August 2003 Archives

I had planned to ride the canyons this morning, to prep my body for my planned trip up PCH in a couple of weeks. Both rides look out of reach at the moment.

Jeremy called around 6:30 yesterday with a flat tire over in Duarte. I left home with the USC football game in the middle of the fourth quarter to drive over with the air tank and see if the flat tire could hold enough air to make it back to the house. No such luck.

Jeremy called for a AAA tow, and I hung around with him. It was his first time calling a tow truck, and it's a little weird anyway. When the truck arrived I let him deal with it, and we drove home together in my car.

This morning, instead of riding while it's cooler, we're going to get a couple of new tires for his car. The car's a junker, so he needs the cheapest tires possible - if the car lasts for 10k more miles, it'll be a miracle. We'll probably head to Sears, just to use the Sears card to conserve the cash he'll need Tuesday for books.

Carole needs to pay her MLS/Board dues, using the money I had planned on for my trip up the coast. It's the right thing to do, but I was looking forward to the trip in a big way. If we somehow manage to sell the Quest, it may still be possible. Carole's making the right speeches about working to get it sold, but I'm not sure her actions are backing it up all the way.

If things work out today, I may ride tomorrow morning. Time will tell.

I dug up a webcam and plugged it into my Windows box at work. It's pointed out the window, looking across the 134 at the Eagle Rock. I setup Pryme, a recommended freeware tool, to do the every-five-minute capture and upload.

A pleasent diversion.

My sister Carol, her son Sheehan, and my dad Jim got back from their trip to the Pacific Northwest this afternoon. By all reports, everyone had a great time.

I volunteered to do shuttle duty, and found a neat feature of the Alaska Air flight status page. They have the usual text with departure and estimated arrival time, but they also have a graphic tracking system that provides semi-real time updates on the route and current location of the plane, along with a weather radar layer.

Click thru to see a few screen shots of the graphic tracker page during various points in their flight.

I got a nice surprise this morning when I walked into the Jamba Juice for my usual. Arlene told me it was on the house! I asked her why, and she said "Just because"... (I'm a regular - 3 to 5 a week for the last 18 months.)

Arlene, Bru, Tim, Josh, and the rest of the bunch are the best. They run the morning shift in East Pasadena, by the south entrance of the Ralph's at Rosemead and Foothill. I visit other spots occasionally, but they just don't compare.

Subduing Iraq could take years, Afghanistan may unravel and the Middle East is ever-ready to erupt

Thursday, Aug. 21, 2003

It's been busy at work, but I sneak in some down-time during the day to recharge a little. The last few days I've been using a mapping program to plan a 3-day trip up the coast on my motorcycle. The planned overnight stops are Morro Bay and Paso Robles, with day two covering Santa Rosa Creek Rd., PCH from Morro Bay to Carmel, then Carmel Valley Rd. (G-16) and Interlake Rd. (G-14).

The target (and Motel 6 reservations) are for Sun-Tue, Sept. 14-16th. If work settles down enough, and there's enough ready cash to cover expenses...

Overcome by one of those semi-primal urges to listen to some light yet sophisticated music, I burned an mp3 CD of Diana Krall, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Sheryl Crow, and some others. (No Dave's True Story - a serious omission.) It helped me ease into sleep a couple of nights ago.

Unfortunately, a 10-hour CD will just keep playing, at least until the batteries run out. When Carole came in around 2:00am, I woke up enough to turn it off.

From time to time, my sister Carol and I debate various grammatical and typographical issues that come up in day-to-day business. We're both dedicated amateurs, with a good general education background, but no formal training in the discipline.

I came across the following situation today:

When the word etc. is the last word of a sentence that is a question, how is end of the sentence punctuated?

I did my due diligence looking through my copy of Gregg's Reference Manual (Ninth Edition), which Carol had given me as a gift a couple of years ago, but wasn't able to find anything definitive. I gave Carol a call, and when she called me back her initial opinion was:

etc.?

I agreed, although I wasn't as firm in my opinion as she was - I wanted a reference. We agreed to swap references if and when we found one.

I finally grabbed some lunch around 2:15, and paged thru Gregg's while I ate my cup-a-soup (yummy, huh?). After a while, I found it: 543. Carol's opinion was confirmed.

Something to make the long business day a little interesting...

Baby, baby
Baby don't leave me
Ooh, please don't leave me
All by myself

I've got this burning, burning
Yearning feelin' inside me
Ooh, deep inside me
And it hurts so bad

You came into my heart
So tenderly
With a burning love
That stings like a bee

Now that I surrender
So helplessly
You now wanna leave
Ooh, you wanna leave me

Ooh, baby, baby
Where did our love go?
Ooh, don't you want me
Don't you want me no more

Ooh, baby
Baby, baby
Where did our love go
And all your promisses
Of a love forever more

I've got this burning, burning
Yearning feelin' inside me
Ooh, deep inside me
And it hurts so bad

Before you won my heart
You were a perfect guy
But now that you got me
You wanna leave me behind
Baby, baby, ooh baby

Baby, baby don't leave me
Ooh, please don't leave me
All by myself

Ooh, baby, baby
Where did our love go?

Brian Holland/Lamont Dozier/Edward Holland, Jr.

Sunday was hot - 107° hot. I was still tired from the ride on Saturday, so I just stayed inside, doing the odd chore and working through a particularly troublesome crossword puzzle in the Sunday LA Times.

Around 5:00 I roused myself enough to wash the motorcycle, dry it off nicely, and put it in the back of the garage. I was just finishing this up when Carole pulled in with Michael around 6:15. Michael offered to get us pizza, and I resisted the normal urge to decline, so we had a nice dinner without the effort of making one.

Sometimes it's good to push yourself to the point of exhaustion, all in the good name of personal fun.

I knew I was in for it when the mapping program said my planned route was 410 miles. As they say: no guts, no glory.

It's been a long week. Between hard deadlines and the pathetic intrigues of a paranoid co-worker, the daytime hours have been harsh.

Jason went to visit his girlfriend Jenny at her place in Ceres, and brought her back here when he came home on Monday. They didn't get in until after I went to bed, and stayed out late on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, so I didn't get to actually meet the girl until Thursday. We had planned to go out to a restaurant, but wound up going over to my sister-in-law Karen's house for an extended lasagna dinner.

Jeremy had left on Wednesday to drive to Mammoth. My sister Carol works at Caltech, and had a late cancellation of a driver for a field trip to Mammoth and Yosemite. Jeremy was drafted - at first reluctantly, but after working out the details, he seemed jazzed.

Back to Thursday - Crystal joined everyone at Karen's, and I went to pick up Michael at Ontario Airport, so Jenny got to meet me and all the others at once - a true family baptism-by-fire. She held up pretty well. Her temperament seems a lot like Jason's - pretty mellow, a little quiet.

They were heading back to Ceres tonight, so we splurged (uggh) and took them to Souplantation for dinner. Jeremy was still in Mammoth, so we had five.

Tomorrow is the overly ambitious Santa Barbara County motorcycle ride. As I scoped out the route, I knew it would be long, but when I put all the details down, it turns out to be 410 miles. I think it will be fun, but I'm not sure how my back and butt will hold up over that kind of one-day distance.