The Rub

Damn, February already. Well, so much for posting more often. Let's see, so what happened in January? Besides Maddy going from crawling to almost running in the span of a week, she's expanded her vocabulary to include the words stinky, cheese, diaper (always preceded by daddy), doggie (as opposed to deedaw which is now Boulder) and uh oh spaghetti O (seriously yes, she can say that). She's also started throwing a few fits during mealtime. Most of her problem stems around wanting anything Gina or I have to eat and does she let you know.

Unfortunately for me my grandmother passed away earlier in the month. Unlike my grandfather, we were prepared for this and it wasn't as hard to take. I'm also still dealing with this pesky sinus infection. After a round of amoxicilan I ended up back at the doctor only to be prescribed a stronger antibiotic, avelox. The first week on it wasn't bad, but still training and putting in a hard week, I found I just wasn't recovering very well and that culminated with an unplanned week off the bike. To add to it, a followup visit this past week to the doctor resulted in another 7 days on this stuff.

Seeing that it went from being in the high 20's/low 30's for the daily high to in the 50's today, I had to go out and ride. Wasn't quite sure how the legs were going to feel after a week off the bike but they felt pretty good, albeit a sore. I was out with my teammate Mike C and as we were tooling around Sykesville trying to intercept a group ride, we come across a guy walking his black lab on the opposite side of the road. The guy has the dog on a 15ft retractable leash and the dog is using up all 15ft, mind you he's walking along a major road with no shoulder and his dog had 15ft of leash to roam on. Well, as we pass by him the next thing I know his dog, a bit unfriendly for a lab, is acorss the road growling at us pressing both Mike and I almost off the road. All of this and a car was about to pass us from behind. With no regard for his dog's safety let alone ours, the guy makes no attempt to pull his dog out of the road before it either bites one of us or is taken out by a car. Being somewhat infuriated at this I utter something to the effect of "nice job jackass", not really expecting it to be in earshot of the guy but apparently it was. He started yelling something back but it just earned him the 1 finger salute. Moron.

He's probably one of the same idiots that was out driving in the bad weather we had earlier in the week. Obama is right, prople in the DC area a retarded when it comes to dealing with winter weather, ok, maybe he didn't use the word retarded. I had the misfortune of having to drive to Herndon both Tuesday and Wednesday. I dread this drive even in the best of conditions. I lost count of the number of assholes driving slow in the left lane, holding up traffic only to find that they are also yapping away on their cell phones. Look, if you're afraid to go out in this weather then stay at home. If you are afraid to drive in bad weather but must go out, then stay out of the left lane and put your cell phone somewhere you can't reach it. It will make it safer for everyone trying to dodge you braking and swerving all over the road.

Karma or just a bit of what comes around goes around? Gina lost her iPod Shuffle in the locker room of the Y. Obviously someone picked it up and apparently didn't think to ask at the main desk on their way out if there was a lost and found they could leave it at. A day or two later at the grocery store I'm using the self checkout. I always pay with the bank card but happened to look down and the most inconveniently placed cash return and noticed someone had forgotten to take their change, turned out to be $15. For the entire time I checked out I debated the situation I was in, walk the money over to the conveniently located service desk that I would pass by on my way out and turn it in or, keep it as a down payment on a new iPod Shuffle?

Did I tell you Gina got a new Shuffle the other day? She's upset they no longer make it in purple.