Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

George Carlin said it

Nearly everyone I know is down right now. Depressing things; I feel bad that I'm no help.

I started reading an Anne Tyler novel between trick-or-treaters. Probably not the best choice for an already dark night, more like shooting out the porch light.

But I have advice:

Don't take any shit from the Zeitgeist.

Hocus pocus, yawn.

I was flipping through Parade this morning (that extra hour, it's great for being able to relax and read the entire Sunday paper) and this caught my eye:

Now there’s an effort to pull the world’s most popular wizard, Harry Potter, from school libraries in Gwinnett County, Ga. Why? Some parents say kids can’t tell fantasy from reality and will try casting spells on classmates.

Wow. Kids will try casting spell on classmates. I would think that would only be a problem if the spells actually worked. Is that what the parents are scared of?

I checked out the Gwinnett Daily Report, and it doesn't sound like that big a deal...the local Board of Education smacked the...concerned parent, shall we say...down back in the spring, so she submitted her appeal to the state earlier this month. Public opinion, from my glance at the editorials and letters, doesn't seem to be on the concerned parent's side.

Reality. How dull.

Worst. Title. Ever.

I came this close to titling this post "To Pee or Not to Pee," but I couldn't make myself type it.

But that is the question.

Well, sort of.

So I'm ready to spend a billion dollars, give or take, to refinish the basement. One thing I'd never considered asking for is a bathroom in the basement, because I didn't have a rough-in for the plumbing. But the contractors are saying "So?"

They're more than happy to jackhammer up the basement floor and do the plumbing work, and that's making me start to think, hey, why not? It's just a few more days and a few more dollars, give or take. They'll even throw in a shower.

Interestingly, it's Victor saying that putting holes in the floor sounds like a bad idea. And of course I'd agree that holes in the basement are bad, but holes that get filled in with plumbing and covered with tile and end up under brand new bathrooms...that's good, right? A shower for guests, that's good, right?

Because the basement is completely below grade, we could never have a bedroom down there. That wouldn't be legal, nor would it be safe. With my fire phobia, I would not even consider having somebody sleep in a basement without a door to the outside. But my friends at work have all said that when I go to sell the house, having the bathroom in the basement will be very appealing to buyers. Mothers of teenage boys seem especially eager to shut their sons in the basement. When I kept reiterating the lack of egress, they said "Nic...just because you can't sell the house calling the basement a bedroom doesn't mean people won't want to use it that way."

So really, my only conflict now is that someday after I sell this house, which may even be when I'm dead and my nephew sells the house, somebody is going to end up perishing in a fire because they decided to illegally live in the basement because I put in too nice a full bathroom.

But for the next 50-some years, I'll have a convenient place to pee.

Decisions, decisions.

I guess I can forgive them

Found at Ted's:

Sports Illustrated didn't think that Timo Blomqvist was the greatest hockey player ever to wear number 17.

Well, I really can't argue that Jari Kurri was a better player, if you want to look at statistics and Stanley Cups and those sort of things.

I think I may have pointed out this site before, but it's worth another link, in case you need to check out the bios of anybody on that SI list: the NHL Player Search from the Hockey Hall of Fame. (I have better pictures of Timo Blomqvist than they do, though.)

In basement news, I had two more calls after I posted last night. I let one down...he was all the way out by BWI, and it didn't seem right to make him come all the way out here for a one-in-six chance of getting the job. I expect that I'll end up overthinking the final decision and making myself crazy with this (call it a wild hunch).

This Old Haunted House

Back when I had my kitchen remodeled, I had some trouble getting contractors to return my phone calls. That was about a year and a half ago. Apparently a slumping housing market is good to people who want to pay other people to do home improvements, because now my phone won't stop ringing.

I should start at the beginning. Last summer at the fair I filled out a card to win a free basement remodel. As I suspected, I didn't win a basement remodel, but I did get a couple of calls from a contractor who wanted to give me an estimate to do my basement. I begged off because we were still cleaning out my aunt's apartment, and I couldn't see beyond that. The contractor asked if she could call me back in October, and I said yeah, sure, you do that.

Damned if my phone didn't ring again on October 1.

I figured I should at least get the estimate, because God knows my basement won't remodel itself.

I should go back farther. Have I ever mentioned that my basement is a pit?

A few owners back, or so the story goes, the basement was "finished" by a photographer for use as his studio. The walls are panelled in peg board. The electrical outlets are in the ceiling. Everything, and I do mean everything, was painted black. And in the last dozen or more years, everything the guy did has started to fall apart. The florescent lights no longer light. The ceiling is falling down. It is hard to describe just how bad it is.

