Ahhh, good ol’ President’s Day.  I get this major holiday off fortunately;  Now I have to decide what to do with it.  What I will NOT do with it is sit on the couch playing on the computer.  I’d better make a cursory update though.

I was oncall for the weekend so we kept things rather low-key.  Started things off Friday night at a fund-raising auction up at Donette’s school.  We’ve been the last several years and it is always a good time.  Last year they switched from a BBQ dinner to a shrimp boil, which I have to say was a nice upgrade.  I can eat me some shrimp.  We stayed for the entire auction too, although luckily we didn’t buy anything this year.  The Nigro Brothers donate their services as auctioneers, and they are quite entertaining to watch.  They get going so fast it’s kind of hard to track what is going on.  My favorite purchase of the evening was by a friend of ours.  He came over and told us his wife thought she was bidding on a BBQ dinner, and instead purchased a reserved pew at the Christmas Eve service.  Apparently she had trouble tracking the action too.

Saturday was pleasantly subdued also.  Donette’s folks come down and they joined her at 75th Street for some lunch.  Meanwhile I broke out the bicycle for sort of a “leg stretch.”  I rode to Volker Bikes down on 39th Street;  Just about right for a chilly first ride.  Later in the afternoon, we once again tore apart the house looking for our long-missing drill.  How do you lose a bright yellow power tool anyway?  I cannot really imagine.  Lost it is though, and has been for quite some time.  It’s been holding up several projects around the house.  Finally we gave up and went drill-shopping.  They struck me as being significantly more expensive than when we bought the last one, which was probably 15 years ago.  But, gotta have one, so we bit the bullet and went with a Milwaukee 3/8″.  Hope we don’t lose it too.  It’s immediate use was putting down some decking up in the attic, where we are slowly moving all our “junk” from the basement.  The basement is too damp and moldy, so we’re moving everything to the attic where it will melt instead.  Sounds like a plan to me.

Sunday Martin & Munkirs came over and we took off on our first “official” bike ride of the year.  It went pretty well;  Everybody made it back and nobody threw up at any rate.  I was a little worried, as I have essentially spent the winter laying on the couch watching TV, but we took it slow and I lived.  Got in a nice little 17 mile ride, then went down to the Brooksider and celebrated the opening of cycling season.  Which, from looking at the forecast, might already be on hold for a few weeks.  I have some nice cold-weather stuff, but it’s for like 45 degree cold, not sub-freezing cold.  After that Donette and I made some tasty dinner, then sat on the couch and played an epic round of Photo Hunt on the Wii for a few hours.

It’s a three-day weekend people, who has entertainment for me?  Actually I am oncall so that might be all the “entertainment” I need right there.  Weather looks pretty marginal too.  I’ve got the scooter out though, rode it all week.  It’s pretty amazing how much quicker my trip to and from work is when I’m not riding the bus.

That’s about the best I can do for an update.  I have no news.  Got the new wheels on my bicycle but haven’t gone riding yet.  Went to a cycle shop “open house” last night but it was uneventful.  We are out of milk.  Yeah, I’m done.

So my quest for new bicycle wheels is finally over.  I found a set of very lightly used Mavic Aksiums on Craigslist for a good price.  This same kind of wheel shows up every now and then for sale, as they come standard on a lot of bikes and people swap them out for nicer ones.  They are plenty nice for me though, and a good upgrade from the ones I have now.  (Especially considering mine are bent.)  I’ve always missed out on buying them before, somebody always gets them before me.  This time, after trading a few anonymous emails, it turned out I actually knew the guy selling them so he hooked me up.  Small world.  As an added bonus, he loaned me the tools to swap them out so I don’t have to pay the shop to do that.  I’m pretty excited to get them on and go riding, as I am sure these new black ones are going to be considerably faster than the gray ones I have now.

One of my recent absolute necessities was a “nettop” computer.  These little things are pretty cool.  They are very small PC’s, and most newer models come with HDMI connections so you can plug them into your digital TV.  I’ve been shopping them for several months, and finally decided on the Lenovo Q150.  I almost built one from scratch, but when you price everything out the Lenovo actually comes in cheaper.  (When it’s on sale, which it was last week.)  So, what can you do with this little thing?  Well, it’s first use was to video chat with Ed & Kim and the baby.  I might get a nicer webcam for it someday, but the one I have did OK for the time being.  Since then I’ve installed Boxee on it, so I can use it watch TV shows, Netflix movies, etc.  Mostly I just sit on the couch and surf the Web though.  It’s like having a 32″ monitor for your computer, it works great.  The only downside I’ve come up with is that it sort of makes me wish I hadn’t bought my recent webserver and the PS-3, as the new toy could pretty much take the place of those two purchases.  I do occasionally play games on the PS-3 though, so there’s a little justification there.

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone.  My Valentine has taken off for parts unknown so it’s just the cat and I for dinner.  Boo hoo.  Actually we already had our Valentine meal.  We went to the Blue Bird Bistro on Saturday night, and had just a fine dinner.  (We had a coupon, naturally.)  I would honestly say that was one of the best dinners I can remember eating.  Donette had a ribeye, and I had the bison tenderloin, both of which were just awesome.  If I’ve ever had a buffalo steak before I don’t remember it, but it was great.  Granted, a good part of the flavor may have come from the 1/2 stick of butter it was soaked in, but it was delicious at any rate.  Everything was so good we didn’t want to quit eating, so we ordered dessert too.

So, what else did we do this weekend…  Well, not a whole lot.  Friday night we went to 75th Street and had a pizza.  Something of a trend as of late.  Saturday afternoon I met Munkirs & Belanger up at the new Bike Source on 95th, mostly just to check out the new digs.  Quite a store, although I tend to agree with Bruce that they may be a little optimistic with their inventory.  Are you really going to sell dozens and dozens of $5,000 bikes in Kansas City?  Who knows.  Not to me they ain’t, I know that much.  Speaking of Bruce, I was pleasantly surprised to see him there.  My first thought was that he was going to take up cycling with us this Spring.  Fat Back Cycling is always looking for new team members.  Turned out he was just there to make fun of our hobby though, darn.

Sunday morning Donette drove to the downtown airport and participated in the “Love 2 Run” event.  I would have joined her, but I do not “Love 2 Run,” which automatically disqualifies me.  It sounded like a good time though, or at least as good of a time as exercise can be.  After that she hauled me down to the Brooksider so I could enjoy the nice-ish weather on the patio, and she headed out of town for some kind of class she is taking.  I will be accepting any type of charitable entertainment for the next two evenings.  Oh, and you have to come get me too, I don’t have a car.