Sunday Blur

Damn, it felt cold Sunday morning. I'm talking below 50F! Pull out the winter gear! It's amazing how different 50 degrees feels this time of year compared to, say, January. At least I was nice and comfy for the ride out to the Lakefront, and I wore mostly stuff that could be removed and pocketed en route, so it all worked out well. The group was fairly small -- maybe 20 or so -- yesterday, and so we had a fairly easy ride except that it seemed the pack was particularly thick with Cat. 5s who were having all kinds of trouble dealing with the crosswind. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the newer riders don't realize that riding on the downwind edge of the road in a crosswind is not going to make them any friends. Anyway, lessons were taught; lessons were learned; things improved. Otherwise, it was a uneventful training ride that got me back home in plenty of time to contemplate working on the kitchen. Since The Wife, who instigated this whole thing, broke her thumb, not only am I frequently called upon to perform manly duties like opening pickle jars, all work on the kitchen windowframes has ceased. So yesterday I put on my grungiest pair of K-Mart blue jeans and climbed up on the kitchen counter with a gallon of extremely hazardous organic solvents and continued the stripping of paint. This is the first time the wood on these windowframes has seen the light of day since around 1925, and in the interim they had received numerous layers of paint ranging from the old hospital green to dark green to various permutations of beige. By the time I finally gave up for the day there were more than a few pounds of semi-liquified paint on the dropcloth and my shoulders were sore from working over my head so much. Add to that the unavoidable inhalation of low molecular weight organics, various minor chemical burns, and a pervasive regret at having ever allowed this to get started in the first place, and most of Sunday was just a blur.

So I woke up this morning not "with the sundown shining in" but with a mild headache and the knowledge that I wouldn't be riding because of a 7 a.m. appointment at the local Volvo dealer to get the damned side view mirror finally installed. That process took over an hour, which meant a frantic high-speed car ride downtown in order to get The Wife to her 8:30 meeting on time. By then I was so overdosed on waiting room coffee that I would probably fail a USADA random drug test for caffeine and gotten suspended for two years.

Much to do this week at work - deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.