Ok, here's an annecdote. A few years ago the HVAC guy came to service the furnace, and when he came down the stairs he said "My God, this looks like Jeffrey Dahmer's basement."

You know, I've always believed the photographer-needed-a-dark-studio story. I know some photographers with basement studios, and they that aren't all black, but I still prefer the thought that my basement was a photographer's studio to the notion that it was a satanic den for ritual sacrifice.

Anybody remember a Saturday Night Live sketch with "This Old Haunted House?" Bob Vila installing the acoustic tiles to muffle the screams of the damned souls?

Actually in a metaphorical way my house was haunted. I really didn't want to stay here when my ex and I split up, but the housing market at the time wasn't one where I could dump the dump and still afford to live anywhere but a box. I hated this house and nearly everything about it, and the fact that I was a divorced loser living in squalor. Finally in the last few years I've been having the squalid things fixed...I had the nasty carpet replaced with Pergo. I had the gold-flecked tiles in the tub covered with white fiberglass. And of course, except for its Lilliputian scale, I now have the kitchen of my dreams.

The black basement is really the last thing that needs to be exorcised.

Which brings me back to where I started, sort of. The nice contractor from the fair gave me an estimate. They could give me a lovely basement, but I figured I needed to do some of that "due diligence," as we say at work. (I can't order copy paper anymore without purchasing asking me for a due diligence report. I suspect we are now misusing the term.)

So I diligently got another estimate, and this contractor was just as nice, and he also proposed putting in a bathroom. I'd never thought of that, but now that I do, it sounds kind of handy. And even with the bathroom, his bid is cheaper.

(Another aside. Of course I can't afford to just buy a new basement, but I have such a ridiculous amount of equity that all I had to do was make a ten-minute phone call and show a guy at a bank my driver's license, and they want to lend me way more money than I took for my original mortgage. The process was supernatural, it was so easy, and I'm wondering if I accidently signed a pact with the devil instead of taking out an equity line of credit. I mean, I'm not sure the bank guy even looked at my license.)

So now I need another bid to see which of the first two bids is more reasonable. I found a site online where I could fill out a form with the work I need, and they match me up with contractors in my area. (It looked like a good site, because it included license numbers, insurance information, and reviews from registered but not anonymous users.) I did this at lunch. I was literally still looking at the pictures of the featured contractor's work when the first guy called me back...ten minutes, tops. He's coming tomorrow. And after dinner tonight another guy called to make an appointment.

I've never been so popular.

Let them fall where they may

I noticed this leaf last night when I got home. It is stuck between the shutter and the wall of the house, and the picture doesn't do justice to its color.

This morning I looked at the leaves. The colors, the patterns, the contrasts.

What I should probably do is get out the rake.

Never thought I'd miss the rubber chicken

A few years ago I impressed one of my coworkers with my amazing powers of prognostication. We were heading to a meeting at a hotel, and she was wondering what they'd be serving us for lunch.

"Chicken, rice, and green beans," I told her.

When the waiters presented the plates, she asked if I'd gotten some advance tip on the menu. "No, but I've been to lunch meetings in hotels," I said.

I had a meeting downtown today. Lunch was served. It made me miss the chicken, rice, and green beans.

Hotel meeting lunches, at least the ones I get to go to, now seem to be the deli tray and a bland pasta salad. This one was a blander-than-usual salad (tubular pasta in mayonaise with a light sprinkle of something that may have been oregano), and the bread choice was white sliced bread or white kaiser rolls.

Worse, we didn't have tables, so we had to eat with the plates balanced on our laps. Made it tricky to take notes on the lunch speaker's presentation.

They did have two kinds of cheese, though.

Too true

I got a laugh, and a certain sense of recognition, out of John Kelly's column today:

Wheel of Life Rolls Over the Redskins

Or, you know, The Capitals, the Terps, the Nationals...

Easily distracted

So I was saying...pesto, with the mortar and pestle. Not bad at all, although it took a long time to actually make it. And since I was in a smashing mood, I made apple sauce with the surplus of apples from the farm.

(That's why people used to be able to eat lots of nice full-fat food but not be fat, all that pounding and standing for hours while you pounded in order to make dinner.)

That was dinner Sunday. It's what, Wednesday? I'm feeling a little disconnected this week; maybe it's the drugs. (Those antibiotics, whew, what a trip.)

