I rode my bike to work today. And now for the big news, I rode it back home too. I’ve ridden to before, but Amber has always come and gotten me. It helps assuage her guilt about me riding while she drives places. Not that she should feel the least bit guilty. The ride is just over 7.5 miles each way (a little longer on the way home because of the frontage road situation). I’m going to try and ride Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That way Amber has the car when she needs it and I might get in a little better shape. If I can get the ride to less than 30 minutes in each direction I’ll be happy.
The morning ride is a bit different than the afternoon. First, it is darker, generally a bit more downhill, cooler and with less traffic. The drivers also tend to be a bit friendlier. They still cut me off and try to force me out of my lane, but there are fewer of them and they are less stressed not having been at work all day so they don’t actually look like they are going to hit me, they just look like they want me to think they are going to hit me.
In the afternoon it is about 20 degrees hotter and sadly a little longer and more uphill. Plus when I got on the bike my legs pretty well felt like I hadn’t just had a 10 hour rest. It felt like I had two lead weights on the pedals. But my sad, sore, heavy, worthless legs were really only part of the problem. The other part is that my butt apparently took it personally this morning. It is still punishing me now. Hurts like hell. I suppose I’ll build up calluses or something, but boy it hurts now and I’m sitting on the couch. On top of the pain in my butt my underwear also decided to fight back. They were bunching in ways and places that are as far as I can tell not in line with the laws of physics. Maybe a new seat is in order.
I finally got the ducting in the attic replaced. Took a long, long time. I am more flexible and patient than I would have imagined. Think hot yoga with jeans, knee pads, nails above your head, a respirator and lots of insulation all over you. When I say hot, I mean 10 minutes and your clothes are totally soaked (like you jumped in a nasty, salty lake).
But we are cool and breezy in all the rooms now. The above photo shows just one section of damage. I put the paper in there to better illustrate the hole. The big one is about 4 1/2 inches wide and 3 inches tall. All the ducts were like this every few feet they had a series of holes. Some small, some large, some looked like they had been shot at. But now all that cold air is blowing into my bedroom. And it is good.
For those of you not up-to-date on Wesley’s lingo here is a crib sheet:
| Wesley | English | Notes |
| airpop | airport | And yes, he knows that this is where planes are and where people go away. |
| appupb | apple | Fun to throw and bite, but not really for eating |
| bope | boat | Everything that floats is a boat. |
| bubup | bubbles | No bath is complete without bubups |
| cocoa | snowman | We read a book called “Snowmen at Night” which has a line that talks about “ice cold cocoa” so snowmen are cocoas. |
| crush | turtle | From the father turtle in Finding Nemo |
| die | fly,cry,dry | Sometimes it is a fly on Jillian who is crying. |
| dit | dip | This refers to any sauce or sauce like food you can dip the rest of your food into. May be syrup, ketchup, sour cream, salad dressing, peanut butter, etc. |
| gahk | walk, chalk, rock | How do you know which? Probably he wants all three. Otherwise he’ll point, pull, or drag you to what he wants. |
| haunt | ant | Might be my fault. I told him ants were hot. So we have hot ants = haunt.” |
| hoofoo | train | Almost ChooChoo |
| jeejee | Jillian | Now Jillian’s nickname. |
| nanny | banana | I guess nana was too traditional |
| nimanumuh | Nemo | He wants to watch Finding Nemo. You do have a copy don’t you? |
| oush | ice | Boy loves his ice |
| ooh | cow | accompanied by finger on head. Cows in Texas don’t say moo they say ooh |
| shope | sheep, sweep, rake | Sheep is getting more like sheep, but sweep (or sweeping leaves with the rake) is still shope |
| woowoo | butterfly | This one is a mystery |
He of course knows a lot more words and phrases that are pretty easy to distinguish. He also uses a number of signs either alone or in combination with his words.
I opened up Flickr tonight to see this: Flickr telling me that I didn’t have any photos uploaded yet. You can see that the total number of photos is showing as 0.I didn’t panic too much. I thought to take a screenshot before doing anything. One click on my profile and it got over itself, but this is why I’m glad we backup all our photos. If this was real, it would really, well…suck.