Even I Haven't Looked At This Stupid Blog For A Week

And it's not because I was mugged while riding my bike. Speaking of cycling, I've passed a few milestones in the past week. SS Deathstar rolled over 3000 miles on the odometer and my yearly total has passed 4000. 5000 here I come, but it may take me the rest of the year. Earlier in the year, I was going on frequent rides with the Twin City Bicycling Club. It was very convenient, because there were a number of rides leaving a mile or two from the house, so I'd just bike over and meet up with the group. Many of those rides have disappeared and my usual Saturday morning ride is a thing of the past since Madster and 'Nika have karate 3 Saturdays a month. I try and commute 3 days a week minimum and I'll get out on my own for rides, but frankly it's much more fun to ride with other people. I did have the opportunity to do that the past two weekends. At the last minute I showed up at the Minneapolis bike tour and rode the 41 mile route. At the start we were reminded that this wasn't a race, and to enjoy the parkways of Minneapolis. Pfffft. I enjoy the parkways all the time, at least as much as possible while dealing with traffic. This was an opportunity to blow doors without having to worry about cars. I worked my way past the recreational riders and fell in with a bunch of riders of similar ability. Fun, fun, fun. I averaged 18 mph over the 41 mile course. It's fun to be a pretend bike racer sometimes. On Sunday Rob T. invited me to go on the Hiawatha Cyclery ride around Lake Pepin. 70 miles of hilly goodness with stunning vistas. During the ride, I had to apologize to my fellow riders for my pathological hatred of hills. When I see a hill I attack it. I want to get it over with and I hate spinning my way up slowly. I have to admit it feels pretty good passing people going uphill, but I always remember there are tons of people who could easily do the same thing to me (I'm looking at you Neil). That mindset of pushing and punishing myself while biking must be leftover from all those years and yards in the pool. It doesn't feel right if it's not painful.

Speaking of pools, last week KyKy said she wanted to quit swimming, but that notion passed in about 12 hours. It would make me sad if she was to quit, not because I think she should be gunning for some scholarship or because of the whole idea of accomplishment, determination, improving times etc. All those are good things. It's being part of a team that's important - having a group of friends that you share your suffering with. Southwest is a pretty big school compared to Emerson, so having people you are connected with makes H.S. much more manageable in my opinion. As of today, she's still having fun.

The Madster is part of an after school activity called GEMS - Girls in Engineering Math and Science. She went to a weekend workshop on robotics, with mixed results. Parts were boring (learning the programming) and parts were fun (problem solving with a partner). I really ought to make her post about it.

'Nika is, well, 'Nika. She's plugging along in school. Hasn't had too many breakdowns about not wanting to go. She is constantly keeping us entertained with her general goofiness. She and Madster are both digging karate. They're really committed.

TOYH's classroom time is winding down, thank God. After this coming Monday, she'll only be in class once a week, on Thursdays. That's not to say she won't have a ton of stuff to do, since she has a preceptorship in public health, but she won't be gone two evenings and every other weekend to class.

If you're frustrated by my lack of posts, tough. I might suggest that you sign up for a RSS feed, just don't ask me how you should do it. I know on my Google homepage, they have a widget called Reader that will connect to a blog and alert you to new posts. If you can't figure out how to set it up on your own homepage, I guess you'll just need to check in here every once in a while, until you finally get frustrated and stop reading this crap altogether.

This Makes Me Angry

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1423126.html

That was the night I was to go biking with my book-club buddies, and most likely we would have been in the same area as this incident. Any seeming act of random violence seems worse than violence where victim and victimizer knew each other. Add to that the fact that the victim was a cyclist and it happened in my neighborhood, and now I guess I'm supposed to be more vigilant, but it just makes me angry. I'm angry that someone was killed. I'm angry that the perception of my neighborhood is that it is overly dangerous. I'm angry that because this has happened, I'm supposed to be more cautious or that I'm putting my family at risk by living here. (For those of you with sensitive eyes or ears, please stop reading now, you'll be offended.)