Unfried green tomatoes

I came home tonight to multiple messages on my answering maching from the doctor and the pharmacy. What a shock--the doctor was using the wrong fax number (now somebody in South Carolina has a billion copies of my allergy medicine script). Of course it took three days for the various health care people to actually talk to each other (as I begged them to do) and straighten it out. During those three days the gunk in my head festered and putrified, and this afternoon I ended up having to go to the doctor anyway because now it's a sinus infection.

Not that I'm bitter.

We have a freeze warning tonight. That is utterly unrelated to my sinuses, but it brings me to topic #2, all those green tomatoes on my vines out back. It's actually been weeks since I had one fully ripen, I guess because September was pretty cool, weather-wise. (Is that right? I'm not a botanist, but I assume there's a temperature component to fruit ripening.) Anyway, I picked the ones that were either the size of a fully done tomato or the few that had started to turn orange this week (when it hit 80 degrees). Now I guess it's time to fire up Google and see what do do with them, besides frying. I am not sufficiently southern to fry green tomatoes.

I also picked all the basil. Since the tomatoes aren't ripe enough for insalta caprese, I guess I'll be making a boatload of pesto. Perhaps I'll really use the mortar and pestle; that might be a productive way to pound out some frustration.

I'm cranky

I have been trying for two days to get my allergy medicine refilled, but some combination of indifference and incompetence on the parts of the health care professionals on whom I rely is making this refill not happen.

I swear, I should just phone the vet.

Also, some spammer spoofed on of my e-mail addresses and now I'm getting a thousand "your message cannot be delivered" messages an hour. At least the spam wasn't obscene, but still. If a thousand spams have bounced back to me, how many got delivered? How many people now think I'm an evil spammer?

Probably none, because their filters probably caught it all. But I still don't like my identity being muddied like that.

The dog ate a bunch of trash from the rat room and puked all over her bed. At least it wasn't my bed.

My rage at these annoyances is out of proportion, so I guess it's either time to change the bulb in my magic lamp or I've got some whicked pms. I haven't started looking for chocolate, though, and I did just walk though the Halloween aisle at the drug store.

UPDATE

As I suspected, the faxed prescription didn't make it to the pharmacy this evening, either. I can't wait to go in there tomorrow to pick it up in person. When I'm mad, I spit when I talk.

And here's a funny coincidence: the e-mail address that was spoofed by spammers wasn't my old mu.nu address. I haven't been getting mail on that for months, so I sort of gave it up for dead, but the mailbox is still on my Thunderbird set up. Low and behold, I just got 43 messages!

Most of them said

Questionable content was found in an email message you sent.
The message was blocked from reaching its destination.

All my aliases are bad.

I have such a headache. My sinuses hurt down into my teeth. Maybe that's where the crankiness is coming from.

Good bye, Kono

I've not been keeping up on my hockey news. It was just today that I learned that Steve Konowalchuk has had to retire because of a heart condition.

I'm really sorry to hear this. Mostly I'm sorry to hear that he has the heart condition in the first place, of course. But I'm also sorry because I sort of harbored this fantasy of going to Vancouver in 2010 and seeing Kono skate for Team USA in the Olympics.

I was thrilled in 2002 when Kono was named captain of the U.S. team. I liked him because I was a Caps fan, but also because he's the kind of player I love: mucker and grinder. And a class guy, too...I would never expect to hear about him, say, tearing up a hotel room.

Plus, to add to the storybook story, in 2002 the games were in his hometown of Salt Lake City.

The reason you don't remember the storybook story is that Kono injured his shoulder that season and missed the Olympics.

Last year he made the Olympic team again, but got knocked out in the first half of the season with torn ligaments in his wrist.

And now he's out for good with long QT syndrome. The Rocky Mountain News put it well:

Few in the NHL played with as much heart as Steve Konowalchuk, making the reason he is giving up the game at age 33 so painfully ironic.

Crazy (bike) talk

Wouldja believe I went bike shopping today?

Well, bike looking. I didn't actually ride anything, because frankly, I don't think anything would have felt good. The sofa didn't feel good. (Though I might have blown it...perhaps a test ride today would have been very telling.)

On paper, I'm becoming infatuated with the Trek Pilot 2.1 s.p.a., although it's a little more that I was looking to spend. Still, the s.p.a. (I think it means "suspension performance advantage"...the frame has a lightweight elastomer to provide suspension) might be worth the extra bucks. One of the least comfortable parts of the metric on Saturday was the tar & chip roads...they made the pain I was already feeling in my knees just radiate up and down my legs, and it bothered my hands and wrists, too.

I still can't believe that the longest, most miserable ride I've done in eight years has encouraged me to want a new bike. This is crazy.

