GLOBADOM

Oops. There was supposed to be a Thursday post, right?

Right. I keep falling asleep. Last night, instead of fixing my stupid broken bike wheel, I fell asleep. Just too much to do and not enough energy.

But that’s okay, the weekend is shaping up well: one piano concert, one or two major bike repairs, a couple of significant car maintenance issues (I’ll be dropping my transmission fluid and changing the battery, yes I will), errands ranging from pianist delivery to meat acquisition, plus the desire to pack in a few bike rides this weekend mean I’ll need Monday off to recuperate. Well, I get Tuesday instead, but that should be enough.

Do I want politics to intrude on this? Not yet. I’d rather talk about being busy. It’s good for you. I think.

It’s like this: I really, really like the effects of being busy, like getting stuff done. I loved one major thing about being a bachelor: the vast unaccounted for chunks of time I used to fritter away on nothing. And I mean it. Hours spent reading, napping, playing games, or just not doing anything even that ambitious.

But it had to end, because I wasn’t getting anything done. I mean, I’d spend hours just getting up on a Saturday morning, wander around, look at my magazines, read a book, put off 8 tasks and errands, and then not do anything. Evening would roll around, and I’d just play games for a while, then go to sleep. On an ambitious day, I might actually walk outside and buy some groceries

And I did that a lot. It was just weird.

The Lovely One has been very good about encouraging me to do stuff, and more importantly, about making sure that the whiteboard in our office accurately reflects our upcoming obligations.

Between stuff The Lovely One wants to do, stuff I want to do, and stuff that just has to be done (I’m talking to you, Tercel transmission), there’s a lot of stuff to do.

But with the new lifestyle, stuff actually gets done.

In other news my video game obsession is overtaking the number of friends I have. I want to get a Gamecube so I can play Pac-Man Vs.. I already have a Gameboy Advance, so I’m sorted! And T-Bone wants to sell me his Gamecube because he doesn’t play it anymore. Now I just have to find two more controllers, a GBA link cable, and two more friends. The friends might be tricky…

Wired Cola-specific musing now, just for keith:

good brand name: Yum! Brands (parent company of several fast food chains)

bad brand name: just about any SSRI. Prozac? Luvox? Paxil? Zoloft? Lexapro? Is there a rule about making your drug sound both ominous and meaningless? Well, except maybe Paxil.

None of these is as bad as Genexxa, the name of Radio Shack’s now-defunct house brand. Maybe a conflict with a Swedish speaker maker?

“Don’t you love how websites are so much cooler now than they were three years ago?”

That’s not me, that was T-bone said that.

You know what I like? Not Windows. I’m not even about assigning blame here: I don’t care if it’s down to terrible programming, aim-at-the-biggest-target malware, or stupid user tricks; I just hate the result.

Last night I spent a couple of hours messing with the computer my brother-in-law does his work on. The first part of the problem was down to a bad cable (not to mention one of those “it never should have worked but it worked for months” network setups: the PC was plugged into a hub port that was shared with the hub’s uplink port (a Netgear 5-port 10/100), which was in use by the cable modem).

Then came the exciting fighting with the numerous pieces of crapware, a porn dialer, and so forth. The porn dialer or something screwed TCP/IP up so badly that the recommended fix didn’t work. And of course, we didn’t have the original Windows disks around to do a reinstall or repair. Great.

As a last resort we backed up and used the restore CDs to bring the computer back to a virginal state. Tonight I’ll go over there again and set up some the last few bits of the system: new guest account so nobody can install stuff on the system, enable the xp firewall (in the hopes that actually does something) probably an hour of watching Windows Updates install, and so forth.

All this instead of, oh, some much-needed bike maintenance, maybe a trip to the library, or perhaps just kicking back, watching TV, and killing my brain cells with a cocktail. Which would be a lot more fun.

Oh, and did you know that Blow-Up (or “Blowup”) is on DVD? Finally see the photography scene referenced in Austin Powers 1! Check out the nice ambient jazz soundtrack! Enjoy the daft ennui of sixties moviemaking at its best! Enjoy the movie that “Blow-Out” (starring John Travolta!) was a remake of! Check out David Hemmings Before He Was Fat and Vanessa Redgrave Before She Pissed Off the Israelis!

And I’m spent.

Three new fillings, one long bike ride, and corn bread

So I went out to my dentist’s office to pay for several years of dental neglect. No major hitches in getting three holes in my head plugged (pay no attention to those saying “do three more!”), but getting there was definitely about half the fun.

