nuxx.net blog

As of last night I’d wholly intended to ride my bike to work today, packing it and getting everything ready to go. Unfortunately, when I woke up this morning I realized that I simply couldn’t. My throat is hurting a bit, I feel physically run down, and I’ve got a constant, groggy / spacey feeling. Either I’m getting sick, or I just need a good, long sleep. I’m hoping that instead of being sick the cumulative lack of sleep from the past week, and a whole weekend of not sleeping well has done me in and I just need some proper night’s rest to feel better, but as I’m rather accustomed to working on little sleep I fear it’s actually illness. If I’m not feeling any better soon I may have to call off my plans for the rest of the day.

I just hope that I’m feeling better for Saturday morning for the River Bends Park Trail Day with the MMBA where we will likely be finishing the first segment of new single track trail. Along with some other folks I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the past couple months planning it, marking the route, working with the township, and doing initial cutting and clearing of the trail, so I’m really looking forward to seeing this first piece finished.

This morning while walking into work there was a deer standing in a small circular garden eating a breakfast of roses for itself. I was able to stand about 10′ away and take the photo above (full res) without it running away. I guess this is the inevitable result of urban sprawl.

Here’s another photo of the deer (full res), taken from a bit further back while it was actively eaten.

With the weather forecast saying that rain shouldn’t start until after 7pm it seemed like a good weather day for bike riding. Despite having my car back I fitted the pannier setup to my bike, and set out for work. I set out just after 7am, arriving at work just over 1:06 later. As the day wore on and rain got closer, the forecast rapidly changed to having rain arrive sooner, so I left work a bit early, riding quick, hitting rush-hour traffic, and made it home in four minutes less than it took to head to work. After getting home I was then able to finish up work before heading off to the grocery store, then to Sherwood Brewing Company to meet some friends for dinner and beer.

Here’s a couple photos from today, all of them better than the weird, blurry, self-shot photo of me riding on the Clinton River Trail, somewhere between Hamlin and Adams:

· Riding down the Clinton River Trail, heading east, between Hamlin and Adams.
· My bike propped up against a column under Rochester Road along a branch of the Clinton River. I stopped here briefly while riding home from work.
· My bike outside of VGs on the bike rack which they installed after I asked them to fit one. I rode up to buy beer and bagels after riding home from work.

I haven’t posted anything in roughly 20 days, mostly because I’ve been busy traveling Europe and generally being busy with stuff. I arrived home today, and I’ll post more about that later after I’ve sorted through the photos. Instead I’ll just mention the brief things that my day held:

· Waking at 4:30am UK time to catch a flight. Thus I’ve been up almost 23 hours straight and traveled by a car (on the left and right side of the road), train, bus, and airplane.
· Replacing a hard drive in banstyle.nuxx.net on the way home, as my mom waited in the car. I was very thankful for this, as it kept me from having to drive back to Southfield during rush hour.
· Got a replacement SIM card to put in my replacement Nexus One. My other one was lost / stolen (I’m really not sure which) in the airport on the way to the UK.
· Finished setting up a rigid fork on my Specialized 26″ hard tail, getting it ready to be used as a commuter / light trail bike complete with rack and new rear blinky light.
· Went for a 20-ish mile test ride mixing single track, two track, and pavement. The fork works well and I like it, so I stopped for frozen custard at Custard Spot. I don’t know the distance because the bike doesn’t have a computer on it.
· Washed sheets and showered to remove mud from me, and started other laundry.
· Downloaded all the queued work email so I can begin reading it tomorrow morning.

Now I think it’s time for bed. It was a really excellent trip filled with good friends and lots of nice people, but I must admit that I’m a bit glad to be home.

Sleep will be needed, because I suspect work is going to get quite busy as soon as I return tomorrow morning.

Here, have some new photos posted to my moblog:

· I rolled up the rim and did not win.
· My Specialized is now lacking a fork, as the Fox is being sold and the new rigid fork has not yet arrived.
· UPS RMA label for sending back the damaged Belleville 700 boots received from Botach Tactical.
· Six bottles of Blenheim Ginger Ale in the fridge.
· Garlic and sesame bagel, part of my breakfast before going to work on the trails at Addison Oaks.
· The urinal at Pei Wei in Rochester, MI is rather close to the ground. It would be good for urinal pooping.
· Sending my census form in. This makes me feel like an adult.
· Ice and snow around a drain pipe on the Paint Creek behind Rochester library. Seen while wandering around before an MMBA marketing meeting.
· Forlorn bag of salt in the parking lot at work, with a bit more context.
· A cut open bag of salt left leaning against a curb at work. I imagine it was caught in a plowed pile of snow.

I should set up a more automated method of posting these than simple manual uploads.

Last night someone very special made stuffed shells for dinner, and now I’m eating leftover ones for dinner tonight at work. This is very, very tasty. I only wish I had some of the super-awesome garlic bread that was also made by said super-special person.

Here’s the view from my office as Winter Green II, our landscaping company, cleared the parking lot around my condo. There is now an 8′ pile of snow at the end of each parking spot, and a small strip next to Danielle’s car which I’ll have to shovel off. I believe that we’ve received 4″ – 5″ of snow thus far today.

Good thing my network connection is staying up solidly, as working from home is a much better option than a couple hours of driving through slushy, icy crap.

Today at work I was going through some old cabinets doing a bit of cleanup. One of the things I found was this wonderful, gigantic mousepad. It’s great!

Working from home on a snow day let me constantly cycle laundry while taking brief breaks from reading and writing documentation. For most of the day from my first 7:30am meeting through now the washer and dryer have been doing their thing, removing skin oil and flakes, bits of food, and other debris from my clothes. I’d been a bit remiss in laundry-doing lately, so I had to do loads for socks, underwear, work clothes, towels/robe, t-shirts, jeans, bike clothes, sheets, rags, and a few other things. The final load, towels/robe, is only now drying. This evening I also decided to donate a some clothes that I haven’t worn in years to the Salvation Army, so I had a full load of those to wash, as few years worth of dust on the clothes likely wouldn’t be appreciated.

The result is this nice, clean closet with everything folded and put away. Socks, bike clothes, and various other bits are in drawers. Now to get some sleep and get back to working in the office tomorrow. This will be nice as I’m not terribly fond of working from home, particularly when the weather dictates the preceding and following evenings also involve sitting at home. I do like my house, but work is a very nice change of venue.

Here, have a bunch of winter-time moblog photos including food from Slows Bar-B-Q in Detroit, ice skating at Campus Martius, and random bits of snow:

· Danielle taking a nap.
· Random poor quality photo taken at home.
· My order of pulled pork and cornbread at Slows Bar-B-Q.
· Danielle’s plate of catfish and beans at Slows Bar-B-Q.
· Kristi, Erik, and Nick at Slows Bar-B-Q.
· Outside of Slows Bar-B-Q in Detroit.
· Danielle skating in Campus Martius.
· Zamboni smoothing the ice at Campus Martius after ice skating with Kristi and Erik.
· Purchasing a stack of RAM and an external hard drive as christmas presents at Micro Center.
· Grilled cheese and cajun fries from Five Guys in Auburn Hills.
· Looking inside of a sharps container at Danielle’s work.
· Slow, slick drive to work along M-59 through construction.
· Looking out the window at work on a very empty holiday week Monday.