Just Stop Swimming

I'm a little tired.

Working until 1-2am I can deal with, but combining that with a 5am wake up to go swimming just isn't cool. With my standard 30 minutes wait time before I actually go to sleep, I'm looking at 2.5-3.5 hours of sleep on these nights, and that's to go into an endurance workout. That dog won't hunt, Monsignor.


So what's an insomniac with acheivement issues to do? Well, I can cobble together a swim workout for the next few weeks at my local pool with some 1/2 mile open water swims in the lake, but long term I'll probably join a 24 hour gym with an indoor pool. The morning masters program was good, and I got a good amount of coaching out of it. So, I'm more comfortable training on my own now.

On another note, yesterday was a pretty crap day. One good thing came out of it though, Daughter had a big break through on reading. She memorized her alphabet forever ago, and got the sounds each letter makes shortly thereafter. So, when I read to her, I'll pick one short and simple word out of the book and take her through how to read it letter by letter. Last week she started saying the letters with me, then yesterday I got her to read a few different words on her own. Dog was "Duh, Ahh, Guh ... dog" I picked words that I knew she didn't have memorized, like 'hat' and 'bat' to test her and she got them all. Smart little bugger.

The Evil Overlord List has something to say about that,
"I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father."

Lessons We Haven't Learned Yet

I did my first race about six weeks ago. I placed in the middle of the pack, which was to be expected. I hadn't trained very long, first race, etc. I'm fine with that. But something has been bugging me ever since.

I could have done better.

I don't mean that I could have trained more or gone in with an expensive bike. I could have pushed myself harder. Much harder. Right after I finished and the nervous looking little kid handed me a bottle of water I realized that I wasn't tired enough. I still had plenty of gas in the tank so to speak.

That's been nagging at me ever since. It's not even trying to beat the others, though looking at it more competitively would probably help me. It's just that I didn't do as well as I could have. I've got three weeks to the next race and I'm not going to do that again.

Birds of a Feather Attract Opposites

It's interesting to see how radically different Daughter and Son are. Also, Daughter's personality is really being shown in sharp relief as Son is starting to show his personality more and more.

Son is a happy kid. Smiles constantly, laughs easy, generally in a pretty good mood.

Daughter is much more serious. Harder to get her to smile, rarely laughs, and she has a sense of humor based heavily around throwing things. Not to say that she doesn't enjoy things. She's happy, you just can't tell by looking at her.

So what we've got here, is a 2 year old girl equivalent of me.

That's a little creepy.

I got my bike. I'll talk more about that later. And you might notice that my training's slacked off. That's intentional. I'm taking a slow week to recover, then I'll build back up for two more, then taper for the July race.

Little Plaid Ones

You ask a guy why he married his wife and you'll get a different answer depending on when you ask the question. If you ask while his wife's around, you'll get an answer ranging from, “I love her”, to a sonnet describing the nature of true love and how it somehow resides in his wife's perfect smile. Fun fact, the sonnet guy either had sex 30 seconds before you asked that question, or is trying to work his way out of a six-year dry spell. Now, if you ask a guy without his wife around... well, guys generally don't do that.

I don't get that question a lot. It's usually something more like, “You're married? I thought you were gay.”, or “How on earth did you get her to go along with that?”, then it's usually back to, “I could have sworn you were gay.” Once you get past my evidently questionable heterosexuality and the natural incredulity that I was smooth enough to trick a girl into marriage, then you run into another detail that throws people off. I'm a goofy white guy, and my wife is quite noticeably Chinese. In the mess of race-relations in America, an Asian-White intermarriage is one of the more acceptable deviations from tradition. Combine that with living in California and we don't have to worry too much about catching flak. Still, from the goofy white guy side you manage to run into a couple major stereotypes; nerd or fetishist.

I'm really more geeky than nerdy, but that's a pretty fine line sometimes. To the fetishist charge I'd have to fall back on my dating record, which prior to Ning, contained no Asians. So, if I'm not an anime/manga obsessed Asian-fetishist, then what could possibly be the attraction?

Miniskirts.

I like miniskirts. Wait, let me rephrase that. I like women in miniskirts. Saying it that first way leaves the option open that I might like wearing them, and, to be perfectly frank, I don't have the ass to pull off a mini. Evening-wear we can talk about later. Anyway, Ning looks pretty damn good in a miniskirt and I'm pretty sure she knows that.

Outside of Vegas, or Reno for those on a budget, a miniskirt does not a marriage make. Usually you have to throw in a little conversation first, if for no other purpose than working out a prenup. Amazingly enough, a hot Asian girl, and a goofy white guy can actually carry a conversation that isn't centered on characters in Japanese cartoons. At some point during the first date she must have figured out that 67% of the things I said were some form of joke. Had she not, then I'm pretty sure that second date wouldn't have come around. We both worked in technology. Her in finance and me in the part that actually contributes something to the company (See how I joke?) , so we had plenty to talk about there. Mostly I was able to tell her when her techies were lying to her, which happened a lot back then. She was smart, and decent enough not to play dumb to make the man feel better about himself. She obviously had a good sense of humor or I would have been pepper sprayed and kicked in very sensitive parts on the first date.

