This is going to be a boring post.

That said, here goes.

What a weekend. On Saturday morning, I made a list of everything I wanted to achieve by Sunday evening. We completed 23 of the 25 items (the algae in my shower got a reprieve, but not for long) by the time Ian’s grandparents showed up at 5:30 pm on Sunday for dinner. It was great having them over. I’m really enjoying entertaining people in our home.

Happily, I had an excuse to take Monday off (we got the new flooring installed in our downstairs bathroom and laundry room! Now we can finally get a washer and dryer!), and I spent a good portion of it reading The Passage. Although lats November I wrote my own supernatural novel, I’ve actually avoided the entire genre diligently. However, Dad and Ian both recommended The Passage, so I gave it a try — and got sucked in, so to speak. Now I have to sleep with the light on because I’m pretty sure vampires are going to come leaping through the window if the lights go out.

Anyway, aside from my newly developed case of nyctophobia, this weekend I cooked a bunch — molasses cookies, 2 loaves of bread, an amazing berry pie, some other stuff that I’ve forgotten — and cleaned a bunch. So overall it was a pretty decent weekend, and with Monday off, I did end up feeling like I’d gotten some rest. Next up: Meeting with Kenis Loven about some shelves, two late nights in the office, and working on Saturday at the finish line of RAPSody. I know I keep saying this but, I’m eagerly looking forward to next Sunday evening, when this is all over.

Have you noticed how closely physical and mental well-being are tied? In biking, they have a term called “bonking.” Contrary to your first thought, it actually refers to when your body runs out of nutrients and you start going downhill physically. Runners call this “hitting the wall,” which has fewer alternative definitions than “bonking.”

On long athletic endeavors, the athlete has to continually replenish calories and electrolytes lost through exercise. This means consciously making an effort to eat and drink during the long activity. On my first century (100-mile) ride, I started bonking at about 70 miles. My symptoms:

• Sudden exhaustion

• Weakness
• Headache
• Dizziness
• Feeling depressed and miserable (more than riding 100 miles would warrant)
• Feeling like I’ll never make it and I might as well quit
• Suddenly needing to take a long nap

The insidious thing about these symptoms is that many of them seem reasonable for doing a long, hot ride. I mean, who wouldn’t want to take a nap after riding 70+ hilly miles on a hot day? But I heard a story about a professional racer who started bonking. He pulled his bike over in the middle of the race and took a nap.

What’s interesting is how many of the symptoms are mental. I usually know it’s past time to eat or drink when I start feeling hopeless. After I’ve had a snack and some water, not only do my muscles feel ready to take on more hills, but the world looks entirely beneficent.

I’ve known about this food/mental attitude influence for a long time as it pertains to athletic activity. The part I’ve never connected is that this applies in life generally. I don’t know why it’s taken so long for me to appreciate that when I feel inexplicably unhappy, maybe I just need to have a snack. However, now I’ve noticed this linkage, I have to say that it’s absolutely true: I’ve had any number of times when a negative, grumpy, miserable mood changed to a much more positive, chipper, upbeat outlook after pausing and having lunch. I’m not sure why nutrition has such a tight tie to emotions, but it’s clearly a strong link.

So next time you’re feeling a bit moody, take a break and munch an apple (or something else healthy — sugary snacks have their own sugar high problems). It could very well make the difference.

Yum.

Lately I’ve been reading a six-book series called the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen R. Donaldson. The major characteristics of the books are the hopeless, miserable way the protagonist moves through the books — he’s really just moved around by other more lively, driven characters — and the author’s use of remarkably arcane vocabulary.

Now, I’d generally consider myself to have a pretty decent vocabulary. I did all the vocabulary quizzes in high school, read Atlantic Monthly, and generally enjoy words. Using exotic vocabulary rarely fazes me, and only infrequently do I encounter a book that contains more than a scattering of words I don’t recognize at all. The Thomas Covenant series, though, regularly uses words completely unfamiliar to me, as well as quite a few words I haven’t encountered since those long-ago vocabulary quizzes. Just for the heck of it (I had 4 hours to kill waiting for a ride from Trout Lake home — I’m still in the midst of them right now) I decided to document all the unusual vocabulary words I encountered in one chapter (Chapter 9 of book 6, White Gold Wielder, pages 193 to 219), a total of 26 pages. The following list includes the word; and my guess, from context, as to what it means; and the actual definition.

