Since I'm the only one reading this damn thing, I guess I'm not too upset that my last post was almost a year ago. :D This will pretty much be a poorly written "brain dump", but here we go ...

Lots of things have been going on this year:

Emeril Green Show in Jan: (http://www.yoursforgoodfermentables.com/2009/08/veggiedag-thursday-organic-beer-cuisine.html)

Thailand in Feb (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandio/sets/72157615616949248/)

Germany in September for Q&A's wedding (http://www.quincyandachim.com/)

And it looks as if I'm on track to break two thousand of miles for 2008. Hard to tell as I've forgotten to turn on the Garmin a few times.

I've still found "zero" incentive to work on the house, though I did end up replacing the hot water heater and our heating unit for our HVAC ... ouch. We're looking into replacing the kitchen windows, back door, front door's frame (as it's rotted), and possibly some other small repairs. The major deck renovation has been put on hold once again, but I'm confident that I'll be moving ahead with that late next year. Sandi would like to do some more painting this Fall, so the downstairs and hallways will be going from that Poo Brown to a nice white and/or slate. It will go nicely with the red that I finally finished in the dinning room. I'm also still in search of old brick to fix our wall in the dinning room, but I think laziness has really taken its toll on me. I'm hoping to also fix up the closet in the dinning room that hides the water heater and HVAC as the closet was widened after the water heater was replaced.

Our third set of tenants are on their way out this weekend and we have yet to fill the apartment. I'm a little worried, but I'm sure we'll find someone in September (knock on wood). Yong moved in upstairs a few months back to shorten his commute to UMD, so he's been able to help us out a little too ... which is nice.

Overall, it's been another good year. Sandi and I are celebrating five years together next week as well as my 33rd b-day. Time flies ... that's for sure; but it's goes so much smoother with such great people in my life!

Well, survived yet another birthday. My parents came in town to celebrate both my Dad's and my b-day. Plenty of food and drink and very little slumber. I though I'd have the following week to recover, but my b-day surprise guest (it was my parents last year) Timmy G is in town. Between Guitar Hero 3, drinking beer out of the fridge, and trips to GG's it has been a long week. It was nice to see everyone last weekend though ... really made me see who my good friends truly are. You all make living a hell of a lot easier!! Love you guys! Gabs too.

No riding last week as I was still out of commission with a missing spacer. My buddy Rudi helped (read: did) install it before our PPTC Tuesday night ride. Killed the ride ... though it was short, we really hit the back end averaging between 22 and 24 mph on MacArthur Blvd. Looking forward to our last Tues night ride of the year next week. Will hopefully have more success riding through the winter than I did last year.

Haines Point - ~32 miles; Avg speed (19.8 @ the Point); (13 overall post crash)

Okay ... here is my attempt to start logging my miles! It's a little late as the summer season is almost over, but my goal is to continue through the winter this year so I can hopefully start whipping some of the other guys on the Tuesday night rides!

Last night I decided to throw caution to the wind and brave the pelotons down at Haines Point. Every Tuesday and Thursday night the local race teams gather to work on speed and sprints. I can usually hang with the group for the first few laps before I bonk. I surprised myself last night though as I first caught up and passed one of the top riders from the Bike Rack team (who subsequently sown shifted and dropped me like a bad habit at the end of my pull) then hooked onto the peloton and ended up catching and passing the front pack. Granted they'd been riding pretty hard prior to me latching on, but I did catch them only a third of the way into their lap, so hooking on and then beating the lead group was pretty impressive (to me at least). Needless to say, some were who were not as psyched as I to see some dope without a race kit blowing them out of the water. It funny; I tried to chat with one of the lead riders (some older dude w/o a helmet) but he had ZERO interest in speaking with me. I really never grasped how some of these guys take themselves so seriously ... it's not like their top national competitors. I digress.

On the second lap with the peloton I was pissed by the entire pack. I was feeling a bit exasperated until I realized that I had nearly caught back up by the half-way point. The majority of the riders who had blown by me had now "blown up". It was quite satisfying to rocket past all the club posers and catch the back up with the faster pack. Guess I'm not as out of shape as I had thought.

I ended up doing a few more laps by myself without the group as the peloton had already started to break up. At about mile 26, I decided I would ride one last lap and head home. After passing the majority of the riders left on the road (not that impressive as most were only going about 19 mph) I decided to wind down and pull to the left. As I was merging left one of the riders I had passed decided to pass me on the left. Not the best idea as we collided. At first it appeared as if I would pull out of the mess, but I tightened up to much and turned my wheel too hard. Ass over tea kettle ... some road rash, a bent right break and a nicked seat. Not bad ... thank goodness I was only going about 22 when I hit the ground, it could have been a lot worse. We exchanged a few expletives before cooler heads prevailed and we both made sure that we were both okay (of course he had not dumped it ... bastard ... half kidding). He was very apologetic and a bit shaken up. I brushed off, checked the bike, and was back on my way. Up until that point I was averaging around 19.8. Like an idiot I did not check my stats before I reset my computer (it was bugging out after the crash), so I'm not really sure how many miles my ride actually was. After the reset, the cpu read 3 miles with an avg mph of 13. That was for my ride home. Oh well. All in all a good ride minus the crash. Now I'll have to see how much it's going to cost me this weekend when I take it into the shop.

With this ride, I'm up to about 59 miles for the week. Hoping to get some miles in for tonight or tomorrow.

Life can really deal some shitty hands sometimes. Keep your head up Johnny, we're all thinking of you.

Wow ... almost two years since I attempted to start a blog. That's about as successful as my attempts to rehab my house in DC!

