Necessity is the mother of invention

And sometimes you just need a steering wheel instead of handlebars.

Coffee guy

One thing that I love about Philly is that it's kind of a village.  It's a big, dirty, and often rude village, but a village nonetheless. I've got my auto paint guys, I've got the Mexican store, the Chinese corner store, and even the folks at the local Petsmart know me as the dude who always goes to buy more shrimp for his aquarium.

My favorite village find right now is Greene Street Coffee Roasters.  I can swing by the roastery before work and shoot the shit with Chris the owner. He hooks me up with what is fresh and tasty.  Sometimes I get it straight out of the roaster, so fresh it's crackling still.

Dope.

Happy birthday Jennifer

Huong Tram delivers the flavor of 40.

But they had a little help from the umami blaster.

Benton ham

15 lbs of aged Tennessee ham. 

Delivered to our door, smoking up the joint.

SPIES

Vladimir Putin is living in Jennifer's desk stand!

Just another day in Philadelphia.

You know, some orange haired asshole is under investigation for misdeeds against the country. the other orange haired asshole one is being accused of punching a kid.

Finding some reserve

The last week was a blur of work which culminated when a crick in my  neck and summer serious lingering fatigue. It's my hope that I can pull together enough reserve energy not to just dog it this week.

Yes, The info is accurate.

What a wild and warm day in January.

nevermind, it's actually 66 degrees now.

Work warp

This week has been a blur of editing and writing on the next phase of bike share. Turns out contracts are not my strong suit. But that's okay I guess I'm just not a lawyer.

Head like the clouds

That is to say, grey, crenelated and wet. That could also apply to my attitude. All the steam from my earlier positivity ebbed out over the last two days.  I'm working on a set of tasks at work that are both complicated and tedious.  There are also a bunch of other things that are lingering over me and that I just don't like to do. 

 I think that I gravitate towards bike riding because of its limited complication.  In terms of the machine, you can see almost everything there is to mess with or fix. In terms of the activity, there is nuance, but overall it's simple: push your legs and thereby remove tiny molecules of rubber from the perimeter of your tires.  Repeat this on an infinite loop over the course of many miles and many hours.

Good gift

Patrick knows my taste: crazy=good.

New year, new bread

I'm getting back into bread magic. Good ol microbes, flour, water, salt, TIME, and heat. 

With wetter dough, there is less need to knead. This is a good thing. 

attitude adjustment

Ended feeling like a total of schlub last week. Squishy and unhappy. Then I had a great weekend with 2 bike rides with friends and a food adventure with Cheryl to Le Mandingue in West Philly. 

1.5 Lingual

My Spanish studies paid off a little just now!!  I answered a call from a woman who needed help with something home related, but she only spoke Spanish.  I was able to (mostly) redirect her to the correct spot, or at least tell her that she'd called the wrong number by mistake.  She also helped me out a bit by speaking slowly and clearly once I'd gotten out, "No hablo bien español."

New Format

As the obvious increase in mean posting time indicates, I'm not a regular blogger anymore.  My communication habits, responsibilities and time constraints have evolved to the degree that this just isn't a part of my life anymore.  I do really like the way that I can reference the blog in the way I would a journal though.  Even though the blog itself is public, the forum feels more private than not--gotta look pretty hard on the internet to find it.

In any case, I'm going to try something different for a few weeks to see if it sticks--one sentence journaling.  The plan is to write one or two sentences about something that I'm thinking.  My plan is to try to frame the day, or at least something relevant about the day, with the text. I might try to add in photos where it's easily available, but my goal is not to get hung up on formatting or content so much as to get back in the groove with things.

頑張ります!!

Hookey

Yesterday I took some liberties with the traditional 9-5 (or 6:30, or 7) schedule that I typically keep.  I needed to do some concentrated writing, and typically can't do that well in the office.  SO I opted to take the day and 'work at home'.  I figured that I'd clear my mind first, and do a nice long bike ride to get the blood moving, and to kill some of the fidgetyness that has been building over the past few rainy, overworked weeks. 

Juvenile Eastern Red-Eared Slider

I took a long ride up the Green Ribbon Trail and ended up around Mile 5, near Gwynedd Township.  I stopped for a couple of minutes and then pulled out my tenkara rod for some sunfishing. The weather was warm and sunny and it was perfect to be standing around in a creek for a couple of hours.  Given that I was already 30 hours in to my work week on a Thursday, I just stayed out.  

I remounted my bike to head home at about 1:30, but took just a little detour to check out the lower reaches of the creek.  I ended up stumbling onto the most incredible fishing hole that I'd ever seen.  It was where all of the little fish go when they grow up.  So i did what I had to do, and started fishing again. 

Biggest fish I'd ever caught from the Wissahickon

Right after I caught this awesome bass, I also caught the first of what would end up being 8 yellow jacket stings.  I have no idea what I did to them, but they sure as shit stung the crap out of me!  The first one was on my eyebrow and was quite the surprise.  Then came the second through 5th in rapid succession.  It was terrifying--you just don't know where they're coming from, but you can hear the buzzing and then all of a sudden a hot poker of pain jolts through wherever the little bastards landed. I am not the quickest, but I can take a hint.  This was a definite sign that I had to get home, but it was quite the battle to get back to my bike which was leaned against a tree in the 'no go zone' patrolled by angry wasps. Fuckers got me on the ass, arm and side by the time that I was rolling.  

Awesome Amigos

After more than seven years living his life as a solo goldfish, we finally realized that Mr. Fish was lonely.  Though he's had dozens of generations of guppies to keep him company over the intervening years, they just aren't the same as a friend of the same species. My parents tipped us off last summer during their visit, and we made a run to the big box Monster Pets.  It's close to our house, and does have 'stuff' for pets, but loses major points on service and quality and vibe. We left sans-fish, and with a bit of a bad taste in the mouth.  This year I opted to widen my net, and rode up to Worldwide Aquarium and Pets in Roxborough with panniers and aspirations of a cool friend for Mr. Fish.  

The shop was set off a dingy parking lot on Ridge Avenue, reminding me of my childhood pet paradaise, The Ark in Ames' campustown.  It had all the right features. 

Petshop smell? Check.

Dark room full of tanks of exotic fish? Check.

Surly, yet helpful staff? Check.

New best friend? Check!

 After looking through the various tanks of wondrous fish from around the world, I found the tank of subunkin goldfish and locked eyes (well one of his, two of mine) with a calico with mirrored scales.  He goes by the name of Shabu-Shabu, or just Shabu for short, and he's accompanied by Shelby, the giant pond snail. 

Mr. Fish and Shabu are now inseparable, though that's mostly because they are living in the same 55 gallon stock tank.  That said, they seem to enjoy chasing each other around, and eating fish food together.  Match made in heaven. 

The Club

We've been members since last year, when they were taking in new applicants, but it took until last night to eat there.  House rules forbid me from going into detail about what transpired within the doors, but let me say that Eric and I left quite satisfied. 

Hunterdon was Hell on my wheel

So I made it to the line in time to start with the first wave, which was great. Great that is until about mile 30 when some bonehead decided to ride into my rear wheel. I lost FOUR spokes, but was able to true it up enough to ride the remaining 50 miles of the route.

On the plus side, it gave me a good excuse to take er easy.

Man of the Yunk

Windy today, so I kept my ride close to home and was rewarded with a fantastic sunset.