Weekend Update

Tonight I'm going to take a break from my vacation report, because well, it's really dragging on. I might do one quick blast of a review to get it over with, and that'll be that. For now, here's the news from the front lines.

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Simple Quote

"E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business."<
Accounting Manager, Electric Boat Company

For those of you who don't get why this is funny, Electric Boat builds submarines for the US and UK Navies. They're also not known for passing info along to the people they work with, but I doubt that's the original quoter's intent. Having worked with some of EB's finest, I can attest to their poor communication skills.

Reprinted without permission from: http://www.mitchy.com/quotes.html

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No Thanks, Just the Box it Came In

Anyone who has kids or was a kid at one time knows the best part of Christmas (sorry Jews) is the kickass boxes stuff comes in. As it turns out the same holds true for my less-than-appreciative cats.

Yesterday my entire agenda was rained out when the slight drizzle they predicted for the afternoon showed up as an incessant downpour somewhere in the middle of the night. After bagging my bike ride and returning to the warm confines of my bed, I slowly awoke, lazed around the house and somewhere around noon decided I needed to do SOMETHING. I decided there was no better day to head to Trader Joes than a rainy Friday off.

Long story short, while at Trader Joes I treated my cats to a double-wide cardboard cat scratcher doohickey, complete with catnip. So far they ate the catnip and have ground their gums (as cats do on anything with a corner: boxes, eye glasses, noses, toe nails, tables, post-biking calves, etc) on the corners of the box the scratching post came in. They have not, however, ground their nails into the perfect scratching surface within the box. Ingrates.

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Josh Billings Rampup

For those of you who don't know, I'm going to be participating in the area's foremost athletic event later this year. The event, The Josh Billings Runaground, is a triathlon consisting of a bike, paddle, run combination (in that order). Last year I was the paddler on a team of three. It was fun, but I thought it would be more fun to tackle the whole thing myself this year, also known as the Ironman division.

Not wanting to let myself down, I've been hitting the bike and kayak about as hard as I can safely do without injuring myself or getting fired from my job. The running on the other hand has been put on the back burner while I nurse a hamstring injury back to health. Last year I would have said that the running was my strong suit, but this year I'm not sure. I hope to be able to give it a strong attempt, but lately I've really been having a hard time. Send some healing vibes this way, please.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to head out to the race route to give my bike another shot at it. Historically I've ridden with people of all abilities and we end up waiting around at various points. The average pace (minus waiting) is usually pretty good, but if I get to rest every 20 minutes it hardly simulates race conditions. Tomorrow I'm going to give it hell, and follow up with a paddle around Stockbridge Bowl for good measure.

Over and Out,
Old Coot