Just another day....

This has been a surprisingly cool August. Not in the snow is falling on my head but the lack of insanely hot and muggy days. This i am not complaining about; I have plenty of other things for that. Tonight it is going to cool rather rapidly and even get in the high 50's (crazy i know) and right now it is in the wonderfully cool mid 60's. That's good sleeping weather right there ^_^

The plan was to leave the windows open with a fan to help the circulation, then bury myself under a nice blanket and then sleep like a log. But that is not to happen, because some person (with close range) decided that mid-60's is cold enough to get the fireplace going!!!!!!!!!! now i don't really have bad sinuses, but it thick enough i am surprised my fire alarm didn't go off. So to keep from waking up with the worst headache I have had in years (and everything i own smelling like burn oak) i am going to have to close the windows and miss out on the great cool air :( this makes me sad inside :'( see the tear??

So i squared off with the hottest pepper in the world today. One of the techs at work decided to grow some Naga Jolokia peppers. A pepper so hot that is ground into a paste and smeared on fences to ward off wild elephants in Indian!!!! Now thats HOT!! So anywho, the first of the crop has come in and the tech was daring people to try and eat even the smallest of pieces. One guy reporting that he lost all feeling and ability to taste anything for an hour or so after being stupid enough to try this. So of course that means i need to try this.

Now, myself being smarter then the average bear, i did not try to consume any of this solidified capsaicin, whereas i cut a fresh edge on the pepper and rubbed off just a slight amount of the oil on my finger which then i licked off. My mouth burned and went numb for about 20 minutes. Those pepper are dangerous. I washed my finger in rubbing alcohol to get the oils off. i do not plan to repeat my foolishness.

Real Definitions

Lead Engineer:

lead en·gi·neer [leed en-juh-neer] –noun

1. The first person to get blamed when something goes wrong, the only person that doesn’t get credit when something goes right, and the last person to hear when something gets changed on a design project.

Not what i was expecting.....

I ordered a shirt online a week or so back. This is something i never do. Mainly because, even though my size has change dramatically over the course of the last half a dozen years, my size has never one that main stream clothes designers consider normal. So finding shirts and such that actually fit in a way i want them to do at the time is rather difficult.

While perusing an outdoor liquidation website, i found this rather cool looking shirt. A 'Bamboo' shirt. My first thought is, "That's awesome!! A shirt made of bamboo." Knowing a little about bamboo, and a little bit of knowledge is a very dangerous thing, i figured it might actually work. Bamboo is a very light long fibered grass. It could in theory be made into a fabric. i mean weirder things have been in the past. And it was dirt cheap!! Cool and cheap, how could i go wrong??

Looking to order the shirt i had to pick a size. I look to the 'handy' little sizing guide, which is a guide to some article of clothing just not this shirt. And compare its sizes suggestion to my own frame. According to the numbers i should fit in a large. Now this took me a little bit a surprise since that many of the last shirts i have bought were mediums. But in the end i went this the guides suggestion figuring that the shirt may have been meant to be snug fitting, and i wouldn't be able to breath in the medium.

So i get in the shirt today and notice some amazing things that i did not know before now. It seems polyester is made from bamboo. This was a shock to me since i thought it was a man-made material. but no; my 'bamboo' shirt is made from polyester. either that or the shirt was made from recycled fake polyester bamboo plants you buy (or don't) from Wally-world. Also another interesting thing is that wherever that sizing guide was made at, they use a different standard for inches. much like there is a different standard for a gallon if you are in the States or in the UK. Cause the shirt fits like a hockey jersey.

Mad adventures in shingling

Sometimes i do, agree, or even volunteer to something without really thinking it through. Kind of a 'knee jerk' reaction to the feeling of being needed. This was the case when i volunteered to help my friend AJ to replace the shingles on her shed after the HOA (the evil Nazis) sent her a lovely letter indicating their displeasure. Its not like I was going to get anything out of this other then a sore back and a possibility of major injury. But at least it did give me an excuse to buy a really nice tool belt. Every guy (and girl) should have a nice tool belt to do home improvement projects. "What you have a leaky sink? Let me get my tool belt!!!!"

