Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday, February 21, 2011 10:00 PM

Valentines Day and Beyond


Tuesday and Wednesday are semi-productive days at work. After work I get out walking on Tuesday and lifting weights on Wednesday. Whereas Monday's workout was a struggle with slightly reduced weights, Wednesday's workout with the same weights is downright too easy. What's going on here? On Tuesday I do some maintenance on the road bicycle and get it into shape for some longer rides and finish my taxes. On Wednesday I perform small maintenance on the motorbike and then relax.

On Thursday I leave work and pickup Person Ti_Ca directly on the motorbike and we ride home. At home I find two packages on the front porch from Person Ch_C so I wrap them in plastic without opening them, put them on the "stairs to nowhere", and send an email to Person Ch_C indicating that it is in appropriate right now and he has to take them back. At home Person Ti_Ca and I cook dinner, watch telelvision, talk, and hang out. And then approaching 10 pm I gave Person Ti_Ca a ride back home. (And he maintains an old motorbike helmet of mine and an old pair of gloves for such special occasions.)

I have a productive Friday at work and get a small assignment that will be fun to work on next week, so I'm feeling good about work today. Nonetheless I leave work early and find a package from flowers.com on my front porch. I call the number and after being ut on hold for a while, I speak with the ladt at flowers.com and tell her that I am refusing the to take receipt of the package. She says that since they are prepaid I cannot refuse reseipt of them. We go round and round for a while and then I ask to speak to her supervisor. After being hung up on when asked to speak with the lady's supervisor, I get in a good session with the weights, mow the lawn, and then trim the sideyard which gets neglected regularly. After a warm shower I spend the evening relaxing - I need some rest and extra sleep right now.

On Saturday I start the morning bicycle ride on the road bike and get down near the aquarium and have a problem with one of the pedals. SO I pedal one-legged over to the Long Beach bikestation and they get e fixed up to at least get home. But they tell me that the cranks are so old that the threads ahevs tripped out and I need new cranks. The road bicycle is more than 25 years old, so I have to start thinking seriously about a new road bicycle compared with the fairly significant cost of a good crankset. After a shower I buy a Valentine's day present and then pick up Person Ti_Ca for the day.

Person Ti_Ca and I spend the entire day together. We do the laundry, we drive down to Seal Beach and walk around the sand and water, we have fruit smoothies, we go back home and get cleaned up for evening activities, grab dinner at Island's (because there were long waits at other nearby resuaturants), watch the movie "Just Go With It", and then hang out at home for a bit before I drop Person Ti_Ca off at his house before 1 am. The movie is really funny and Person Ti_Ca and I are poking each other at various times when situations arise in the movie that we've lived through over the past 45 days that we've known each other.

On Sunday I start with early morning grocery shopping and reading the neighbor's newspaper (since she's away for a bit longer and I'm watching her house in her absence). Near mid-morning I take the mountain bicycle out for the extended aquarium after I've put a wrnech to various nuts and bolts on it to make sure that I'm not going to run into a problem with it during the Sunday ride. After the ride I get cleaned up and do little things around the house including cleaning up the oven/stove which has seen a fair amount of use lately with Person Ti_Ca. Late on Sunday I call one friend in Thailand and one friend in Cambodia and wish them happy Valentine's day since my Sunday night is their Monday morning. And I eventually head for sleep early.

Monday and Tuesday are very productive days at work. I work on my little side assignment and make great progress and have creative ideas for how to solve some problems. In addition, my boss asks me for detailed technical advice and when I come up with a great idea he's so excited that he's going to do the grunt work on it himself to prove that the idea works. On Monday, Valentine's Day, I leave work early and pick up Person Ti_Ca on the motorbike. We go home and switch over to the car and have a nice Thai dinner in downtown Long Beach. Afterwards we buy some flowers and vase and hang out until I give Person Ti_Ca a ride back home. On Tuesday after work I have a great workout with the weights and then wait to have dinner with Person Ch_C. It is not a pleasant visit as Person Ch_C keeps asking for things that I cannot give him since I'm involved with Person Ti_Ca. And I have a hard time getting rid of Person Ch_C towards the end of the dinner. But I do.

Wednesday is an another extremely productive day with models and simulations and technical discussions with my boss. I leave work early to lwork on the abdominals and lower back - it's a great workout. And then I try to recover from the drama of the past few days.

