Busy Month!

For obvious reasons, I tend to post less when I'm busy, and thusly should have more to say. Well, I have been Very busy this past month, so I have not posted at all.

First and most interestingly, I have taken over as the roaster for Northwest Coffee Roasting. Awesome. I've been doing all of the roasting for two weeks, and Eric (the soon to be former roaster) has a couple of roasting days left before he's gone entirely.

Secondly, we got rear eneded in our truck. The bumper was dented. The other guys car may be totalled. It's fixed now. The other guys insurance company seems to have done right by us. Who knew that ever happened?

Thirdly, Anne and I were in our first ever bike race. It was awesome. We were promised fun, and it was delivered. I will only divulge details on the bike race in person, so ask.

Fourthly, our garden has taken off. Crazy! We've got carrots, we'll have tomatoes eventually, we've planted some herbs, and our beans seem to be dieing. :( I spent a while weeding this morning. I pulled up about a bushel of mint. Lots of mint.

Fifthly, Anne's latin class has just finished. It is good. 5 weeks is not enough to learn Latin. Also, Latin grammer is stupid hard. Really. I found a page she conjugated a verb on. Just one verb. The chart spilled over onto the back. A Latin verb conjugated into like 70 forms. I'm not kidding.

Finally, We have jumped into high gear in preparing for our vacation in less than two weeks now. We're taking the train to Sedaila, and biking back. It's a long way. 225ish miles. We'll have a week. We might skip it if the weather is awful, but right now it looks like it will be good.

My sister got married

My sister got married last weekend. It was good. For reasons that are not at all clear to me, she chose to get married in St. Charles, MO. If you aren't from around here, St. Charles is like St. Louis, but with more cars, no soul, and nothing of any interest. I had been in St. Charles last summer once, but not since. I forgot how much I dislike it.

But I digress. My sister's wedding was very nice. I got to see many relatives who I don't get to see very often. Why am I so bad at keeping up with people I don't see regularly? I don't know.

Our summer is filling up fast. We really hope to go to KC for a weekend in addition to everything else we had planned. I'm really looking forward to that trip, we'll just need to find a place for it. We also want to go to North English to see my grandpa. That will be good, too.

Technology

I have been thinking lately about communications technology. I think that it has fundamentally changed how we communicate with other people.
Is it more efficient? Certainly.
Is it faster? Yes, of course.
Does it provide more quality in our communications? No.

Bottom line: Is it better? I don't know.

I've decided. I'm taking it back.
I'm going to stop it all.

For a week I won't communicate with anyone electronically.
I'll turn off my phone. I won't post on my blog. I won't read blogs.
I realize that it may have to happen at work, but that cant' be helped.

This absolutely does not mean I want to be a shut-in. I like talking to people. I enjoy communication. So, please, that week, swing by where I work. I'll buy you a cup of coffee, my door will be open. Stop by my house. I'll show you what I've put in my garden and give you a beer. If you live too far away, send me a letter. I'll send you one back.
I would like very much to have an actual conversation. With you. Really, if you read my blog, take this seriously. Stop by. Or let me know, maybe I'll come calling at your house.

It will be April 26-May 2. I am going to tell my friends and family who don't read my blog.
I would encourage you all to do the same.

A long ago promised update

This post regards my milege project.
For a recap -- I am tracking the miles per week that I drive my car. Anne and I share a car, so it is the total miles we drive together or seperately. I would like, on that account, to divide all of the numbers herein by two. That, however, would be disingenous as the fact is that I drive more than Anne does. I will leave the numbers unaltered, please bear in mind that these totals are for two people.
These numbers have been tracked for a 20 week period from September 21 to Feburary 15.

Overall total miles driven: 2843.6
Gallons of gas burned: 142
Amount spent on gasoline (Approx) $400
Overall miles per week: 135.4 or 19.34 miles per day.
Miles per week when I worked at TC (the job I quit in October partially because of the long commute) 180.23 Or 25.75 per day.
Post quitting TC avg. 127 or 18 miles per day.
Post quitting TC on weeks we did not drive out of town 69.8 miles per week or 9.98 per day.

These are very interesting numbers to me. I expected the overall total to be lower, and I expected more of a difference between the TC and post TC driving. We did take more than the usual number of out of town trips during the past 20 weeks, betweenthe holidays (two 400+ mile weeks to visit relatives in Iowa) and not working weekends for the first time in years. I'm a little distressed by my non-trip miles of nearly 10 per day. I recognize that that includes the winter, and I have hardly biked anywhere in a couple months, but that still seems high. Must resolve to not drive more. My goal is to have a 0 mile week this spring. Ideally more than one.

Some working definitions
Out of town trip means any trip past the 270 belt or outside the greater Metro east I'm not splitting hairs with this one, pretty well all the trips have been Columbia or Kirksville.

A week is defined as from Sunday morning when I reset the odometer to the next Sunday morning when I reset it again It includes all of the miles my car is driven in that week, weather it is myself, my wife, or borrowed. (I don't think I lent the car out in that time)

I only worked at TC for three weeks of this project, so the numbers will reflect that only figuring lightly into the overall averages.

