I drive to work again on Tuesday and Wednesday because the motorcycle isn't quite ready. But at least on Wednesday afternoon I get a call indicating that it is finished. The days at work are slow - it seems like a lot of people are out of the office on business travel, jury duty, or health reasons. So I work on some things that need to be clsoed out and work on some experimental numerical algorithms that may or may not bare fruit. On Tuesday I get in a good session with the weights and nothing hurts during the lifting. But later at night my right shoulder, at the arthritis location, does hurt.
It feels great to be able to ride the motorcycle to work on Thursday morning and again back home on Thursday afternoon. Traffic is bad Thursday and I am grateful that I have the bike back and still astonished that people are able to sit in their cars stuck in traffic. I have a slow day at work until I'm invited to a 4pm meeting. Present at the meeting is the lady who used to be my friend and who now doesn't miss a chance to insult me. Of course she insults me once at the beginning of the meeting and once more at the end. I just keep letting go because she's really just harming herself. But nobody at work will challenge her to "play nice". I get home and have a good workout with the weights with increased weights and have no serious shoulder pain. Later as I watch the news I'm getting all upset about the lady at work and the entire situation. It isn't worth the stress but tonight it is really bugging me. It's just a very disappointing situation.
On Saturday at 6:40 am I'm on the motorcycle riding up to Bennett-Kew elementary school in Inglewood for a painting project with UCLA volunteers. Today we have an Arab sorority helping us out. ALl of the sorority sisters have voluneteered before and are very efficient at getting things set up. The UCLA freshmen and transfer students arrive a bit after 9 and we start painting the basketball backboards, the temporary building, poles and rails, and a map of the United States on the asphalt. We were supposed to have a template for the USA map but didn't get one. So we asked for volunteers and two of the sorority sisters had enough artistic talent to take a map of the USA from a book and their phones and chalk-out the outline of the country and then chalk-in the outlines for each state. Fantastic job! From their the volunteers were able to fill it in and it looked fantastic! We manage to get all of the painting done and this is the smoothest volunteer day that I've been at. When I get home I'm hotand sweaty because, of course, this was one of the hottest days of the year. So I mow the lawn and fiddle around outside a bit before having a cool shower and relaxing inside the house. Later Person Ti_Ca and I have a very serious talk about how we are failing. This talks was started when I asked Person Ti_Ca to fill in a table about what each of us are getting out of the relationship and what each of us are putting into the relationship. But we skip the table and go straight to real issues. Eventually we both take a break as Person Ti_Ca goes to hang out with a Cambodian friend and I relax and try to rally some energy for a Sunday morning ride.
The highlight of Monday is getting a free flu shot at work. Otherwise it is blah at work as I do run-of-the-mill work. When I get home I watch the Moto3 race from Aragon (Spain) with an exciting last few laps. And then I go for a long walk as the day cools. Blah!
On Saturday I start northon the Los Angeles river and pick up another rider. We continue further north to the Santa Fe dam and take a quick breather at the base of the dam. There is a guy who sells drinks and helps people fix thier bicycle at the base of the dam and I find out this is title is "el chalan" - the fixer in Spanish. I also run into Ted from Poland at the base of the dam. Today my riding partner and I just head south on the San Gabriel and he is pushing the pace and I am struggling to stay with him. We finally get to Del Amo where I turn off and crawl home for about 55 miles. Needless to say that with today's pace and distance I am going to be useless for the rest of the day. I do run some errands and get new books from the library to read, and then relax.
On Monday I'm still physically hungover from Saturday's ride and don't have the most productive day at work. I try to work off some tasks that need to get done before testing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lbaoratory in a couple of weeks and I do make progress. Finally, after a couple of afternoon meetings, I go home early to lift weights, start washing every indoor door in the house, and get disappointed at my Detroit Lions lose again despite being within a yard of winning the game in the last two minutes. I hope for good sleep on Monday night for the trip to Pasadena for work on Tuesday.