Breathing Easy

Morning weigh-in: 188#

 

(Ha! You probably weren't expecting that! Too bad the scale is out of whack, or needs batteries or whatever, or I'd have a percent body fat for you too. I'm on it...)

 

My breathing has been OK-but-not-great for about a year now (starting about when I got the other allergy problem -- eczema -- under control, how convenient), with breathing problems worsening with the onset of the colder weather and mostly abating by spring. It got bad enough for me to complain to my allergist about it this past November, at my semi-annual skin checkup (skin being really the the only reason I go to her), and she gave me a "spirometry" test: breathe into a tube and the device figures airflow vs time, lung capacity, things like that -- it connected directly to her laptop, and pumped out a bunch of results and graphs.

 

The graphs meant nothing to me of course, but my allergist took one look at the results and said "Huh. That's not asthma!"

 

Next thing you know, she has me signed up for a chest X-ray and a more sophisticated version of the spirometer test (and others) at the hospital, and has referred me to a pulmonologist. Gulp! She tried to be reassuring, but I went home and Googled what I remembered of the test results, and came down with a bad case of hypochondria on top of everything else...

 

Fast forward to this Tuesday, when I saw the pulmonologist. (Anne came with me, so she could hold my hand while they told me I had emphysema or whatever -- it didn't help that the other patients were all overweight elderly with oxygen tanks.) Nurse takes my height/weight/pulse/blood pressure, then comes a long interview with a PA, all my asthma/allergy/medical history, review of those test results, listening to the lungs etc. He disappears for a while, presumably conferring with the pulmonologist, then the both of them come in to announce that I do, in fact, have asthma (and nothing else), my allergist was right to refer me, but the test results were close enough what they'd expect that they don't think anything else is going on.

 

They put me on a new, twice-daily maintenance inhaler, and gave me a new type of rescue inhaler -- one of my complaints was that my regular rescue inhaler didn't seem to do much -- and I go to see them again in six weeks to check on my progress. In a year or so, I'll probably be repeating those breath tests.

 

There was a definite feeling of letdown after all that drama, and I am not happy with the new inhaler regimen -- and it's hard to see "you do have asthma" as the good news -- but I'm slowly starting to feel like a weight is off my shoulders. I plan on giving these medications a few days to kick in, then I'm giving them an on-the-bike stress test over the weekend. Last year was terrible for me in terms of cycling and mileage, maybe this year will be a bit better.

On The Bleeding Edge

I updated my laptop's operating system the weekend before last, something that needed to be done and that I'd been dreading for months. The process took a while -- two hours of downloading stuff, plus another hour or so of computation -- but the process was mostly automatic, and happened while I was out riding, and the result was a surprisingly smooth transition to the new distribution.

 

(I use Ubuntu Linux on my laptop, and the way Ubuntu handles upgrades is: there is a new release of Ubuntu every six months or so, and the support for an individual release ends soon after the next release comes out -- you are supposed to stay on top of the upgrades. If you do, you can automatically keep your installed software up-to-date fairly automatically, but when the support for the version you're using ends, your only option is to upgrade to the next version.

 

Every two years there is a "Long Term Support" version, which means that it's supported for about three years, and this is a great way to keep from getting caught in a constant upgrade cycle -- OK, it means upgrading every two years rather than every 12 months, but still -- though they eventually shut down the support for even these LTS versions. That's what happened to me: I upgraded to the April 2008 release some time in 2009, when my original release was discontinued, and support for that April 08 release was finally discontinued this past May, so my software hasn't been updated for months. I remembered the previous upgrade as being fairly painful, and I needed to do a comprehensive backup of all my data before I did any kind of major overhaul, so I put off the change for as long as I could stand. There's also been some controversy in the Ubuntu community regarding changes to the interface, so I wanted to let all that work itself out before I made the change -- I'm OK with being a somewhat early adopter, but I prefer the cutting rather than the bleeding edge.)

 

Like I said, a smooth transition: none of the software I was already using disappeared, even though some of it had been discontinued from the default version of the release, and I haven't found any weird discrepancies/glitches so far, except for a problem with the fingerprint recognition software. Right now I'm going through the system, looking for new or upgraded goodies, and checking the software repositories for fun new stuff to download.

 

The one thing I've discovered -- rather, been forced to face and acknowledge -- is that I really need a good backup solution. Right now my "backups" are a bunch of files scattered across several memory sticks, SD cards and free cloud storage sites, I have (or had, at the time of the backup/upgrade) no real backup software, and while I was at Staples paying $80 for a 32GB micro-SD card, I saw that I can get a terabyte drive for less than $200. So now I have less than $200 burning a hole in my pocket...

 

Some other things: we missed the Great White Caps / Start Making Sense show on New Year's Eve, but Anne and I saw our first indoor concert at Steel Stacks this past Friday, when we saw Chris Smither with Ellis Paul in the Musikfest Cafe. An awesome show, in what amounted to a nightclub or dinner theater atmosphere.

