Friday, October 13, 2006

Dream King Redux

Tuesday's ride was great (for me, others had many mechanicals), and I came home & passed out; Wednesday was laundry and dinner at Which Brew and no problems sleeping; and last night was the gym, then back to WB for dinner. Sleeping like a log...

I think my problem is another inner-ear infection: lotsa pressure in there, and my vertigo problems were back for a while -- maybe that was the source of the feverishness, an actual fever. When I go for my physical I will have that looked into, maybe get a referral for an ENT guy & get this dealt with once and for all. (Neat stuff on ears here.) This will probably be sometime next week, since all the tests I needed should be done.

Listening: Been in a 90's alterna-women retrospective lately, listened to Tori Amos and now Bjork. Next up will be -- PJ Harvey? Listening to women in the car anyway, in the house it's been men: I've been getting into Gregorian chant. I have a couple of CD's, and I think I'm starting to freak my neighbors out.

Playing: I've started to teach myself Lisp, or at least the rudiments.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Creepshow

Morning weigh-in: 182#, 6.5% BF (WTF?)

I don't know if I actually get feverish, and maybe it's toxins & byproducts leaking from the muscles but sometimes, after a really hard ride, my body acts like it has a fever, and one of the biggest signs of fever for me is restless crazy-dream sleep. Sunday night was like that, and ended with a real horror involving rotting mollusks and crabs.

I mostly forgot about it until dinner last night, when it came flooding back to me in the middle of leftover hot wings, and it caused me to spit out -- practically vomit -- what I was eating. I switched to sandwiches after that...

I got into the computer after dinner, and the next thing I know it was maybe 11:00 and time for bed, but when I went to bed I started with the crazy dreams again, woke up and was then convinced that something -- intruder in the house? a haunting? -- something evil was going on. It was crazy, I was really spooked: searched the apartment twice, lay in bed listening to odd sounds until I fell asleep again. One random house sound was just like the creepy Bartok "tap tap tap" from The Shining...

Linux Voyager, Boatbuilder Edition: What I was playing with was the GNU tools for automating the software-building process. Things like make and autoconf, which are amazingly powerful, but surprisingly easy to use. Then I got into a tutorial for guile I found online, which had some graphics programs built in -- unfortunately, I couldn't get the graphics parts to work, and I still have no idea why.

I won't find out tonight though, because I'm joining Greg H & Eric for a night ride at Sals. We're riding the new trail we built (among other things), which has been nicknamed the "Black Angel trail" because someone put a porcelain doll (about half the size of a child, with a black porcelain face and dressed like for a first communion) watching over one of the tougher sections. It's creepy enough in the daytime, I sure hope my lights don't fail while I'm passing her...

Monday, October 09, 2006

The Tao Of Poo

Poo! Boo! Heh heh heh... Well that's over with, everything's coming up roses and I can eat red meat again.

Anyway:

Rode Friday night on the towpath, but turned around before I got to Sand Island: I got spooked between Freemansburg and the BOC plant when saw a set of glowing predator eyes, low to the ground but bigger than a cat, watching me from the other side of the canal -- just as I came across a torn-apart & half-eaten squirrel on the trail. Coyote? Bobcat? Whatever, I was out of there. When I got home I went to Which Brew for dinner, but it was an early night, no Porters afterward.

Saturday was the gym, and then I met Greg M, Eric and Doug at Sals for some trailwork. Heavy lifting, and we got to to see Eric blow his shoulder out again, maybe 20 yards away from the place he ripped his rotator cuff last time. Since it was Eric's 40th birthday, or close to it, Doug and Lori took him out to dinner at Porters, and I came along to help. It was "Kilt Night" over there by the way, show up in a kilt and get a free Guinness.

I stopped at WB after that, where I ran into Shannon, a girl I knew from my earliest days in Easton. It was her "night off;" she and her husband Eric (different Eric), after nine years of trying and in vitro fertility stuff, now have one-year-old twins, and she just opened her own restaurant so she has almost no time/energy to spare. It was nice to see her out, but I don't expect to see too much of her in the near future, unless I visit her restaurant.

At one point in the evening I looked up and saw Arnie in a tux (just got back from the big Bicycling Hall of Fame dinner,where he met Greg LeMond -- he was practically walking on air), and Andrew in blue hair and a black leather kilt. Only in America, and usually not even there...

Sunday I blew off the Gap Gallop, and rode the towpath and Sals, tried the new stuff we built. Nice, but way hard. I was toast when I got home, but it might have been nutritional un-wisdom that did me in. I was so tired I went to dinner at Porter's again, got the exact same thing as Saturday (chicken w/ sun-dried tomatoes, olives and artichokes, plus rice) while I caught parts of the Eagles & Steelers games -- it is Pennsylvania, after all.

And now for your sermon:

Those who speak don't know shit,
Those who know don't say shit.