July 31, 2008
This spring we worked hard getting my backyard ready for a garden. Last year there were problems particularly with tomatoes as they got a fungus and stopped producing, and the cukes tasted weird. So we mixed in pine bark and peat moss and dug down into the clay and broke it up and mixed it into the soil. A Ph test revealed the soil wasn't acidic enough, so we added aluminum sulfate as well. I started germinating seeds in March and April. My mistake this year was starting too late. Once the seedlings got into the ground, it was late May. I was scared to plant them because of the late freeze we had in April 2007 which killed or stunted a bunch of my plants. (Early bird did not get the worm that time.)
So, it's late July and we are just now getting vegetables from the garden. It is a terrific bounty this year, so the soil amendments made a big difference. Tomatoes, cukes, peppers, okra, and beautiful sunflowers, zinnias and cosmos. There are watermelons also, but they are not ready yet. Since I had so many seedlings, I planted them in a bunch of other places where we didn't treat the soil and those are doing fine also (for now).
Next year we'll have a lot of compost to use as a soil amendment so the garden should be even more productive then.
The veggie that has been a thorn in my side is yellow squash. Some kind of worm or pest eats the plant every year. Thus, rather than try it again and fail, I didn't grow any this year. I don't know how people grow squash successfully other than to use heavy pesticides or let chickens run loose in the garden to eat bugs. Neither of those options works for me.
Posted by megabeth at 12:16 PM | Comments (5)
July 30, 2008I fell off the wagon after doing a couple of bike races at mid-day in 96 degree heat. It isn't much fun when the suffering reaches the point where my intolerance begins. So, I am riding whenever I please, doing whatever I want on rides (in other words, no intervals or structured training rides), and I am eating whatever I want. So if I want M and Ms for breakfast, then that is what I am going to eat. Actually I haven't had them for a meal, but this week I have enjoyed a tasty peanut M and Ms snack a couple of times. And I have spent some evenings parked on the sofa, watching TV.
This is probably a temporary phase. I'll probably get back into training again at some point, but need to get this out of my system for as long as it takes. And then get back to some semblance of training, though I'd like to be more relaxed about it.
Also, candy is yummy, but I haven't missed that blood sugar roller coaster thing.
Posted by megabeth at 03:29 PM | Comments (1)
July 28, 2008Photos of Ruby driving the boat.
Posted by megabeth at 03:43 PM | Comments (2)
We had guests for the first time at the lake this weekend so of course the fish weren't biting and a storm came through just as we were about to jump in the water for a swim. It was a big summer thunderstorm so the power went out. This is not so bad since dinner could be cooked on a gas grill, but water at the house is pumped from a well which is powered by electricity. And then there was the problem of not being able to call the power company because the phones are cordless and our cell phones don't have a connection in the boonies. After the weekend was over and we were cleaning up, we found an old school dial phone in the closet. But since we didn't know about that, we were driving around trying to find a spot where my cell phone would connect. In the battle of cell phone providers, T-Mobile and AT&T would not get service at all, and Verizon's service was intermittent. I called the automated line and left a couple of messages and they tried to call me back, but my phone kept cutting out. The other issue was that the house has no physical address, so I'm trying to give the voice recorder 'country directions', which involves phrases like "off County Road 15", "the owner of the house is John Doe", and "over yonder by that fishing lake". When I could talk to an operator (this is after the clouds cleared up and a signal became stronger), she asked what town the house was located in. HA HA. Once the operator talked to the serviceman, he knew exactly where the house was located and fixed the electrity outage within a half hour.
This delayed our dinner a while and we ate very late, around 11 pm. It took some time to filet and clean the fish. While they weren't biting well (the water temp is too hot), my boat caught three and the other boat caught one. I am proud that I was the captain of the boat that caught three, which consisted of two adult females and a silly little dog named Ruby. I worked the trolling motor, changed lures, and took fish off the hook. It was a lot more work than sitting there throwing out a lure, but it was rewarding. It was a rite of passage: I am able to hold my own in bass fishing without needing help (most of the time!).
Ruby had a turn with driving the boat. I'll post a photo of her once I download it from the camera.
Posted by megabeth at 08:46 AM | Comments (4)
July 21, 2008My races this weekend were painful because I don't perform well in heat over 95 degrees. Yesterday's recorded high was 98 and my race was at 1:00 pm.
Not fun.
I'm probably burned out because of the heat, mostly, but also I have been operating under a fairly strict schedule in my free time for about five years due to graduate school. I assumed that I would enjoy training for races after I graduated, and I did, but the constant need to follow a schedule is starting to wear me down. (Plus being in pain from two injuries, the broken toe and bruised ribcage.) It's time to take a sabbatical.
There are a lot of things I would like to enjoy with more free time. I will still ride my bike, but just for fun and without a specific purpose other than fitness. I want to play the piano, play with my nieces more often, go shopping for home decor, finish paving a sidewalk with rocks, build a herb garden, and do some deep cleaning in my house. Lots of things to do, but I won't have an agenda.
Posted by megabeth at 08:35 AM | Comments (3)
July 18, 2008I am going through a severe motivational crisis about bike racing. There are some other things I would like to do with my free time and cycling is taking up too much of it. I enjoy achieving higher levels of fitness and the endorphins from exercise, and also the social aspect of the sport. But I would like to get back into playing piano, spending time with my nieces, and doing some work on my house and garden. I am somehow turning cycling into a source of stress (feeling obligated to ride a certain number of hours a week to follow a training schedule) and my heart hasn't been in it lately.
Nevertheless I am racing this weekend and will see how I feel afterwards.
I have been resting after MBA school but am getting more interested in starting something entrepreneurial. I have a lot of ideas but haven't decided what to follow through on. Anyhow, if I come up with something, then cycling hours will have to be cut anyway so that I can pursue a new business goal.
