Coming Up: Jealous lovers vie for Mr. (W)right's final fealty. Will track or mountain emerge the queen of all his cycling stars? As storm clouds gather and heatwaves bluster in the breeze, other bikes take cover. Will the living room trainer survive its sudden singlehood? The TeXpo long behind left its scars, but planted seeds of victory for those who brave its halls once more. Will our heroine be lured back to the darkest of sides in promise of sweetest success? Will she survive her descent once more to the black lodge of non-humanities.
Grab your confectioner's blow torch, kit up your racing steeds, and circle around-and-around-and-around in agony once more if you dare seek the truth below...
Tryst Night on Track for Tracks The Case of the vanishing trainer-bike
Mr. (W)right and I have our date nights; we have our track/track-widow nights; but some days we also have what I'm going to call our "tryst nights." These are also known as "unexpected date nights in that make me feel like we must be cheating somehow!" Any time we get a little extra evening together on a Monday, it just feels like we're "getting away with something." Sort of like one of us snuck over to the other's house on a school night, which actually we used to do once a week when we both lived in Seattle (that was back in the day, when I bravely faced the broken slatted cot of misery, so grand was my love for the lad). Sometimes, between making funny faces at each other and other shenanigans I hear us giggling and want to shush in case our parents hear us!
Last night had a certain low-agenda high-sneakiness sort of feel about it. I had just gotten back from an appropriately grueling pilates class. I really enjoy our instructor. Like all of my pilates instructors thus far, she is petite and blond and a little bit... smiley. She'll kind of gaze off into the ether during a set and start to ponder out loud how she's going to modify an exercise in future classes, totally forgetting count and often leading to very LOOOOOONG sets of quivering and mewling muscular destruction. But, it definitely makes for a char-grilled burn by the end.
And it also satisfies any impetus for ambition or projects for the remainder of the evening. Most nights I have enough time at home to settle in, start dinner, pick up a chore, and ride the impetus of that chore through to a second domestic Aeolus. And I'm thus fairly embroiled once Andrew gets home. On pilates nights, I'm pretty rushed getting home and getting dinner together, which nukes any iota of motivation to do much at all afterwards.
Andrew got home with a minor agenda - retooling his track bike for the pre-season shenanigans this Friday. Fortunately, he was also (1) home fairly early, (2) not totally tanked by work insanity. Actually, he was in a good mood. I was coming off an exercise high - dying muscles mean the brain doles out extra huge tinctures of the happy-drugs. Enjoying the concinnuous bonhomie, we complemented each other thoroughly. The weather didn't hurt, since spring is traipsing about with all the subtlety of a drag show diva, flicking her blossomy boa about and belting a warble of chirpety birds.
It was a splendiferous prelude to our bridge into a somewhat manic May to come. Andrew officially starts pre-season track racing this Friday, which is full of mysterious variables. Will it rain out? Will he do well enough to want to buy the full season race license? Will one of his bike parts explode, taking out half the field? What madness will Adella get up to when unsupervised for an entire evening?? It boggles the mind, I assure you. This weekend should be a biking bonanza and a good first pas de trois with his dueling cycle-racing-loves. After the track opener on Friday, he'll be driving off to Whidbey on Sunday for his first mountain biking race.
It's going to be a spotty pre-season, since we'll be out of town on the 16th for my MIL's 60th bday bonanza; he'll be attending a friend's wedding tour weekend party while I'm off in Jersey on the 30th; the weekend of the 23rd just predates the Ski to Sea, so while he'll probably race, it will be yet another back-to-back racing weekend. And, it being spring in the Pacific Northwest, there's always the possibility any single night could be called on account of rain... but probably only after he's driven all the way out to Redmond and waited around for several hours.
