Okay, that’s not exactly “breaking.” How about this…
Word on the street (aka Lance Armstrong’s Twitter account) has reported that there will be no Team Time Trial in the 2010 Tour de France. You heard it hear first, unless of course you Follow Lance Armstrong on Twitter too.
Three Days Of The Cold Shoulder
For three days my Amazon account has been frozen due to a miscommunication from my credit card company. My frustration level is rising, all over a $50 charge.
I have been a loyal Amazon customer for over ten years now and in a blink of an eye they have frozen my account without a single notification prior to doing so.
Two days ago I contacted an Amazon customer representative who was as inept as one can be. In fact, this person was so inept that I started to wonder if the email I received from Amazon was actually a phishing scheme for which I fell. Yesterday I contacted a representative at my credit card company who agreed with my assessment that they screwed up and assured me that he would resolve my dispute. My account is still frozen as of this morning.
This should be really good for my bank account, but it’s really bad for my desire to do business with Amazon. My thoughts of buying a Kindle have been dashed, I’m considering purchasing all of my music from iTunes again, and I get free shipping from B&H Photo so I can make any camera-related purchases through them. How wise does immediately freezing my account over a disputed $50 charge seem now, Amazon?
ITP Flickr Pic
This has gotten sad.
RealiTV Update: Hell’s Kitchen Has Shut Down
Last night was the whirlwind two-hour finale of this version of Hell’s Kitchen. I can’t say that I am all that sad to see the season wind up as I didn’t feel that the best of cooks on Hell’s Kitchen could last more than a week on Top Chef.
I can say that I was wrong about the series’ winner, however. Until the showing of the final hour I was certain that Kevin (aka Mistaaaaaaah Clean) was the hands-down favorite. I was also fairly certain that one-handed Dave was going to finish in third, even though he has been surprising me all season long.
Wham! Bam! Thank you, Ma’am. The three finalists cook up country-inspired dishes (Mexican, Indian, Chinese) for three “top chefs” in those cuisines. Dave, whose country is India, nearly cooks beef and still manages to insult by choosing pork (psssst – Have you heard of the Muslims?) Some how Dave’s protein faux pas is not large enough to gain him victory however. Dave, his incredibly pretty fiancé, and some other person (his sister) pig out (pig — see what I did there!?!) on meals prepared by the three judges whilst Kevin and Ariel had to clean and polish all of the silverware to be used for the night’s dinner.
Dinner service on this night is the standard “Run the pass and look out for sabotage” as the cooks try to impress Ramsay one last time. In the end Ariel is ousted; we’re down to two.
Enter the cooks who have been kicked out in recent weeks! (Including the cute Amanda). And choose teams! Hurry, we have less than an hour remaining! Unlike in year’s past there’s no “This is your restaurant, create a menu and decorate your space.” it’s cooking, cooking, cooking time. And before we know it Kevin and Dave are standing in front of doors. Who. Will. Win? Dave.
Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – blah
Current Music – listening to the “Coverville” (episode 616) podcast
Website Of The Day – I admit that at first I read Go Urban‘s URL as “Gourban” and wondered what the heck ITP-Ready Kay was sending me to last night. Now that I realize that “Go Urban” is a urban adventure race I am interested — Atlanta’s race will be held on March 20th.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – nothing
Morning Weigh-In – didn’t check, but wish that I had
Monthly
Foot Mileage – 8 miles, Wheel Mileage – 0 miles
Pushups – 0, Situps – 0
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 0 (0)
Vegetarian Days – 3, Carnivorous Days – 10
Marta Rides – 0
October Goals
– Not get fired from my job
– Take at least one photo every day
– Restart work on house, actually making progress this time (note: not successful during August)
2009 Goals
– Reduce my weight to 190 pounds (today’s weight was 199.5 pounds)
– Completely read the book 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die
РEarn at least $150 through photography sales in order to cover the cost for the renewal of the Jalape̱o Beach SmugMug account I opened the other day.
