Tuesday and Wednesday are filled with meetings at work. This is boring. I don't enjoy this at all. At one point I help a co-worker move chairs and get her laptop plugged in - a trivial act of kindness to which she replies "Thank you". Later in the meeting most people have left for a program all-hands meeting, but this co-worker stays because she has to make a presentation and I stay because I want to contribute and I want to help her (if possible). She looks at me and wonders why I am still at the meeting and not at the program all-hands. I say, "Because I'm you're friend". To which she seriously replies "You're not my friend". I don't say anything, but I'm actually hurt by this comment and it somewhat bugs me for the rest of the day and into Wednesday. On Tuesday night I help Person Ti_Ca with taxes and he's paid only $48 in US taxes (because he only worked a few weeks in 2013) but he's getting a refund of $300. How can this be? And on Wednesday after work I get in another heavy session with the weights and though my shoulder does not hurt, I ice it afterwards anyway. And later I tear apart the RC car connector and start to re-solder it for my own purposes.
Thursday's day at work sees me having a decent day and a co-worker's last day as he is retiring. At noon I go and get passport photos taken so that I can renew my passport (which was put through the laundry prior to my last trip and has no empty pages left). After work I get out for a good walk and stop at the grocery store for supplies on the way back home.
I start Saturday with a good ride down to the old yacht club and back. After a shower I send my passport off to be renewed (it had been put through the laundry, had no pages left, and will expire in a year), buy some groceries, go car shopping with Person Ti_Ca, stop at the library to return and checkout more books, and then stop in at a local high school stadium with a big empty parking lot. I give Person Ti_Ca his first lesson in how to drive a manual transmission. Later I relax with the Los Angeles Kings ice hockey game and some reading and some television.
On Sunday I start north for the Whittier Narrows dam. I ride with a group of riders for a while but they are going very fast (which isn't the problem) but they keep speeding up and slowing down. Since I prefer a more even pace, I let them speed up ahead and I take an even pace to meet up with Person P_C. We ride down to Long Beach and I show Person P_C parts of the Long Beach Grand Prix course and then we head back to the aquarium where many riders tend to take a breka in their rides. Today a rider on a tandem with his daughter on it rides past us and circles and rides past us again and then stops and asks me in an accent, "Where did youg et that jersey?" I'm wearing the Slovakia National tem cycling jersey so I respond with "Dobry den" (which is Czech for hello or good day). And he responds back and then we start talking about how hard it is to find these jerseys, where he is from (a small Czech border town with Poland), where my grandparents are from(a small Slovakia border town with Poland), and other things. Finally he rides off with a hint as to where to get the jersey. Person P_C and an acquaintance rider who also happened to stop with us say that they were going to "s___ their pants" if I started speaking Czech with the guy. (Because they now I can speak a bit of Thai and a bit of Spanish.) But I disappoint them and only remember the Czech good ay greeting. Eventually I leave Person P_C to ride home and I get cleaned up and watch a cracking MotoGP with great action throughout the field from lights out until the checkered flag. Later I clean the roses and trim a bush in the front yard and relax for Monday's day trip to Santa Barbara for work.
I get to work on Monday near 5 am to finish a few things before our trip to a Northrop Grumman subsidiary just south of Santa barbara. We're supposed to have four in our carpool, but when to drop out, the driver says, "Let's go to my house, pick up my motorcycle, and ride up". So we make the ride in good time and have a reasonable meeting with the subsidiary. Afterwards we both head back towards our home campus and then I ride on home without stopping. I have enough hours in today and riding up towards Santa Barbara on a near race motorcycle is hard on the old body. When I get home I relax for a bit and notice that the neighbors are installing the vinyl fence that I told them not to install. ("You'll get three years down the road and tear it down and put up a real wooden fence jointly with me anywa.") And they've installed the fence so that I will not have any room to trim back my side bushes - the fence is more or less against the bushes. I get in a good, heavy session with the weights to work off stress and to mend the body from the long motorcycle ride. After a quick shower I help Person Ti_Ca with homework and watch the Moto3 race where my favorite (younger) rider makes a horrible start but works his way up to challenge for the lead with two laps to go and gets pushed down to 5th in a wild scramble finish. After this excitement where I'm yelling, "Come on Alex. You can do it. Get there! Get there!", I have to put off watching the Moto2 race until Tuesday because I'm worn out.