KEY:
Word - my best guess definition – definition from Merriam-Webster online
* = Word I already knew but rarely encounter.

1. *Argent - silver

2. Vermeil - red – gilded silver
3. Demesne - kingdom, territory – estate, region, territory (others)
4. Ambit - notice, zone, sway? – a sphere of action, expression, or influence: scope (others)
5. *Virulent - contagious sickness, spreading – extremely poisonous or venomous, malignant (others)
6. *Preternatural - unnatural, over-natural? – existing outside of nature (others)
7. *Effaced - hidden from view – to cause to vanish (others)
8. Periapts - objects of power – amulet
9. Auge - disease, weakness – definition not available free on Merriam-Webster! d’oh!
10. *Carillon - bell – a set of fixed chromatically tuned bells sounded by hammers controlled from a keyboard
11. Geas – magical compulsion – not listed in Merriam-Webster online at all!
12. *Rectitude - uprightness – moral integrity : righteousness
13. Percipience - perception, sight, vision – perception
14. Argute - acute, tense – definition not available free on Merriam-Webster! d’oh!
15. *Verdant - lush – green with growing plants
16. Roborant - medicinal drink – definition not available free on Merriam-Webster! d’oh!
17. Immedicable - untreatable – incurable
18. *Caterwaul - crying, wailing – to make a harsh cry
19. Bourne - home – boundary, limit (others)
20. *Eldrich - magical – weird, eerie
21. *Tarn - lake – a small steep-banked mountain lake or pool
22. Oriel - window, opening – a large bay window projecting from a wall and supported by a corbel or bracket
23. Coign - window, opening – definition not available free on Merriam-Webster! d’oh!
24. Malefic - malicious, evil – having malignant influence : baleful; malicious
25. Suasion - persuasion, argument – the act of influencing or persuading
26. *Prescient - presaging – foreknowledge of events
27. Puissance - power – strength, power
28. Donjon - castle – a massive inner tower in a medieval castle
29. *Cairn- memorial marker – a heap of stones piled up as a memorial or as a landmark
30. *Embrasure - window, opening – an opening with sides flaring outward in a wall or parapet of a fortification usually for allowing the firing of cannon (other)
31. Inanition - ??? – the quality or state of being empty: (a) : the exhausted condition that results from lack of food and water (b) : the absence or loss of social, moral, or intellectual vitality or vigor (reference)
32. *Vertiginous - inducing vertigo – causing or tending to cause dizziness (others)
33. Chausuble - hood – a sleeveless outer vestment worn by the officiating priest at mass
34. *Crozier - staff of office (for a bishop) – a staff resembling a shepherd’s crook carried by bishops and abbots as a symbol of office
35. *Exigency - need of the moment – : that which is required in a particular situation —usually used in plural (others)
36. Mendacity - ??? – 1 : the quality or state of being mendacious (really helpful definition); 2 : lie
37. Countervailing - countermand, opposite order – to exert force against an opposing and often bad or harmful force or influence (others)
38. Reft - bereft – to deprive one of; seize (more)
39. Falchion - huge sword – a broad-bladed slightly curved sword of medieval times
40. Deflagration - fire, bursting into flames – to burn rapidly with intense heat and sparks being given off (more)

(Side note: how many of these did you know? Can you fill in any of the undefined ones for me? Please??)

Now, I’m all in favor of “the right word for the right use,” and I love learning new words. Frankly, though, most of these word choices strike me as gratuitous use of a thesaurus, rather than using the right word in the right situation. For instance, why say “suasion” rather than “persuasion”? Or “percipience” instead of “perception”? Or “puissance” for “power”? Or, for heaven’s sake, “immedicable” rather than “incurable”?

OK, so if the author wants to use a cool vocabulary word now and then, that’s fine. But he used “embrasure” 3 times in one paragraph. He used 40 jump-out-at-you, grab-a-dictionary words in 26 pages. “Puissance” has appeared often enough that I’m ready to vomit at the sight of it. Most of his unusual vocabulary choices come from 14th Century origins and haven’t enjoyed common usage for centuries. At this point, my enjoyment of learning new words has transmogrified (take that, Stephen R. Donaldson! You’re not the only one who can toss around unnecessarily big, arcane words!) into disgust. I respect Donaldson’s vocabulary choices about as much as I respect Clive Cussler’s multiple uses of “Machiavellian” in one book.

