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

I can’t tell if it was a sign of how long it had been since I had last been out doing serious wine shopping or if I’m just a wino, but with J’s help I just picked up three cases of wine from Pearson’s (one mixed, two complete). Probably a little of both. But now I’m set for months. Or at least I hope it’ll last months.

I found it quite nice to be able to shop for spirits on a Sunday. Normally shops that sell both wine/beer and harder liquor have to close on Sunday in DC because of our antiquated Blue Laws. The place was hoppin’, about as busy as I normally see it when I’ve gone in the evening during the week or on a regular Saturday. The clerk allowed as how they’d been that busy all day. Anyway, because Xmas day and New Year’s Day are on Mondays, DC’s liquor laws allow liquor shops to stay open the Sunday before. There’s no real reason they can’t be open 7 days a week normally (aside from outdated hopes for moral suasion), but one lives with the law one has, not the law one wishes one had. Nonetheless, it felt like a bit of a stick in the eye to those ridiculous laws to buy alcohol until my heart was content.

Managed to forget my wallet this morning (d’oh!), which wouldn’t be a big deal, but my monthly haircut is this evening, so I kind of needed it. So, told my team leader I was headed out for lunch today (I normally work through lunch at my desk), and biked back home. Much nicer than doing a veggie burger at work, and it’s nice to come back and check email on a real computer (as opposed to my cell phone). Hopefully the pasta will be done shortly and then it’s back up the hill to try and fix a (hopefully not too) big goof by one of our program offices with regards to their budget. Fun, fun. One of those times when I actually have to put to paper all of the ‘truths’ that folks ‘know’ about how the federal budget gets executed, which means some folks are not going to be happy…

It is, sometimes, good to be the sibling with no kids and who’s the responsible one.

Case in point: At Xmas, I get cooking equipment and jewelry. He and my sister-in-law get baby stuff and food things.

Drove down to Tidewater for the annual between-the-holidays visit (easier than dealing with holiday traffic), and we exchanged presents this evening. I made out like a bandit, though I think my fave is a silver ring with a dark green tourmaline in it that fits exactly on my right ring finger, and that does not clash with my favorite steel-n-ceramic ring (which is the only ring I wear daily these days). The moose cutting board has to be a close second, though. The relatives all seemed to like my choices of gifts as well, which is always good news.

I’ve also managed not to down a single drop of water since somewhere around 10 this morning. Coffee all the way down in the car, and nothing but wine since. I still marvel that despite not really drinking a lot around us kids when we were growing up my parents have somehow turned into total wine people. Or maybe they just pretend when I come down, but in any case, most visits are tests of my liver because of the amount of wine consumed.

I’ll be drinking a good chunk of water before bed, I suspect, just to stave off a possible hangover. The blow-up mattress is ready to go, just need to dump sheets on it. The parental units have retired, and the brother, sister-in-law and nieces have retreated to their own desmesne.

The younger niece (9 months old now) is not quite a terror – she’s crawling, and standing, but not yet walking. Cuter than should be possible, and was (thankfully) not all that fussy when strange ole Uncle Moose picked her up and held her. But very, very wiggly. You had to be very careful or next thing you knew she was dangling by a single toe and straining hard to get that dislodged so she could go on to the next conquest. Wrapping paper was her favorite play toy of the evening (aside from my necklace and general person), and we had a minor crisis when the older niece popped open a tin of mints and scattered them all over the floor. Watching five adults scrounging for white mints on a slightly off-white carpet is a funny sight, but when compared with dealing with a choking toddler, we went with the mint hunt.

Shopping tomorrow. I’m looking at going to BJs to get huge amounts of necessities like adult Tang and the like, and a trip to Homo Depot to check out programmable thermostats (gotta love being a home owner). Then on to a late lunch with one of my two surviving great-Aunts, and general visit time with the ‘rents. So far so good, and glad I came down.