This is a blah week at work. I get a few things done, but pretty much daydream my way through the week.
On Tuesday after work I ride the motorcycle and meet up with Person Ti_Ca to look at a used Mazda3 hatchback. It's a clean car and runs well and the people selling it are nice. Should we trust them? When I get home I relax for a bit and watch the Moto2 race with some good action. Later in the evening it looks and sounds as if Person Ti_Ca is going to be giving me the silent treatment (because I bought wine from the grocery store), so late at night when I'm usually going to sleep I go walking for an hour to sort through things. When I get back home Person Ti_Ca is not giving me the silent treatment.
On Wednesday after work I lift heavy weights and then start chopping up the juniper bushes that were pulled from the side of the house due to the neighbor's new fence. At one point as I'm adjusting the chain tension in the chainsaw (with the power off and the electric cord pulled out of the wall socket), I lose an adjusting nut and it takes me ten minutes on my hands and knees sifting through the grass to find it. But eventually I fill up one trash container, pull down part of the old fence, and move the remaining juniper bush trimmings to the sideyard for disposal over the next few weeks.
After a blah day of work on Thursday, partly due to not being able to sleep on Wednesday night from 2 am until 4:30 am, I go on home and lift weights. Since I lifted yeasterday, I drop the weights just a bit and do as many repetitions as possible for a great workout. I'm supposed to meet Person T_U at a sportsbar near where we live to watch the UCLA and Florida basketball game. But Person T_U gets to the sportsbar early and says it is too loud so I ride a bicycle over to his house to watch. (I'm not a basketball fan, but I should watch at least one game every ten years or so.) It's a see-saw game where Florida gets ahead and UCLA almost catches up and it goes this way the entire game. But Florida pulls away and wins. Person T_U is disappointed. Late at night I get back on the bicycle and ride home.
Friday is a good day starting with checking out practice sessions for the Malaysian Grand Prix. I get on the mountain bicycle and ride to the old yacht club and back. When I get home I edge and mow the lawn. We receive a phone call that the car that Person Ti_Ca wanted to buy needs a repair before being sold. I'm starting to have a bad feeling about this car due to recent events. After a shower I go see a doctor and get some proactive pain medicine for my shoulder, pick up food for lunch, and do some grocery shopping. When I get home I get on the road bicycle and ride over to my bicycle store to ask them if my rear derailler looks bent, but they say it is okay. And I buy some brake pads for the extra mountain bicycle and I install them when I get home.
I watch qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix in ever-changing wet/dry/wet conditions before going out for a ride on the mountain bicycle. On today's ride I'm going the same direction as a latino man and his son, so I ride with the man for a while (as we leave the son behind). We've seen each other riding many times before but have always been going in the opposite direction, but today we are headed in the same direction. Luis, the father. has been in the US from Mexico for 10 years but doesn't speak much English. So I get to practice my Spanish with him. Eventually I get to my turn around point and I tell him I him I'll be returning home and he turns with me to go back and find his son. His son, Gustavo, is 11 years old and rides once a week also. After the ride Person Ti_Ca drive to Alhambra and Lakewood and look at cars to buy and then have lunch as Souplantation. I get down for a nap and then drive to El Segundo for an informal retirement dinner for a co-worker who has just retired. And then I get home for sleep.
Sunday starts with a ride to the WHitter Narrows dam where I meet up with Derrick and Person P_C. We head back down to Long Beach and then I add some extra miles on to get to about 55 miles for the day. When I get home I water the impatiens and trim the roses and grab a shower before watching the Malaysian Grand Prix. Later in the afternoon I relax and do some web programming and just be a vegetable.
Monday is a reasonable day at work and I make progress on some simulations. Just after a meeting a co-worker, who I've spoken with over the phone and exchanged emails with, intorduces himself and asks me some questions about work and actions from just before Christmas. I'm completely drawing a blank on the work and it takes my co-worker refreshing my memory with some charts. My mind must have been somewhere else during that week before Christmas. When I get home I have a good workout with heavy weights, trim the roses, spot water some bare spots on the lawn, and help Person Ti_Ca qith some homework. Person Ti_Ca has lost a memory stick of homework and a business project, but I'm able to recreate historical stock data for Person Ti_Ca in no time.