I could go crazier, and spend three grand on the model that's all carbon. That bike weighs less that my Camelbak did on the ride Saturday.

Victor's Ride

Victor here, reporting on his ride. I did it, too. Kinda.

Unlike Nic, I planned to ride the full century, and I can report I crossed the finish line with no assist whatsoever. But I didn't ride 100 miles.

Also unlike Nic, I can say I trained a bit more, but to be honest, not too much more. My longest ride was a slow 45-miler I did with Nic. I also did a 40-mile ride with some friends at about a 15mph pace, plus one other 25-miler with the same people (but at a slower pace, because of the hills). Thinking about the way I felt after those rides, I felt I could maintain a 13-15 mph pace on the century and finish it under my own power. I still think that.

But I didn't count on the weather being such a factor. I don't think I can add anything else about the weather that Nic hasn't already said, other than it sucked donkey dicks.

I rode with Nic and her friend for the first 8.8 miles, to the place when the metric and full centuries split. A hug & a kiss and we went our separate ways. It wasn't too much past that where I turned left into a 20+ mph headwind. I watched my rate drop from 14mph to about half that, for about five miles. At the first pit stop, I ate and drank and realized I wasn't having fun. Obviously, a bad sign, but still, I jumped on my bike and took off for the second pit stop, twenty miles away.

On my way to the second pit stop, the wind wasn't much better, and my pace stayed at 7-11 mph. I passed by some riders talking to a policeman and I was slow enough to hear the cop explain the wind was like this all the way to Assateague Island, where the third pit stop (2nd SAG stop) was.

(NOTE: I found a comment, from Cycling Forums member rpc180, about the winds on the Verrazano Bridge to Assateague on the Cycling Forums: The Assteauge (sic) bridge - is windy, people were tilted almost 15 degrees to compenstate. I'm not real fond of bridges; I don't think I would have crossed it for fear of being blown off.)

I thought about the advice I gave to Nic and her friend when we split up. Don't be afraid to SAG in, I told them, if you don't think you can make it. I didn't think I'd be taking it, but I had to admit to myself there was no way I'd be able to finish a full century in this wind. In fact, I called up Nic and told her so.

The second stop was a mini-stop--just water/gatorade, jiffy johns, and a car with a FIRST AID magnet on it. I asked the SU Athletic Trainer serving as a medic if there was a SAG bus from this stop; she explained there wasn't but there was one at the fourth pit (and third SAG stop). She watched my eyes get big, and she quickly added it was only about four miles away--just take that road over there straight until you reach the stop. If you take a look at the map (here, on page two), you can see the Victor end-around. Just draw a line along Shockley Rd. from the WATER & TOILET STOP to the 3RD SAG STOP.

At the SAG stop, I ate some pie (a very pleasant surprise. I thought the pie was at Assateague Island) and told the goose in the pond if my gf had been there, she'd have taken a dozen pictures of him by now. I also looked at the map, and saw I was only sixteen miles from the finish.

Hmmmm, thought I to myself, thought I. I rested a bit. I drank some Gatorade, and I ate a banana. After about twenty minutes I started feeling better, and my heart-rate monitor confirmed it (my pulse was below 100 bpm). I called up Nic and told her I might continue, after I rested awhile.

The SAG van left and returned. About an hour after pulling into that pit stop, fully expecting to return in a SAG van, I had some more food and drink & I hopped back onto my bike. My pace increased to about 15 mph (mostly--the winds still wreaked havoc on my average) with my heart-rate monitor staying, for the most part, between 150 and 155 bpm (160 bpm is the point where I'm really straining and I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack). A little over an hour after pulling out of pit stop 3, I crossed the finish line.

If you go by the map, you can see I did 59.5 miles by the cue sheet. Add in the 3 to 4 miles during my end-around and I did at least 62.5 miles--an honest Metric Century.

Someone may ask me, fairly, if I feel I cheated. I can answer, fairly, that I didn't. This wasn't a race; I gained nothing from my shortcut other than the pride in finishing my longest ride in quite awhile, in weather I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, under my own power. More importantly, I finished healthy, safely, and uninjured. In the vernacular...I finished in one piece.

Which, all along, was my true goal.

That which does not kill me

When I hear the term Nor'easter I picture a hardy New Englander in one of those bulky cable-knit sweaters and an oilskin slicker. That image is incompatible with spandex shorts and sherbert-colored bike jerseys, but we went out and rode through the tail end of the Nor'easter anyway.

