CafeChatNoir

So, a year ago I kicked off this tri-insanity thing. One year and I’ve run over 300 miles, biked over 350 miles and swam over 20,000 meters. Not too bad.

Yeah, time to get back to reality. Finished off vacation time with a jaunt up to Adams Morgan with the Marine on Friday night – nothing quite like charging headlong back into the DC scene. He’s probably going to be deployed here soon, so no way I would pass it up.

DC drivers didn’t improve while I was gone, either.

Tons to get done this week. Gotta get back on the training wagon in a big way, get the painting scheduled on the townhouse, and a slew of other annoying miscellany that I didn’t miss one bit down at the beach.

On a completely unrelated note, I think I’d like Grey’s Anatomy more if they threw Meredith Grey out a window.

Rest of the dolphin pics Done from the boat from the Nags Head Dolphin Watch in Roanoke Sound. Probably somewhere between 6-8 in the group we caught up with.

Rest of the beach pics

So, I got “report cards” on the critters for their stay at the kennel. I was thrilled that they apparently behaved quite well. Mox’s comments were glowing, and I expected no less of him. He apparently also enjoyed going up to the cattery to visit his pals. (Yes, they took the dog up to visit with his buddies. Very cool in my book.)

The cats, I expected something along the lines of “they are moody, cranky, standoffish beasts.” Instead, I got:

Snoopy & Target are both very sweet & loveable. They enjoy coming out of their suite to enjoy the cattery and visit with the other cats. They also like to look out the windows & sit in the sun.

Color me shocked. (Well, not the sit in the sun part.) Yep, they apparently actually hung out with the other cats and were sweet and social. The gal that brought them down when I picked them up said they loved to come out and follow her around and see what she was doing when she was in the cattery.

And happily, I have not caught any grief from any of them since I’ve been home.

ETA: Mox is also enjoying his river otter stuffed animal from the NC Aquarium, and we’re still working on the concept of his new frisbee.

Home again, and with a non dial up connection. Will get the rest of the pics sorted out this weekend and uploaded. Why is the drive home always more tiring than the drive to get on vacation?

*sigh*

Last day here today. Will be happy to get home and sleep in my own bed and be w/the critters again, but not exactly thrilled to get back to reality – whatever that actually is. Overall, it’s been fun but I also almost feel like I could have skipped it and not missed a thing. Strange, I know. I suppose your brain does that to you so that you’ll eventually go back home.

OK, Florida peeps – needs your help – one of her dogs is missing – please help if you can!

Cheeto?? Please? (He’d found a stray one a few minutes early and was hoping against hope that I had been the one to drop it and would have more for him.)

Sunrise this morning:

Didn’t realize when I took the pic that he had already shuffled off this mortal coil, otherwise I would have picked him up and gotten him back to the water:

Yeah, kinda obsessed with the pelicans, but they’re so cool to watch fly by.

Random Surfer

Just liked the way these two came out.

OK, back when I was dealing with well degreed idiots for a living, there was a situation I ran into constantly. The software database had two tables that caused a fair amount of stupid. One table was the “cost and revenue” table which then fed into the “project status report” table. The project status report table was designed for one function and one function only – the system used it to print the project status report. Who knew? It’s not a friendly table to try to use for any other purpose, end of story. On countless occasions, I had people calling and asking how they could use the project status report table to build an external report. Given that’s not it’s design or function, we have no obligation to try and help you figure this out. In fact, if you actually want to build a report and *know* what you’re hitting on in the tables, you use the cost & revenue table. It has all the same data, but in an actual comprehendably organized fashion, which the report table doesn’t. Over and over again I told people, “Don’t even waste your time trying to use the report table, just go to the other table and use that. Trust me, you’ll be less frustrated in the long run.” And invariably there would be a bit of snarking over the fact that they should be able to use whatever table they wanted, and I would tell them they were more than welcome to, but we weren’t going to help them with it anyway, so they should be happy we were at least pointing them in the direction of the more user-friendly table.

I’m still on the Yahoo newsgroup for my software, I don’t know why I stayed subscribed to it, but I’ve been a member of it for years now and I still find it interesting the things that pop up there from time to time.

