On Tuesday I drive to work (because it is raining) and have a reasonable drive home after a frustrating day at work. I do 100 leg lifts and 100 crunches on a slant board as the evening workout. Wednesday is even more frustrating at work. So I leave a bit early (in the car because it was raining in the morning) and stop at home to pick up the motorcycle. I ride the motorcycle over to the dealer for a service and a new chain and sprocket. The service manager looks at my odometer a number of times and I finally say, "You don't see many R1s with 41,000 miles, do you?" And he shakes his head and has a puzzled look on his face. Finally, to jar him back to reality, I continue with, "I guess most people wreck their R1s before they get that many miles". And he smiles and is brought back to reality. I take two buses home and have a good session with the weights though I note that my abdominals are getting sore from the extra good Tuesday abdominal workout.
The rest of the week sees good workouts and runs. On Friday I come home ealry (because it's the last day before holiday vacation) and have a visit with Person M_Fl who comes over. I show him my pictures from Thailand and Myanmar and we hang out. Late in the evening I get in a good session with the weights and eventually head for sleep.
Saturday is a great day. It starts with a 40 minute run and Person M_Fl coming over early because he left his watch at my house on Friday's visit. I call into the teleconference for work and am told that I will probably not be needed until Sunday. I take two buses over to the motorcycle dealer and pick up the Yamaha YZF-R1 with a new chain and sprocket and tuneup. It feels great! During the mid-day sunshine I jump on the mountain bicycle and head down to and around the aquarium. Afer re-hydrating I clean up the rosebeds as I feel myself getting ready to collapse. But I notice a squirrel in the tree watching me so I get some crackers and "tease" the squirrel out of the tree for food. He/she reluctantly comes down and eats the crackers that I've tossed to it. This is the same squirrel from a few days ago and I hope that I'm making a new friend. By now I barely make it to bed for a two hour nap. When I wake up I feel that a Thai elephant has stepped on me. But it feels great. During the day I've kept two computers running - one is my home computer and the second is a laptop from work with the necessary encryption so that I can retrieve work email and monitor the status of when I am needed. There is very little work email traffic and I just assume that I might be needed on Sunday. I watch football, read, and stay warm on Saturday night.
On Sunday the 8 am teleconference indicates that I am needed at work. Thus I have breakfast and ride the motorcycle to work - arriving near 10 am to a facility that I have no access or badge for. Thirteen hours later I am leaving the facility after not having accomplished much. The host organization had many issues that they were working through trying to get ready to test. When I leave near 11 pm there are still issues that may prevent us from testing when we resume on Wednesday.
Monday is a great day! It's bright and sunny and 74 degrees F in Long Beach. I get out for the aquarium bicycle ride during mid morning, do the laundry, and then do a "hard prune" on half of the roses. The hard prune is done in the wintertime to cut back the size of the rose and re-shape it. I can't wait for bloom season! As I'm pruning the roses my friend comes to visit and I give him/her some crackers fir lunch. I rent two DVDs for watching: Stoned is a chronicle of the sordid life and suspicious death of the Rolling Stones co-founder Brian Jones. La Sierra is a documentary on three young people who live in Medellin, Colombia in an area ruled by a gang with ties to the nation's paramilitary armies.
On Christmas day I get out for the windy loop ride and then watch the La Sierra DVD. It turns out neither DVD was very good and I skip to the final scene of the La Sierra DVD to see the ending. Over the past few days there have been many calls from Person C_T, Person T_U, Person T*, Person D_X, Joe, Person J_J, my 94 year old aunt, and Person Ey_T.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are blurs of work. I'm at the facility in cold and windy weather by 6:30 am each morning and trying to push the test forward. After each day at work I try to squeeze in any sort of workout that I can. But I am overjoyed on Thursday when I get a text message referring to me as a "sexy beast". That makes my day!
After work on Friday I get in a good session with the weights, call a number of people, and head for clubs in West Hollywood. On the way to the club I pick up Person Ey_T who lives on the borders of K-town and Thai-town. We check out two clubs before heading back to the herd/clone club and each run into a number of friends and acquaintances. Person T_U, Person D_X, Person D_B, and Person J_J are present. For some reason the club is very very crowded and the time goes rather quickly. Before I know it Person Ey_T wants to leave (though it is already 1:45 or so) because his throat is sore. We stop in at a Rite-Aid to get cough drops as I drop Person Ey_T off at his apartment and I rush home. The lights go out for sleep right near 3 am on Saturday morning.
I'm up at 6:30 am to run 4 miles before taking a shower and making the 8 am teleconference (from home). It turns out that we are not needed until approximately 1 pm, so I catch up on home activities before riding the motorcycle to the work facility for testing. Testing goes okay but we do not finish until 10 pm.
On Sunday we start work before 8 am. We are making great progress until something bad happens. We open up a failure review board and I'm at work until almost 9 pm. This is not good. I collapse into bed near 9:30 pm and sleep well.
Except that I wake up at 4:45 am on Monday morning and cannot fall back asleep. There is nothing to do except get out of bed and start my day. A text message comes in at 5:30 am and at 7 am Person M_Fl stops by on his way to work. We hang out for a while before it is time for Person M_Fl to get to his job. I have a 10:30 teleconference with work for 90 minutes on one of my two days off. And then head out for a sunny bicycle ride. The rest of the day I run a few errands, but stay close to home and just relax. I'm in bed by 10:30 pm on new year's eve with ear plugs in so that nearby firecrackers and gunshots don't wake me.