We shall determinedly see. There are just enough potential races in May to try out the pre-season Friday races, before his category is shifted to a less propitious weeknight in June. Apparently Andrew doesn't think racing on Monday nights until the wee hours is nearly as appealing. In my very personal selfish mode, I actually think Mondays are more appealing, since the post-race grog-day will be spent largely groggy and surly at work instead of spacy and disconnected at home during my weekend time. But, one's druthers are not always one's entitlements. In that same time span, there should be just enough mountain biking to appropriately compare and contrast which style will be his "A race-style" and which will be his "B race-style" for the 2014 season. Which discipline will get the rose?? Stay tuned!!
But yes, after some very amorous frivolity, we did settle down our churlish shenanigans long enough for Andrew to prepare the track bike (deep massage, some long therapeutic sessions, maybe a serenade or two...). Combined with some additional work he did on his Kona a few days ago, the garage is topped off with ready-to-ride bikes. And the living room is barren of them! The trainer plangently lilts a threnody for its lost companion.
No bike in the living room? Surely spring is nigh!
Tech-tastic Triumphs And the petty wins that add a delicate sapor to life as we imagine to know it
I'm a winner! Really. Double-thumbs up. After our ascent into the TeXpo (trademarked by Adella's Addled Morning Brain) Abbadon last Friday, I thought we had left it all behind in the dust-bin of musty memories slated for compression. But oh no, seeing as I am that kind of compulsively prepared person who would pre-register for a free event, I was entered in a drawing to win some fabulous prizes or other. And I won! I am soon to be the enviable owner of a "Sony Bloggie Duo camera". I have no idea what this is. My argute deductive skills belie to me that said item is "a camera"... probably manufactured by "Sony." And is intended for something maybe pertinent to blogging in a cutesy way?
My brief google cull reveals that it's some kind of camera optimized for duck-facing selfies in still and moving picture! But then aren't they all these days? It is cute though. Quite compact and has a built in USB arm, so that's one less cord to explode into my life. Given that I haven't used my actual camera in years, I'm not sure that I needed a mid-range portable camera that mostly mimics my cell phone's operations. But I won it! So it's cool!! Writhe and roil with envy peons! And I do kinda blah blah blog a lot, so I suppose I should have it as recognition of such.
In other minor victories, I managed to purchase the correct floodlight for our vaulted kitchen area. We have the strangest lighting and wiring in our home. There are a total of six flood lights arrayed in constellation above our kitchen island. There are also three light switches to control these (in addition to two other light switches which have no correlation to lights, per se and may be strictly decorative). There seems to be no logical correlation between the switch and the light(s) affected by a flick of the on/off. There are also dimmers on two of the switches, but not the third. The third one is further situated next to an identical switch, which controls an outlet in the living room.
Naturally this all results in (1) a shuffle of clicks and lights as the farraginous flickers are flipped in quest for the perfect lighting scenario, (2) some lights always being left on because it is too confusing to figure out which switch would extinguish them, (3) the cleaners perpetually confusing things by dimming the lights instead of turning them off and turning off the outlet in our living room (which cuts juice to all of our electrical accoutrements in that room and is hard to notice until after the long standing panic); (4) an incredibly difficult time identifying when lights have burned out, unless you witness it happening or have absolutely every light switch in the house flicked upwards and are confident that "up" means "on".
I believe that three of our flood lights had burned out over time. But I can't be certain. I perched atop our kitchen counters to get to the one whose swan song nova moment I witnessed first hand. It had several reams of cuneiform information about its properties. And the manufacturer of that lightbulb does not appear to have a match. With some amazon sleuthing, I sussed out equivalencies and bought a light that mostly fits, and provides more light for less energy consumption. The additional light wasn't really necessary, but that seemed to be my sole option. At great peril, I perched anew (hoping to god the proper light switches were switched off) and had a minor battle shoving the bulb in its celestial orb.
It's a tad atilt in the socket, but I like it. At least I know it fits. The other one that I know to be fizzled will require a ladder and a second light. There could be broken glass and necks yet! But if that is the case... I will be able to easily record myself and use excellent sony software to blog all about it with my bestest friends on Vine, Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat, Pinterest, and whatever's actually cool these days.
Oh sweet victory...
