It takes a while to get back into the swing of work on Tuesday, but both Tuesday and Wednesday are good days. As I'm talking with a co-worker in my office on Wednesday I look behind my office door that wants to keep closing and I see a deflated space alien doll. This space alien doll was in my office almost 10 years ago in another building and has been passed around many people. I think one of the last guys to have it and who retired snuck it into my office. Regardless I have no idea how long it has been there. But its in good condition so I blow it up and go around the bay, stop at the door of people's offices, throw the alien doll at people at their desks, and yell "alien". I completely scare the pants off three people before others have caught on and everyone vows to get back at me. After work on Tuesday and Wednesday I still feel hungover physically so I go for long walks and work the abdominals and lower back. And I relax on Wednesday night and feel sad when the Kings lose in double overtime to force a game 6.
Thursday is a strange day. I get to work at 6:15 in the morning and work for a while. I then take the motorcycle up to Westwood to visit the Pakistani consulate. It appears that they will accept my application for a visa but they will not accept Karl's (that I brought) because he is not present in person. Thus I call Karl and I go to FedEx and send him his information back - having left mine at the consulate for approval and return sometime next week (I hope). I ride back to work and have a semi-productive day. When I walk over to a nearby restaurant for lunch I see a used syringe on the ground in the parking lot very close to my door. I take a picture of it and send it around to my co-workers with the title "Why I like working at my company". At the end of the day as I'm riding home I am getting spacier and spacier and having a hard time judging distance such that I almost run into a couple of vehicles on the ride home. I don't know what is going on, but I take a short walk and this tends to clear up the spaciness a bit. But I have a quiet evening at home and no workout (other than the two walks today) since I'm tired and spaced out and many joints are still sore.
It's a good Friday. I make it through some meetings and make progress on my work until it is time to go home. I mow the lawn and then go walking for a bit. Today I watch the Los Angeles Kings lose another playoff game and there will be a game 7 on Sunday. Late at night, when I would normally be going to sleep, I pull the car out of the garage and ride with Person Ti_Ca to pick up two of his friends and one of mine to go clubbing.
We pick up Bopah who lives near us and then pick up Lida who lives closer to downtown Long Beach. Today there is not much traffic and when I get to the parking place behind the clubs the Russian owner recognizes me and treats me like royalty (probably because he remembers me from a long time ago talking with him about his ancestors and my ancestors). Person Ti_Ca, Bopah, and Lida must think that I come here every week (which I've only been up here 3 or 4 times in the last 12 months). We get to one club and meet up with more friends and the music is lousy, so I take off for another club. At this club there is some good techno/trance music and I relax and enjoy the music. I have a nice conversation with an architect visiting from London and when Person T_U shows up, though he said he was too tired to go out tonight, I go hang out with him. Eventually we go back to the first club and I just have to put up with the top 40 remix music until closing time. We drop people off in the reverse order that we picked them up and I'm dropping off for sleep at about 3:15 am on Saturday morning.
I sleep until 6:45 am and get up to review MotoGP qualifying from Mugello, Italy. When I'm more or less coherent I got on the mountain bicycle and ride to the end of the ocean trail and then add some more miles on at the end. I've had to dodge a lot of mini-triathlon traffic and a pet-walk fundraiser, but I come out unscathed. After a shower and some errands, I pull Person Ti_Ca's car halfway intothe garage in the shade and start chanign the brake pads. The brakes have been making noise but I'm not sure changing the brake pads will solve this type of nosie problem, but its the cheapest first try. Person Ti_Ca comes out to help and we've finished with the right side and doing the left side and we realize we've left out two small clips on the right side. When we finish the left side Person Ti_Ca asks if we need to go back to the right side. If it was just my car, I would ignore it. I'm sure those clips don't do diddly. But because it is Person Ti_Ca's car, I say, "We probably should" and we go back and re-do the right side. It is the right thing to do - "Do it right". And I hope it is a lesson that Person Ti_Ca learns for the future - "Do it right". I grab another shower and then relax.
Between the lack of sleep from clubbing, the bicycle ride, and the crawling around working on brakes, I sleep very well on Saturday night. Everyone has wimped out on riding today, so I watch an exciting and thrilling MotoGP race from Mugello before going out on the mountain bicycle. Today I ride down to the old yacht club and add some more miles on and finish with tired legs. I trim and water the roses and then wash and wax the mountain bicycle before getting a shower. In the afternoon I finalize who I am voting for in Tuesday's election and watch the Moto2 and Moto3 races from Mugello, Italy. On Sunday evening I watch game 7 of the Kings playoff series. At times I cannot watch because I think that I am jinxing the Kings. The game goes to overtime and I only know that the Kings won because I can hear the neighbors clapping.
