recent acquisitions

It's like Christmas! Consumerist materialism is where it's at. A whole bunch of parcels have come my way recently. Some were items I'd ordered; a couple were Amazon items sent to me by my buddy Mike as birthday gifts. Here's a happy pile of stuff:

I guess my apartment number is 1418.

Below—Mike's gifts. What could they be?

I guess I'll be reading about a comma queen:

daughter of Chuck Norris, no doubt

The full suite of Mike's gifts:

The late, great Anthony Bourdain wrote or co-wrote the comic Get Jiro.

I loaned my other tube of After Bite to my American coworker; he never gave it back.

Funny thing about me and mosquitoes: they're rarely a problem for me when I'm outside walking. Mostly, they're a nuisance when I'm indoors. On my trans-Korea walks, this matters because, even in the early fall, the weather is still warm enough for mosquitoes to hang around inside motel rooms. While most rooms are okay, some rooms are so infested that I find it hard even to sleep at night, which guarantees I'll spend part of the next day taking nap breaks on the trail. I plan to take along my F-Killer bug spray this time, but since I'm walking later in the year, I have to wonder how bad the mosquito problem will even be. Sometimes the worst mosquito problems occur in what seem to be the nicer-looking motels.

Below: a 40-pound, adjustable-weight, Olympic kettlebell. Long story. I'll explain in a separate post. Right now, though, I can say that I'm so weak that bicep-curling the kettlebell is currently impossible. When I was young, using a two-arm curling bar to curl 80 pounds was nothing. I could curl over 100 pounds despite being no big shakes as an athlete. Now, though, especially after my stroke, and given my age, I'm little more than a weak, mushy little dumpling. But as I said, more on this later. There's much to talk about.

kettlebell!

I also got two more items from Spring. One of my 2023 Kevin's Walk tees came in. I made two versions of the tee: two-sided and one-sided. I got the one-sided one for myself so there's nothing on the back to be ruined by friction from the backpack. Behold:

I opened the package up at work.

The second item that came was this rectangular sticker of my tee design, a design that shows my route across South Korea. Do you readers have any ideas where I should stick this? (I assume the standard answer is "up your ass," so let's assume I know that one already and move on to more constructive possibilities.)

I'm still waiting on another 2023 tee (different fabric), plus a pint glass and a mug with this same design on it. I hope they're not lost in transit. And if they are lost, well, at least I have a tee. The sticker:

For any folks who don't read Korean, but who have been wondering what the design says, the top part says this, line by line:

Kebin-ae Dobo Yeohaeng (roughly, "Kevin's Walk")

Gukto-jongju Sa Dae Gang-gil ("National Trail, Four Great Rivers Path")

Kevin's Walk (English)

As for the map, it shows cities along the path. From northwest to southeast:

Incheon, Seoul, Yangpyeong, Choongju, Sangju, Daegu, Yangsan, Busan

At the very bottom, it says:

chong geori ("Total Distance"): 633 km

Remember: the romanized eo is a sound between "aw" and "uh."

A lot of smaller and not-so-small cities are missing from the map, like Hanam next to Seoul, Mungyeong (which is rather large and spread-out; it's also where they're famous for their omija-cha), and Namji-eup (a bit before Yangsan; Namji is where I get my favorite chicken tenders). But you can't fit everything on a map like this.

So now, I've got things to wear, things to read, things to rub on myself, things to swing around like a burly Russian dude, and things to stick on other things. Awesome.