As I opened boxes of office-related stuff today, I ran across this Pearls Before Swine bicyclist comic, which I had up in my cube at Charles River.

I love this comic. I don’t know if the artist is a bicyclist, but it so perfectly encapsulates the reality of bicyclist/non-bicyclist relations in one succinct comic.

In unrelated news, we had an amazing family dinner at the Metropolitan Grill: Amazing in a few ways. First, when I say “family,” I mean more than just my parents and us. Uncle Greg was up from San Diego for Grandma Sullivan’s memorial service and taking her ashes to the Tahoma Cemetery, so he joined us. And my dad’s cousin John Whitlow and his wife Laurie joined us from Bainbridge Island. This is the first time in my memory I know of the Sullivans and the Washington Whitlows getting together at something other than a funeral. John and Laurie are avid bicyclists, and John serves on the board of the Bicycle Alliance, which is how we reconnected — really I should say “connected,” since we never knew each other before. I’m optimistic that we’ll get to be a bit more family-like from now on.

Some other tidbits:

• I have started repainting the downstairs bathroom from dusty rose to off-white. I’ve cut in (badly) most of the edges and that doesn’t actually leave much to do with the rollers. Unfortunately it takes 2 or 3 coats of the white to cover up the current pink color.

• Ian and I picked raspberries at a friend’s house this weekend. We are now flush with really delicious home-grown berries.
• We got an estimate on redoing the floor in the downstairs bathroom and laundry room, which together total less than 100 square feet. Total cost: $1,500. Why? Because the subfloor is made out of particleboard or something equally not allowed, and they have to take out the subfloor, put in plywood, and then put the new flooring material on. Also, they have to remove and reinstall the toilet and moulding around the edges. Total labor: $950. I’m starting to think that we should just find out how to do most of the labor ourselves, if we can. Maybe our current ugly pink-diamond linoleum isn’t as awful as I thought…
• Removed ivy from our rockery. DIE EVIL INVASIVE SPECIES!!! (Of course, we left all the succulents etc. that are certainly not native, either.
• We’re watching Carmel while my parents are in California. We had to dope her up with doggie drugs on 4th of July; our entire neighborhood was a war zone, and we could see fireworks out of every window. It was horrendous. The next morning she found a moldy tennis ball and cat poop in the back yard. And then we got back from raspberry picking and found her unashamedly laying on our couch, which required serious reprimanding. I love having a dog!
• We awoke to sunshine this morning for the first time in at least a week. I saw Mt. Rainier! And the Cascades! And the Olympics!

And last but not least, I’ll be in Trout Lake from tomorrow through Friday, so expect silence again. You’ll never even miss me. Enjoy the sun and drink lots of water!

If you’re like me, you’ve probably thought occasionally about how you’d like to die. It’s not that morbid; death and life go hand-in-hand, and we’ll all have to die some day. As a cyclist, I’ve thought perhaps a bit more than most people about dying, since I regularly thing I’m going to have a fatal encounter with a two-ton hunk of metal piloted by a distracted incompetent. Anyway, I think that in general we all want to die the same way: Asleep in our own beds. Who wouldn’t want to go to sleep and then simply never wake up? You might want to know ahead, so you could say goodbye to loved ones, but generally it’s about as easy of a way to go as you might hope for.

That’s just what happened with Grandma Sullivan. She seemed fine on Sunday, and then simply never woke up the next morning. We had to deal with the difficulty of what to do, but for her, it was about as peaceful and easy a way to go as you could hope for. No fear, no agonizing, no pain. I’m so glad that she didn’t have to suffer through intubation or any of those other undignified, painful life-prolonging medical procedures.

Being schizophrenic, Grandma Sullivan was never able to be a real grandma to us. She tried, though: She had Christmas presents for use every year through my childhood, even though she had very few resources to obtain gifts. She had an amazingly good attitude through all the miserable, disappointing things that happened in her life. She always seemed delighted to see us, and in February when she was sick, she made it clear that she was happy I was there. If I could have one wish, I’d wish that we’d been able to know her as she would have been without schizophrenia or the side effects of the psychiatric drugs.

