I suppose I should blog

I just haven't felt very "write-y" lately.

I've had a lot going on at work and a lot going on on the inside that I just really needed to kinda sit with myself for a while and reflect.

This weekend is the last event of the year for me. I'll be doing The Sentinel in Santa Cruz on Sunday which is an olympic distance triathlon: 1 mile swim, 25 mile bike, 6 mile run. I haven't really been training for it but I did run that half marathon in July, and swam from Alcatraz in September and I know I can bike 25 miles with my eyes closed and my arms tied behind my back so I think I'll be ok. I won't be breaking any records tho, including my Maui time.

Last Saturday I lolled around until I had to leave for work. I had a board meeting to commemorize and then a tailgate party for the grand opening of the new stadium. Got there at 11:30 and set up for the board meeting and then sat through that and
took the minutes and then went over to the tailgate and hung out for an hour or so. Total hours of OT: 5.5

I rushed home and got ready for dinner at my friend Jim's house. He invited me, Lyne and Willo. Those are pretty good odds for Jim. He also invited Scott. I was really happy to be invited into that group. It was kinda special since they were all friends before me and made me feel like I belong. Awwww.

Jim cooked up a fabulous appetizer of grilled scallops on top of bacon topped with
guacamole served with champagne. Dinner was grilled cod with a yummy peach salsa, tomatoes and cucumbers from someone's garden and corn on the cob and some great pumpernikel bread. And wine. Lots of wine. Tho I tried to keep it under control since I had to ride the next morning...

...Which I was slightly hungover for. I went to bed at 11:30 and woke up at
7:30 and just felt slow and tired. I am really beginning to think if drinking is really worth it. I think that one glass of wine with dinner is fine but it seems that anything beyond that really affects me (of course I didn't drink any water that night either).

Packed up my car and got a call at the last minute that we were meeting at a
different spot on the route since 2 of our riders are new to riding and would only be doing a closed to traffic portion of the route. That took some logistical manuevers that my brain wasn't ready to deal with. But we made it and it was hot down onthe Peninsula. In the 80's and very dry. We hit the road and it was just fantastic until THE MOUNTAIN. Ugh. 4.37 miles at 1630 feet with a gradient of 7.06%. SO HARD. I thought I was gonna die. And in fact I had to stop. I really felt dizzy and shaky and nauseous. The rest went on ahead and when I asked a passing cyclist how
much farther to to the top and he was all, about 4 miles I was all: Clap! Clap! I'm out. There was no way I was walking 4 miles up hill. So I called my peeps and said I was turning around. I felt like the biggest loser/failure ever and only did a 22 mile ride. I will say tho, that I think that cyclist gave me wrong info. When researching the details of the mountain for this blog, I just found out that the whole hill was 4.4 miles and I had probably already done 1.5. Anyways, I was
thankful and relieved to be going downhill and hitting the flats back to the car. All in all, I think it was a pretty ambitious ride for me even without being slightly hungover.

Then I came home and watched a marathon of America's Next Top Model....

...how did I miss a season? VH-1 was showing season 6 which I thought
ended with Nicole winning and here was a group of girls I had never seen
before. So I watched 7 or 8 straight hours of ANTM and then The Amazing
Race season opener.

I've also been meaning to complain about my iPod. Oh how I wish my iPod had two channels. I have been using it a lot lately to listen to Howard Stern. Mario grabs the shows for me and puts them on CD and I load onto my iPod and listen all.day.long. The shows are about 4-6 hours longs and it takes me between 2-3 days to listen in between commutes and fixing dinner. But sometimes I want to listen to music and if I switch out of my Stern show I lose my place and have to make a mental note of where the counter is at etc. It's just a pain.

There. I complained.

Pics here.