Farewell

he needed surgery.

we couldn't afford it.

rather than put him to sleep, we signed him over to the vet.

I missed him last night and this morning.

He always came into the bathroom to make sure I'm alright after I get out of the shower.

Bye buddy.

Down

Cat's in the kitty hospital. Blood work shows kidney out of whack. Could be caused by getting into something, could be caused by dehydration. Dehydrated due to vomiting. Vomiting caused by getting into something or blockage in the digestive tract or stomach. Results in a couple days.

Wife has been having leg problems. Xray was inconclusive, MRI ordered. Results in a couple days.

Got my crown put on today. Wasn't bad. Feels better than the fake crown, but I'm still going to do my best to avoid this again.

Don't know that we'll be able to get our couch for Christmas.

Things aren't happy.

Things come in three's....lets hope it's not a trilogy of threes.

out.

Bucket List

It's a great movie.

FYI

Friday

Kitty was sick last night, not moving much, but didn't seem toooooo bad, but puked a couple of times. No fun. It's pretty obvious he's doing better...he's back to his normal self. I'm glad too. He wasn't a happy kitty last night.

Today is Friday, and my plans for tonight are either go to a beer thing with Mike or stay home and gather my beer making supplies so I can know what to get when I go to the brew store tomorrow. Yay!

No work tomorrow, but I have to go to the dentist to get my permanent crown. Bleh. Not looking forward to that, but at least I'll be done with that tooth for a while.

Then, I'm hoping to relax and start a new batch of beer brewing this weekend.

Crab season comes to a close this weekend. Well, not this weekend, but it closes on the 30th, so, it closes for me. But, since I can't crab except up north, it's not like I can make an afternoon trip out of it, so I guess I'm done. 1 crab this year. And still no salmon :(.


Oh, and Sherry, I'm not coming back for a while, even to hunt. I miss you guys. I hope you are doing well.

still tired....but at least I can work on the current problems for a while....instead of the past ones....




Last night, we had dinner with Mike and Grace. It was a total blast, and I was reminded how nice it is to be around people that I don't *just* talk about bike and forum drama with.



My brother is brewing beer, bottled his first batch already, and I have yet to get going again.


This weekend...I'm going to have a bottle of cider and start up a batch of beer going in my garage. At least....if I have some time to get to a brew store on Saturday after my crown :(

tired

I'm pretty tired.

I'm tired of a lot of things.

I'm tired of working on things other than what I'm supposed to be working on.

I'm tired of causing myself to work on things other than what I'm supposed to be working on.

I'm tired of not having a boat.

I'm tired of looking for a free/cheap boat.

I'm tired of trying to find a hunting season that's worth my while this year.

But mostly...

I'm just tired.

I need to go to bed earlier, which tonight isn't happening. Maybe this weekend, I'll just rest. Wouldn't that be weird?

A bit more about my Sunday Adventure

I was pretty tired on Sunday night when I got home, so here's a bit more of a ride report.

First thing, I took off around 9am, slabbing down 405 to 167 to 18 in order to get to the track. I was meeting a guy there to give him something I needed cut to make taking my front wheel off easier. So, I ran down and met Norm there. I ran into Tim while I was there, bullshitted with Norm and Tim until Tim's session started, watched 5 minutes of the session and took off.

18 to I5 to Tacoma, and in Tacoma, I took 7 south toward Rainier. Up until now, I had been on 100% slab. Hwy 7 is a long straight slab, followed by some decent turns as it heads into the mountains. So, of course, because there are some decent turns, I got stuck behind traffic. Lots of traffic. The worst part was that every time I saw open road in front of the cars I was in, I couldn't pass, and by the time I could pass, there was another 5 cars in front of the people in front of me. Frustrating to say the least.

At one point, I had a decent run at a turn while a guy on a big cruiser was following me. Halfway through the turn, I swore I heard him crash. Being mid-turn, I didn't want to turn around and look, so as soon as I straightened up, I looked back, to see him "deep" into the corner, dragging his floorboards through the corner. I gave him a "rock on" sign and a thumbs up to and kept on rolling.

The traffic in Elbe was pretty bad, and since it's a gas station, and the last one before the park, and it's also a couple little places to eat, it was busy. Really busy. I kept rolling. I headed from Elbe, out on 706 until I got to the entrance to the park. I stopped for something to eat and drink at the little store, and for cash for the park entrance, didn't even consider there might be an entrance fee. Debit/credit minimum of $7, wtf am I going to spend $7 on to get some gatorade and a candy bar? Oh, a shot glass! Then, they didn't have an ATM, or give cash back, but the guy at the store said they took cards. Sweet, no worries. Onward. $5 for bicycle/pedestrians, $15 for cars. Motorcycles: $5 WHOO HOO!

10 minute wait to get into the park due to the line, which means traffic all through the park. But, it was worth it. The park was beautiful. The road for the first half of the park was completely broken up, and you had to be alert just to keep from being tossed off the bike, but once that cleared up, it was a nice ride. Awesome corners in the park, but, I was stuck behind people going below the posted speeds, so, it was all scenic, not much good riding. The views made up for it.