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Attend at least one professional photography workshop
The Unmeasurable
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Become a proficient programmer in Objective-C (iPhone development) and Ruby on Rails (Black Sheep web page concept)
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem
Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]
We just watched NCIS last night – always an entertaining show.
It is looking like a party in the garage for bike maintenance night at Mango’s tonight, unless this rain goes away. Swing by for a beer if that sounds like fun……
I may swing by Mango’s tonight. I’ve nothing to fix at the moment as my road bike is fine and my mountain bike will not see action any time soon, but I may stop in to be social.
I NEVER have anything to fix……
And – if this helps –
It is Biketoberfest (per Mango) Brats are on the menu, and we’ll be bringing some crockpot mac n cheese. (cuz I can’t think of any german side dish that sound good)
When you put it that way Barb all I can say is that I’ll be there beer in hand. What time do you expect to arrive?
We should be there by about 6pm – usually stay until about 10pm. Food is usually closer to 8.
Cool. I’ll probably be there closer to 7. See you then.
We had some good German food Tuesday night in Chicago…plus the Chicago dog before we left yesterday. There is a reason us Midwesterns look the way we do….
I case you didn’t hear I’m back and getting caught up.
I’m going to highjack the blog for a minute. First thanks to everyone for all the well wishes this weekend, sorry I haven’t gotten back to everyone yet.
I’m going to give the Cliff Notes from Sunday.
It was cold in Chicago, I think the temp at race time was somewhere in the low 30s, my teeth were still chattering a mile into the race. The first thing I noticed was my GPS wasn’t picking up a signal…I had to keep track of my pace the old fashion way, doing math in my head.
I was feeling really good, I was keeping up with the 3:45 pace team with what seemed like little effort. At the 13.1 marker I was set to do a 3:45 race. Long story short, around the 25K mark the ball of my foot started to hurt, felt like there was a stone in my shoe, but there wasn’t. By the 30K mark as was in a lot of pain, I could only run for a mile or so at a time, I would walk enough for the pain to let up and then start running again. I was even running in the grass because it was softer. I really wanted to run, everything, legs, cardio, stomach felt great. When I hit the 20 mile mark I knew I wasn’t going to make my goal. The last 2 miles were rough, I just wanted to sit down and cry, I really thought my foot was broken.
I found the guys (Jerry’s brother Joe came up from Indy to watch) shortly after I got to the family reunite area, we didn’t stick around, I was a bit of a mess,physically and emotionally. A hot shower, a burger and a few beers help my mood greatly.
I did manage to make it under 4 (3:57:45) but didn’t get my BQ.
My foot is feeling better, I still think I need to see a doctor but I don’t think it is broken.
Martha…good job enduring the pain and finishing. You may want to wear a shoe with a wider toe box or use metatarsal pads. Doesn’t sound like anything broken…some metatarsal/joint/nerve/liagment irritation…..although for peace of mind, you might want to get it checked out….never know….could be a stress fracture.
Yes Martha–great accomplishment for finishing so strongly despite the injury and enduring so much pain–but it does suck to make it so close to the bq goal. Good news is….there’s always another day. I would suggest to stop running as a way to ease the foot pain–but that’s just my inner snarky paulie being channeled on the blog. Probably better to take sal’s advice….Congratulations!
“snarky paulie”
My inner snarky self nearly [REDACTED] my name in your comment, Betsy. 😛
Betsy – I think that comment just needed a BAZINGA after it. (does anyone else watch Big Bang theory?)
Betsy, don’t think for those last 10k or so, never running again wasn’t my first thought. I will run another, probably sooner than later. I went to sign up for Mountain Mist but missed the cut-off.
Sal, thanks for the advice, I may run by Big Peach tonight and see what I can find. I’m ready to get back out there.
We’re coming to Atlanta next spring and might be there in the fall too. Check out our urban adventure race at http://www.hightrekadventure.com
Cheers,
Jason
Excellent to know Jason. Thanks.