Posted by megabeth at 11:20 AM | Comments (2)
July 15, 2008If anyone ever wonders why I am driving a car that is ten years old and plan to keep it for another 8-10 years, it is because I just lost the money I was planning to use to buy another car in the stock market.
I was investing it until time to buy a car.
I don't have it anymore.
But I do have a nice tax write-off for the next ten years!
My car is fine. It will work fine for another ten years. It only has 106,000 miles on it.
Posted by megabeth at 09:59 AM | Comments (6)
A five pound fish feels heavier than it really is. I look like I'm trying to pick up a thirty pound barbell. With 1970s sunglasses on. A bass has rows of teeny tiny little teeth that feel like pinpricks, so I don't like holding them by the mouth.
My personality and fishing don't go together, but I am trying to learn how to be patient. What happens is that the fish will bite for an hour then stop completely. I will get my bait tangled up in the trees or a stump several times, get pissed off about it, and give up. I'm learning how to fish with worms (usually I catch them with spinners or minnows). It requires a good jerk in the opposite direction once you get a bite, and I keep losing the fish by jerking in the wrong direction, too soon, too late, etc.
Posted by megabeth at 09:30 AM | Comments (1)
July 11, 2008It's funny how I don't actually get injured in sports, just side activities that have nothing to do with anything. But now that I've said that, I'll probably get injured in cycling next. Last weekend, I was getting a fish out the live well of a boat and the seat I was leaning on fell in (one of those fold-over seats) and my chest hit the edge of a bucket. So now I have a bruised ribcage and am finding cycling to be quite painful, even for someone who has a decent level of pain tolerance. It could be several weeks before the pain goes away. This happened just as I was getting my full race fitness back after the toe incident. I really do have the worst luck on the planet. I thought that avoiding power equipment would prevent further injury, but now it appears that my activities outside of work and cycling should be limited to reading and watching television.
Posted by megabeth at 10:45 AM | Comments (1)
July 08, 2008Dara Torres is a media darling this week. People are surprised that she is still an Olympic contender because the theory stands that your body deteriorates as you age. This is true, most especially for sedentary people. But if you continue to maintain top fitness (aka 'use it or lose it') then your physical condition will remain optimal for many years. Nobody in the media is even mentioning Jeanne Longo, one of the best female cyclists of all time, who is competing in the Beijing Olympics at the age of 49. Part of the success of these women can be attributed to genetics, but building upon years and years of fitness also plays a large part. And swimming and cycling are kind to the joints, so athletes can remain competitive for decades in these sports.
It's hard for me to say from personal experience if aging makes a difference on upper level fitness. In my twenties I was either lazy (see: college) or unfocused (see: ultimate frisbee), and am just now seeing the benefit from three years of training on a bike. I am more fit now than I've ever been before. And also a bit obsessive about remaining that way, because I don't want to lose what I've worked so hard to earn.
Posted by megabeth at 03:30 PM | Comments (3)
July 07, 2008I check eBay often to see what the market rate is for things I want to buy. Since they have hiked their selling fees in April (or was it May?), the volume of auctions has dropped off considerably.
I checked to see if it would be a good stock to short. Everyone else already had the same idea.
Because of the reduced volume of auctions, eBay is a seller's world. I can't find anything worth buying, but I just sold a $50 gift card for $50.01.
Posted by megabeth at 04:43 PM | Comments (2)
I did not see or hear any fireworks this holiday weekend since I was in the boonies at the lake house. But it was a classic summer weekend nevertheless. We rode our bikes a lot (new record: only TWO cars spotted in one hour!), went bass fishing (I caught a 5 pounder), picked blueberries, found a few arrowheads in the field, got eaten alive by chiggers. And we ate the best barbeque ribs to my knowledge (but I can't tell you where we got them. If the secret gets out, then demand will so far exceed supply that I will never get to eat them again.) I cooked a big Southern meal for the family, topped off with homemade peach cobbler. During our bike rides, we saw wild turkeys, chickens, cows, goats, horses and an armadillo.
When we passed by the chickens, I yelled, "I EAT BIRDS!!" which seems to have gotten them into a clucking frenzy. I think chickens are hilarious. As a city dweller I don't see them often and wish I could have some of my own since I like fresh eggs. While I'm not particularly queasy when it comes to seeing innards and blood, I feel a twinge of guilt about killing animals to eat them. When we catch bass in the lake, we will eat what the rules allow us not to throw back. I feel kind of terrible when the fish's head gets cut off by the electric knife. Then I was fascinated because the fish head kept moving several minutes after his entire body had been removed. We have been instructed not to throw the remains back into the lake and were told to dispose of them in the woods. (Not sure of the logic, but I'll follow the rules.) So I took the fish's remains into the woods and dumped them out under a tree. Lo and behold, Mr Fish Head was still breathing in his gills at the bottom of the tree. If that isn't enough for a strange nightmare involving fish that hide in the woods and try to invoke revenge upon me for killing their relatives.
Small town Alabama is fascinating to me. People are generally very nice, not in a hurry, and stop to chat with you. But for all that generally clean air that they get for not living in a congested area, they smoke more than a drunkard at a bar.
Posted by megabeth at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)
July 01, 2008Big news! Starbucks is closing 0.00000001% of its franchises. See article. This may equate to more hardship for you if you have to walk or drive one more block to the next closest Starbucks. I wonder if this will slow down their plan to open up 200 new Starbucks franchises in Antarctica (one every 50 square yards).
I'm not a big fan of Starbucks since I try to keep sugar intake in my diet to a minimum. I think of their products as "sugar masquerading as overpriced coffee".
Posted by megabeth at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)