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

I thought I was going to have to rip my speed sensor apart and replace the battery (and totally void the warranty by doing it myself, but hey). Thankfully I discovered it was just out of alignment and needed to be adjusted back into position. Yay for geeky, obsessive measurements.

In other news™, while the building did come in and plug the holes in the wall today (finally!), I’m still getting the incense smell here. Yuck. I really hope they can do something about these jokers, this is beyond stupid.

Really good ride this morning. My newbies weren’t there on time (did see and pass one on my third and last loop), so I decided today was a day to practice riding in the aero position, down on the aero bars. Speedier that way, and I needed the practice time in that position. The ride went well, did 3 long loops and spent the vast majority of my time in the position with no pain in the back or neck. When you’re first learning to ride in that position those are two of the most common complaints – your neck hurts, or your lower back hurts (or both). Been doing back strengthening exercises to keep that in check, and with the neck, well, it’s a matter of spending more time in the position and learning not to keep your neck craned back to look directly forward. Not the easiest thing when one wears glasses, but it’s trainable. Now I need to do more tricep exercises, as those were the weak spot this morning and got a little sore at parts in the ride.

Decided I need to do a brick workout (BRICK = Bike, Run, ICK!) this Saturday since I’ve not done any since, oh, my last triathlon? Short one, since my race the following weekend is a short one. Just need to review that feeling of “are my legs going to be lead or gold today.”

Had a few dates lately. Taking things slowly (not hard, given my schedule), and trying not to rush into anything.

The building finally seems to be moving on the incense/pot smoke issue from the unit below mine. Per an email I got forwarded to me today they don’t have keys on file for them and have to have them there before they can go in (go fig – if you’re doing illegal things you don’t want someone just barging in). They’re scheduled now to go in and check it out next week. Maintenance has also asked if management can take some sort of action against them for indoor air pollution. In any case, I just want the stench not to make it into my unit (or, better yet, not to get made in the first place).

So, I’ve finally started training for this triathlon season. Sort of.

Ran this morning, since I didn’t get in a single run this weekend. Didn’t sleep well Thursday or Friday nights, so was too wiped. Friday it was the asshole downstairs neighbors and their incense again. I left a very ugly email for management about not getting that fixed yet. They of course did not come into the apartment today to do anything to the remaining hole in the wall that’s letting this crap in. Someone’s getting an ugly phone call tomorrow.

Anyway, ran this morning, swam this evening. Pool was mega-crowded. One of the few times I’ve had to circle swim at the Y, which always throws off the pacing of a workout for me. The other two folks in the lane were a tad slower than I was, but not too far off. Gave me some time to rest before heading back out. Was an okay swim.

Plan is to get up and bike with the club in the morning, provided it’s not raining.

Should definitely sleep well tonight.

Still have to write up the race report from the previous weekend. Oh, and I signed up for a 10k in two weeks. Because I’m insane. And didn’t have a race in May yet. Though I have a friend looking for a 5k in the area because he’s never done a running race and I said I’d do one with him.

What else? Work was nuts today. We had field counsel in from all over the country and I got to meet some of them in person finally. Otherwise I was buried in my office writing up stuff to go the uber-boss to tell him why we don’t think we have a legal problem with someone another BGA claims is a legal problem. Whee. That and trying to pry more information out of yet another BGA. At least they’re paying me well now.

Mixed messages and missed texts ended up scuttling Saturday plans, so was relatively good and quiet Saturday evening. Biked with my newbies Sunday. Made plans for dinner with a friend on Thursday. The same missed connection from Saturday seems to be missing making plans for this week as well. Oh well, his loss. Plans made for this upcoming Saturday to go to, of all things, an amusement park. Only riding the rollercoasters if they’re not too big. As Bug can attest to, I’m not a big fan. Should be a trip.

My sunglasses broke this morning; ear piece came off. Thankfully I have an eyedoctor appointment on Monday (along with the dentist – double whammy), so I’ll be able to either fix these or order a new set. Also have to get new regular lenses, I’m sure. The ones I have now must not have gotten the scratch-proof coating, they’re all scratched to heck and it’s beyond annoying when around any sort of brightish light. Look forward to being able to read the TiVo screen from my reading chair again. How much we want to bet I’m down another quarter of a diopter again this year?