Fuck all that. I am not making any drastic changes because of this. We've lived here for 9 years with absolutely no problems at all. I have walked the streets at 1 am and later and have never been bothered. (When I worked at the hospital, I would take the bus home from my evening shift.) I refuse to live in fear. I like my neighborhood. I like the fact that we are centrally located in the city. I like it that many of our friends are living within 4 blocks of us. I suppose if I wanted to live a life with less "risk" I would move out of the city and I would stop riding my bike on any roads I had to share with cars, but I don't want to do either of those things. There is that old saw from FDR's inaugural, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." I'm coming to understand the profundity of that statement more and more. Not only because of where my family lives, but because of the times we all live in. This whole "war on terror" is complete and utter bullshit. Thousands upon thousands of lives lost. Billions and billions of dollars wasted on a senseless war. And for what? What is it that we really fear? Death? Economic hardship? What? Islamic take-over of the country? Loss of our "freedom?" (If freedom is your answer, I hope you have been dead set against the Patriot Act from the beginning.) I am personally sick of being told that everything we know and love is being threatened by an amorphous enemy, but to allay our fears we must declare and sustain a war against a people that never attacked us and never even posed a threat to us. And even if something terrible did happen, would it be our ultimate demise? We survived 9/11 didn't we? What have we got to fear?

OK end of rambling rant.

You Know Something Is Wrong With Me When....

I skip a bike ride. So yesterday I felt pretty miserable all day at work. Stomach cramps and a general malaise is how I would describe it. The Madster had something similar on Tuesday. I was able to bike home from work without any embarrassing gastro-intestinal episodes, and when I got there, I piled the younger two into the car and off we went to KyKy's swim meet. She was in 4 JV races. We missed her anchoring a medley relay, but I think she swam a :33 on her split. Next was 200 free - 2:57. Not a great time, but she's never swum that race before so she doesn't know how to attack it. She swam the 100 in 1:18 and her split on the 400 free relay was 1:16. Not too bad. I wish the coaches would spend more time with the girls on technical stuff - stroke work, starts, turns. It's an easy way to shave time without having to kill the girls with swimming massive amounts of yards. Besides, if they're swimming all these yards and reinforcing bad technique, you've just made your life much more difficult for yourself as a coach. Southwest lost the meet. There were a couple hundred people crammed into the pool for the meet, and at times it was absolutely deafening. It was one of the more exciting dual meets I have ever been to. The two teams have another dual meet again later this season. It will be hard for Southwest to beat South from what I've seen. South has too much depth in the freestyle events for SW to overcome.

After the meet Madster and 'Nika and I were waiting in the hallway for KyKy. We bought some water from the concession stand, and it was very cold, which felt good after spending nearly three hours in the pool. I was feeling ok standing out in the hall, but when we left the building I crashed. It wasn't that cold outside, probably in the low 60's, but that, in combination with the cold water, pushed me over the edge. I felt like I had hypothermia almost immediately upon getting outside. I wasn't shivering, I was shuddering. We got in the car and I cranked the heat up and actually dreaded the walk from the garage to the house because I thought it would be so cold.

Now Wednesdays are my "book club" night. I get together with 3 other friends and we sit around on Matthew's porch and discuss a book we are jointly reading. And drink some wine. We really do discuss the books though. So far we've read all or parts of "God: A Biography" by Jack Miles, "Life Together" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and "Irresistible Revolution" by Shane Claiborne. I really, really cherish this time with these guys. Often I don't get to bed until 2:30 am because of the intensity of the discussion. So last night we were going to forgo the discussion for a while and go on a little after dark bike ride on the trails around the city. We did this once before, and I was looking forward to last night. Alas, when I got home I called Matthew, told him I wasn't coming because I felt so crappy, and went straight to bed at 9:30, pulling two comforters over myself to warm up. I happened to wake up at 2:45 and I thought, "I've just slept 5 hours more than I normally get on Wednesday night." Still feeling a bit crummy today so I didn't bike, which bums me out because that would have been 4 days in a row of bike commuting - 108 miles not driven.

Yeah, So What If I Haven't Felt Like Writing Anything

Can't tell you why I haven't written anything lately. Well, yes I can. I'm lazy.

