Ok. I'm Back.

Well, after nearly two months off I decided to actually flip the ON/OFF switch on this machine to ON and type something (instead of just threatening to do so) .  It’s been a pretty active couple of months.  I will spare you the blow-by-blow and just give you the Cliff’s Notes summary.  Enjoy.

Sold Two Vehicles, Bought One.  It’s a big black truck!  Not too much to say about it other than it is waaayyy better than the death-by-a-thousand-cuts-Prius could ever hope to be.  Sure, it has the turning radius and the mileage of a freshly-torpedoed World War II battleship but, hey, it’s a big black truck, and you can’t put a price on that.  Well, the dealership can, obviously... And the bank, I suppose...  Look, you know what I mean.

Bought a Bike. A Jamis Allegro X Sport.  It’s also black.  After not being on a bike for over a decade and a half my test ride around the bike store parking lot felt like I was imitating the first few seconds in the life of a newborn giraffe.  I got my “sea legs” back pretty quickly though and I found out that if I ride every nook and cranny in my neighborhood all the cul-du-sacs and side streets add up to over 11 miles which was surprising as hell.  Seeing me ride it instantly got my kid past his “Calvin and Hobbes”-esque fear of his own bike which was totally worth the price of admission right there.  What else... Oh, yeah, I hope the fellows who wrote the “instruction manual” for the odometer/speedometer I bought are found and brought to justice someday.  It’s just an odometer - not a Space Shuttle.  Keep it simple.  Also, maybe limit the number of languages the bed-sheet-sized fold-out manual is in to under 1,200.  English, German, Chinese... All fine.  Tamarian, Akkadian, and “the Hula”... Dudes, rein it in a little.

Went to Disney World - The drive down was kind of a pain.  The insane storms from the Virginia border to the Florida border made it feel like we were in a 10-hour-long car wash.  Once we got there, though, the weather was great.  We walked about 40 miles that week, I got me a turkey leg,  I got to watch my four-year-old fight Darth Maul with a bunch of other kids at the Jedi Training Academy, and I even got to ride Space Mountain (meh - the scary part is realizing the coaster is almost as old as I am). I have no idea what 1980’s stand-up comedians are on about, but in no instance did we wait more than 15 minutes to ride anything, even with a crowd level of 9.3 out of 10.   My wife’s planning book and app really nailed it.  Awesome, awesome trip!

Went to LegoLand - Meh. 

Built a Giant d20 - Actually, I was going to post on this tonight but, for some reason, the file on my fob isn’t readable and I need to retrieve a backup copy. I’ll do that next week.  Here it is mid-construction.

Updated the Geo-Junk Clock - Hmmm... a couple items just refuse to stay stuck with hot glue, it seems.  I guess I will use epoxy for those in the future.  Anyway, I should hit 250 caches this weekend.  I should have reached that milestone last week but I forgot the cable to my fully-charged solar charger so the battery in my phone was getting dangerously low.  I was forced to cut the 12-mile hike down to eight and got back to my truck just before the screen went blank.  I will remember the cable from now on, I hope.

Nike + Kinect Training - I took the third month fit test and scored slightly worse than I did for the second month one.  Bummer.  I blame a recent cold and the week off for the Florida trip, I suppose.  I am sitting at just under 12,000 points.  Oh,  I have a note for my virtual trainer.  Look, I know I have “struggled with these in the past” and I know that you think that “today, I know you are really going to nail these”.  After all, you have said those things for various exercises at least six times a week for the last ten weeks.  Isn’t the fact I am no longer barfing up vital organs enough for you?  Just freakin’ let it go, man...