Today a message popped up… “I’m trying to use the project status report table to build and external report and it just isn’t working…” No shit, sherlock. I recognize the user name, and I’m pretty sure we had this conversation before.

Jetskiing today! Haven’t done that in a good 10 years. Much more fun this time around than my first go at it back then.

Actually got out IN the water today. It’s not that I don’t go out in the water, I just tend to hang back and keep an eye on everyone else and pick up small children who have faceplanted into the sand before they get pummeled by the next wave coming along. But damn, I don’t think I’ve gotten out and played in the swells since I was a kid.

Got more pics today, but still have to get them off the camera, see if any of them actually came out and resize, etc, etc.

Have managed to get through the week with no sunburn. This is good for me, since invariably I miss *somewhere* when I am trying to get in on and end up with a nice random red patch on my body.

Looking East – Tropical Storm Beryl:

Same time, same place, looking SouthEast:

The fox that lives in the scrub next to the house:

Or at least, very little. This group down here this year is again myself, my brother, and Tev & Lisa (my brother’s roommate/lifelong buddy & his wife). Tev commented when we went to dinner last night that he was pretty sure the hostess was the same one here last year – I wouldn’t doubt it for a second.

I’ve been coming down here since 1993, missing 2001/2/3 &4. Even with that gap, very little has changed over time. North of Sanderling (where I was in ‘93), there are more houses, and a couple shopping centers. There is even a very nice Harris Teeter up there, and they seem to be bound and determined to give the Food Lion a run for it’s money. But then again, even the Food Lion is somewhat recent – the first time I was down here, the most “accessible” market was a little 7-11 type place referred to as the “Super-ette”. Sadly, the “Food-A-Rama” left sometime in the past 5 years. It was always a bit on the sketchy side to say the least, though, and I can’t help but think those working there were able to get work at Food Lion, and the locals probably liked a less scary place to shop for groceries.

Other than the development up north, which seems to be fairly controlled, not much else has changed in the past 13 years, which is comforting. Our favorite restaurants are still here (but then again, bad restaurants don’t last down here), 1 preferred surf shop has disappeared (owners retired), two new hotels have cropped up (one on an existing site that was torn down, another up north), a new surf shop has opened on the bypass, one (crappy) chain beach shop has opened in Duck, and that’s about it. Southern Shores has it’s big “commercial area” of a half dozen shops at the corner of 158 & 12, which was empty anyway, and has a restaurant, a yarn/knitting shop, a fabric shop, a hairdresser, and a couple other small shops in it.

My friend Tom who used to live in the DC area came and visited last month. It’s a been between 18 months and 2 years since he’d been in the area. Everywhere he turned it seemed he was saying, “That wasn’t here before!” I was prepared for that reaction at every turn when we arrived last year with the oh too long gap in visits and was very pleasantly surprised and comforted by the lack of massive change.

In many ways, change is good. In many other ways, lack of change is just as good.

It never fails – the best shots are available when your camera is sitting on the table back in the house. Got down to the beach this evening to see…

– Nuns on the beach. (It’s just not something you see everyday.)
– The sand crabs putting on a floor show for everyone with the post high tide burrow excavation. (I always have a hard time photographing the buggers and they were right by my feet…)
– Some nice Navy hardware flying overhead

Ah well, tomorrow will bring other opportunities. Hit a local winery and a wine shop for some tastings, and we now have 2 boxes of crackers, 4 kinds of cheese, and 12 bottles of various NC wines. We still haven’t decided on dinner yet, wine & cheese is a definite possibility.

It’s definitely strange to bike somewhere that people aren’t going out of their way to try and run you off the road.

Made it! Had to deal with some wicked storms on the way down on Friday but we made it in one piece and with 16 minutes to spare before the rental office closed for the day. Weather has been great so far, and we’re pretty sure there is a fox living in the scrub next to the house. Already have had one dolphin sighting. Life is good.

In the sine wave that is my life, it’s “flurry of activity” time.

Talked w/landscaper dude, he’s done the estimate and will take care of everything I need to have done and most likely before I leave town on Friday.
The painting estimate is tomorrow. They can give me the estimate on the spot, and I’ll probably just hand over the keys right then and there.
The title signing party (or whatever it actually is, I just know to show up with ID and a pen) is Wednesday.

