Corporate Hippy

Nick and I are about to walk out the door – to the airport – for a week’s vacaction in Amsterdam with Jessica. Our adventure has its own website and will be documented by all three of us throughout the week.  Follow us here:

http://www.farkinfinally.com

Shania had another doctor appointment yesterday and this time it was all good news!  The stitches came out, and the incision is all healed up.  Her ear infections, in both ears, are COMPLETELY GONE – I don’t think she’s ever been 100% ear infection free since we’ve had her.  That is HUGE.  I’m hoping the regimine of Benedryl/Claritin will keep them from coming back.  Now that I know she will eat them if I drop them in her food, it’ll be much easier to keep the regimine going.  And today I got a call from the doctor with the results of her urinalysis – there is no sign of infection.

So, she’s got some antibiotics to finish and then she needs to go for another urinalysis a week after that – just to be sure its gone for good.

Jon says she’s been chasing Chilli around the yard faster than usual lately and she’s been really snuggly and happy for the past few weeks.  She hasn’t had a single ‘accident’ in the house since I brought her home from surgery.  Good news all around.

Well .. Made it through another week …

When the race hoop-lah is all over, we’ll be on vacation in Vegas.  In fact, we’ve already alerted our race volunteer staff that no matter what, we’re driving away from the park at 5:00 because we have an 8:00 flight on Sunday.

I’ve never flown on Spirit, and DTW has just opened a brand new terminal that Spirit flys out of, so hopefully things will go smoothly.  If we get out of Addison on time, we should have plenty of breathing room for whatever may happen.  Nick’s plan is to get to the airport early enough to allow for sitting in the bar and drinking a couple of beers before boarding.  I’m looking forward to sitting listening to my audiobook while knitting sock #2 of the pair I was working on for my mom’s birthday (its only going to be 2 months late). I’m working on the “leg” part of the sock which requires no thinking what-so-ever and is just really mentally relaxing to work on.  Its actually my favorite part about knitting socks – I sense really tall socks in my future 😉

I think we decied that we’re going to rent a car for the first couple of days of our Vegas trip.  The swanky place where we’re staying has free valet parking, and cars are pretty cheap to rent in Vegas.  I doubt we’ll get ot to Boulder City for the dirt demo on Monday, but on Tuesday we plan to head there and also visit the yummmy yummmy brewery in town that day.  We’re thinking a convertible is in order for this trip, wouldn’t you agree?

I’m really looking forward to staying at the swanky condo for a week.  I’m sure we’ll sit through the time-share presentation (again), thinking (again) that this is a great idea and it would make sense, since we go to Vegas every year anyway.  And then, by the time we’re riding the plane home on Saturday we’ll come to our senses and realize that renting your vacation is really not that bad – and getting an additional mortgage for $20k+ is just not in our life plan.  But, I have to say – it is very compelling when you get all the benefits of the Marriott vacation club on top of the wonderful Vegas condo.

In other news – Shania had a visit with the doctor yesterday to check the progress of her ears.  He was really surprised to see how good she’s doing – the incision is healing up very well and there’s hardly any ‘debris’ from the ear infections (black goop that come out of her ear holes).  She hasn’t had an accident in the house a single time since we brought her home last week which tells us that the antibiotics are working for the bladder infection (thank god – if not, it would have been another $300 in tests).

Oh .. and one more thing – my “local food fairy” brought us some Fat Tire from her Colorado galavants.  Kristi and Erik took a 2 week vacation, driving out west and riding bikes.  *JEALOUS*  :D   Thanks Kristi, we cracked the 6pack last night and it was mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm  (FYI – Kristi also brought is 2 dozen Jean Kay’s pasties from Marquette in August .. she’s the greatest).

Ok .. really one more thing – I just heard that our friend Ali will be in Vegas next week too.  I haven’t seen Ali since she moved to Cali (she’s already since then moved to NY) so I hope we can run in to each other.  Ali – look for the girl who looks like me, hanging out with the guy who looks like Nick 😉

Friday was an interesting ballet of running around.  Mike and I had decided to swap trucks in the morning so that I could pick up his giant movie screen from Trails Edge (where its been for a year).  He’s been thinking of setting it up somplace at the Addison Oaks race to play some MTB movies during the day.  The screen is super long, and his truck has a bigger bed than ours (and certainly longer than the jeep).  Also, I was going to be picking up cones, stakes and other trail marking materials from the Sherp that the Metro South chapter is letting us borrow for the race.  Mike has graciously offered to house that stuff until race day.