Smart cookie that I am, I decided to ride out to Delta, but didn’t count on one hitch: highway 91 from the Alex Fraser bridge to the 72nd exit (maybe 1km at most) is “no bikes”. D’oh! I proceeded on a longer-than-necessary detour (I got lost) that left me 25 minutes late for my appointment. Stupid.

The whole ride was quite pleasant except for the bridge work. There are many bike-friendly bridge crossings in the GVRD, but the Fraser and Queensborough bridges are not among them. The Fraser featured long stretches of exciting metal decking to ride on, plus a few points where obstacles narrowed the sidewalk (where you’re supposed to ride) to a frightening degree. And then, you know, you can’t use the 91, so you have to go all over the place to get to where you want to go.

The Queensborough has a somewhat exposed sidewalk to ride on, but adds in some pretty dicey detours of its own.

On the way back I fixed my previous problem by ignoring the signs and blithely riding down the shoulder of the 91. One concrete-barrier climb later, and I was fine, though the bike route detour from Delta to New West was weird and strange.

Had lots of fun being comfortably numb for a few hours (cracked up one co-worker by doing some help desk calls like that: “Hehp Dehk, Rahn speahkng.”)

And then home to a delicious pork chop dinner. The new teeth worked!

Got into a strange frenzied mood that evening after watching the Canucks take care of the Avs: while I was washing the dishes, I baked up some cornbread. The recipe was on the bag of corn meal (corn flour?)

1 cup corn meal

1 cup wheat flour

4 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp salt

1 cup milk

1 egg

1/4 cup softened butter

mix dry ingredients, then stir in the wet stuff. bake @425 for 20-25 minutes in a greased 8″ pan. Serve hot with butter.

Good! makes a nice crumbly corn bread.

I’ve noticed that so far, despite my interest in politics, there isn’t any in this blog. Good. I think that speaks of my healthy focus on the issues which I am most directly responsible for: the health of myself and my family. Not making too much of a mess of the house. The joy of good corn bread, shared with wife and in-laws (they liked it, which is a good sign).

More pictures, and some notes about Valentine’s day.

Warning! The large versions of these pics are a half-meg apiece. click if you dare.

The Lovely One gave me liquor for Valentine’s:

I romantically paid for her hair styling, and we went to an antique show Saturday morning, where I got her an amethyst glass toothpick holder:

Also, a nice-looking 60s-era juice pitcher, and I found a vintage Valentine’s card which I gave her.

Antique shows are interesting chances to see stuff and people. I get the idea a lot of the trade in collectibles is the same 200 people in town swapping the same 200 collections in their own favourite sub-genre (“you like plastic farm animals for model train sets too? I want to buy your collection!”)

No great bargains out at the show, which was in the Tradex building in Abbotsford. I’m more impressed with the usual pricing down in New Westminster’s Antiques Row. There was a lot of amethyst glass on display at several stalls, which pleased The Lovely One.

No bicycles, though, so that was a bummer.

The liquor collection will now help us with what we hope will be a new tradition: a Saturday-night cocktail, a different one for each of us every Saturday night. We started with a Blue Monday for her (too strong; just add pineapple juice) and a Gimlet for me (I like gin drinks, and it has a nice sour taste, but not something I’d order as a first choice).

One cocktail is a nice, moderately decadent treat, something that helps us feel continuity with the pretty-but-decadent culture of the sixties (as opposed to the messy-but-indolent counterculture). It’s good fun, and takes us to a time when it was okay to drink.

I got my mother-in-law a cactus as a Valentine’s day gift. I thought it an amusing gift. She really liked it.

I’ve got pictures for you.

I’m playing with the departmental 5 megapixel Sony Cyber-shot (a cyber camera for the cybermorphic weblog, natch). I took a few pictures, mostly for information. large versions are mostly 800×600, but there’s one really big one in there just for fun.

This is my lunch box Bianchi, perfect for wet commuting. Note attractive green tire, mismatched fork, signature orange saddle. Future projects include replacing the wretched rear brake and the caliper; I have another RSX brake and an SLR lever for this.

A big picture of the Kona Kilauea. Note normal state of cleanliness, this time a result of riding up Burnaby Mountain and back down.

