Corporate Hippy

she sleeps

Poor Shania is in the hospital again.  She had a hematoma on her ear and the only fix for that is surgery.

I left her at the doctors office last night and will pick her up tomorrow with stitches and a good dose of pain medicine.  I’ll be following up with a variety of different ear drops and other mumbo jumbo.

This doctors office is full of people who just love animals.  They really pay a lot of attention to Shania and give her all kinds of love and attention.  I feel really comfortable leaving her there as I know she’ll get lots of petting and sweet talk.  She’ll be well taken care of.

Shania has the sweetest and most loving face I’ve ever seen on a dog.  She always looks at you (ie - anyone) as if you’re her favorite human to ever touch her.  She really makes you feel loved and needed.  It’ll be tough, that day when her age finally wins out.

It felt like I might have been making a blogging comeback with my super-formatted and intelligent post about the Maybury race.  And then I disappeared again.  Such is .. me

I’ve got a few irons in the fire and its getting a little tough to keep them all straight.

The biggest - Addison Oaks Fall XC Race - September 21, 2008

The Metro North chapter of the MMBA is promoting the Addison Oaks Fall XC race this year.  This stands to be a major chapter fundraiser.  Our chapter has never done anything like this before, and I certainly haven’t either.  There’s a really small group of us organizing things and its starting to get a little stressful.  There’s too many loose ends and so much that we don’t even know that we’re missing.

Not so big, but still taking brainpower - MMBA merchandise

Earlier this summer, we opened a new MMBA online store.  We implemened X-Cart software and designed it up.  Its a really great tool - and people are using it.  This means I have things to send out, often.  Its been relatively slow lately, but I just haven’t been able to stay on top of it very well.

In addition to the store, I’ve been to a few races this year .. the races themselves take a whole day, and then I have to sort the money and memberships and get those to the right people.  I just finished gathering and separating and processing everything from the Maybury race that was a couple of weeks ago.  Luckily, that one was easy as we didn’t sell much

On the homefront - dogs and things

I just noticed yesterday that our oldest dog, Shania, has a hematoma on her ear.  This is not a new thing - this will be the third time since we’ve had her (~5 years).  She gets ear infections and shakes her head.  This breaks blood vessels in her ears.  It takes surgery to repair.  Looks like I’ll be calling the vet today.

Aside from that, she’s just been getting old.  She hasn’t been very good about holding her poo and we’ve been cleaning up stinky piles from her cage and from the living room rug (she does this at night when we’re sleeping and we get to find it in the morning when we wake up - I don’t recommend this as a replacement for coffee).  So, my first thought was to have someone come over during the day and let them out so that she’s not stuck in the cage all day.  But, even with Jon coming by for 15 minutes between noon and one, she was still leaving presents in the cage before 5 when we get home, or she’d have a present waiting for Jon when he came by.

We decided to start leaving them outside in the AM and have Jon put them inside if the weather is bad in the afternoon - if the weather looks good, he just comes by and gives them love and exercise and leaves them outside.  Its been better for cleaning up the poo, but might have escalated the ear infection/head shaking that caused the hematoma - but its just a guess and I have no basis to back this theory up.

All I know is, I’m tired of cleaning up poo.  And I hope to god that this hematoma will be cleanly fixed with a simple surgery.  Last time, it was months of follow up as the thing didn’t heal and the infections ran crazy.

The ignored stepchild - Team Trails Edge

I’m also supposed to be the manager for the Trails Edge team.  I’ve done such a good job this year that we haven’t even gotten an order in for one of our sponsors and its already September.  Nice.

I can honestly say that I have this job only because I’m slightly more attentive to it that the Sherp.  Its certainly not because I’m qualified.

Oh, and Interbike is in a couple of weeks, so that means its already time to start shoping for new sponsors.  I’d really love to have our proposal updated before then so that I can take a few copies with me, just in case something comes up.  We’ll see how that goes - we’re supposed to fly out the night of the Addison race.

Did I mention that I still have to get plane tickets - heh.

There’s more to this list - but just writing it is stressing me out.  And, now its time for me to get ready to go to work.

