June 30, 2007

My road race today went better than I expected, but I had to call on the time trial experience I gained last weekend. The women started in a group with the juniors and the master's men (over 50). That is unusual to start those groups together, but I did enjoy being part of a large pack for once. Usually there are only 10-15 women in a race so we do not make up a large pack.

I decided to hang with the men as long as I could. That lasted about 9 or 10 miles, then I did the rest of the race alone. The first 8 mile lap took about 20 minutes, so we averaged around 24 mph, before I got dropped. I knew there were a few women in the group ahead of me when I got dropped but that most of them were behind me. I kept looking back from time to time to see if any women behind me were getting close, but never did see any. I finished 2nd in my category, of out 9 women, and 5th overall, out of 12 women. I think my average speed was around 20.8 mph. It was kind of a boring race since I did not have much to occupy my mind other than trying to ride as hard as I could in the heat of summer, and wondering at times why I voluntarily chose this hobby.

Tonight I did a 4 mile time trial and as usual, I sucked at this type of race. I think my average speed was around 22.5 mph. I will find out tomorrow where I placed.

Tomorrow morning is my favorite type of race, the criterium. Looking forward to it and I will give a report when I get back in town.

Posted by megabeth at 05:29 PM | Comments (3)

June 28, 2007

I'm racing an omnium this weekend (my first omnium ever!) and I'm not feeling very motivated. It's been a month since the last road race/criterium, so I've had plenty of time to recover. The problem is that in women's races, they usually throw all the women together regardless of experience or strength. Thus, it is difficult to look forward to an event where I will probably receive a sound butt-kicking. Not fun.

There aren't enough women in bike racing because of these high barriers to entry. Race promoters have to combine the fields since there are only like, five women who show up. But if the fields were separated by strength and ability, then more beginner women would want to start racing. It's a vicious cycle.

I'm trying to get some of the ladies who ride with me to try out some races for the first time, but they are already intimidated, and it doesn't help when I tell them, "Oh... this race will be 50 miles at 12 noon in July, and the fastest women in the southeast will be racing with us. Want to race anyway?" Ha ha ha.

So I'm doing a lot of positive self-talk this week. Things like, "Hey, last place isn't so bad when there were only three other women racing!" and "You'll get a great workout even though you came in last!" and, best of all, "You will get a lot of time trial experience once you get dropped by everyone else!"

This is going to suck.

Posted by megabeth at 01:40 PM | Comments (3)

June 27, 2007

We found a single tomato hornworm in my garden, on the beefsteak tomato plant. Sadly, he met his end. However, I found out why he chose the beefsteak over the better boy/big boy tomato plants: the beefsteak tomatoes are heavenly delicious. I've also fried them up green right after picking. The beefsteaks are the best fried green tomatoes I've ever had. My only regret is not planting more of them.

The cucumber plant has been producing bitter-tasting cukes (and some of them have blossom end-rot), so the lesson I learned here is to add gypsum to the soil before planting.

Next lesson: Sweet peas do not like hot weather. I'll try those again in the fall.

I'm still waiting on more peppers, squash, zucchini, and okra. I planted those late.

There is no comparison between organic just-picked veggies and store-bought. It has been worth my investment and effort, even with the mistakes I've made (that will help me become a better gardener next year).

Posted by megabeth at 12:29 PM | Comments (3)

June 24, 2007

I've gone from useless nit-picking of software applications as part of the company's extreme overreaction to Sarbanes Oxley, to working on multi-million dollar contracts with fuel suppliers and transportation companies. This is where the company does its business. The stuff I left is a bunch of pompous, vapid bombast created for God only knows who.

The first thing I noticed about my new department is that the underlings give the presentations. This means that management is interested in employee development. That may sound like it sucks to some people, and I get pretty nervous before giving presentations, but if I can get comfortable with the material, I enjoy it a lot.

That's because I like being in charge of things. My mother had convinced me all these years that whatever I opined and whatever choices I made were just plain wrong. Once I threw that out of my head, I find that I like being the way I never was before: assertive, decisive, and important. I like helping to make decisions that affect the bottom line of a multi-billion dollar corporate entity. Sometimes I even like wearing suits.

