Bad Bike Ride

For the first time since I got my bike over 4 years ago, I’ve had a bad bike ride. Andrew and I have biked in 100-degree temperatures, put up with asshole cyclists, and pushed ourselves further on the bikes than I thought possible. But up until now, I’ve enjoyed those rides — the 100-degree day was still fun, because we were exploring some residential streets near our house that we’d never been down before. In fact, those streets were hilly, and even in the heat, I was able to navigate them without hopping off my bike and walking. The long rides we took last year zapped my energy for the rest of the day, but I really felt good about the day in general.

This morning seemed like the ideal biking morning – the sun was shining with a few clouds in the sky and the temperature was in the lower 60s. We set out at around 9AM, sans sheatshirts or jackets, in anticipation of the the temperature warming up a bit as the morning wore on. Silly us. Our first destination was a huge yard sale about 8 miles away, just off the W&OD trail, and by the time we got there, the temperature had dropped, the wind picked up, and clouds had taken over the sky.

Instead of turning back after purusing the yard sale (and picking up a couple books for our Halloween give-aways), we pushed on to Reston, just another mile or two down the W&OD. The hope was to spend a bit of time in Reston, where they were having a “Pet Fiesta”, rest up and then head back home.

By then, though, I was getting a bit cranky, I was downright cold, and just wanted to get home. We made it back into Vienna, but I was feeling iffy about whether or not my legs would be able to pedal all the way home. In Vienna, we had to part company with the W&OD trail, but still had 3 miles to get go before we were home. Just after we got off the trail, I got a raindrop right in the eye. The rest of the trip home there was a bit or rain, still windy, and just not a fun ride.

I actually did make it home under my own power, but I was completely wiped out. After a shower and lunch, I snuggled up under my covers with two cats for about 3 hours. I’m still a bit out-of-sorts.

Tags: bike, suckitude

Exercise your right to vote!

I entered the “Insomnia Photo” [link no longer exists – 1/2014] contest, which may end up being more of a popularity contest than anything. The judging will be based on “peer” votes — the top three peer-voted pictures will get prizes, and the top 25 of the peer-voted pics will get passed along to the judging panel. Oh, and the “list all” entries page lists the pictures in order of the “points” they’ve received through the peer voting, so early votes will set up the pictures that get the most voters.

Anyway, go vote for my picture here. You can find it by title, “Tenacity”. You probably need an Apple ID to vote, but if you’ve purchased songs on iTunes, then you already have one, plus it’s free to sign up.

Oh, and this might be a direct link to my pic [link no longer exists – 1/2014].

Tags: photography

Spring is in the air…

I suppose that spring has been in the air for a while – it’s supposed to be crappy, odd, oscillating weather in the spring, right? But today was beautiful.

We started with a 13 mile bike ride. We took the W&OD trail from Vienna in toward DC. Just after the Falls Church Metro station, there is a small park where I had to stop and play on the swings.

After lunch, we stopped at the garden shop and picked up some mulch, flowers and herbs. I spent the afternoon mulching the front yard and planting flowers in our deck’s flower box. I’ve told Andrew to place bets about how long I’ll be able to keep those pretty, pretty flowers alive. I’m guessing they’ll be overrun by weeds by early June. Any takers?

Tags: bike

Happy Spring Everyone!

Spring starts this evening at 8:07!

When I got home from the dentist this morning, I saw these white flowers had poked through our brown front yard. They must be ready for spring as much as I am.

Tags: comfort, photography

Weekend at Mushi’s

Much of what we did and talked about this weekend is classified, but I can report that Mushi and I had a BIG TIME!

Our first order of business, after dropping a little cash in a local scrapbooking store, was to get ourselves inked. Mushi’s friend had recommended someone, Tony at No Regrets Tattoos, and had warned him that we would be coming by today. He had an artist coming in to interview, so when we stopped by the shop a bit before 1, he told us to come back around 2:30. That gave us a chance to hit B&N to look up animal tracks to help finalize Mushi’s tattoo design. We had to wait a bit after we got back, and got started around 3:30. I went first, cuz Mushi wanted to see the color he used on my vine (see pictures), which she was considering for her tat.

My last tat was done over 10 years ago, so I couldn’t remember how much it hurt, but I remember that it hurt. Also, the one I got today was on my ankle, which I was a bit worried about, since it’s less “fleshy” than my back/shoulder where I had my last one. So, yes, it does hurt. It feels a bit like someone taking an exacto knife and scraping up your skin. The ankle was definitely worse than the shoulder, since as he went around, he hit a bony spot and there seemed to be more nerves closer to the surface in places. I’d often get the “funny bone” weird, hurting as he was doing one bit or another.

Read more…

Tags: build-a-bear, friends, trip report

Saturday Cuteness in the Cold

It’s 9 AM. You have a free Saturday that you’d like to fill with something fun. It is 25 degrees outside. The high for the day is 35. What’s the first thing you think of?

Why, the zoo, of course. The outdoor zoo.

I’ve been talking about going to the National Zoo for a while. I’ve really wanted to see the baby panda, and I’ve been worrying that it’s too late to see the cute guy as a a cute guy. (Not that pandas aren’t cute all by themselves, but there’s something about baby animals.)

So, we bundled up, hopped the metro, and went to the Zoo. Many of the animals were inside (who can blame them?), but we did get to see some of my favorites – pandas, big cats, and seals.

Tai Shan is still a little cutie – he tumbled around his mom and was just a curious little guy. I have a little video, which may or may not appear below.

Tags: video, zoo

Christmas Past: Baking cookies

Part of my family’s holiday traditions growing up was a fair amount of Christmas baking. Mom would start baking sometime after Thanksgiving, and by the end, we’d have six or seven varieties of cookie. We had several standards – cherry bars (which, I believe, Dad made…or at least he took over them at some point before I was out of high school), Russian Teacakes, Spritz, English Toffee, Fudge, and Toffee Bars.