My great comfort is that now she’s in heaven — she was a devout Catholic, and probably had greater and simpler faith than I’ll ever have — and is free of mental disorders, disease, suffering. She’s joined most of her family, which was always important to her (who did she “call” in her delusions? Her parents, her siblings, Grandpa Sullivan, and of course her sons). It encourages me to think of her finally getting to be free and healthy, the way God wants her to be.

Lately, I’ve been working on creating a checklist for the volunteer program at the Bike Alliance. I figured a checklist was a pretty simple thing at heart, right? How could you have different ways of writing or interpreting a checklist?

Well, a quick unofficial survey of Bike Alliance staff members showed that people think about checklists differently.

Some people use checklists as a “Done” list rather than a “To-do List,” and would like to see everything in past tense:

• Did laundry

• Reserved Zipcar
• Went to Safeway

This seemed counter-intuitive to me. Yes, when you’re done, the list would document what you completed; but if that was its primary purpose, wouldn’t we call it a “Checked List” rather than a “Check List”?

Then there are the people who just write shorthand checklists:

• Laundry

• Zipcar
• Safeway

A shorthand list like that works because you already have context and an entire idea string associated with each of those words. You just need the list as a reminder of what to do. So when a person writes a shorthand checklist like that, here’s what they actually see when they read the list:

• Wash the towels, bike clothes, and perma-press clothes.

• Reserve a Zipcar for the trip to Spokane this weekend.
• Buy groceries for the salad to go with tonight’s dinner.

That kind of list works great if you have the context, but if you don’t have the background knowledge, those keywords won’t trigger any meaningful reminders for you. You’ll just know that you need to do something with laundry, but what? Wash it? Dry it? Fold it? Put it away? And which laundry?

Another other kind of list people seem to use is a more detailed list that contains tasks broken out into sub-tasks:

• Do laundry
  • Towels

  • Bike Clothes
  • Perma-press
• Reserve Zipcar
• Go to Safeway
  • Lettuce

  • Carrots
  • Broccoli
  • Tomatoes

This type of list works a bit better when the reader doesn’t have the context, since it lays out more details of each task as well as giving the overarching task.

Both of these styles of lists assume a competency in doing laundry, reserving a Zipcar, or choosing and buying produce. The checklist I’m creating for the volunteer program has to assume zero competency to start with, and I have to try to envision and explicitly describe each task and sub-task. This is, frankly, impossible: I have an idea of what needs to happen overall, but the nitty-gritty remains nebulous. Because this program hasn’t yet become real and people haven’t started doing the steps, I’m not sure what each individual task will actually entail when it’s acted out in reality.

I do believe that a checklist can ease the transition as we move into a new way of interacting with volunteers. Atul Gawande’s interesting article “The Checklist” and this related NPR spot reinforce the value of using checklists. I’ve put a hold on his book The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, but 108 other people have put holds on it ahead of me. In the meantime, I get the privilege of trying to write one checklist that makes sense to seven different brains.

Here goes. Good thing I have an inspirational Indiana Jones soundtrack to keep me going!

I was going to write a blog about how my internship is going, but I think I’ll share an insight that I had recently instead.

At Charles River, although I always worked hard and gave my tasks my best effort, I never really believed in my work. In fact, I always felt ambivalent about making money from Big Pharma on animal testing — two hugely controversial topics. When I met new people, I told them, “I write lab reports,” and de-emphasized the part where the results come from animal testing. Only very, very rarely did I arrive home upset or bothered by my work. When I rode out the gates, I left all Charles River-related problems and frustrations behind.

As a result, I separated my sense of satisfaction and enjoyment in life completely from my work. Work was work; I did it to make a living, but I never expected to feel gratified or validated by it. Instead, I found my joy in other places: In my faith, friends, family, and hobbies. Although I won’t pretend that I spent every minute blissfully happy, I did enjoy a calm peace that carried through my workdays.

Now I work at the Bicycle Alliance of Washington, a bicycle advocacy group that I really do buy into. I believe in their mission and goals, and everything they work for closely touches one of my deep passions: Bicycling. In essence, without even realizing it, I’ve expanded my passion for bicycling into passion for my work at the Bicycle Alliance. I want to achieve something great for them, to finish my internship with a beautiful, smooth-running volunteer program that will dramatically broaden the Bicycle Alliance’s reach and potential for achievement. Lots of organizations use volunteers in highly responsible roles, and I have a dream of something that grand and meaningful for the Bicycle Alliance.

