With the spring like weather we are having I noticed that some things that are sometime thought of as work, don't seem so bad in the spring.

Today's five things:  Five things that you don't mind doing in the spring that by fall you will dread.

1. Lawn work: In the spring this is a joy.  The sun can be out and it just feels good to be outside and not wearing six

inches of down.  The first cutting of the lawn smells wonderful and will bring a smile to your face.  By fall this becomes a pain in the ass!!  You have to drag yourself out and force yourself to do it.

2. Cleaning Gutters:  another outdoor activity that in the spring it's nice to be on the roof, feeling the nice breeze and not caring that you just cut yourself on the gutter, and everything is a complete, wet mess.  For some reason, in the fall this is not a fun job.

3. Sweeping Garage:  You breath the dust in with joy in the spring, not caring that the mold and mildew of the past 5 months is embedding itself deep into your lungs and is probably what will kill you!  You do it with pleasure.  By fall your wearing a mask and pissed at every grain of dust that lands anywhere on your body.

4. Cleaning out my Car: The first cleaning that you do without freezing to the outside of your vehicle is always nice.  Once clean it feels like you have a new car.  Doing this in the fall though is a hot sweaty mess that you'll put off as long as you can.  Leave those floor mats until the last possible minute before cleaning.

5. Cutting wood: Most people don't have to deal with this.  Every spring however I'm always gung ho about building up my wood stores for the next winter.  Probably because I didn't cut enough at the end of LAST summer to get me through THIS winter so I'll swear that I'm going to do better now and convince myself that I gotta get off to a good start!  However come fall the inevitable will happen and I'll have what I think is just enough to get me through and then I'll run out sometime at the end of next February.

 

Just checked out the Add-on sight for firefox and think this is really cool.  First off if you don't use firefox you should...:)  Secondly, check out PicLens.  It works with flickr, photobucket, facebook, myspace, and lots of others.

Also I was forced to use windows today and had the bright idea of doing a defrag.  I know that's a foreign term to most Mac and Linux users but anyway.  Two and a half hours later Vista decided it was finished. Sigh....

Since I didn't get any action shots last night because of the light, and the kids wanted to come over again today for more sledding action, I thought I'd grab my camera.  Thus the title of this post...:)

Tonight Roger and Kelly brought the girls over for the second night this week for a bit of sledding.  With the really cold temps tonight after a day with a slight melt yesterday the snow was lightning fast.

It was so dark however that getting any action shots was pretty much out of the question but I think these shots will give you the idea.

The goal was to get down the big hill in the front of our house and across the driveway.  We were only successful a couple of times .

We never got the snow that was being called for today.  I guess we lucked out.  As much fun as all this was I'm hoping this might be the last of the snow.  We might have whats on the ground for a little while longer however as it was below 20 while we were out there and it's going to be down like that all weekend.

Recently I've been having a change in wardrobe that I'm hoping is not  a sign of a midlife crisis.

I have for years gone the plain white tee shirt everyday for work.  Not fancy just functional.  It keeps me warmer in the winters and cooler in the summers.

For some reason though lately it's given me some piece of mind to wear something with some life to it!!  It makes me feel better in the morning when I throw on a nice cycling or billabong surfing tee shirt under my dress shirt.
So instead of feeling like the usual work day, now it somehow feels more like I'm closer to being on the bike riding or on the beach watching some surfing.  Does this mean I should start thinking about retirement...:)?

What a great race.  Just got done watching stage 1 of the Tour of California via the web feed.  It was actually pretty cool to be able to have it on while at work.  The feed was OK, it was watchable but not great.  Also the new, great GPS thing for watching the riders position wasn't working so that was a drag.

The stage was of course won by JJ Haedo from CSC.  That's 2 in a row for CSC after yesterdays win by Cancellara.

The highlight of watching for me was at the beginning.  I was in the chat room killing time when someone asked where everyone was from (the age old chat room question).  To my surprise, besides myself there was 2 other people from Ypsilanti Mi.!!!  Now I don't live there anymore but did for over 10 years.  I was shocked!!  I sent them my email and they both responded.  One is the President of the Eastern Michigan University Cycling Club and he offered me as an Alumni an invitation to go ride with them.  The other person was the mother of one of the Jelly Belly riders!!  How damn cool was that!!  That made for a very productive chat room experience for me.

Not sure if I'll be able to watch tomorrow (meetings) but we'll see.

Well as promised I'm updating on my father-in-laws horse.

She was in a $2500.00 purse claiming race and won!!

That means she won $1200.00.  Half of which he is donating to the make a wish foundation for my ride in July!

Trivia question: how can you tell a trotter from a pacer?  hint: you can see it in this picture.

My Dad and I have this thing where we make mixed CD's of music we are listening to at any given time and sending it to each other.

