart is about as close as I’m going to get to actual spooky celebrations.

-Even though I wasn’t a Wiggles kid (and haven’t met any of them in person or had the chance to interview any) I thoroughly enjoyed the Hot Potato: The Story of the Wiggles documentary on Amazon Prime. To see their incredibly humble beginnings and tiny shows in people’s backyard to filling actual stadiums and the concerts where young adults now are having just as much fun now as they did when they first got into the group was awesome. But also learning about what they went through to get there was quite eye opening too. No amount of hooning around in the Big Red Car can fill in missing your kids dearly while you’re out there grinding so hard in another country. Highly recommended even if you weren’t a Wiggles kid like me.

-And finally I’ll leave you with one more recommendation I tripped over this month. If your Micro SD card reader suddenly stops working or reading your card (incredibly in October 2023 both the card readers I had bit the dust!) then check out the Nextech unit at Jaycar. Yes it’s tiny, yes I keep losing it because of how tiny it is but it works so well and set me back $7 all up – bargain! Now back to printing and bring on November already!