Unfortunately, the linking of a hobby with a job means that the many setbacks, disappointments, and frustrations that plague me here follow me into my private life. I found that I began basing my joy in life from my work, rather than on those healthy things I’d done before. I started feeling very low and unhappy, when objectively I knew life has hardly ever looked better for us: We own a home, my bike is fixed, Ian has an interesting, challenging job that he likes, we’re healthy, we found a wonderful church and are making friends there, we love living in Washington near our families… The list goes on and on.

It took me a long time to realize that I had once again shifted my sense of value and joy on how much I felt I had achieved at work. That’s a terrible way to live; joy shouldn’t be externally driven, but an interior cup filled by God and always overflowing. Now that I’m aware of it, I have started reminding myself of all these many blessings. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers,” James 1:2 – 4 says, “whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” And really, who wouldn’t want to be “mature and complete, not lacking anything”?

Today I got a letter from the Washington State Department of Licensing. It warned me that my driver’s license would expire this May 23rd, my 26th birthday.

The amazing, truly awesome thing about this is that I technically don’t have a Washington driver’s license. A quick search reveals I never blogged about the Great Massachusetts Driver’s License Fiasco, but the Cliff Notes summary is that our car insurance was revoked on May 9, 2009 because I still had a Washington state driver’s license. After I obtained a Massachusetts driver’s license, we got our car insurance back and were once again legal to drive in Massachusetts.

So you can imagine my delight when we got this letter, and realized that Massachusetts never informed Washington that I had changed states. The beauty of it is that you can renew online in Washington. All they require is your driver’s license number — which they kindly provide preprinted on a mail-in form — and the last 5 digits of your Social Security number, plus of course a $25 renewal fee. Because we’re living with my parents, even the address remains the same as before. As soon as I got the letter, I went online and renewed my driver’s license. Now I have a temporary Washington State driver’s license valid for 45 days, and I should receive my new license in the mail within a month.

That means that, until my Massachusetts license expires or somebody in the government figures it out (guess which will happen first?), I will have valid, real driver’s licenses from two different states.

This is so crazy.

Also, we spent 2.5 hours tonight driving around looking at more houses. Ian’s rooting for this single-family home; I’m rooting for this residential townhome. I foresee tough conversations in the future.

Yesterday my AmeriCorps cronies and I met together in Othello, WA. If you’re like me, you need to look it up to have any idea where that is. Let me help you out with that.

View Larger Map

As you may notice if you zoom the map out, that city is in eastern Washington. In perfect weather, it takes about 3 hours to drive from Seattle to Othello. I left the house at 6:15 to meet my carpool at 6:40, aiming to arrive at 9:30. Unfortunately, as those of you who live in Washington know, yesterday’s weather could hardly have diverged more dramatically from “perfect weather.” This is what we saw as we drove over Snoqualmie Pass:

Happily, Mom had equipped me with 15 freshly-baked hot cross buns from Hillcrest Bakery to share with the three guys in my carpool. We didn’t starve or freeze, and we made it to Othello under extremely ominous, dark clouds.

As you can see from the map, Othello isn’t exactly a large or happening town. When Heather and I planned this Pod meeting, we struggled to find activities for our group to do that would be educational and that would take up more than 30 minutes at a pop. Eventually, we settled on visiting the Grant farm — they give tours — followed by a BBQ lunch there, and then going for a hike in the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge. On the way to the farm, we all had to pull off the road to make way for some huge farm equipment moving slowly down the road.

At this point, we had clearly left Seattle far behind. Jane Grant’s tour of her farm, which took place despite howling winds and drenching rain, reinforced how different life is when you make a living off the land versus off of…well…the computer, I suppose. Jane was passionate about planting breaks around various fields — they hold 600 acres — and then watching as the birds come in. She and her husband have farmed there for 41 years, and seemed to have done pretty darn well. Most of all, I got a sense of joy from listening to her. She chose this life and lives it fully and passionately. I can only hope to have done the same when I’m pushing 70 years old.

Here we walked in the shelter of a break she had planted some years before.

And here we got away from the rain in a genuine hay barn (she said it cost $80,000 and they have two of them. Yow).

