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

Training, that is. Ran and swam yesterday, biked this morning, running a long run tomorrow. Definitely feeling it tonight; almost didn’t do laundry as planned, but managed to get off my butt and get it done (yay for clean sheets). It’s a good kind of tired though – good, honest physical exhaustion from exercise.

Work’s nuts, which seems par for the course these days. I wonder if all political transitions are this crazy or if the economy being in the crapper has substantially added to it. I’d prefer not to find out for a while. What would be nice is to stop stress eating (why couldn’t I be one of those people who can’t eat when they get stressed instead of the opposite? silly body).

Long run planned for the morning, first in a while. Was prepping things for it tonight (water bottle, etc.) and I think I need to hit Conte’s or the like and pick up nutrition this weekend – down to two gels and two things of shot blocks. Not enough to make it through training or the two races, by a long shot.

Cold’s still here, but better. Not feeling the need for quite so much sudafed to keep the sinuses in check today, more like just the normal allergies dosage. Let myself sleep in, and now I’m sipping coffee from my SF Zoo mug this morning and missing my boys out in San Francisco. And as much as I love my apartment and my neighborhood, it’s times like this when I wish I’d bought a place up in northwest so it were easier to get out & about to places for things like “food”.

Brought some work home this weekend, so that’s what I’ll be doing most of the day. The newest political in my chain of command came from the private sector (with no gubm’nt experience), so I think his expectations don’t quite match the reality of being a federal attorney. He’ll learn. But in the meantime I’m going to try and redo this memo such that it doesn’t suck completely. 17 pages? I don’t think so. 5. Maybe. Note to field counsel: footnotes and glossing are your friends, especially with a busy management chain.

Anyway, off to go give y’all more gubm’nt than you’re willing to pay for.

For some reason the reintegration back into real life has been a bit difficult. There was the inevitable backup of work at the BGA (“vacation is its own punishment”), breaking things off with someone I’d been dating, adjustment back to east coast time (which means I have to try and fight my normal nature to be a night owl), and just doing the little things like unpacking everything and putting it all away, sorting mail, grocery shopping, etc. Still haven’t done the grocery shopping, so I’ve been subsisting on ever-shrinking supplies of staples from the freezer and cabinet. Not a bad thing, it’s good to clear those out every now and again, but not perhaps the healthiest meals I could be eating.

One thing I’ve been doing to integrate some of our practices from DLOC has been to post “appreciations” over on FaceBook. Just little things to acknowledge those things I’m appreciative of for whatever reason. It does help to make one more mindful of what’s going on in your life, which has made it a useful tool for me.

Past that I’m trying to find my motivation to get back to tri training for my last two races this season, and finish up my commitment with the club’s volunteer work this month. “The Pile” of books has grown since coming back, including some re-reading of classics I feel the need to reexamine in light of the DLOC and SF experiences (The Ethical Slut, the Tao Te Ching/Dao De Jing). I’m about 1/2 an inch from finishing sock #2 on pair #2, and I have another pull ball ready to go on the next set, but the one sock’s been sitting here unloved as I try to work myself back into life.

Picked up another bike yesterday. I wanted something a bit better for zipping around town than my mountain bike (which is a good bike, but not the best for commuting). I went in a slightly different direction, a single gear, and put “campus pedals” on it (clipless on one side, regular pedal platform on the other), so I don’t have to throw on bike shoes just to zip somewhere if I wish to bike out. My goal there is to bike about more to things in town, and sweat be damned. It even came with a kickstand! I feel so retro with a kickstand on a bike – I don’t think I’ve had one of those since high school. With the bike, though, comes the last big purchase for the year, I think. Need to back off and pay off the remnants of vacation and the bike and plan for the end of the year and Giftmas. And to plan for the next body electric workshop next year, of course.

It’s hard to fully describe the changes wrought by DLOC, but I’ll be working on them this year.

Been loving being here in the bay area the past two days. I’ve worked on my tolerance for beer, wandered around in town, run into friends on the street, and gotten to meet several folks I know, at least one for the first time. Went dancing last night at the local every-other-week bear get-together. Stayed out late yesterday. Crashed early Friday. Eaten lots and lots of good, inexpensive dim sum.

And I can tell I’ve relaxed considerably because I actually have fingernails and cuticles again (I tend to chew them off when I’m stressed, and so they’ve not much been in evidence lately as they’ve been thoroughly taken down at work). Precisely what I’ve needed, and while I’m looking forward to the retreat this week, I’m also very much looking forward to seeing more friends the week after.

It’s reached the point in the year where frozen berries in the morning smoothie are no longer just a tasty addition (fruit! vitamins! flavor!), but a necessity (cold!). Better tasting than adding ice cubes, but still good at bringing the temperature down, post-workout.

