I sleep well on Monday night and the motorbike behaves on Tuesday morning and starts right up. I have a pretty good day at work as I develop software tools and look at data and try to solve an upcoming test problem. Today I run into a number of people that I haven't seen for a while and have long conversations with each to catch up. When I leave for work the Yamaha YZF-R1 starts right up and then just dies 100 meters up the road. It starts up again instantly and makes it home with no problem. I'm starting to think that the problem is with the ECU ($900) as opposed to the tumbler ($100). Poor Yamaha YZF-R1 and poor Ray! I have a great pull muscle workout and then walk to the store. As I'm walking to the store I smile and say Hi to a guy walking the opposite direction and he stops and says "Ray!" I turn around and realize from the sound of his voice that its the former neighbor who I regularly see cycling. We both joke that we don't recognize each other without cycling clothes or helmets on. I try to convince him to come back and buy back into the neighborhood but it won't happen right now.
On Wednesday I plug away at work until I am tired. I call the motorcycle repair place twice since the Yamaha YZF-R1 is behaving a bit erratically and each conversation with two different guys goes, "Hello, this is Ray Manning..." but I'm interupted from both guys with "Yes, you have the R1 with many miles on it". I guess they recognize the name and the voice by now. I get some advice from the service manager and we decide to have a look at it closer to Christmas. When I get home Person Ti_Ca is waiting for me and we change our clothes and go run. Though it is cold, Person Ti_Ca does better than last time though I still have to drag him along. When Person Ti_Ca leaves for the evening I relax, read, and go to bed.
On Thursday I have a special one day assignment at work but the other people won't leave me alone. Fortunately I am not in my office on this special assignment and I've committed to it, so everyone else has to wait. They manage to track me down but I just apologize and blow them off since they failed to prioritize appropriately. Or even failed to line up authorization and funding. When I leave work for home I walk to the store and then have a good workout for the abdominals. And then I start working away on work stuff. Person Ti_Ca comes over for three minutes to borrow some baking pans and stuff and then I head for bed to read and sleep.
I have a bit of trouble sleeping on Thursday night and get up for an hour to surf the Internet and to read a book. I eventually get up near 7 am and milla round the house to let the morning warm up. And then I get out for a long bicycle ride. Only towards the ned are my legs getting tired. After a shower Person Ti_Ca run errands including buying Christmas presents, returning other merchandise, stopping in at the library for more books, grabbing lunch, and buying office supplies (including a new chair) for the home office. Later we get down for a nap and I wake up rather quickly and go assemble the new office chair - it feels great!
I have a bit of trouble sleeping again on Friday night. I wake up a time or two and cannot sleep and go surf the Internet. When I wake up near 6 am I wait for the morning to warm up and go for the extra extended aquarium ride and my legs start to feel a bit tired towards the end of the ride. After a shower Person Ti_Ca and I run more errands including Christmas shopping, a calling card for Cambodia/Thailand, and food. The afternoon is a bit slow as Person Ti_Ca studies for his final examinations (with very little help needed from me now) and I mow the lawn. I get in another abbreviated abdominal workout though the muscles are very sore from Thursday's workout. The evening is fairly slow and I look forward to deep sleep.
As I'm relaxing on Saturday in the early evening I receive a phone call from Person Ti_Ca. His car will not start. I drive over to the mall where he is and I find that the ignition lock will not turn. We take a few things apart and try to work with different keys and things, but the ignition lock appears to have failed and we cannot get the key turned. I suggest a friend of Person Ti_Ca's who is a mechanic and soon he comes over and cannot get the ignition lock to turn. He takes another piece off and can get the car started, but the ignition lock is "frozen" and so the steering wheel is locked. We eventually call another friend who tows the car to the mechanic's house for subsequent diagnostics and repair. I drop Person Ti_Ca off at his house with all of his shopping presents and get home and down for sleep a bit before midnight.
Sunday morning starts a bit after 6 am with some laundry and some online shopping for Honda ignition locks. When the morning has warmed up a bit I start off on a bicycle ride even though I've missed sleep the last few nights and am feeling a bit under the weather (but with no fever). I keep thinking during the ride that I'll just go short and call it a day. But I just keep going and going and it turns into a long ride. During the ride I run into a few other riders and one of them recognizes me and I just say "If I am not working, then I am on a bicycle". He understands and then he goes off to ride with his group. After the ride and a shower I run some errands and fertilize the backyard - with the backyard scalped low I try a different and cheaper fertilizer this time. I don't receive instructions on how to help fix Person Ti_Ca's car, so I read and watch football and relax throughout the afternoon and evening.
It is just starting to finally rain on Monday morning when I walk outside. But I have pre-planned to drive the car today to work since it is supposed to rain for most of the day (and the motorbike seems to act up more in the wet). This is the first time that I have driven the car to work since April or May. I have a reasonably productive day and then leave work early to beat traffic. I stop off at the grocery store for supplies and then have a heavy push muscle group workout. And then I work on work things to make up the time (since I left early). I have a long conversation with Person Ti_Ca as we schedule the week around his finals, my work, and repairing his car. And then I relax with football and some reading.
It's still wet on Tuesday morning but I ride the Yamaha YZF-R1 to work and only get a bit wet. I have a semi-productive day and then go home to lift weights for the pull muscle group. It's great to be back on the motorbike even after missing just one day.
