Midday gold

Okay, so yesterday didn't turn out to be all that productive. I had a decent start in the morning, getting some stuff ready to work on, but then I took a walk down Roosevelt for a lunch meeting of the Leagyue of the Underemployed. After a delightful stroll, I met Dingo, Johnbai, Silvio, and Silvio's brother and sister (she visiting from Brazil) at Taste of India.

After some yummy curries and nan, the Silvios went off for touristy exploration and we remaining three headed down to Wallingford for a short geek-out at the local comics shop. I picked up my weekly assortment of testers (see the comics blog for details), Johnbai checked out some old titles, and even Dingo went looking for her favorite artists. Aside from momentary confusion from the clerk between Popbot and Popeye, the trip was successful - and even included Turkish club soda)!

Carless Johnbai was lingering in the RD prior to having to meet O at her bus from the east side, so we all dragged back to the townhouse to chillax. Otis came home, but too late for us to hold trials of Dingo's new badminton set. Johnbai was off to O and Dingo back to the hill and then a date with Leonard Cohen.

Otis and I went over to magnuson park for some sun, but stayed just a bit. I got a little more work done, and then we finally watched Broken Flowers. It was great.

That was a great day by any measure, but it didn't include a lot of productivity, so this morning I got up and jumped on the work with vim and vigor. I worked through the morning, and then took a luch break and went for a bike ride.

The bike ride was a highlight; since my overall tally has been off, at least I can celebrate an individual perfomance: this was a triple-dipple! Those familiar with my OCD ways will recall that this designation is applied to a ride with a length of at least 20 miles, a duration of at least 80 minutes, and an average speed of at least 15 miles per hour. I rode 21.2 miles in 82 minutes for an average speed of 15.5 mph.

It was really a sweet ride: I was tracking the splits, and here's how they stacked up:

First 30 minutes 7.94 miles 15.9 mph
Second 30 minutes 8.18 miles 16.4 mph
Last 22 minutes 5.06 miles 13.8 mph

Now here's the puzzling bit: the last segment inlcudes the ride up Stone Way from Lake Union to Wallingford, a slow mile-long hill on which I average about 8 mph, so it's logical that that bit's the slowest. But the first leg includes the ride down the Ravenna Hill, a steep, fast rollercoaster that I take to get to the Burke-Gilman trail. So why is that segment slower than the middle leg, which comprised only the flats of the trail, from Ravenna, up past Matthews Beach, and then back to the University? At any rate, it felt good to sustain a nice average speed over a full ride.

When I got back from the ride, I rewarded myself with a shower - and then got back to work! I completed one whole chunk of stuff, including computer uploading, and rewarded myself for that by taking Otis out to dinner at World Wraps (one of the few places she could find something that approximated the therapeutic diet her naturopath has her on).

I think tomorrow, while Otis is giving a massage in the morning, I will be spending a few hours at Cafe Maree near Green Lake responding papers; let me know if you want to join me (for the caffe, not the papers). I think I should get my reading done sometime in the afternoon sun, and I'll be all on track for the week.

Life is good.