So, I left a little early for work on Friday and stopped in Oak Park on the way.  Its a quick little jaunt off the expressway, but hardly out of my way at all.  We swapped keys, and I drove away in his big truck.  Around noon-thrity, I drove from work out to Trails Edge to drop off Bob’s destroyed wheel, pick up the screen, marking stuff and a bike for Bill to try out over the weekend and went back to work.  After work, I drove to Mike’s place to get my jeep back, then by Bill’s place to drop off the bike and then finally I made my way home.  By then, it was raining pretty hard.

We ordered pizza and watched TV for the night – it was a long busy week, and we needed some chill time.

Saturday, we were planning on meeting Steve at Addison to talk about the kids race and some other logistics.  Nick and Mike also had to meet with another TC to talk about some business.  It was pouring rain when we got to Mike’s place a little before 11 and raining even harder while we were walking around at the park.  We got pretty soaked in the hour or so we were out there.  Once home, we commenced with the LWM (lazy weekend mode) – watching movies and chilling on the couch.  Nick even napped on the couch for a couple of hours in the evening while the PASTIES were cooking (I listened to music and knitted).

By sunday AM, cabin fever had grabbed hold and I was ready for some fresh air.  Since it wasn’t raining, and just gloomy, we decided to grab the bikes and head out for a ride.  We rode for a little over an hour, got a little over 10 miles in and brought home lunch from Jimmy Johns.  A slight burst of motivation got me to clean up the bedroom a bit, deciding to throw away Shanias dirty and disgusting (several year old) dog bed and replace it with something that was completely washable (with the old one, we could only wash the cover).  So, we went out to run some errands and made it back just as the heavy rain started to fall.

After that – it was back to LWM for the remainder of the evening.  I’d found a frozen lasagna in the freezer and called that dinner.

Overall – not a bad weekend .. I just wish I could have ridden my bike a bit more.  But, what can you do when you depend on Ma Nature?

As panicked as I was earlier this week, I’m much more relaxed now.

The Addison Oaks fiasco

Lots of things have happened this week and we are much more on track than we were this time last week.  Awards have been ordered (and are going to be awesome!), insurance has been purchased, start/finish line setup is covered (thanks to OCP), the kids race is covered (thanks to Mike and Steve), the beer has been finalized (thanks Tom and Chris) and neutral race support has been secured (thanks TJ).  

We’re heading out tomorrow to meet Steve and talk about the kids race.  I hope to ride the course to scope where we need to mark and where we need to place course marshalls.  

The Merchandise headache

I’ve filled all outstanding merchandise orders and haven’t received anything new since.  YAY!

The crumbling homefront

Shania is back home and doing very well.  She’s got a shaved ear and a very neat incision to be cared for.  Her ears are still very swollen with infection, but I’ve been giving her all kinds of different ear drops and medications – hopefully we’ll see that swelling go down over the next few days.  I also had them test for UTI and/or intestinal problems while she was under anesthesia.  Turns out, she’s got a pretty severe UTI which has probably been causing all of the indoor poo/pee problems we’ve been having.  She seems to be responding well to the antibiotics prescribed, which is good.  She’s happy and spunky, just like normal.  

We’ve got a follow up with the doc next week.

The Trails Edge saga

Not much new on this front, but I’m still banking on getting the sponsorship proposal updated before we go to vegas.  We’ll see how that goes.

 

In other news – I’ve finally booked tickets for our Vegas trip.  We’re leaving on race-day, flight is at 8:00 pm.  We’ll most likely be leaving right from Addison to go to the airport.  Luckily, I paid extra to secure a couple of exit row seats, so we’ll have plenty of room to stretch out and sleep.  I think Karma came through for me on this too – when I looked at flights on Monday, the price had gone down below $300 (it’d been sitting at $354 for the past couple of months), but I wanted to wait until I knew how much Shania was going to cost before I made the purchase.  On Tuesday, I didn’t get a chance to get to the bank to make the deposit that I needed to make in order to purchase tickets – the price had gone back up to $354.  On Wednesday, I finally was ready to make the purchase and got tickets for just over $300 (but, add in $60 for luggage and another $60 for seat assignments).  And, it was really perfect timing because – Thursday the price went up to $419, and today I saw the price went up to $489 (I get daily alerts from Kayak).  Wow – talk about getting it right.  Heh.

Generally speaking, I’m not one to dine alone. Most often, lunch is eaten at my desk while surfing the web, on a conference call, or just otherwise working.

Today, however, I needed a change of scenery and decided to dine-in @ my favorite medeterranian restaurant – la marsa. They’ve just finished a big expansion/remodelling project and the place looks great!

Lunch looks even better tho …

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.