life's balance

today was just an awful day. it started out by me having to get up at 5am to drive my son to the pool. ok, if you must know i was up anyway, and he drove himself to the pool. he only has a permit, so i had to go along to change the songs on the stereo :). i had started a pot of coffee before i left but it was a little too late and wasn't ready before we had to go. i had to sit there in the passenger seat, with nothing to drink and a whole lot of non conversation. i couldn't find anything to play either... none of the songs on my ipod were right for that moment in time. i tried to force the mood by playing some techno [groove armada] but that didn't sit well for a coffee-less forty-something year old. but i played it anyway. which reminds me, i have to get a mega bass for my car, this factory one sucks. anyway, i had to drive back home by myself and just get ready for work. the first stop was the coffee pot... yummy. after one rather large cup, i felt as if my eyes had finally opened up. i could see the rays from the early sun breaking across my neighbors grass [note: my yard is nothing but dirt right now, so i have to use my neighbor's yard for inspiration]. everything seems right for just a moment.

there was nothing really special about the morning, i did everything as usual: played on the computer, took a shower, shaved... bunch of other stuff. packed my cloths in my panniers and i was off.

when i got close to work i rode in front of this elementary school. i was a particularly crowded morning. there were a bunch of parents dropping off their kids and trying to leave the school area. here is a kind of funny thing that happened. i am riding along the road, in the bike lane. right before the intersection, the bike lane ends. i pull out in to traffic [which there is none really]. bear in mind that i am in a school zone so the speed limit is 20 mph. also, the reason the speed limit is so low is so that drivers have time to stop in case a kid doesn't see them... it just keeps everyone honest. i get into a left turn lane behind some five cars or so. the cross traffic is pretty heavy so the line is not moving very fast. in the mean time some cars move in behind me. keep in mind that we are not moving very much at all. when my turn come to turn left i am almost right behind the car in front of me. i know it's kind of illegal, but it keeps me moving through an intersection. so as i am in the middle of my turn... i can hear a woman's voice, "it's not a bike path!" what the heck was that? i looked back and tried to make eye contact of with the idiot who said that. she was a late thirty something year old driving a toyota hybrid. she would not make eye contact. actually another funny thing about this idiot, was that she had to roll down her window to let out this idiopathic spew, . after making her turn she tried to zoom down the street past me, like i was holding her back :) suddenly she realized that the speed limit was still only 20mph. that's when her break lights came on. lol! by the time her car decelerated, the school zone was over. she tried to accelerate again but this time the light ahead, was turning red. that didn't stop her, she just motored right through it. it was pretty funny to see someone so brainless and lost.

work really sucked today. nothing was working, and everything was late. i ended up going home at 10:15PM. around 5 o'clock i was starving. all i had to eat all day was a bowl of top ramen, [does soup really fall under the "eat" catagory?]. around 7 when everyone left, i made another bowl of ramen, and some popcorn. i don't like to make the popcorn when everyone is still around because it just smells up the entire building [that doesn't stop some people]. when i make it after hours, everyone comes in in the morning, and wonders why their office smells like fake butter [maybe it was the cleaning people...i dunno :)]. i was doing ok after all that, but starting to feel kind of gross. a little while later, the family shows up with some food! it was good to have more food, but i think i over did it. i was feeling kind of icky all around. i was actually pretty stuffed but i crammed down the semi-good food on top of the crappy food. i don't think that was a good order, maybe i should have done it the other way around. overall, eating so much turned out to be ok, because i was so stuffed and relaxed that i could only concentrate on the work at hand.

i always hate leaving work so late. it feels weird to be alone in a place that is usually so full of people and noise. it also doesn't help to have the morgue next door. actually it's not the morgue, it's only the coroner office. i heard that they only handle overflow bodies [sorry i don't have any pictures]. if there were ever a major disaster, some 25+ bodies then they will start showing up next door. before i knew that, i used to always try to sneek a peek next door whe they had the shipping doors opened. the only thing i ever saw was a stuffed elk's head..... that's kind of creepy isn't it?!? anyway, i can freak myself out pretty well so i try to not stay past the point when my mind starts to play tricks on me.

i finally got things going after ten, and i started on my late night journey home. the time just changed a couple of days ago, so it would have been dark at 5pm. it felt darker and colder than usual maybe i was still thinking about the morgue :) i was in a little bigger hurry to get home, because i wanted to sleep. i kind of hammered the whole way. all the other cars were pretty polite on the way home, but then again there were only a couple of people out at that time. when i got home i changed, ate again...[my wife made dinner for me, so i wasn't going to pass it up] this just added to the sleepiness.

those of you who commute on bike have experienced the leaving work apprehension. it's that feeling that starts an hour or so before you are about to leave work. it's really dark... cold outside. you know how far it is, you know how cold your going to be, you know how long it's going to take, you know that a warm ride home is just one call away..... but still you do it! i still dont know why i do it other than i some how love suffering. when it is all done, i remember many more rides to work than i do drives to work. and, if you can't remember something then it was wasted time.

-leo