Thanks for the good thoughts for our rat. He's hanging in there...the chest tap was not successful (in that he still has a collapsed lung), but he's on some powerful antibiotics, and he isn't any worse.
My mind has been all over the place this week, flitting around like a...a...a thing that flits around uselessly. I finished up my big July projects a little earlier than usual this year, and it is like my brain took the cue to go on vacation. Only problem is, we don't leave until next Saturday. I have a couple of meetings and two candidates to interview before that, so I need my brain back.
The pet sitter is coming tomorrow, so this afternoon I intended to clean the house up some. I don't want her to see the disaster area and report us to the ASPCA. Right now, the living room looks like the result of a collision between a hardware store and a sporting goods store...spare microwave, extra quarter-round molding, cartop bike rack, yoga mats, a drill, the bikes...oh, and books. It looks like the collision was caused by the Bookmobile. Hmm. That was not my best simile ever.
Anyway, it is a mess. And in the course of trying to clean up the mess, it struck me that my bike duffle is falling apart. There is nothing special about this bag, it's just a big gym bag I bought in 1985 that happens to be the perfect size for my helmet, shoes, gloves, and glasses; a towel; clean clothes; a bottle of Gatorade; and my Camelbak. Nothing else. If the bag were bigger, I'd cram too much in it. If it were smaller, it wouldn't work for this purpose. But it is disintegrating. I need a new bag.
So obviously I had to spend two hours on the Internet looking for one just like it, only to determine that there is no bag just like this. Not a surprise; it's 20 years old. But I really could use those two hours back.
Speaking of biking (Yes I was...sort of...ok, I said I'm flitting around today), I signed up for the Tour of Hope. The ten miles, not the fifty. I took my road bike out Sunday, and that was enough to remind me: I'm slow, I have tendonitis, and I'm afraid of cars. But the only thing that made me feel better about what I was viewing as a wimpy decision was the friend who pointed out "You don't need to prove anything to anybody."
Damn, that's right. Why can't I remember that?
I also had a couple of Tour-related thoughts. Not insightful ones; that's what Velonews is for. One of the thoughts was triggered by this Velonews analysis of T-Mobile's future, particularly
Despite the fact that Ullrich's best years have to be behind him, T-Mobile appears intent on building its future on him. It's a concession to German media and sponsor pressures......"Everyone wants Jan, Jan, Jan. Jan has to live with that and we have to live with that."
Ullrich is the face of cycling in Germany and nothing less than a Tour victory by him is accepted.
I wonder, if I lived in, say, Pinneberg, Germany, if I wouldn't be so sick of all-Jan, all-the-time, that I'd be rooting hard for Ivan Basso. (Or Michael Rasmussen, maybe.)
The other Tour thought occurred to me the other night watching the peloton glide through another sunflower field...why do they grow so many sunflowers in France, anyway? Are they a major exporter of sunflower oil? When I think of France, I think of wine, cheese, and bread, not seeds. What are they doing with all those flowers?
I started to look it up, but of course I got distracted by something else. I did find one amusing bit of trivia before getting sidetracked, though: sunflowers are native to the high plains of North America. All those flowers in the south of France have American ancestors.
Posted by Nic at July 22, 2005 05:20 PM | TrackBackSunflowers are one of those miracle plants that you can use for everything, from the seeds to the oil to the plant fiber, it's all useful. They grow tons of it up in North Dakota too.
Posted by: Ted at July 23, 2005 12:14 PM