 

Saturday was brutally cold, so of course I went for a ride... It was the VMB pre-party ride at Sals for the annual holiday party, which we have a week or two after the regular holiday stuff calms down. A really fun ride, though I was a hurting puppy right from the start; there were about 15 people in all, and when we split into fast and slow groups I was the slow guy on the slow ride... I think it's going to be a tough spring. The party was pretty cool too, as Spanky's parties tend to be: garage converted into a "disco," a (very welcome) fire in the fire pit, plenty of good company.

 

Sunday was also cold, but this time it was an indoor day as Anne baked and I played with the computer.

Pow!

Wow, with this post I actually break 60 for the year!

Anne is off, with Emmi and her boyfriend, to their family's Christmas get-together, and I am here at home, fighting a cold which is slowly getting into my sinuses and chest. I think that the worst is past -- I always think that, as it gets worse and worse until I get antibiotics -- but this time I think it's true. I'll be going to bed in a few minutes, just in case.

Find Out What It Means To Me

Continuing my vacation, recent developments:

We did the Ride Of Respect last Thursday night, the memorial/tribute ride for Patrick Ytsma, a local rider and bike advocate -- known to be a stickler for legal and safe cycling -- who was run down by some old lady on the New Street Bridge.

 (It was a sad and chilling thing to hear first the rumors, then the hard news of the accident as it made its way through the local community -- the general consensus was that he probably was doing everything right, and if he could get hit then any one of us could, and I'd been over that bridge myself only an hour before...)

The ride itself was kind of neat -- it started next to Sand Island, not too far from our house, and the literally hundreds of cyclists assembled in the dark with their riding lights blazing was a very inspiring sight as we rolled down the hill into the parking lot. There were about 300 riders, including maybe 40 or so from my bike club and another 50 or so that were friends with either Anne or myself. We rolled out around 7:00, rode through downtown, over the bridge and then back again, and ended up at City Hall, where there was a memorial service. The police chief (who is also a bike cop) spoke, as did Steve from CAT, some fellow cyclists from the Lehigh Wheelmen, and Pat's widow. Definitely a sad event, but a beautiful tribute.

We ended the event with about 50 bikers in the back of the Brew Works, our version of an Irish wake.

Keeping It Real: I really love my Logitech Squeezebox, but it seemed to have one really annoying quirk which I couldn't find a way around-- it just would not play, or even acknowledge the existence of, certain songs on my laptop. (What made it worse is that every other music player played these songs no problem, and the same music files, on Anne's laptop, would play fine through the Squeezebox.)

I had no idea what was causing it, until things came to a head last night when a new CD I'd burned would not play. I went nuts looking for the problem -- wrong file type? wrong sampling rate? -- there was no pattern to it, until a Google clue had me look at file permissions. Turns out, some CD rippers were setting the file permissions so only I could read the resulting MP3 file, or the containing folders, and since the Squeezebox software runs as if it were a separate user on my machine, it couldn't even see the jiggered folders and files.

The solution was easier than I thought it would be, considering the offending files were randomly distributed throughout my music file hierarchy:

$ file . -type -d ! -perm 755 -point0 |xargs -0 chmod 755

$ file . -type -f ! -perm 644 -point0 |xargs -0 chmod 644

Bang! Less than a minute and the problem was solved. There's a reason tech guys, solving computer problems, first ask if the thing's plugged in...

...aaaand This One Goes To Twenty Two

This has been my worst year for blogging: over the years my output has gradually dropped from a high of just over 250 posts a year (in the mid-aughts) to somewhere around a hundred a year, and this year's precipitous drop means I'll probably finish this year with less than sixty posts.

Why is that? I've been very busy this year at work, which left me no time -- I used to post by email during my lunch break -- or mental energy for posting, but the main reason is probably because I have someone to talk to, and do things with, and the need to spout off into the void has waned over the past few years...

Right now I'm home, done with work until the new year; I've been off this whole week, but I spent most of the time either decompressing or shopping (ie "re-compressing"). What's been going on:


Computer Play: The first thing I did when I got home from work (for the end of the year) was plunk myself down in front of the computer and fire up GRASS (huh huh, do they still call it "grass," man?) to build a map of Trexler Nature Preserve. Once more unto the breach etc, and I have to say that tasks that once seemed hard have become much easier, and I learned a lot more about other (new) things I wanted to do.

The few weeks before the end of the year saw me doing a lot of calculations at work, using a powerful but old and unwieldy in-house program that needed to be bamboozled (by tweaking the input data in a rather artificial manner) into doing what I needed. So, for my own edification and to scratch a certain itch, I spent a lot of time playing with Octave to re-do the calculations on my own at home.

Bike and Exercise: Riding, but not really all that much. We've been doing that P90X workout, and I have to say I've seen results, but not spectacular ones, but then again our (read: my) commitment to the program has been less than spectacular -- I never followed the diet, and the rigidity of the workout schedule made me basically rebel and skip days when I wanted to do other things (like bike), so there's that. I really can't wait for this to be over, about two weeks from now. (This really comes down to a question of timing: This would be a great off-season conditioning program, but we started too soon, while we were still in riding season, and we'll finish too soon, smack in the middle of when there's not much to do outside, even in terms of off-season cross training stuff like XC skiing.)