With lows in the mid to high thirties this week, and as I get ready to start running and biking regularly again, it got to be time to haul out the winter running gear. The collection’s slowly grown over the years as I’ve needed items for particular weather conditions, or as I’ve found good sales in the spring. I remembered the collection as I was preparing for a short run this morning, and hauled out a top that was perfect for the temps (mid-40s).

In the same storage container was the bulk of my long-sleeve t-shirt collection, which was also a pleasant find. I’d left a couple out in my drawers to tide me over for the change in seasons, but I definitely needed shirts, even for just hanging around the house.

In he meantime, I’ve misplaced two DVDs that I use for indoor bike workouts. Found the short one (which I’d misplaced when I moved), but now I can’t find the two longer ones. I’m sure they’re around somewhere, but heaven only knows where.

It did feel good to run this morning in the cold. As usual, I needed the gloves to begin, but by the halfway mark they were too warm. The hat covering my ears lasted a little bit longer, but not much. I look forward to more cold runs this winter as I do base training for next year, and should be well prepped for the two spring races I want to do.

“No, is too long, so I sum up,” to paraphrase Inigo: I signed up to start receiving the Post again last Tuesday.

• They began to deliver the paper on Thursday.
• I received papers on Thursday and Friday.
• Saturday came, no paper. I called and asked for redelivery, didn’t happen.
• Sunday came, no paper. I called and asked for redelivery, didn’t happen.
• Monday came, no paper. I called, did not ask for redelivery, but did ask for them to find out what the f*ck was going on with my subscription. It’s now being referred to the “special problems” (or something like that) staff to figure out what the f*ck is going on. If no paper shows up by Thursday morning, I’m disputing the charge on my credit card.

Additionally, when you’re a subscriber you can go in through their web site and report missing/damaged papers, do vacation stops, etc. It’s actually pretty convenient, and easier than calling an operator (though I’ve always found their operators to be friendly, to their credit). But heaven help you if you move. There’s no way on their web site to change your address or email or phone number except to either call them, or email them. You can’t update it yourself, you can’t change that information online, you have to send it to them and wait for them to get around to fixing it. Actually, I take it back, you can update your profile information on washingtonpost.com, but it doesn’t seem to translate over to the actual newspaper subscription information, so even if you update your address on the user profile, your old address still shows up on the subscriber page. Ugh. How asinine is that? Especially in a town like DC that’s known for its transient nature. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

This after I had waited six months after moving in to start delivery again, mainly because I had had to call three out of the last four weeks I got the paper at my old apartment because either stuff was missing or the paper didn’t show up at all. So far they’re not really doing a lot to counter the impression that their delivery people are any more competent in the new neighborhood than they were in the old.

As the weather has cooled down I’ve been bitten with the baking bug. It happens most years at this time, but with a renewed focus on cooking at home, and the attendant reading of cookbooks, it’s come on bad this year. So I decided the next foray (after the first attempt to use the oven) would be muffins. Lemon poppyseed, using a recipe that I knew worked.

Blended the stuff up, almost forgot the egg replacer, but got it in before too late, popped it into the heated oven.

Unfortunately, like the last time, though I had carefully gotten the temperature up to the right place, it again zipped over the set temperature. Some slight burnt edges, and the flour was not quite the freshest (it’ll be replaced ASAP), but they did come out edible. Not perfect, but not a complete waste of time, either.

It’s almost like the oven refuses to cut off once it reaches the right temperature. Thankfully there’s a little light over the dial so I can tell when the heating element is on or off – that’s what clued me in that it was still going even though it had long since reached the right temp. Not sure what type of tweak it’ll take to fix that, will have to research the stove model and see if there’s any way to fix it without replacing the unit. Do need to get it fixed or figured out before I start making bread on the weekends again, though. Muffins are one thing, a week’s worth of bread is a whole other thing.

Okay, so today was most certainly the start of the last week of the fiscal year. Nothing quite like watching budget people wig out over other staffs’ mismanagement of their programs.

So I came home and did what I normally do when I’m stressed out. I downed a fifth of good bourbon. Since I’m not currently drinking until after the marathon, I cleaned.