Monday is an okay day at work. After work I come home and watch the Moto2 race. I'm less enthused this year about Moto2 than usual because I don't have a favorite to cheer for. After a break Person Ti_Ca go over to the tennis courts in the park across the street and we try to bang tennis balls around. I'm swinging a racquet that is 30 years old and I haven't touched it in about 20 years. It seems so foreign to me. Person Ti_Ca actually doesn't do bad for his first time.
On Tuesday I leave work early and ride the motorcycle back up to Westwood to the Pakistani consulate. As I'm waiting for the window to open I realize that I didn't bring my receipt. When the window opens I wait my turn and greet the lady in Urdu and tell her why I am there and I give her my driver's license. She asks for my receipt, but I tell her the phone message didn't say that I had to bring my receipt. She doesn't want to give me my passport (with visa) back, but I say "I'll sign something". The lady makes me write, "I forgot my receipt at home but I am taking possession of my US passport". I feel like I'm back in grade school havign to write "I will not talk in class" 100 times. But I have my passport and visa (and driver's license) back. It is rush hour and I push and shove and ride fairly aggressivley to get through traffic - sometimes riding on the shoulder of the freeway and across divider regions because traffic is a mess in this area. But I get near home and stop in to vote. And then I get in a light, high repetition workout with the weights after about 10 days off. I have to start all over with light, almost sissy weights to rehabilitate the joints. But it feels good to lift.
Wednesday and Thursday are not good days. I've fallen into a funk after Monday's tennis session. I realize (again, as I've known this in the past) that when I was playing chess and ice hockey I have a killer instinct but when I played golf and tennis I did not have the killer instinct. Why does this come up? Because Person Ti_Ca and I are hitting the ball back and forth and I see the smile on Person Ti_Ca's face during good hits and very wild hits where the ball goes over the fence. But I also see a look of panic on Person Ti_Ca's face when I hit a ball a bit too hard and he's going to get close to getting the ball but not quite. That look of panic on someone's face is what took away the killer instinct in me. If I saw that look in someone's face, then my killer instinct just melted. And over the next few days I keep seeing the look of panic in Person Ti_Ca's face and it doesn't matter because we were just hitting the ball around for fun but I don't ever want to see that look in his face again. Needless to say these thoughts keep surfacing during work on Wednesday and Thursday and I have to fight back tears. It feels good to lift weights again on Thursday and I vow to have sessions with lighter weights and more repetitions for a long time now to avoid joint pain. But after I lift my thoughts wander back to "the look of panic" and I have trouble functioning and sleeping.
I wanted to ride long on Friday, but with my emotional state I ride the mountain bicycle for about two hours. After the ride I mow the lawn, trim the roses, and tidy up the big tree in the backyard to get branches away from the fence and out of my eyes while mowing the lawn. After a shower I drive to the main public library for more books and run some other errands. I help Person Ti_Ca make some phone calls regarding his travel plans and then I start reading one of the books that I just got. Person Ti_Ca calls coveredca.org and gets a big run-around about coverdca computers not talking with county computers and he has to talk with two different people over the course of 45 minutes and his problem is still not resolved. What a mess health care is! If I stay engaged in some activity, the thoughts of panic and sadness and worthlessness that have plagued me recently are not present. Just after 7pm I drive to a nearby city to meet with social workers and domestic violence workers to see how/if we can work together.
I get out for a two hour ride on the mountain bicycle in the morning. The Wrigley district fun run has the river trail blocked off going south, so I go north up the real Los Angeles river until it ends. Near the end of the ride there are two road cyclists who pass me but aren't pulling away, so I stick with them for the last couple of miles. I watch qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix and do little things around the house until the Kings playoff game comes on. This game goes to two overtimes with the Kings playing catch-up the entire way until the Kings win.
I'm lazy on Sunday and surf the Internet until about 8 am. I just take the mountain bicycle out again as I've got my emotional cloud back and I'm feeling unmotivated to ride long without somebody to ride with. I run into some acquaintances during the ride and it ends up being a good ride. After trimming and feeding the roses I watch an exciting and entertainign Canadian Grand Prix. Later in the afternoon I drive down to beautiful and historic F&M bank building in downtown Long Beach for Haydn and Dovrak's string quartets (in C Major, Opus 33 and F Major, Opus 96, respectively). This is another in the series of Long Beach Symphony Orchestra's sounds and spaces events with classical music in historical buildings. Afterwards I drive on home and just relax since I'm tired and not necessarily enthusiastic about going to work on Monday morning.
Workis slow going because I am unmotivated and because there are a fair number of people absent today. When I get home I lift weights and watch the Kings playoff game. I'm supposed to take Person Ti_Ca to the airport later in the evening but that changes and I'm off the hook. So I sit down and try to get re-started on some web programming.