Only This Much Fun Please

Morning weigh-in: 179#, 12% BF

Car went in the shop last night: oil change & lube, a few minor repairs, & to see if/why it's leaking/burning oil. I didn't arrange for a ride to work today, figuring on maybe bike-commuting on the Iguana. My plan was to use the bike to get home from the dealer, do that as a sort of shakedown cruise for the commute. Things looked pretty grim in terms of time though (I have to leave the house by 6:00 AM, thus wake at 5:00, thus as early bedtime as possible when I bike to work), so I called a friend, left a message to beg for ride. Since I got no answer, I followed through on the rest of the plan, got the bike ready and packed my panniers for the morning, then left for the dealership a little after 10:00 PM.

Weather forecasts were for possible light flurries, but lots of wind overnight & into today -- & they weren't kidding about the wind! Strong enough to have the flags all stick straight out, but it was fairly steady & always from the North. My ride went north for only a mile or so, then cut east, paralleling US22 on back roads all the way to Easton, so I lucked out -- I hate riding into the wind, and this breeze was pretty strong. I was worried about my situation at first, but partway home a little voice said "admit it: you're enjoying this!" I was home by 11:30.

My friend had called me back, leaving a message that he'd be glad to give me a ride -- woo hoo! Another bullet dodged, though except for the early wakeup, I probably would have enjoyed the morning ride too.

A Death In The Family

Morning weigh-in: 179.5#, 13.5% BF

Good workout last night at Brian's: me Brian and Greg on the trainers; sprints, intervals, amazing how hot and sweaty you can get in a cold basement... After that it was laundry night, and I went to Which Brew for dinner while the stuff dried -- but they were closed. I had a backup plan though, & walked over to Porter's for a cheeseseak and a Lancaster IPA.

One of the things I don't like about Porter's is the fact that their bar is small, it doesn't take many people to fill it. If you show up to eat alone, sitting at a table for four in a mostly-empty room can be pretty lame -- especially when there's a lively crowd scene at the bar (not ten feet away). So anyway, I ate pretty quickly (good cheesesteak), then got up and found a few people I knew. My garrulous friend Scott was there, told me what had happened across the street.

Which Brew is very much a family establishment: K-Jo has her sisters as occasional waitresses, her cousin Maura is one of the main bartenders, and Maura's sister sometimes helps out; also, her parents are fairly regular patrons. Others work there of course, but this sets the general tone. Apparently, a cousin, a young guy I never met but who sometimes helps out on Saturdays, was having some kind of leg surgery and there were complications... from what Scott told me -- he was over there -- they got a phone call at WB that he'd passed away, maybe about 8:30 or so, and everyone was so upset (& also had to deal with family emergency) that they closed early. Tragic. I gathered from what Scott told me that the guy was hardly more than a teenager. It'll probably be pretty grim over there for a while.

Breakfast

Breakfast
Originally uploaded by donXfive.

Morning weigh-in: 178#, 14% BF

This is a shot of my breakfast at Coffee Works, our first stop on the Chili Ride. Right now it's the most popular of my photos on Flickr.

I decided to skip the gym yesterday, instead went for a hike at Merrill Creek, and then I uploaded my Chili Fest photos. After that I blew off laundry & shopping to play some more with the computer.

Ran this morning, riding the trainer with Brian & Greg tonight.

New Leaf, Slowly Turning

Morning weigh-in: 180.5#, 12.5% BF

I skipped the spin class last night, instead took the singlespeed down the towpath/bike path. Only an hour ride (, then went to Mug Club Night at Which Brew, had dinner with Brian. I was home & in bed by 10:00; morning was a pretty easy wake-up at 6:30 for a change. If this keeps up I'll be able to start running again... Tonight is the gym, followed by laundry. I usually hit WB while the laundry dries, but I think I'll do a little food shopping instead. Meantime, the house is still clean.

