Crikey… it’s Monday already!  Where did the weekend go?!  Ah well, LAN parties will do that to you.  Matt and I both attended.  I think we were there from 5pm Friday until 2am Saturday morning, crawled home for a few hours sleep and then back at 10am Saturday morning for a big group breakfast. Played all day Saturday and got home finally a little after midnight.  Both of us slept in Sunday morning… I finally noticed sometime in the early afternoon that time had changed.  Being media deprived all weekend I completely forgot about it!  Fortunately most of my clocks set themselves so I wasn’t too far out of synch with the rest of the world.

To further cement my status as an alpha nerd, I have to confess that I started playing World of Warcraft again this weekend.  I started playing when the game launched but finally stopped after investing far too many hours into about six months ago.  Well, a few friends prevailed on me to come back and I find I’m enjoying it again. Anyone else play it?  It’s quite habit forming if you’re into fantasy worlds.

Recently, I was asked to participate in a cross-country rivalry to select the One True Cookie. Both Leesa and Marianna maintained that their cookie was best. Not content to live and let live, they opted to draft fellow bloggers to sample their wares and choose a winner. I have completed my testing of the cookies from Montana and Texas, and one cookie came out on top. » Continue Reading

Batch number one has arrived safely.  I will say no more in order not to bias the scientific testing process I have developed so that I may choose the one true cookie.

I’ve been up to my ears in work lately… no time to do much of anything fun!  That should change later this week.  I’m going to a LAN party on Friday and Saturday.  Major nerd event… around a dozen people in a dark room playing computer games for hours and hours. 

I am excited about one thing this week.  Well, two things really. Leesa and Marianna have asked several of us to judge a cookie baking contest.  There’s been a lot of smack talk so far but no cookies! You can be sure I’ll be *very* scientific in my judging… or errr… something. So hopefully I’ll get not one, but TWO batches of cookies this week!

I’m going to try to sneak over to the Museum of Flight tomorrow at lunch, maybe I’ll have new photos to post after that!

I haven’t posted about music for a while. If you’ve been reading for a while you may recall that I used to post MP3s occasionally.  That wound up being a victim of it’s own success as I rapidly consumed all of my bandwidth and had to pay overages. I finally found a way to stream smaller audio files fairly easily.  You may notice there is a player at the top of my home page.  I don’t know if anyone ever listens to the song I post though.  Do you listen? 

Speaking of the player… I just updated the song.  I’m not sure why exactly I like this track but it’s kind of a catchy tune. I can relate to not wanting to come home… and the lyrics mention a blue bike just like mine. 

This may be the coolest commercial I have ever seen.  High resolution version is available here and you might be interested in the “behind the scenes” documentary.

I haven’t been very chatty lately, you may have noticed. I’ve been too danged busy… work, life, go go go!

I managed to watch a few movies to unwind.  One of them was quite interesting, Lucky Number Slevin. I don’t want to say too much about it because the movie is filled with plot twists.  If you liked The Usual Suspects you might like this one.

In order to cement my status as an alpha nerd I bought this recently. I’ve raced r/c cars but I’ve been thinking of getting into r/c aircraft.  What better way to start out than by buying a full-up PC-based r/c airplane simulator?  Think about it… an r/c airplane is a simulation of a real airplane… and this is a simulation of a simulation of an airplane! Ok, I said it was a nerd thing…

I went to lunch with an Indian friend yesterday.  He’s going back to India at the end of the month. Among other reasons, he’s at the age when his parents expect him to get married.  They’re setting something up for him now. Arranged marriages seem strange to us normally, but thinking about it… can it be much worse than random dating?

Ok… random brain dump over… I’m out!

Again, this isn’t the photo I intended for today’s Saturday Photo Scavenger Hunt theme “Lost.” I had a great motorcycle photo and I was going to do a post on how we often get “lost” on purpose just to discover new roads and explore. That was before I woke up at 4am.  My first thought was “Ouch ouch ouch.”  Then it occurred to me that I’ve experienced this pain before.  Yeah, kidney stones.  I’m on allopurinol to deal with them and I haven’t had any problems for a couple of years. Until this morning.

I elected not to go to the hospital right away.  I figured I’d push fluids and see how things progressed. I have a high pain threshold… but it still hurt like hell mind you. I’m pleased to say the crisis has… ahem… passed. Capturing the stone is necessary so the docs can analyze it and see if my meds need to be adjusted. The photo was a fringe benefit.

Definately glad to have “lost” this stone!

Hmmm, this could make dating so much easier! Now… where do I find a lawyer that specializes in this kind of negotiation?!

The best part of the riding season has passed I’m afraid.  Though the weather is decent this week and I’m hopping on the bike here in a bit to ride up to a meeting in Bellevue, WA… soon it will be to unpredictable and cold to plan any major rides.  Plus the mountain passes will close at some point making the best roads unavailable until the thaw next year. I’ll still get a few day rides in I suppose but I don’t really enjoy those as much as a nice multi-day ride to someplace new and interesting.

There are practical reasons that riding will be limited for a while too.  After a excellent season of riding, the bike is ready for various maintenance activities.  It’s due for a valve check and carb sync. The tires are starting to look a bit worse for wear.  Probably need to replace front brake pads and new brake lines would be nice too. I’m thinking about new paint to repair the last of the damage from last year’s accident also. I wouldn’t mind trying a new windshield now that I think about it. Plenty to do!

In the mean time, there’s always planning for next year.  Discussion going on about a West Coast meet in May… probably in Oregon or California. And I hope to make it to the national Sport-Touring meet in June.  That will take me to the area around Custer, SD.  A long ride that one will be.  The straightline distance is around 2200 miles round trip… and we rarely go the direct route. I’ll have to horde my vacation for that, I’ll need to take a full week off for sure. Planning to ride out with Dave from Canada, we’ve chatted a bit that maybe I’ll pre-ride up to his place and we’ll depart from there.  Haven’t ridden the bike in Canada so that might be fun. 

Of course, that means I should probably get my passport taken care of… and it’s never too early to start planning out routes.  I wonder if I should upgrade to hard luggage before this big trip? And there is this new flip-front helmet I’ve been looking at… Oh yes, plenty of things to do even when I’m not actually riding the bike!