From the Archives

In other news, my niece, Stereo, was born today. YAY!

65

So we didn't do the 90. We did the 65 instead. We rode up to the check point like right at 11, so our options were 1) skip the rest stop and do the 90 or 2) take the rest stop and do the 65. We opted for the latter. Besides, at 30 miles we were already feeling like 90 would be very tough to do.

I did meet a lady (though we never exchanged names, so perhaps it's not even 'meeting') who has become my hero - she was doing the 65 mile ride one legged - mostly because she only had one leg. BUT there was a huge hill that we had to go up - 1) she passed us, 2) we have gears on the tandem that people don't have on road bikes (we've got a super granny gear like mountain bikes whereas with road bikes you actually have to have some leg muscle) and 3) she Only. Has. One. Leg.

Would I do it again - most likely. Would I try to do 90 next time - probably. Would we end up doing 65 instead - likely (especially if we ride the tandem again - which, by the way, Shawn said was much more fun than riding his Formula 1 in the MS 150).

Quite honestly the ride was quite moving - I mean it was 7 am, it was cold and almost everyone was wearing these tags that said "In Honor Of" for people they knew who were currently battling cancer/currently in remission or "In Memory Of" for those that lost the battle with cancer. There were many, MANY people who had multiple names or multiple tags. I mean really - 2300 people got up at 6 in the morning on a Sunday (and there were plenty of people who traveled from out of state or out of the country) to go ride a bike to fight cancer.

Bi-sickle! Bi-sickle!

Tonight, we have a wedding (for Shawn's boss).

Tomorrow we have the Livestrong Bike Challenge. 90 miles of riding fun! The most we've ever done has been 45 I think...but we never take enough food and so we energetically crash somewhere around mile 35 and never really recover. That shouldn't be the case on the actual ride since they have rest stops every 10 miles or so. But just to be safe, we can choose to do the 65 mile ride after we get started if we want.

PLUS! Matt and Ross will be coming over to the house in order to take care of Ivy-cat. Who, at this point, has suffered an acute kidney attack (kidney stone), liver failure (from not eating enough and going into starvation mode), and now, anemia (because the kidneys tell the bone marrow when to make red blood cells, and since they've been pulling blood with some frequency, it makes for a cat with a low red blood cell count). So yay...

Groupon

As with most people, I have participated in the Groupon craze. The problem with this, as one of my coworkers has also found out, is that we tend to wait until the last possible second to use our groupons. And I only buy groupons which I figure we'd be prone to trying on our own anyhow (so for food instead of services).

Examples:
-I bought one to Russel's Bistro. We used it on the last day available. The place was packed because of it.
-I bought one to Hyde Park Bar and Grille. We used it the last week possible.
-I bought one to Trattoria Lisina (one of our favorite restaurants) to use on our Anniversary. But since we were both out of town on our anniversary, we never used it. Until the last day possible. And even then, Shawn had to change the reservation last minute because Ivy was at the vet and it was taking forever to get out of the office.

So it should come as no surprise that I am currently feverishly working on photos so I can use the Inkubook groupon I purchased. I figured it would be no big deal to use it because I could work a little every weekend to get a photobook that I would use the groupon for. Needless to say, this didn't happen. But not because I didn't try. The problem, you see, is that Inkubook uses Silverlight. Silverlight is a Microsoft product, so it doesn't work on Linux. But not to fear; the Linux programmer types have created Moonlight (which makes it so Silverlight works on Linux). But the problem is that since the Silverlight programming is still changing, the Linux programmers have decided to stop working on Moonlight until Silverlight is somewhat finalized. This means, of course, that I can't work on the photobooks on the laptop. So instead I must start my desktop in Windows. Which wouldn't be a problem if I could access my photos from my Linux partition while in Windows. But this was not the case until yesterday. So, once again, I'm waiting until the last possible minute (the groupon expires on the 9th) to use a groupon.

Work

Things I have heard in the office within the last week:
"The table of despair"
"In the Cavern [one of our conference rooms] of sadness"
"The elevators of hell"
"The building of misery"

Yep, end of the fiscal year is always fun.