Otherwise, kicking up the training for my first sprint race the first weekend of June, and settling back into a routine. While includes crashing at not quite 10 pm. Oy.

Oh, and on the removal of The Awakening from Hains Point? Let ’em have it. Maybe fewer tour busses will travel down there now while we’re trying to bike and run.

Early start to the day. Up at 5:30 for a pre-dawn ride with the club. Did an hour, but got smoked early on. The mostly solo ride was good, nonetheless. Hains Point is very well lit, so was no trouble to be out there before the sun came up.

Got home, whipped up a meal for the crock pot, started the dish washer, got cleaned up, biked up to work.

I’m exhausted just thinking about it (and about ready to crash here at 8:30 – will just be up another hour, I think).

No smoke today from the neighbors. Hooray for small things. 😉 Dinner from the crock pot was wonderful. Hot food, no cooking in the evening. Perfect.

Getting rid of the old couch tomorrow evening, yay. Will try to run in the morning as well. Will be cooler than this morning, I think, but easier to run in that than bike.

Have now discovered this is a known issue (at least to the neighbors) because they’ve told me it’s p*t smoke and incense coming from the apartment directly below mine. Shitheads. Methinks we’ll have maintenance in there to ‘fix’ their air unit as well so it’s not spilling this crap into the walls.

I don’t care what you do in your home, until it affects me. Then you’re toast.

Been burning a candle tonight (safely) in the bedroom since I got home to help kill the incense smell. Hopefully they’re not home and won’t be up at all hours again. Evidently they come in and out. Management will get an earfull in the morning, especially if this is a known problem.

It’s a good thing I normally bike commute, and thus had an extra pair of pants in my office to replace the ones that got soaked on my walk to work this morning. Whee.

Gorgeous day, after the rain ended. Slept for crap last night, though, so a rest day for me. Had a cult co-op meeting tonight which was going well until the issue of discriminatory pricing came up at the end (we charge less for seniors to use the fitness center, even though we’re all supposedly equal members of the corporation; it’s the only place where anyone pays anything different for “extra” services past the carrying charges). Nerve touched, on all sides. Fun, fun. Should be an interesting election season for the board in two months.

Get fitted for new orthotics tomorrow (yay new orthotics, yay killing off the deductible in one fell swoop). Mine are fine, except the little front part is about the sheer off. Will have to talk about whether it makes sense to have 2 pairs, given how much abuse I heap on them. We’ll see. In any case, the old ones will reside at work until they die so I don’t have to keep hauling them on the bike. Every ounce not carried is a good thing.

Too much to write about right now, and no time to do it. Will attempt to get more thoughts to ‘paper’ here in the next couple of days.

Good lunch today with RNJTM at his place of employment. This after getting rid of the rental car and somehow managing to get into my BGA, deposit a check in the ATM (I bank at the BGA’s credit union), replace my lost badge, drop off two bags of candy in my office, go to the bathroom and leave, all without seeing any of my co-workers.

Came home, napped, got in a run (first exercise in two weeks – damned cold). Found out the internet was down, watched them release a squirrel who’d gotten into our lobby (yay for the exterminator [who regularly comes in on Mondays] having a live-capture trap), cleaned some, then off to dinner with MG, who is now trying to fix his ailing laptop in the other room since the internet is now back up. Oh, and managed to register for the Cherry Blossom 10 miler (third time’s the charm?). Next step, planning how to approach the race this year.

Lots of thoughts about the family, Mom’s memory, driving, etc., but for now I really, really just want to get to sleep.

I blame Susan Dennis, as if there were any need to blame someone, but to her goes the blame for getting me to go to the local library finally, some 7 months after I moved down to Southwest.