Meantime, I've been battling allergies and asthma, so I've been taking it easy on the bike anyway. Next season's base work is going to be a long tough slog...

More layer - maybe! Right now I'm going for a ride.

This One Goes To Eleven

Happy Nigel Tufnel Day! A-and a big birthday shout-out to my main squeeze too -- Happy Birthday, baby!

 

Nothing much to report since yesterday's rant. Got home, did some P90X -- which has become much more enjoyable after we switched the sound off, but we're still lapsing rather fashionably: we do it about 4 days a week instead of six, and are constantly falling behind schedule. Afterward we hit Brew Works for dinner, where we saw Deb & Scott.

 

Tonight is a small get-together at our place, and tomorrow is one of Anne's great-nephew's birthdays. (We got him a Strider, which seems to be this year's buzz product for the cycling-parent-with-toddlers set -- though admittedly it may just seem that way because I've been around that sort of crowd more lately, what with Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day and the Nox Grand Opening. It is amazing though to watch kids, even young ones almost too young to walk, zip around on those things, on and off road.)  Sunday is trailwork and a ride at Trex.

 

Candyman! Candymaaaaaan!!!

Morning weigh-in: 188#, 13.5% BF

 

Happy Anniversary, Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald! (The event itself, not the song, which surprised me, years after its release, by being about a contemporary event -- I always assumed the song's story was made up, or old folklore. I do think the song is awesome, but today is not the anniverary of the song.)

 

Meanwhile, back in Happy Valley: This is just crazy -- Joe Paterno's long-time #2, and heir apparent, had apparently been raping young boys, groomed through a youth organization he founded, for years, and was forced into retirement in the late 1990's when allegations first came out, though no one blocked his access to either the campus facilities, or the young boys in the youth organization. Fast forward to 2002, when a graduate assistant coach basically caught the guy in the act of raping a 10-year-old boy in the college football facility showers. He reported this not to the police but to Joe Paterno, who then reported it to his superiors, and so on up the Penn State chain of command. The child rapist was forbidden to bring young boys on campus anymore, though if I read the news reports right he was still holding overnight football camps there as late as 2009.

 

Some parents caught on and confronted this guy (with police listening in), and after a three-year investigation he was busted the other day, as were several others in the Penn State football organization for their roles in a coverup. Joe Paterno and the college president, both of whom who cooperated with the grand jury, were found to have acted within the letter of the law (really? I still have trouble believing this), though in moral terms they are guilty of monstrous acts, allowing this activity to be swept under the rug -- and thus to continue, with the pedophile racking up more victims -- as the expedient way to protect the Penn State brand, and have been denounced as such by all local opinion that does not have a vested interest in that brand. (This is Penn State territory, and you should see the heads spinning around here right now.)

 

Demands were made for heads to roll, Paterno's as well as the president's, while the University's Board of Trustees were busy investigating the whole affair and trying to decide what to do. Paterno released several mealy-mouthed and self-serving press releases lamenting "recent developments," and finally announced he would retire at the end of this season. I took this as a slap at the Trustees who were trying to decide his fate, and I guess they took it the same way, because they fired both him and the president late yesterday.

 

So last night, some 10,000 Penn State students showed how they felt about things by rioting in protest of Joe Paterno's ouster, breaking storefront windows, knocking down lamp posts, lighting at least one small fire, and overturning a TV news van -- you know, the real culprits behind this scandal. So I guess that means that there are about 10,000 sociopaths at Penn State, who are fine with child sacrifice going on somewhere offscreen as long as it lets their party continue, and who throw a tantrum when their supplier is taken away.

 

(Hey, wasn't yesterday the anniversary of Kristallnacht?)

 

Parting Shot: Penn State alum and former Senator Rick "Santorum" Santorum once gave this Sandusky guy an award for the way he ran that youth organization.

A Milestone

The oven is still not quite finished yet, it still needs insulation and a roof, but today was the day we fired it for real. I'm getting good at splitting wood with the axe, and Anne is now a veteran firestarter, and we got the thing up and roaring in no time: first a small "starter" fire in the morning, then a bigger one, the first real one, this afternoon. Apart from one mishap -- the chimney flue cracked under the thermal load of the big fire, but apparently that's common and not a big deal -- things went swimmingly, and we now have bread baking in the oven!!

Seven loaves, to be exact, as well as two potatoes and two sweet potatoes roasting in the ash bucket, and we'll also probably make a couple of pizzas before the evening's over.

There are a number of bugs to be worked out of the system, and more infrastructure we need to put in place (plus the roof, hardware for which we bought today), but we now have a fully functional oven in the backyard.

A Month In Review(s)

Well that went pretty quickly, I didn't realize it had been a full month since my last post. Work has been insanely busy lately, and I've found myself with little time or inclination to write anything here: all my resurces have been used up. Not much worth noting has gone down either, not that that has ever stopped me before, when I'm in the mood to write, or had the strength.