You Shall Know Us By Our Stained Shirts

Morning weigh-in: 179#, 15% BF

I spent the weekend sort of battling a cold, still on the edge of it & I don't know which way the tipping point is going to go... stayed in Friday night, blew off the gym on Saturday -- spent the day w/ housework, even though it was beautiful outside. Living room, kitchen & bathroom are pretty much up to code now, and the enforced rest did me a world of good.

Between the sinus situation and the medicine I was taking for it, I didn't have much of an appetite. I don't even remember eating dinner Friday night (probably just went straight to bed), and breakfast was all I ate on Saturday, until I suddenly got very hungry about 10:00, decided to go out after all. I went to Which Brew, grabbed a cheesesteak and a Lancaster Milk Stout. I checked out the band (Illinois Slim) talked to Stu and Cathy, & saw Ed there as well, but didn't make it "a night out," went home to bed pretty quickly.

All this sets the stage for...

The Superbowl of Chili: yesterday was Superbowl Sunday, which meant it was also the 10th Annual "Superbowl of Chili" at Pearly Baker's Ale House. I've been to all of them since the beginning. How it works is, the back dining room at Pearly Baker's is emptied of the regular tables, and long tables are set up against all the walls; about 30 different local restaurants and pubs (some caterers as well) bring their chilis. There is a panel of judges for the main competition, and also a "people's choice" award. A five-dollar donation to charity gets you in, and you get to sample all the chili -- tiny little samples, but after 30 of them you're stuffed -- and vote on your favorites. It's a mob scene; outside of Heritage Day it's the biggest deal in Easton every year.

My/our participation has evolved into something of a ritual: some outdoor activity beforehand, then the Chili Contest, head next door to Mother's (much lesscrowded) to regroup, then a walk up the street to Porters to end the day. This year we started from my place and did an MTB-on-road ride, dropped downtown to Coffee Works for breakfast, rode around near the library and Easton Cemetery, then took the (snowy and difficult) trail along the Bushkill to 13th Street and back home. "We" in this case was myself, Brian, Eric and Doug & Lori -- Lori also volunteered to be designated driver, after she saw us in action last year... The ride was very good, up until we hit the snow, then it was difficult but doable (barely). We spent a little more time than we should have with this phase of the day, and arrived waaaay late to Pearly Baker's: usually we get there around 11:00, an hour before the start, and get a spot on line inside the bar. This time things had already started by the time we got there, and we were waiting down the block; warm weather was a lucky break but it was quite a while before we got to eat any chili. The bar was crowded, and inside "the chili room" was total chaos as usual, lots of people & great chili -- bumping into people, juggling a cup of beer, pencil and score sheet, Doug and I got matching chili stains on our shirts but we managed to get most of it in our mouths. Saw a few familiar faces, but not as many as I expected, no Pete H or Dick S... of course, we didn't spend much time in Pearly B's after the chili, so maybe I just didn't see them. Mother's, Porters, home, early bedtime & I missed the Superbowl for the umpteenth time in a row...

Channeling Susan Sontag

Morning weigh-in: 183#, 11.5% BF

In one of the eulogies for Susan Sontag I read of her habit of going tirelessly from museum to gallery opening to concert etc; last night I sort of emulated her, in a little more lightweight way of course, except for actual weight. I started with the Laurie Anderson show at Zoellner, very good. I was surprised when I saw a friend from Which Brew there, then another -- and another! Some, but not all, were wearing black... Meantime, I was there "with" Eric & Kris, but we arrived separately, sat apart, and we only talked for a bit before/after the show, no retiring to anywhere for post-concert activity.

After the show I went back to Easton, got there in time to got to Which Brew where I expected some up-and-coming local musician -- nothing, and the place was practically empty. I broke down and ordered chili cheese fries, which may explain those weigh-in numbers... The few people in there were going over to Porters, because Maria from Duende was hosting a folkie-type amateur night. I went over too, and it was cool for a bit, but I got there just as Alex (also from Duende) finished a set, and the next few guys weren't my cup of tea. School night, getting close to midnight, went home.

There've been some colds moving through the office, now I think I may have caught one. Maybe sit back this weekend with a copy of Illness as Metaphor -- hope my emulation stays lightweight.

