No Wednesday Biking. There was no Wednesday bike ride this week due to rain. I'm sure some people rode, but I wasn't in the mood for a 90 minute wet ride.

Saturday night I'm going out with L again. Well, sort-of. She suggested that I come to her home and that she'd make dinner for us. I hope she's a good cook.

I got an unsolicited voice-mail this morning from Abby. She's giving herself a week's vacation before starting her new job on Monday.

Thursday Ride: trail ride. BH first time: 8 min 11 sec. BH second time: 8 min. 21 seconds.

 
Whiffle-ball. Memorial day my married friend, M, had some people over for a cookout. Shortly after arrival M pulled out a whiffle ball and bat. I used to be a big fan of whiffle ball but hadn't thrown one in years. It turns out that M as well as another guest, J, were both experienced players from their youths.

I started out batting against M and was slapping his junk pitches all over the yard---that is, the 20% of the pitches that came anywhere near the plate. After about 10 minutes of that M changed the rules to be "home run derby"---any hit not over the fence is an out. And his yard favored lefty-hitters (which M is) because a tree blocked a significant portion of the left field fence and robbed both J and myself of several homeruns.

Although I hadn't played in years most of my *arsenal* of pitches were still with me. However, my slider, which used to be a go-to pitch for me, got slapped over the fence by both M and J so I had to retire that one early. Everyone's ego remained in tact as I beat M, who beat J, who then beat me.

Today I'm nursing a sore shoulder and arm.

 
Date-Night. I felt like going on a real date so I asked out a woman named L for Saturday night. I took her out to a nice restaurant downtown and then to see a play. Because I'm frugal (some would say cheap) I didn't buy tickets until the day of the play when they're half-price. Sometimes you can get great seats because season-ticket holders are allowed to switch nights and often the seats they give up go in the 1/2-price rack. But being a holiday weekend I guess there wasn't any switching. The two seats I bought were on the very top row, but at least they were centered. And the theater is small enough that there really aren't any bad seats. The play was good.

After the play we went back to L's condo and had a couple of drinks. One thing led to another and yada yada yada....a little physical interaction took place. Mostly above-the waist stuff, nothing too serious. L was a fun date. I'll probably ask her out again soon.

 
Thursday morning I went to Pittsburgh with my friend M. He had a short business meeting so most of the travel costs were covered by his employer. The real purpose of the trip though was to see the Chicago Cubs play the Pittsburgh Pirates. M is a huge Cubs fan.

I've been to several major league ball parks but this one is by far the nicest I've visited. The way the stadium faces the skyline is perfect. The park has several restaurants built into outfield walls. We ate at the Outback Steakhouse prior to the game. The service and food were both fantastic. Actually, everyone we ran into was extremely friendly, the cab drivers, the police, concession workers, the people sitting around us at the stadium, the homeless guys & the desk clerk at the hotel. Are they passing out happy-pills in Pittsburgh?



We'd bought good seats for the game (~$35/each) and were sitting 7 rows behind the first-base dugout. Two sluttily-dressed 19-year old twins were sitting on the first row behind the dugout. Hmmm...I'm sure they're big fans of baseball. A Cub player named Bako tossed a ball to the girls and that prompted a Pirate fan to heckle him as "R. Kelly Bako" every time he came into the on-deck circle.

And to make things even better, the Cubs broke a 2-2 tie in the 9th inning with a solo homer. That 3-2 victory won me $35 (paying for my ticket) and won my friend $100.

Post-trip Trail Ride: 33 miles. Big Hill 8 min. 38.5 seconds.

 
Biker Chick. I saw the biker chick (aka Tracy) Wednesday night at (amazingly enough) the Wednesday-night bike ride. Of course, I like to refer to her as the future Mrs. Singleman. The weather was great so around 80-100 people showed up. Before biker-chick arrived a cute girl named Nicky started chatting with me. It was only her 2nd time going on the club ride and she was clearly intimidated by the process and the size of the group. One hundred strangers dressed like Lance Armstrong sitting on $2000 road bikes can do that. Everyone looks like a pro standing in the parking lot. My advice to her was to go with a slower group because the groups always go faster than they advertise. I learned that the hard way.

Right at start-time I spotted biker chick pulling into the parking lot. My memory of biker-chick from last summer was that she was a medium-speed rider. That is, she was strong on the flats but struggled on hills and thus often fell behind anytime the group hit a hill.

So I was caught off-guard when I spotted biker-chick leaving the parking lot with the 17-18 mph group (which usually averages 19+). My friend said that she was probably trying to avoid you. Thanks "friend".

I said a quick goodbye to Nicky and jumped on the back of the biker-chick's group. Including me there were probably 18 riders which is a larger than normal pack. I don't think biker chick saw me for the first 20 minutes because she was riding near the front of the pack and I generally hang out in the back.
After a while we hit our first steep long hill and biker-chick drifted to the back. As I passed even with her I said hello to her by name and all I got in return was "hey". But maybe that's all she could muster given that she was struggling like hell on the hill.