We've actually made some progress with the place since I last wrote. The primary kitchen has been successfully renovated, the half bath has been completed, and Sandi has really made leaps and bounds fitting the first floor with all our new furniture (the pic is from last Christmas ... but gives a good perspective on the new interior design - it beats the previous living/storage room scheme we had going). We have also redesigned the front yard along with our tree box. We've been really pleased with the outcome as have our neighbors who continually comment on how great the front yard looks. Sandi has really done a great job.
My two partners have decided to move on, so I will officially become the sole owner later this year once the "refi" issues have been resolved. It's a bit daunting taking on the entire project myself, but it is a great challenge as well. So far so good ... knock on wood.

Sandi and I had a pretty eventful weekend. Went out to Bar Louie with friends on Friday for really cheap, yet really strong mojitos followed by tons of sushi and Asian Pear Sake (thanks Yong) with a side of Saporro at Nooshi Noodles.

Saturday day was eaten up with the repainting of the apartment so no riding for me. My incredibly awesome tenants (Joe and Sarah) moved out after two great years, so I've been cleaning, painting, repairing, etc. the space for our new tenants (Mike and Alison) who are also newlyweds ... just like our last tenants. Hopefully they'll be just a good. We're a little worried as they have a one year old black lab (same age as Gabi) and we're not exactly sure how Gabi is going to take the new tenant. Hopefully with a few aggressive "meet the new puppy on the block" sessions we'll have her acclimated. I was able to paint the remainder of the space on Saturday (bathroom, kitchen, hallways, and living room), but had to return early Sunday morning to replace the molding for the breakfast bar.

Sunday Gabi woke me up early for her morning constitutional, so I was able to get an early jump on the work for the apartment. It's always good starting early as I was finished with all my work by 11:30. All was for not though as Sandi dragged me out to the "country" for some TJ Maxx action followed up with a trip to Harris Teater's. We came home to a suspiciously quiet house after the shopping extravaganza. On further inspection I found Gabi knocked the "F-out" on the bed with the oscillating fan keeping her cool ... what an excellent watch dog. I actually scared her when I entered the room as she had not heard us enter the house. The perplexed/frightened look on her face when I woke her up was priceless.

It was incredibly hot this past weekend, so I clocked zero miles on the bike. I did however finally buy a replacement battery for my odometer, so I'll finally be able to measure the distance of my commute. I did not do it this morning as I opted to sleep in rather than fight the rising temperatures of July in DC. I'm riding with PPTC tomorrow night hopefully, so I will be driving to Springfield once again tomorrow morning.

Work is still a bit lame, though there may be more opportunities at this site than there were at my last position. Will have to explore further with the management here to determine what my next step will be.

Plans for this week:

Tuesday night ride with the PPTC
Hopefully commuting to work via bike Wednesday - Friday
Greg Cooper's B-Day bash this weekend
Tie up all the loose ends with the apartment (i.e. final cleaning)
Possibly a trip to the brew shop to start up the brewing line again ... been a while since my last batch (November ... a dry hopped DIPA). The beer has been fantastic ... not one bad batch yet. Hoping to make a Liberty Anchor clone next.

Well, my first post on the blogosphere ... so far, so good. Now if I can just refrain from posting any photos of naked women or political rants, I might just stay under the Google radar. Not too much to post at the moment since it is clear that I'll probably be the only one reading these posts ... if there are any to follow for that matter! Not too much is going on at this point in my life ... I turned 30, but that was more of "another day" than a milestone. I think someone was telling me that 60 is the new 30. What the hell does that mean? Then again, I think I ended up telling my Dad that same "factoid" on his 60th this year ... go figure. Speaking of 30, it was a bit odd to think that at this same age my parents had just had a baby boy (me) and then decided to move across country to start up an optometric practice in Maine. I, on the other hand, was fumbling around in the dark trying to decide what tie matched best with my pink shirt before I walked down to the office for a consulting job I can hardly stand. It's odd how times have changed, no? Think about it, my parents were starting a business and a family at 30 and I'm not sure what the heck is going on with my career ... let alone my life! It is a thought that could really mess someone up ... but instead of dealing with the situation head on, I did the mature thing; I met up with some old friends and got really drunk. What can I say, I'm a responsible adult! I ended up buying a house with two college buddies last year. The house projects are going really well. We've taken a bit of a long hiatus after we finished up the basement apartment, but we'll be starting work on the upstairs kitchen this month. Working on the kitchen in cooler weather will be much more palatable than trying to tear out cabinets in the stifling DC summer humidity. The kitchen will be a bit of a chore, but I am really looking forward to seeing how it turns out since the basement ended up looking quite nice. Who would have thought that those genius Swedes could design cabinets that were so easy to assemble and mount? Up until this time I had only credited them with those tasty little meatballs in their savory gravy! Anyway, I am really hoping that the house will be ready to sell by next year so I can move into a nice, tidy, new condo instead of another "fixer-upper Victorian". Then again, I wouldn't mind trying this again with a house of my own ... but I digress. The other "first" for me occurred this year when I finally brewed my first beer. I convinced my friend Al, a solid vodka drinker, to give beer a try. Well, after a few different tastings I had him hooked. So instead of tasting everyone else's beer, we decided to brew our own. It's an American brown ale and should be ready this afternoon. I'll have to wait a bit longer though since I'll need some extra equipment to hook up the CO2 tank to the soda keg. I also have to move all the food out of our old fridge so I can cool the beer down. Quite the operation for my first attempt ... here's hoping it doesn't taste like shit. Well, guess I really should get back to work. It's been a bit slow now that the fiscal year is over with. Hopefully now that things are slowing down for the year I can start planning some things. Maybe get a better handle on what's going on in my life ... professionally and personally. Or maybe I'll just call up some old friends tonight and tie one on. Yeah ... that sounds like the best approach!