Fast Forward

Morning weigh-in: 181.5#, 11.5% BF

No exercise yesterday or today: last night was the Lehigh Valley DFA meetup and tonight is Laurie Anderson at Zoellner.

The meetup was so-so, and I cut out early. Big crowd, in the "atrium," (ie the Main Street Commons mall corridor) rather than inside Brew Works, certainly not the "drinking liberally" scene I expected... same faces as LV Democrats, same bullshit from the crowd, though I like the group leaders. The parking situation was horrible; I parked in a tow-away zone behind Main Street, thinking "it's after hours, this store is closed & no one will care." Funny feeling diring the meeting so I went outside, there's a Bethlehem (maybe dreaded Parking Authority) cop in the alley, looks like he's checking cars -- I got to mine tout de suite and got out of there, couldn't find anywhere else to park so I went home. Hopefully, tonight will work out better.

It's A Wonderful Life

Morning weigh-in: 181.5#, 12.5% BF

Saw a cool quote about Ayn Rand the other day:

In regard to objective reality, I find an irresistible urge to digress into
Rand's view of nature. She hates it. Nature's only purpose is to
provide raw material for factories. A beautiful park is only as good as
the crops you could grow on it once the trees were cut down.

So anyway, what is the definition of paranoia? When it all starts fitting together... like seeing this, and then this, and then this (on top of this). Maybe it's just fiscal desperation trickling down from the federal level, but it sure seems that local officials have been whoring even harder than ever lately to build their libertarian dystopia. It's like what happened to the town in that Sgt Pepper movie; maybe we can just name the area Pottersfield and be done with it.

Sorry, just getting my game face on, tonight is the Dems for America Meetup...

Hey! I Know That Puppet-Master!

Morning weigh-in: 181#, 14.5% BF

This article was in today's Morning Call, only their version was titled "Creating a buzz." I happen to know this dude's mother, who used to work here until she got laid off a few years ago. Russian woman, also suffered from positional vertigo on occasion, amazingly pretty, even with a thirty-something son... Her son has been doing this kind of thing for years, originally as an assistant to someone else, who put celebrity parties together (rent a beach house or disco, invite a bunch of rich, famous, semi-famous or just good-looking people to schmooze and get photographed), now it looks like he's on his own & hitting the big time -- at least, according to the hype.

By the way, I linked to the Sun-Sentinel article rather than the one in the Morning Call, because I found a link quicker via Google News than I would have rooting around on the Call's clunky website -- and that reminds me of this little gem: apparently the researchers found that teenagers wouldn't deal with bogus websites, and concluded that they were less savvy than their elders???

McSurley's

Morning weigh-in: 182#, 15% BF

I went on a day trip to NYC yesterday. I'd totally forgotten that we'd all made plans at Friday's dinner to go in on Sunday, until Lori P called Saturday night, finalizing the plans and and asking what time I thought we should go... oh, oh yeah, going to the city yes yes of course I remember...

Anyway, we drove in to Jersey City ("we" being myself, Doug & Lori, and Kris & Eric: Eric did the driving) around 9:00 AM, parked at Pavonia Station and took the PATH train to the World Trade Center, aka Ground Zero -- the train goes right through the hole where the buildings were, stopping where I'd guess the original station was. Very weird feeling, the biggest buildings in the world used to be right over our heads.

We didn't have much of an itinerary, just planned to find ourselves at the Guggenheim at some point in the day. Our first stop was for brunch at a vegetarian place in or near the Village; the food was very good, despite an "if you have nut allergies leave now" CYA warning on the menu. We then went walking around, browsed a few funky shops, looking at the buildings and the people. At one point we found ourselves outside CBGB, and at another point we were outside McSorleys and decided to stop in for a quick one -- I was the only one who'd ever been there, so I bored regaled them with tales from my misspent youth, some of it misspent right there in that very room... The place hadn't changed much, a little quieter maybe, almost empty but it was still early on a Sunday afternoon. Cat sleeping on a chair by the coal stove, patron and his dog at the bar, a few elderly Irishmen talking quietly, and the bartender and waiters as um, brusque as ever.