I’d not been to the local branch here, the Southwest Neighborhood Branch. I’d been to the Mt. Pleasant Branch many times, and I suppose I was spoiled by MtP and its Carnegie library building. Like all of Southwest, the library was reborn from the ashes of “Urban Renewal,” but unlike the cool modernist residential buildings that surround it, there is little of modernist design about it, other than the municipal cinderblock architecture (so reminiscent of my mother’s Junior High/Middle School library, where she worked for almost 30 years). Regardless of the design elements (or lack thereof), the building was in good repair, and did have a nice modern touch in the automatic doors for both entrance and exit.

The science fiction collection was rather small, two sets of bookshelves and a part of a third, but it will do me for now. I grabbed three books after renewing my card (“Your card has expired, and we have these new ones now, so which design would you like?”), updating my address and all that. They even have a keychain card, though I doubt I’ll use it since I don’t use any of the other ones I have (I consider them a nuisance at best – who wants to carry around all that extra crap in their pockets? CVS and Safeway have it right in that they allow you to just give or type in your phone number and be done with carrying more cards). I’ll have to bug the Friends group to add to the collection there. Or get creative with requests from other branches.

I also noted with some satisfaction that they have proper bike parking out front, of the reletively recent vintage that the city government is putting up here and there as they can. Glad they did so at a municipal building, and I’ll be using the bike to hop up there from here on out, I suspect.

Spent a good chunk of the evening going over resumes one last time so I could rank them for our Board of Directors here at the cult co-op. I’ve been serving on the committee that’s reviewing new property managers’ resumes for the Board before they get their own chance at them, hoping to weed out some of the chaff before they get them. As is the way with these things, some where obviously outstanding, and some were obviously not suited to the position, but the majority were somewhere in the middle. I had a hard time classifying some of them, but I think I put the right ones in the right categories.

I had planned to go to the gym this evening after work (I ran this morning), but was feeling a tad too, er, gassy (damn that veggie burger), to make the gym a comfortable experience either for myself or my fellow weight lifters, so came home and went grocery shopping instead. Did need the groceries, so wasn’t a waste, but had been looking forward to the weight workout. I’m trying to stave off further injury in my chosen three sports (swim, bike, run), and need the help, but when it’s not in the cards, it’s not in the cards.

My parental units found an old personal page from 1999 that was still up for some reason. I thought the ISP had deleted the page, but evidently not. Thankfully I still use the email address from them, so was able to log in, archive the site, and delete it from the ‘net. It would be relatively easy for them to find this particular blog, I’m guessing, but one hopes they know better than to read it. If they do, oh well, they’ll certainly get an eyeful.

Had a Deputy Grand Lawyer come in and dump an assignment in my lap at 5:45 or so this evening, which was interesting. All of the stuff he wants is stuff we can pop out pretty quickly, thankfully, but I zapped an email off to the Assistant Grand Lawyer anyway to let her know so she knows why I’m writing all this stuff for the deputy tomorrow. It’s sometimes good to be the sole source, and sometimes not.

It appears that I wasn’t the only one, but yesterday evening was just one extended freak-out. After the plane stuff in the afternoon, my little brain decided it would be a good time to start stressing over pretty much anything and everything that it could, leading to absolutely no sleep until I finally hopped back out of bed at 1-something (I think), gave myself a reality check, and went back to bed.

Slept really, really poorly, so called in to work (that’s why they give us sick leave!), went back to bed until about noon, then got up and was a total slug.  The most productive thing I’ve done all day was read the paper, once I finally realized delivery had started today (I ordered a subscription to the newspaper earlier this week; how retro). Oh, and registering my DS games with Nintendo. Whee. Hopefully I’ll sleep better tonight, but there are times when it would be nice to just be able to turn off the lizard brain and stop it from freaking out, especially when I realize it’s completely off-base and freaking out for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

In Other News™, the cult co-op has put together a committee to pick a new general manager. We’ve finally driven the latest one nuts enough that she’s quit, though she thankfully has given us to the end of the calendar year to find a replacement. I think this means #7 in 6 years or something like that. Fun! I was asked to be on the search committee, and said yes; the list of folks on the committee was distributed today by the management and I’m on it. Will be interesting to see how this goes. For those of you in properties with property managers, what would you want to know from a candidate for the position?