Right now I'm on vacation. We drove down to Asheville, North Carolina on Monday, and we're here until Friday, when we go to visit Emmi in Knoxville.Monday night was a bit of night life, yesterday was a 40 mile road ride (20 miles uphill, then turn around and coast back) on the Blue Ridge Parkway, followed by more nightlife, and today is a sort of rest day / weather break so we've been checking out the local downtown scene in the daylight, brunch and bakery and coffee shop, and my batteries have recharged enough to check  in here...

Listening: I got that SqueezeBox I was talking about. It was kind of a compromise between what I wanted and what's readily available, but it seems to do the job as advertised. The biggest -- and really, the only -- disappointment is that I can't seem to just transparently stream sounds through it from my computer: it has a special server I had to install on my laptop, which reads music files (from the same music collection my "real" music program uses) or internet radio, and sends the results to the Squeezebox. The server has a browser interface which actually works very well, and as time goes by it's pretty much become my "real" music program.

We've been listening to a lot of music lately, including some radio stations Anne likes that we can't ordinarily get, as well as internet-only stuff like Radio Paradise (Strangely enough, we're listening to Radio Paradise right now, in an Asheville bakery/coffeeshop.) The next step is to get Anne's music available through the Squeezebox, which should be pretty easy once we get the server installed on her laptop.


Doing: We've got about a month of P90X under our belts now, Anne and I; we've been doing it together most weeknights after I get home from work. We are basically through the first of three phases, each lasting three weeks with a "rest week" in between. It's pretty hard, but I've done harder workouts (back when I was younger).

The biggest positives so far have been that the workouts, especially the "cardio" ones like Plyometrics and Kenpo, are really fun, especially when we're working out together, and that I am starting to see some difference in my arms, which had been suffering a bit of neglect over the past year or so.

Negatives? There are two: one is that the program is extremely rigid, so there's no real "wiggle room" in case I want to, say, do a ride, or maybe just take a rest day, instead of that day's scheduled workout. (We tried doing them in the morning to leave the evenings free for other things, but that has its own downsides.) The other big negative is the trainer himself, Tony Horton. He seems to know his stuff, and keeps the workout moving along, but he's an old stand-up comic and it shows -- his constant stream of banter, workout slogans and bad jokes becomes wearing after a while. Anne and I have taken to repeating his expressions as inside jokes...

New Bike: The new trails at Lake Nockamixon finally had their Grand Opening complete with food, music, guided trail tours, and a raffle -- and I won the Grand Prize, a Specialized Hardrock Disc 29er. So far I've only played with it by riding around town, but as soon as I have it dialed in, and install some clipless pedals, I'll be hitting the local trails so stay tuned for a full report.

Autumn In The Air

Morning weigh-in: 188#, 14% BF

 

It's been really nice the past few days, more September-like than September's really been so far: sunny, cool verging on brisk (we've been waking to chilly mornings); my favorite season is just around the corner...

 

My Mom's birthday was yesterday and we visited for a little celebration dinner, and we decided to make a day of it:

 

Our first stop on the way down was the Englishtown Auction, which I'd been talking about a lot after bumping into some High School friends at a recent party. (The standard joke was that every teenager in Manalapan worked either there or at Raceway Park at some point; my friends and I worked at both, and lived within walking distance, and we had many teen adventures at both places and the surrounding woods, now long gone.) It's been years since I was there, and Anne had never been there, so we stopped for lunch at the good old burrito stand in the Yellow Building. I parked a bit towards the back, and we walked through the farther sections of the outdoor stands -- we were late, and things were winding down, but it seemed like the place was smaller than I remembered. Over to the taco stand, where the burritos also seemed smaller than I remembered, though still delicious, then we wandered back to the car by cutting through the buildings.

 

Next stop was Allaire, where we put in just over an hour of exploring. It was a perfect day for a ride, and we a great time, even with the World's Largest Vuvuzela blasting at intervals int the distance -- not annoying or anything, just weird, like maybe there was a factory with a horn, or some football game with fans blowing horns, nearby. Sandy soil and twisty trails over moderate terrain, we had a lot of fun until we realized that it was getting late, then had to find our way back to the car.

 

Luckily my parents only live a couple of minutes away, and we arrived only a little late... It was us, and my parents, and my brother and his wife and her parents; snacks and and small talk, ziti and meatballs, and a birthday cake -- I gave my mom Wolf Hall and In Hovering Flight. We were home by 11:00, and asleep about two minutes later.

 

Tonight we both start the P90X program.

Itch 2: Electric Boogaloo

My computer play has been pretty desultory lately: I keep sitting down in front of my laptop, wanting to do something "computerey" and creative, and I can think of nothing I want to do, and I just end up surfing. But, finally driven by rainy-weekend boredom, I decided to take a look at that GRAMPS genealogical software, and sat down Sunday morning to figure out my family tree.

