Simone Napping (not really)

I lay down with Simone the other day, hoping to get a little nap. My cell phone rang, and it was all over. It's been months since I've napped with Simone, but it was not to be my day.

She's very interested in phones - probably because they light up and make noise. Here are some pics of her admiring the phone. They go from her being cute for the phone to wanting to eat the phone.

iBike WW05 (1)

A short ride today, up the Country Club hill twice. While on the backside (south side) of the hill I came across Mary's River Natural Area, a 1/3 mile board walk in a grassy wetland. Cute.

Yet another beautiful day, I don't recall the last time January had so many beautiful days...

Ride stats: 7.17 miles, 36.5 min, 11.6 mph.

Happy 2/3 Birthday

So, Simone turned 2/3 today. Yup, that's 8 months of excited, bubble-blowing, diaper-wearing goodness.

What's new with Simone? Well, she's rolling over back to front and front to back. She's not real crazy about being on her belly, but will hang out there for a while now and then. She's sitting up pretty well, though she doesn't quite realize that straightening her body like a pirate's plank is antithetical to sitting upright (or, maybe she does and is just playing with us).

Her hands operate independently, and she's starting to bang toys together or on the table. I'm thinking a drum set might be in order for her 4/5 birthday, we'll have to see if it passes the censors.

Today, Simone and I took a walk past the duck pond because it was beautiful, we needed a walk, and Mary was up for a nap. You see, Simone has decided naps are passe, and she's also decided that 9pm to 6am is enough sleep for her. Needless to say, it's not enough for Mary who's awake chunks of the night feeding Simone. I, on the other hand, obvliviously sleep through the night.

Some friends came over for dinner, and that was reason enough for Simone to stay up. She's just a party gal who doesn't want to miss a beat.

So happy 2/3 birthday Simone.

iBike WW04 (1)

A shorter ride today, started off foggy, but ended with beautiful sun. Just a little loop with two hills and two bumps - past the country club, out country club drive to Philomath, and back on West Hills Road.

Stats: 47 min, 10.6 miles, 13.4 mph.

I'm a month in (1/12th the way through the year) and it feels good to get out on the bike regularly.

Roasted Carrots

Who would have thunk it? Mary made roasted carrots tonight (to go along with the grilled halibut, mmm...). I bit into the dark orange slices and wow! They taste very much like roasted yams! Awesome. I've always hated cooked carrots (ok in soup, but icky sauteed or steamed), but wow, I'll take them roasted any day.

iBike WW03 (2) + Simone

Mary, Simone and I went on a ride around town today. The sun was shining, birds were chirping, and we just had to try out Simone's new helmet.



We just meandered up 53rd past the fairgrounds, up Walnut, and over to Patti and Ken's place, where we stopped in to say "hi." All in all, just a wonderful day - it tired us out enough that we took a family nap.

Details: 8.44 miles, 51 minutes, 9.7 mph average.

mmmm.... tasty

Or, should I say del.icio.us?

del.icio.us is a "social bookmarking website." Basically, you can use it to maintain bookmarks, adding tags to them, searching through them. Plus, it lets you see who else is looking at the same sites (and then you can see what else they look at).

A buddy of mine got some folks at work to start using it. We could then subscribe to each other's bookmarks and then get an idea of what folks thought was interesting. It worked for about a week, then they stopped adding new bookmarks.

I still think it's cool, if only my friends used it. You can pay attention to what sites/links I think are nifty by adding this RSS feed to your favorite aggregator. I still add links occasionally, though my blog is a little more active than my del.icio.us bookmarks.

Getting a Grasp on Oil Production Volumes

I found this little article The Oil Drum | Getting a Grasp on Oil Production Volumes which helps bring the energy numbers into perspective. To do so, they noted that the amount of oil produced last year was 1.02 CMO (Cubic Miles of Oil).

Simply staggering...

Car Rental Scam

We're going to Hawaii in a few weeks (woo-hoo!) And while we're there, we'll have a rental car. I made reservations - checking all the companies that rent at the airport. Turns out there's a 50% difference between the lowest and highest prices. Who would have figured.

