Category: Pissing and moaning

I hate February

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
What passes for snow in February
A little cranky commentary on the back deck. I thought about putting it out front but property values are already low enough around here.

Fourteen degrees with a 12-mph wind out of the south and maybe a half inch of fluffy white powder on the deck — just three of the reasons that February sucks.

Weather like this makes me want to eat grease, drink whiskey and buy things, not necessarily in that order. I just looked back through a few old training logs and the February entries are full of low mileage and foul language. The month is bad for the legs and worse for the mind.

It doesn’t help that colleagues are taunting me from Tucson, where they have spent a few days test-riding bikes under sunny skies in 70-degree temps. There’s nothing a journalist likes better than seeing an open wound and the salt shaker within easy reach. Oh, the humanity.

Me, I did an hour of cyclo-cross in a bitter north wind on Thursday and about 90 minutes of unimpressive riding in a surprisingly snowy and wet Palmer Park yesterday. Who knew that last little poot of a snowstorm would linger as it did? Not me, and now I have a bike that needs a wash and brush-up.

Today I’m trying to nudge myself into the first trainer ride of 2012, but the pep talk is not going well. Cycling indoors is right up there with daytime TV, cybersex and listening to Republicans speak.

A sound of thunder

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Again with the “snow,” just enough to glaze the streets like a cop’s doughnut. I’ve seen more white powder on a proffered mirror, sighting along a rolled-up dollar bill. At least the wind is barreling down out of the north at 22 mph, with gusts to 31. So we’ve got that going for us.

Weather like this sends me straight back to the Mexican cookery for its natural-gas component. Last night it was posole and chicken-and-jalapeño quesadillas; tonight I’m simmering up a pot of beans with chipotle chile. I should whip up a batch of green chile sauce, but I think I’ll save that for tomorrow — I have a quart each of Anaheim and New Mexico chile thawing in the sink, and then we can greet the day over breakfast burritos with leftover chicken, beans and spuds smothered in green.

So, yeah. A day without beans is like a day without thunder. Just in case you thought Fort Carson was engaging in a little holiday artillery practice.

Thorazine is on my Xmas list

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla views with alarm
"You said a bad word," says Mia. "And another. And another. And another. ..."

What’s been going on around here, you ask?

Well, let me think here for a minute. Hmm. …

We had the big Thanksgiving Day U-turn from Bibleburg to Fort Collins and back on Thursday; a full day of VeloNewsery plus dinner with our across-the-street neighbors Larry, Jill and Wendy on Friday; lunch with (and saying adios to) our wonderful next-door neighbor Judy on Saturday, with an extra-large side of work; and work work work on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, culminating in yet another dinner with friends tonight, a northern New Mexican project to which I tended between bouts of pixel-pushing for the Boulder boyos.

Whew. Long week for an old dog. And it ain’t over yet.

As you might imagine, something’s had to give around here, and that something is exercise. My ass is approaching critical mass, and I ain’t talking about the traffic-snarling bicycle parade, either.

I did sneak out for a 20-minute “run” this afternoon before putting the beans on the stove. Folks probably thought they were seeing a particularly ugly, sluggish zombie on the prowl.

And I probably managed to sweat off a couple of grams running around the kitchen, chopping, mincing, slicing, sautéing and stirring bits of this and that until in desperation, running out of time, I finally dialed down the menu from cheese enchiladas in green sauce with one side of beans in chipotle and another of red chile roasted potatoes to a bare-bones platter — bean burritos smothered in green with a side of the aforementioned spuds.

The bad news is, I probably put those lost grams right back on by going back for seconds. Plus pie. Did I mention pie? Oh, Lord.

Meanwhile, we will return to our regularly scheduled snark come Thursday, when I have a day off — and the weatherman is calling for wind-driven snow and a high in the 20s. I foresee much grumbling and the first stationary-trainer ride of the season, not necessarily in that order.

Occupy Office Chair

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Turkish basks in the afternoon sun
Dr. Turkenstein, I presume?

I’m really starting to hate Sundays. It’s like someone docks a Waste Management truck to my office window and offloads a metric ton of moldy corn dogs, crushed Grain Belt cans and elephant shit from the Iowa GOP caucuses into my iMac.

I clocked in at 7 a.m., just in time for the first lap of the men’s World Cup opener in Pilsen, and I didn’t really find the bottom of the VeloPile until about 4 p.m. Pee-yew. There’s more to be done, of course, but it never found its way to me and thus has become someone else’s problem.

Doesn’t help that I’ve somehow managed to throw out my back again, which adds personal injury to professional insult. Sending two Tylenol Extra Strength tabs after that old refrigerator-delivery injury was like pitting a Boston cream pie against Rosie O’Donnell, without the potentially funny bits.

Happily, as I do my part to help smash the State through Occupy Office Chair I’ve gotten some top-notch attention from Dr. Turkenstein, though I note he is prone to wistful window-gazing. And no black-glove coppers have pepper-sprayed me yet, so I’ve got that going for me.

Your phone call is important to us

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
The guru meditates on the pure white light of stupidity.
The guru meditates on the pure white light of stupidity.

Technology is not always our friend. For example, when I awakened this morning to the sound of the furnace fan running endlessly while the bedroom only grew colder, I surmised that our ditzy Heil heater was on the fritz again (ain’t no flies on me).

Then I clocked in over at VeloNews.com only to find the site down and some arcane error message about “guru meditation” and “varnish cache server.” Nobody told me the cache server required varnishing, and anyway, can’t the guru do it between meditations? I’m a busy man.

• Late update: Ho, ho. Seems “Guru Meditation” is the name of an error that occurred on early versions of the Commodore Amiga computers when they crashed. And here I thought we’d been running the site on a Mac SE. Live and learn. Speaking of which, looks like new-furnace time. Time to start logging some OT somewhere.