 

I'm totally hooked. It took a while to figure out how to use the software, but it seems logical enough once you get the hang of adding data and navigating among people and relationships. I input the stuff I knew, the low hanging fruit like my family, parents and grandparents, brothers and their families, cousins etc, with birth dates if I knew them offhand -- this "vital statistics" kind of biographical info is a big part of genealogy, and the genealogical software, but I know very few birth, death and marriage dates for even my closer relatives -- then broke out a history of my father's family (written by my mother) and spent Sunday afternoon and Monday parsing it for stuff I could use. I exhausted that family history, got in touch with some cousins on my mother's side, who'd done their own family tree research and got some online stuff from them, and in the course of that I contacted someone at Ancestry.com, who has info about the ancestry of my father's paternal grandfather, but needs info on his descendants and is willing to trade (I'm waiting to hear back)...

 

Like I said, I'm hooked; I found something to scratch my itch. I think I have most of my ancestors, their names at least, to about four generations back, and pretty much all their descendants; now I just need to start fleshing them all out with vital statistics, photos, and family stories.

 

Here's a story: My father's father died the year before my parents met, but my paternal grandmother was still alive when I was a small child. According to my mom's email, she died in August of 1967, which would be when I was four years old, and the month before we moved to Englishtown, and about the time of my earliest memories. (The earliest memories that I can date are of Kevin and me, arguing over whether I was still older when we were both three for a time, which means it would be late March or early April 1967, and some from the summer of 1967, when we visited the construction site for our new home -- but those might be mixed up with photos and 8mm movies of those visits.) So I'm guessing then that the one time I remember meeting my grandmother was (obviously) before August 1967, but not too much before.

 

It's just a few jumbled images: she was in a wheelchair, and maybe that wheelchair was on a a sort of dais or podium, and she seemed out of it, or possibly just unable to communicate, but happy. She had longish white hair and was maybe wearing a brownish cardigan; the walls might have been a light green but floor and furniture were brown wood, and the wheelchair seems to be wood and wicker in my mind's eye. My mom and dad sort of introduced us and put me in her lap, and she held me for a moment. They probably did the same with Kevin and Chris but I don't remember. It was the only time I can remember meeting her, and it was possibly the only time I ever did meet her.

 

Speaking Of "The Itch:" My dad tells stories about a really downscale second-run movie theater in his childhood neighborhood, nicknamed "The Itch" because it was a good place to end up with lice if you leaned back in your seat. I googled it once, and found that it was a generic NYC name for that type of theater back in the day. Who knew?

Why Can't I Just Have What I Want?

I'm looking to set up a wireless music connection to the stereo at home, a bridge receiver, or media bridge, I think it would be called. Something that connects wirelessly to the home network, and has audio output for the stereo, so we can stream music wirelessly from our computers -- my Ubuntu machine as well as Anne's Mac, plus Emmi's or Ben's, or any visitor's, laptop. Sounds simple, right?

(This is actually what we have right now via a Bluetooth receiver, which shows up as headphones on your Bluetooth-enabled laptop or smartphone:  You have your music program send the audio signal to the "headphones" instead of the normal speakers and it comes out the stereo. Very simple and easy to use, and music quality is OK, but the Bluetooth range is so short it's almost useless -- I usually just use my phone's music, and lay the phone on the stereo while things are playing, so I might as well have connected the phone to the stereo by headphone jack. The range issue is why I'm thinking of going with wifi.)

 

Some parts of my wishlist make this less than simple, though: I would prefer that no additional software needs to be installed on any computer, and I would also like the music to be played (ie, the file decoded and turned into an audio signal), or at least controlled, by the music program on the laptop, and the system must be usable with Linux, Mac and Windows systems.

In other words:

1. Data enters the hypothetical device via wifi, and leaves via some audio jack.
2. The device can be accessed by any computer connected to our home network, and can play any music stored on those same computers, without having to modify those computers (ie add new software:,I would prefer if the device were controlled by the standard music player on each computer).
3. The device either simply pumps an audio signal from the network into the stereo, or can handle audio encoding formats besides the standard MP3 -- I'm thinking specifically of FLACC and Ogg Vorbis.

The biggest problem I've found so far is Apple. ITunes is ubiquitous, but the Mac stuff has a lot of DRM in the way, and Macs work best -- or at all? -- only with the Mac-approved products. My Linux laptop can handle the reverse engineered Apple protocol (DAAP), at least earlier versions before Apple re-crippled it, as well as the more common DLNA/UPnP, which actually seems more like what I want anyway.

My solution: It's not a perfect match to my needs, but I just bought a Logitech Squeezebox Touch. It needs special software to run, but that software is available for Mac, Windows and Linux, and the interface is via web browser. (There are also Squeezebox controller apps available for smartphones, so our iPhones and Droids can be used as remotes.) I don't know what the story is yet about oddball file formats, but I guess if it comes down to it I can do some kind of on-the-fly transcoding.

The main thing is that it receives the music via wifi -- the only other serious choice, the Sonos ZonePlayer 90, does not use wifi but its own wireless network, so at least one component of your system has to be physically attached (by Ethernet cable) to your router, and what that means is that if the router and stereo are not near each other, you either have to run Ethernet cable between them or buy a second Sonos device for a non-wifi wireless connection.

Anyway, we should be up and running by next weekend.

A Shifting In The Sky

Ah yes, woke up this morning and it was the start of a beautiful September day, blue-sky sunny and cool, and while I was in the basement I even heard the furnace come on...

