August 29, 2008

I was going to watch Obama's speech last night, so I turned on the teevee and sat on the couch, and in five minutes I was soundly asleep. So there's how I feel about politics.

In a similar fashion, football games put me to sleep. The crowd noise in the background is sort of a white noise that I find very relaxing. I spent many a Saturday in college sleeping on the couch with the tv tuned to some random football game.

There wasn't a time in my life when I was interested in football. In high school, I went to the games to socialize and never paid attention to what was happening on the field.

So I'm baffled at the mass attraction to football that occurs every fall in this state. Nobody here is interested in the sport of curling and probably the same percentage of people who live here who have not physically participated in curling have also not played football. That would be about 99%. And about half of that number never went to college.

I'm only interested in sports that I have played myself. I can watch tennis matches because I played tennis for many years. Cycling is pretty boring for most people, but because I have done some amateur racing, I have a better understanding of what is going on during a professional race. So watching cycling on tv is interesting to me, but I don't go around chastising people for their lack of interest in the sport, and I don't put "Team CSC", "Rock Racing" or "Team Astana" magnets all over my car's exterior and flags hanging out my car windows or wear a Lance Armstrong t-shirt to work on a special day marked just for the occasion.

If people are just looking for an excuse to get together, I can think of some that don't involve football. How about, "To chat with one another", "To play card or board games", "To have dinner and drinks", "To have a picnic in the park", "So our children can play together". That wasn't hard. I could think of a hundred more in a few minutes. Football... not necessary.

Posted by megabeth at 08:41 AM | Comments (2)

August 26, 2008

I have started storing food for winter. I love fresh veggies at the farmers market during summer and wish I could eat them all year long. Each time I visit the market, I buy a little extra of something and freeze it. This past weekend I decided to can tomatoes. When I told the farmer guy that I was canning them, he made a special deal and I brought home a ton of tomatoes for a good price. Now I have tomatoes, field peas, butter beans, tomatoes and jalapeno peppers in storage for the winter. The blueberries we picked (3 gallons) did not make it because we ate all of them already. My next winter preservation project will be okra and some more peaches.

My grandparents used to buy huge quantities of one vegetable and spend the day together peeling, prepping and canning. Canning tomatoes this weekend was a lot of work and I didn't enjoy it much. But hopefully I will appreciate it when the weather is cold and dreary and I can sit down to a hot plate of spaghetti or vegetable soup made with Alabama grown tomatoes.

Posted by megabeth at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2008

BMX is one type of cycling that I will not be trying. I prefer having unbroken bones. But the crashes are fun to watch.

Posted by megabeth at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2008

Updating my house over the past five years has gone fairly slow since I am too cheap to hire labor. There have been a few times when I did pay someone - to lay travertine tile, to lay a tile backsplash, to install hardwood flooring, and to fix a mess in some electrical wiring that I caused by trying to fix it myself ("Typical reason people hire me," the electrician said). I didn't know at the time that the switches were rigged and out of code, so no textbook in the world was going to help me, unless they publish one called "Fixing Electrical Wiring Installed by Color Blind People in the 1960s".

This weekend we tackled installation of a stone walkway in the backyard. It sounded nice and fun and then the work began. Removing about 5-6 inches of dirt and mud, laying the plastic liner, pouring buckets of crushed limestone as the foundation, then building a puzzle of stones to fit together. On Saturday we worked in the rain, which was cooler but muddy, and on Sunday we worked in the sun, which was hot and still muddy. The neat thing about this project: All of the stones came from my backyard, which is rocky on the hillside. That brought the cost of this project down into dirt cheap territory, since we did the labor ourselves. And now I want to pass out and die from exhaustion, and I think I will be very sore tomorrow. I ran out of gas at the 75% completion point. It will be done with another 3 or 4 hours of work. Next spring I'll plant sod in the back since currently it is full of weeds masquerading as grass.

Next project: crown molding in the den, foyer and kitchen. And painting the window trim outside the house, which needs a fresh coat.

After the crushed limestone base was laid.

Inlaid stones in the limestone. The stones will be more visible after it rains.

Posted by megabeth at 09:54 PM | Comments (1)

August 20, 2008

Nice! Next time the Olympics is scheduled, those of us who choose not to have extended cable are going to be left out. Thanks, stupid ESPN.