Two stops: we hit The Strand, a huge used/discount bookstore (I got three books from the Loeb collection: Julius Caesar's Civil War and The Gallic Wars, and the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England), and Paragon, a huge sporting-goods store where Lori found cycling shoes at a ridiculously low price. Strangely enough, they said "Lori" on them, probably a contraction of "lorica" but you take what omens you can get.... By the way, did I mention that these stores were huge?

After that we made our way uptown via the subway, then over by the park to the Guggenheim. This was kind of a disappointment since the main exhibit was mostly Aztec sculpture; we found the "recent acquisitions" wing and also checked out their permanent Kandinski collection -- also managed to find a Chagall or two -- which was cool, but not really cool enough at $18 apiece for an hour or two of gawking. (We got there at about 4:00, left a little before their 5:45 closing time.)

Back outside, a little walking and back into the subways down to the Village again, find a place for dinner before heading home. A bit of work, hungry walking in the cold before we found a really cool place whose name I can't recall, just a pub really, but with pub food that really hit the spot. After that was the PATH ride to the car and the drive back to Pennsy; I was home by 11:00.

An observation: Lori pointed out while we were walking around downtown, that very few people we saw were fat, and she attributed it possibly to the fact that they all walked wherever they went. I wasn't ready to agree just then -- we were near NYU, lots of the people around us were college students or starving artists, ie the sample could have been skewed in any number of ways -- but by the end of the day I had to admit she might be on to something. There were very few overweight people. A strange contrast, once you noticed it, to the Red State - Blue State rhetoric and imagery. (To be honest, many of them looked smoker-thin rather than really fit or healthy.) (BTW: There was a recent article about the difference between thin and fat people, that difference being about 300 calories per day of fidgeting.)

RIP George Mitchell: I found out today that a friend of mine, a former co-worker, passed away on Friday. He had colon cancer years ago but beat it (it seemed pretty mild), was laid off maybe a year later. I heard that he'd been sick again recently, another bout and that's what took him. He was maybe fifty five, sixty at most: wife, daughter in college or just graduated, and a son in the Army (West Point alum). It must have been a pretty low-key affair, the funeral was Sunday which seems pretty quick.

UPDATE: Just got back from the gym, spin class with Colette, where I ran into Pieter Cooper before the class. He was one of the kids in the Chain Gang junior racing program, but I remember him from even earlier, when he was about fourteen and would go on the Genesis MTB rides -- now he's in college (actually , he should have already graduated, the slacker). Small world, time flies...

Sangeet

Sangeet is Hindi for "music," and is the name of a show on WPRB, which I was listening to this morning. "Music of the Indian subcontinent," classical and folk, Bollywood dance numbers, world beat and hip-hop. What caught my ear when I first turned on the radio was a very simple flute melody, with sitar behind it. Reminded me, with the snow on the ground and the cold clear air, of Kashmir, Nepal, someplace high in the Himalayas, with a touch of incense in the thin air... Next song of course was some filmi pop, kind of broke the spell.

Reading: Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, plus others. Sangeet also happens to remind me of George and Irma Rajamuttu, the grenadine-soaked conspirators living next door to protagonist Gnossos Pappadapolis, and their record collection. Small world.

I was on my way to Coffee Works this morning when I heard the music, but last night I met Doug & Lori, and Kris & Eric at an upscale Italian place on College Hill called Juliana's. Good food, some decent BYO wine that they brought (fine by me anyway, I can never tell good wine from bad), good talk which became depressing for a while: several recent sexual assault and child molestation/porn cases came up, a bit of a buzzkill.

Crazy... so when I got to Coffee Works there were two high school girls working, and a bunch of their friends there, all BS'ing with this big fat old guy, shabby, suspenders and a gray-white Santa Clause beard, that I've seen down there a few times lately. I opened the paper, saw the stories we were talkng about last night, plus another, and another... The fat guy started looking pretty creepy and ominous, until one of the girls said to him "we should get this [brand of cream cheese or something] at home, Dad." Um, OK, and the mom of one of the workers was sitting next to me at the counter, calm down...

