Runday

January 7, 2024January 7, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, they say.

But when life gives you snow — what then? Make snowcones? Snowballs? Snowpersons?

Nah. Just go for a run.

I thought I was underdressed yesterday when I headed out for 5K on the trails. Lately I’ve been wearing Darn Tough wool socks, some toasty old Head tights and this long-sleeved Gore cycling jersey over an ancient Patagonia Capilene base layer because it has pockets for the phone and any bits I might feel compelled to remove or add, like the Smartwool gloves or Sugoi tuque, as conditions dictate.

But I wasn’t taking anything off yesterday. I only felt overdressed at the outset because I had the wind to my back. Once I turned around into it at the Menaul trailhead I tugged the tuque down over my ears and the Gore’s zipper up over my Adam’s apple. The wind caused my right eye to tear up behind the Rudy Project shades, making me seem to be half crying, like I wasn’t really all that worked up about whatever was bothering me.

All in all, a good day for a run, though. Not many people out and those that were seemed to feel that we were all members of some open-air private club for the genially insane.

The trails were pretty crunchy; a bit of mud where the sun had shone, icy in the shade. But I managed to not fall down and/or roll an ankle, so, winning, etc. ’Ray for me.

This morning I’m getting a loaf of bread started while I try to talk myself into a bike ride. But I think it’s gonna be another run. We’re talking 33°, feels like 25°, wind from the south at 10-15 mph, and if there’s any blue in the sky I’m having trouble making it out.

Then again, tomorrow looks worse. Maybe a short ride on a fendered bike? Thank Itztlacoliuhqui we have one more meal’s worth of green chile stew waiting patiently in the fridge. Also, there is a sack of pintos that needs cooking, and it will be a frosty day in The Bad Place when I don’t have the ingredients for some variety of south-of-the-border rice, either rojo or verde.

Now that I think of it, if I just had some shredded chicken and some corn tortillas, I could make enchiladas.

Shit, I better get outside pronto. I can feel myself dollaring up like something a fella might use in a stew.

On (and off) the job

January 6, 2024January 6, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Never tease the Snow Gods. They will take a frosty dump on you from a considerable height.

True, it wasn’t much of a dump; just a few heavy, wet inches. Still, during round one on Thursday the roads got so slick that Herself refused to take me back down to Reincarnation to collect the Fearsome Furster after its semiannual pulse check. And even I could see the wisdom in not tackling the trip on two wheels, especially after I nearly faceplanted on an icy spot while shoveling our ski jump of a driveway.

Round two overnight was strictly a broomer, but the icy bits remained, and I checked my footing as I swept this morning.

“I break a hip and she’ll put me down for sure,” I mumbled to myself. “She’s a sensible woman, albeit a bit ruthless, won’t let the Medical-Industrial Complex suck the nest egg dry rehabbing an ill-tempered ould villain who’s months away from the brain fleas even if he gets back to limping around the property, acting out all the parts in whatever noxious play he’s producing in that scabby, hairless head. Hire some 19-year-old stud-muffin to handle the shoveling and other personal services. …”

Speaking of jobs of work, I see Joe reared up on his hind legs and talked some smack, so I guess he wants to keep the job after all. Christ only knows why. He has to have enough tucked away to sweep Jill off to a white sandy beach somewhere, let the SS boyos fetch the umbrella drinks and fajitas, take the weepy calls from Hunter in gaol. No, no newspapers, thanks all the same. And keep that TV turned off.

Meanwhile, Wayne LaPerrier, that fizzy little firearms fancier, is stepping down from the NRA to spend more time with his lawyers, guns, and money, because the rest of that wonderful Warren Zevon lyric.

And I guess Doug Lamborn finally got tired of being the King of El Paso County. Surely some worthy Democrat can finally snatch that House seat from the cold, cruel clutches of the GOPee hee hee hee haw haw haw haw as fuckin’ if.

The Duck! City may have frozen over but Hell hasn’t. I just checked The Weather Channel.

A ‘new’ year

January 4, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

January’s getting all, well, January on us. New year, same old song.

It’s been chilly, but not so much so that a fella can’t ride his bike for 90 minutes with three or four layers of 30-year-old cycling kit, adding and removing same as conditions indicate while awaiting the fabled Snowpocalypse, which by noon Thursday was as you see.

Betimes we are reminded that rich people, politicians, and rich politicians can be insufferable, twisted, lying, featherbedding assholes. This is not an annual or even seasonal event.

Meanwhile, just to keep things interesting, evildoers found a back door to our credit card while Herself was in an personal-electronics-free secure area and I was out on the bike, oblivious to my my own digital alerts as I removed and added layers of this and that while rolling around to no particular purpose beyond taking pix of the Sandias.

So, once I had been made aware of the breach in our fiscal defenses, I had to race home, doublecheck my receipts, mumble several filthy words, block the attempted piracy and croak that card over the phone, go get two new cards from a local branch, and then go back to get two even newer ones because the Top Secret Your Eyes Only Three-Digit Security Code was buggered on the first batch.

Now I get to work my way down the long list of bills set to autopay in order that we do not suddenly find ourselves freezing to death in the dark with no Innertubes and The Blog up on blocks.

It should go without saying that today was the day I had to drop Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster at Reincarnation for its semiannual pulse check. I did not ride a bike home from the shop and will not be riding one back there to pick up the wee beastie.

Thirty-three, feels like 25°? No thank you, please. I’ve seen the way Burqueños drive under warm and sunny skies. There aren’t enough layers in my winter drawer and none of them are Kevlar.

R.I.P., Les McCann

January 1, 2024January 1, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments

Well, this is a tough way to start the New Year. It seems Les McCann went west on us this past Friday.

He was 88, which just happens to be the number of keys on a piano.

And man, could he play those 88 keys.

He was best known for “Compared to What,” which was part of an unscheduled performance with tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris and trumpeter Benny Bailey, who joined McCann’s trio during the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

From The New York Times:

Neither had played with Mr. McCann before, and there was no time for rehearsal. But the performance was to be recorded and filmed for broadcast. Despite the pressure, or perhaps because of it, as Mr. McCann recalled in the liner notes for the 1996 CD reissue of the concert album, which was released in 1969 as “Swiss Movement,” “Just before we went onstage, and for the first time in my life, I smoked some hash.” When he got to the bandstand, he wrote, “I didn’t know where the hell I was. I was totally disoriented. The other guys said, ‘OK, play, man!’ Somehow I got myself together, and after that, everything just took off.”

If I’d known a fella could take off like that, I’d have smoked more hash.