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

Finally got a chance to taste/use the little Cliff Shot Bloks I’d picked up at the Cherry Blossom expo, and I’m hooked. It was so much easier on the bike to fish one of those puppies out and have something to actually chew on, rather than having to tear open a container of goo one handed and then worry about where to put the little container when you’re done. Definitely going to be the calories of choice for the bike portion of my upcoming race (since I don’t seem to do well with sports drinks when exercising). Used them on a nice 2o-ish mile ride this morning.

Then this afternoon I swam, did 3 500 yard repeats after a long warm up. It went well, so I’m feeling okay about the swim portion of the race. The bike will be tough, but definitely doable, and the run, if this calf doesn’t get better this week, will be torture itself, but overall I think I’ll survive it.

Managed to get up to Dupont for lunch with a friend, and back down to the Y for the swim and then home again before the rain really hit. It’s going nicely now, a good, steady, relatively light rain. Enough to keep the kids indoors, not so nasty that I have to close the balcony doors. Is a nice, quiet counterpoint to my tapping on the keyboard. Should take the nice, quiet time to do some more cleaning, but I’m feeling cleaned out after yesterday’s straightening and getting the chairs unpacked and set up.

It looked as if I had killed the Scarecrow in my living room.

My dining room chairs arrived today, and inside the boxes they were padded with this paper wrapping that included some sort of straw stuffing that, no matter how careful I was, got all over everything. Whenever you moved the padding, it fell everywhere, along with the twine that I had to cut off the outside. Even tried to clog up the vacuum cleaner when I went after it that way. But in the end, I have dining room chairs, and can finally sit somewhere other than the couch to eat.

Otherwise it was a calm day. I got rid of the last of the donatables from the old apartment, got hissed at by Boris after I clipped his claws, claimed my flours & other baking sundries, forgot to get my mail, and had a nice time seeing Richard. Took the cart to the grocery store, hauled back some sundries for making some fun things (marinara, anyone?) and some more staples. I’m gradually rebuilding a kitchen, now I just need to cook some more. Tempeh gets made tomorrow – I’ve been craving a good rice dish, and since the rice cooker was among the things reclaimed from the old place, I can make some again. Without picking up the phone, even.

Long bike ride planned for tomorrow, then off to whatever Arena stage is playing at the moment. Might have to talk Lawrence into Jenny’s for dinner, stick down here in the ‘hood.

The boxes are gone.

I just packed up the last of the empty boxes, including the ones from the just-set-up dining table. I have space in the back of the living room (a.k.a. the dining area), there’s no boxes sitting around, and the psychic relief of having it all gone is considerable.

Of course, now that the table’s set up, now I want to rearrange the room entirely. Move the desk around, shift the storage unit. Thinking the table should go as a console behind the couch. Shift the black bookshelf around. Generally see how better to set the room up.

But man, it feels good to have those boxes gone.

I hate when I overschedule.

I’m normally fairly good with putting things in the two different calendars I maintain (work and home), but I forgot to put in an after-work-work-function (aka happy hour with the other young attorneys) and scheduled dinner with a friend this evening as well. Given the relative positions of the friendships and what not, I’m choosing dinner over HH, but I hated having to spill the beans that I’d overscheduled and was not making HH (even with the real and good excuse that I have to run and get my new glasses after work today). Ah well.

Been in a mild funk the last two or three days with a lack of sleep, general feeling of pessimism, and dealing with the last bits of the relationship with CT (a handover of some things I left at his apartment). Not terribly fun, but I know it’s a temporary condition, just have to keep telling myself that.

The dining room table arrives today, as does a stool/side table for the balcony. The chairs are on backorder until the middle of the month, but that just gives me time to clear the remaining junk out of the way. Once the table’s set up I’ll have a chance to look at various designs of couches I’ve been looking at, to see if any of them would work in the space. For the most part the dining room table will be in the folded mode against the wall, so I’ve got some space for a couch in front of it, but I’ll need to actually see the space, as well as measure, etc.

Work’s nuts, with several things bouncing around. Thankfully the bosses are understanding since they’re bouncing on the same issues (as well as others). Fun stuff (not). Hopefully will settle down soon, but if not, oh well!

Just got out a psuedo contentious meeting of the membership of the cult co-op. We were amending the bylaws, and we just left the meeting room at 11:30, after starting at 8.

This is why I stopped doing city government stuff; I couldn’t take the long meetings late into the night.

It will probably totally kill my chances of being awake enough to run in the morning tomorrow, but we’ll see how that goes. Grrr.

I was out running this morning, about 20 minutes or so in, was rounding one of the three corners around Hains Point, running on the grass, when I passed under some of the many cherry trees there. It was misting lightly, and some last few hardy blossoms were coming down in the rain, falling nicely across the path. Very pretty, very zen, very cool. And then one of the petals found its way into my mouth.

