Occasional Notes

I was telling my mother more about cycling and she hung up on me. This is the woman who sat through junior high band concerts for me. To make her walk out of a conversation takes. Um.

Something fairly annoying, I'd say.

Or, perhaps, someone fairly annoying. Like me, for example.

Fortunately, she's my mother, she can't hide forever, and I can finish what I was saying when she gives in and calls back.

I WIN AT STUBBORN!

Briefly:

The Montreal weekend was great. jubilancy and oneangrykate(s) are great. mcee was as lovely as ever, but in a completely different city than I'm used to her being lovely in. I saw my Montreal cousins, and they were great. I barely thought about my thesis at all, had a really seriously lovely time, and came home only very reluctantly. I am making plans to either kidnap or be kidnapped by the aforementioned Montreal girls permanently.

My cycling preoccupation is getting out of hand. Several Montreal cyclists think that they were being perved upon, when really I was lusting over their bikes. I cannot pass a cycling shop without sticking my nose against the window and trying to read the price tags on their display models. I am currently attempting to figure out what make and model of road bike offers the best value/cost balance, but the internet, for once, is not helping. I am very confused, but soldiering on.

Thesis continues to anti-develop. Thesis supervisor should get her requested couriered print out of it in hand tomorrow morning and perhaps something will happen shortly thereafter. Defense, I hear, should be early September some time.

I went to see Sky High with lmondegreen this after noon. The movie was cute and amusing, and the same can be said, as always, of the company. Afterwards, I gave lmondegreen a ride home and met her dog, who is absolutely adorable. He's big and affectionate and kind of floppy looking.


Tomorrow's plans include:

- bike ride
- getting passport pictures taken
- submitting passport renewal forms (w/ pictures)
- drooling over bikes at what seems to be a particularly well-favoured downtown cycling shop (all the models I'm most interested in list this particular shop as their Ottawa distributer)
- buying boxes to start packing my house up for the move to North Bay, which is coming up...quickly

Note to self:

33°C (91°F) that feels like 42°C (108°F) with the humidity + (very direct sun - sunscreen) + 3 odd hour bike ride = not the best idea I ever had

On the other hand, I have completely earned a popcicle or ice cream of some kind. Which I will go out and buy later. Much later. When I get my legs working again. And my head.

In other news, the cycling pants I bought myself as part of yesterday's impulse shopping spree work great. Loose enough not to be embarassing, tight enough not to catch the wind, stretchy enough to be comfortable, and short enough to avoid getting caught in my bike chain.


(additional note to self: make cycling icon.)

Ah, signs of spring. This morning I bared my winter-pale legs for the first time since probably August, rode my bike to school for the first time since the snow hit last fall, and spotted my first dark underwear under white pants and my first above-the-waistband-below-the-crop-top thong band.

They were walking together along the path I ride on to get to campus.

oh my eyes.

In other news, this morning's bike ride certainly made clear how appallingly out of shape I let myself get this winter. The path to school is nothing -- no rough terrain, minimal incline. Even if I did ride hell bent for leather on the way in, trying to get there on time after waking up late, I shouldn't have arrived feeling like I was breathing broken glass in the place of air. I certainly shouldn't now feel like I've got limp noodles in the place of legs. While I've never been lean and mean and at the height of physical conditioning, this is just pathetic. The knee injury in January didn't help things, but I could have pushed myself a little harder to get over it, too.

I'm going to do better. It shouldn't be too hard, now that the weather's turned nice. I can as easily spend less of my off-thesis time at the gym or outside as I do lolling on the couch or cruising the internet. I want my England ass back, the one I got after spending a month walking everywhere. I miss it. It was downright shapely.