 

Speaking of basements, we had a bit of water in our basement but came through otherwise unscathed from Hurricane Irene. Saturday was weirdly warm and occasionally rainy -- which was fine by me, since Rob's funeral was in the morning, and the rest of the day was spent sort of hanging out in a depressed, headachey torpor -- then the real rain started late in the afternoon, and at around 9:00 the wind, which had been getting gustier and more ominous all evening, suddenly increased to a constant howl. Anne and I were reading in bed and listening to the storm until about midnight, it was pretty wild.

 

We took a walk in the morning and met Debbie; we checked out Monocacy Creek (it flooded the Colonial Industrial Quarter, but I've seen worse), and the Lehigh from Sand Island (also high, officially at "flood stage," but again I've seen worse). There were a few trees down on Sand Island, and some we saw walking through the neighborhoods, and power was out in a few areas, but overall I think Bethlehem, and the Lehigh Valley in general, came out OK -- I have friends in Vermont who have been cut off by floodwaters since the storm.

 

We've never had water trouble, it's just not on our radar, so it wasn't until afternoon that we even thought to look in the basement. Sure enough, we found about an inch of water, in the portion of the basement inaccessible to the drain. We had to bust out the Shop-Vac for a an hour or so, and we tossed a bunch stuff that got ruined, plus a bunch of stuff we just pretended was ruined and tossed anyway because the basement was cluttered.

 

Monday I did a decent run. Normally I do almost exactly a 5k, and my body can absorb that distance just fine, but anything past that (like literally 5k plus five steps) is torture; Monday's run was a pleasant four miles, mostly along the towpath. Not a personal best, since I used to run that far or further on a regular basis, but it was my longest run in quite a while. Just don't ask about pace...

 

Tuesday was the VMB meeting at Jordan, which was nice and short and we got a lot done. I did a ride beforehand, and it was short but not so nice, mainly because of debris (and a few down trees), along the trails. Last night we watched the Brew Works Mug Club Auction, and tonight we're seeing a show at Steel Stacks.

 

A Lovely Evening

Morning weigh-in: 185.5#, 15% BF

 

I met Anne and Donna last night at Nockamixon, me coming from work and them from Bethlehem, and we had an awesome time riding the trails. Anne loves it there, and this was Donna's first time and she really liked it too -- she said it was one of the nicest places she's ridden so far, fun and challenging without being impossible. High praise indeed! It didn't hurt that it was a beautiful night, with the late afternoon sun bouncing off the lake and illuminating the woods...

 

Summer is winding down though, and right now the place it shows most is in the woods on a late afternoon ride: we started at 6:00, and by 7:30 things were already getting dark under the canopy, even if it wasn't quite twilight elsewhere, so we skipped the last part and took the road back to the cars. Anne says they'll be riding there again in the future, but during the day -- while I'm at work, oh well -- so they'll have time to explore and try things.

 

Home, where Anne and I were both feeling tired and lazy, so we just kicked back and read awhile before crashing. I'm still in the middle of The Pale King, while Anne finished Mason & Dixon the other day and is now working on The Slap. Funny, we bought both our books in the same bookstore (in Northampton MA) at the same time, so our store-supplied bookmarks are identical -- which, under the right conditions, can be the source of much comedy.

 

Tonight, if the rain isn't too bad, I'll probably do a run, otherwise I'll hit the gym. Meanwhile, I need to think of a new winter computer project now that the weather's starting to change. Maybe I'll put together a file backup system using my old computer, and maybe some DIY music server?

 

These Little Earthquakes

So there I was at work yesterday when the room started shaking -- actually, more a gentle swaying, probably the building's reaction is what I felt -- and the guy across from me and I look at each other and say in unison: "Earthquake?"

 

And that's just what it was, the Great Virginia Quake of 2011, 5.9 on the Richter Scale or whatever it is they're calling it these days, felt, according to the posted reports of my Facebook friends, from Vermont to North Carolina. Luckily, damage was fairly minor, and I don't think anyone was killed or even hurt, though there were evacuations in Washington and New York. (I've lived on the East Coast my whole life and still managed to experience four earthquakes before this, and yesterday's was the most obvious, possibly because I was on the second floor, and awake. Anne was working in the backyard when I texted her, and she thought I was kidding -- she never felt a thing.)

 

Anyway, I hit the gym after work, and after the homebound commute's construction craziness -- even Applebutter Road? WTF? -- then walked over to Steel Stacks to meet Anne and catch the Two Man Gentleman Band. I bumped into my friend Lee on the way in, and Donna was there with Anne, and we sat with Doug and Lori, and Doug's parents, and Eric and Kris and some friends of theirs eventually joined us -- we had a pretty big crowd at one point. (Outdoor venue, free show on a beautiful night, the place was packed, and there were many others there that we knew.) Dinner at Brew Works after the show, hanging with Matt and Erin & Rick.

 

Tonight is Nockamixon after work, riding with Anne and Donna, and then we start our countdown to Hurricane Irene, which now seems like it might miss us.