They'll probably bid too much for it and then charge that extra cost to subscribers. So your cable bill will go up $50 a month. Mine won't.

Also: "Ew!" is what fellow swimmer Amanda Beard says when asked if she is dating Michael Phelps. I think he is the one who should be saying "Ew", to the ho who lost all credibility by posing nude in Playboy. Ew.

Posted by megabeth at 04:30 PM | Comments (3)

I went to the velodrome in Atlanta for my first night of track racing and had a blast. It's interesting to me how I don't ever want to go to Atlanta for shopping but am willing to drive there and back in one evening for a bike race. Priorities.

For the first time this year the track folks were doing a keirin race so I decided to take advantage of it. A keirin involves a motorcycle leading the racers out for a few laps at a progressively pace, then pulling off so the cyclists can have a mad 2 lap sprint to the finish. It was fun.

I am hooked on track racing. It is social since everyone is hanging out in between races. And the races are short, usually less than 5 minutes, and I can deal with short periods of high intensity knowing that it will be over soon.

About a month ago I ditched my training plan since I wasn't having much fun and was feeling deeply exhausted. I cut my hours down and rode whenever I felt like it, however long I felt like it, and with whoever I wanted to ride with. No plans. No end purpose in mind. Cycling became fun again and every day I look forward to riding my bike.

This second season of racing has brought forth some new epiphanies about myself. One is that I am still finding my limits, and each year my limits are becoming higher so I can push myself harder. But they are still there and I need to remember that I am a mortal and an amateur athlete. Two is that variety is the spice of life, and I need to change things up every once in a while to stay motivated. So the track cycling endeavor was greatly needed to restore my enthusiasm. I may try some mountain biking or cyclocross in order to sustain my interest in two-wheeled sports.

Posted by megabeth at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2008

Being on the police department's notification list has been enlightening. It is a good tool, but I have starting worrying more because crime is happening everywhere in my suburb and sometimes very close to my house. Maybe ignorance is better.

This guy really wanted to hide. Alas, he was caught.

Today, 08/19/2008, at approximately 12:45 pm, Homewood Police conducted a traffic stop on Mansard Drive. During the traffic stop, a passenger got out of the vehicle and ran from police. After a 15 minute search, the passenger was located in a garbage dumpster and arrested. A person in the apartment complex assisted police by pointing out the dumpster the passenger was hiding in. The driver of the vehicle was also arrested for warrants from another city. The Homewood Police Department would like to thank everyone who assists the police department in our day to day operation.

Posted by megabeth at 01:52 PM | Comments (1)

August 18, 2008

I bought some apples at the farmers market on Saturday called Ozark Golds. Last year I bought Ginger Golds (they'll be ready in a week). These apples are the best I've ever eaten. I peel the apples that I get from the grocery store because wax does not taste good. Have you ever taken a peeler and scraped the peeling of the apple (don't cut into it, just scrape it)? Wax comes off in clumps. I understand that they have to do this in order to maximize shelf life. But by the time I get an apple after it travels across the country and sits in a box for who knows how long, it doesn't taste great anymore. These farmers market apples make me sad, because there is only about one month a year in which I can get an apple that is totally delicious.

Posted by megabeth at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2008

Since I spent an hour cracking up at the cake wrecks blog mentioned in my previous post, I couldn't stop thinking about cake so I just had to make one. It is impossible to look at cake for so long, even if decorated with poor taste or grammer, without wanting cake.

We were on a tear this weekend to eat everything in the fridge before it goes bad (as opposed to the usual, forgetting about something and having to throw it out). Since there was sour cream in the fridge, I decided on a sour cream pound cake. This is the first cake ever that I have not made with a boxed mix from the grocery store. As wonderful as cakes are, I have somehow avoided making them from scratch, I guess because they are labor intensive.

It came out perfectly so now I feel compelled to become a pastry chef.
Just kidding.

I was tempted to get the cake decorating kit out and make a message that says something like "I luv Mikel Felps" so it would be featured on the cake wrecks blog. But contrived isn't funny.

The other exciting event this weekend (we're an instant party, lemme tell you) was the Alabama themed meal. I read the blog from the folks who have refused to eat anything not grown/made in Alabama this summer. Sounds like pain and suffering to me, while I love fresh whole foods, I also like to eat a wide variety of foods. There is no salmon, bananas or pineapple being grown in Alabama.