So, in theory, I should be near ready to put the damn house on the market within a month. Woo-freaking-hoo. And once that is done, it will be a couple months of being a complete lazy sloth again, at which point something else will be approaching critical mass and I’ll have to deal with that.

Yeah, not so good at the “pacing myself” in life.

I love my Jeep. The tires however, are an excellent example of a bad decision in the design process. They take a P215 75/16 size tire. This tire is only made by Goodyear and apparently also isn’t terribly popular.

A little over 2 months ago I took the spare to Merchant’s tire to be replaced. It took two months to get it. (No charge in the end for the stupid nightmare trying to get it. Yes, I could have gone elsewhere but I basically wanted to torture them and MAKE them get it for me since they said they would.) Part of the problem was that this is not a terribly common tire size so they didn’t have it in stock. The second problem was that their inventory system has gotten so completely and utterly screwed up since they merged with NTB & King Tire that it’s totally unreliable – at one point the inventory system said they had 3 in stock in the shop when they had none. They would try to get it from another shop, and it would get sold out from under them.

So, I finally got the spare. Then went to get my car inspected. Guess what it failed on? Tires, cause the alignment got out of whack and caused some very funky wear on one side… Of course. Tires. This would be the same day I’d finally gotten the spare. I talked w/Merchant’s on the snowball’s chance in hell that they might have a couple more of these in stock when they got mine, and no surprise, they didn’t. However, they referred me to the Goodyear retailer over in Burke, so I headed over there. They don’t have them in stock either and apparently have never had them in stock in that particular shop for any reason. They had to order them as well, but their inventory and transfer system actually WORKS and I had them today after ordering on Friday.

The gal at the desk asked if I needed them w/black or white lettering… At this point, the lettering on the tires could be neon green and in Japanese and I wouldn’t have cared.

But, I have a car with a valid inspection sticker, two new tires and nicely aligned.

Note to self: Ask how long the work will take before dropping off the car so you are not surprised when they say four hours. (Which I shouldn’t have been anyway.) But hey, it’s worth it, I’ll have a car in proper alignment and passing inspection.

I love how when I call my ISP they tell me I can check system status online. Chances are if I am calling, it’s because I can’t get online.

I have a small birdbath on the back deck to replace the “plastic table birdbath” that was created one day when a storm flipped it over. The new birdbath is just an oversized shallow pasta plate that seemed to be perfect and easy to keep clean, etc. I have yet to see a bird venture near the damn thing. Little flying ingrates.

The dog, who was soooo not happy with my packing up on Saturday morning, apparently got over it. It took him at least 5 minutes yesterday when I got back in before he noticed I was even back, and I got an “Oh, HI! Were you gone?!” greeting…

Colonial Beach is truly the land that time forgot. If you ever want to get away from pretty much everything for a couple days, this is a good place for it. My motel door had an actual real metal key.

Floyd Landis now qualifies as tough in my eyes. He’s getting his hip replaced after the Tour de France, and isn’t taking any pain medication in the meantime. I get a hangnail and it’s “Where is the advil and wine?!”

Oh, and the weekend was by no means a loss whatsoever – found a new winery pointed out by a fellow BT’er: Ingleside Vineyards. 10 tastings for $2.50. My wine supply is restocked.

It’s a good thing I have Columbia ahead, cause I think otherwise, I would be constantly doing the what if. Which is bad. Captantony near bit it on the swim and is now rethinking the sport. :( I feel so bad for him.

DNF on the swim!! And I’m not the slightest bit upset about it. (Perhaps a testament to how NOT hard core I am, LOL.) And I rode the bike course anyway.

