Pretty busy this week, headed to the cabin for the long weekend. Going to wax the montero, ride the Suzuki and go hiking with the woman. Should be fun. Next week I'll pickup my hearing aids and become cyborg boy. Off now to do the last of my 1-on-1s with my team. Damn these take a long time.

On my way up to Kristen's last night my bike got it's first road scar. I was splitting up through stopped traffic at a light and apparently this guy didn't like the idea of me getting ahead so he turned into me while I went by. Fortunately he was starting from a stop and with the guy in front of him not moving he didn't have far to go, just enough to hit my mirror. Very minor scratch, hope most of it will buff out. I don't think it broke anything. It did make me notice that the RT mirrors don't exactly have anywhere to go when they get hit. They're fixed, they don't fold back. I've seen the mirrors 1000s of times I just never paid attention to that detail. Losing it I guess. Oh, and when I pulled into the driveway I noticed the odometer read 011911 and the trip meter read 0191. I snapped a pic this morning, it was just sorta odd.

I got a parking ticket at work today. I was parked in the garage... hmm... I bitched at the facilities manager and she couldn't find any of the security droids that knew anything about it. Apparently they don't keep records on the tickets they give. Doh. So I'm safe to ignore it they say. Still, what's up with the ticket?

Another random picture in the camera (using dad's memory card which isn't corrupting images). Isn't she the cutest thing?

After finally dragging our asses of out of bed yesterday, we ended up getting a lot of stuff done. Shopping seemed to take up most of the day. We got stuff for the trip, I got some bark and fertilizer for my tree, groceries, book store, etc. I made dinner and we found that the cartoon version of The Lord of the Rings was on. Cheesy, cheesy. Still, a good day overall.

Today I started the one-on-ones with my team. This was the easy day. Tomorrow is the hard one. Ugh.

While Kristen is off teaching a class at some college in the north bay, I'm making good use of the day. I've finally taken those bags of stuff to goodwill, taken my shotgun into the dealer to get it pimped in preparation for the shotgun class (tighten the throat, back port, shorten the stock, new recoil pad) and gone to the Suzuki dude to get a stock sized main jet for the DR (to make the carb jetting match up with the stock pipe). He gave me a 127.5 jet, no idea what that means. The manual he has says it's stock. The service manual I have says it needs a .9mm. It looks like .9mm to me. We'll see. It's cheap to tinker with and will take me hours to do which is good while I'm trying to ignore the family up at the BBQ over memorial day weekend.

If it was warm out (it's 60 and cloudy & windy) I would wash the car and bike but it's not so I'm going to sort paperwork and throw junk out from the den.

Time for a break. I wish I had some root beer but they don't sell it at the store anymore around here (they still do in Alameda oddly enough). I've condensed 4 filing drawers full of crap down into 2. One is all of the house papers for th various places, including the refinances and the Colorado place. I'm just leaving all of those alone down in the bottom of the filing cabinet as ballast to keep it from tipping over. The others are all important stuff: taxes, vehicle registration, etc. I even tossed out (or put in the pile to be shredded anyway) all of my old visa statements. Everything since January '99 are in quicken so why keep the paper backups. It's not like I would go re-input that data if all my backups suddenly went bad. With a little more work I will even have room to display my two boxes of AD&D books. :)

Some of the stuff I'm finding I'm glad to be getting rid of. Strange notes from ex-girlfriends, performance reviews from old jobs, etc. One thing that's interesting. Back in '98 when I was looking for work out here I sent a bunch of email to Troy saying that I feel that I have no skills, that I'll bomb every technical interview, etc, etc. Funny, that's the same theme I've got in my head now. Almost 6 years later and I'm still saying the same crap in my head. That can't be good.

A small victory for the IT group. I was taking some stuff to shipping and walking by the new data center and saw one of the electricians had one of our moving carts (cart #9, we've lost 1-7 so far) and was using it for his crap. They usually just steal tools and ladders, not carts that I've seen. Anyway, he left at 3pm and I went back in, dumped his crap on the floor and stole the cart back. Ha, score one for us!

My other triumph today was more clever. I keep my gym stuff in my cube in one of the overhead bins. I don't want it getting stinky in there so I found an old SPARC 5 in the trash pile and pulled the power supply out. It's got a real power switch (no soft power crap) and two nice quiet fans. It's now mounted inside my overhead bin providing air circulation to keep any wayward stinky away. Seth says I need to make a rack to hang my stuff on to air circulates above and blow the clothes. Good idea. Maybe a baking drying rack will work.

