The Best Kind of Day

Today, Omaha, Kouryou-chan, Yamaarashi-chan and I all rode this part of the Burke-Gillman trail, from the new north bridge at the Boeing Military Aircraft research park in Tukwila down to the southern part of Van Dorens park in Kent. It's only about two miles one way, but one-way it took an hour to to do the whole trip, because Kouryou-chan wanted to ride her own bicycle instead of the Trail-A-Bike and Omaha and I thought it might be a good idea. Most of the trail is really easy, but there's a small portion on a shared public road with automobiles. Yamaarashi-chan had a bit of a meltdown because the tilt of the road kept disorienting her and she's not very good with her balance yet. Omaha did a fabulous job of convincing her to get back on the bike and keep riding.

We passed behind a row of warehouses where a lot of motorcyclists had congregated and were showing off, doing wheelies and tailstand wheelies and all manner of really dangerous and stupid stunts. Fortunately, the field separating the trail from the warehouses was wide and we weren't too close in case something really tragic happened.

The park was very crowded, but the girls had a good time on the swings while Omaha and I rested under the shade of a tree, eating tuna sandwiches and corn chips.

On the way home, it was Kouryou-chan's turn to have a meltdown of her own, but Omaha coached her the same way she'd succeeded with Yamaarashi-chan, and once we were back on the bikes-only part of the trail along the Green River everything was good. The girls tried to race one another but Yamaarashi-chan's bike was geared much better than Kouryou-chan's, which only frustrated the littler girl but not by much.

We stopped at Coldstone, where I tried the Ginger-Wasabi ice cream (oh, that's good!) but settled on their double-black licorice with peppermint and sprinkles mixed in. The line was really long, no surprise on a day when temperatures reached the high 80's.

We got home around five, after more than three hours of bicycling. I let the kids watch an hour of television, and then kicked them back outside until dinner (pizza) was ready. Omaha put them to bed while I cleaned up. I think I'm going to sleep rather well tonight.

Manic Monday

"I'm going to pretend that all of this is a highly disturbing hallucination."

"You'd be surprised how many civilizations have been founded on that very principle."

Ah, Diablo and some unidentified space monkey once again make terrible sense in today's Goats strip. I love Goats. Oh, and check out Reality Check. Third couple from the front. Go Patty!

This morning as I drove into work I had the weirdest sensation. It had already started out as a pretty strange day-- I awoke at 5:30, a half-hour earlier than usual, and felt fit to get up, hack for half an hour, then head straight into the office. I drove into downtown to drop off my library books (which I'm going to have to check out again later; I didn't finish the second one, and the first was full of good references for a story I'm writing), then drove to the office-- all the while, enjoying myself fully, stereo blazing. (I love Yoko Kanno's techno-instrumental piece The Way Men Fight!) Now, this experience is rather odd, as I usually loathe driving. But there I was, tooling down the freeway, having one of those Steve McQueen moments, focussed vision and all.

I realized I was in a manic phase. Just a mild one. I haven't had a real full-blown case in over a decades and I kinda miss them. (I don't miss the crashes, though.) No worries, though; I got into work, sat at my desk, and it mostly went away. Sigh. On to the soul-crushing working-for-the-Man kind of day. At least I've stolen my boss's chair for the month while he's off on his honeymoon. He uses a 75cm inflatable ball designed for long-duration sitting. I'm trying it out to see if I like it. So far, it encourages wiggling, which I regard as a good thing, since it means I'm not static all day long. My wrists kinda ache this morning; not sure why, I didn't do a lot with them over the weekend, but I've downed a full dose of glucosamine/chondroitin and another of Advil.

(It's a day for comics! Today's Sally Forth! reflects my life well today, too.)

Eww, gross!

My left control button on my laptop wasn't working right, so I tried cleaning it out with a can of air. A small twig or something stuck out from underneath it, so I reached in with a pair of lab tweezers, the kind with a long thin point at the end, and pulled it out. Out with it came a cat hairball a half-centimeter on a side. I started working my way around the keyboard, and sure enough every key was gummed up underneath with a substantial and disgusting volume of cat hair.

It took a while to clean all of the keys but once I had it done I was happy with the results and the keyboard feels springy and responsive again.

I can't pop the keys off as at least one has broken when I tried to do that. Fortunately, it was only the Windows key; I chose it for the experiment because it was expendable. This keyboard is so old that the plastic undersprings have become fragile, and I don't dare stress them too hard.

Off to take the kids to the library and look up books on La Belle Epoque.