Listening: Right now I just downloaded a Duende MP3, one of my favorites: a live version of their song "Overboard." I've got the CD, guess I'm just stocking up in case something goes wrong. I'm also downloading "West Virginia," a song thak kind of reminds me of the way I feel about Easton, or at least the Easton of my dreams. (I dream a lot about Easton. No plot, just drifting throught the streets and houses, almost like an alternate universe, brickwork and downtown, night and alleys...)

After Coffee works I went to the gym, met Dawn there. Excellent workout, I feel pretty strong on the weights especially my legs. Dawn's heading up to Maine for some snowmobiling, and I won't see her again until almost March; when she gets back I think I'll start switching from strength back to endurance workouts.

Tomorrow is hopefully a road ride (reasonable conditions and I'll break out the Iguana) otherwise I might go DH skiing at Blue Mountain. When the song finishes downloading I'll listen to it, then hop in the shower & go out for some dinner. Yo later.

Friday And My Weekend's Already Come And Gone

Morning weigh-in: 181#, 8.5% BF

Went to the gym last night, again getting there a little late and again running out of time before I ran out of exercises... I got there a little after 7:00, and I was doing alright, on schedule up until about 8:00 when the yoga class got out. My friend Violetta had taken the class, saw me on the way out, and engaged me in conversation -- something she's very very good at! Twenty minutes of talking about Alaska, bikes, health & finances, just enough time to put me in the hole & I didn't quite dig out. She used to be a member of the health club, quit and now has re-joined; I guess I'll have to relearn my "friendly but short gym greetings" technique.

After that I went to Which Brew to see Alex Radus play solo. He's half of the duo Duende, and as good as Maria is I've often felt that Alex is the better musician and singer. Last night however, though he was very good, I felt that he was missing something -- like Maria -- to complement and balance his style. (He did have a few guest musicians on stage for one or two songs, and that was good. And in case I've given the wrong impression: the show was fantastic, he sang and played beautifully, and it was definitely worth seeing. I really like those guys, Alex and Maria, and sort of hold them to pretty high standards -- and my "missing something" feeling last night may have been just because I'm too used to hearing the two of them together; someone going in with no preconceptions would have been blown away.)

Anyhoo, when I got to WB the first thing I see is a car stuck on ice trying to get out, one other guy pushing and it's going nowhere. I go over to help and it's Perry's car, he's got about six feet of slightly uphill ice to beat and he'd be on dry pavement, and we just can't get him there... I go inside, recruit another volunteer, turns out he has a 4WD truck and towing chains -- nope, that didn't work either, but Perry was able to roll backwards out of the lot, through the space that the truck dude vacated. Later in the evening, Murph got stuck and we went through a similar drill...

UPDATE: I guess I missed the news, but it looks like Duende broke up. Damn, no wonder the new Year's Eve show ("fifth anniversary of our first gig") was such a big deal, and I had to miss it.

I'm not sure what's up for the weekend yet, but I think I'll be staying in tonight, I'm tired. Next week is the same out-on-a-school-night drill: Wednesday the Democrats for America are having their Meetup at Brew Works, then Laurie Anderson is at Zoellner Arts Center on Thursday.

Just dodged that bullet: unplanned (forced) outage at a power plant near Nashville, they need people to go and take advantage of the unscheduled shutdown to measure a few things. Would I be willing to go this weekend? Uh, yeah (never say no), but then it transpires that a service guy is available and they're sending him. That's good, Nashville is expecting an ice storm, and we know how those can be, just ask Pap Thomas...

