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

I cannot help but think the four men sitting in front of Congress today were quite full of shit. All of this while the Congress still hasn’t even funded the federal government for the next fiscal year, and can’t seem to decide on how they’re going to temporarily fund us, and for how long. This is, as I’ve often said, no way to run a government.

Long, busy day at work doing things I can’t talk about. Whee. I’ll mention the old adage about not wanting to see laws or sausages being made and leave it at that. And it’s going to start early tomorrow, too. Whee.

Got to see Dean, Richard and Gene for dinner this evening, which was quite nice. I find myself almost wishing for Metro rides across town as it gives me time to sit/stand and knit. I think I got a good 1/2 inch to an inch done on the hat I’m working on now. The downside is that my foot’s now sore again after walking around.

Tomorrow evening should be nice and quiet, with more needed straightening to do, but otherwise nothing is on the schedule, and I’m looking forward to that.

That was a surprise. Came home, put the bike away, loaded up laundry, was heading out to go do it when I looked at the carpet in the dining area where something was missing, but I couldn’t pinpoint what. Then I saw the manuals for the stove and microwave, but not the appliances themselves. Quick doubletake to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, then zipped into the kitchen to see the new appliances in place. And all of my crap shoved all over the place because they didn’t warn me they were coming so I didn’t clear the area for them. Oy.

But hey, they’re in!

Of course, I didn’t actually get a chance to use them tonight because I was also doing laundry, and getting rid of my old desk, so by the time I got done and could sit down to figure out how to work the microwave I was starving, so just had leftover potato salad. And collapsed into my chair to actually sit down finally (after cleaning some of the countertops, of course, and putting away dishes, and putting dirty ones in the washer, etc., etc., etc.).

Got up and biked this morning. After snapping off another presta valve stem in the pump. Grrrrr. Stupid design, both the pump and presta valves in general. But the ride itself went well, cool, and gradually sped up each round, cutting each 5.whatever mile loop by 15 seconds. And now I’m ready to collapse – I’m not used to getting up at 5:30 any more, though I hope to get back to that this week.

Got to see JT this evening for dinner out in Ballston. The new redo of the old Tara Thai there, well, fails. It’s obvious they’re trying to turn it into a more clubby place and that just won’t work well there. Oh well. The bartender was nice, and the drinks were cheap ($2.50 for a draft beer during happy hour – 5-8). Not sure we’ll be going back any time soon, though.

Still have assorted little things to go through before I’ll have the room entirely together in the new configuration, but it’s pretty much there now. I can get the bikes in and out (a major consideration – they’re stored on the balcony and I have to be able to get them to/from the front door easily). The room would be easier to configure without needing that pathway, but it works this way.

Going to try and get up and cycle in the morning. Went out Saturday for an hour and it was great. I’m cleared to cycle all I want, so I need to be taking advantage of that, even as it cools off outside.

Limited email today. My inbox at work hasn’t looked that good since, oh, early February 2004 (i.e., right after I started there)? Evidently we had a “catastrophic cascading hardware failure” in our network stuff which killed off all email access. Whee! Still feel sorry for the CIO types. Explaining this all to management will not be fun. Especially since as of now we still have no crackberry service.

The peanut thing in the slow-cooker worked pretty well. I added water, thinking there wasn’t enough liquid, but it seems there actually was, after the veggies sweat out and shrunk down. So it was “stewier” than expected, but still good. It’s definitely been worth it to have dinner waiting for me when I get home. Now I have a bunch in the freezer for later, again, easier than trying to come up with fresh food every evening, and better than processed stuff as well.

Otherwise more splicer killing in Bioshock, and now it’s zombie movie time, before I crash.

I will say this about the economic news: at least it’s stopped people from commenting on the other inanities which the two campaigns keep spitting out. Though I’d not wish this nonsense on us any day of the week. Re-regulate the markets, tax the hell out of the salaries these fuckers made while screwing the rest of us over and bringing ‘value’ to their companies (which are now defaulting on everything they did), and to the extent necessary, let the market ‘correct’ their actions without bailing their asses out. They so love the market, then live by its rules and don’t expect the rest of us to bail out your poor choices.

I feel very, very sorry for our IT folks today. Our network connections (email, internal drives) went down sometime right after lunch, and stayed down all day (and, from the lack of email on my work crackberry tonight, looks to still be down). Not fun, and I’m sure they were sweating buckets trying to get it all back up.

In the meantime, with no access to pretty much anything I need to actually write things, I worked for a brief while on a presentation I have to give next Friday (before that program seized up and refused to play nice, thankfully after I’d saved my work to the desktop), and then I ended up leaving early along with most of my coworkers since there wasn’t a hell of a lot we could do. I played a lot of Bioshock once I got home (needed to just kill time & monters), and enjoyed the fruits of the slow-cooker’s labor all day, a garlicky chicken stew, which needed a touch more salt and a lot more garlic; eight cloves was not enough to make something ‘garlicky’ in my book.

Cleaned up the slow-cooker and prepped veggies for another batch of stew tomorrow, this time a peanut sauce, after I’d bagged up today’s stew for the freezer. Saved one serving for tomorrow’s lunch.