Screwy day. Water was 79 degrees, fully wetsuit legal w/a USAT amendment due to the jellyfish… Pre-race meeting scheduled for 6:40 – planned on warming up in the water from 6:30-6:40. Wrestle into my wetsuit and get ready to head for the water and they’re now saying the meeting will be at 6:30 and are telling people to get out of the water for it. And we stand around and wait, and wait and wait, then find out the delay is because there had been an accident out on the bike course and the sheriff’s dept was getting it cleaned up. Finally the first wave goes off (men 39 & under) and we watch and try to figure out what on earth is going on since they’re all inside the buoys. Can you say strong current? Next wave goes off, with a little bit more success as they angle themselves more to the left. The women head out and we’re near going straight left trying to compensate. Went out very slow, no OWS freakout but also keeping my head above water simply because I need to keep track of where I am after watching the first two waves end up all over creation. Past first bouy, getting on to the second and all forward motion pretty much ceased. (Apparently this was where the current was kicking in, or I suck even worse than I ever thought) I am expending WAY too much energy to get NOWHERE. But, absolutely no panic whatsoever. I’m looking at where I am, and where I need to be to make the turn and there is no way it’s gonna happen, not with the water seriously not cooperating with me. So, I realize I can snag a kayak now and get in a boat under my own power, or try to continue on, get in real trouble and get pulled out by the back of my wetsuit. Discretion being the better part of valor, I went for option A.

The guys on the boat were super nice, kept asking if I was OK, I was more worried they were going to ground the boat getting me to the beach. Handed off my chip to someone and they said they were so sorry, I just said “No worries, I’ll kick it next year” which I guess isn’t a normal response cause I got some very surprised looks. Got out of my wetsuit and dried off a bit and went back down to watch the rest of the swimmers come in and that confirmed I made the right call – they were hurting bad coming out of the water. Folks were so off course trying to come back in because of the current – one of the race officials said he was sure folks did a minimum of 1200-1400M with the current. One other gal came in on one of the boats, and she was in tears – I felt so awful for her, and hugged her and told her it was OK. She said she was going to bike and run anyway, which for some reason sounded like a great idea to me, too. So, off we go to the bikes. This may have been in violation of several rules, but the bike course was open to traffic with no aid stations, so it’t not like they can tell some random person on a bike they can’t be on the road.

I have mixed feelings about the bike course. Technically, loved it – the hills weren’t nearly as bad as they seemed when I drove them last night, it was a very straightforward out and back with 2 turns and the turnaround. (However, one turn was 90 degrees at the bottom of a hill.) From a safety standpoint, it sucked in my eyes. Course was totally open to traffic, just some police & volunteers at the intersections. Fortunately, the traffic wasn’t heavy. The 90 degree turn had an oil slick on it. The “shoulders” were gravel & grass, so if you had to go over the white line, good chance you would wipe out cause you only had another 6 inches of pavement. 5 cars intentionally came as close to me as they could, including one pickup truck deciding to honk as he got right by me, despite my being near on top of the white line and there being NO oncoming traffic. On the way back in I saw the last rider on the way out w/the sweep behind her. The two cars behind it decided they wanted to pass, and came over into my lane. No crash, but WAY too close. I discovered I do have nerves of steel sometimes, as on all 6 occasions I managed to ride as straight and perfectly as I have in my life.

The last left turn to get back to the race site was no longer manned as I approached it – no biggie for me, I’m not racing anymore, but there are still folks behind me! I turned left a block early and just went through the neighborhood to get back over to the site. I decided to bag running since I figured I’d already tired out my guardian angel between the swim and the bike route, and 6 more miles of being a slow moving target might not be the best idea. (Full traffic on the run route, too.)

So, what could have been a really craptastic day was actually really good and I made two goals – happy (even without the finish) and under 2 hours on the bike. No OWS panic and some really good calm, clearheaded decision making.

Don’t know if I’d attempt it again next year, obviously there is always the revenge factor, but nearly getting creamed 6 times on the bike doesn’t have a lot of appeal.

OK, so I think I am good to go for Sunday. Just a matter of getting the bags & bike in/on the car in the morning and taking off.

Thinking internet access is unlikely as the only free wifi spot I have been able to locate is the local library, so, probably no posting til Monday unless they’re voice posts.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Damn, why don’t they tell you some things will be so easy? Called the title company on the house, and all we have to do to get it in our name is to show up next week and sign some papers. I figured it would be a friggin’ goatrope like everything else.

Little bro is back home, which I am very happy about – sounds like he had a really good time in NYC, so I’m happy about that – can’t wait to see his pics – apparently the building he was staying in had a killer view and he got some great shots of the city from the roof.