I didn't plan on the alabama theme, it just happened that way. We ate sweet potatoes and field peas from the farmers market (Chilton County grown). We thawed out some bass from the freezer that we caught at the lake (Coosa County). I fried green tomatoes and okra from my garden and breaded it with cornmeal from McEwen and Sons (corn not grown in AL, but milled there). And we had salad (not grown in AL), but the goat cheese was made in Alabama, at Fromagerie Belle Chevre. I love goat cheese, but believe this is the best goat chese I have ever eaten.

Good eatin'. I'm thinking about fall and winter and started freezing some items from the farmers market. Plan to can tomatoes next weekend.

Posted by megabeth at 10:14 PM | Comments (4)

August 14, 2008

This cracked me up this afternoon: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/.

I get a kick out of the bad grammar cake photos. Everyone makes mistakes, but on a cake? I think that bad grammar on menus is hilarious also.

Posted by megabeth at 03:48 PM | Comments (2)

August 13, 2008

My employer, a very large company, has a bunch of walking competitions trying to motivate employees to exercise. At the same time, we have lunch brought in a couple of times each week and it's usually something fattening like BBQ or italian, and there are candy jars and snacks all over the place to encourage us to consume the calories. Oh, and the drink cooler, which is stocked with 12 different kids of sodas and gatorade.

If I limit myself to healthy snacks, there is little at snack station close to my desk that I can eat. Raisins, peanuts and almonds only. The rest is junk.

So they have these creative ways to help people burn the 3,000 junk food calories they are fed at work daily in order to keep them happy.

I decided to participate in the walking competition, not because I need more exercise, but because I like to win prizes and smack talk my coworkers. We decided that 5 miles of cycling equals 1 mile of walking, so that means I was first round draft pick for my team. They know that I ride my bike all the damn time. Hehehe!!!

Posted by megabeth at 03:09 PM | Comments (2)

August 12, 2008

I've been working in downtown Birmingham on and off since 1999. Since 1999, the number of restaurants serving lunch in the area has stayed about the same: we've lost a few and gained a few. Overall, there's still just a few. In spite of the mayor's efforts to make it as difficult and expensive as possible for businesses to open up within city limits, there are a few brave souls willing to put forth the risk and become pioneers in a once vibrant, but long dead location. As with many revitalized downtown areas, the new businesses springing up are part of an urban hipster revival.

This urban hipster thing must be gathering inspiration from European city living - there are bicycles parked outside shops, folks buying lofts so they can walk to the office and restaurants, and most interesting to me, tiny meals for expensive prices.

I'm not saying that restaurants should attempt to engorge an already overweight American public a la Cheesecake Factory. I lose my appetite when a restaurant brings me a plate that contains three meals' worth of food. I eat a healthy amount of food, and my weight belies that fact, but YES, I eat an average amount of food for a human being. I am not a dainty "eats one tiny salad a day" kind of person. If I go to a place like Urban Standard or Safari Coffee and pay eight bucks for four ounces of food, I get more than a little annoyed and then do not return to that place of business for lunch. For the love. At the LEAST, I would think that a restaurant could feed a customer enough so that they don't have to eat lunch again in an hour.

I have been waiting a long time for some new places to eat lunch while working downtown. Guess I'll keep waiting.

Posted by megabeth at 08:40 AM | Comments (4)

August 11, 2008

This photo from last night's men's Olympic 400 m relay swim race is hilarious. The Chinese official is looking at Phelp's nearly exposed crotch like he is going to be traumatized for the rest of his life for spotting something he would have rather not seen.

On Saturday I went to the Dick Lane Velodrome for a certification class and as I expected, I enjoyed track racing very much. As an added bonus, the summer heat has broken and the temperature was only in the high 80s. The races are short, fast, intense, and ridden on a bike with no brakes. And I love riding my fixed gear bike, so this is another excuse to ride it even more. What does a velodrome look like? Check out photos of random people racing at Dick Lane.