She Certainly Can... Can-Can Of temperate heatwaves and bog creature coping mechanisms
It's been actually warm the last few days. Our typical Pacific Northwestern Spring is a mulch of light rainy days and the sort of briskly fresh sunny days that suggest slight jackets are in order. And until this week, that was about what the weather-doctor ordered: cool in the morning, overcast at some point during the day, and exquisitely clear and lovely at some other point, with a typical ping-pong twixt damp and dry. But we've got ourselves a bonafide heat wave (PNW style, that is). Yesterday, the temperatures got up to the high 70s here and to the 80s (low 30s Celsius) in Seattle. That's kind of like our high-summer season weather. I'd say more like "June" but June in Washington is typically more rainy and drizzly than the month preceding it.
Unlike our future estival heatwaves - pre-reserved grounds for obsessively watching and complaining about THE WEATHER as if we were discussing "The Great War - people are mostly digging this proleptic leap into mid-summer (and all those puckish daydreams). The streets seem to have belched up about 300% of Bellingham's populus, and they all appear to have received whimsical bikes and strollers during their time in the sewers. Outdoor seating is booming. I can't imagine work is getting done much.
And the regular summertime rituals begin in the (W)right household: the constant balancing of open-windows and fans in anticipation of warm days on cooler mornings. Yesterday, we had our annual raised eyebrows over what to do with that overnight breeze that had wafted into the living room after Mr. (W)right left the patio door open. As is my traditional stance, I was in favor of intentionally cultivating the chilling temperatures in anticipation of the warmth to come. Andrew was in favor of my no longer explaining why I had leapt up yelling "NO" when he tried to close the door or turn on the heat again. We were both in favor of having breakfast in our robes, slippers and coats. Last night, the bike and chain most certainly remembered to close the door, forestalling future standoffs until the next heat wave of more staggering proportions.
While many are in favor of continuing the mid-July, I am not so sold. As I am wont to rant and rave, our office is hellishly warm on a moderate day. I keep the window open almost perpetually. Ever since the equinox, I've had to keep my blinds down to prevent my little oven from baking me alive (nice smell with a good marinade, but kind of disturbing and uncomfortable). My home is ilikewise both well-insulated and perfectly equipped to catch the sun's rays at their most incalescent. Of course, my little tin-can of a kia has never heard of climate control. Then there's the fact that (1) I am still an Irish Bog creature and burst into flame in direct sunlight, and (2) I've managed to lose my sunglasses yet again in anticipation of our sunny weather. I feel like a mole rat with eczema staggering about in my workout capris and camisole, eyes slit and blearing through a dazed torpor. Yeah, I'm super professional these days. But, it's hot in here!! And Nelly said where it is hot, one ought to shed one's enduement!
But as I have heard that our regularly scheduled drippy-tap spring is back on the menu soon, I'll do my best to enjoy the blaring gaudy little nova hoity toiting it up outside my office-window. It does make for some intoxicatingly redolent mornings, and sitting in the breeze under a mild shade is the sheer eidolon of childhood nostalgia.
And, since it's hot and Cinco Mayo is nigh (Amurricuhn code for "Let's celebrate another country by getting drunk on Tequila and Cerveza instead of whatever other national liquor we were planning to use as an excuse to be rowdy on a weekday evening"), I've got my mariachi music piping over the office speakers.
OLE!
Beware the Bunnies of May Day - The New Culture Movement Moves West
And Happy May 4th, to all you skeptics of the old-fashioned Confucian ways. Let us break out the vernacular and diary like Mad Men (with diaries, not ad agencies) as we doff our paternalistic society and embrace science and -isms. And... ok, we're Amuricuhn so let's drink a beer and watch tv.
It's a delightfully dreary and damp Sunday. Perfect day to drive to the opera and sottenly stagger with Monsieur Hoffman through his hallucinations of love and art. Probably, it is a less delightful day for Andrew's chosen mud-march of a cycling race. But he seems to enjoy suffering, so perhaps it shall enhance his racing experience to be drenched and bemired. Either way, he has headed out the door ahead of me. In honor of his upcoming battle, I left him a warrior's token in his car. You know, to serve as an example to any who dare to challenge his supremacy. Poor bunny was a brave combatant, but April has showered itself away now and Easter promises have long faded.