Other than that, though, today was kind of a “blech” day. Did my scheduled ride on the trainer cause when I looked at the radar this morning, it looked like there were storms coming through – of course, they didn’t come through until much, much later so I could have been outside after all.

Despite the “blech”, it was a fairly productive day.

I have health insurance! Well, I’ve got new health insurance – my individual plan is in force now. My brother went through the same company – he was good to go in a couple days. Mine took 2 weeks because apparently the computers ate part of the quote and as a result it went into limbo until someone pulled it up and got the missing pieces in.

Made a bunch of phone calls on the townhouse to start my day. Have someone coming in to give me an estimate on interior painting for the townhouse next week. They said they can give me the numbers on the spot. At which point I will likely hand over the keys and say “Knock yourself out.” Waiting on landscaper to call back. Get the last of the stuff out that is there and then it goes on the market. Yeah, it’s taken too long, but it’s also taken this long to get to a point where I don’t wake up in the morning completely over my head in work stress. What can I say, when I burnout, I go all out. It was more important to get myself feeling better physically first before tackling anything else, cause I was seriously dragging tail for a long time. Guess it sounds kinda lame, but it is what it is.

Also have an appointment for all three critters to get their checkups and shots tomorrow so they will be good to go for the kennel.

So, definitely a more done than undone kind of day.

Went and got lunch today and came home and crashed out hard – totally snoozed through the afternoon ride I had planned and when I got up, the storms were heading through. At first, I just figured the run & heat had taken a decent chunk out of me, but then I realized the problem. The problem is – I am a dumbass. I took sunscreen with me today, and neglected to actually put any of it on and hence, got a bit of a sunburn. Not lobster red by any means, and no pain, but I can tell it’s there – and that is what makes me sleep like a complete rock within an hour or so of getting in the house.

Assuming I don’t fall asleep on the couch again, I’ll spend the evening reassuring the dog that I will NOT let the fireworks outside get him. I wish he wasn’t afraid of the noises, cause I do miss being able to set fireworks off in the backyard.

The run today was fun, if warm – 77 degrees at the start with 63% humidity. Which you just don’t think of as being hot, until you’re moving in it. Then it’s freaking hot. But there were lots of little kids running and they were so fun to cheer on at the end – they have that great “I’m being chased by a monster” form that is just so adorable. The last of the race was a downhill, and it was so cute to watch their eyes light up when I would tell them “It’s really downhill!! I just did it!” (Amazing how quickly they learned that the volunteers will tell them anything to keep them going, but a lady with a race number is going to tell them what’s really up ahead.) One thing that just bugged the crap out of me was passing a father & son where the father was giving the kid a ton of crap about his form. Not, “Hey, bud, if you keep doing that, you’ll get shin splits, so try this” but more of the “You’re going to be the cross country star I never was” attitude. And the advice he was giving was bad. While I did resist the urge to give the guy a flying tackle as I went by, I might have muttered something about his information being incorrect as I passed.

It did bring something that I’ve always known in the back of my head into sharp focus, though. 21 years ago I did my first 5K, and managed to swing age group hardware to boot. My folks were both there for the race, my Dad riding his bike on the side streets of the course and tossing me wet towels (it was hotter than hell) and my Mom at the finish with big thermos of lemon honey tea. (The fine art of jockstrapping goes back many years.) I knew so many parents whose reaction to the race would have been, “Well, we’re signing you up for track/cross country now!” since the results were fairly good. Fortunately, mine knew that I wanted to do this for fun, to see if I could do it, and I did and had a good time and that was that. They were always so good about letting me do my own thing when it came to sports and such. Pretty much the only thing was if I started a season, I needed to at least stick it out. If at the end of the season I didn’t want to do whatever it was anymore, no problem.

I sure hope if I ever have kids I always remember that.

Happy 4th Everyone!! Don’t blow off any fingers.

Kicked off my day with a 5K over in Potomac – not a bad way to start off the day.

Now it’s time for FOOD.

If you just leave OLN on television all day long, you can come and go all day and eventually you will see the entire TdF stage for the day, as they seem to be replaying it at least 3 or 4 times.

Really enjoying it this year – definitely interesting with all the usual suspects out of the tour.