There's this thing (meme, call to action, trend, club, fraternity, inspiration) going around my small part of the internet where guys (always guys, only guys so far) fix one thing a day. I first noticed Derek Featherstone doing it, and maybe he has inspired the rest of us. I like continuous improvements. I like consistency. I like the magic that happens over a long time when small improvements are done consistently.

The mister replacements I ordered a week or so ago arrived, so I decided today's fix would be installing the missing mister element. The misting system in the corral has six misters, of which five exist and one was missing. For reasons I still don't understand, when I ordered the replacement misting element, I ordered six instead of the one I wanted to replace. Turns out, past self was seeing into the future.

I went out with three in hand, screwed one into the hole where the missing mister is, and turned on the water.

Well, we (note the lack of capitalization, we are not royal) are on day two of "cold" showers and not much has changed.

I delayed jumping into shower this morning because reasons, but not by much, and by 7:30, I had the water on only cold, and was reversing back into the water.

Aaaaaaaand, again it wasn't cold.

I stood with my shoulders in the water for a bit. I slowly rotated the water onto my shoulder, my chest, my other shoulder, back onto my back.

I realized at this point, I had forgotten to start a timer.

Nothing to be done about that, except complete the full shower experience: my face into the water.

Yep, still tepid.

Everyone it seems these days is taking cold showers, not for the reduction of sexual frustration, though some may be cold-showering for that reason, but for the health benefits. See Wim Hoff. See brown adipose tissue. See weight loss. See hand waves magically curing depression. All these reasons and I'm sure many, many more.

I listened to a Melissa Urban podcast episode yesterday where she talks about how amazing her 85 days of cold-shower starts are to her days, and heard her challenge for "take a cold shower first thing in the morning for 30 days."

Okay, fine. Claire has often commented about her puzzlement over the various challenges I put forth for myself, what is one more in a pandemic?

Some time around 5:30 this evening, I started feeling uncomfortable (which isn't quite the right word, but neither is melancholy, depressed, blue, ennui-full, yes I made up that word). No idea why (hello 2020), but when the lighting outside started changing, my mood lifted. I went outside to feel the gusts of wind. I shortly went back inside for my wrap-around sunglasses, as the dust going into my eyes, even when I merely cracked them open the smallest bit, was fast becoming problematic.