After slogging around long enough to get completely soaked, we retreated to the warm haven of their ranch home — a true ranch home, both in style and location. There we prepared the BBQ we’d planned, but just indoors instead. Lots of people put their jackets or pants in the dryer and borrowed dry pants and socks. Jane and her husband Pirie were incredibly welcoming, wonderful people. They never asked us to leave, but about 2:00 Heather and I felt we’d taken advantage of their generosity long enough. Eventually we wrangled everybody into Phase 2, the Refuge hike.

As you can see, the clouds cleared up and the sun actually came out for a while. This inspired people to decide to try camping overnight there, where before as we walked through the muddy fields in the rain, they had leaned towards driving home that night. Even so, two other guys wanted to leave that afternoon, so we split up after the Refuge hike. The two guys and I went off, leaving the rest of the group to set up camp sites and check out the local bowling alley.

I’m not wildly enthusiastic about bowling, but I think that I might have preferred bowling to the nerve-wracking drive home. As we approached the pass, the clouds thickened and eventually covered the sky completely. Then it started raining, and then we got into the pass and the rain changed to snow.

Not long after that, a sign warned us of a collision ahead. The next sign mandated chains for all non-four-wheel-drive vehicles. We had neither chains nor four-wheel-drive, but the driver just moved from western Massachusetts. I felt that if I had to ride in a car in that snow, better him than somebody else. Even so, we both sat in tense, anxious silence as we drove up the pass and then down the other side. Eventually we fell in behind a large, slow-moving semi-truck and just stayed there, driving comfortably at 10 mph in the truck’s tracks. Most of the way down, maybe 5 miles from Issaquah, we started seeing a huge backup of vehicles on the other side of the road. Turns out they closed the pass for a while. Boy am I glad we left when we did.

That was definitely the safe and prudent thing to do. Sadly, that meant I arrived at the Good Friday dinner for church at 8:45 rather than 8:00 as I had hoped. Plenty of food remained, though, and I sneakily inhaled deliciously-seasoned baby potatoes while they talked about the meaning of Good Friday and Jesus’ sacrifice for us. It’s not that I take Jesus’ death lightly, but I had to catch up on dinner before dessert! After dessert, of course, we socialized with lots of people we barely know. Ian said later that the dinner just reinforced how friendly and wonderful the people at our church are, and that this is definitely the right church for us. For my own part, I focused on getting through the meal without snapping at somebody or seeming extraordinary churlish. My long day in Othello and trying ascent/descent through Snoqualmie Pass left me pretty well drained.

That said, here’s today in a nutshell: Mom and Dad tried and failed to go to Bolivia; will try again tomorrow. KDOG door hanger “event” in the morning – met up with 3 KDOG members and gave door hangers to distribute. Also dropped off door hangers at Marymoor and Spot Wash. Got home and Ian had my new computer up and running. Spent the rest of the day eating, reading, and setting up the new computer. Very fast but can only support one monitor so far.

What’s in sight? The end of several things:

• Our tenure as long-term house-sitters! Tonight is our last night house- and cat-sitting for one of my coworkers; we spent a full week at her house this time, but had three other 2-night stints before that. This experience has confirmed that we are most definitely not cat people.

• My bike languishing unrepaired! Yesterday I took Artemis to Elliott Bay Bicycles. They’re building me a new front fork, something steel, sturdy, able to handle fenders, disc brakes, and harsh treatment. I’m so excited to get moving on the repairs at long last!
• Wrangling with Hertz and Oracle! Yesterday I also talked to Hertz, and they’re writing me a check for about $1,400 for repairs, plus paying for the cost of a rental bike as long as my bike is out of commission. The check amount is right between the two estimates I got, so I consider that pretty fair and reasonable. It may not cover the full cost of repairs, but I’m also improving my bike a bit at the same time, which will somewhat increase the cost.
• KDOG craziness! Next Tuesday, exactly 1 week, is the all-important City Council meeting that we wanted to spread door hangers to advertise about. A few people have volunteered to help distribute door hangers, so they’re getting spread around a little bit. I feel OK about how that’s going. Nobody has RSVP’d for my meetups (here and here) on Saturday, and I may cancel them, but that’d be all right because they are getting out other ways.

All in all, I’m feeling much better. I’m working on a comprehensive volunteer handbook for the Bicycle Alliance; I put off more house-hunting until the middle of next week; and a few KDOG door hangers are getting out.

So it’s OK.