Anyway, since we have Simone, we need an infant seat. Most places have a reasonable deal, $10/day, $60 maximum. Dollar, on the other hand, has decided there would be no maximum - therefore the seat rental would be $140 - about twice what it costs to buy our car seat. What a rip-off.

Now we're debating about checking it at the gate, or switching rental companies.

Toe Job

So I had the toe done today. It feels fine now, but looks horrible. I'll spare the gory details, but just have to say that the surgery itself was rather barbaric. It looked like some sort of cruel torture video, only it was on my foot, and I couldn't feel anything.

The doctor said he'd only do one toe at a time, and that's all he really had time for anyway. At the least, I can still hobble around on one foot fairly well, it's tough enough walking around using only one big toe.

Things should be completely healed in 2 weeks, and bunches better in just a few days.

Unfortunately, Mary said she wasn't going to help me with the bandages - as she stopped work altogether. I imagine if she were still working she'd have used the excuse that it was a nurse's job, not a doctor's. Either way, I get to dress my own wounds.

iBike WW03 (1)

A new ride today. I got it in early this week because of the toe doctor appointment later this week (not sure if my feet will be up for riding or not after that).

I had grand plans of a short ride - I started by going by the country club and then heading toward Philomath, but I kept taking back roads I'd never been on. I knew roughly where I was, I just didn't know where the roads I was taking would lead me. So, when I saw a sign pointing south to Philomath (2 miles) I knew it was wrong, had to be because I was south of Philomath (which I was), so I took the other option, eventually ending up on a main road going south.

Time to introduce a rule to the weekly rides. One cannot turn back simply because one does not know which turn to make, one can only turn back when time is a factor (gonna run out of water, people are going to worry, etc.).

Anyway, the day was beautiful, sunny with blue skies, and cold cold cold. Luckily, there was no wind. I'm still getting used to riding a single speed - I certainly need a higher gear for road rides (which is what today's was), but probably should step down a notch or two for mountain rides. Note: I'm currently running 32 teeth in the crank, and 16 teeth in back - as if you cared.

Stats for the ride: 53 min, average speed 12.7mph, 11.21 miles.

Note: the (1) at the end of the title indicates the count of the ride for this week - this is the first ride, thus a 1. And the "WW" is "work-week" or the Nth week of the year (also known as the ISO 8601 week date).

Coding Horror: Typing Trumps Pointing

A quick sneak peek at Windows Vista reveals ... Typing Trumps Pointing.

Hm, looks like everything evolves toward becoming Emacs.

Survey Says...

I use Stat Counter to keep track of my massive amounts of traffic. I'm up to almost 9000 hits, total! Wow, you can't buy traffic like that.

Anyway, I occasionally look at the search terms people have used to find my blog. Stat Counter keeps info for the last 100 people who visited (I'm using the free version). For a while, I was actually #2 in Google for "mojito recipie" (note the misspelling of recipe), but I seem to have slipped to #5.

Some other interesting terms that lead people to my blog are: "aol yay worm", "makes a mean steak", "chapel of the chimes", "crappy car", and "on one midge bar shifters" (no idea what that last one means). Oh, 4 people came to my blog with "x-biking en puerto rico" - I guess I've got a bi-lingual audience.

My favorite search term, however, was "simone fart videos" - which apparently came from someone in Quebec Canada. I'll have to get on that, I don't think I have any videos of her farting.

iBike WW02 (1)

Same ride as last week, I imagine it'll be a regular ride until the bald-hill trails open up, and until the weather clears up a bit.

This week was snowy and cold, so I got to ride in some snow and ice today. It couldn't have been more than 35 degrees out, but man was it beautiful. The shady spots of the Midge Cramer path still had snow, and in the forest there were little puddles that completely froze over. I clipped the end of one going around a corner, and that was a bit scary. The ride ended well, I've got high hopes for the iBike project.

My legs didn't have a lot of oomph today, and it showed, just a hair over 1 hour to do the loop. But it felt good to get out.

Yeah, the deniers are going to love this.