I stopped at a waterfall to use the bathroom, and it was closed. The waterfall was awesome though, and worth the stop. I wasn't in a walking mood due to my racing boots, or I would have walked down to the bottom of it to see it from there.

I stopped a couple other places along the way to take some pics of my bike and the mountain. Nothing to note, but you can look at my myspace to see the pictures I took.

On my way back down the mountain, I found some good clear road, and got to kick it up around a couple corners before the road straightened back out. From 706, I took 123 and then 410 back up toward Enumclaw. These roads had some decent corners, but again, I was stuck behind traffic, so I enjoyed the scenery.

Then, about 20 miles from Enumclaw, I saw a guy pushing a Harley I stopped to see what I could do to help and it turns out that his barrel key had fallen out. Yes, his key fell out. It's a horizontally mounted, barrel key, and it's under the seat. It fell out and got ran over, which changed the shape, and it wouldn't go back in. I gave him my pliers from my toolkit and it didn't help at all. So, he tried to catch a ride into town with me, but I have no seat, no pegs--not happening. So, I offered to let him use my phone to call his friend to go get his extra key. Not home. So, I went to the next town and called him a tow truck. I hope he got home ok.

Right where I stopped to help the harley guy, there was a line up of cars due to a motorcycle wreck, traffic backed up for miles. I saw a tow truck go by with 2 sport bikes on it, one was upright, and looked beat to hell. The other was on it's side. That thing was done. Traffic cleared up not to long after that, and we all marched in line into Enumclaw, where I got lost, took about 5 wrong turns, but knew as long as I headed west and north, eventually, I'd get to something I knew (hey, you can only go so far west around here!) and then I'd be golden. All my wrong turns ended up ok, and I got on I5, and jammed home.

I made it home at 6pm.

It was well worth it. An entire day to yourself and your bike will do wonders for a person's soul.




Cliff's Notes:
Traffic made the twisties straight, but the scenery made that ok. Also, WHEEEEE!

saltwaterlassie

not sure if you are going to check back....but....

instead of "importing" my myspace blog, I just copy and pasted entire sections and dropped them in, and then I posted them in order, so they all lined up correctly.

that's how I did it.

It even copied my pictures, which was I surprised about.

Mount Rainer National Park

It's a beautiful drive, but don't be in a hurry. It was crowded the entire way, from home until I got back.

But I had a great ride, about 270 miles, and it took me all day.



Well, I recommend it.

I'm tired.

goodnight

brush your teeth, kids!

Cavities suck to get filled. Root canals are worse.

Yay for poor dental hygiene!




Grr...ruined my Saturday.

Head Cleared...Good To Go

I've been stressed a bit lately, and I knew it was partially due to not having time to myself in a while. So, I rode in to work yesterday, like I usually do, but I took the long way home. I took a couple roads that I usually take on "the long way", but instead of turning onto the close road, I waited to turn north, and headed west a bit more. It put me on a route that took just about twice as long, but had better turns and the benefit of better pavement!

The extra fun part about this route is that it exposed me to a couple places that I could stop and fish for pinks (coho salmon!). I stopped at one of the fishing accesses along the road and was scoping it out when a guy stopped by to use the outhouse. I cornered him and asked him if he fished here. He had, but usually didn't, and about 5 minutes later, I had a couple good tips on what to try, and where to try it.

So, on Saturday, we have our dentist appointments to get our teeth drilled up, which should be a total blast! But, at least they'll be fixed.

Then, hopefully on Sunday, or even Saturday afternoon, I'm hoping to get out and try for some river cohos.

Next Saturday, I want to drive up to the Anacortes area and do some crabbing and fishing in the sound. It's quite a drive, but it's the only place where crab is still open, so, you do what you gotta do...crab is that tasteeeeeee.


Well, there's no point in going in to work yet. I'm remotely logged in, getting things ready, but there's not much I can do until it's done building the latest versions, so here I sit, slacking at home for a little bit before I shower and get ready for work. It gets me to work a bit later, but I am able to be more productive when I am there, which is supposedly a good thing, right?

Anyway, my plan for today is to figure out how in the hell I'm going to setup our priority system for what I'm working on. In the simple case, it's easy. However, in the not-so simple case, it's terribly difficult.....

Labor Day Weekend

Yeah, so, for some reason, I thought I'd go for a little camp over Labor Day weekend....just over an hour from home. I looked online to see what kind of camp sites were available....nothing. Ha!

Ok, so, then I thought, "You know what will be a great idea? Fishing at this full campground!"

Yeah, don't do that. It was a beautiful drive, and it's a beautiful park, but it was crowded.

We went to Cornet Bay to fish instead. I finally succeeded in catching a salt water fish. I caught a little (6-7 inch) cod, and then another, and then another. Yay.

Jessica caught roughly a dozen herring too, which was pretty fun to watch. She was really into it. There was roughly a billion people herring fishing and crabbing on this dock.

That was Sunday.

So, we went back Monday. It wasn't (as) crowded, and we brought our crab ring and a new little home-made crab bait box. We caught some crabs, and not a whole lot else except some rays and a nice relaxing sit on the docks.

I don't even remember what we did on Saturday...must have been epic!

Anyway...I'm not that chatty tonight....

out