I’m trying hard to be stoic about the fact that I live in an older building with a combined either-or air system that hasn’t yet changed over to cooling, despite 90 degree temps over the weekend and the next two days. I’m trying, but I daresay not succeeding terribly well. Let’s hear it for unseasonably warm temps after unseasonably cool temps. Not that I’ve run the heat in the past month, but hey. It’s made sleep somewhat elusive, as it does every year when this happens (and it does happen every year, which is why I’m trying to be stoic; I’ve had to deal with it for a decade now, so you’d think it would be easier). Hopefully the run this morning and a swim this evening will help with that tonight.

Speaking of the run, on my run this morning I saw: 1. lots of pollen; 2. the sun rise over the Washington Channel; and 3. a Decepticon sticker on the hood of a parked car.

I have a love-hate relationship with pancakes. Love to eat them, hate to cook them. Or, rather, I always feel inadequate when cook them. I’m just not terribly good at the whole flipping them over part. At least not when cooking more than one in the pan, which is a necessity if you’re ever going to get done in time to actually eat the things while they’re still hot. This morning’s batch ended up with two cakes that only made it half way over before they fell off the spatula.

Part of it this morning was a new spatula I’d picked up this week, one coated in silicon rather than the usual plastic ones I’ve had. I discovered that the plastic ones were melting on the end (ewww!), and I really didn’t want to suck in more plastic than I probably already do. I’m pleased to report that the silicon spatula did not melt. So far. Even if I’m still not fully up on the whole flipping thing with it yet. Maybe I just need a larger pan. I definitely need a new pan; the one I have now is cheap, and slightly warped (I doubt that helps much with the flipping).

But even slightly folded, the pancakes were still quite yummy.

Another reason it’s good to keep a clean kitchen: so when you drop 1/2 the coffee you just ground, and don’t have enough to grind more, you can reasonably assume you won’t make yourself sick as you scoop it off the counter and throw it in the pot anyway.

I must be mellowing in my old age; I went to a Superbowl party at a neighbor’s apartment, actually watched large segments of the game, and didn’t hate it. Made veggie chili which was well received, even if it was a last minute “OMG, I totally forgot that I need to cook something for the party and what can I scramble together out of the cabinets” type affair. And hey, I got rid of some of the five gazillion tomatoes I have in my freezer courtesy Mom & Dad’s garden.

Not looking forward to another week of 9 am meetings, but you do what you’ve got to do. At least I have a core training class to look forward to tomorrow evening after work.

Despite my declarations that I would be holed up inside my apartment until Wednesday morning, I did wander out into DC today to grab lunch with Chris up in Columbia Heights. Our first choice of restaurant was packed to the gills with a line out the door (at 1 pm, mind you), and the second choice had a 45 minute wait. We took the 2nd choice and zipped over to Best Buy to waste some time (setting a phone timer so we would know when to wander back). Got in relatively quickly after we returned, and had a perfectly nice lunch (not-quite-screaming-but-just-occasionally-fussy-baby notwithstanding).

The city is just abuzz. I haven’t seen it this packed in ages, and everyone is just full of this energy surrounding the inauguration, it’s wild. The Metro was busy, but not insane. Lots of “Is this our stop? This is our stop! Quick, get off the train!” type conversations going on, but for the most part folks were getting tickets and getting through the stalls pretty quickly and not being obnoxious about getting in and out of the cars and generally not being in the way. I am, however, glad I’ll not be going anywhere near Metro tomorrow. As busy as it was today, with 8 car trains and all of them relatively busy, tomorrow will promise to be a madhouse.

I’m glad I went out today, it was neat to see all these folks who are so excited to be here.

Had Chris over today to help me cull my clothing collection. 20-odd T-shirts went out, as well as polos, button downs, and others. Much space was made in the drawers and in the closet. All in all, four paper grocery bags got filled with neatly folded clothes. Also found some items I shall offer to my brother for his daughters (blankets our grandmother made, etc.) so perhaps they’ll get use rather than taking up space in my closet which could be better used.

As an enticement to come play fashion critic, I offered lunch. The menu, from The Voluptuous Vegan, was pomme frites, a roasted garlic and herbes de provence aiolï, citrus and cucumber salad, and a provençal stew with couscous. Was tasty, though the pomme frites could have been better (they kept sticking to the paper, making it difficult to turn them when needed).

Finally cleaned up all the dishes (thank heavens I was cleaning as I went along or I’d never have had room for it all), and inventoried and bagged the culled clothing. Relaxing now with a glass of the pinot grigio I opened for use in the stew, and enjoying not having any more dishes to clean. It did push home the need to replace the blinkin’ dishwasher, though – doing that many by hand was trying, and not good for my hands (yay eczema).