Fun and Games Dept

So I’m finally working from home again today. I feel like I’m back on schedule and that’s a really good feeling.

I made myself a healthy lunch and have found my way to nearby Lock 20 on the Barge Canal. This is a park that is maintained by volunteers. It’s a popular spot with the locals and it is usually in really good condition. I’m watching two boats go through the locks as we speak. The first (pictured above) is a dinner cruise boat headed farther east to start the dinner and sightseeing season. The second is a little fishing boat with two guys on it. I don’t know where they’re headed.

I sometimes pay too much attention to the noise in the world and don’t stop and take a moment to realize the nifty things that we have right in our backyard. In a geeky way it’s cool to have a canal lock a mile or two from the house. It’s a good place to relax for lunch hour. Cycling seems to help me bring my awareness to the hear and now back to the forefront of the clutter that is in my brain.

And I smell lilacs as I type this. I can’t find a lilac bush on a quick glance around, but I can definitely smell them. My favorite flower, the scent of lilac reminds me of Grandma City. I’m smiling like a little kid right now, all because I took the time to appreciate the hear and now and then smell the flowers.

Little things make life grand.

Today, of all days in my adult existence, I needed to see something that would be a game changer. After a rough start to the day and some intense conversation, I needed some sort of glimmer of, well, something.

And then the universe led me to this.

Please take 10 minutes to watch this if you feel so inclined.

I have to admit that this is kind of awesome in a way, but really sad in other ways. Either way, don’t diss the Kiss Cam.

http://youtu.be/GE88upiaSyg

As I mentioned in the post earlier today, I drove to work today with the top off the Jeep. It was chilly at 50ºF, but it was manageable. I had a hoodie and the windows up. The fresh air was exhilarating.

Not having the top on the Jeep today posed a little bit of an issue during the lunch hour. Sitting in a shopping center parking lot with the top off can get mighty hot. It can also make one’s iPad quite cranky. Since I’m enjoying lunch later than usual, my usual shaded, secluded area outside of Burger King didn’t exist as the sun was in the wrong position. So I ended up finding a shady spot on the Main Street in the downtown area near work. I’m sitting outside a closed tattoo parlor. The hours state that they will be open this evening. The adjacent antiques shop is closed on Tuesday. I find that odd.

There’s not a lot going on in the downtown area but there are a few pedestrians walking about. I’m kitty corner from an old bank building that has a clock on the front of it. The clock is stopped at 1:55. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the clock would work perfectly on the clock system collection I have at home. Perhaps I should stop in the bank someday and ask them if they need assistance getting the clock going again.

I’m rather enjoying the change in view today and it’s fitting in line with my work schedule this week. I decided to try two days in a row at the office instead of spreading my office days out over the week. I find these little changes in my routine exciting.

And I’m really enjoying this beautiful afternoon sitting in the shade.

It’s a first: driving to work with the top off. Kind of chilly but lots of fun.

So I thought I’d take the three of us to the local Panera for a little Monday evening wind-down. We’d perhaps enjoy a little treat, have a soft drink or iced tea and just relax a little bit as we played with our gadgets and the like.

Those plans were abolished when I spotted something ahead of us in line.

Two children. One stroller. One balloon.

The mother is oblivious. The child is in the stroller and is screaming at the top of its lungs. When the oblivious mother is reveling in her obliviousness, the child with the balloon hits the child in the stroller with the balloon. The kid yells louder, loudER, LOUDER, I tell you. To calm the child, the mother shakes a plastic glass full of ice in the child’s face and makes odd noises. She doesn’t make a tsk tsk sound or try to calm the child, she shakes ice in it’s face. The child is now yelling “maw maw” and then screaming.

Playland. It’s just around the corner.

I suppose I was a brat when I was a kid. My sister and I were often left out in the car while Mom did her grocery shopping. Matched up with our cousins once removed, the five kids left in the car once got so loud that a woman came over from another car and told us we were very bad children. My cousin once removed retaliated by sounding the horn. Constantly. Then we were quiet once she walked away. So the truth of the matter is, kids will be kids and I get that. I also get why my mother left us out in the car while she did the grocery shopping.

She didn’t want us to blow the roof off the P&C (grocery store).

People that were seated around the ice-rattling mother and her balloon bopping child with screaming mimi are vacating the premises like it’s nobody’s business. The guys behind the counter are talking about the screaming kid. It can’t be good for business.

Maybe we can relax at home after all.

To whoever sent this postcard to me I have to say thank you. This brightened my afternoon.

Ever since I was old enough to ride a bike on the road, I’ve always wanted to ride my bike to Oswego. Around 25 miles from where I grew up, as a young kid Oswego seemed like the closest place that would be interesting and that would be reachable by pedal power. I would ride to Oswego, look around the downtown area a bit and then ride him. It’d be roughly 60 miles around trip.

