If you bike, you should pledge your miles.
Jul
24
So my count is sitting at 189 miles since June 17th. I am feeling okay with that total at this point. My legs are a little sore esp. tonight. I lost pretty badly at tennis. But on the upside I am getting better.
211 more miles to go.
Jul
22
I got a nice ride in before the storm last night to make up for not getting to ride to work yesterday. Today will be a decent mileage day for me. So far I am at roughly 174 miles. So that gives me roughly 226 miles in the next two months. That is not bad, and if I dont get to over heated, I should be able to finish before my deadline. But I am in no hurry. My tires are holding up well. I finally got my valve adapters so I can put air in the tires.
Jul
21
I will admit I had kind of forgotten I had this blog until I got a comment the other day on it. Thanks for the comment by the way! I have had a busy summer of late but nothing overly remarkable. I have been getting slightly better at tennis which is good. Last week I lost pretty horribly but it was one of the better games I played. In general, I don’t mind losing when it comes to something I enjoy doing.
On Saturday, i took a really nice hike through Fox Ridge State Park. It was beautiful albeit extremely warm. The Riverview trail was great. It has multiple different kinds of terrains to hike across from sand to grass. Maybe multiple terrains makes it seem like it is rivieting experience, but one must remember we are in the Midwest. I drank a lot of water and had a really great time. I felt good afterward. A day in the sun makes me feel relaxed and sleepy.
So my new bike is great. I love it. It is an older Trek 750 multitrack US made. It is great and lightweight. It needs a little bit of work still. I need to reroute my derailleur cable to accommodate a kick stand. I need to adjust my front and rear derailleur so that my gears change a little more smoothly and i don’t have to do weird things to get them to change. That is really the major thing right now.
When I got my bike, I made myself a goal of 100 miles in the first month. I think I ended up going about 150. So to keep motivated, I have set a goal of 400 by the middle of September. I am at 164 miles since my 27th birthday. I will try to keep it updated. I can’t promise cause I keep forgettting that I have this thing.
Dev recently let me know about Pandora FM which will scrobble my Pandora tracks to Last FM. It makes me very happy. However, it makes my last FM think I have music ADD. Hmmmm
Jun
23
This weekend, I had my birthday BBQ. I must say it was very fun. A whole lot of people showed up, it was great. We played rock band. My friends met each other, and I even made new friends.
I have set up recycling for our house. We live in on of those places that do not offer it. So I am required to take it to the next town over if I am going to recycle. That is fine by me. Below is an example of the last months worth of recycling. This includes the party on Saturday. But it is still a lot to cut down on going in the trash.
I have to say the highlight of my week last week was testing out my new bike. I rode about 25 miles on it last week, and really like the feel of it. There are some minor tweaks I want to make to it, but overall I got a great deal and a good bike.
Jun
17
I do not even know when my last post was, but I have more or less been on vacation for the last 2 weeks. I went to both Alabama and to Cincinnati. So first on the list Alabama. I went with D and M. I had a lot of fun. They were going down for Dev’s brothers wedding and were kind enough to let me tag along. Two things came out of this trip.
1. It confirmed my long held thought that I would fall in love with the South Eastern part of the United States. And I did. I want to go back sometime soon. Maybe when it is cold here, and still warm there. I would love to get a chance to go to Atlanta for a trip. I ate fantastic amounts of great food. Including fried green tomatoes and pecan pie. It was delicious. I had beef brisket that was very good as well.
2. Dev’s family is great. I really liked them, and they made me feel extremely welcome at a very important event for them.
My second part of my vacation was a trip to Cincinnati to visit with T. I had large amounts of fun on that trip. We went and saw Death Cab for Cutie in Indy. Wow. It was a really great show to say the least. The drunk girl in front of us provided a great deal of entertainment as well. She managed to get herself stuck in 3 lawn chairs at the same time. It amused me. It was pride weekend in Cincinnati so we went to that as well. It was fun. I am glad we went because it challenged the long held belief that there are very few gays in Cincinnati. We ate tons of great food. We went to Ambar for fantastic Indian, Don Pablos for Mexican, and Pomodoris on McMillan for the best pizza I have ever eaten. I ended up finally finding a bike I wanted while I was there. I rode it to work this morning. I had tons of fun with T overall. And I already miss her laid back style and off beat humor.
Other than that, summer is going really well. My garden is growing quite well. i have even started a second patch which I want to pick up a couple extra packets of seeds for. I call it my pirate patch. If anyone knows where I can get a small pirate flag for it, let me know. My yard is looking pretty good this year with a little bit of work that we have been doing.
