Day’s Verse:
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.
1 Peter 5:8-11

It’s been over a week since I posted anything here, as you’ve probably noticed. Why? Well, a variety of reasons:

• I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the computer with Bike Alliance stuff. By the time I finish that, I just have no interest in doing more stuff on the computer.
• I’ve spent a fair bit of time with other people: hiking at St. Edward’s State Park; riding a metric century to Fall City and back with Dad (that took a good portion of the day); hanging out in the awesome library at our house; and hanging out at other peoples’ houses.
• Most of what I’ve done feels pretty ho-hum. Why talk about ho-hum?
• I’ve been reading interesting books: A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge; The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein; and Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, by Ethan Gildorf. When I have free time, it’s gone to those books.

Actually, I’ve found it somewhat astonishing how quickly time can go when I’m not working. When I think back on my days during the last week, I’m not 100% sure where all the time has gone — but I haven’t spent it sitting around, let me tell you. Take yesterday as an example.

I got up and worked for an hour on Bike Alliance-related stuff, creating an agenda for the bike classes for PE teachers I’ll be teaching starting January. By 8:45 I was out on the road, riding my bike to the Bellevue Transit Center to drop off a swipe card. They have secure bike parking that you can access by card, but it costs $50/6 months and I only used it maybe a half-dozen times in the last six months. Since I don’t have to commute to the Bike Alliance regularly anymore, it really wasn’t worth it. On the way home, I stopped at Kirkland Bike Shop and bought a pair of pants to replace the pair I was wearing. The old pair had worn through where my butt touches the saddle; it had 2 holes in one knee; and the fabric was wearing through at both knees. I received those pants for Christmas in 1998. Anyway, replaced those and then did an exchange at Sur la Table. The wire on our $16 cheese slicer broke, and apparently they don’t make replacement wires (?! Lame design if so!) so Sur la Table gave us a new slicer.

Then on to Mom and Dad’s house, where I looked for wrapping for Ian’s white elephant gift for his work party (no luck). I killed some time there until my 12:00 doctor’s appointment. The appointment took about an hour (15 minutes of which was actually with the doctor); then I had to wait to make another appointment. They were short staffed and the place was crawling with people, and I felt a bit bad for all the staff trying to run around and keep up. I know that feeling. Anyway, the doctor also recommended physical therapy for my back, so I went to that office (in the same building but 2 floors up from my doctor’s office) and it took a while to do that whole jazz.

By the time I got home, I was pooped. But my day wasn’t nearly done! I had an urgent email asking me to come pick some stuff up, so I rushed off to do that, and on the way home stopped at the Bothell library to pick up Boundaries, by Greg Cloud and John Townsend, the book the women in my Journey Community are reading.

When I got home again, I realized I needed to print stuff for the Bonney Lake bike audits I’m doing today, so — since we have no printer — I had to go back to Mom and Dad’s house and borrow their printer for a while. I rode my bike and lubed the chain at their house, too, since they have a bike stand. That took a long time; printing Google maps like this one can be challenging. Finally home again for the evening, Ian and I tackled our Christmas tree. We’d brought it in and set it up the previous night, but even the thought of lights and decorating just tired us out. We put it off until tonight. Our Christmas sphere, despite not looking like a particularly traditional Christmas tree, turned out nicely nonetheless. Finally, I finished the day watching an episode of Babylon 5 with Ian, and the sitting still sure felt nice. I slept pretty well.

…all that to say this is why I end up not blogging. All the time I spent at my computer was Bike Alliance-related, and I didn’t have a huge amount of down time despite having only one appointment on my calendar.

Today’s looking interesting but not likely for a blog post: I’m meeting a guy from Feet First at 9:00. We’re driving down to Bonney Lake to begin evaluating roads around 3 schools for walkability and bikeability. Now I wish I knew more about road design. Anyway, we’ll see what happens. At least I’m getting paid a reasonable wage to do it!