Posted by megabeth at 06:08 PM | Comments (2)

June 21, 2007

Sorry I haven't been posting; life is too busy lately. Here's an update:

My new job started Monday and I am in the midst of a huge brain cram. Going well so far.

My previous job and this one are like night and day though they are in the same company. At my last job, I sat in several hours' worth of meetings that weren't relevant to my job responsibilities. Then they expected me to do X and Y, but I did not have much time available after being in meetings all the time.

Here's an analogy: Someone asks you to bake a tiered wedding cake for tomorrow, but then tells you that you have to drive 200 miles to pick up a car and drive it back this afternoon. And also, there are no cake pans or bowls for your cake project because they aren't in the budget. Here's a spoon, though. But before you use that spoon, please get this document giving you permission to use the spoon signed off by three managers. Oh! And at three today, an auditor is going to come in and check that you had the Spoon Permission Form signed off correctly, and then recommend that the form be signed off by an additional two managers. By the way, you are doing a great job. We really appreciate the hard work you have put in to accomplish absolutely nothing.

Posted by megabeth at 02:15 PM | Comments (3)

June 18, 2007

This weekend we decided to visit the asian market on West Valley Avenue because it is the largest one in town. We slowly combed each aisle, inspecting and analyzing the various products and packaging. This is more entertainment to me than going to a movie or a bar. I found the ingredients needed to make summer rolls (with fresh basil from the garden), and also bought green tea ice cream, thai tea, asian pears, and weird candy that ended up tasting quite good (as opposed to the taste-bud-marring Mexican lollipop experiment in our last food adventure). The candy was honeydew melon flavored chews. The sweet, crispy Asian pears were 2 for $1, and at Publix they are $1.50 each.

There were some other stomach-lurching items for sale, particularly in the areas of seafood and fungi.

We couldn't wait for food adventure #3, so in the same day we hit the India heritage store, looking for mint chutney. Naturally, they were out of stock. We did buy some other things, like samosa chat, dahl mekhani, chicken methi, papadi, and naan. And then we decided to eat Indian food for dinner since the craving for mint chutney had not been sated. This was our fourth or fifth visit to Silver Coin, which is located on Lorna Road. Thiis place is a hundred leagues above the other, not to be mentioned, Indian restaurant, which has been around for years. I had no idea until now that Indian food was THAT good.

Posted by megabeth at 06:15 PM | Comments (3)

June 15, 2007

I took a leisurely walk down the cereal aisle at the grocery last weekend. I've been eating Kashi cereals and granola for breakfast, and I decided to compare the sugar content to kids cereals such as Corn Pops and Cap'n Crunch. In general, you are not any better off eating some of the so-called healthy cereals because they have just as much (or more) sugar content than those Froot Loops you wish you could eat every day, but are too embarrassed to admit that you buy them sometimes.

Another surprise I found was that some of the "healthy" cereals don't have much fiber content, either.

This research project justified my purchase of Kix, which has only 3 gm of sugar per serving.

Posted by megabeth at 08:32 AM | Comments (0)

A few weeks ago I won a door prize at a meeting; it was a bag of Microsoft software in retail boxes. I don't need any software, having purchased licensed versions of everything for my home laptop already. I auctioned everything off on eBay, but Microsoft had my Windows XP Pro auction yanked because they think the item is "counterfeit". There was no chance offered to defend myself, and eBay threatened to close my account because I am now a "counterfeiter".

Breakin' the law. That's what I do so well.

This probably benefitted me in the end because the final value was low. I am going to sell it at work. M$ can kiss my ass.

The earnings from my auctions this summer are going towards a REAL vacation (by definition, an ENTIRE WEEK off from work! Who can fathom it??). I want to take a trip out west (Colorado? Montana?) this year, so the planning has begun.

Posted by megabeth at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)

June 11, 2007

There are several Hispanic grocery stores in town, but a larger one opened recently with a restaurant nearby, so we decided to try out the restaurant and take a look in the grocery before eating. The rationale was that a Mexican store would sell good (fresh) salsa, but lo and behold, this place had NO salsa for sale. I like food adventures, though, so we decided to try something new. The meat counter displayed some things I did not recognize, and had the potential of ruining my appetite for the upcoming meal. We selected some cinnamon cookies for purchase, a safe choice which turned out to be very good. And I decided that the experience should include an adventure, so I selected some watermelon chili lollipops to try out. I like spicy foods, so perhaps there was something delicious about chili powder and hard candy.

