CafeChatNoir

Lane is home! They still have no freaking clue what it was, but he’s home and that’s the important thing.

I find it rather appropriate that even the demolishing of the Woodrow Wilson bridge is delayed. It was supposed to go down at 11:59, they’re still standing around at 12:17.

If you’re still up and want to watch, the live feed is here:
http://www.nbc4.com/videostream/6025072/detail.html

Got some GOOD news on Lane today! Thank god.

He’s eating, off the morphine and only taking Tylenol for pain, the rash that came with this adventure is fading, and he’s being a real smartass. Looks like he’ll get to go home soon.

At one point on Friday the docs apparently weren’t really sure he was going to make it. I can understand that. 5 days of extreme, unexplainable pain and no answers. At that point it becomes a mental battle to try to stick it out and believe that you really will get better.

They still have no idea what caused it, but I’m still thinking it sounds for all the world like a case of the shingles.

Woohoo, didn’t die on the swim!!!

OK yeah, so I’m sitting here in a hotel room hoping I’ll get tired here soon so I can get some decent sleep before tomorrow.

Got everything checked in at the estrogen-fest IronGirl registration/bike racking/et al. It’s very…strange? different? odd? Something, I just don’t know quite what. It may have something to do with the fact that they had 1800 people register for it, so it’s pretty huge. (Biggest tri I’ve been involved in topped out at 500 registrations if I recall correctly.) Supposedly 800 of the folks here are first timers – pretty cool.

Looking around at bike racking, it sure looked like a pretty hard core field to me – didn’t see any mountain bikes or hybrids like I did at Virginia Run, and everyone had that “I know what I’m doing” look about them. Ack. Got a good look at the swim course, too – my god it looks 10 miles long. It’s hard to visualize 1,000 meters of water, and this definitely doesn’t look like I imagined, LOL. But, they’re saying the water temp is 84 degrees, so that’s definitely a plus for me. Also, something I noticed is that a good chunk of the swim is relatively close to shore, so should I freak out, in theory I should be able to paddle to the shallows, put a foot down, take a breath and dive back on in. The other thing is that I am planning now to just go ahead and side/breaststroke the first leg of it (it’s an out/left turn/left turn triangle-ish route) to get past the initial HR spike that always happens in the first couple minutes when I swim, that way I can still be head-above-water & breathing and not panicking while I wait for my body to agree that yes, we are swimming today. Once I thought about those things, I felt much better about the swim, so I think I’ll be able to stay relatively calm through it given that I’ve thought it out ahead of time and have a “plan” of sorts.

I really didn’t think anything of the fact that this was going to be an all female event when I signed up – it just looked like a reasonable distance that was late in the season, so I figured I’d be able to tackle it without dying. Well, let me tell you, this being an all-female event is a Very Big Deal. This is “IronGirl“’s first season of triathlons. The first was earlier this year in Dallas, they got about 600 people I think, and this one registered 1800, so I can see how that is a big deal for an inaugural race.

Guess I’m just having troubles wrapping my head around the need for an all female event. Why couldn’t you have a kickass co-ed event and push it hard as “first timer friendly”?

Tomorrow, I may understand why an all female event *is* a big deal. Regardless, if what I have seen so far today of the setup and such is indicative of how things will be tomorrow, it should be a very good, very enjoyable race.

Looks like the common theme of BT racers tomorrow will be “this is for you Lane” – he’s still in the hospital, still no diagnosis, but his friend who visited with him today said he’s still being a smartass, so that’s definitely a good thing. I’m usually not one to race for a “reason” but tomorrow, it’s for him.

So, this weekend’s race is slightly more involved than others I’ve done. Between being “out of town” to an extent (just over 50 miles away), bike racking is today. Which is not unusual in larger races, but I’ve not run into it before. So, I have to get to the host hotel and get my packet, then over to the race site to get the bike inspected and racked, then back to the host hotel for the “Mandatory but not really, we just want you to come” meeting at 5PM, then over to my hotel to crash out for the night.

Fortunately, all these various locations are within a few miles of each other. As it stands right now, if I leave now, I will have about a 2 hour window for bike inspection and racking before needing to get back to the meeting. Of course, I’m not quite ready to go.

Bike inspection and racking shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes tops, even with lines – if the inspections are like they usually are, it’s “check brakes, bar end plugs* and helmet” and that all there is to it. In theory, I leave as late as 2 and still make it. However, I don’t think I’m going to push that, so as soon as I have the last of my stuff packed up and the bike on the car, I’m gonna hit the road.

So, yes, I should get on all that, shouldn’t I?

