MarQ1

Somehow I twisted my knee while of after biking 24 miles yesterday. Going down stairs and getting up after sitting at my desk are difficult, but the ride was worth it.

Carroll Gardens… Gowanus… Sunset Park… Bay Ridge… Bath Beach… Bensonhurst… Coney Island… Brighton Beach… Sheepshead Bay… the Knapp Street sewage treatment plant… some neighborhoods whose names I don’t yet know… Midwood… Kensington… Windsor Terrace… Park Slope and home. Barely winded. In high gear. Mostly.

Got to scare a pedestrian, too. He was crossing against the light and not looking. I can be loud when I want to.

Feather & Fan is at 80%. Twenty rows and the crocheted binding to go.

Mostly cloudy and dense with humidity

Today, 24.4 mi/39.25 km, through Ft Greene, Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, Maspeth, the area around LaGuardia, Astoria, Long Island City, Greenpoint, East Williamsburgh, Fort Greene agains and home.

Finally summery. With a nice evening breeze.

Last Sunday’s Route

Twenty-four and half miles, following on 20.5 the day before.

Feather & Fan

Less than 25% remaining. I’m sorry, it is tedious. It is nice though.

I’m on VACATION.

I cannot remember when I last felt this relaxed. Not that a sane person would call me relaxed.

I’m on vacation for only a week; and at the end of the week I turn 49. My joy is not unmitigated.

Spring. Finally. Maybe.

Five weeks after the false hope of March, it finally warmed up enough to get out on my bike and flap my love-handles in the wind. I work a loose shirt to protect the innocent. This was a marvelously perfect day for biking. Not too cool, not too warm. Steady, but not too insistent breeze. Light traffic.

Today will probably be the best day Brooklyn will have all year. Everybody was out. People on bikes—some cute guys, too— everywhere. McCarran Park, between Greenpoint and Williamsburgh, was packed, as were the sidewalk tables at the restaurant on Smith St.

Feather & Fan Update

I’m ⁷/₈ through round 165. This sounds like a lot, but that’s only 72% of the total stitches. Only twenty-five more rounds, mostly plain knitting until I get to the crocheted cast-off, which will be the end of me.

I finished a scarf, too, since we last met. I’ll take pictures eventually.

Confession

Sometimes blogging seems like Work. Some days at Work are 90% e-mail.

In Other News

• We’re having a home office installed tomorrow. We had to move everything out of the office in preparation. It seems quite large now, but the living room is cramped.
• A table, two good-quality bookcases, a mirror and a black plastic cylindrical trash-can went out to the curb to make way for the new furniture. All found homes, good ones I hope. The trash can went first—odd, since it was the cheapest thing out there. The last to go was the six-foot bookcase. I was surprised, How often do you find a six-foot, maple-veneer, mahogany-finish bookcase in excellent condition with all the shelves on the street FOR FREE?
• My elder sister turned 50 today. This is not a consolation to me. I did remember to call her. Eventually.
• I warned my younger sister that in the two years after I turn 50 I am unlikely to forget that she is relatively right behind me, so she should be nice to both my older sister and me.
• I have realized that my the vacation I had (vaguely) planned out of the country next year to avoid spending my 50^th with anyone but J will probably not happen. We have a major system conversion due at the end of April next year at work.
• Of the tens of people I saw biking today, I was one of the four oldest. I’m almost certain the other three are gay. And they looked pretty good. I’ve got some work ahead of me.

Overcast, not as warm as I’d like, but so much better than last week.

Time to Get My Butt in Gear

Call me an optimist, but the weather doesn’t seem quite as antagonistic this week. I need to get the bike into the local shop for a tune-up and a new back wheel, so I can get these love handles out flapping in the wind once more.

I was in a cab on the way home from my biweekly massage, where if I didn’t make a conscious effort to relax I would probably feel like a blob of kneaded lard, and I saw throng of poeple going into the local gym. At 7pm! Spring is definitely coming.

I’d probably be more motivated if that throng hadn’t been, on average, twelve years younger than me.

However, I absolutely refuse to go up a waist-size. Those hideous gym walls will see me yet again. Soon. Right after I get over the fact that I now have to get up at 4:30, despite what the lying clock says.

