Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

Finally cooling off in here now that the thunderstorms are rolling through. I can’t really hear them over the dishwasher, though. It was a ‘clean the apartment and do laundry night’ for me, hence the dishwasher running. The dining table looks nicer without so much crap on it, as does my desk. Amazing what actually filing the stuff in the ‘to file’ pile will do for the place.

Now if I could just make a dent in the ‘to read’ pile.

Good bike ride this morning. I’m hoping the weather will be relatively nice so I can run in the morning. While I’ve been biking a lot more, and finally getting back to swimming, I’ve neglected my running over the past week, which is probably a contributor to the foul mood from yesterday (which was gone after a good night’s sleep and the ride this morning).

Popped by the bike shop to pick up supplies. Sadly their choices of Shot Bloks was very, very limited, so I only picked up a couple. I’ll have to pop back out somewhere else to pick up more. Still haven’t been able to try the margarita flavored ones, but I wasn’t too keen on the pina colada ones. They were okay, nowhere near as gross as vanilla clif shots were, but not a favorite. I prefer the black cherry or cran-razz flavors so far. Oh, and the bike shop was able to take my old bike tubes to recycle them. Yay! Better than dumping them in a landfill, for sure. Glad I remember to take them with me to work this morning in anticipation of the shopping trip.

Swim tomorrow, then maybe dinner in town with BC and some friends. Have to behave as I have a long ride on Saturday, around 4 hours or so.

Clearly feeling more than a little bit of volunteer burnout today. I know it’ll pass, but at the moment I could take the three organizations I’m currently doing work for and happily pitch them all directly into the Potomac. I think this always happens the days I have meetings at the cult co-op. Those can be so incredibly contentious, over the smallest things, that they’re frequently quite unpleasant to sit through. Makes me wish I had already picked up how to knit, as at least that could occupy my hands while I listened to them drone on.

Got to see BC last night for dinner and a horror flick. Whoever set up the arms at the theater so they could be pulled up between the seats and out of the way is a genius, as that made cuddling during the movie all the better.

And to whoever decided to start the as-yet-unreleased new Nicole Kidman flick with images of a space shuttle breaking up on reentry, may you die a horrible, painful death. Like any of us needed to see that happening again. Watching the first shuttle accident live on TV in Junior High was bad enough, having to help with post-cleanup efforts from the second one in the early 2000s was worse. Seeing it on the screen was not pleasant. So, yeah, thanks for the memories, asshat.

Oh, and the smell of pot and incense is back. I’ve placed a call with the local police lieutenant to see if they can do anything about it if I report the smell when it’s back. Not entirely hopeful, but wanted to know my options there. I’ve had it with these folks, and with this smell.

To date I have avoided doing charity sporting events, but this year I have committed to ride in the 2007 TEAM Food & Friends cycling weekend, July 12-15th. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to do the century (100 mile) ride as part of the weekend; I’ve certainly been riding enough this year for it!

Food & Friends is a nonprofit organization that prepares, packages and delivers more than 3,000 meals a day, free of charge, to clients throughout the DC metropolitan area. One of the main reasons I signed up for this was that while Food & Friends began as a service to deliver meals to people with HIV/AIDS, and that’s still a central part of their mission, over the years they’ve been able to expand that service to include men, women and children who face a variety of illnesses such as breast and prostate cancer, and other life-challenging illnesses. That mission is critical to support providing three meals a day to more than 1,300 people, six days a week.

Please support my efforts to raise $1900 by making a tax-deductible donation today. Every penny raised goes directly to help the clients of Food & Friends.

So far I’ve raised $545 thanks to these generous contributors:

Thom
Jerry
Joe
Greg
Richard

Thank you very much!!!

I hope you will also contribute. If you do donate, please let me know, since I won’t necessarily know the real names of folks who read this.

Want to see something gross? Take apart, for the first time ever, a mouse (trackball, actually) that you’ve been using for well over a decade, in order to clean it.

Yuck.

A vignette from the weekend, completely out of context:

Me: This is really fun.
BC: I’ve got no complaints.
Me: Good, ’cause if you did I’ve got a ball gag over there that would stop that right quick.
*pause, look at each other*
*both of us dissolve into giggles*

Words just can’t do justice to the mash-up video posted over here at UltraSparky. Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon meet Unk. I love it.

So, got a call today that the other dresser had arrived at the store. They were able to deliver it this evening, but not to assemble it but could come back to assemble it Saturday. Ha. No, thanks, just deliver it and I’ll assemble it. And you know, it was really easy to assemble, especially if you’ve ever put anything together by Ikea. Basic screws with those little turn-tighteners all over, plus putting on the rails for the drawers. The drawers themselves were fully assembled in their respective boxes, meaning only the frame had to be put together. Even with just one person, it was a snap.

