When I witnessed the weather conditions the Giro d’Italia rode in yesterday I was certainly happy that I never became a professional cyclist. As the men road up the Italian alps they encountered rain, sleet, and snow flurries on the ascent, and wet, treacherous roads on the descent. Kinda sounds like that Muscle Mountain Mania all those years ago, just at a much higher altitude.
Today’s Daily Challenge
Plan to ask for details on how a menu item is prepared the next time you go out to eat.
Healthy eating can be harder when you’re in a restaurant, especially when you’re not sure what went into the preparation and cooking. The menu does not always provide these details, so it’s useful to ask. Meat and vegetables that have been battered, fried, or sautéed are higher in fat than most poached, steamed, baked, or grilled dishes. Foods with cream- or mayonnaise-based sauce or dressing also have more fat than toppings like salsa, yogurt, or herbs. Knowing more about a dish can help you make an informed choice about what to order.
Um no.
What I would like is for people to cook my burgers to the doneness that I’ve requested, and not “well done” regardless.
I Guess That I Was Tired
After playing racquetball last night and making the requisite “ruin it all” stop, this time at Taco Mac, I got home and hung up my wet clothes. Surprisingly the house wasn’t brutally hot (by my standard) so I opened the bedroom window and placed my box fan within it to draw in some of the (slightly) cooler night air. Before I knew it I was waking up to the sound of my alarm clock. The only two bad things to come from this deep sleep was that I neither brushed my teeth nor took my nightly dosage of medication before passing out.
Working On A New Photo Workflow
I may have mentioned this before but I am planning on leaving my laptop in the States when I travel to Europe. It’s not that the MacBook Air is cumbersome in any way, I’d just like to limit the amount of things that I will be packing for this trip.
Because of this I will be practicing a new photo workflow (who knows, this may mean that photos appear more often in this blog again) involving my Nikon 1 V1 to shoot the photos, the iPad’s Camera Connection Kit (geezus Apple, are you ever going to release one of these with a Lightning Connector end?) to import the best ones onto my iPad, and apps — Lightroom or Snapseed perhaps — to edit them. When I can locate WiFi it’ll be a simple task to upload the images to Flickr for sharing.
Needless to say, I have little experience with all of the processes listed above, with the exception of the upload, so it’s going to be a fun learning curve over the next two months.
The Sound Of Silence
I used to defend Twitter as a social media platform by declaring “It’s great, when you have a question or need you tweet it out and people will answer you.” For instance, about four years ago I took a trip to Nashville and asked Twitter to suggest vegetarian restaurants at which I should eat (this was back when I ate vegetarian twice a week) and within minutes I had a handful of replies. This behavior has not been the case in the past six months or so and I may have found out why this morning.
According to Twitter I have 978 “Followers”, about which I admit two things:
1. That number is rather high for an unknown individual who is also not a beautiful person.
2. A good number of those accounts are follow bots, or abandoned accounts.
This morning I received an email from Twitter (SPAM to be precise) which tried to encourage me to use the service more by highlighting some of my recent tweets that have either been favorited, or replied, or retweeted. From this email it appears that from my 978 “Follower” pool the average number of times that my tweets get viewed is twenty-five. [insert crickets chirping sound here] Hardly a recipe for social success.
A Miss “K” Update
I heard from Miss “K” yesterday and she is loving her Washington (state) life. She told me that she has whole heartily taken up mountain biking (she never mentioned an interest in cycling while she lived here) and that she is absolutely loving it. Oh to be twenty-five again…
While it certainly disappointed me that she moved away (I’ve not been bowling since!) I am glad that she is happier out there and wish her the best.
Today’s Personal Project
It’s lavanderia miércoles. Spanish speakers, am I to capitalize the days of the week the way we do in English? I cannot remember. Bob, why don’t you Google this for me. 🙂 I’m happy to say that the impetus for doing laundry tonight is that I’ve run out of clean workout shorts.
Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – not bad
Current Music – silence at the moment
Website Of The Day – Yesterday I heard about Atlanta Cycling Festival, which will be held from June 7-14. Huh. Check it out, there seems to be something for everyone.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – racquetball, ~90 minutes
Morning Weigh-In – 216 pounds (2014-05-26)
Monthly
Foot Mileage – ~25.5 miles
Wheel Mileage – 0.0 miles
Gym Visits – 6 (6 cardio)
Marta Rides To Work – 1
Bike Rides To Work – 0
May Goals
– have European trip plans carved in stone
– clean my basement to the point where I could have people over
– hire a plumber to fix all of the sinks at the ITP Estate
– go away two of the weekends
2014 Goals: Measurable
– Get my weight down to 190 pounds so that I can wear a 36″ waist pants comfortably
– Completely read ten books, audio books permissible
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Completely run at least one 10k
– Fix all (or at least most) of the things which are wrong with the ITP Estate
– Sell the ITP Estate (tentative)
2014 Goals: Unmeasurable
– Continue to Simplify, simplify, simplify
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem
– Eat smaller portions
– Start, and continue, to make my own bread using my bread machine as well as using the technique outlined in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking
– Read and discard magazines during the month in which they arrive (even digitally)
Books I’ve Read/Heard In 2014
- “Johnny Carson” by Henry Bushkin
- “Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative” by Austin Kleon
- “Chaos: Making a New Science” by James Gleick
- “What’s So Funny?: My Hilarious Life” by Tim Conway
Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]
Today’s Giro comment: I’ve never seen so many bearded cyclists.
Did you read about BMC getting “pissed” about how the race was conducted yesterday in all that bad weather? Some teams didn’t “get” the memo that racing was too dangerous.
The BMC Racing Team has issued a statement in response to several incidents which occurred on Tuesday during Stage 16 of the Giro d’Italia -> http://bit.ly/1lPPrHG
then-
did you read about Taylor Phinney’s crash up on Lookout Mtn Monday?
I hope they are referring to only facial hair?
I never signed up for twitter nor have a ever tweeted (did I get that right?). Maybe one of these days I’ll get a real phone and catch up technology wise.
Apparently there was a controlled descent of the Salvia Pass yesterday that no everyone got the word on. The word supposedly went out on radio tour (which is what all the teams must listen to) but there are claims that it did not and was only a rumor. It was certainly a mess. A portion of the coverage I saw had a rider shaking his hand out on a descent- no doubt trying to get some feeling in it so he could use the brakes. That was what untimately stopped me on MMM.
After a little pool maint. last night, Debbie fed the horses and we went out for Mexican (almost 3 weeks… I was having withdrawl!). When we got home Phinney was standing in the front yard talking to the other 2 horses in their pasture. Either he has learned to operate the gate, or it didn’t get shut tightly, but he was a good boy either way.
My boss, who I haven’t seen in 3 weeks gave me a nice little bonus and tchotchke for my work on the VoIP conversion. I think the bonus was already spent!!
-FP
I’d not read either accounts yet.
The (Taylor) Phinney news I heard on Monday from Steve’s comment on my blog.
The GdI news I got while watching/listening to yesterday’s stage. During the broadcast the announces said that it was fair game for teams to follow social media such as Twitter and act accordingly.
Your lingo is correct Martha. Don’t go changing, we love you just the way you are. 🙂
Martha, I guess we won’t be sitting at the cool kids table. I wouldn’t know how to twit, I mean tweet.
http://www.gazzetta.it/Giroditalia/2014/en/28-05-2014/polemichetappa16-80777079737.shtml
I’ve thought about the whole Twitter thing, but do I really need something else to make me more addicted to my phone?
But- I bet those teams that “didn’t hear it” in race radio would ahve heard if someone said something disparaging about their team- selective hearing is what I think.
MMM icefest – what a great memory (once we got warmed back up).
Makes me think that I need to call Janie, its been way too long.
I didn’t hear a peep about this while still in Chattanooga. A lot of marshall motos besides the comm motos-
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2014/may/28/questions-raised-about-phinney-crash/
My Google fu is strong today, got this with a quick search. http://spanish.about.com/od/writtenspanish/a/capitalization.htm
You do not capitalize days of the week in Spanish.
I’m still sitting at my dining room table in my front yard as the flooring people put down new carpet. I hope they finish soon, it is getting warm out here.