I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but just getting on the bike yesterday put me ahead of half the 6,000 registered riders. (Maybe it shows I'm in the dumb half of the population.) The weather was just shy of "We can't ride in this, it's too dangerous." If it had just been me, I would have bagged it (untrained, uninterested in an early season case of pneumonia, etc.), but a friend of mine bought her first bike this spring and trained her tail off. She was looking forward to doing this ride, and I couldn't bail on her. I did warn her, though, that I didn't think we'd be able to finish, and she was prepared to get on a SAG bus.

And indeed, around 5:40 p.m., with the route about to close, we did end up in the back of an SUV, but that's because somewhere between mile 64 and 65 we got lost. (The exact mileage is a question mark because our computers crapped out in the rain. All the electronics crapped out at some point, even my red blinky light.) If we'd made our correct turn, we would have crossed the finish line on our bikes, and since we did more than 100 km, I consider the ride a sucess. An amazing success. A success I wasn't expecting.

The only reason I was able to do it was that we rode the slowest freaking ride in the history of bicycling. Part of that was because we rode into a 17 mph headwind, part of it was on purpose to keep my heartrate low. No lactic acid, no pain.

Well, actually I had plenty of pain. Cold and damp are not my friends, not with tendonitis and arthritis. Naproxen stopped being my friend when it started to eat through my stomach. And the bike saddle, well, that's where my total lack of training was most obvious.

But there were high points, like realizing I was riding along a cyprus swamp, the pie at the pit stop, and mostly, finding out that I won't die if I push myself. I really thought that by the end of this ride I was going to be selling my bike for scrap, but on the way home today I was actually thinking about what I want in my next bike, so that I'll do better if I ever decide to pursue this craziness again.

64 miles

Cold. Rainy. Windy. But I did it.

It's that transition time of year

Heh, I'm not the only one still thinking about baseball. Steve Kolbe, radio play-by-play guy for the Caps, just remarked that the puck from Brendan Shanahan's 600th goal might be headed for "Coopers--the hockey hall of fame."

Toronto, Steve. It's in Toronto.

And I guess congratulations are in order for Shanny, but did it have to come against us?

P.S.
I was talking to a guy at work yesterday. He's a huge baseball fan, and I'd seen him and his wife at RFK on Friday night. I was telling him how I was still feeling my way through baseball, since I grew up with hockey.
Turns out his wife was a huge hockey fan, emphasis on was. She got so pissed about the lockout that she barely follows it now.

I hear laughter in the rain

That high-pitched, hysterical laughter.

Back around my birthday I made some dumbass New Year's resolution involving riding a Century this year.

Then I started riding again in the spring and I remembered...biking sucks.

Then I realized that if I eat enough and keep my heart rate under the flashing red "Call the paramedic" zone, it can be sort of fun. Briefly.

Then I crashed.

Then my aunt died and I spent six weekends cleaning out her house instead of training.

Then I trimmed back the 100 mile goal to 62, which the ride sponsors upped to 70. And I said that well, it will be a long day, and I will be sore, but I will enjoy it.

Then I saw this weekend's weather forecast:

Hey, little girl, better wear something pretty

A woman at work was telling me today about a lecture she attended on how to be happily married. Apparently the gist of it, at least on the women's side, was "don't let yourself go."

Was the dial on the time machine set to 1960? I asked.

No, no, my friend said. The lecturer was just pointing out, men are visual, so you should, you know, dress up a little, make sure you look good.

I started to hum:

Hey, little girl, comb your hair, fix your make-up
Soon he will open the door...

It made sense, my friend insisted. The lecturer pointed out that women wear nice clothes and makeup to work, so all day he's around women like that, so if he comes home and you're in sloppy sweats with your hair in a ponytail...

I nearly burst into full song:

Day after day, there are girls at the office
And men will always be men...

I suppose the lecturer also suggested having a pitcher of martinis ready, I said.

My friend decided by that time that I wasn't buying in. Of course, what do I know...I'm divorced.

I also have to note that, for the record, I was at work with no makeup, hair in a ponytail, and wearing baggy khakis, a rugby shirt I've owned since high school, and Doc Marten-looking shoes with a rat bite out of the sole.
I'm just doing it out of respect for the wives of my married male co-workers.

You can't always get what you want

Nearly every e-mail I got today was a variation on the same theme:

Nic,

I want/need/can't find the report/assessment/summary documents you were supposed to write.

I wanted to send back

Wanting leads to suffering. Stop seeking that which doesn't exist and you'll be much happier.

Actually what I really wanted to send back was much shorter, but I have vet bills and a mortgage.

Traffic jam

Traffic was a little slow on the parkway coming home from the baseball game this afternoon, so I started snapping pictures out of the car window: