preface

i will blog retroactively soon [for those jumping in after september 12th, i haven’t blogged yet. i’ve got notes taken but i just haven’t had time to write it out [or use this grand image of spencer]. at the end of the month i’ll put all the entries in their proper place. or maybe not.

september 12

what a long and crappy day — marco’s machine decided to be dumb so we were trying to fix that while i had a ton of work to do for the both of us. turns out there was a mix-up and corcor had a volleyball game and she didn’t have papers to ride the bus back so i jumped in the car as soon as i got home. halfway to the school near downtown sarah calls and corcor is back at her school. her volleyball coach was nice enough to stand out on the corner with her for 15 minutes until i got there. when i returned home we gulped down food and i was off to spencer’s open house at his school. he cried. he cried hard. he did not want to go. he has been telling us his preschool has been broken and he can’t go, and he constantly asks/commands us «stay home?!»

sarah helped m edrag him to the car and he and i headed out. he cried until i tickled him, finally gettigng a little warm to the idea of going to see his school if i came and played too. i believe he thought we were taking him to school again. he wouldn't go in his class and told me that i could go in by myself. after prodding by his teachers he fianlly ran in and played with the helicopters and then built a large yellow race track in one of the areas. only then did we go home and he was very happy to leave. poor little guy — traumatized already.

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knowing full well that my united states cycling federation license has done nothing but make my wallet a wee bit thicker, i am ending out the season by racing in the last event held — the state time trial championships. i was planning on riding the 20km version, but no, my division doesn’t have that distance. i’ll be doing the 40km time trial. why do i fear it? i am not in good riding form for it. i have only a handful of mildly instense rides the last few weeks and that does not make for good training. this is going to be painful, and hopefully not embarrassing — i don’t want to get passed by 20 riders, all making up the 30 second interval on me. i’ll ride without a cycling computer or heart rate monitor as i just need to push and not use the computer as a guage. it might be nice, but i'd rather push myself — i don't think i will noodle along. i’ll post how i do next week some time [i won’t stick around for the timing/awards ceremonies — i have to teach].

september 4

we were watching robin wiliams in «RV» which wasn’t that good and i kept looking at the lady playing the mom and wondering who she reminded me of. it took me just a bit to realize that she looks like jimmy neutron’s mom, judy neutron. i think it is mostly her mouth, but pretty crazy, eh? maybe there is CO2 leak in my house, too.

september 14

i’ve now put more thought into the time trial this sunday and it is going to be rough for many reasons. i haven’t trained for an event this length so i may be a little tuckered by 18km, or i may just need to ride slower [which is counter to the whole idea of the ride, yet it would be better to go out and give my best time versus going out too hard and dying on the way back in]. another pain will be that this time trial has all of the riders from each category riding continguously. other time trials have people all mixed up, but this one will let me see how i am doing compared to the people i’m riding against. it is good because we will all be riding at close to the same conditions, bad because i’ll either never catch anyone or they will all catch me. they’ll also be sending off the next riders that are faster than me/us after our group is gone, and all the up to the speedy tandems. i think i’ll be getting passed quite a bit, unless i do well.

so here is my prediction: hopefully right around 22mph. i would think i could do 21mph, and 20mph should be too easy, but i don’t know. 22mph would be a good goal. hopefully i won’t dissappoint myself, but i have nothing else to go from. a flat time trial should be my kind of ride. i would say it would be better if i was in shape, but i am in a kind of shape, just not a great one [though my shorts don’t roll over my gut anymore — that has been getting smaller].

i’m spending money for this pain. i just offered marco $10 to kick me in the jimmy. same result while not costing as much as well as being much quicker [and without a drive].

setember 2

susanity is a hoot. she started teaching at the university and she was tryng to put the fear of God into her freshman class:

Imagine 3 parts Lorelai from "Gilmore Girls" with 1 part Monty Python. That was me — that is me. I don't even really remember all that I said and did, but, um, I don't think it was good. I do though remember a student at one point asking if I'd be giving them fun essays and/or assignments and I responded, "What, like with sparkles and unicorn stickers?

i do believe that is the textbook definition of «fear of God» — sparkles nd unicorn stickers. read more of her here.

september 5

i got up and had to pee 6 times last night. sarah got up some, too, but more with the kids [trevor threw up and i got him that time]. what a miserable night. we then proceeded to prune up the front yard for 5+ hours, filling our back alley up with greenery of all kinds in preparation for our bulk trash pick up. our yard looks loverly. i will post photos soon. 6 times to pee? what is wrong with me. fortuntely it was overcast and mildly sprinkly in the morning [sarah’s birthday, of course].

september 9

i rode my bike in the rain this morning and the computer got wet which defeated its functioning abilities. on the ride home i noticed that my max speed on the ride in was 199.99mph — i must have missed that part, as my average was still just 17.8mph. i must have gone that fast for just a moment — a very brief moment. we have gotten so much rain this year — i love it. well over 10" for the monsoon.

september 14

itunes [well, the new video tunes] had a free download of a few abc shows [what a deal with jobs/pixar/abc/disney/espn/etc — talk about a big glob of all he surveys] and i wanted to see what the new resolution looked like [640x480]. i got the season finle for grey’s anatomy and it was grand. got a little misty when denny died and izzy was snuggled up with him, missing him because whe was getting dressed up to be the pretty girl she didn’t need to be for him.

thee 5 monologues — wowzers i forgot how great they were. mereidth nails the head guy at the end with questions about how her mom left her dad for him. yowtch. great tv.

september 13

i’ve been leaving a little window open for the streaming video that nasa provides. it makes my day to look over and see two astronauts dangling from the iss superstructure with the earth lazily spinning behind them. i wish i could be there. i believe i would be scared to death to be so alone and exposed — much more so than on a small raft in the middle of the ocean. i marvel at their ability to pull a 17.5 ton addition out of the bay and move it around without breaking the robot arm. it may be weightless but it still has mass — it needs to stop the momentum it has built up. why does the arm not snap? so very cool. i’ll be online tomorrow watching another pair of astronauts tromp around in space. join me tomorrow at nasa.

this is what my second monitor looks like with nasa tv on at the bottom:

september 18

this is a breif recap of everything leading up to and after the arizona state time trial on sunday the 17th.

i have had my racing license all year and haven't used it, nor have i had a cycling computer on my new bike so i don’t know how fast i go, nor have i done a lot of good riding with intensity. i had no idea how fast i could do a 40km time trial — sounds like a good reason to enter, right? by friday i was getting butterflies, wanting to do my very best but not knowing what that looked/felt like or how to gauge my effort. i continued my nervousness on saturday, getting my bike set up but not taking a quick spin to keep the o2 up.

as i was driving up to the race sunday morning i felt about the same as i do when waiting in a office to get some blood drawn — not good at all. i parked a little further down the road instead of driving through the whole camp to the few parking spots i noticed in the back. i slowly got ready but i didn’t have much to get ready. i spent 15 minutes warming up and then went up to the start line where i got there with maybe 3 minutes to go [my bike computer is off by 40+ minutes so i couldn’t tell exactly, so i was lucky]. i still felt very out of place as my bike was without any sort of aero hardware and my shorts were some cheap ones, but i still clambered up into the start house [we got to go down a ramp! woohoo!] and waited my turn. the course is out and back with very little elevation change other than some dips into small washes, an overpass, and the total climb on the way out might be 140 feet. over 12.6 miles, that isn’t bad. what was bad was the headwind. couple that with my fear of going out too hard and i was a bit nervous until i went down the ramp. i was riding — i can do that part. i was averaging 22mph and after 2 miles i thought i might be going a little quick. at 2.5 miles out the guy behind me passed me [riders get released every 30 seconds]. i was already caught, and right about then i caught a poor guy that was way out of his element [1.00 ahead of me]. my pace continued to drop as i fought to stay in a good tuck without aero bars and as i neared the overpass [halfway] i think i was holding at 20.3mph. i could see markly’s car parked up there and sure enough, he hollered louder than i’ve ever heard noise come from him. by this time i had already wished for a flat tire to end me of my misery, and i had also grown tired of calculating how much more pain i had to endure [this was my first 40k time trial]. 2.5 miles, i’ve gone one-tenth of the way. 5k, i’ve gone one-eighth of the way. it wasn’t fun.