Ah, isn’t that nice? note exquisite colour matching. Observant viewers may see what looks like the same front wheel as the Bianchi. That’s because it is. I have two nearly identical Nisi rims, one with a nice Shimano 105 hub, one with a usable Suzue hub. Only one tire mounted up, right now, so I use the wheel on both bikes. The Pinarello doesn’t get much work until racing season, though. The tri-bars in this picture come off for mass-start events. The only to-do on this bike is replacing the left SLR brake lever with an “aero” version, mainly to get the brake cable out of the way of the tri-bars.

The camera also has a lovely Nightshot mode, so you can do the full Paris Hilton thing.

Don’t read too much about the camera into the quality of these pictures. I’ve massaged them all pretty heavily, and was not shooting at full resolution.

Mmm. Apples. Props to The Lovely One for picking out some really kickin’ Fuji apples this week. I’m really cheap, so I usually buy T&T’s cheapo Red Delicious. They’re nice, but it gets monotonous.

Should be an interesting weekend. Antiquing at the Tradex show instead of bike riding on Saturday (um…), then dinner at Takumi, a nice local Japanese restaurant.

Oh right. I’ve got a chance to borrow a digital camera. Let’s see if I can put up some pretty pictures for the site. You all want to see the blue bike with yellow tri-bars, a purple fork, and orange seat, right?

Four bikes isn’t too many, right? Okay, how about five?

I have a schtick I use right now when my wife half-jokingly complains that I have four bicycles (true) and even more frames (true). I then describe them as my “race bike, my commuting bike (because you don’t want to get the race bike messy), my mountain bike, and the fourth bike is just for fun.” The fourth bike is a crude fixed-gear conversion.

That was fine. Four bikes should be enough for anyone. I even promised not to buy another bike for a while; assured The Lovely One that it would be utterly redundant to get one.

Then today a co-worker and clubmate suggested that he would soon be selling his old Brodie to get a new Norco A-Line. The old Brodie has 8″ of travel front and rear, a fork that wouldn’t look out of place on a small motorcycle, and would be a wonderful dose of suspension-induced courage for hitting huuuge drops.

Sure, it would probably cost more than twice as much as my next-best bike, and yes, I’d only ride it 10 times a year because it’s a big heavy shuttle-bike, but that makes sense, right? Right? Darn.

Your pants maker is lying to you.

So, we all know that clothing sizes, granting that there never has been anything really standardized, have been gradually inflating, so that todays size 6 is more like yesterday’s size 10.

Fine. But that’s women’s clothes, and to an extent, men’s tops. But aren’t pants supposed to be sold by waist measurement in inches?

I’ve recently lost a lot of weight and even more waistline, thanks to my new “don’t make a complete pig of yourself all the time and ride your bicycle at least 7 hours a week, plus other activities” diet (note to publishers: let’s talk book deal). So I’ve been buying a fair number of trousers so that I don’t have to hold my pants up with one hand anymore.

Here’s the score: measured waist: 34″.

Size of “Uniform” brand jeans from Europe that fit me nicely now: 34

Size of Old Navy slacks that fit about as well as the Uniform jeans: 31

Size of Levi’s 634 Orange Tab relax-fit taper-leg jeans I just bought, which fit maybe a tetch snugger than the others: 30

1″ I can understand. But 4″? Pants are often sold in 2″ increments, so that’s off by two sizes.

I’m a 30″ leg if you care, and the relax-fit tapered-leg is good for me because I have a cyclist’s thighs, which is to say big and muscly. Just ask Eric. And also, because they were $20 at Able Auctions’ Coquitlam liquidation centre.

The Lovely One and I spent the morning and a fair part of the afternoon at a local day spa, thanks to a fortuitous contest win by yours truly.

Gentlemen: I can highly recommend the spa experience. Yes, I know it seems all girly-girly to have a massage, manicure, pedicure, and generally be fussed over. But I’m here to tell you: the girls are on to something. The chairs they did the pedicure in were so cool that I want one of them in my living room. Or rather, I don’t because if I had that, HDTV, a fridge, and a commode, the only reason I’d leave would be to restock the fridge. Basically, imagine the Spine-Melter 2000 with a foot jacuzzi attached to it. This is a good thing!

Just don’t let them use nail polish.

This is your VP Marketing here. Although the Wired Cola brand has suffered a few setbacks lately, we think we have a winner this time. Of course, we also thought that about the Wired Cola can that could transform into a shuriken, and we all know how long it took to get the CPSC off our backs over that one.

In other news, I got my mountain bike back up and running. That should be good for a few nice fall stories soon.

But don’t worry. We expect non-productivity of tangible assets to continue for some time.