*Bar end plugs = the little plastic round piece at the end of the handlebars. Quite important, if you fall/crash and manage to have one of the handlebars decide to attack your body, it’s the difference between a bigassed bruise and an actual wound that will require a tetanus shot.

I know no one here knows Lane, but I feel better being able to talk about it.

He still feels like total shit and they have no idea why. MRI & CAT came back with nothing, his white counts are normal.

Dale is going to visit this weekend with another one of Lane’s old friends (they had been roommates way back when) and will be printing off all Lane’s blog comments and reading them to him, hopefully that will perk him up at least a little bit.

I know he’s really down – who wouldn’t be – you’re in a ton of pain and no one can tell you why or how to fix it? How long can you put up with that before you give in? That’s what I’m really concerned about – if they can’t give him an answer here soon, how long can he stick it out?

I was going to make a road trip to Nashville in September to surprise him at a race. I may be booking a flight to Memphis at the beginning of next week.

If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we figure out what hell is wrong with Lane?

They still don’t know what’s going on, except that he’s hurting, and has a fever. I talked to him briefly this afternoon, and they were getting ready to take him for an MRI. His Mom is thinking it may be time to change hospitals and get him up to Vanderbilt up in Nashville.

He sounded tired as hell, but his sense of humor is still at least a little intact – he’d had a running bet w/his friend Dale (the one who has been the main POC on this) on some weight loss – he’s now insisting that he’s won. (He hasn’t eaten in 4 days.) Told him if he’d really wanted a rest day from training, all he had to do was take one, no need to go to these lengths.

When Dale checked in this evening, they’d given him some Demerol and he was finally sleeping, which is good – he SO needs the rest to fight whatever this is.

I’m very worried and scared for him.

Lane is still in the hospital, still no firm diagnosis. (Meningitis & West Nile have been ruled out.) His friend who has been checking in with him and keeping us in the loop emailed me this morning with “I am sure he would rather hear from you than me.”

So…I’m getting ready to call the hospital for a quick “Dammit, get yourself better” call. I’m a wreck when it comes to these kinds of things. I’m totally terrified that he’ll have just fallen asleep and I’ll wake him up, or something like that. Wish me luck that I don’t say something stupid or start crying.

The books are apparently “Out for delivery” so hopefully he’ll get them sometime today.

Edit:Didn’t say anything stupid or cry. Go me.

Well, my evening of being cutoff resulted in absolutely nothing critical being missed and some peace & quiet. :)

Having a much better day today already, with only one downer. My friend Lane down in Memphis is in the hospital – they don’t know what’s wrong with him but he went from training for Ironman Florida to not being able to get out of bed on Monday. His first thought was tick bite, but there is no firm answer yet. He’s probably going to be there for at least a few more days, I’ve sent off a couple books (thank you Amazon for cheap next day shipping, that prime membership thing just made itself worth it), figure you can only watch so much CNN and Oprah. Not much you can do from 900 miles away.

A nice late night time waster:

http://www.43things.com/

I’m worried sick about Lane.

Crappy, crappy day. I’m in a bad headspace and generally bad mood. The idiot that IM’d me the other night emailed me (oh, thank you so much AOL for that free email account that I never asked for so now anyone can email me through it) cause I guess the moron wants to stay in touch or something. I forgave him for being such a dumbass a long time ago, but I really have no desire to stay in touch thanks.

Phone has been ringing off the hook throughout the afternoon with useless calls.

Finally gave in and turned off the phone, email, and IM a couple hours ago. I’m not in the mood to deal with anyone right now. If you’ve emailed me, I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Maybe.

Well, let’s see – two days running and I haven’t managed to do a damn thing about the cable. I think that will wait anyway until Donald moves in cause then we can figure out the best place to put the server.

I need to come up with something for tomorrow.

I’m in a bad, BAD headspace today. Very bad.

Well, folks – if the world ends tomorrow, it was really nice knowing y’all.

They’re closed, like everything else. ;)

I’ve always been a night owl, but in the past couple weeks my sleep patterns have shifted about an hour later for whatever reason, and you lucky people get to listen to my “on the verge of crashing out” ramblings.

I’ve got a handful of minor stressors hanging over my head at the moment and that may be what has pushed back the rack time. None of these things are insurmountable, but they’re just things I don’t want to deal with. And my biggest flaw is that if there is something I don’t want to deal with, I won’t for as long as humanly possible. I’d like to think I’ve raised procrastination to an art form. :-D

But, it’s a horribly bad habit to have, and I need to do something about breaking it. It’s not that I haven’t attempted, but I tend to look at *everything* and freak out instead of just picking one single thing to deal with and then moving on. You’d think at my age I’d have figured things out, wouldn’t you? Of course not! I still go in fits and spurts – put things off as long as possible, then a frenzy of accomplishment, and right back to ignoring things I don’t like as long as I can. It’s hardly a new thing for me, and I don’t even have the excuse of “work is kicking my ass, I don’t have the time or energy to think about anything else” anymore.

