Sunday, April 01, 2007

Quck with the Hands

Since it's Sunday evening I thought I'd update you fine folks with what I've been up to. Yesterday involved a lot of lounging, for reasons I'll explain briefly. Today I actually slept in for the first time in many moons and it felt great. So, on to the reasons for lounging.


Steady Lounging

Thursday night I was headed for the shower when I heard my phone ring. I wasn't expecting any calls at that hour (9:00, which is late-ish for this guy). I checked to see who was calling and it was unavailable. Great, I booked it across the house butt ass neckid for a telemarketer.

When I got out of the shower I found that it was in fact my sister calling from Japan. I quickly busted out her phone numbers and set forth trying to figure out how to call internationally. The second time was the charm.

We ended up talking about this and that until about 12:30 when I had to put an end to the conversation. I could have talked forever if I didn't have to work in the morning.

Friday night I made the long trip out to Northampton to visit Trader Joes. It had been talked up like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and for the most part it lived up to the hype. I could have used about twice as much store, but the stuff they have is pretty dope. Between the two hours of driving, shopping, dinner, walking around Northampton I didn't get home until pretty late.

Saturday morning I awoke before the birds to meet up with some folks for the week's long run. We kicked back 13.33 (repeating, of course) miles in roughly 2 hrs. Being as tired as I was, and as dehydrated as one can be after drinking coffee all day the day before and not having and water, I was a hurting unit. I pretty much read and slept away the rest of the day. There was a short trip to Dick's for cycling shorts and Crocs.

As it turns out, the Crocs are still too small and I have to hook up a pair of XXLs. I don't like the idea of wearing XXL anything, but I guess shoes are okay.

But anyway, the reason I was so tired all weekend was because I stayed up late Thursday and Friday night and got up early the following days.


Riding at High Noon

Today was supposed to involve the first bike ride of the season. I bought new shorts, gave my bike a quick once-over, put all of my accessories in the back of my A-ride and put a bike rack on the roof. As the morning drew on, everyone else bagged the ride and around 12:30 I went out to work on the lawn. I won't bore you with the details; it involved primarily raking.


WHAT!?!

Months ago I picked up a Rubik's Cube with the intention of learning how to solve it. I know that there is really know way to solve it without memorizing algorithms (algoritha?), and that's fine with me. It's still something that most people can't do and it takes a good mind for spatial reasoning to solve, so back off haters.

Today, after a few hours of toying with it and learning some simple techniques (and following some not-so-simple algorithms), I SOLVED A RUBIK'S CUBE! I didn't have to remove any stickers or rearrange the cubies (that's cuber speak for the little pieces on a Rubik's Cube).

I was surprised how quickly I was able to learn how to get through the first 2 layers of the solution I'm learning. There are a few techniques but for the most part you have to do the first two layers yourself, then follow the pattern to get to the finale. My brain picked it up pretty quickly, thank you very much TV Turnoff Month.


Well, it's time for this guy to get a few more rounds of Cubing down and get to bed. I'll holler at y'all later. Peace in the Northeast.


Over and Out,
Old Coot

1 comment:

Abbey said...

Wow, you're awesome! You could get a highly competitive internship at an investment company and turn it into a wildly successful career. Then make an award-winning movie about it! But seriously, I don't think I ever knew anyone who solved a Rubik's Cube. I was a sticker-remover myself.

"Something inside of me just said 'Hey, wait a minute, I want to beat him.' and I just took off." -Pre