Finally updated WordPress this evening, both on the main CountFour home page and on the /legalmoose site. Got tired of the constant “a new version is out, update today!” warnings that have been there for a while now. Also popped in some more plug-ins, to make viewing the site friendlier for mobile browsers (thank you for that example, Brian), and to be truly obnoxious and make Twitter go off when I post new things here as well (thank you Brian and Fredo). Put in a new cross-poster for LJ which seems to work better than it had before (since my preferred one stopped working a couple of iterations of WP ago), even if the text box is a bit much. I suspect that’s editable, but I’m not going to worry about it tonight.

And with that, I’m off to bed.

Arrived at SFO with no hiccups. We did have one weird wing dip & over-correction coming in over the Bay, but otherwise the flight was quite nice. Got an exit row seat on the aisle, and managed to get 2/3 of the way through another hat (navy this time) before we touched down.

It’s somewhere in the low 90s here in Oakland where I’m staying with Dean, which actually means it’s warmer here than it has been in DC for pretty much the entire month of August. Hanging out shirtless on the deck has been nice, as was the much-needed post-lunch nap.

We’re debating options for this evening, but I expect to see my friend Mark tomorrow for breakfast, then catch Ray to hang out some as well. Rice is out of town, but there are certain other people whom I shall have to take more aggressive measures to bug soon if I’m to catch them. Not to mention someone else who is here visiting. And of course my lone family member who’s on this side of the planet. I think a good night out at a bar or two tomorrow is in order!

Chatted briefly with my parents. I forgot to tell them I was going out of town. Whoops. Was fun to chat with them about the job search stuff and catch them up on how that’s going.

Until then, we’re going to hunt down some food, and perhaps a bar later this evening.

Windy morning for a bike ride. Lots of clouds, definitely needed the lights on the front & back of the bike to keep myself visible (you’d think the big red, white & blue jersey would do it, but no…). The wind was actually a nice challenge – enough of a tail wind on the one side to help a bit, and enough of a head wind on the other to challenge me to keep my cadence up and moving forward. I think it was a NE wind, so it was never directly in my face or behind me, but just enough to make the ride more challenging than normal. Got up to 26.8 mph (compared with a high of 23 mph Sunday), so the tailwind was definitely a factor.

Otherwise this morning was scrambled. I forgot to turn on the hot water for coffee, and didn’t get ready in time to prep the veggie chili fixin’s and get them into the crock pot, so it looks like I’ll be making it the old fashioned way over the stove this evening.

Well, despite my irritation over the non-work the cult co-op maintenance folks did on my unit today, I actually had a pretty good evening. Ordered in Thai with a friend, did laundry, and we watched Stardust, which I’d picked up this past weekend. I’d seen it in the movie theater with BC, but I’m glad I picked up a copy as it’s a very fun and cute little film. Not my usual “bad movie” type of thing, but I do like a little sappiness and silliness on occasion.

Get to see Richard tomorrow for dinner and a good look at the living room and some possibilities I’m considering. I value his opinion, and I think it’ll be useful to have someone like him look at what I’m considering before I go nuts.

Just checked the TSP web site and it’s showing that the loan I took out to get rid of my remaining credit card debt is now paid off in full. Sweet! One less payment each month, even if it was an automatic deduction. More money in the pocket is a good thing, even if it’s just going to go to more student loan reduction. Bit by bit it disappears.

Hopefully I’m going to get out of town for Labor Day. Leave is approved, waiting to hear on accommodations, then I’ll purchase the tickets tomorrow evening if all goes well.

My training is competing with my social life, and for now the social life is winning. And I’m okay with that.

Been out several nights this week, with tonight no exception. Had dinner with MG last night, and managed to run into Bug randomly on the Metro on the way home. Tonight it’s a wine bar to help a friend celebrate a new job/promotion. Fun stuff, and I’m glad for the chances to get out & about.

As I posted earlier I finished up the latest hat I was working on, thanks to a ton of waiting time at my hair salon. My stylist is on her usual month-plus summer vacation to head home to Indonesia, so I had whoever was there. Apart from clippering my hair too high (I look like a 12 y/o whose mom took him to the barber shop & said, “don’t give him a high & tight,” so the barber didn’t. barely), he was also double booked, so I was quite late meeting MG for dinner.

Work was a lot more productive today than it has been of late. A couple of looming deadlines helped, but so has the getting out & letting loose.

Heck of a lot easier to run eight and a half miles at 70 degrees and relatively moderate humidity this morning than it was in the mid-80s with high humidity last Wednesday evening. Just sayin’.

I think I’m finally beginning to appreciate sports drinks while out running and biking. It helps that I’m finally training in a decent heart rate zone and not running too high to take in nutrition. Ever run so fast you felt like you were going to puke? Well, run just below that and you won’t puke, but you can’t take in nutrition, either – your stomach won’t process it. And sports drinks tended to make me feel like I was over-full. Moderated intake, while still mostly drinking water, seems to be working. Which is something I needed to learn, to ensure I take in enough calories while out on long runs and rides.

In other food news, I’m no longer keeping a vegan diet, nor a vegetarian one. As with the original decision to go vegan, this was about my health and what I needed for my diet. This isn’t that big a deal, so I’d appreciate it if folks would refrain from smart ass comments about the change back to omnivory.