Now truth be known i haven't done roofing in years, and then it was a metal roof not an asphalt shingle. 'But hell' I figured, 'how hard could it be.' And I probably know enough about what I doing to buff the rest. I mean it works for me professionally.

Roof requires three things to come together at the same time: good weather, materials, and cooperative workers. This took several weeks to get together. But after several false starts we finally got to start working. The shed was in pretty bad shape. But we had hammers and tool belts!!!

The roof stripped off easier then I had expected. And surprisingly enough the wood was in very good condition. Thank goodness for small miracles, no patching in plywood!!! One of the front molding beams was rotten (not load bearing) so we replaced all of them. Which turned out to a far easier fix then i was guessing, which of course made me very concerned, this was going far too well. Something bad was going to happen, very bad.

So a little tar paper and a nearly thrown out back trying to get the pack of shingles on to the roof, and we were off. And after awhile AJ was starting not to be so afraid to be up there ^_^. In fairly short time we were making noticeable progress and thanks to a very well placed tree we were in the shade almost the entire time. Which even though it was a very nice day (compared to what we have seen around here) made this adventure much more bearable.

And then there was the last full shingle. So why do i look like i am not done yet? That because there is a second little roof that needed attention that was not in the original request. But after looking at its poor state, I took pity on it and put it out of its misery. Now all the rot fears I had for the shed were materialized in this little utility closest. I wish i took some pictures of it before i patched together a new roof for it, but after some swearing and beating it with a large hammer, we were able to pull together a respectable little roof.

So all in all, project was a success and since its just a shed and no one is going to care if it leaks, the roof is perfect. So no broken bones, and only a few sore muscles, not bad, not bad at all.

In the long run

As I had mentioned before for some reason unfathomable to me, i have started running on a consistent nature. Actually I do know why I started running again, i want to lose the last of the 'college' fat that i picked during grad school, and trying to stop eating doesn't seem like a good plan. So I have managed to keep a up a three day a week, 3/4 miles a day running schedule. And I have noticed a few things, I am not running all that must faster, but I am recovering a hell of a lot faster then i did at the beginning of the season. The first month i would run three miles and then my legs would be sore and stiff for days afterwards, usually ending with me running the next time with legs still sore from the first. But slowly that started to get better; soon i would only hurt the following day but would be fine by the next time to go running. Finally now i only am only sore (and its really just sore i don't hurt like i used to) just for a couple hours after running and by that evening I am doing good. With of course means i need to start running longer and harder ^_^ So I set myself a new goal for this summer, I wanted to run from my place to around Lake Elkhorn and back. The route!! This run would be just a hair over 5.5 miles (a way a bird flys, there are a lot of elevation changes on this route). I figured that would be a fairly good goal i could reach by the end of the summer. Well this morning I finished the run in about an hour. ( I know I was shocked too) It was a shockingly great morning, (its almost lunch time, i still have the windows open its so nice out there) the plan was to run just to Lake Elkhorn then back, which is right at 4 miles round trip. This is (was i guess now) the upper limit of my running range, but since I didn't have to go to work today I wouldn't mind the extra time this morning. So i made it to the lake and I noticed that I was still feeling fairly strong. My legs hadn't started hurting yet (they normally do a little at two miles) and nothing had cramped up on me, so i figured what the hell, I'll run around the lake and see how far I could make it back before my legs gave out underneath me. The lake was shockingly crowded for a weekday late morning as usual. And about halfway around the lake i started regretting my foolishness, but I pushed on telling myself, "All you have to do is keep running." For some reason in my tired stupor that actually worked i a continued going. The run back actually was easier as i felt there was a gentle push behind me prodding me along, and obvious sign that i was hallucinating. But I managed to slowly work my way back and made the whole loop without stopping. I stopped at the apartment complexes gym on the way back and weighted myself for the first time since I started running. I have lost eight pounds since I started running. That may not seem like all that much, but I was far from being considered over weight. Eight pounds is about 5% of my total body weight.


On a unrelated side note, the angry noisy downstairs neighbors are moving out today (actually they are getting kicked out ^_^)!!!!!!!! Now I am going to meet up with a buddy from work for lunch to celebrate the wonderful weather. I think this is starting to turn out to be a really great day!!!!