So, with tomorrow being Monday and the start of a new, fresh, shiny week, I think it’s about time to attempt to break that habit. What is it they say – 21 days to make or break a habit? If I pick one thing a day and deal with it for the next 21 days (well, excluding the couple travel days I’ve got ahead), I should have gotten a shitload done, and hopefully made a new habit of picking something to get done everyday and not letting things pile up.

I think one thing a day is a reasonable thing to attempt, don’t you?

Tomorrow, get the cable & internet situation sorted out. (I could have sworn I’d already gotten the name changed on the cable long ago, but when I tried to add the internet to it online I found out, nope, still under the old name.)

I’ll probably post things to keep myself accountable – so, enjoy watching my to-do list, LOL.

Yes, because I get mistaken for Liv Tyler ALL THE TIME. *snort*

Yeah, it’s more “look, they all have brown hair and part it on the same side!” recognition, but an interesting little tool.

Talked w/a friend last night re: the arrest in the Jon Benet Ramsey case.

Neither one of us is convinced that this is the guy, and that this is one seriously messed up call out for help.

Regardless, Karr is one super creepy guy.

Update: Emailed the RD on this – first, he emailed me back at 12:35AM, and is willing to work with anyone who is truly unhappy with the last minute change. Turns out they had to shorten the bike, so they shortened the swim & run as well, but they didn’t have to – so they put those back the way they were due to several requests.

Given the incredibly fast response, and a very positive one as well, here’s to this being the start of a great annual race for DC.

I’m trying to decide if the Nation’s Tri has doomed itself before the gun even goes off.

They managed to get the permits to do the race, which is great, but they had to change the distances. It was originally going to be an Olympic distance with a 1.5K swim, a 40K bike and then a 10K run. By the final go/no-go date on Monday the 14th, they had to change it to a 1K swim, 32K bike ride and an 8K run, and they opened registration.

This morning they then announced another course change – it’s now a 1.5K swim, 32K bike and 10K run. Upside, it’s closer to the Oly distance that they originally wanted. But changing course distances after registration has opened has already gotten a few hackles up – and I don’t blame them. You throw down $175 (yes, it’s THAT expensive) based on the fact that you’re doing a race of “X” distance. To change that afterwards kinda sucks in my book.

When the 10K I did last spring had to be changed to an 8K, they offered refunds to anyone that wanted them when the change occurred, but there has been no mention of refunds or transfers for this race.

Be interesting to see how this turns out.

OK, this meez thing is a little creepy…

It’s human nature to want to know what is going on. With the advances in communication technology over the years, we have gotten to the point where we can often get the news as it’s happening. The problem with this is the lack of complete information.

This morning is a good example. When I got up, a plane had been diverted to Boston on it’s way to Dulles because a 60 year old female confronted an airline crew, while having in her possession a screwdriver, matches, vaseline (none of which she should have been able to get on a plane) and notes referencing al-Qaeda in English & Arabic.

By the time I left to go to the gym, it was a 59 year old woman that just had a big honking panic attack and apparently got into it with the crew. None of the above mentioned items were actually there.

The arrest in the Jon Benet Ramsey case – right now they’re so desperate for things to talk about, it’s getting absurd. The suspect has been described on more than one occasion as a “second grade elementary school teacher” – as opposed to those second grade high school teachers, I guess.

As much as I like knowing what’s going on, I wish the media stick with the facts that they can actually confirm for the moment and bring in the details later when those can be confirmed. Leave the rumors out – I’d rather wait to get the entire story. They may want to take a cue from the Boulder County officials who are holding off on their press conference until tomorrow.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee! Kicked out a 20K today. :) Couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather today, and finished in under 2:30 which made me quite happy. Not particularly fast, but I stuck with my plan and didn’t blow up, bonk, or have anything else go wrong. Feeling good about MCM.

All the gory details here.

For weekend users of Metro’s blue line.

From now through mid-October, there will be ONE train going between Franconia/Springfield and the King Street stations on the weekends. This will add ~30 minutes on to your trip and Metro’s trip planner feature does not incorporate this delay into the times when you try to figure out trip times.

OK, so I went up to the city today to see a rally/protest/march/whathaveyou to see if actually seeing it in person would give me some more insight into why people do this and what it accomplishes.