After a busy week, an errand filled morning, serious house cleaning in the afternoon, and a nice bike ride to metro beach, we had a good dinner

Nick and I have been using smugmug for a few years now to host pictures for sharing with the world.  Lately, though, we’ve both been using flickr a bit more for various day-to-day things.  On our appleTV, I found that you can set the screen saver to display a slideshow of your flickr photostream so I decided to start a new flickr set called “screen saver” and put some cool pics in there that will float across our large TV screen when the appleTV turns to screen saver.  Seems like such a great idea!  I mean, what better way to view your photos?

Well, being a flickr newbie, I didn’t realize the limitations of the free flickr account.  In fact, I’m such a flicr newbie, that I didn’t even realize that there WAS a paid “pro” account until recenlty.  So, I found the first limitation to be that I could only have 3 photosets.  Ok, fine.  I managed that OK .. Well, now I fumbled my way into another limitation that I can only upload 100MB per month - and I’ve already exceeded that limit for August.  Nice.

So, my option is to wait until September or pay $25/year for flickr.  But I’m still paying $45 for smugmug.  I like them both for different reasons, but I just don’t know if I really want to spend $70 / year for photo hosting ..

*sigh*  what to do .. what to do ..

Things are looking good today .. I finished my MMBA todos last night and will be dropping off $$ to our treasurer today. I put jersey orders in the mail today and also finally sent back the broken copy of The Matrix to Amazon.

I think our supplies for the weekend are coming together pretty well. Bike stuff is pretty much accounted for - I had to buy some extra 29er tubes yesterday since we’re both on the big wheels now, the 26″ tubes we have lying around just won’t do us any good

Thanks to Nick, my bike woes should be all taken care of now. Last night he swapped out the Salsa bar with my fancy-dancy Ritchey bar (I love the idea of that Salsa bar, its a nice carbon oversized bar, but with 11* of sweep, my hands were numb constantly) - and he dug up my grip shift ergon grips to go on there too! As a bonus, I had an oversized stem with a 10* rise, so he put that on, upside down, so that I can (hopefully) get a little lower now - I was feeling a little too upright with the original setup. I’ll take her out for a spin tonight to see how it all fits together, but I’m pretty optimistic.

I still need to pick up some prescriptions from the pharmacy and take the jeep in for the fuller than full service oil change. Plus all of the packing and associated laundry. The plan is to deal with the ’scripts today and the oil change tomorrow. Laundry and packing tonight. Ride tomorrow.

And, apparently, we’re going to meet Shari and Robin at the Taco Bell with the BEST hand dryers in the world. Does it get much better than that?

I realized that there are more things on my todo list than I remembered to list (MMBA merchandise to send and MMBA money and memberships to sort), but I also realized on my drive home that I still have Wednesday’s lunch break for errands too .. so that makes things better .. I just really get nervous when the pharmacy is involved, but I’m crossing my fingers that my doc has called in the script and it will be there waiting for me tomorrow…. think happy pharmacy thoughts for me, will you?

oil change with the works (including headlight replacement, new wiper blades, air filter, fuel line flush, transmission fluid flush)
* jeep really needs a good inside and outside cleaning
* prescription refills
* packing
* pick up bike rack from Mike
* swap handlebar and put ergon grips on the demo bike
* install garmin mount on demo bike
* and many other various errands …

i’m running a bit short on time and a little heavy on stress at the moment .. maybe trying to borrow a bike for the weekend wasn’t as good of an idea as it seemed in the first place .. at least I don’t have to worry about cranksets anymore - that silliness has been addressed!

Our trusty old Jeep is only 6 years old. She’s only a 2002, and I think we got her in 2003. I drive her to work every day and she’s our main ride for any trips we take. Races, vacations, rides, errands, whatever the trip, the Jeep is the go-to. Poor ol’ girl has 185k miles on her. And today, she got brand new shocks and strutts. She needs to take us to TN next week for Dirt, Sweat and Gears, so I’d better start giving her a lot of love, or she just might rebel.

Well, here we are. Welcome to Corporate Hippy! We’ve actually been here for awhile now … I’ve written an about me page, and prettied up a theme with grand intentions … of .. well … nothing in particular. I suppose I was thinking of trying something new… But it just never seemed to happen .. I just kept posting (well, sort of) to the old blog .. and this one just kept sitting here .. collecting virtual dust…

Call it conspiracy. Call it fate. Call it good planning, or poor planning - however you want to look at it. It really doesn’t matter. It is what it is and here we are

So, welcome! If you’re lucky, the change will inspire me to write more … Or .. maybe that would make you unlucky? Check back and decide for yourself ….