Early in this week (days 106 and 107) I put the finishing touches on the LeetCode problem which consumed my whole last week. That dominated my thoughts and schedule so thoroughly that it wasn’t until later this week (days 111 and 112) that the mental buzz faded and I got bored and/or antsy for the first time since starting that. In between all of that I did hunting prep, which is actually just a bike-packing and camping trip.

FIRE: Day 106 (10/12)

We left my mom’s house today and got home around 12:30. My body is feeling like it has been assaulted by the enormous amounts of sugar and fat that I ate over the past day. My intestines literally ache and it has to be from all of the scotcharoos and breakfast casserole.

I went to the gym in the afternoon, and it was pretty quiet compared to the morning. In the afternoon and evening I finalized some stuff with my LeetCode problem.

FIRE: Day 107 (10/13)

Gym, Spanish, Tech.

My tech time today was just writing a blog post about the LeetCode problem I solved, and basically how it’s a good brain teaser but nobody should ever try to compete with AI on raw coding.

I blew out our sprinkler system. The first freeze is just a few days away. While the compressor was running between zones, I trimmed our overgrown bush in the front yard.

FIRE: Day 108 (10/14)

I spent almost two hours on Spanish today, and I plan to keep pushing hard on it. First of all, I accidentally bought a year of super Duolingo. That’s how they get you – free trials until you eventually screw up and fail to cancel it. While I have that, I need to get some good use out of it. Within a year I need to be functional for day to day life in Spanish. If this learning process drags on for too long it won’t ever happen.

The rest of my day was spent adding support for Chinese speakers learning English in YAL. I got to test my pipeline more, and worked through some growing pains with that. Ultimately it worked pretty well though. Despite the speed bumps in my process, I was able to push out Chinese translations of the full site – landing page, prompts, results and progress screens – all in about four hours of my time. That’s a language I don’t speak one word of. This would have been impossible, or at least completely impractical before AI.

FIRE: Day 109 (10/15)

Gym, Spanish, but not much tech. I did some research for hunting.

The kids had a sleepover at JC’s mom’s house. After they left we thought about going out for a drink, but as we typically do, we went with the more fun and frugal option of having drinks here. We watched the Broncos game which was sort of dull, even though it went to overtime and they won.

FIRE: Day 110 (10/16)

Gym, Spanish, but no tech today.

I emailed back and forth with my hunting buddy to nail down food logistics. With my limited bike-packing capacity I wanted to break from our tradition of sharing breakfast/lunch stuff so I could pack just my own dense calorie meals. He was good with that, and he also has all of the dinner stuff so I can avoid bringing the steaks I had planned for everyone one of the nights.

FAC went off mostly as normal. JC didn’t seem to want to drink after last night, so I didn’t plan to either. I went to the basement and was watching the original Backrooms YouTube series, and JC came down and wanted to have a drink after all. We listened to some music, and then did our usual pizza and movie routine. It was JC’s pick, and I forget what it was but it was pretty good.

FIRE: Day 111 (10/17)

I slept great last night (86 score), and felt really good this morning. My run went unusually well so I decided to run a 4th mile.

In the early afternoon I went to help our neighbor remove some planters that she couldn’t get off of her deck railing. The screws had rusted to the point that the heads were turning to dust when using a screwdriver. I still got some of them out with just a screwdriver, and the rest I had to use vice-grips.

Later in the afternoon my mood turned south. It was set off by BC wanting to go to his friends house across town just to play video games. I wanted to say flat out no, but JC thought he should go since he doesn’t do a lot of friend stuff. This friend lives next door to us half of the time (parents divorced, his mom is who I helped with the planters). Seemed to me they could just wait until the on-week when he could walk next door.

The rest of the afternoon I worked out bike-packing logistics for camping. I figured out that if I rolled my big sleeping bag and two man tent together but folded to half their normal width, they are just compact enough to fit on the back bike rack I bought. I will get a milk crate that it should just barely fit inside. That will save me buying a smaller sleeping bag and a smaller tent. I also bought a front handlebar waterproof bag roll that should be able to hold all of my food.

In the evening I read more of my book that I’ve been fighting to get through (Sean Carroll, The Big Picture) while the rest of the family watched a chick flick.

FIRE: Day 112 (10/18)

Today was tough for me and I’m not sure why. I slept really good last night, but I was bored, antsy or something else I can’t really identify.

JC was feeling similar. We can identity certain things that are bugging us, but not any one specific thing. Partly it’s feeling stuck in the area of our house. Even when the kids are at school, we aren’t really free to go very far. Day trips for hiking or sight seeing end up fizzling because of the time/distance radius which allows us to be here when they leave and when they return. It’s the irony of FIRE with kids – even though you’re free, your still subject to a M-F schedule.

It also may be nothing at all. The kids have been on fall break this week, and having them around with an unstructured schedule is a low grade annoyance that’s hard to explain. I suspect when they are back in school tomorrow everything will feel ok again.

I studied a good amount of Spanish, and played some football with BC. I tried watching some NFL Redzone but it bored me to the point of falling asleep. JC and I went on a walk, and I looked at elk tags as well. The tag is going to be $83, and it’s a crappy unlimited bull elk tag that they sell in unlimited volume because you have no chance of getting one. Seeing as how I don’t plan to actually seek out an elk anyway, I decided not to buy one and save that money. I’ll just camp while the rest of the group hunts.