Away for the Holy Day

First off, I would like to declare myself participating in LBD (http://littledrummerboy.info/).

I've been lucky so far, but I'll need to make sure it are it off of Jennifer's iPod so that it doesn't accidentally come up while I'm at home.  Last year Starbuck's got me, so we'll see how I do this year.

Today, Jennifer and I are on our way to the Harvest Festival in San Jose (http://www.harvestfestival.com/).  We're enjoying a nice Amtrak train ride south.

BTW, football sucked yesterday.  None of the teams we liked won; although, we do enough watching the Lions win.

Refurb

So, I've had my bike for almost three years now; we bought it right after I was laid off in 2011.

It's had some work performed on it over the years, not the least of which was the repairs after it was stolen.

We've found a local bike guy, so that we don't always have to go into the city for bike maintenance, and one thing he had pointed out was that the brakes on my bike were pretty cheap.  We think the brakes that had come originally with the bike had been switched out between theft and recovery.

We'd placed orders for parts, including brakes and tires since my rear tire was going bald, but hadn't gotten around to getting the work done.

Saturday things became a little more important as after an afternoon ride with Jennifer, I was coming back to the front door of our building, and with a snap, my front brake cable broke.  We made an appointment, and Sunday took a little ride to see if I could handle one brake.  It wasn't too bad, just forced me to keep extra stopping distance in mind.  And last night we got our work done on our bikes.

It turns out that Bike Man Dan has moved, and is just a couple blocks from the MacArthur BART station.  He needed a little time to work on both bikes, so we took a walk for dinner.  We were going to try Cafe Biere (nice site right?), but when we got there, the place was closed with an eviction notice and list of assets inside posted on the front door (yeah, I know I should have taken a picture).  Looking online today, it appears to have moved to Albany.

So we had dinner at Miyozen instead.  Jennifer ate small, and I had my new Miyozen favorite: the Flaming Dragon Roll.  This has a spicy tuna and tempura shrimp core with salmon on top with a bit of sauce.  They then wrap it loosely in aluminum foil, and put it on a plate with alcohol of some sort which they then set on fire.  The heat is not too high so the roll comes out slightly cooked, and incredibly tasty.

Afterwards, we walked back to Bike Man Dan's, got our bikes, and rode home.

Pressure Equalization, Part 2

Yeah, so it looks like it's going to be one of THOSE days.

So not long after I posted, the previous post, I got a notification that BART was now back up and running.

So, I said goodbye to the cats again, got in my gear and rode to BART.

Now at work, and just a little bit winded.

Pressure Equalization

So... BART's shutdown.

Apparently it has something to do with a computer system problem.  At this point, I'm kind of wishing I had taken a picture fo the station.  The metal gates were almost closed, and people (including me) would walk up to them in confusion, getting slower and slower, then read the signs and walk away with a puzzled look on their face.

The wind was absolutely insane last night.  The gusts were so powerful that up on the top floor it felt like a series of magnitude 4 earthquakes.  thew cover was halfway blown off of my grill, and the empty, spare propane tank had been rolled around the patio.

On the way to BART this morning there were lots of empty garbage cans on their sides as well as broken  branches.  I saw one tree that was at least a foot and a half in diameter that had been snapped off just above the ground.  Luckily it fell towards the street and not the house it was in front of.

But, at least the predicted 30+ mph winds weren't blowing on my way to (and much slower return from) BART.

In the Village

So, I have three songs by the Village People on my iPod.

One is "YMCA", because it's "YMCA".

Another is "In the Navy", because it's also a fun song, and has good memories attached to it.  I remember more of the emotions associated with it, but they're happy and fun parts of childhood.

The last is "Go West".  I first heard this last one in the movie "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert".  It's jsut one of those songs that strikes all the right chords.

So today, on my ride home, I was just about to turn onto Alcatraz Avenue, and "Go West" came on.  That kind of thing just has to be acknowledged.

Smashed Tomatoes

Two weeks ago I sent a couple days in Lodi preparing for last week.

Last week was also spent in Lodi doing digging and drilling.

Jennifer and I took this weekend for some Us Time, and today I am back at work.

I had wondered if I might end up riding my bike in the rain, but the predicted storm hasn't hit land yet, and so it was just riding to work after a bit more than a one week lapse.

At least I can say that I didn't get overly sweaty, but it was a tough ride nonetheless.

Now I get to have a short week this week from having Monday off, and then next week is a nice three day work week.

In the intervening time since my last post, I have passed the halfway mark for the Discworld books.  I can feel the reading accelerating since at this point Pratchett has got his stride and characters set.  And now he begins exploring new characters while putting the main characters into the background.

Additionally, I've been reading the relevant pages from the Annotated Pratchett Files after I finish each book.  Most of the little bits I've already picked up from articles about the author, explanations from the quizbooks, and the occasional news article that ends up revealing the hidden secrets from which Pratchett pulled his ideas, but every now and then there is a note that just makes me smack my forehead.

Fragility

So I had my first iPhone for two and a half years.  In that time I dropped it once.  I was bringing it out of my pocket, and it slipped out of my fingers.  I was in the kitchen at home, and for those that don't know, it's all hardwood floors downstairs.  I could see it all happening in slow motion.

And then it hit and landed on one of the two floor pads.  All was well, and I started to breathe again.

Then there are the things that are valued in the single digits and I can't seem to keep them whole.

I am on my third acrylic straw cup combination at work.  Drop them once and the join where the inside cup meets the outside cup just snaps.

I'm also on my second "coffee" mug at the office.

No idea where I was going with this originally, but I guess I'm just saying.