Death By Garlic

Morning weigh-in: 174#, 12.5% BF

Well, this weekend is the Easton Garlic Festival, but at Which Brew the weekend starts on Friday night so I grabbed a plate of roasted elephant garlic: each clove must have been about as big as a full bulb of regular garlic, and the plate held about half a dozen cloves. Unbelievably tasty, but it wreaked havoc on my digestion. I guess now I'm honorary Welsh...

Anyway: rode last night, 3 hours on the (slightly damaged) Lehigh towpath -- most damage wasn't from the river, but from water coming down off the hills and cliffs, heading for the river -- then to WB as noted. The band there, The Insidious Rays, were awesome, by the way. Hung out with Stu & Kathy before they left, and Heath & Hans Kneller (their bikes were on their car, who else could it have been?) and Margarita, plus about a thousand cute college girls it seemed like.

This morning I fooled with computer before hitting the coffee shop, then a run along the Jersey side of the river & a standard gym workout; after that I checked out the festival downtown. Got home, played more with the 'puter, and my mouse crapped out. Cheap plastic part inside snapped, so I bought a new Logitech wireless optical mouse (3-button w/ mouse wheel, thirty bucks -- sweet!), which I'm using right now. Feels kind of weird, like using a template on the old AutoCAD systems at work, but I'm sure I'll get used to it pretty quick.

Channeling My Inner Dork

Morning weigh-in: 177.5#, 12.5% BF

Didn't ride/run/lift or do chores/errands last night, instead played with the computer. I don't know why, but I really like playing with bash.

A Little Mercy

Morning weigh-in: 174.5#, 11.5% BF

Heard a cool song yesterday, had to stay in the car to let it finish when I got home from work. I didn't catch the artist/title, but liooked it up and found this:

Whoever watches over all these truckers
Show a little mercy for a weary sinner
And deliver me, Lord deliver me
Deliver me to the next Best Western

Rode last night at Jacobsburg (w/ Doug & Lori on the tandem, Greg M, Greg P, Eric, and Joe & Cindy, as well as seeing Rich B, Lee S on his BMW motorcycle in the parking lot, and Dave J as he was leaving). Lots of damage from the storms & flooding: many bridges out, including small trail bridges (Doug et al fixed a lot of these) and even a few of the big ones. Some trail damage made the trails more technical though, which was fun, a guilty pleasure.

I'm still sick though, and felt like hammered shit after the ride so I went straight home & to bed -- no dinner. Felt a lot better overnight and this morning, thanks to my good friends Actifed, Ibuprofin, Echinacea and Vitamin C. I'm still passing the "neck test"* though, so tonight I'll be heading to the gym, see how I feel there.

*Neck Test: if you're sick and it's below your throat, don't exercise, but if it's above your neck do a warmup, and if you feel up for it you can continue the workout.

Not the Return I Was Expecting

Morning weigh-in: 177.5#, 10% BF

I seem to be getting a cold, which was once a monthly occurrence but has been almost unheard-of for more than a year. Sore throat started last night, sinuses seem clogged, I hope it blows over pretty quick.

Ran yesterday, two miles down past Baker Chemical before working out, then went home, did some stuff, and went to WB for dinner. Interesting conversation with a dude I see there on Tuesdays: kickboxer, worked as an "armed security escort" in the Caribbean, coupla stories...

Tonight is a night ride at Jacobsburg, check out the flood damage & see the ol' Gang.

Finding My Way Back To The Same Old Same Old

Morning weigh-in: 176#, 11% BF

I was going to run this morning -- but I got a haircut yesterday, which means I visited the bookstore in the mall, and that's where I bought some books on MySQL and PHP, thus causing me to stay up a little late reading and playing with the computer... I'll hit the gym tonight (if it's still there after the flooding), do a quick warmup run beforehand.

I have PHP on my computer, but no web server installed; I haven't checked to see if MySQL is around anywhere yet. I'll probably either download the latest Apache or use the handy CD that came with the book, get it all running & start to play sometime in the next week or so. Meantime, I can always use PHP to generate static HTML in various shell scripts, right? (Yes, still messing with my photo galleries script, which I think I'll be finalizing this weekend. I'll probably post version 1.0 in my gopherspace real soon.) Sad to say, freeshell.org doesn't give access to MySQL without special, paid-for privileges & I won't be setting up anything but a private web server at home, so this is all pretty much just wanking. Actually, 2nd order or meta-wanking, since the web page project is already a bit of a wankfest...

There is a bit of an agenda here, however: I think I may have to switch careers sometime in the next year or so, and am looking to get into computers. Web stuff is probably already saturated; my theory is that home-PC tech support will be pretty stable -- you can't outsource the doctor that makes house calls, right? -- but I'll need a bit lot of retraining before that (hardware, software, MSCE, yadda yadda), & I first want to get a feel for the back office of a computerized small business. We'll see.

By the way, here are some photos of the flood damage, emailed to me from a friend (not sure who took or owns the pictures).

Back From Florida

Morning weigh-in: 178#, 13% BF

Well, I'm back; flew in last night & was home by about 10:30. Some highlights: flew down Thursday, met my uncle at the airport and, on the advice of my other uncle, drove directly to the rehearsal dinner, where we were two hours early... went to Universal Studios on Friday, the wedding on Saturday, and a brunch at my cousin's new house (sister of cousin who got married) on Sunday before flying back. Plenty of hanging out w/ family in the meantime & betweentime.

The weather was good (but very hot), and there was only a little hurricane damage in the Orlando/Cocoa Beach areas I frequented, so when I got home I was surprised to see as much storm and flodding damage as I did around here: bridges and roads out; the downtowns of Easton and several other river towns spent most of yesterday under water.

More later, including many photos (probably in the yahoo galleries), so stay tuned...