A Day In Which I Start To Get Off My Butt

Maybe.

Got up around 6:30a, which is damn early for a weekend, and helped Lisa put together stuff for her Fiber-pallooza up the road. The nor'easter (although I hate using that phrase for anything that doesn't involve heavy snow) was rolling up the state, so it was raining like merry hell. This didn't exactly bode well for any attempt at selling fleece and yarn, but you can't really change the dates for these things, apparently.

We got everything labelled, packed, drove up the road, and set up shop. I excused myself to go to the gym around 1030a, where I swam 1.5 miles. And did not drown, not even once. It probably helped that I had the pool to myself. I diddled with the idea of doing an even two miles, but could see that turning into a problem, and the pool was kind of cold anyway, so I crawled out and biked my usual short 13.3 miles.

All in all, I was pretty pleased with myself. I should've run, but it was just raw outside.

Ran back home, stopping to get Pringles and ice cream for the boys and conveniently forgetting the milk. Did dishes, fed chickens, let dogs outside, threw clothes in laundry, and ran down to the internet cafe. I was going to do some more big downloads (work on a weekend? How'd that happen? Guilty as charged. It's an addiction, not a job) but Celeste was closing early.

So I blew down to the grocery store, this time remembering the milk, dog food, and a bunch of other crowd-pleasers, drove back by the house, unloaded, and ran back up the road to pick up Lisa.

She did pretty well, apparently. Not pretty well, like scoring a $2 million advance to spin fiber, but pretty damn well for a rainy, cold day. Did I mention most of the fiber people were outside? On porches or under tents? Ugh.

We were both cold, tired, and wet, so we stopped by a local Mexican food place. It wasn't good, but it wasn't vile (ricotta and half a can of tomato sauce do not belong in an enchilada). At least, not vile enough to walk out on. I was exhausted, so instead of coming straight home and cooking for the kids, I stopped and grabbed a couple of pizzas for them. They didn't seem to mind.

All in all, not a bad week. About 60 miles of biking, 15 miles of running, and 4 miles of swimming. Next week will be tough, since the pool is going to be closed through Thursday. I'll have to set aside time for a couple of long swims on Friday and Saturday. Which is fine, because I also need to get off my butt and do more running. This week wouldn't have been bad on the running front if I hadn't been dealing with the coop all Sunday.

Anyway.

A few other odds and ends:

*** Blogged yesterday about a particularly nasty piece on Murray Waas. I might have been overly critical. I don't think the personal crap (for lack of a better phrase) belongs in a story about a journalist. Or anyone else, for that matter.

*** Good NYT story on Khalid Khannouchi today. It's nice to see a well-written running story somewhere besides Runner's World.

*** My Rockets fired my second-favorite coach of all time (any Rockets fan knows that Rudy T was every Rockets fan's favorite coach of all time). Van Gundy didn't get the guys very far, but he was fun. And I started liking him in New York in 1999. He was getting the hell beat out of him in the tabloids. His Honda Civic got killed by an airplane's afterburners after a playoff loss. And everyone was asking him when he was going to get fired by the Knicks. Constantly. He finally lost it.

"It's New York," he screamed. "It always ends badly."