Ouch...

So after two weeks of progress my shoulder and collar bone have decided to start hurting like hell at random times throughout the day. First the bone hurts so I put my arm back in the sling. All is well for a while. Then without warning it feels like someone is putting a knife into the back of my shoulder. Arm comes out of the sling. All is well for a while. Bone starts to hurt... repeat ad nauseum. Good times.

This week has been up and down. There was an amazing steel Look track frame on ebay in my size. I decided I wanted to buy it. I had the money (kindof... I had it yes... but should I spend it? Probably not). So with 5 minutes to go I am sitting in front of a computer waiting to swoop in for the kill. I was willing to go $800 on it and the bid was sitting at about $500. Well to kill a few seconds while waiting for a minute to go I start reading a certain someones blog. When I go back to ebay and hit refresh I missed the auction end? WTF? Am I an idiot? Yes. Is it all for the best because I should not be spending hundreds of dollars on a track frame when I am trying to buy a house? Double yes. I still want to punch myself in the head every time I think about it though. Of all the track bikes made in the 1990's there are three that I have always wanted. The Look probably being at the top of the list.
The second is an early 90's Cannondale. I actually had one just like the one to the left. Like a complete moron I decided one day I wanted to sell it to buy a lugged steel frame. Few decisions in my life do I regret more. I sold it to my friend Billy who I am quite sure will keep it until it breaks as I should have. This bike defined early 90's track frames in my opinion. Super stiff, great handling, good looks. Why did I sell it? Because I am an idiot. The last of the three on the want list is just a lowly black GT Pulse (or even a GT-B. I have a soft spot for the triple triangle design even though they are not particularly nice bikes. Oh well... maybe next time. Maybe never.

The high point of this week has been the discovery of a nice plug-in for Mozilla Firefox. Nerdy I assure you but there is something called adblock with out the line of pictures and links to stupid shit you don't want going down the right hand of the screen. that allows you to disable many of the little advertisements that are on your screen when you go to certain webpages. I am not talking popups. Firefox already takes care of those. But go to bikeforums. Now imagine that webpageAdblock makes that stuff go away. It takes a couple minutes to set up for each website you go to but I seem to frequent the same few webpages the most and its nice not to have those all crowded with ads. It works especially well on myspace and gets ride of those pesky movie ads.

Give me a break...

So apparently 4 members of the U.S. national track team got off the plane in Beijing wearing pollution masks that were issued by their national federation. This apparently has hurt the feelings of many people in China. Maybe I am an insensitive prick but give me a fucking break. It's no big secret that the air quality in Beijing is pretty bad. If four athletes that often rely on thousandths of a second to secure victory in their respective events want to take whatever steps necessary to protect their lungs while waiting to compete in the Olympics so be it. If the politicians and people of China don't want people to come off planes wearing masks they the first step would be improving their air quality. I can't believe that anyone actually issued an apology. This guy has no reason to apologize to anyone for anything...

Learn something every day

I learned about a very appropriate quote today. There is an "interesting" political debate going on on the local MTB forum and I picked up this gem along the way...

Sinclair Lewis: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."

Life is good but deep down I know dark days are somewhere down the road for all of us...

The Dark Knight

It's no secret that everyone is sweating this movie. I went to see it today. I have to agree with the masses. Very good movie. Every scene with the joker I couldn't help but think about how Heath Ledger did not live to get the respect that he deserves for his work in this role. Oh well... his choice to mix prescription meds and hard drugs, not mine.

Best line of movie: "some people just want to see the world burn."

Spent most of the day with my arm out of the sling. I can raise my hand all the way above my head now too. Good sighs. But now it's 10pm and my shoulder hurts like hell. I should probably push it less tomorrow.

More uselessness of note...

My sleep pattern is completely wrecked.

Some guy named Mark took some pictures at Bryan Park on Tuesday. You can see them here...

I learned some useful information about firewood today. My father in law came up to help us move 200 gallons of heating oil from southside to our house. I was supposed to but a broken clavicle got me out of that bit of hard work. I do feel bad about this but at the same time I did not have to spend the better part of today sweating my ass off so I'm going to chalk this one up in the "win" column. So he came up with two missions. One to move some fuel and the other to give us some much need schooling on splitting wood. A few weeks ago I was working on some smaller pieces with a maul or "poppper" The technique was not the best but I did make some progress. However it did seem that I was not making progress at a very swift rate. Apparently it's quite a bit easier to split wood when it is in the from of a billet.
When a tree is chopped down for wood the large parts of the trunk are cut into cross-sections that of various thicknesses. We have several from a large dead oak that was cut down in the lot next door. Each one was over 24" across and at least 14" tall. They all weigh over 100lbs too. So Howdy gave us some advice and a demo on how to split wood with a sledge hammer and a wedge. Turns out its actually pretty easy to make short work of a large billet of wood with the right tools.

Sarah has been really pushing to learn more practical skills like this and hopefully we will actually get to make use of them. If we end up getting a wood stove this can easily save us $2000 on our heating bill this winter.

Oh and as an epilogue to my earlier post about the oil moving scheme the end result was this. We ended up getting just short of 180 gallons of heating oil.
Cost of oil $100
Cost of pump $50
Cost of two 55gallon drums $50
Cost of gas to get to southside and back a few times $10

Total cost of project: $250
Cost of 180 gallons of oil at projected fall rate of $4.65 per gallon: $837
Total money saved: $587

Sweet!

Shirt update...

Artwork pretty much done. The computer screen does not do it justice. For those who have seen the shirt with the guy wearing a cbc jersey sporting an afro you know what the printing style will be like.