Color me somewhat underwhelmed. It was interesting, but I still don’t think these activities necessarily accomplish anything, and the message gets lost when other groups come out and join in. (I was approached by the socialists a couple of times…thanks, just observing.) Did get some pics – I’d toss it in the photo gallery, but I wanted some narration so they’re behind the cut, and it is very image heavy.

They said that there were 30,000 in attendance. I don’t think it was quite that high.

Pick your sign, any sign…

Or, a button

This idiot nearly got his ass kicked by the folks at the rally – the police eventually convinced him it would probably be in his best interest to not provoke people. This was not a quashing of free speech, this guy was there for no other reason than to cause trouble. He was hollered at by several people that this was not a racist event and to please take it elsewhere.

Prayers

Just not what I’d expected to see

The police had it fairly easy today – things were pretty well controlled overall. The officer on the right asked if I was Muslim or a sympathizer – basically just trying to figure out what this decidedly out of place looking gal was doing. “Just observing.”

After the rally, they marched in front of the White House and over to 15th Street:

No anti-war march is complete without the Grim Reaper:

No official counter protests, but there were these rather hateful people over on the side. No, the police aren’t protecting them, they’re at the corner of the route where they have to make sure the march turns and goes down the right street:

Hot damn! Margie Shapiro is going to be at the Columbia race this month! Meaningless to most I realize, but I had the opportunity to go to a tri Q&A clinic and spend a couple hours while we all picked her brain. She’s incredibly nice and super talented, and it’s pretty cool that we’ll be in the same race. (Even though she’ll likely be done in 50% of the time that it takes me, LOL.)

I hate it when I have so much rattling around in my head that it effs with my ability to sleep.

Today’s (well, technically yesterday’s) events have me pretty down. Thrilled they caught it ahead of time, but it just reinforces the fact that it’s just never really going to end, and there’s not really anything I can do. Sure, I suppose I could go enlist in the Army, but I’m pretty sure I’d die 3 days into basic, so that may not be the most practical response. I guess I just don’t like the idea that the best we can do is just hope we can stay a step ahead of things.

Maybe related, maybe not, I can’t tell for sure, but I’m also feeling totally single tonight and not in my usual “I like being single” way. Meh. However, Snoopy is doing his best to remind me that I am not just single, I am Single with Cats. Um, thanks buddy.

Totally un-PC cynical thought of the day… How many candidates that lost in the primaries on Tuesday are wishing this whole Heathrow story broke on Monday morning instead of today? And I wonder how many other candidates are drooling at the timing for the November elections, and how many times we’ll hear about this again. Regardless, props to British intel for getting it taken care of, as long as they nail this stuff ahead of time, the timing is fine by me.

I am flying to Panama City in November. I wonder how much of a pain in the ass that is going to be, or if things will have settled out a bit. I also wonder how much the lost luggage numbers are going to spike if they continue to heavily restrict carryons…

Went into the city today, and of course there were the requisite news vans all outside Reagan National showing a lot of nothing going on.

I actually don’t mind the ‘no liquids’ in carryons rule, cause right now they apparently don’t have an effective means of checking/testing to see if what you’ve got can be blown up later. Understandable, but I do hope they can get their act together to effectively screen for things such as this, but I doubt it. I was also happy to see that at least one airline waived all ‘extra baggage’ charges for anyone that had to check their carryons if it took them over the X bag limit. (Yes, I would expect this should be a given under the circumstances, but business being what it is sometimes, I can see some execs going “Woohoo, extra baggage charges today!”)

One way of getting rid of your liquids before boarding*

*photo link courtesy Fark.com

Well, there goes carry-ons…

Have fun trying to travel anywhere anytime soon…

ETA: Listening to Sky news via Fox right now – if you’re in the UK (and it sounds like it will be the same in the US shortly if not already) – you basically can’t take JACK on an airplane anymore – seems it was a liquid explosive that was the issue.

At what point will you not even be able to check luggage, either?

Today was a very, very good day. Finally broke through the 2000 meter barrier at the pool. 2050 meters in 1:05. :-D (2050 meters = 1.27 miles)

It has taken what seems like forever to get to this point, but this bodes well if I ever decide to do a half-IM, since the swim is 1.2 miles. I know I can slog through the distance. :-D

The reward was a lovely rare steak and a baked potato. MMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

This is mainly for the benefit of , as he’s the one that got Mox his new frisbee. He’s not real good at giving it back, though… (It’s 2:26 long, so don’t feel like you have to watch the whole thing!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zJHVVwg5eU