Work, work and more work
Someone told me that weekends are for resting, for catching up from a week in the workplace, for fun. WTF am I doing wrong?
Friday afternoon I took the final test I need to get my Windows 2008 MCITP certification. This test was on configuring and installation of Vista / Office 2007. You say both Vista and Office 2007 are yesterdays news, why would you test on it? To get the certification, why else? This test had more questions than either of the two other tests I took, 53 in total yet it was probably the easiest of the three, I scored a clean 1000.
Passing this test wraps up this round of certification study/testing. I set the goal in 4th quarter 2009 to update my 2003 MCSE. It took a bit longer than I hoped but it’s done. I probably won’t screw around with more certification for a year or two.
On Friday evening before we sat down for our traditional pizza and Tivo session Ali wanted to go on a bike ride. She is doing her first sprint triathalon (400 meter swim, 10 mile bike ride, 3 mile run) in a couple weeks and she needed to get more practice time in on her road bike. It also gave me a chance to have more practice using my bike shoes and SPD pedals/cleats.
We went from home to Wilson Blvd and back, around a 7 mile ride. There was a funny moment along the way. I was trying to explain to Ali how to adjust her front derailleur to get onto the higher set of gears. She over adjusted and managed to push the chain off the gears completely so I had her stop. After getting the chain back on her bike I commented to Ali how I was doing better with getting my feet in and out of the pedals.
So Ali takes off and I lock my right foot into the bike and start to move forward. In a split second I crashed into the curb and onto the grass which is on my right with my foot still locked in. The only thing hurt was my pride, especially after just proclaiming my proficiency in mastering the SPD clips. So I hop back up, lock my right foot in and again, crash immediately. This time not only did I dump it, I knocked MY chain off.
By this time Ali was a a small figure in the distance. She had no idea I just had two incidents in a row. As I was angrily putting my chain back on I realized why I was crashing. I had gotten into the habit of always locking my right foot in first. Well when you have a curb on your right and a road surface that slightly crowns to the right you will always drift that direction if you do your right foot first, causing my embarrassing spills.
I got the chain back on, used the grass as a makeshift rag to get the grease somewhat off my hands and started again this time locking my LEFT foot in first. No crash, whew. Luckily despite dumping myself over the curb with my right foot locked into the bike twice both my bike and my body seemed to escape any major damage. By the time I got moving again Ali was hardly visible. I hauled ass to try to catch up but realized she was way too far ahead. She did not realize I wasn’t behind her until she pulled into our driveway. 🙂
My Saturday was a marathon of labor. Ali was doing a swimming/running session with Michelle. I opted to do an all day long weeding, mulching, transplanting session. I was sick of the landscaping in front of our house for awhile. The topiaries that flanked our front door had become rather ugly over the years despite my attempts to keep them trimmed up. Plus everything was visually just boring. I finally got around to switching things up.
I first loaded the truck down with 20 pieces of sod, 25 bags of mulch, and some stuff for the garden. I didn’t see anything at Home Depot that excited me to put in front of the house. On the way home I decided to stop at a local nursery. I came across something called a canna lily. The leaves are a deep purple with pretty red flowers. I grabbed two of them and found small accent plants that also had purple tint to plant in between our three green things. The truck was jam packed.
Once I got home I got to work. I decided to place the sod and spread the mulch first. By the time Ali got home I had moved on to planting the cana lilies. First I had to get the topiaries dug out which was no small feat.
The area is covered in river rock so I had to remove that first. After being in the ground for at least 5 or 6 years each topiary had developed some big root systems, it required a lot of digging and root cutting to get them out. I sort of felt bad removing the topiaries as I have spent a lot of time over the years trying to maintain them. I decided I would attempt to transplant them somewhere else on the property to give them a chance to survive.
Ali liked the plants I picked out and thought they looked good in front of the house. It was nice to get some color out there. I also bought some smaller colorful plants to refresh two of our containers on the front porch that had some less than spectacular mum remnants in them. I left the healthy portion of the mums but by adding the new plants made the pots look appealing again.
Despite working for hours on these projects I hade more to accomplish. At Home Depot I grabbed a container of Thompsons Water Seal. I waterproofed the ramp for the small shed as well as my pull up and jump station. You know you take your pull ups seriously when you waterproof your pull up bar.
I was beat and overheated from my activities. I was hot enough to do the first swim of the season in an unheated pool. The water temp was 78 degrees so it felt pretty chilly for a minute or so but after that it felt fine. Sadie was very happy that splashy splash season had started once again.