I've come to the realization that 18 songs makes up the perfect mixed CD.  I always title mine Messed Up Cuts and then a number.  I just burned number 11 for him and realized that 4 of the last 5 I've made have had 18 songs.

Messed Up Cuts 11:

1. Tea For The Tillerman - Cat Stevens
2. Best I Can - Guy Davis
3. Chains Of Love - J.J. Calle
4. Treat Her Like A Lady - Alvin Youngblood Heart
5. I'm Shakin' - The Blasters
6. One (Blake's Got A New Face) - Vampire Weekend
7. Bubble Toes - Jack Johnson
8. Dunya Salam - 1 Giant Leap featuring Baaba Maal
9. Bring Me Some Water - Melissa Etheridge
10. Somewhere There's An Island - Seaman Dan
11. Where Will I Be - Emmylou Harris
12. Vacant Chair - Steve Winwood
13. Heartbeat - Annie
14. M79 - Vampire Weekend
15. California Girls - The Magnetic Fields
16. New Soul - Yael Naim
17. Day Too Soon - Sia
18. Sunsets - Powderfinger

Links all go to Amazon MP3 downloader.  I much prefer this to iTunes because of no DRM and higher quality.  A good mix of old and new, mainstream and weird...:)

So I guess I'm sticking to 18 songs from now on.  We used to have a rule that you had to include one live song and one Johnny Cash song but I've kinda gotten away from that.  Maybe have to go back to it for MUC12!!!!

Very frustrated with this decision:

Tour de France organizers exclude Astana team; Alberto Contador may not defend title

In a show of supreme stupidity the TDF organizers banned the Astana team from this years Tour. 

I've been a steadfast defender of cycling and the TDF in it's efforts to eliminate doping in professional cycling.  This move by the TDF though sends the completely wrong message to the cyclists, the fans, sponsors, and on and on.

Astana was a major part of the doping situation LAST YEAR!!!!!!!  They have replaced over half of their riders, their director and many sponsors.  For some reason however just because their main sponsor decided to stick with cycling and continue to support a professional team, they decide that they still deserve punishment!

This is the most backward ass stupid fucking decision I've ever heard of!!!  You are setting a precedent from now on that any time a team has a doping violation the riders are all going to bail the next season if they can just to avoid being punished for something done last year. 

The major thing remaining on the Astana team is the jersey!!!  They even have a new bike sponsor in Trek and component sponsor in SRAM.  So what are you ignorant asses really doing?  Your punishing the Jerseys for being the same as those worn by last years team!!  Your punishing the color blue you silly morons!!!

Oh and while I'm at it I'll include the Giro organizers as well.  What is a team supposed to do when something like this happens.  From now on they will have no option but to fold, loosing a sponsor to the sport, because even if they change almost every other thing, if the jersey has the same name on it they can't compete.

I never thought I'd boycott watching the TDF but I'm really close now.  It's going to depend on whether or not Slipstream is an included team when that announcement is made on the 29th that will determine if I watch it at this point.  Just glad the Tour of California is kicking off Sunday.

Sorry about the lack of posts lately.

Since the return from Chi town I've been working on my complete switch over to linux.  Yes, there have been frustrations and yes there will be more but I think I'm finally at a point where I'm done tweaking and starting to actually do stuff.  That said I just realized I need to install the customize Google add on in Firefox.

I did the switch over on 2 machines, a laptop and a desktop, laptop for work and desktop for home.  Of course I still have the xp desktop and the vista laptop because lets face it, it's a windows world, for now at least.  Oh and one more thing.  Windows Vista is the second worst OS I've ever used, the top honor going to Windows Me.  I can't believe how much I hate it.  It brings my core 2 duo with 2gigs of ram to a crawl!!!!  Taking forever to boot, unbelievable.

Here is a shot of my desktop:

I'm much happier with my linux...:)  I was playing with the 3D desktop last night.  That is too cool!!!

I've also had two lovely days of clearing snow from my driveway in blistering cold.  Under 10 degrees for the past week.  Combine that with falling and blowing snow out here and it's a nightmare.  You basically just struggle to keep the driveway clear enough to be passable.  Then of course my satellite dish which is on a second story roof fills with snow every now and then and I have no connection , sometimes for a couple of days.

I know I missed a bike porn Thursday in the last week so here is my make-up.

I will probably always have a soft spot in my heart for De Rosa.  My first serious road bike was a DeRosa and Ijust love them.  I'll probably own another some day.  This new carbon King is just beautiful.

On the topic of biking.  One of my father-in-laws horses is racing this Friday.  He told me he will be giving half the purse that he wins (if he at least places) to my Wish a Mile Ride.  I'll  make sure I post the results.  That's pretty cool.  If the horse has a good day I might get that special jersey after all.