a couple of miles beyond the bridge i watched the tandems blast by on the return trip, then the cat 1 guys and so on. i was holding on for dear life, at one point dropping down to 16.8mph coming out of a wash. this was not a good sign. i continued to push hard to the turnaround and then there was this glorious tailwind. my speed shot up to 24mph and i rode at that pace for 3 miles until 3 riders passed me. one of them was 15 numbers behind me, so that was 7 12/ minutes behind me that he made up. ugh. i knew i wasn’t pushing it so i ramped up my speed to 27mph or so, standing every 4 minutes as i was aching. i fought off cramping in my right calf and came across the overpass where mark hollered again. guy #6 who had passed me had a very slow cadence and i was wondering if i was illegally drafting off him but i’m pretty sure i wasn’t. i knew we were getting closer to the finish and though i wanted to go faster, i was pretty well maxxed out. i always have a bit more, though — that is how i have always been for finishes. i chose to chase #6 down, and i did. okay, right as i was about to pass him i thought «can i keep up this pace or will he pass me in a moment as i fade?» but i passed him anyway. somewhere before this i partially blacked out [vision tunneled, stars, loss of color] but i backed off and was fine. after i passed him i kinda blacked out again, then a few minutes later he passed me. oh yea? i passed him again, and then we were at the finish and he passed me and i couldn’t respond even though i maxxed myself out. i’m not really sure where the finish line was as i couldn’t see straight and there wasn’t much to do but hit the pedals hard with all i had [i think gord calls it «i got cross eyed at the finish»] and i quit pedalling hard once i passed the crowd. somewhere in there must have been the finish line. yea, i was done! cyclist #6 told me that i was mean to pass him while he was in a good rythym, and we laughed. he may haved dropped his time 15 seconds due to me. he was red in the face which i realized later that day that my face was temporarily red from the effort.

markly was just beyond the finish so i stopped and chatted and that was when i realized my left hamstring felt as if i had broken it. when i got to the van i couldn’t bend my leg much so i walked over to the awards ceremony area to hydrate and eat a bit. my results weren’t posted so i returned to church where i laid down on the floor for half an hour. my lungs still hurt as if i had just inhaled 140°F air, my legs are mushy and my hamstrings don’t want me to move. good times, good times.

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i got to talk to the xchange folk and it was a bit of smackdown for everyone — none of us do this well: doing what we say we are about. i compared it to cycling and how i say i am about racing but i raced just once this year. the next part i tied into my time trial about how i gave it my all — we don’t live out the gospel with a full effort. the last bit was about how we don’t like to obey as if we were in the military — we do our own things. put all three together and we rarely amount to much. not quite the positive talk, but why keep talking about the bible more if we don’t try any of it out. xian enthusiasts unite!

more X2

we all dunked our kids afterwards, and i got to dunk allie and trevor. when i got to talk, i added in the «hey, you are my friends — i expect you to hold my kids to their decision, too. they said they were going to do it, help them along the way» ditty. afterwards we all went over to another room for potluck and while there was a huge crowd to watch the dunking, i think the crowd in the room was larger, maybe 300 people. i joked that we were now the 4th largest church in tucson. after than i started crashing, and as i’ve explained before, i get clumsy. i ripped open my left big toe on a curb and i was done. i did go clean my office with sarah, and while lounging around and not wanting to go to sleep yet we watched expedition 14 launch from russia on a soyuz rocket. someday i would love to go see a shuttle launch [i used to live in lompoc just outside of vandenberg air force base and remember missle going up — they were nutty loud] but with the launch delays i’d have to plan for more than just an overnight stay. the shuttle has come through town a few times piggybacked on the 747, but not under its own power. someday, someday.

september 21

i took yesterday off as trevs and i were sick. it was pretty painful as all i wanted to do was sleep but instead ended up helping the boys out [trevor threw up once and spencer spit up twice on me. spencer and i caught tomato worms and he brought out a bowl and spoons to dig up gravel so that they could have a better life in captivity. i watched 6 movies yesterday, enjoying «avatar — the last air bender» though the crowd scenes were weak. the girl reminds me of olive.

the shuttle is down, the tourist up, and i do believe i’ll be out looking for iridium flares soon enough, maybe even to take photos.

i had other things to write but the have all disappeared in my sick fog. the only thing i can think of is that grey’s anatomy starts up tonight and i need to set the vcr. nope — last thing was that i averaged 22.05mph at state, which was unimpressive and somewhat disappointing. i suppose having aero bars would have save me at least 4 minutes of time, putting me into the top 8 or so.

here is the speck of something that nasa found floating near the shuttle. it looks like a pretty little jellyfish:

allie is very much like sarah. sarah was holding her while watching «the lion king» and as the dad died allie sniffled, then said «it’s JUST SO SAD!» and burst into tears.

september 22

i was disappointed in grey’s anatomy. was there a new director? it felt like jurassic park — things happened but the people were missing. too bad. maybe it will get better [christina was good of course. she always is].

we also got a letter from courtney’s musical theatre class:

I just wanted to tell you how much I am enjoying teaching Courtney in my Beginning Musical Theatre class. She is outstanding! She is always on task, always the first to volunteer, always knows the assignment, always is the first one finished, etc., etc. This is a class of overachievers and Courtney is definitely one of them. Did she tell you that she performed her monologue a week earlier than she needed to? And she was very good, too.