Nothing like spitting out cherry blossom to ruin a mood.

The good run (an hour, no calf pain!) was had despite sleeping in late, having been out late last night tricking. Tried water sports successfully for the first time (had an abortive attempt once before) and I have to say it did absolutely nothing for me. One set of initials checked off the list and in the ‘nah, don’t need to do that any more’ column. Along with that I also fisted the guy, and again I don’t think it does much for me. Is interesting in an itellectual sense (anatomy, displacement, etc.), and a sensual sense (control, texture, etc.), but it’s just not a very sexual act to me, in the sense of turning me on, because it just doesn’t. I won’t rule it out if a partner’s really into it, but I just need to realize that it’s silly to seek it out because it’s just ‘blah’ on the continuum of turn-ons for me.

Other than that I shopped, a lot (Homo Depot, Target, Pearson’s liquors), got a lot of things for the house, and generally got my money’s worth out of the rental car I had for the weekend. Have a fresh case of wine, replenished the liquor cabinet, got the aforementioned kitchen sink aerator, and got rid of 99% of the stuff that was left at the old place. Still have to haul off the old Kirby vacuum cleaner, and get my flour and stuff, but the big stuff that was being donated is now gone, which I’m sure Richard is glad of.

I just performed my first home repair: I changed out the aerator on the kitchen sink. The previous owner had some sort of water filtration system hooked up at some point, which was long since defunct. The aerator and attachment were still there, however, so I wanted to change it out for something a tad less decrepit looking. So, off to Homo Depot this weekend to get that and a few other things for the house.

Well, just found my plyers this evening, so I ripped off the old aerator and I was appalled at the amount of crud built up inside the old one. No wonder I was getting crap for water pressure in the kitchen, nothing could get out amongst all the gunk that was built up in the aerator! Yuck, yuck, yuck. Had to go run off and grab my old toothbrush (that I use for scrubbing small spaces) and clean the thing off thoroughly to get all the crud off the thing before I could put the new one on. Thankfully it all came off quickly, and the new aerator screwed on pretty easily.

Not bad for a first repair, but yuck on all the crud that was discovered.

Nothing quite like having your hair stylist ask if you want to have her trim your eyebrows. This after a morning spent plucking the odd long hairs out of my ears. Ah, the joys of aging.

In happier news, I biked a couple loops around Hains Point this morning on the tri bike, nice 40 minute ride (seriously, seriously have to get more water bottles and soon). After getting ready I decided it was time to try biking into work. Commute time, door to door: 10 minutes. 7:40 of that was actually riding (1.3 miles), the rest was getting down in the elevator, locking up the bike and getting up to my office.

It’s hard not to gloat about a 10 minute commute. Oh, who am I kidding, I’m gloating. Full-on, doing the happy Snoopy dance gloating. Gloating with my shaggy eyebrows.

Having food at home is a good thing. Cooked yesterday (just some frozen pasta & sauce) for the first time, and made a good salad this evening. Starting to feel like home, finally, with some food in the fridge & cabinet (and my belly).

Work’s been odd this week, with absolutely no one in the office on Monday when I got in, which is really, really bizarre as I’m usually the very last person to get there in the morning. Easter Monday, go fig. And otherwise it’s just been a strange mix of busy and not-busy. And of course the last place I want to be is at work, preferring to be at home getting things together. Whee.

Calf is still okay, so I’m hopeful it’ll be okay when I run tomorrow or Friday (haven’t decided if I want to run or bike tomorrow). Swam this evening, pretty good swim, and not too busy in the pool, which was a pleasant change from the mornings. I still want to check out the two closer pools, but if an evening swim would be less crowded, that might be a better option (since I do like the YWCA facility overall).

Took my first run in the new place this morning, my first run in about two weeks. I was a tad nervous – the reason I’d not been running was because of chronic calf strain so had taken the time off to let it heal up. I had originally planned to bike this morning, but it’s a tad cool out, I didn’t feel like bundling up for a bike ride, and with the on-and-off rain we’re getting here it was easier to just throw on running clothes and get going.

Ran down to the waterfront, along the marina, up to L’Enfant Promenade and across the Case Bridge (aka the 12th Street Bridge). Made it to the other side of the bridge and was over East Potomac Park, but turned around there (at 15 minutes in) and didn’t enter the park itself. The run was nice, my calf is feeling okay thus far, and I stretched it thoroughly after I got back. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, since I am supposed to do this little 1/2 ironman race in less than two months, and not being able to run would be a slight impediment to that goal.

This is my first day back at work after the move, so I get to see what the commute to work is like. I’m walking, even in the rain, so it’ll be interesting to see how long it takes, especially after I just ran most of the route I’ll take to work. I sense somehow that I’ll manage to bike up there more often than not, just because I’m too impatient to deal with the walking pace. But not this morning; this morning I walk.