My mother wasn’t having any of it. She barely let me ride my bike to school (around five miles away) let alone riding my bike to Oswego and back. So the ride was out of the question. I never made the trek on my three-speed Huffy bike.

On Thursday I sent Earl an email while at work and simply asked him, “how would you like to meet me in Oswego for lunch on Saturday?”. His response was simple, “I’d love to.”

Earl and I had lunch in Oswego today. I left for lunch at 6:55 a.m. and arrived in the Port City right at noon. The ride was much farther than it would have been from where I had grown up; all in all I clocked 73.4 miles today on my Fuji 21-speed bike. I think making this trek in five hours is a decent accomplishment. I’m a little sunburned as I write this, but all in all I feel fantastic.

I found my “zen spot” shortly before the halfway point of the ride. By then it had warmed up to 60 or so and the countryside was enjoyable scenery. Several stressors from the week resolved themselves in my head and I was able to think about various things while riding along. I think this is contributing to the wonderful feeling I am having this evening.

I made a few brief stops along the route. I stopped in a little town called Lee for my first protein bar and my second protein bar was consumed in the front lawn of the New Haven Elementary School. While at the school I peek through the windows to see what time it was, as classrooms usually have their clocks over or next to the door to the hallway. This particular school had their clock in the front of the classroom. The clocks were recently replaced. I’m such a clock geek.

One of the things that I hadn’t accurately remembered was the number and size of the hills along Route 104 between the village of Mexico and city of Oswego. I knew there were a few hills here and there, but I didn’t remember the up/down, roller coaster approach to the road. Being that this stretch of the ride was the last part may have contributed to the slightly daunting feeling I felt while cruising along the former US route. (NY Route 104 was US Route 104 until 1972). I maintained my stride, though and Earl was able to find me along the waterfront along Lake Ontario at the Port of Oswego. Yay for “Find Friends” on the iPhone; it has proven to be invaluable in situations like these. Come to find out, Earl had been only a half dozen miles behind me for the final hour of the ride. He decided not to pass me and make his presence known as it psychs me out a little bit and makes me feel like the ride is over.

My husband knows me well.

I rewarded my body with a relatively healthy lunch at the local Ruby Tuesday before taking a scenic ride home in the Jeep with the top off.

I think I might take a shorter ride tomorrow morning, but it’ll be a loop so Earl can sleep in.

A couple of pictures:

I don’t know why I’m biting my lip.

This was taken from the Jeep on the way home. That’s the Nine Mile 2 Nuclear Power plant in the background.

The remnants of a railroad bridge, again taken from the Jeep on the way home. I was in too much of a zen mode to stop and take photos from the bike.

As I rode the back roads and through a couple of villages on my bike this morning, I noticed that the world seemed quieter than usual. I wasn’t being hounded by vehicles trying to pass me, I didn’t hear the thump thump thump of unrecognizable tracks rattling license plates on cars and I didn’t see any school-aged children outside waiting for the bus. As I drove by an elementary school my suspicions were confirmed as the message board in front of the school proclaimed, “No school May 3”.

Apparently the local schools are closed today.

I am curious as to what has spurred this seemingly random date for a school closure. Are there extra snow days to be used up? Is Cinco de Mayo weekend a long weekend now?

It then dawned on me. School is closed today because the annual Town-Wide Garage Sale Event Weekend! starts today.

The exclamation point is mandatory.

During a break from working at home today I took a walk up the street and was nearly accosted by more vehicles than usual. And these vehicles were moving slowly, very slowly. An eyeball stared out from under the steering wheel.

Elderly drivers were in search of a garage sale. Apparently the sport is actually called “Garage Sailing”, but that doesn’t make sense because I haven’t seen one garage that looked like a yacht.

I digress.

The crazy cat lady woman up the street has put out her wares for the Town-Wide Garage Sale Event Weekend! and this has drawn the garage-sailors like, as they say, “white on rice”. Vehicles are parked haphazardly up and down the road and people are walking near the center line, apparently breathless from all the deals they are about to find at each of these garage sales.

Tomorrow is going to be garage sale hell in these parts.

It’s time to get out of town.

So it’s lunch time and I’m sitting in the Jeep on probably the most gorgeous day thus far of 2013. Today simply rocks. The sky is clear, the humidity is low and the sunshine is abundant.

I’m hiding in the shade of the big sign that pronounces the existence of the shopping center I’m relaxing in. I went to the “alternate” Dunkin’ Donuts today for a little change of pace. A change of scenery is good.

As I look out I see the beginning of the Adirondack Mountains less than a mile away. The trees are starting to show a more cheery color; the combination of rain earlier this week and sun for the past two days have started the whole spring thing around here. The days are getting longer, the birds are singing more, there’s little to complain about.

My iced tea even tastes a little better. I even had a friend stop by that wanted to share a PopChip.

It’s a good day to let the stress melt away.