One year, my family traveled to Florida for Christmas – we often called it the Christmas that didn’t happen, because even though we had a great time on our trip, it just didn’t seem like Christmas. While we were there, we visited some people my parents knew, and they had a new Christmas treat for us – No-Name Bars. The bars were chocolate chips, butterscotch chips and peanut butter melted together, then salted peanuts and mini-marshmallows added. Yum! These were soon added to our own Christmas rotation. The bars were called “no name” bars because whoever these people had gotten the recipe from had not put a name on the recipe card. Eventually, we decided to rename them “Nut Goodie Bars”, though often we still refer to them as “No Name”.

Another year, we attended a family Christmas night at our church. They had lots of various “classes” and we could choose a couple of them. One of the classes we took was on how to make corn flake wreaths. These cookies are a lot like Rice Crispie bars, but with a bit of green food coloring and Corn Flakes instead of Rice Crispies. When the mixture is still warm, we shaped spoonfuls into wreath shapes. Finally, we topped them off with cinnamon candies to look like berries on the wreath. I loved making these, so they were also added to our Christmas cookie repertoire.

A year or two after my Mom returned to work (she was a stay-at-home Mom for many years, and then returned to school when I was in kindergarten, and to work when I was in 6th grade), she did not feel up to making all of those Christmas cookies every year. As luck would have it, I was old enough to bake, and in need of some extra cash for Christmas presents, so she and I struck up a deal. I can’t remember what she paid me for the cookies, but I felt flush when I went off to do my Christmas shopping. After a few years, I didn’t ask Mom to pay me for making the cookies. I just did it because I liked the tradition.

Since I’ve left home, Mom has taken to buying cookies from bakeries or church cookie sales. While the cookies are good, it’s still not the same as having home-baked cookies. Also since I’ve left home, I’ve done some measure of baking myself. Once I moved into my own apartment, I started to develop my own repertoire of cookies. (Check out the tale of my first excursion into Christmas baking in my apartment here.)

Oh, and Dad does still make Cherry Bars every year – they’re his favorite.

Tags: baking, christmas

Christmas baking

Last weekend I did most of my Christmas baking (and some of you work friends have already sampled it). I made seven different kinds this year – more than what I was planning, but a couple of them were very easy.

Here they are:

Spritz	Ginger Snaps
Rice Crispie Snowment	Sugar Cookies
Russian Teacakes	Choclate Marshmallow-Hazelnut bars
Ishler Tortchen (sp?)

Three of them are free of wheat gluten (turns out my mom is okay with corn gluten). The spritz and ginger snaps are completely gluten free, with the spritz recipe coming from here, and the ginger snaps were from a mix from the Gluten Free Pantry (found at Whole Foods – good cookies). The Ischler Tortchen are an Austrian recipe from Andrew’s mom, and for the first time making them, they turned out quite well (if I do say so myself).

Notes on the gluten-free spritz: I used white rice flouer instead of the brown rice flour that was called for. They taste quite good – slightly odd texture, but no odd after-taste. I colored a third of the dough red and a third green, and these colored bits went through the spritz machine a lot easier than the uncolored third. The uncolored bit fell apart more easily, and wouldn’t go through one of the holes of the disk. The Christmas tree mold seemed to work best, both for pressing the cookies and for getting them off the cookie sheet. Oh, yeah, there was a delicate balance between leaving the cookies on the cookie sheet too long and not long enough – in both cases the cookie fell apart. I resorted to using a knife to free the cookies from the pan, then a spatula to transfer them to the cooling rack. This was no guarantee that they’d stay together, but it tipped the odds in my favor. Even after they are off the pan, though, they are very delicate. I don’t know if these will make it to Minnesota in one piece, though I’m gonna give it a try.

A note on the Rice Crispie Snowmen: commercial brands of Rice Crispies have flour in them – you really need to buy the gluten-free ones to ensure a gluten-free treat. The marshmallows contain modified cornstarch, but according to several gluten-free informational websites, in the US modified cornstarch is gluten-free. In other countries, this may not be the case. In any event, the M&Ms and frosting on my snowmen has cornstarch (not modified), so has some corn gluten.

Tags: baking, christmas

Christmas is coming!

We got our tree last weekend, and I decorated it on Sunday. So it’s starting to feel like Christmas…despite the 70-degree weather last week and no snow. Not that I’m complaining – I don’t exactly like snow.

I’m working on the Christmas cards, and I’m thinking about which cookies to make this year. I have a special challenge, because I’ll be bringing cookies home with us to my parents’ house, and my mom is allergic to gluten. So, I’m trying to find recipies that will work gluten-free…it’s not easy. I’ll let you know what I come up with. If there are any suggestions out there, I’d love to hear them.

Tags: christmas

Halloween!

As I said earlier, I love Halloween! As usual, I dressed up the yard a bit tonight:

Carved pumpkins (four words, people: battery operated pumpkin carver – this thing was awesome!):
 

Jo and Felicia wanted a front row seat, so they camped out in the front window to watch trick-or-treaters:

I dressed up as Violet Hunter again…this time without my Sherlock Holmes. Oh well.

We ended up with 63 trick-or-treaters. We gave out 29 books. The first trick-or-treater came at around 6:05 PM (for reference next year – every year I try to remember what time the first kids com around so I have the pumpkins out and my costume on in time). The last came at around 9:15PM (after we’d turned off the lights and doused the jack o’ lanterns…we didn’t open the door).

Now all that’s left is to clean up the yard. Sigh, and I’m off to Philly for the day tomorrow…hope it doesn’t rain until Friday at least.

Tags: halloween