I have grown to learn that many of my friends call me when they have a last-minute change of plans because they know that I have the flexibility to do things on the spur of the moment that many people don’t. The plan for today was to take the car in to have the clutch checked, but I received a call from a friend who had an appointment cancelled and wanted to know if I wanted to head to the beach to go for a hike. Never one to pass up an opportunity to get outside, it didn’t take much to twist my arm into going.
I actually really needed to get out. For a few weeks now my head has been fuzzy, something that I’ve never had an issue with before. I’m not really sure how to describe it other than if you imagine the way you feel right after you get up from an afternoon nap when everything isn’t quite in focus. Now imagine that feeling all the time you’re awake and that is what I have been dealing with the last few weeks. My body isn’t tired at all, but my head is just in a fog and never feels quite right. I had been hoping that it would clear itself on its own, but that doesn’t appear to be happening so I may need to go in to see a doctor to try to figure out what’s going on, especially since it’s effecting my productivity. I’m also keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn’t turn into something that is expensive enough to ruin this minimum wage challenge. The one time that it seems to get better is when I am out hiking, so I jumped at the chance to get out for a bit.
We headed to the beach first where we spent a couple of hours beach combing and had lunch:
We then went to Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve and did a 6.3 mile loop hike surrounded by beautiful mossy greenness:
We came across a few of these fellows along the trail:
There were also a lot of interesting and colorful mushrooms:
Although there was cloud cover, the first 2 miles of the hike were pretty steep and we worked up a nice sweat. At one point, she was complaining about how sweaty she had become and I had to remind her that nobody should ever be embarrassed about sweat since it’s nothing more than one’s fat crying. She then mentioned how many more calories she would be burning if we were running the loop instead of walking it. I mentioned that I didn’t think that was the way it worked — that running six miles doesn’t burn any more calories than walking six miles since the distance is the same (as opposed to exercising the same amount of time where running would burn more calories). I reasoned that since you traveled the same distance, you would burn basically the same number of calories, while she said that running exerted more so it must burn many more calories over the same distance. Why am I mentioning this debate? Because it led to one of our regular $1 bets on who was right — Quiz: do you think I was able to add $1 or I had to subtract $1 to the minimum wage challenge with this bet (no fair Googling before you post your answer in the comments)?
I really enjoy days like this when I’m able to do something that wasn’t planned at all. All in all, it turned out to be a good day and a no spend day. My head did clear up while hiking which was a great relief, but then clouded up again as we drove back. This prompted me to make two appointments for tomorrow: one with the eye doctor (I’m wondering if it’s being caused by poor eyesight) and one with my regular doctor. It needs to be taken care of before it gets any worse and hopefully it won’t be too expensive…
Today’s Spending
Food: $0.00
Car: $0.00
Housing: $0.00
Travel: $0.00
Health: $0.00
Misc: $0.00
Total: $0.00
Total Spending
Food: $27.89
Car: $0.00
Housing: $0.00
Travel: $0.00
Health: $485.00
Misc: $19.00
Total: $531.89
Jeffrey strain is a freelance author, his work has appeared at The Street.com and seekingalpha.com. In addition to having authored thousands of articles, Jeffrey is a former resident of Japan, former owner of Savingadvice.com and a professional digital nomad.
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