crazy first born kids. i went to trevs and allie’s teacher conferences and it was tough sitting thre and the teachers spilling about the kids, like «there is only one straight A student in the class and it is allie» or «he is wonderful, very smart and engaged». i don’t think i’ll ever have a teacher conference that is bad [i don'’t think].

september 23

spencer is why we drink.

september 25

i’ve been misreading and misthinking things:

narcoleptics anonymous — come on, now. do you seriously think they will remain anonymous.

i want to make a full cd comprised completely of recordings of cars passing you. i think it should make everyone feel slow. my only thought is will anyone notice the difference between a car passing them and a car being passed by them? is the sound different? i would title it «music to make you slow»

and then remembering things:

our yard was a large triangle with the alley running on both the back legs. the middle of the back yard was a huge chinaberry tree in which we spent hours climbing, playing, and reading. there was really only one branch we could reach to climb into the tree, and that was the one branch we didn't play on much. the bark slowly split open on the top from our repeated handholds. the three branches counter clockwise were mine, both hanging over the alley and i think the utility folk may have trimmed them as they were insanely plush. the first was also over our shed and one time while sitting and reading i somehow tumbled out backwards and scraped my side horribly on a branch while [luckily] landing on my back in an astronaut launch position. the next branch i didn’t play on much as it was only good for getting up higher in the tree and wasn’t much good for resting. the third branch i spent the majority of my time on as most of the branch was still in our yard. the middle part was much higher and the end was like a salad fork where i could snuggle into the 3 branches. the bark wore out quickly on that branch. right next to it was a small branch that we had cut off where we could swing out from the middle of the tree and drop [there was a big rut where we dropped]. it was on my brothers branch which was higher and longer but it also stretched over the roofing of the porch which would have been better served on a trailer park porch. he also had the center branch which was great for climbing and looking over a street or two. i didn’t like that branch much, though a friend of mine [jason switzer] was hanging from it once to set the «highest drop» record. he hung for 10 minutes until he was ready to go and that was the first of his problems. we had learned jumping around on huge boulder piles in prescott that you always want pressure on your feet otherwise the pool with blood. he dropped and not only did his feet hurt but he stopped me from sweeping away the chinaberries, aka marbles, from his landing. his feet slipped out in front of him and he took the brunt of the landing on his butt. as he crawled away screaming this scary low and guttural moan we [brightly] asked him what hurt. after 30 seconds or so he moaned «my buuuuuuutttttt!». i miss that tree, and i quietly mourn that my kids don’t have a similar tree to call their own.

and another:

we never really had much money growing up [until i moved out, i believe — okay, until my mom started working] and i remember great plans for vacations. we went to san diego in ’72 as one of the first people at campland by the bay [i think — it was all dirt and no trees] as well as disneyland for the ’76 special — maybe even seaworld. then there were all the trips to national parks and going tubing and even one to oak creek canyon where i think all we took was some gas money [if even that — i think my mom went to a store slightly chagrined to beg a femine product]. money was not our strong point, and one trip to zion & bryce was done in our vw beetle without the front seat. i sat on an ice chest where the seat would be while my mom/brother/sister sat across the back. it rained the whole time. i was always allowed to buy the unfolding pack of postcards of the places we visited which i don’t believe i have any more [those were my treasures]. we didn’t have the money [can i point that out much more?] and my dad would hit our local park saturday and sunday morning well before the sun was up to collect beer bottles and cans. there were some days my brother and i would go and marvel at the stinky beer in half full bottles, always careful to pour out the contents on a place OTHER than ourselves. we would drag the bags back to the car and help sort the bottles by colors as well as sometimes sorting the cans by brand and size. there were the larger cans as well as the tiny 8 ounce cans, all in marvelous metallic colors. i liked the old milwaukee cans as well as the cream colored coors cans. we would stand the cans on their heads on the back porch and my dad would come by with a cinder block and smash each one as flat as possible. my brother and i smashed poorly, frequently resulting in the long can where the circles of the top and bottom were not directly on top of each other but side by side.

we would go with my dad to the recycling places [which i don’t think were ever legit — my dad would ask if they could way us kids and they would reach behind something and then say «sure, go ahead». we are sure they were flipping the scale to read true. oh well]. there were huge bins of the colored bottles — clear, green, brown — and then massive piles of aluminum cans to be shredded. if i remember right, it used to be 13 cans to a penny [that sounds wrong as i right it] and now i believe it is 3 cents a can. i am not sure. i believe it paid for us 3 kids to go to disneyland, though, which was the intent. it was a big deal to go and see how much we earned from collecting.