I picked up my lower today, it's locked in the back luggage on the bike. They say the new law specifies that I have a locking container to carry it out of the range with. Apparently BMW locking luggage counts. :)

I rode up to the city last night and had a great time with Cicely at dinner. She had one of her coworkers with her and although I can't remember the dudes name he was a lot of fun to hang out with. Kristen was worried a bit about "doing OK with my friends" but she did awesome as usual. Parking a bike in the city at any garage is a bargain. $3 flat rate all day (vs. $30 for a car).

Of course, all that happy was overshadowed by the shitty day at work I've had today. Funny how that works out. I even did a good deed this morning by moving a road cone out of the fast lane that was screwing up traffic for about a mile. See how no good deed goes unpunished?

That whole "yea but it's a dry heat" thing is actually true. It was 98-100 degrees each day in Phoenix and it was actually pretty bearable as long as you stayed in the shade and didn't move around much. Any sort of movement caused instant sweating so I tried to lounge around as much as possible.

The baptizing thing was pretty interesting. Not because of all the squalling brats running around (everyone has 2-3 kids as it's the thing to do at this age) but because of how strange the wording of the ceremony was. They did all sorts of things like "forgiving the mother for her sin of motherhood". Apparently having sex and a kid is a sin so she has to be forgiven. Strange. They also wipe some sort of oil on the kid and have to "pledge him up to god". It was kinda creepy, if you replaced the white robes for black and changed the oil to blood I'm sure the BATF would be knocking down the doors to end another cult. It doesn't take very much searching to see the true nature of what the churches were in the olden days.

The reception after was good because we got to change out of the church clothes into something more suitable for the environment and just sit around. The kids mostly stayed inside with the women folk and the guys stayed outside and drank. Apparently Jeff (Kristen's brother) and most of his friends have serious alcohol problems that are getting worse as they get older. I guess not all frat boys have it easy after college as we always theorized. They chatted with me a little but mostly I got to talk with Kristen's dad and read the paper. Not a bad afternoon all things considered.

After the reception her parents took me to the new Scottsdale Gun Club which has all sorts of stuff including class 3 (full auto) stuff. AZ is a class-3 friendly state. If I moved there I would have to drop some coin on an MP-5. :) We didn't do anything there but look, I think they were just trying to do something I would like so I would feel welcome. I guess that means they like me. Kristen seemed pleased by the whole thing and was extra happy that Max (the dog) liked me as well. I've got some random crap pics of the trip but they're still in the camera. I'll download them tomorrow night.

Tonight I'm riding up to the city to have dinner with Cicely who is in town for a trade show. I'm going to meet Kristen at her office and then we'll walk to where Cicely is. The garage up the street from K's office is motorcycle friendly so I shouldn't have issues.

The flapping dragonflies are going nuts every time the sun comes out from behind the clouds. I wonder how long this thing will last before it shakes itself apart?

Everyone at work thinks I'm extra bonus nuts now but I was at Fry's picking up some misc parts and got one of these solar powered dragonfly kits. I now have them flapping away on the top of my cube (pointed toward the windows).

I'm home now just finishing up packing before I head up to Alameda. We're flying to Phoenix tonight.... I'm starting to worry a touch about the whole "meeting her parents" thing. It's not supposed to be a big deal but still. The worst part is we have to go to church to watch her brother's kid get baptized and then dance around and bow down at the alter of sprog all day. Making a whole new person is kinda strange when you think about it, but it's not exactly uncommon. I'm just worried about standing around in 100+ deg heat wearing really hot clothes. Ugh.

I talked to Sue a bit yesterday. She's still happy with her new guy, but a little worried as well. Apparently they've been going out for 3 months, are "exclusive" and all that yet they're still not having sex. He's not made the move and she's pretty clueless about how to do it herself. Wonder what's up there?

Kristen got stuck in the Bart tunnel (under the bay) for 55 minutes behind a broken train. That's gotta be freaky.

What's up with people telling me I've dropped off the face of the earth? I'm still around, I'm just out doing stuff and instead of sitting around trying to get people to go out and do stuff with me I have someone to go with so I don't have to just wait around all the time. Humph.

Photos from the weekend are up. Here is what happened. Friday night we went to home depot and I got some light bulbs (all compact fluorescent, the bathroom is turbo bright and costs less than 2 of the old style bulbs) and a new tray for the tree. The old tray had cracked and I was dumping a ton of water onto the carpet and into the floor. oops. Probably have to pull up some of the floorboards when we have new carpet put in some day.

Saturday we went to the BMW dealership in the morning and I put a deposit down on the '06 RT. True, the '06 RT doesn't exist yet, and they're not sure when it actually will since it's not been announced and there are no ship dates or anything yet. Kari (owner of Cal BMW) will go to Germany in September where they'll show the prototype and let them know when they'll see production bikes in the US. Whenever it is, I'm #1 on the list. There were 4 guys on the list already, but none of them had put any cash down. It's fully refundable so I figured it's worth losing .04 cents in interest of it sitting in the bank to secure my spot in line.