Banner Day!

Today has been notable in many respects!
Details to follow, suffice to say that my new bike has been ordered (well, the parts) and I may have a chance to ride it soon!

My adventure!

So, yesterday between 8:30am and 3:00pm, we got about 10" of snow here in St. Louis.

I had quite the winter adventure yesterday.

Against my better judgment, I set out for work (leaving extra time) at 9:00. Normally the drive takes me ~20-25 min. The roads were slick, snowy and getting slicker. When I saw that the highway was going under 20 MPH, I should have cashed it in right then, but I stuck it out. At 10:30, after 90 minutes of driving, I got the truck firmly stuck on the I-70 on-ramp. This held up traffic until a cop showed up, determined that I really was good and stuck, and called a tow-truck. The tow-truck (actually a rolloff truck) driver was nice, he pulled my truck up onto the back, and away we went.
After some sliding on the part of the truck (with my truck on the back) We eventually made it to the garage. Nothing was wrong with my truck, and I wasn't given a ticket, so that was all good. On the other hand, I couldn't really get anywhere. The driver offered to drop me off at the metro station on his way to his next pickup. (in fact a USPS truck stuck in a ditch) I got onto the train at the North Hanley Station.
Strangely, there were about three people waiting for the train, and about eight employees shoveling the platform. They were not shoveling the walk, stairs, or bus platform. Just the train platform. Over and over as far as I could tell. (it Was snowing really hard, but one or two people shoveling it over and over might have been enough, imo) Once I achieved train-dom, I saw that all the platforms had a similar surfeit of employees. Mysterious. At length, the train stopped at the old familar CWE station. Yay! My travails were almost at an end.
After a 30 minute wait for a bus, I secured a position of the number 93, which would take me the remaining 2.5 miles home. I spent much of that time standing under the canopy, watching the snow come down as hard as I think I ever have. It was nearly a white-out. The roads were getting slicker all the time, and the bus I was on had started to slide around more than I was comfortable with.
So it was, with some relief, that I disembarked by Anthino's Taverno, and trudged the remaining couple of blocks home. Anne greeted me with dry clothes, hot tea, hot soup, and fresh biscuits. Have I mentioned lately that she's the best ever? Thus, at 1:00 pm. My aborted trip to work ended. Four hours, and my car was still in Edmunsun, MO.
This morning, I got on the bus early to catch the train up to N. Hanley so I could pick up the car. The roads are much much better today.

Have I learned a lesson? Yes! St. Louis is blessed with a mediocre public transit system, but when the weather is awful, for god's sake, take it! it will save you hours and hours.

It is done.

Well, mostly.
We have all of the boxes and junk in our house.
Now begins the long slow uphill struggle to find each of our pieces of junk a place in the new house.

Additionally, it has been a remarkably busy week at work. I may be getting a promotion to be the manager of the store I work at. Certainly, Chris, the current manager is leaving. He put in his two weeks notice on Monday, but has apparently been told to go by this Friday. Woah! Alarming.


Troubles seem to come in packs. Not that these things are necessarily troubles, but they are certainly big stuff.

It's official.

Anne and I are homeowners.
We closed this morning, then we both had to rush off to work.
Grrr. I want to go over to my new house.

House buying joy!

We went on the final walk through yesterday morning, and we have the closing on the house tomorrow morning. Wargh! or something.

It's extremely awesome! Very small. The upstairs is actually somewhat smaller than our apartment. The full basement makes up for that, but we're apparently getting a ping-pong table. (!)
There are more pictures on my flickr account. (see side bar)

Big doin's.

I haven't posted in a while. I plan to have a more comprehensive post soon, but for the moment suffice to say that I've got big doin's.
Anne and I are buying a house, and the store I work at is closing. Like now. I'm going to (yet) another store in the company.

More later, I think.

Auction...

I have finally gotten around to listing a bunch of my tools and misc. armour on the Armour Archive. This has been a very melancholy experience. On one hand, bigger and better things. Bicycles certainly pay a lot better than armour ever did. I'll get free trips to places like Europe rather than KC or Pennsylvania. On the other hand, we fear change. I miss making armour. I can't take as much pride in my work. I'm not making something out of nothing. So, some good, some bad. When you open one door, you can't help but close a different one. I'd like to make armour as a hobby. Maybe someday I will.

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted.

So, I have lost track of my blog I guess.
I have been busy, but that's really no excuse, is it?
Anyway,
I went to visit my relatives on my Dad's side last weekend. There were 31 Romines there. That's a whole lot of Romines. It was pretty fun until the cops showed up. Work at the bike shop goes more or less well. Sometimes frustrating, sometimes enjoyable, it beats working in a cubicle.

Our van had some malfunction, so I've been riding my bike to work this week. Whoof! Two days this week I went 15 miles round trip, and today I went ~7, then got a ride home with Anne. Between the ride, and working on my feet 8 hours, my legs are pretty tired.