Somehow putting things in order seems to calm me down, as I’m sure I’ve written about before (but I’m too lazy to look up any entries). The dining room table is clean, the desk is clean, my triathlon/exercise books are in order, and I’m about to tackle the cookbooks (those have been driving me to distraction of late as I try to find particular books and they’re in no order). The floor is clear enough (and was even before I started, honestly – this has been an effort to attack surfaces above the floor) that the roomba ran nicely around the whole place while I worked on particular areas, rescuing it as it ran into the bathroom or got stuck on the living room carpet. A nice, soothing scent’s been going in the burner, and I just closed up the house for the night, to shut out the noise.

It’s certainly a healthier reaction than the other usual one, and I do feel better for having cleaned stuff up, but it always strikes me as odd when I ‘come out of’ a cleaning fit and find specific spaces put into order and looking much, much better than they had at the begining of the evening. Neuroses are such fun.

I bought a signed copy of a memoir about breast cancer written by a lesbian this evening. I’m not sure why I did this, except that it sounds like it will be interesting reading (lesbian relationship drama!), and perhaps it might help me deal with my mother’s own survival over having had breast cancer a decade ago. An odd way to learn about it, but one does what one can.

No running this week after Tuesday morning’s run. My knees began to hurt, which is a sure sign that New Shoes Must Be Purchased, so I will do that this weekend. The race last weekend went well, despite evidently needing new shoes. I ran it under 30 minutes, as was hoped (28:10), but not under my PR (27:33). I did have to remind myself that the PR was set on a very, very flat course and that this one had two slight hills at either end, so that was some slight bit of consolation. That said, I was still happy with the results. If only the marathon would go so well.

Otherwise the silence has been merely busy. It’s the end of the U.S. Federal Fiscal Year, and since fiscal law is what I do for my Big Government Agency, it’s a relatively busy time of the year for me. I still enjoy it, thankfully, but it has kept me somewhat occupied of late. I also purchased a new game for the DS, Lost Magic, and am enjoying that thoroughly. It’s horribly distracting, but I have put it down every now and again.

Still seeing MG, and that continues to go well. He makes me happy, I enjoy the time we spend together, and I look forward to more time spent with him.

When I moved into the new place and set up the TiVo, I noticed that Spike TV was playing Deep Space 9 on reruns, in order, several episides a day. So I signed up for a season pass and have been watching them bit by bit. The run ended recently and so I caught up to the last several episodes, not being able to stop watching as the story progressed in a marvelous fashion up until the end. So somewhere around 2-something last night I finished up the last episode. Worth staying up for, but left me a tad tired this morning, when the building’s fire alarm went off sometime after 6 a.m.

I vaguely remember drifting out of sleep, but only realized what was going on when I heard the fire trucks pull up. Will have to have a discussion with the building to see about making the alarm a) louder and b) more annoying. It was a constant beeping which really was no more annoying that someone’s alarm clock going off on the other side of a large house. Not nearly sufficient to wake people up in the case of a real emergency.

Having lived in a large building where the alarm went off every 2-3 months, I wasn’t about to evacuate until I knew there was an actual reason to. So I watched as the firemen in one of the trucks were unable to get into the property. They ended up setting two ladders so that they could go up one on one side of the fence and down another on the other. I cannot believe none of the security guards, nor any residents had keys to open the fencing. That’s going to change, period. I suspect folks will be yelling up a storm at the board meeting on Wednesday about this.

After brunch most of the day was spent with MG, a gentleman I’ve recently started dating. Some shopping, some wandering, a good nap at his place, then home again before heading out to dinner with RNJTM. Now it’s crash time so I can get up and run in the morning, another 15-16 miler planned as prep for the marathon.

Okay, the oven works, the cake came out very well. It does seem to run hot for the setting it was on (i.e., 375 setting was reading 425 or so when I pulled the cake out), but that’s why I got an oven thermometer, to be able to tell these things. Never trust the dial on your stove, always double check it.