Posted by megabeth at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)

August 07, 2008

I need to vent about something: There is a person at work who talks about their personal life very loudly. Let's call that person "Pat". Everyone in a 100 foot radius can hear Pat and knows everything about Pat's personal life. At first it was entertaining, but now it is a broken record about how a person of romantic interest who was discovered at a bar hasn't called back after they hooked up. Also there are many stories about how this person and that person are wrong or stupid about something because they think they are better than Pat. Day in and day out. Blah, blah, blah. I like my job and my work environment except for this one thing. It isn't in my job description to listen to this blather all day long. I know, I know - "wear earphones". I prefer not to shut myself off from my work environment. I shouldn't have to.

Posted by megabeth at 08:53 AM | Comments (4)

August 06, 2008

I was blessed with many talents, however, there is one function of my brain that is completely undeveloped, which is called the "Interior Decorating" function. I was born without it, which may have been the result of my mother's crack smoking habit during pregnancy. If I walk into a furniture or home decorating store, my brain immediately explodes and I become deaf, mute, dumb, cross-eyed, and drunk. Quantum physics problems seem easier than picking out a chair to go in my living room.

My latest projects are to find a console table and find a rug for my den. Seems simple, but there are a bunch of constraints, so I have been looking for these items for, oh, about four years. What happens is (1) I go to a store that sells what I am looking for, (2) I look at products and my brain explodes, then (3) I give up looking for six months to a year so my exploded brain can heal up.

Cost is one major constraint, of course. Size and colors also. Console tables like to come in 48" widths. I was thinking more like 60". The rug has to be 9 by 12 so it is going to cost a zillion dollars.

Last week I found a pretty oriental wool rug for a lot more than I wanted to pay for it. In terms of genuine wool orientals it is on the low end scale, around $1200. In terms of my decorating history which involves $100 tables and $10 vases from discount stores or closeout sales, it is shockingly expensive. So here follows the mad rush to look at every other rug in the metropolitan area as quickly as possible to make sure there isn't anything just as pretty for less money so that I can justify dropping that much money on a rug, and yes I will be using that rug as the centerpiece of my den for the next twenty years. Orientals, thankfully, do not go out of style.

When I looked online for rugs, I found some excellent prices (as low as $600), but my brain exploded because I can't really tell much from a photo, and don't want to pay return shipping for a 200 lb rug if it doesn't work out.

I picked the basic decorating colors of golds, greens and reds for my house because I figured that someone as stunted as myself needs this task to be as easy as possible. WRONG. Of all the rugs I have perused lately, about 1-2% of them contain those colors exclusively. I believe that blue and black are the most popular colors for decorating, at least for those who make rugs. Whatever. I am frustrated, as usual.

Posted by megabeth at 03:49 PM | Comments (1)

August 05, 2008

This is an old photo but I still think about it sometimes. While cycling sometimes there are interesting things to see especially when riding in the country. While I was at winter training camp in February, this little calf had somehow gotten out of the fence and was running up against it trying to get back in. He missed his mommy. I was sad for him.

Posted by megabeth at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)

August 01, 2008

According to some small engine mechanics, ethanol has a destructive effect on the engines of lawn maintenance tools. Most gasoline blends sold in the U.S. contain ethanol, so it's hard to avoid using it in a lawn mower or weed trimmer. I tried to find out via Google if premium gasolines are 100% gasoline, but none of the oil companies will state outright what is in their gasoline. Shell V-Power is rumored to contain 100% gasoline, but I couldn't find any information on their website to prove that to be true.

Some car-aficionado websites mention that ethanol is bad for car engines as well, but I don't really buy that. I am sure, however, that ethanol lowers gas mileage because it has a lower Btu content than gasoline. Thus, your car would probably get more miles on a tank of 100% gasoline than a 90% gas/10% ethanol blend.

I'm generally not a fan of ethanol since it takes so much energy to produce. Thus, what is the purpose? We're paying more for ethanol but have to use it because it is government mandated. If we want to reduce our dependency on oil, how about some conservation measures.

If you know any gas company that sells 100% gasoline, post it here. I'll probably fill up my gas canister next time with premium. It takes so long for me to go through two gallons (a year probably) that I don't mind the small extra expense.

Posted by megabeth at 02:33 PM | Comments (4)

I think I type fast. I can type without looking at the keyboard or the screen. This test says that I type at a rate of 100 wpm. What's your typing speed?

Posted by megabeth at 09:23 AM | Comments (4)