Wednesday is a good day at work. Lately I've been called on for some rapid response tasks and I seem to be thriving in this environment. EVen if it doesn't offer longer term stability. After work I pick up Person Ti_Ca and we pick up his new ignition lock and drop it off for the mechanic to install. We start driving to a restaurant we've been to before and I'm getting the silent treatment so we end up driving 45 minutes t a restaurant that Person Ti_Ca wants to go. But I tell Person Ti_Ca that the next time I get the silent treatment I'm just going to drop him off back at home because neither of us are happy with the silent treatment. We wait for 45 minutes to get a table and then we eat. Fortunately the drive home does not have traffic.
I wake up in the middle of the night on Wednesday night and run to the bathroom. And on Thursday morning I have to make quick trips to the bathroom on Thursday and have a 0.5 degree fever. Later on Thursday when Person Ti_Ca talk it turns out that he has made a number of urgent trips to the bathroom also. So we both agree that that restaurant is off our list for the future.
On Thursday I have a good day at work though we have an all-hands meeting where we are told that the environmental monitoring satellite that I am working on has been zeroed-out in congress and that times are desperate. And I also attend the retirement party of one of my previous bosses. He's a good guy who is always looking to the future and looking for challenges. He once told me that if I got bored then I need to find new things to do and if it involves leaving the company, well, they would miss me but he would be happy if I was happy. After work I ride home on the dry. I walk over to the grocery store for supplies and by the time that I have finished shopping and am ready to walk home there is heavy hail, lightning, and thunder. There is so much hail that the streets look like they are covered in snow! I wait a few minutes hoping for the hail to slow down and finally start walking home. I'm soaked by the time that I get home, so I strip off my clothes, put on workout clothes, and have a very heavy session with the weights for the push muscle group. And then I do the week's laundry with the wet clothes thrown in.
On Friday morning Person Ti_Ca comes over near 5 am after he dropped his brother off at work. I get up and we talk for a while before I go to work. Today the Yamaha YZF-R1 will not start - the intermittent problem taking over. So I roll the motorbike back into the garage and get the car out. All of this while Person Ti_Ca is wrapped in a blanket trying to help and neighbors are out for their morning walk/runs. I have a productive day at work and keep thinking, "I bet the minute I get home the bike will start right up". I struggle on home with nasty traffic and just before my heavy pullmuslce workout I start the motorbike and it DOES just start right up. I tell Person Ti_Ca that we have to take it into the dealer on Saturday. Person Ti_Ca gets picked up by a friend for a night of clubbing and a sleepover and I just relax with phone calls from various people.
I sleep horribly on Friday night as I keep thinking about Person Ti_Ca. Eventually I wake up and sweep the driveway and then go for a long bicycle ride. On today's ride there aren't as many people out as I expected since the weather is nice. I just keep cranking away and I'm surprised as I finish that the time went by so quickly. When I get home I sweep some more of the driveway since it got very dirty from the veay rain and hail on Thursday night. Person Ti_Ca comes home and he tells me about his night of clubbing and his sleepover. As we get ready to take the motorbike in for a inor tuneup and some debugging, it starts to rain. And Person Ti_Ca pushes me out the door to ride in the rain. Why is it okay to ride in the rain today but he's mad at me when I commute in the rain? After we drop the motorbike off at the dealer Person Ti_Ca drives and we have Thai food for lunch. Person Ti_Ca wants a nap but we stop off at the local mobile phone store and eventually we both get new smartphones after we've negotiated a pretty good price. But signing up as a family plan and activating the phones takes a while so Person Ti_Ca doesn't get his nap and just drops me off at home and goes to work. I go home and pick up supplies at he grocery store and talk with Person T_U about the Christmas light boat parade that we spoke about attending. But I'm tired and Person T_U is doing otehr things so we blow it off. So I just have a quiet evening at home relaxing and I go to bed early to make up for the horrible Friday night of sleep.
On Sunday I wake up and check out a slight drizzle as I wait for the rain to stop so that I can go cycling. When Person Ti_Ca's alarm goes off I help him get ready for work and I head out for the extended aquarium ride. I feel pretty strong today but am not as enthusiastic as I typically would be to ride. After a shower I do a next-to-last round of Christmas shopping, drop off books at the library, and then take an easy Sunday.
I have another night on Sunday night and into Monday morning where I wake up and cannot sleep for a couple of hours. Nonetheless I drag myself out of ned at 5:30 am and have a very productive day at work. It is after lunchtime when I check the clock and realize that I've been encased in my own little work world and making a lot of progress. But I feel like tears today - I do not know why. When I go grab some lunch I'm sitting in a restaurant and my hands are shaking so much that I cannot read the newspaper. And I'm feeling like crying again. What is going on here? I need to pull myself together because I have to meet my boss in 30 minutes. When I get back to work I have my annual performance appraisal with my boss and it is way better than I expected. He literally put me into the "walks on water without getting wet while juggling at the same time" category of performance. I'm happy that he (and others with input) are happy with my work. After other work discussions on current problems I leave work early and work the abdominals. And finish cleaning up and oiling some furniture that I am giving to Person Ti_Ca for his new house.
Seeing that I have been sleeping horribly and I've been having emotional swings between tears to ecstacy, I decide that I have to clean up my act. Tuesday is the start of a new Ray where I'll eat healthier food and increase my exercise program to try and beat back this wave of emotional turmoil.