Today is my birthday! I am the big 27. It feels like a really good thing actually. I got some really cool things from my friends. I got a book of Andrea Gibson’s poetry called Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns, a tennis racquets, and a sweet card from dv.
Right now I just feel like i had a very good and blessed year. I have some great people in my life, and its a good life. I can only hope this year is half as good.
May
27
I really like the new Death Cab album. I brought it to work to put on my work machine I like it so much. Memorial day was a slow day yesterday. It rained for the first part of the day forcing me to take it easy around the house. My plan had been to plant my garden and I was kind of upset that it was not cooperating with my plans. Midway through the afternoon, D and I decided on a shopping trip for softball gloves and a few other things that were needed. It started getting nice and warm so I picked up a bunch of seeds and a packet of bulbs. I was bound and determined at this point. The weather turned beautiful out. Midwest humid but nice. I was able to get two kinds of beans, and some squashes put in the ground. It was finally time to move my pepper plants outside. That made me happy. So the garden is all planted, and I am happy. Played a little catch in the yard, and went on a walk. It was a nice evening. It was capped off with watching Summer of Sam with S. It was a good weekend overall. A good unofficial start to summer.
May
25
this weekend has the first real feeling of summer for me. So far, I have been having a great weekend. And still have one more day to go. which is really nice. i had a bbq with my favorite people J & K last night. We had pork burgers. i have never eaten a ground pork burger, but it was locally produced farm raised pork so i thought why not? it was really good. It goes on my list of new favorite food. We played some Mario Kart and had an overall great night. After that Steph and I made a trip to the Pig for a beer. The beer was good, but overall sometimes the atmosphere is not always great.
Yesterday morning, a quick trip to the farmers market produced some excellent mixed greens. There will be some good salads with couscous this week for lunch.
Today has been an around the house day so far. I got the lawn mowed. The garage cleaned and a bunch of stuff done around the house. My recycling is more organized. I made pancakes with whole wheat flour, cottage cheese, and eggs. Instead of syrup you use a little bit of sour cream and jelly. I choose an organic cherry jelly. It was kind of a disaster but something I will try again. Now i am listening to the new Death Cab album. I can not wait to go see them soon. Well more exciting chores around the house are in the mix. Wiping my old hard drive that died and finishing laundry.
May
22
So seeing that I have been a super slacker of late about blogging, I thought I would start the summer off right was a blog entry. With Memorial Day weekend coming up, the summer season is well on its way. Although it has been hoodie weather around here. So life for me is going full force these days. I am working two jobs over the summer which it nice to break things up. Plus I am back to working in a library which I enjoy a lot. I am just that kind of geek.
On the home front, we have a new room mate and I am enjoying the house being alive with people. I think during the winter it will be nice to have lots of people around to break up the boredom winter.
so i have been making a very conscious effort to take much better care of myself and do things that help cut my use of energy. I think it important to reduce my carbon footprint.
so here are some things that I am doing to help with that:
Number 1 is always recycle and more importantly reuse. I will buy one 1L bottle of smart water and use the bottle for 5 to 6 months everyday for water. It fits in my backpack perfectly. We live in an area that does not offer recycling so I will carpool to the recycling center.
2. Replacing all my light bulbs with compact fluorescent. This weekend I plan on replacing the rest of mine in my section of the house.
3. Buying as much local food as possible. This has its advantages for several reasons. I find I like the taste of it better. The farmer’s market here is awesome. It requires less fuel to get the food to me. And it helps support local small businesses. Fresh whole wheat sourdough bread is great. I can not wait for prime veggie and fruit season.
4. Walking, biking, and busing. I am getting very comfortable with the walking and using the bus vs. driving. I am working on the biking into work more often.
5. this weekend i will be starting my building of a small compost unit. i have decided the worm method is the preferred way for me as i can keep it going all winter. My grandmother lived on a farming commune when I was a child. I clearly remember our walks to the compost pile with her. I thought it was gross. Part of me still does.
6. This summer I am attempting a small patch of veggies. primarily beans, tomatoes, and peppers. I love peppers. I want to try watermelons as well.
So that is a small part of what i am doing and what my plans for reducing my carbon footprint are, How about you?
Apr
25
So I am almost done with school for this semester. So more updates to come in the summer months. and i will be moving my blog i think. so i will post the new link for that when it is time. yay.. i am all signed up for my lsat. no yay to that. but i am sure i will do fine.
Here is a song for everyone. Its by Voxtrot and the song is called Firecracker. Enjoy