After the dealership we came home and went up to SF via BART. It's a long ass ride from the Fremont BART station to SF but it's cheaper and easier than driving and parking. From SF we took Muni into the Castro and went to see the original Godzilla movie (1954). It was the unedited Japanese release, not the US release so it made a lot more sense. Turns out it's a massive propaganda film against Japan's development of their own H-bomb program. After the movie we met up with one of Kristen's psych friends for dinner at a place called "home". Quasi-trendy but reasonably priced with awesome food. I think I would get so fat living in the city. There are too many good places to eat. After dinner we walked (through some scary parts of town I suppose) to get to the BART station and ride home. We had books with us and got to sit and read on the way down, so much easier than driving. She might have converted me to a mass transit sort of guy.

Sunday was Mothers Day and instead of the usual card thing, Kristen talked me into doing a brunch for mom and then going to Bay Meadows to watch horse racing. The brunch turned out pretty well, we made these German style "baked" pancakes with lots of fruit that were tasty as well as having an assortment of cheese, apples and some bacon. It was better than it might sound. The racing was good, and you would think that with 4 of us betting on each race that someone would win something. Nope. Mom helped me prune the tree in the living room and it's looking a lot better now. We took the ties off it and it's "fluffed out" more now and takes up about half of the useless room. Sure looks good, I need to take a picture.

Too tired to type now, but I got the photos uploaded which is good. Tomorrow I'll write about BART, Godzilla, Home, '06 RT deposit, Mom's Day breakfast, the tree and horse racing. Damn, I've never seen so damn many horses compared to the last two weekends. Those things are everywhere.

I'm so tired! I gotta get up and move around before I fall asleep at my desk.

OK, that didn't help. Now I'm just tired and have walked around. Anyway, it's easy to know why I'm tired. First, after work yesterday I went on a ride with Gernot, one of the other guys in the [lame ass] nVidia motorcycle club. He recognized my autobahn sticker on the bike as he is from Austria. Cool. He showed me some new roads up off 84 and a new loop (as seen in the cheesy map he mailed out). He's been riding for about 2 years and what I thought was a somewhat slow but reasonable pace that he was running turns out to be his max speed. Eventually I lead and left him in the dust. And to think he thought I wasn't going to be able to keep up on my "big heavy bike". Yep, my bike is big and fat, but can dance. :) The little ride turned out to be 106 miles, I think we went off the designated route a few times.

This morning I did the "no car" thing. I rode to work, ran to the gym and back again. It all worked out fairly well, it takes only 8-10 minutes to actually run to/from the gym, depending on the lights. It's much more interesting to actually run somewhere than to just stand there and do cardio and have to try to avoid watching all the TVs that are there. The TV "news" in the morning is just too nauseating.

Sunday is mother's day for those of you who forget those Hallmark holidays as often as I do. We're going to make breakfast for my mom and then go to Bay Meadows and watch horse racing. Mom likes that sort of stuff and Kristen is all for things that involve horses since she can't ride for a few weeks.

Kristen got through her outpatient surgery thingy yesterday with no real worries. She's on limited activity for a week and then is mostly back to normal, whatever that is for her. They'll know in two weeks what the results are, if she's got cancer and if they managed to get it all out of her. She's up-beat about the whole thing which is good.

My dental appointment was uneventful as well, but I don't have to wait two weeks to find out everything is OK.

I've been trying to find a way that I can ride to work every day (and still go to the gym) and I think I've come up with it. I ride to work, change into my gym stuff and then run to the gym. I get a 10 minute cardio workout "for free" and then do my weight stuff and then run back to work completing my 20 minutes of cardio. That way I don't have to change in and out of my riding gear, figure out what to do with it at the gym, etc, etc. Sounds pretty slick to me, I'll have to try it tomorrow and see how it works out. If it's a good solution, I can see not having to move the car almost at all during the week, only for groceries or something. The solution seems to obvious, I dunno why I didn't think of it sooner. Must be too much in-the-box time for me.

The pictures from this weekend's activities are here. The Sharks playoff game, the Gay Marriage Charity Walk/Run thing, the police stables and some other random shots around Golden Gate Park. Who knew they had buffalo in GGP?

I also got the Kauai plans finalized. We're flying direct from SFO to LIH on June 7th, returning on the 14th. We're staying in a "budget" resort which I think is going to turn out like the hotel Dennis, Kenny and I stayed in when we went to Cabo but hey, the money we're saving on the hotel can be used for quad runner trips, scooters, food, helicopters, etc. We're supposed to be right on the beach, so even a motel 6 on the beach would be fine I guess.