And Now For Something Completely Different

Morning weigh-in: 179.5#, 12.5% BF

Actually, not that different. In fact it's the same old same-old, except maybe refracted, run through a coordinate transformation to the mirror universe of Bethlehem... Instead of me riding the towpath to Sand Island, we (others being Doug, Greg, and Eric & Kris) skiied it, starting from Sand Island, and then went out to Bethlehem Brew Works for dinner afterward rather than going to Which Brew. So except for the differences, it was exactly the same...

The skiing was better than I expected, though the towpath had been walked on and the snow flattened. It was a little colder than it was during the day, maybe mid-twenties, so there wasn't any slushiness or stickiness (which I was worried about), and the footprints were for the most part so constant it was like a flattened track to ski in rather than annoying postholes. We started out towards Allentown, but only got as far as the railroad "humping yard" because the path was plowed from that point west. We stopped, watched the trains move around the yard, headed back, and made the mistake of trying Sand Island itself: the snow over there had been beat up so much by pedestrian traffic that it was frustrating rather than fun, so we headed back.

Brew Works was OK: food was good and draft beer so-so, though Doug went downstairs to the Steelgaarden and got some amazingly good bottles of belgian stuff, for himself & for Lori who joined us. I had a cheesesteak, Kris had some wasabi tuna thing, and everyone else sat too far away for me to get a good look at their food.

Tonight should be the gym, then I'd like to see Alex Radus (the guy from Duende) play solo at Which Brew.

A Nose That Can See Is Worth Two That Sniff

Morning weigh-in: 181.5#, 8.5# BF

Oral, anal, genital -- nasal? I think I've discovered a new complex... Actually, I have nothing to complain about right now, just my usual endless obsession. Breathing easy even here at work (land of indoor pollution), no colds or sinus infections, minimal stuffiness... I got a humidifier for Christmas, still must set it up, probably will try to do it tonight.

Light dinner last night (soup & salad), then I went to the gym, then Which Brew while the laundry dried. Ran into Mike and Carole, Scott -- and T and Perry. Oh well, guess I saw that coming. Perry's a nice dude & I'm glad they're happy -- but I wish I found someone new first, because then I would have won.

Linux Voyager, not all oars in water: I was looking at that bash getopts built-in, and it's supposed to replace the getopt(1) command because it's better, but getopt actually has more, and more useful, features. Is this a new version of getopt(1), and reviews were panning the old one? What gives, which one should I use? Going around in circles...

Meantime, tonight will be more XC skiing along the towpath. It's been pretty warm, and the expected new snow didn't really happen, so I hope the conditions are OK.

Got Garlic?

Morning weigh-in: 182#, 12.5% BF

I stayed a little late at work and, since I needed to hit the drycleaner, I had to skip the spin class (most of those classes are way too early for me). So, no exercise yesterday, but I did find out how to use the bash builtin getopts command. (One of those things I should have understood and been fluent with long ago, but self-education means you're gonna find gaps.)
Dinner was tuna & wilted greens in garlic & oil, over fettucine, quite the garlicky delicious treat. The apartment may need fumigating, pores exhaling garlic, meeting-deflection technology, my poor co-workers... Tonight is laundry, soup & salad, and the gym (there's no schedule I have to meet, so I should be OK), then maybe a little more bashing around when I get home.

Ranting to the Masses

Morning weigh-in: 183#, 11.5% BF (uh-oh, wrong direction)

At the gym on Saturday, I was talking with my trainer and she told me she downloaded and installed the Firefox browser, on my advice. I didn't realize she was listening that closely to what I was saying... maybe I should listen more closely to what I'm saying, since I don't remember actually advising her, just ranting and raving about how Mozilla -- I use the big Mozilla "kitchen sink" program, rather than the little pieces like Firefox or the Thunderbird email client -- was so much better than Internet Explorer. Just now I listened to my co-workers' tales tales of woe with kids, home computers and viruses/spyware/AOL/whatever, and simply said "get Slack, and get happy!" I don't even use Slackware (I'm a loser Red Hat man myself), but the slogan fit the moment, hope all this doesn't come back to bite me...

Winter Wonderland

Hey Get Out of the Water
Originally uploaded by donXfive.