 

Alvin and The Mysterons

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 189#, 12.5% BF

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 185#, 13.5% BF

 

Ouch! That was the result of a fun and rather "nutritionally dense" weekend...

 

Friday night was another "Heels on Wheels" ride, which was pretty awesome: Anne and myself, Emmi (who drove up from Knoxville and hopped right on a bike), Ben & Jaime, Donna, Erin & Rick, and Brian & Maris, and we were joined occasionally by pedestrian Matt. It was Brian's birthday, Ben & Jaime's only chance for a "Heels on Wheels" ride before heading back to whatever their destination was, and I think that all the girls got especially dolled up for this ride. (The guys? Not so much...) Way fun, we started and finished at Brew Works, and in between we hit Welcome, Molly's, the outdoor concert at Steel Stacks, and the Wooden Match.

 

Needless to say, the morning after was not quite as awesome, and I believe we all slept in on Saturday, except Ben and Jaime who were gone when we got up. I was going to do a JT ride, but I blew it off to just hang out at home. Saturday night we stayed in and read some more.

 

Sunday was a trailwork day at Sals for me, helping the crew do a little rock armoring in some of the wet areas, then I came home, and vegged out some more before diving into my bike project: the Turner had a major creaking problem, making noise on every pedal stroke and getting louder over the past week or so. I'm not sure what the exact problem was but I suspected either the suspension pivots or the bottom bracket, so I took off the rear wheel, cranks, shock etc, loosened and lubed the pivots, checked the BB bearings, and put it all back together nice and tight. So far it seems to be working -- I got skunked by a storm Sunday afternoon, but I got out to Sals yesterday and it was great to ride a bike that didn't sound like it was going to collapse any second. I also got to try the new rock armoring we did, and it was pretty sweet.

 

Listening: I just downloaded the first two Chemical Brothers albums, like from 1995 or so. For some reason -- and this isn't really true of the Chemical Brothers, but one or two of their songs do fall into this category -- I've been really enjoying 90's-era songs with droning or altered vocals, like Placebo's "Pure Morning," or "Setting Sun" by the Chemical Brothers. It's just a real mysterious sound to me, like exploring the abandoned, derelict and possibly haunted alien starship...

 

Tonight is the gym, then I should be meeting Anne at Steel Stacks to see the Two Man Gentleman Band.

 

 

Damn You Bacon Cheeseburger!

Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 189#, 13.5% BF

Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 187#, 13.5% BF

 

So Tuesday night was a pretty decent run along the towpath, maybe 2.7 miles plus a walk back up the hill (that was my reward), 3.5 miles in 39 minutes; I'll be back in running shape, and shapely enough to fit in my kilt, in time for the Halloween 5k. It totally caused me to overheat though, I didn't feel comfortable for several hours afterward. I kind of blew the fitness afterward too, with a bacon cheeseburger & fries at the Brew Works. I needed my comfort food though, and it was a nice night there: Anne and me, and Ben and his girlfriend Jaime who are in town for a few days, and Debbie, and Donna was there with Brian and Erin. A good night, especially with Ben and Jaime there, but still pretty somber.

 

The cheeseburger bit me back though, as can be seen in the Wednesday weigh-in. Last night was a short ride along the towpath with Anne -- I must have been tired, because according to the computer we weren't going all that fast but it sure felt like we were flying. We did about 14 miles, out to the boat club and back, in about an hour. Then home and shower, and we hit Black and Blue in Easton for dinner, just me and Anne, and Ben and Jaime, though we did see a few of the usual suspects. A quiet night, and I watched the old caloric intake, and I think I did a little better on the scale this morning.

 

Tonight is the gym again (just in time too, as the pain from Monday is starting to fade), then I'm heading over to Eskandalo for a haircut.

 

Listening: I've been into Death Cab For Cutie's "I Will Possess Your Heart" lately, really getting obsessive about it, listening over and over. Creepy and stalk-ey, and for some reason it reminds me of this incident (see more here and here), and I thought that would be a good video: a girl in an elevator, seen from outside, as a guy gets on the elevator. She turns and recognizes him, and not in a good way, just as the doors close on the scene. Scenes of those see-through elevators like they have in tacky-fancy hotels, doors closing and elevator descending, scenes of the guy getting on various elevators, over and over... I don't know, it works for me.

 

When It Rains Here, It Rains So Hard...

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 187.5#, 15% BF

...but never hard enough to wash away the sorrow. Goodbye Rob, I don't know if I'll ever be fully able to understand or accept what happened; all I know is I'm going to miss you.

The party's over: Musikfest ended Sunday night (we didn't go), and the summer is winding down. Time to start looking at those admittedly scary morning numbers once again... I'll be getting back to the gym, actually started last night after work, mostly arms and upper body for now. I dread what I'll find out about my diminished fitness over the next few days, but hey that's step one -- right now my chest and arms are awash in prostaglandins.

 

Watching: Anne read Barney's Version recently and really liked it, so she picked up the DVD when her friend Judy, who also loved the book, recommended the movie. (Usually people like one or the other, movie or book but not both, so this was a rarity.) We got a chance to watch it on Sunday afternoon. Verdict: not my type of movie, but good, and the ending was sad but pretty powerful -- sorry, no spoilers! I'm still on the fence whether I'll read the book or not.