I am filling the interim between our very (W)right departures by throwing every imaginable ingredient into the slow cooker and dicing through a pair of two of vinyl gloves. Yes, after much consideration I'm back to following the etiquette of a conscientious food preparation technician. But for selfish reasons having less to do with the magical little badge that required me to leave my salsa station, wash my hands and change gloves every half hour in the days of Hot Mama yore. I hated that badge!
I have skin so sensitive that it might as well be posting passive-aggressive facebook statuses intimating that "somebody" hurt its feelings when some somebody "liked" a comment about cortisol cream (as if to say my skin needs that!! The nerve!!). No, no, I really don't know what the prior simile hoped to accomplish.
The Hemmingwayesque version of the above paragraph: My skin is sensitive. Whiskey is good. A man knows these things.
Said sensitivity scoffs at additives and perfumes, of course. But it also thinks I'm far too delicate a flower to be submitting my lily white (and rubicund) hands to such drudgeries as cookery and washing. Since my brain stridently disagrees, there are times of protest in which my fingers break out in little rashes and become implacably itchy. So, having read some advice somewhere "on the internet" - and knowing that its status as "on the internet" invariably means it is true - I'm trying to wear gloves while doing my cooking and washing. It does seem to shield me from several sources of dermatitis (the constant wetness, acidities of chopping vegetables, the inevitable dusting of ground peppers breezing across the dunes of my knuckles... ). We shall see if it makes an improvement over the long term.
Yesterday was sort of our limbo day 'twixt two races. On Friday, Andrew drove away from home and towards the track for his first track race of the season. I took advantage of the opportunity to not stand outside in the spluttering rain at a bike race. Sort of like my plans for today, except with a different kind of bike racing!
Needless to say, he got home very late and was semi-conscious through most of yesterday. Lest any day go by without some additional physical toll on his overall "training effect", we did sploosh through the rain for a tandem treadmill. I'm feeling rather jazzed to be back up to 26 minutes of straight running, without any subsequent caviling from the injured arch. Andrew should be jazzed about resisting temptation to throw the damned thing up to 9 mph and see if his heart or the machine would explode first. Then again, his persistently awry heart rate monitor still thinks he got up to 240 bpm yesterday.
Andrew did, of course, also go out on a bike ride after we returned. But these inevitabilities aside, he mostly caved up in "the study" hunched over a computer whilst I meandered about through the house, feeling placelessly restless between chores.
But there was some excitement! Not to be outdone by my occasional ceremonial coffee-splooshing sacrifices, my engineer of a husband went all sci-fi in his minor coffee disaster for a nice coffee supernova in our microwave. Note to all: the "sensor reheat" button on a Panasonic is intended for plates of food, not beverages.Further note: heating a sponge soaked in white vinegar is still a decent way to clean a totally deluged and dripping microwave.
And my own lesson: if you're going to wash those reusable bags, make sure you take out the little flat insert before hitting the dryer. That thing is made of paper and will curlicue into a hundred little shreds of graying popcorn petals during a good spin cycle.
Having de-gloved and successfully unloaded every conceivable soup ingredient into the slow cooker, I am back to the tick a tack typing of my little keyboard for a spell. It's the annual "I should volunteer" parade in Adella's head, so I'm updating my cover letter and filling out the recommended application for the Whatcom Dispute Resolution Center. I hate cover letters and applications. They make me hiss, but fortunately, it's a volunteer thing so I don't feel quite as stressed out about it all. Maybe this one will stick and the program won't go kerplunk like the Boys and Girls Mentorship program that I almost got involved with last year... I hate to think I have that horrible of juju woven into my goodwill.
At any rate, a few more torrid minutes of "talking about myself" (shudder) and I can return to the oblivion of a pre-operatic escapade!
Wishing you all a sweet day with only the vanquished foes of chocolate at your doorstep.
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