Sure enough, we continued dating and she continued wearing miniskirts, so all was well. She has a good sense of humor, which I mention again because it really is necessary to spend any amount of time with me, and she was very up for trying new things.We had lots of interesting trips overseas. She remembers the scenery and food. I remember things like telling the staring Chinese man that I loved him or causing a teeny little disturbance in Tienanmen Square. Now that I think about it, she probably mentally blocks out a lot of my little adventures. I imagine that makes it easier to keep going on trips with me.

Ning hates paperwork. Fewer things get her angrier than filling out any kind of government form. It's kind of cute to watch. I'm kind of angry all the time, so when Ning gets really worked up about the forms she's about as angry as I am when I'm asleep. It's like watching a kitten play hunter and stalk a toy mouse. That aside, my logic, which I still think is sound, is that once we were married, she would have to fill out a lot of paperwork to leave me. Which gives me a nice buffer zone for whatever stupid things I end up doing. Eventually I spent an unholy amount of money on a ring, took her to a lake and offered her a deal. She marries me, she gets the ring.

Evidently, it was a nice ring.

Small Box. Smells Like Beer

To drastically misquote Huxley in a way I'm sure he wouldn't approve of, Mother's Day is kind of like a dirty joke, Father's Day is just outright offensive.

I can deal with the Mother's Day part. Get Ning presents, day off, etc. Father's Day though, what are you supposed to do with that? Barbecue things I think. Beer is usually thrown in there somewhere too. For some reason I think there's some lawn care involved. Unfortunately I don't barbecue or drink, and I have a hell of a time keeping my lawn alive.

So what will I do for my Father's Day? Well, if it's this Sunday like I think it is, then that means I'm due for a bike/run brick. That'll take a couple hours. I usually pick up a couple books for the week on Sunday so I'll do that too. Hell, maybe I'll cook a pot-roast. It's been a while since I threw that much fat at my cardiovascular system. Other than that I'll probably just try to ignore the "Father's" part of the day as much as possible.

Note to me: Don't wear the 'Daddy' shirt. It's actually from a leather shop in New York, but try telling that to the register lady at the grocery store. Seriously, try it. It's pretty amusing.

Project $ Drain

Since everyone knows that spending dollars is a perfectly valid way to make up for a lack of training time, I'm shopping around for a new bike. Aside from the above untruth, there's also the general male love of gadgetry and toys. I'm lucky in that I really don't get bit by that bug too often anymore, and even when I do, I usually manage to snap out of the consumer-trance in time to stop before I choose a shipping option, but I'm probably going to pull the trigger on the bike.

Doing fast bricks (combination workouts, no one knows where the 'word' brick comes from) has been giving me some leg trouble just when I'm getting my stride sorted out. That and I can get this new one fitted to my lanky body. Also, the new one really should be faster. People, especially beginners, get good time reductions on these things.

I've got some options...

First, I've got a line on a new bike that's on closeout because it's last years model. The price is good (though none of these damn things are cheap) . This bike is aluminum with carbon in a few spots. It's got good components, is slightly faster than a speeding locomotive, and is moderately attractive to women. Because this one is so cheap compared to the other options, I could conceivably buy a ridiculously overpriced set of racing wheels for it...which is super.







Second, is a sexy little red and white number. This little thing is all carbon, good components and faster than a high school kid on prom night. Annnnnd it's expensive. Also, because they don't make too many of these, they always sell out, so no luck finding a closeout deal on this. This is a solid, fast bike, but it eats up any $s I would be able to spend on more upgrades.








Third, and most expensive of the ones I'm looking at. Kestrel makes such delicious bikes, but the bastards charge so much for them. This is an all carbon frame, decent components (not outstanding), and this thing is probably faster than current laws of physics would really allow. So, I'd be paying for speed that wouldn't exactly exist in this or any known dimension, and that seems wasteful.










Per Ning's request, below is a picture of a bike that I'm not considering buying. For one thing, it costs about $15,000. More importantly however, it would be the most embarrassing thing in the world to be riding this and get passed by a 60 year old woman on a Schwinn. Ning thinks this bike is comical, but that's just her opinion, her wrong opinion. Here are the facts:

• There is no stock of this bike, they're all custom built... by fairies. Sexy Swedish fairies.
• The picture below is not of the real bike, it's just a mock up. The bike is so fast that it cannot be photographed.
• This bike will actually capture speed from other racers and use that to accelerate. If you're not careful, it will trap the other racer's souls as well. That is considered cheating and you will be disqualified from sanctioned races.
• This bike sprang whole from the mind of Zeus. It wasn't a headache that caused it though...it was the opposite if you catch my drift ;)
  

Inaugural

Our house has been a viral ho down ever since I got back from Central Asia. It's been awful. First I brought back a stomach-virus souvenir that I was considerate enough to keep to myself, then I got a nasty cold, then Daughter had a fever that turned into a mucous fountain, then Ning and Son got sick with Son ending up at the doctor's a few times.

Ning's generally taken the brunt of this at home while I fend off the ravening hordes at the office, but the kiddies are ensuring that sleep is a stranger to everyone.

One wise decision I made, my wise decisions are noteworthy exceptions to an impressive pattern of mis-steps, was to skip a race for tomorrow. There's a decent chance I would have drowned anyway... or at least been embarrassed enough by my finish time to wish I had.