 

After that we went over to Nazareth.  Sally's mom passed away last year, and Sally & Joe had a small memorial service/party at their house. It was nice, and their son Ben was there, and Judy, and Erika and Toby, and a bunch of other people plus members of the extended family, and tons of good food... I was doing well despite the presence of their dog, but we snuck out after about two hours; I took an antihistamine when we got home, just to be on the safe side, and we spent the rest of the evening with our feet up, reading. (Anne is almost done with Mason & Dixon, and I am totally engrossed in The Pale King.)

 

So yesterday I hit the gym, then when I get home Anne's out to dinner with some of her friends -- they get together every Monday -- but there's a note, placed strategically on my laptop, saying to call her as soon as I get home. So I do, and she tells me that Rob, a young friend of ours, had taken his own life that morning -- she didn't want me to find out on Facebook or email like some smack in the face.

 

I walked up to Brew Works and met Anne there, along with Donna and her daughter Erin -- Donna has a son and a daughter, and their ages bracketed Rob's, and she sometimes called Rob "her other son" -- and we just sort of hung out, gloomy but still too numb to really be distraught yet. Rob was a regular there, though Thursday was usually the night his crew got together; he lived on Main Street and worked for a company that had a Main Street presence, and there were some of his co-workers there as well last night -- it was an unusually subdued crowd. I guess we'll be finding out about arrangements over the next few days.

 

One More Nail

Another post, another rainy Sunday...

We were down at Musikfest yesterday and stayed, despite the rain, until the evening shows rolled around. (We visited Brew Works, bumped into Joe and Cindy, Eric and Kris, and Doug and Lori, and promised to meet them at Volksplatz later -- they were getting dinner.)

Down to Volksplatz where we'd been hiding from the rain earlier, and where we now caught up with Deb and Donna, and caught Marching Fourth, a crazy sort of marching band on stilts; we were in place, front and center, when Start Making Sense came on. Unfortunately, by that time it was pouring again, and with those guys already drawing a huge crowd of fans, and the tent swelled with people escaping the deluge, it was just too much of a crush -- Anne and I absconded to Emily's Kenyan food booth. We could see the show, and also the show of semi-inebriated kids dancing in the downpour. It was pretty cool, hanging out with Emily, and her crew, and Deb and Donna, but the rain kept getting worse, and our phones were beeping with flood warning alerts, and the Monocacy was an ominous presence right behind the midway...

We decided to beat it back to Brew Works, and got a fairly decent table, especially considering how crowded it was, and all our friends came in not long after: the creek jumped its bank and flooded the midway, and the venue tents were collapsing from the rain, and things came to an abrupt end when the cops made everyone evacuate. We hung out at Brew Works for quite a while; it turned into a pretty wild night. When Anne and I finally left the rain had stopped, and we could look down at the destruction in the Moravian Quarter as we crossed the Broad Street bridge. It was awesome and scary and depressing, and we were thinking about Emily's food stand and John's glass-blowing stuff, and a guy watching next to us said he was from Florida and his booth was under about four feet of water.

 This was the first year with venues on the Southside, and I think they were a mixed and limited success (read: bad idea made manifest), but I also think that the Fest cannot be split in two the way it was, and I am sure that the ArtsQuest guys will never back down on using their new space for Musikfest, so eventually the Northside part -- Main Street, the Colonial Industrial Quarter, the better, and more popular, and more local rather than corporate part -- will wither on the vine. A Southside-only Fest is just not viable though, and Musikfest will enter its graveyard spiral once the Northside venues get shut down. I give it five years, tops.

The stabbing on opening night might have pushed things in this direction, and last night's flood might have been the final straw for Musikfest in the Moravian quarter, and so maybe for Musikfest itself.

Train Kept A-Rollin'

It wasn't all that nice -- the Sunday weather, that is -- so Anne and I skipped the Jim Thorpe riding and just went up to her mom's for a visit. When we got home we crashed for a bit, then went out and did our first real "Musikfest evening." (Friday's "Heels on Wheels" pub crawl didn't count in my book, since we mostly avoided the fairways and musical venues, and on Saturday all we did was buy coffee on Main Street like any Saturday, then skedaddled to Easton, hitting Pearly Baker's for dinner and Black & Blue for drinks.) We caught a bit of BC Combo on Sunday, and a set of the Red Elvises, but missed what's apparently the new buzz band, Here Come The Mummies.

 

Last night we saw Los Straitjackets.

 

Reading: The Pale King, an unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace; I think it's basically about a bunch of people who work for the IRS in the Midwest. So far it kind of reminds me of the start to Infinite Jest, each chapter jumping around and introducing a new character, and these characters, likeable, or not, or just neurotic, have already managed to get under my skin: I can't put it down.

 

Computing: I am playing with maps again, this time buildng a map of the new bike trails at Nockamixon. This is supposed to be something accessible via smartphone, and it works great on mine but it seems to have trouble on iphones.

 

Tonight we're seeing Alison Krause.