The Threat of Christmas . . .

I had hoped to be able to ride this morning before the expected rain, but by 6 a.m. the sound of car tires on wet pavement told me I was out of luck. I got suckered into going shopping with The Wife last night to "pick up a few little gifts for the office." Since I needed a few of those myself, I went along. 10 minutes later I was finished; about $35 the poorer including an ornament I got for our own tree. The next hour was spent loitering around while The Wife inspected each and every gift item, contemplating its worth and appropriateness. My feet hurt. I was hungry. Finally she gave up and another $100 was gone.

The NOBC website has been down since yesterday, and if it still is, that's why you don't see the photos and background on the blog site, since that's where the images come from. Since the webserver and our space on it is donated by one of the local guys, I just sent him an e-mail and am hoping they get it back up soon. This happens every now and then . . .

The office is pretty dead now, with half of the staff already out on vacation. Hopefully I'll be able to ride tomorrow morning, although it will be quite cold the next few days. The club is trying to wrap up its sponsorship package for next year so we can get our jersey order out. The new colors will be blue and red with grey accents - quite a change from the green, yellow and black of the last few years. The Herring Gas team has ordered their new jerseys, and from what I heard, theirs looked so much like the initial version of ours that Amy has gone back to the drawing board for a little re-design.

LAMBRA is also trying to firm up the preliminary Louisiana/Mississippi racing calendar. Leadership on that has been a little sketchy and so there is an air of uncertainty about much of it right now. I went ahead and uploaded an Excel-to-html version to the LAMBRA.org website yesterday so that everyone is at least looking at the same thing. We could sure use a few more road races in there somewhere.

I've already had a couple of cups of coffee, mainly because it's here and I'm a little bored, so now I'll be wired and bored. Just to twist the knife, The Wife wants to take The Daughter out to look at cars. Not that we can afford to be buying any cars, you understand. I'm thinking in terms of a 5 year old Saturn some time during the Summer.