Plenty-o-stuff going on. We spent last Saturday down in Mason City for cousin Lise's wedding. It was my favorite kind of wedding - short. No special music. No long vows. No long homily. It was very traditional in that it seemed to follow a script based on the Book of Common Prayer. It was very nice. We adjourned to the Mason City Best Western for the reception and had a chance to catch up with cousins, aunts and uncles. Unfortunately we camped out at tables right under the DJ's speakers, so conversation across the table was sometimes a bit difficult. The last wedding we were at was cousin Trish's which was outdoors, and I don't remember the last time I was at a wedding reception with a DJ. The DJ introduced the wedding party with a very subdued kind of "Let's Get Ready To Ruuuuumble" enthusiasm complete with colorful disco lights. Thank you very much pro sports for making simple introductions into overly done productions. Meh.

KyKy has a big swim meet tonight against arch-rival South. South historically has had a strong program and has beaten up on Southwest for the last 25 years or so. South's coach thinks that this could be the year to break the streak, so it should be an nerve-wracking meet. KyKy will be swimming JV again, although she posted an awesome time in her last meet. She anchored the medley relay and split 30.3 seconds, which was a 4 second drop from the Edina meet. Her split on the 200 free relay was 33 seconds, which kind of surprised me after her first effort. If she can break 30 tonight, I personally think that she should swim a race or two on varsity. We'll see.

All the girls are getting back into the school routine with no major complaints. Homework has been manageable and they like their teachers so far.

I haven't been biking as much as I would like. We've been busy on weekends and schedules are crazy with school, swimming, karate so it is hard to get out and ride. In August, I dropped down from my 600+ mile a month pace to a little over 500. September is shaping up to be another 500 miler, which is ok because I should pass 4000 miles for the year this month and my goal of 5000 looks to be well within reach.

So there you go. Now fill up the comment section with football talk.

School

Everybody but me is back at it this week. KyKy left early today for morning practice before school. The Madster and 'Nika went out to the bus stop at 34th and Columbus we've been going to since 1998. This is the first year since we moved into the house that KyKy isn't climbing on that Emerson bus. She's joined the crowd of kids that have moved on to bigger and better things I guess. In 5 more years there won't be a Stocking at that bus stop anymore.

It'll be interesting to hear what KyKy and Madster's impressions are of their teachers. K is in a whole new school so we don't know any of the teachers, and since all of our friends kids are going to South, we can't get the dish on any of the Southwest bunch. The Madster is getting a whole new batch of teachers who are new to Emerson. They left a good impression on us after we met them at the school open house. We're hoping she has a great year. 'Nika is with some veterans who have been at the school since we started sending the kids there, so she should be fine. This week TOYH starts her final term at St Kates. 3 plus years into this slog and the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel is getting much brighter.

We were able to get stuff done around the house despite all our social engagements. On Sunday, we went to a little get together up in Vadnais Heights for our nephew's birthday. Monday, my sister Terri and her family stopped by with their bikes and a foreign exchange student, so we took a little tour around Lakes Calhoun and Harriet. Lovely day for a ride. In between these things, TOYH finished up the Madster's bedroom. She is now sleeping in a north woods cabin. The Dreadful Man came down, and with the help of The Madster, painted a scene on the one big blank wall of her room. On the one hand, The Madster wanted her room to look like the inside of a cabin. On the other, she wanted wildlife painted on the wall. Her solution? Paint the wall as the inside of cabin where the animals have broken in to eat the food. So there's a black bear and a raccoon munching away at the stores. Pretty clever, I thought. I spent the weekend painting trim on the outside of the house. It was looking pretty raggedy and white trash, so it got a power wash, prime and paint job. This was only the trim on the first floor, mind you. At the upper reaches of the second floor there's some peeling paint that will have to be dealt with eventually. I'm thinking, "Hire somebody." Unless I suddenly get ambitious and rent scaffolding and a truck to transport it, it's just going to have to wait.