After I got out I told Ali that it was the sort of day that I would want to go to Boehringers if we still lived up north. I’d order my old standard burger, fries and a chocolate milkshake. Sadly Boehringers is 1200 miles away. Well Ali had her Iphone out so she hopped on it and did a search for establishments that could fit the bill. She came up with a place named Steak n Shake, a national chain that I never frequented. We piled in the van with the dogs and headed out.
Steak n Shake has a 50’s burger joint theme to it, I immediately liked it. I placed our order at the counter, a grilled cheese, a burger, two orders of fries and a chocolate (extra thin) and vanilla milkshake. In about 5 minutes the food was up. I paid my $13 bill and carried the food out to the van.
We dug into the food and immediately I knew we had a winner. The burger and fries were both nearly identical to what I remember from my countless Boehringers meals growing up. Even the milkshake was nearly perfect. After a hard day of busting my ass it was just what I needed. The only thing missing were the ducks in the creek. We had to settle on looking out over a drainage ditch and 6 lanes of traffic instead.
Usually if I bust my ass on Saturday I like to make my Sunday a bit more low key. This Sunday was not one of those days. The first thing we did was go on another longer bike ride. We went 10.5 miles this time, the full distance Ali would have to travel for the triathalon. On the way out we hit a brutal headwind. For the first section of the ride our speeds varied from a snail-like 10-12 mph. That wind was wonderful on the return trip though. We averaged 19-22 mph on the last third of the ride. Luckily I had no pedal accidents this time around.
We really have been inconsistent with following through on the monthly cleaning project system that Ali created a few years ago. Although Ali created the plan, following through on it is normally my duty. I guess the blame for it not being consistent falls on my shoulders since I am normally the taskmaster. Well April is kitchen cleaning month.
I was not motivated to perform this duty. I didn’t really feel like cleaning the kitchen, I was already sore from the yard work the day prior, yet we did it anyway. We worked across the face of the kitchen. First we cleaned the fridge which meant removing everything from both the freezer and fridge side and wiping/washing it all down. It is incredible just how much scuzz can accumulate inside a refrigerator.
Next we moved to the cabinets, again removing everything, cleaning, sorting and putting it back. By the time we got done with the cabinets my motivation was gone. I declared the pantry as good enough and we wrapped the project up. I had more work to do after all.
I wanted to get more mulch as the first 25 bags didn’t even cover half of what needed to be be done. Ali and the dogs piled in the truck and i threw our road bikes in the back. We wanted to take them to a bike shop to have them properly set the gear trains up as well as doing other normal maintenance. We figured we didn’t spend much on the bikes so we can spend a few bucks to make sure they are adjusted to spec.
After dropping off the bikes I grabbed another 30 bags of mulch at Lowes and headed home. I worked outside spreading the mulch while Ali attended to additional inside duties. It just seemed like the chores were never ending. After 55 bags of mulch I still had a portion of the orchard that was not done. I’ll have to snag another 10-12 bags this week sometime. I finished up close to dinner time.
Ali made a different sort of meal last night, a risotto with asparagus, garlic and other goodies in it. It was good stuff. When Ali asked me what I thought I made the mistake of saying “It’s good” followed by my rating it a 7 out of 10. Well first off, in our household “good” is not looked upon highly by Ali since it is an adjective that I use very often. To her, “good” is not good enough. She wants me to get out a thesaurus and find new words. I have tried to explain to her that when I say something is good, that means I like it, it’s GOOD. She also viewed the 7 as too low of a rating. I asked her if she would prefer if I lied.
Ali said it made her feel like her work on the dish wasn’t being appreciated since I just described it as “good”. I tried to clarify and tell her I liked the dish. I always appreciate her work on meals and I always express that appreciation to her, even on small stuff. I didn’t want the dispute to spin out of control by pointing out that many women would be exalted to have their significant other thank them for anything so I just tried to reaffirm that I liked the meal and I appreciated her hard work.
This morning there was a hellacious storm that blew through right as I was getting ready to leave. As I was out back with the dogs I saw a tremendous bolt of lighting blast a tree several hundred yards away. After the strike the tree was glowing orange and the top was burning. The dogs were terrified and ran inside, I was pretty damn scared myself. Although if you are going to check out, being struck by lightning is probably a pretty good way to go.
I’ll post some pictures of the various projects later.