Of course it helps that I have a decent electric screwdriver/drill, too.

So now all my clothes are put away. Huzzah. Still need to figure out the exact arrangement of the stuff in there, but that’s not a big deal. I’m just glad to have both pieces in and my clean clothes put away.

Tomorrow I pop up to my YWCA to (I hope) finalize the arrangements to join the Masters’ Swimming program there. Depends on whether I find the acquatics director or not. Might have to pop up there during the day, perhaps at lunch, in order to catch him in.

Get to see the crush on Saturday. I suppose I can give him initials now, since this seems to be here for the nonce. Still crushing. Still all silly. Still loving it. So we’ll call him BC. Really looking forward to more time with him. We just seem to fit well together. Not finishing one another’s sentences, and enough differences to keep things interesting, but enough commonalities (it so helps that he’s also a runner) to get along really well.

Hazy morning in DC. Got up for my bike ride, headed out. Had a ton of people out this morning, most of whom were in the ‘fast’ pace group. I had volunteered to lead the slower pace group, so off we went. The ride itself was going great until we got around to do a last short loop of the park. As we entered the one-way section we discovered quickly that the parks service had just turned on the sprinkler system. It’s a big pipe thing they’ve only recently set up, which pipes water in from the Potomac and sprays it over the cherry trees and grass. I thought they were done with it, as it was partially disassembled this weekend, but they’ve hooked it all back up. So for a couple minutes we dodged streams (where we could) and did a lot of laughing as we rode through the sprinklers. Thankfully, while they were getting the back side set up they hadn’t started pumping yet, so we got to dry off a little on the way back up.

At least that answered the question as to whether or not to do a 2nd short loop at the end.

Got up, no exercise planned for the morning, so I got down to the dry cleaners, picked up shirts, dropped off two pair of pants to get hemmed (finally hemming the Nasty Pig jeans I got at MAL), came back, made coffee, went down to the office to check some folders for the cult co-op, then up to get ready to head to work.

Work was work. No biggie.

Swam after work. Was trying to concentrate on relaxing in the water, paying attention to form, but not speed. That was going well until about half to two-thirds of the way through the swim when some guy did a cannonball into the lane beside me. Thankfully I was resting at the edge, but that was a bit of a shock. Most folks are polite and just slip into the end of the pool. He then proceeded to see if he could single-handedly recreate water conditions on the Chesapeake Bay. During a wind storm. Not the most graceful swimmer I’ve ever seen. I kept wanting to point out that you’re supposed to slip your hand into the water, not slap the top of the pool on your way in, but instead tried to continue concentrating on the zen feeling. It mostly worked, despite slappy in the next lane. Overall a good swim.

Still nicely burnt from this weekend’s biking and running. Both Saturday and Sunday I got started late, so was out in way more sun than I usually am, with the usual results. It’s cute – I have a classic farmer’s tan half-way down the upper arm from the bike ride, then a separate set of lines on the shoulders where I wore a tank-style shirt to run on Sunday. Not too bad, save for carrying the bike bag to work and the gym today. Ouch.
A brief bit of laundry tonight, and getting stuff ready for the ride tomorrow.

The crush is still, well, just awesome. We’re both still all googly-eyed and silly and all of that and it’s quite fun. We just seem to fit well together. I think I’ve seen more movies in the theater in the past couple months now than I’ve seen that way in years.
Tomorrow it’s off to Dupont for the usual hair cut, then up to Adams Morgan to put bikes together with the club. Some folks are running a kids’ triathlon camp this summer for DC Parks and Rec and we got a bunch of bikes donated for it, so we’re getting together to assemble the bikes for the kids. Should be fun.

Evidently I needed extra sleep. I didn’t set an alarm for this morning, figuring I’d get up somewhere near my normal time. I think I did, but went right back to bed until around 8:30. Sinful. But it felt good. As a result I didn’t get out on the bike until around 10, so finished up the planned ride around 12:40ish, not quite 40 miles. The ride itself went well. No close calls with small children this time (went out about a month ago with a friend who ended up running over a small child who turned suddenly into his path with no space to dodge her; thankfully aside from a little cut on him, neither were seriously hurt). Only had to yell at one person (“Watch out!”) on the zoo property as he came at me head on while looking at birds off the trail rather than where he was going, and otherwise folks were behaving as I expected them to.

I find that I dislike riding the capitol crescent trail once you cross into Maryland. I’m sure the DC side would be just as bad were it as densely populated, but there’s a definite uptick in strollers, idiots wearing head phones and other obstacles. Heart rate goes up in such situations (stress much?), but so be it.

Debating a planned swim, I think I might be better off doing that tomorrow evening. The rest of the evening is set aside for le crush and a cheesy movie & dinner. Until then, it’s time to make coffee. And gather fruit.