Friday night I took the singlespeed out in the 12 degree cold, and I felt it especially in my lungs and my feet, much colder than Thursday. Good ride though: got in about two hours of riding, partway down the towpath & back, up the ruins of Hope Road to the missing bridge and back, then I returned via the bike path. After that was Which Brew, with a decent blues band and an empty room -- everyone out buying bread I guess...

Saturday morning I hit Coffee Works (semi-crowded) while the snow was just starting, then the gym (crowded) while the snow got down to business, and finally I went to Weyerbacher Brewery (packed) in the full storm to check out their full house. Very cool, bought a mixed case of Heresy/Insanity, $48.00, sheesh. Give it a year and it'll be priceless... Later in the day I walked downtown to take pictures, but light was already failing so I stopped in Porters -- the only thing open, and quite a lively scene I must say -- and I got some dinner there. I got out of there when some newlywed girl, out drinking with her brother-in-law, started calling me a "pussy" for not doing shots with her. I could sense trouble brewing, made my escape... nice girl though, up to that point anyway.

Today I met Doug & Lori, and Eric & Kris, down in Bethlehem for some XC skiing. It was pretty nice, pleasant if windy day, cold enough that the sunshine didn't ruin the snow. We started at Sand Island, and went about 3/4 of the way to Freemansburg and back, then circumnavigated the Ice House. Click on the photo and you'll go to Flickr, where you can find the rest of my photos.

Tough Love

Morning weigh-in: 181#, 11% BF

As usual it's all my fault: that Flickr.com seems to work fine on other machines/browsers, but I was having a lot of trouble with Mozilla crashing whenever I used it -- turns out that Flickr makes heavy use of flash, and I have avoided downloading the latest version of flash for a long long time. I'd upgrade mozilla, then just link the old flash plugins, and since I never cared to see most flash content I didn't worry whether it actually worked or not... Then all of a sudden I needed it to work, so I had to get the latest plugin, figure out how to get rid of all the cobwebbery of symbolic links I'd built around the old version, and reinstall -- properly -- the new one. OK, it's done now, and I spent some time playing with photos, as my recent posts can attest.

I finished playing around say 8:00 or 8:30, and then it was time to ride. I knew I should get out of the house, I needed the exercise and I even wanted to go riding, but man oh man was that hard to do! I finally got out about 9:00, rode for about an hour (mainly to see if the towpath is rideable after the recent snow: it is), then went to Which Brew to warm my toes and see if there was any local music going on.

Kind of a mistake, nothing going on down there. However: this Saturday Weyerbacher is having a big "open house," and I may pick up a mixed case of their Heresy (basically their Old Heathen, an imperial stout, except Heresy is aged in oak barrels that were previously used for aging bourbon) and Insanity (basically a verison of their Blithering Idiot barleywine, ditto the oak barrel aging). Not much info on the Insanity, but rumor has it that right now it's rated either #2 or #3 barleywine in the US. At the WB I usually have a glass (snifter) of Heresy, but the keg kicked, so I asked for a bottle of the Insanity. I have to say I prefer the Heresy (barleywines are very high alcohol, and also kind of malty), but it had an interesting, vanilla taste, which I thought was cool compared to the chocolaty taste of the Heresy. I was planning to get some anyway, bout it was nice to know what it tastes like before having to own it. I'll probably put these away somewhere; they are the kind of beers that get much better with age -- next winter I'll bust them out and be a hero. Pass the port...

Belated Christmas: Me and Mom

Belated Christmas: Me and Mom
Originally uploaded by donXfive.

One last post before I hit the trails... My mom and I show off some of our Christmas loot. By the way, if you click on the photo it'll open a larger version at Flickr.com, where you can navigate around to the other photos I posted there -- not all of them end up getting blogged.

New Year's Day: Delaware River

New Year's Day: Delaware River
Originally uploaded by donXfive.

More fun with Flickr: another shot of the Delaware from my New Year's Day hike. I think these rapids are "foul rift," and I liked the way the afternoon sun put a touch of gold into the "whitecaps."