Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Friday, March 30, 2007

"Only want to see you gagging in the Yellow Haze...Yellow Haze, Yellow Haze...Yellow Haze, Yellow Haze...Yellow Haze, Yellow Haze...Only want to see you gagging in the Yellow Haze."-The Artist formerly known as Prince

It's spring here in the Peach State and with that comes pine pollen. Lots of pine pollen. Buckets and buckets and buckets of pine pollen. The pollen count measured in Atlanta is hovering right around 6000 right now which is somewhere between extremely high to astronomically outrageous depending on whose scale you're using. Everything is covered in this sort of yellow dust stuff. Washing your car is an exercise in futility as is trying to sweep off your porch.

Yesterday I rode a nice 40 mile hill interval route and when I got home it looked like I'd been trying to eat Cheetos with the insides of my elbows and the back of my knees. I looked at the face in the mirror at home and I was jaundiced and my lips were completely yellow.

Plant sperm is great if you're a plant I suppose but I'm not a plant. My sinuses and other respiratory bits and pieces don't seem to want to be impregnated in a planty sort of way so breathing has been interesting.

Hopefully we'll get some rain this weekend to knock some of this stuff out of the air but right now we just have moderate winds to blow all the stuff around and get it into and through ever nook and cranny imaginable.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Finally, a ride worth posting about. Just the day after I spend a post to whine about my poor cycling form I go out and lay down a great ride. I managed to do 42 miles at a pace of 22.6 mph solo. Even better, I managed to do it with an average heart rate of 160 bpm which is well below my lactate threshold. I'll probably ride like crap today (my legs hurt pretty badly after the ride yesterday and this morning) but that's because I did some hill sprints and big gear intervals as part of the ride for power training. Maybe I'll take it easy today and then if I can go do some hill intervals tomorrow. I have to spend most of the morning and early afternoon in a meeting about our new elementary education program here at the College so I expect that I'll probably be frustrated enough to need to blow of some steam doing climbing repeats on Hog Mountain. The question will be whether I do the four mile loop the easy way with a short power climb and then a 1 mile rhythm climb, the hard way with the 1.5 mile rhythm climb that has a real kick at the end or a longer six mile loop with a stairstep climb that's about 2 miles long that has a hard bit at the beginning and then a really, really steep 20+% quarter mile long hard bit at the end. Maybe I'll mix it up depending on how I feel.

Thanks for Reading

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

This last weekend was a long one. We got word on Thursday that one of the Lovely Wife's sisters was leaving her husband for some pretty good reasons. We had planned to go and visit a friend in Birmingham but quickly changed plans to head to LA to help with the late night packing and moving. It was a stressful time as you might imagine but everyhting seems to have been accomplished with as little drama as possible.

I managed to get a couple of good rides in and am now near 1000 for the month. My strength still isn't anywhere I need it to be and I'm beginning to think I won't be doing much racing this month. Between battling scheduling issues and some vertigo which seems to come and go randomly, I feel like I've been struggling to get into some kind of shape. I went in for a physical and neither the doctor nor the blood tests indicated that anything was wrong but I'm still not sure. Hopefully some of this stuff will clear up over the next few weeks.

Classes continue along fairly well. It's great having four dedicated groups of students who really seem to want to learn. It makes my job a lot easier. I've arrived at that time of the year where I have to decide what my focus is going to be. I'll be chair of our Faculty Senate next year so that's pretty much locked in. What I'm trying to figure out is how much student study skills stuff I'd like to do. I think I'd liek to do the same summer seminar I did last year through community ed but I'm not sure about doing an on-campus thing. I don't get paid and I got almost no response last year. The student services division says that they want to support such activities but then they didn't last year. I think I'd rather spend the time promoting the Christian group I'm the faculty advisor for. Maybe when I'm not doing faculty governance things I can take that time and energy and try to do something to get student services moving int he right direction.

Thanks for reading

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Thursday, March 22, 2007

OK...so apparently not everything was broken. I call home today to see if my lovely wife would like to do lunch and what do I find out? The city is digging up our driveway. I'm not entirely certain why but it doesn't look like it's to fix whatever is leaking into the median between the sidewalk and the road in front of our house. Do you know what breeds in sitting water with a slick, oily sheen (I mean, besides boxing promoters and horror film producers)? Mosquitoes. Malaria carrying, encephalitis inducing, blood sucking, buzzing-in-your-ear annoying mosquitoes. So not only do we have to deal with rambling boxing promoters, raging horror film producers and blood thirsty, carnivorous insects, we can't escape them and we can't invite any of our friends over to enjoy the scenery. Maybe I can get lucky and get some film of the insectile pterodactyls sucking the black bile blood of some mutated boxer who was about to chop off the head of a surgically altered pro-wrestling bimbo. If so, I'll post something here to let you know about it. That is assuming, of course, that the city waterworks guys don't dig to China, discover gold under my sidewalk or, worst of all, discovery my secret underground lair.

Thanks for Reading.

Labels: blood, boxing, holes, horror films, insects

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Monday, March 19, 2007

This great Dylan tune is a perfect description for what seems to be going on with the physical elements of our home here of late. It seems that things started last weekend when I tried to mow the lawn only to discover that the riding lawnmower wouldn't start. Being somewhat mechanically inclined, I was able to determine that the battery of the machine had succumbed to the elements and was in need of replacement (I love multimeters). Given that I have this before with cars, I was surprised to learn that they no longer actually get the battery ready for you to just drop in the machine; you have to fill it with acid and charge it yourself now-a-days. So I had to buy a charger too. Once I got the battery ready I could start the mower but the thing wouldn't move. After some additional poking around, I found that the drive belt had come loose and I was able to get that fixed. I felt like I had been pretty clever.

During this time, our dishwasher stopped working. A little bit of a pain but we can do dishes by hand so not a huge deal. Hoping that the solution would be as easy as the lawnmower I did some poking around but I was unable to figure out to fix the problem which seems to be a temporarily (I hope) seized motor. Then, yesterday while I was mowing, our downstairs furnace cut out and now only moves the air around without heating it. I stay a long ways away from HVAC stuff so we'll call someone about that. Fortunately, we have dual zone heating so the upstairs of our house was still being heated or it might have been mighty cold last night.

Finally, we found that a bat had gotten into the house last night. We're not exactly sure how but this makes us wonder if bats have moved back into the walls of one of our second floor dormers. I guess I'll have to get that bathouse built and put up on the back of our property and hopefully lure them out of the house and to it. I'll also have to find a way to seal up the house to keep this from happening again.

Oh the joys of home ownership.

Hopefully, the old wives' tale of things happening in threes is going to hold and we're done with things breaking. On the positive side, I got two really good rides done over the weekend and I'm over 600 miles for the month. This week will be a recovery week with medium long and easy rides planned for each day of the week.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a good week.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, March 16, 2007

So, tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day and to our south, the residents of Savannah will celebrate the life of this great Christian man by reinforcing every stupid Irish stereotype in the book. Granted, some of the best ales and whiskeys in the world come from Ireland but that doesn't mean St. Patrick made them or that all those of Irish descent drink said beverages until their sick enough to recycle them. So, in honor of the real St. Patrick, I offer you his beautiful morning prayer:

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth and His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.

I arise today
Through the strength of the love of cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In service of archangels,
In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs,
In preachings of the apostles,
In faiths of confessors,
In innocence of virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea,
Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock.

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me;
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's hosts to save me
From snares of the devil,
From temptations of vices,
From every one who desires me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone or in a mulitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and evil,
Against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of women and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.
Christ shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that reward may come to me in abundance.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

The Physicist   Link Me    |