And the Point of Starting DST Three Weeks Earlier Is?

And we save energy by having the lights and heat on earlier in the colder and darker early morning hours? I can’t help thinking somehow ExxonMobil, Chevron Texaco, BP, et al. are making money off this.

Lulled into Complacency

I’m having one of those weeks where people cancel meetings I have to attend and postpone deadlines and thereby open huge swatches of my calendar. I forget what I’m supposed to be working on. Doom, clearly, approaches.

There’s a schedule out there somewhere that says I’m required for 730 hours of requirements review over the next four months. 4 months × 21 business days/month × 8 business hours/day = 672 hours. Doom approaches.

Today: light rain off and on, mild

Well, the new year began, but that’s about the only thing that changed. Once I put something off, I continue putting it off until it’s ridiculously late.

I intended to post last weekend just to say that Saturday was so warm I got to go for a bike ride, but didn’t. I was going to entitle it Love Handles Flapping in the Wind. I’m not as out of shape as I expected, having gone over an hour before I began to feel tired, but the bike suit was a bit tighter than it was when I bought it. Anyway, five minutes into the ride I took the jacket off and tied it around my waist because I was too hot—in January—thus conveniently camouflaging my backside.

These are the socks I finished two weeks ago. I ran out of the green yarn—as I expected to—undid the toe of the first sock, joined the two yarn ends and knit the foot of the second sock while frogging the toe and foot of the first until the two socks were the same length.

It’s odd how hard it was to get a good shot of my feet, given how often I’ve had to crop them out of other photos.

I like the shaping in the sock since my ankles are a bit narrower than my calves. No bagging and the sock stays up.

This photo also shows that my flat feet have resulted in curved ankles. Not pretty.

This is the same yarn, Gems Opal, with the same shaping and a different pattern, a k5p1 rib. This is my current conference call project, though I’ve been taking it on the subway too. Not that I get much done in the ten minutes I’m on the train.

The second whippet coat is vexing me. I have a good acrylic microfiber yarn, Fantasy by Dark Horse Yarns, but have struggled with the shaping and getting the desired fabric density. I’ve started over twice and am now doing cables on #6 Am, though the wrapper calls for #8’s. This will definitely not be finished by the time we visit my Mom (and the whippets) next weekend.

I keep looking at Feather & Fan, wanting to pick it up again, but I need to finish the whippet coat.

That’s it. Nothing else has happened.

So I bought bike pants and a torso-covering-thing. This is the best shot you’ll get. Please remember that I’m short and even my own camera is treacherous.

It was one of the shorter weekends. I actually did things. Saturday I went out to buy bike pants—tights, let’s be honest—and other cool weather gear to extend the cycling season. Then I went out for an easy and incredibly fast ride out to Gerritsen Beach and an incredibly grueling grind back into a substantial headwind. I think the pants helped. 2:05. Or maybe I was just trying not to be seen in one place too long.

Secretly I hope that the pants flatter my butt and passing motorists think, “Wow, I wish my butt looked that good!” but somehow I doubt it.

Then I finished the laundry I started before I left. And then we walked to dinner at Alma (Columbia & Degraw) and walked home and watched the first Pirates of the Caribbean.

Friday night we watched The Brothers Grimm. Confused, at best.

Sunday, it was an excursion to Fairway in Red Hook. I can’t tell you what we spent, but let’s just say we shouldn’t have to buy more than milk and veggies for awhile. Then I went for a bike ride. It was only an hour-forty, but after the ride of the day before my calves were cramping and I did just pick the right direction out —Maspeth & Long Island City—to fight the wind on the way back again. Cold & sweating. After showering I made braciole and we had dinner and we watched something on TV.

J made me biscotti.

Somewhere in there I also passed the 54% mark on Feather & Fan.

Diminishing Yarn Cake

I also started a new hat on the subway out of leftovers of Debbie Bliss baby cashmere.

Why F&F is a good cool weather project.

Yes, I can still sit cross-legged with my feet tucked under.

Still listening to The Decembrists: The Crane Wife