Yahoo News reports that warming could spur "evolution explosion". That's like saying that you saw Bigfoot riding the Loch Ness monster.

Toe

I won't gross you out with any pictures, but I've got an ingrown toenail. Normally, it's not something I'd blog about. I'm gonna get it fixed - I just saw a foot doctor today and it'll be taken care of next week.

The interesting/funny part is that he decided to trim up the nail today so the toe has some time to heal (reduce inflammation). He pulled out the shiny toe-nail clippers - the ones that look like the nice ones you'd find in a grooming kit. He reached over, squeezed the handles, pop! the clippers broke. He had to break out the industrial clippers to take care of mine.

The nails are nice and healthy, no fungus or anything. Just super-strong nails, which won't be ingrown as of next Wednesday.

I hope my insurance covers nail clippers.

Word

Check out opportunity costs redux.

Sweet and Sour

Tim and Maria had a party this weekend to celebrate three kings day. A bunch of people came, it was fun.

But I'm most excited about the new way to make a whiskey sour (amaretto sour, vodka sour, whatever...). Toss that sour mix you bough from the store and go pick up some frozen lemonade mix. Mix 1 part liquor, 1 part lemonade mix, 1 part club soda, a marchino cherry and a little marachino juice. That's one tasty sour.

iBike WW01 (1)

Rode the Oak Creek mini-loop on the single-speed. 57 minutes, 12.5 miles. Cool day with slight sprinkles, felt good to be back on the bike again. The slight hills were tough with the single speed - need to get a larger gear for the rear, and get into better shape.

Introducing, the iBike 2007 goal

So, my goal for the year is to bike at least once a week, every week of the year. That's not gonna set any world records or anything (I read about a guy who has ridden once a day for 10 years (where each ride was at least an hour long)), but it's a start toward being more active.

Each winter I tell myself, "I'm gonna bike this winter." But I never do. This winter started with the excuse of my shoulder and neck hurting. It still does a little, but it's on the mend, and if I don't get active, it'll probably never heal. So, I went on my first ride of the year today.

I think the ground rules for this are that I've got to ride for at least half an hour. It'll be ok if it's a casual ride with Simone in the trailer, or if the ride is one of those epic 3 hour rides with the guys from Cyclotopia.

I can't take a week off after riding 2 or 3 times the week before. I figure if I happen to miss a week, I should have to ride twice the following week to make up for it (meaning, 3 rides that week - 2 for make-up, and one for that week itself). The one hitch I see already is that we're taking two weeks to go to Hawaii in February, so I'm going to have to make that middle one up.

You can follow along - I'll have a special label under which I log all my rides - just to keep me honest. Follow along if you will.

A moment of silence please

FoxTrot to be a Sunday-only comic. It's one of my all-time favorite comics, and I'm sad to see it go.

Bush Poll

A little funny for you, how do you rate President Bush?

Excellent article by Richard Clarke

A most excellent article by Richard Clarke. He lists some of the big items the Bush administration has left unattended with its single-focus on Iraq. It begins,

In every administration, there are usually only about a dozen barons who can really initiate and manage meaningful changes in national security policy. For most of 2006, some of these critical slots in the Bush administration have been vacant, such as the deputy secretary of state (empty since Robert B. Zoellick left for investment bank Goldman Sachs) and the deputy director of national intelligence (with Gen. Michael V. Hayden now CIA director). And with the nation involved in a messy war spiraling toward a bad conclusion, the key deputies and Cabinet members and advisers are all focusing on one issue, at the expense of all others: Iraq.

It's worth a read.

The Top 10 Bizarro Environmental Stories

A short list of the most bizarre environmental stories. My "favorites" are America Outsourcing its Pollution to China, and Eskimos Buying Air Conditioners. There are of course the obligatory nods to the Bush administration in the list.

Chapel of the Chimes

Well, the McMenamin's brothers have done it again, they've converted another nifty building into a pub. This one is the old Chapel of the Chimes, which happens to be where I last saw Grandma Jackson, just before she was cremated

I'll have to check it out and toast to her memory when I next get to Portland.