Thursday is another productive day at work with models and random vibration analysis being performed and I get some very good and interestign results. When the workday has ended I ride the motorbike home, grab the World Rally Car, and pickup Person Ti_Ca and we go down to the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific for a free night of viewing the fish. Person Ti_Ca is a bit mad at me because of me still being in contacts with exes, so as we wait in line he gives me the cold shoulder treatment and then calls a mutual Khmer friend who lives in Buffalo. We both take turns talking to our mutual friend on Person Ti_Ca's phone and after the call is over and we are moving into the aquarium (after a 30 minute wait in line), Person Ti_Ca is warming up. We enjoy the various fish and I tell Person Ti_Ca "Evolution is just incredible" because he knows that Charles Darwin, the "discoverer" of evolution, is one of my heroes. Afterwards we drive to a Chinese buffet and have dinner and then I head for home.

On Friday I've turned off the alarm clock and I sleep almost until 7 am. At 8:30 am I pick up Person Ti_Ca and we go take blood tests, check out kitchen closet shelving at Home Depot and Target, open a Chase Bank checking account for Person Ti_Ca (since he is not happy with Bank of America post-charging him monthly fees for his "free" student account, and apply for a Chase credit card for Person Ti_Ca. I keep explaining to Person Ti_Ca in front of the Chase representative that with the credit card you "buy things, pay the bill off in full when it arrives, and never ever pay interest". We'll see how Person Ti_Ca does with this added responsibility. Afterwards we go cook lunch and hang out and take a nap and finally we go watch "Unknown". The film has a good storyline though, of course, one hero takes on many many enemies and always wins. And finally I drop Person Ti_Ca back off at home and head for sleep.

Saturday threatens more rain so I wait for an opportunity to get out cycling. In the meantime I do the laundry and install some new pedals onto the reserve bicycle and try to "epoxy in" the pedals and insert in the road bicycle that caused a problem last week. I'll let the epoxy sit for 24 hours and hopefully try it out on Sunday morning. Finally I can wait no longer and, with grey clouds looming, I start out on the aquarium ride. I just put a short extension on the ride today and I do get wet on the way home. And, of course, the Del Amo access gate is closed and locked so I have to lift my bicycle over the gate and climb over to get back to the surface streets to go home. It's a slow day and I do little thigns around the house until late in the afternoon when I pick up Person Ti_Ca so that we can return some boots he bought to the mall for a refund, have dinner, and then head home to relax and watch television. The dinner (at a Red Lobster) is nothing special but becomes very annoying as the booth right behidn where I'm sitting becomes very loud and continues to be very loud throughout our entire dinner. At times I just look at Person Ti_Ca and roll my eyes and he knows what I'm thinking. But he says not to say anything to the neighboring booth and I just remain calm and make the best of an ugly situation. I don't even ask the waitress to move us (because she couldn't anyway since the place is full) and I don't even look at the neighboring nooth people as we leave.

Sunday morning starts with drying but cold weather. I take the opportunity to do some more laundry and sweep the hardwood floors before starting out for a ride on the road bicycle (with troublesome but hopefully repaired pedal). THe SUnday morning ride is very eventfull! I start the ride out on wet pavement and keep checking out the left (troublesome) pedal to make sure that it is not going to pull out of the crank. When I get down to the bicycle trail along the ocean there is sand all over the bicycle trail and it's more like offroad riding than roadriding. I make the turn up the San Gabriel river trail and when I get near El Dorado park I find that the trail and neighboring roads are underwater. There is nothing to do but slow down and ride through it. Yet still both feet get very wet and cold. And finally, as I'm making the sharp turn and uphill transition from the San Gabriel river trail Del Amo boulevard I get caught in the wrong gear and can't get my foot out of the pedal and fall against a plastic fence. I pick myself up with just a little blood on the left knee and ride the last 5 miles home. When I get home there is no serious damage to the bicycle. (Who cares about my body?) And the reapir to the pdeal seems to have held up to the entire ride and to the fall. After a shower and some grocersy shopping I wipe down the world rally car from the recent rains, clean up the road bicycle, and relax for the day.

Monday is President's Day but we have to work. Since I've done some work over the weekend during some downtime, I have a really productive day at work. But I make satisfactory progress. After work I get in a good session with the weights after having not lifted since last Tuesday. All of the lifts are good and solid. And it is almost time to start doing rowing exercises - the ones that I had to skip since my ribs were hurting me to do them.