Sigh....Again

So, we are well into the Labor Day weekend. Not to diminish the work that I do for Test Equipment World Domination Headquarters, but Labor day just doesn't seem to hold the same cache that it did when I was toiling away as a wage slave, humping packages for FedEx. That was labor, let me tell you. Oh well.

We are trying to make the most of this 3 day weekend. TOYH did not schedule anyone at the Massage Parlour for today, so we had the day to try and get some stuff around the house. After biking with KyKy to her dryland swimming practice (weightlifting), I came back to Casa de Stocking to do some work that has been put off for too long. This weekend, I am borrowing the 2500psi power washer from my father-in-law to peel the paint from some of the crappy looking trim on the house, and also to wash some of the dirt off the siding . So I washed off the siding, and peeled the paint off the offending trim in no time flat. While I was working on that, KyKy called to say practice was over and she wanted me to come back and ride home with her. But this was to be a family affair, so I aired up the tires on the bikes of everyone in the family and we set out to go pick up KyKy. KyKy was feeling adventurous, so she called just before we left and told us to meet her at the Lake Harriet Bandshell. Fair enough. We made it there in one piece, met her, drank down our water bottles and headed back home. On the way home, KyKy was captivated by the buena vista of Lake Harriet, and thus wasn't paying attention to where she was going. She drifted off the bike path and wiped out pretty good. She ended up with some road rash on her elbow and her knee. She was a little weepy about the incident, but I think that was more a matter of injured pride than the actual scrapes and bruises.

After we got home, we regrouped and prepared ourselves for ..... SHOPPING! I had to stop by the hardware store to pick up the paint and supplies for the trim on the house I had just denuded, and we also needed to make a pilgrimage to Costco to get ready for the start of school. Mission Accomplished. We came back and unloaded the booty, and I fired up the grill in the back yard so as to cook up some of the meat we had been storing in our freezer. (Speaking of freezers, TOYH and hauled up our little 3 (?) cubic foot freezer freezer from the basement to defrost it. Took out all the crap (meat) that was in it, brought it outside, set it in the sun, and waited until the ice chunks had melted. Good times.) We ate some grilled salmon and tuna we found in the far reaches of our upstairs freezer and pretty much called it a night.

The sigh in the title of this post comes from me listening to the Gophers football game on the radio. Halftime - Bowling Green 21 Gophers 0. Not encouraging. I'm not a huge football fan, but I want the team from my beloved alma mater to be successful. This year the Gophs have a new coach who apparently is chock full of enthusiasm. I really, really want him to be successful, just like I wanted the U's former coach, Jim "Geezo Beezo" Wacker to be successful. I really like coaches who are barely able to contain their excitemtent about their team. The coach between the current coach and Wacker was Glen Mason, who was a very, very good coach, but he always struck me as bloodless compared to "Wacky" Wacker. I always loved Wacky, he may have not had the chops to coach in the Big 10 but by golly you couldn't help rooting for him. Tim Brewster, the new coach, seems to have an untainted, golly-shucks enthusiasm for the game and for the U of M. More power to him. I really want him to succeed. I hope the Gophs pull it out. All this being said, I must ask if my sister Jen and her husband Francis if they are rooting for Bowling Green, being that they are graduates of that fine institution. American Studies. Storybook romance. Just ask them.

Just as an aside - I miss more than words can express Ray Christiansen broadcasting Gopher football. He has been off the air for a couple of seasons now, but he was the voice of Gopher football and basketball for as long as I can remember. Oh, for the days growing up listening him call a game, and then the post game show with Bill Diehl. Oma always had the radio tuned to WCCO when the Gophs were playing (She had the radio tuned to 'CCO all the time, I mean every waking hour). Ray was such a homer, a graduate of the U who lived and died with the fortunes of the team. He wasn't just a part of my youth, but my adulthood too. I knew nothing other than Ray when it came to Gopher radio broadcasts, and I miss him. Add to that the loss of Herb Carneal, THE ONLY VOICE OF THE MINNESOTA TWINS, who died just before the start of this year's baseball season, and the radio sports mooring of my life has been undone. I guess I'm getting old.

Upcoming: More exciting home improvement updates!