last one for the day:

my dad showed us how to strap a clothes pin [the pinching kind] onto a ruler/stick and then stretch a rubber band from the end of the stick to the open mouth of the paper clip. he also showed us how to make music string rubber bands from all the knobs on the cabinets in the kitchen, looping them tighter for a higher pitch or loose for lower tones, but that is another story. we got good at shooting things [and each other] with these rubber band guns, soon adding multiple bands to the guns, making rifles, as well as multiple clothes pins for multiple barreled guns. one summer i cut an entire army out of paper and bent the bottom to one side so that they would stand up. i would sit on the couch for hours with a pile of rubber bands next to me, destroying the advancing army. it was great fun. soon after that our philatelist skills [stamp collecting] led me to draw my own stamps in both blocks of four and full sheets. many were ed emberly inspired planes of all colors, then nfl helmets, to pretty much everything. they wer always done in marker and i would draw the perforated edges. i was always good with paper and ink.

september 24

i was always a sickly little kid, smart but a little stick and often in the hospital [when i was in college a lot of asthmatics were dying from whatever we all caught. in case you were wondering, i survived] and that meant i wasn’t good at sports [i may be rationalizing this, but i couldn’t run around like the other kids]. i was poor at baseball as well as kickball. the only thing i remember being good at was punting the football. i would punt it way up there and my three friends [jason, joel, and numa] would fight to catch it. i was bad at catching it, too. i remember my dad taking my brother and i down to the school and him repeatedly pitching balls to us. he played baseball for years, then softball, and then coached softball until he retired. none of us played baseball.

i gathered up all our tennis balls, bouncy balls, plastic balls, and even a pair of super mario brother heads from a happy meal and started pitching them to trevor. initially he hit quite a few, but i couldn’t see where he was swinging [high or low] and it soon dropped down to one hit for every set of 8 pitches. he did connect well on a few and that kept him trying. he returned one back into the fingers of my outstretched pitching hand, and another he rocketed a tennis ball off my cheek that stung for quite some time. this comes after spending time on the field near our house practicing kicking a soccer ball. i need to work on getting all our kids up to some sort of base level on basic playground games. i remember spending afternoons throwing a frisbee back and forth on our street, most likely why i can throw far and straight now [throwing it into someones yard was frowned upon]. every few saturday mornings my dad would throw a football with us in the street. baseball was too sketchy in the street. our street now is on the corner, so we would be in danger of the cars just turning onto our street — no time to see it coming or for them to see us. good thing the schoolyard is kitty-corner to our backyard. now that it is cooling down, playing outside is great. the only drawback is that it gets dark too early.

september 26

tonight carbon leaf plays at club congress. it is all ages, so we are going to take the girls. we were going to put them in bed at 7 so that we could wake them at 10, but today the site shows them playing at 7. we call/email and nobody really knows. now the director is saying they'll be on stage between 9 or 10. looks like we'll leave around 8.30 then. the girls should love it, as well as see that not every band has 30,000 people concerts. it is hard work.

september 23

last night our family plus sarah’s parents, family friends, and ben/j2/kristin/nate/stacey/markly all attended the womens volleyball game against asu [aka, arizona st. university, our arch rival where the «st.» stands for «satanic»]. it may have been during the second game when trevor taps me and says, «hey dad, look, throw-up». i turn to look and it was all over his lap. he cleaned himself up pretty good, then continued coughing. i told him to go to the bathroom if he was going to barf again and he said he didn’t have to. later he taps me and he is holding his hand over his mouth. aye yi yi. spencer then fell apart and went crazy and we left. we blew two good leads in the last two games and lost.

september 19

i’ve been wondering what the value is in continuing to give people more information, lectures [aka «sermons»], studies and books when it is never put into practice. i think most people want something to titillate their interest, to find something new and unique and say they have done something, when they’ve really done nothing but help them later in «trivial pursuit, churchianity edition». what good is it if it is only quotable to each other but goes no deeper than some layer in our brain? i’m not fond of the phrase «how can i apply this?» as if i need to use/consume it. it needs to be pragmatic/efficient, etc. it is more than that to me, now. it is a continuation of «how does this change/affect the way i live?» i don’t want it to make me a huge xian couch potato, always getting more but never working any of it off/out. maybe i’m railing against those that do nothing with the information but are the first to throw out a verse or a book or an answer. stopping kidding yourself.

september 26

spencer came up this morning and said, «stay home day? one school? no naps.» i think he is trying to tell us something.

something remembered: the new muppet show had the historical elvis' where multiple elvisi would reennact famous events. one sketch was during ceaser’s time and when one elvis came in the others said, «hail, ceaser!» and in the great elvis voice he responded, «hail, no».