Hahahahaha.

Here is the candy, which looks like dog poop on a stick. Sorry for the bad photography but you get the idea. The stick is covered in chili powder as well. Finger lickin' good.

Here is the wrapper, which implies that there is a delicious, juicy watermelon-flavored goodie inside. The stick, however, provides the warning of poop-flavored hell about to roil your taste buds.

The taste was so, so very bad. If you took a teaspoon of chili powder, soaked it in water, then left it to sit and dry out (and age) for a couple of weeks - that is what this atrocity tasted like.

Someone else agrees with me.

(Aside to Magic City residents: the restaurant name has the word "Iguana" in it. The decor was very nice, but the food was mediocre.)

Posted by megabeth at 03:03 PM | Comments (1)

When dining out, I try not to be a difficult customer. If things aren't quite right I can live with it, and I try not to send the waiter/ress back to the kitchen for little things. If I do not like the experience, instead of giving someone a hard time, I vote with my feet and do not return.

However, I caused a little stir at a restaurant in Florida because of the salad dressing. I had ordered a salad with salmon and balsamic viniagrette dressing. When the food arrived, it looked great, except that the dressing was yellow, so I tried it, and it tasted like honey mustard. I asked the waitress to retrieve the balsamic viniagrette from the kitchen, and she told me that I was wrong and that the dressing was as listed on the menu. She returned to inform me that the chef agrees that I am wrong, and shows me their honey mustard, which is a lighter shade of yellow than the "balsamic viniagrette" dressing. I said, OK, then I do not want the "balsamic viniagrette-honey mustard-your chef smokes a giant crackpipe" dressing and asked for vinegar and oil. Fortunately, they did not bring me orange juice and worchestershire, but it would not have surprised me.

Now the running joke is to point at something and call it something else. Italian dressing is now called French, and apples are called oranges.

Posted by megabeth at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

A few weeks ago I went over to Atlanta with some friends for a trade show called CoffeeFest. We attended some classes... I chose business-related subjects because I think it would be fun (and scary) to start a small business. I had no idea how much capital investment is required to get a coffee shop or small cafe going, but the speaker dude said somewhere around $200-300K. I see why the failure rate for businesses serving edibles/potables is so high.

That was the kind of boring part. The EXCITING part was the expo. I assumed we would be walking around trying samples of various coffees and teas. Then I find out that the CoffeeFest is joined with the Great American Dessert Expo. YEEE-HAAA!! I had died and went to heaven.

The expo started at noon. I skipped lunch to save room for the myriad of samples offered at the expo:

Gelato, various chocolates (coffee-flavored, dark, milk, fruit fillings, etc), smoothies, candies, creme brulee, custard, ice cream, various cakes, biscotti, mints, cookies, pastries, coffees, espressos, teas, flavored sodas and beverages.

By three o'clock I was in a drunken sugar haze, and had a serious craving for salty foods. (So we visited the sushi bar that evening for dinner.)

I tried some things that weren't good, but most everything was tasty. Some of the more interesting items:

• almond milk made by Pacific Natural Foods (very good)
  
• maté (tastes like tea)
  
• matcha green tea
  
• Dr. Smoothie (which has no added sweeteners and tasted better than any other blender drink offered at the expo)
  
• Hint Mint - These mints are POTENT. The way mints should be.
  
• Wine ice cream - High quality ice cream, and it does taste like wine, and has 5% ABV. I tried all four flavors.

All in all, loads of fun, and I brought home samples to try to get people to like me. Ha ha.

This weekend I went on another food adventure and I'll write about that soon.

Posted by megabeth at 09:00 AM | Comments (1)

June 01, 2007

Now I am REALLY excited about my new job after taking a tour of the department. We work closely with the energy traders, and since they work shifts, they get treated very well. Thus, there are drinks and snacks and candy for the employees, but most importantly... THERE ARE FREE LOLLIPOPS!!!!!

Posted by megabeth at 10:59 AM | Comments (2)