On the surface the work week looks good. I have productive days and am able to help people out with their problems that they cannot solve. I also have a number of people call or stop by my office for advice and help. And I'm asked to possibly go to Pennsylvania soon to witness a test.
On the surface the days after work look good also. I get in two great workouts with the weights and do a lot of small things around the house - minor repairs or tidying up. And I also make super progress on two websites.
Since coming back from Pakistan, Thailand, and Cambodia, I have been sleeping very well. Good deep sleep with no real interruptions. Unfortunately on both THursday night and Friday night I wake up near 3 am and cannot fall back asleep. The Thursday wake up was spurred by a bad dream and then compounded with text messages coming in from Thailand (that I would normally sleep through). Friday's lack of sleep is spurred by unlnown reasons.
Needless to say on Saturday morning I get on the mountain bicycle and ride for about two hours - hoping to see big waves in Long Beach from hurricane Norbert coming up from Mexico. I was going to go ride with the Long Beach Cyclery (who I rode with two weeks ago) but there's no way I would ride with them missing sleep. After the good ride I watch qualifying from Monza, Italy for the F1 race and then do a lot of paperwork throughout the warm afternoon. I go through many files and shred outdated paperwork and get other paperwork filed correctly and in order. ANd I help Person Ti_Ca with some statistics homework before he goes off for dinner with his family.
I start out Sunday towards the Whittier Narrows dam. My legs are tired but I get up to the dam, cross over, and start heading south. When I get to the turn-off to break the ride into a 40 mile ride, I ignore it. There is a rider ahead that I am chasing down and want to catch. I catch up to him and pull him along until he turns off within a mile of the ocean. The last 7 miles of this 57 mile ride are difficult as I'm down to a zero energy state. But somehow I am still pulling another cyclist along until he drops off. As I'm riding along Del Amo to get home I am happy when two of the traffic lights go red so that I can take a rest. At the last red light a guy roles his car window down, points at me, and ays "Peter Sagan". (Peter Sagan is the Slovakian cyclist on the international stage.) I point back at my Slovakian jersey and say "Grandparents". I make it through a cool shower, lay down for ten minutes, and then watch the Italiand F1 race from Monza. The rest of the day is spent reading and in recovery as today's ride took a ton out of me.
On Monday and Tuesday there are many people at work who need help and some of my past experience to solve problems. I end up talking on small teleconferences and meeting with many people to help them solve problems. And, unfortunately, to tell a vendor that they have been setting up to do a test completely wrong (with only meaningless data resulting) and that they will have to spend some of their own money to fix the test setup. Among the help that I give to other people I discover an error in some data that I sent to a co-worker last Thursday and I work to rectify the problem and get him the right data. I'm disappointed in myself for letting the bad data get away from me. After work on Monday I increase the weights and have a good workout with no pain at all? How did I have less pain with higher weights on Monday than I had with lighter weights on Friday? And on Tuesday, after the work disasters, I clean the roses and clean the house and don't get in a workout. One should (probably) have a day off from working out sometimes but I notice that I have been having at least one and possibly two per week for a while now. I need to revert back to one or two days off per month. Since the work situation is so critical and explosive, I even check my work email from home on Tuesday night to see what awaits me on Wednesday morning.
There is no significant fallout from the email that I sent which, paraphrased, is "We have to do the right technical things and make sure that our vendors do the right technical thing." I expected many people to complain that it would cost time and money to do something right, but the complains, if made, are not loud. Nonetheless I have a good Wednesday and Thursday at work and make progress. On Wednesday night after a good weights workout, Person Ti_Ca and I eat Japanese food and as we're sitting there I have an interesting idea on how to solve an indeterminant, non-unique problem that we have been having at work. When we finish dinner I go home andwork on the solution framework.
On Thursday I continue to try to solve the indeterminant, non-unique solution as other work continues. I see some progress by the end of the day, so I go and spring the idea on a co-worker. He has never heard of the mathematics that I have proposed and he is going to look it up over the weekend. I tell him that there are still some discrepancies - maybe I messed something up because I tried to get it done in such a hurry - but it looks promising. After work on Thursday I workout with the weights again and despite lifting two days in row I don't end up with too much joint pain on Friday.
On Friday morning I am tired so despite intending to go for a long road bicycle ride, I just get on the mountain bicycle and ride for two hours that includes riding along the ocean and to the old yacht club. But I do chase a road bike rider down the Los Angeles river on the way out and chase another one down on the way back towards home north on the Los Angeles river. So I'm cranking along quite nicely this morning! When I get home I edge and mow the lawn and then clean up some tree branches that a neighbor's tree trimmer has downed onto myside of the fence. It's hot today and I go get water breaks regularly, but I'm on a roll, so I go over to the neighbor's house and try to debug her car battery and charging system which has been intermittently giving warning signs on the dashboard. This is a very large 1990'ish Ford car and it has the old Ford keys with symbols on them that remind me of the keys I used to have when I was first learning how to drive. I get cleaned up and Person Ti_Ca and I do some banking and grocery shopping before he goes off to visit his mother and sister. His mother and brother are planning to move away from the area soon and his sister is probably going to sign final divorce papers soon, so there is turmoil in Person Ti_Ca's family right now. But Person Ti_Ca's sister will probably keep the family store in the divorce and thus Person Ti_Ca can go back to get some unofficial, under-the-table work hours and dollars at the convenience of his university clas schedule. It doesn't do any good to build up the credit rating, but it it is income that shouldn't interfere with his classes.
On Saturday I am lazy again and ride for two hours on the mountain bicycle. The legs still feel strong and I enjoy the ride. After getting cleane dup I do spme maintenance in the garage, and then Person Ti_Ca take electrical and chemicals to a recycling center, go to the main Long Beach library in downtown, and eat Khmer food for lunch. The rest of the afternoon is spent reading and relaxing with the air conditioning running since the external temperature in Long Beach is 94F.
When I start SUnday's road bicycle ride north on the Los Angeles river, I don't have "it". Whatever "it" is. Nonetheless I keep riding north and cross the bridge and get passed by a rider. I let the rider get away by 100 meters or so and then I take my time gaining speed and am even with him by the time that we reachi the Whittier Narrows dam. The extra speed surge has made my legs "wake up" and I go down the San Gabriel rvier trail at a good clip. In the last few miles I see a group of riders way ahead in the distance and I put in a few surge/recover cycles and end up catching them just as I take th Del Amo cutoff to head for home. During the entire ride I've been repeating, "Today is only going to be 40 miles" and thus I take the Del AMo cutoff and do not continue down to the ocean which would be the 57 mile ride. I clean the roses and water the impatiens and fix the Yamaha YZF-R1 motorcycle seat that has been problemmatic lately. Today is very hot and I watch a very exciting San Marino MotoGP race from Italy where an Italian rider wins and the crowd is out of control. I watch some football, but really just "be a vegetable" and relax.
I have a blase Monday at work and get in a good workout with the weights when I return home. The weather for Long Beach is very hot, so I cool off with a shower and then do some web programming. It turns out that Monday night does not cooll off much as Long Beach usually does but some fans keep the house sleepable.