Just regular folks.

I finally got my powerbook from work today. It’s a nice machine, and it must have cost work a pretty penny. They gave me the one with the DVD burner in it… not to mention a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to go along wtih it. I’m pysched, except for the fact that one piece of software that I thought would run on it won’t. That’ll affect my work stuff just a little bit. ah well…

Today (sunday), I raced in the Downieville Classic in Downieville, CA which is about an hour east of Sacramento.

Me and Todd (dude from the shop) drove up there Saturday night after work to meet Jason and Don (more dudes from work) at some campsite that they reserved. Of course, like all great plans, this one was foiled as we couldn’t find the campsite. We ended up driving another hour and a half to a place close to the start line and slept in the car by the side of the road.

6 hours of sleep is always good for a bike race.

The race was about 25 miles long. the first 9 miles are straight up in the open. The last 14 are straight down thru some really really technical terrain.

My Quads cramped on mile 4. I walked until mile 5. I managed to pedal thru most of the pain, as the top section was pretty flat. But then on the decent, you have to pay attention to everything. Your arms burn from riding the brakes all the way, and taking the shock from the impacts.

At about mile 8 I realized that I was in pretty bad shape. My calves had started to cramp too. I thought about turning around, but decided to press on. Again I managed to ride thru my cramps on the descent.

I was doing rather well at the top. A place where I had crashed before. so My confidence was high. But I ended up crashing and almost falling into a ravine. After than I became pretty tentative. I didn’t help me that my hanmstrings and inner thigh muscles were cramping too, tho somehow it all went away if I was just pedaling.

I finished the race in about 3:43 (guess) I was hoping for about 2:45, but oh well. I’m out of shape.

My legs are so stiff right now..

Today we are still struggling with jetlag. Vince got up at 2am and pretty much refused to go back to sleep. As a result, we were the first ones in line at the 6am opening of the breakfast buffet. He loves the buffet, he loves choosing what to eat and piling it on his plate. After we finished breakfast at 6:30am, we headed to the pool on the 8th floor. I was planning that swimming was going to be our morning activity and we were done with it by 8:15.

This afternoon, we got the keys to our apartment, I saw it for the first time. The pool complex is amazing, with 3 different pools, one lap, one an adult swim and one toddler pool, all huge. Vince wanted to strip down to his underwear and jump on in.

Randomness abounding…

Looking like work is picking up even more now. I’ve apparently got a 2 week deadline to design, code, and test my module that isn’t even speced out yet. whee!. I went on a yelling spree today. I sent a not so nicely worded email that basically was like, “everyone talks way too much in this group.” a couple people in my group thought it was a harsh email. oh well. I wonder if people think I’m difficult to work with. Or if I’m the group asshole? or maybe they just think I’m weird. Whatever.

I saw Ted’s x-ray the other day. He totally crushed his collarbone. It’s in 4 pieces right now, and apparently they are _not_ going to do surgery and pin it. I don’t understand how it’s supposed to heal straight, but okay! No wonder it hurt a ton for him too. I was like, dude, you’re a wuss. it’s not that bad! :p

I got the dukes of hazard dvd from you doris! Thanks! Where’d you get the elvis card from anyways? It’s pretty cool.

I’m trying to go suit shopping for arif’s wedding. i dunno if i’ll make it in time as it seems like it takes 10 days for people to tailor it. ah well. I suppose I should get one anyways, since I really don’t have a suit to begin with, and it’ll come in handy for other weddings. Looks like I’m going to go with a black 3 button suit from Brooks Brothers!

In other news, I don’t know if I can keep commuting anymore. getting up at 7:30 is killing me. Rather I should say, going to be at midnight is killing me. but ah sa. I need to rethink this…

Donald out!

Ruby, with her carefully arranged flight schedule, made to carefully coincide with predicted bowel movements, arrived not with us as planned, but 12 hours earlier on the continuation of our first leg out of Frankfurt. Jeremy had spent many days trying to arrange a good flight for Ruby, which included a 12 hour layover in Frankfurt to insure her a rest and nice kennel. But the baggage people left her on the plane and allowed her to go ahead without us. Ruby the pioneer! She got to the airport 10 hours earlier than us. Luckily, the company we hired to help up put her in quarintine was already on-site at the airport and moved Ruby to the quarentine station without us. We are fortunate to have procured their services as they paid for the quarentine space before we even landed. Lucky for us, we also taped copies of all the import information onto Ruby’s crate. Visiting hours are from 4-6 today, so I’m hoping the kids and I can make it down there to see her new digs for a month.

It sounds like our apartment is fully furnished and ready for move-in, but the landlords are still waiting for the 2 month deposit from AMD. Hopefully, that will happen today and we can move in on Saturday before Jeremy has to go to Germany for 5 days.

I’m going to try and get a cool cell-phone today. I don’t know what it is about being in Asia, but I love cell phones here. It’s becuase I’m cheap and I love not paying for incoming calls and I truly believe that the cell phones are cuter here than in the US. My major goal for the next two years is to learn how to text message. Woo hoo!

We are doing our 12 hour layover in Frankfurt. Vince loves flying business class! He’s pretty hilarious with his video remote and a beautiful tray of mac and cheese with nuggets and huge headphones on his head. He went to bed about midnight EST and got up at 4 am EST. And now he’s sleeping during our layover.

Edda’s doing well, she slept for most of the flight.

The Singapore flight attendants are amazing, remembering everbody’s name and being so nice and helpful.

We are hoping Ruby is doing well in baggage, the reason we are doing this 12 hour layover is so Ruby gets to be in a larger kennel and gets to walk around.

July 19

Mom is heading to Denver. Her starting date is August 8th. The assignment is a temp assignment of 3-6 months and can be longer. With higher hour rate and per diem, Mom is ready for the new work in Denver. I will move Mom’s stuffs to Washougal and drive Mom to Denver.

The other upside is that Denver is much easier for me to get in and out. It is also cheaper.

With lot of incentives from Ford, we bought a Ford Crown Victoria yesterday. We need to have a car in Washougal and it is going to be Ford Windstar. F150 was out due to it is too big for Mom plus the reflection of the dash board on the front window bothers Mom a lot.

We did not buy F150 since it is too big. The big problem is the reflection due to the panal which is made of three parts with different colors. It shows on the front glass and there is lots of distraction. The second problem is the rear view mirror is too small and the back window is very small too so the view is not that good even the side mirrors are so big. Daddy is bit disapointed that we did not buy F150.

However, the Crown Vic is a very smooth car and I do like it. With V8 engine, it runs very smoothly. I did not get leather seats since they did not have one. Daddy did not like leather seats anyway.

I think I will know if I have official letter for Denver offer.

We had Arif’s bachelor party last night. Tho I must admit it’s probably not quite the bachelor party that Arif imagined he’d have 4-5 years ago. No strip club or strippers. Just basically hanging out in Arifs’ old stomping grounds in the City. Aka the Fog City Diner and Cafe Greco on Columbus.

I think we’re all getting old. everyone was pretty much beat after that. Oh well.