After we got to the top she caught up to me and struck up a conversation. We ran through the obvious topics: how much have you ridden this year, how's work, and I asked her about the charity she works with. Although she was very friendly to me I didn't bring up anything about how I'd asked her to dinner a couple of months ago and then never called. I still very much want to go out with her. I hope I get the chance.

 
Andrew Sullivan links to this story of another of the NYTimes' affirmative action hires.

 
Slate has a nice piece showing how the NYTimes' Howell Raines did not follow the leadership advice of the legendary Alabama football coach Bear Bryant despite a reputation for annoying the hell out of Times staffers by quoting him.


Hill Ride: 1 hr 21 minutes. Big Hill 8 min. 50 seconds.

 
The Weekend. I had to wake up at the crack of dawn Saturday morning (which is a real struggle for me) to help some friends with their garage sale. Actually, they were selling 80% of the stuff they own so it was more of a house-wide sale. My friend insisted on leaving his little dog in my kitchen so that it wouldn't spend the morning barking at the strangers walking through his house. We blocked the kitchen's three exits with chairs and boxes etc. But it didn't matter--- while I was gone the little booger got out and took a big dump on my nice red rug.

Saturday night I went with Cindy and another couple to see the movie OLD SCHOOL. I thought it was very funny but it would have been a much better movie if the latter portions hadn't have gotten so over-the-top wacky. The first 20 minutes are the best of the movie. The later scenes just aren't very clever --- a fat kid doing the vault in a gymnastics competition....c'mon, that's pretty weak humor. Vince Vaughn and Will Farrell are both great in every scene they're in.

Word I'll never hear again without thinking of this movie: EARMUFFS.

 
Erin O'Connor at Critical Mass comments on the disturbing trend of many colleges holding separate graduation ceremonies for black students. What if you're a student with a black father and white mother and you have light skin? Are you allowed to attend the special "black" graduation and get your kente cloth?

 
The WSJ reports that Schick plans to introduce a four-blade razor to compete against rival Gillette's successful Mach 3 three-blade razor. Wasn't there an old Saturday Night Live fake commercial making fun of the double-bladed razor by proposing a 3-blade razor?

I never would have upgraded to the 3-blade razor but Gillette sent me a free one in the mail. I've been hooked ever since.

 
Dinner with Abby. A couple of weeks ago I RSVP'd for the company dinner party and cited that I would be bringing a guest named Abby and that her request was the beef dinner and red wine. As noted on this blog, Abby and I have barely spoken in the past couple of weeks. Tuesday I emailed her and asked whether she'd be able to go. I was 99% sure that she'd beg her way out and that would be the uninspiring end of the Brian-Abby "relationship".

But she surprised me. Coming straight from her work she met me at the fancy country club where the dinner was held. Abby told me that on her way out of the office she'd had an uncomfortable conversation with one of the higher-ups at her company who wasn't happy that Abby had just resigned her position. Maybe that's why she wasn't very outgoing during the cocktail hour as far as interacting with people who went out of their way to meet her. But she came alive during dinner and became the charming woman she's capable of being----maybe the wine kicked in. The dinner ran longer than usual so there wasn't time for anything other than a quick goodbye in the parking lot.

This morning Abby sent a nice email thanking me for taking her to the party. I still believe that things are over romantically between us but perhaps there's a chance to salvage a friendship.

 
Tony Pierce writes the truth....

she added that she thought that i was a little depressed and she wanted to cheer me up. easiest way to cheer up a bachelor, ladies, is to reach down their pants. crude, yes, but the truth.

 
Abby. I talked to Abby Sunday night for the first time in what seems like forever. Things at her job are awful as the company has lost some major clients and spent the past two weeks randomly firing employees at all levels. Abby hasn't gotten the axe yet but doesn't think she's safe by any means. Abby's got an interview for another job (one she turned down just a month ago) and this time will take the job if it's offerred.

Contrary to my previous Abby post's prediction, I didn't ask her any questions about our relationship as given the stress she's under at work it just didn't seem important.

 
The Weekend. Friday night I went to a cookout at a friend's house. Things died by 9:30 - 40'ish crowd of people working full-time just don't have the energy of 20-somethings. Saturday night I took Cindy to a restaurant in a restored German village part of town. I had a free-dinner certificate that I'd won months ago. However, the food turned out to be mediocre. The place was definately a bar that served some food rather than a real restaurant. But I can't complain about the price. After dinner we had a few drinks at a roof-top bar of one of the restored buildings. Great view of downtown and perfect night for sitting outside. Sunday I went to work as I'm trying to put the finishing touches on a paper that should have been resubmitted to an academic journal two months ago.

 
The Blahs. I've got the blahs again this year. Seems to happen every year about this time. It generally happens for a couple of weeks and then things go back to normal. It's probably related to this being the time of year when college lets out for the summer. This has always been the time of year that I was moving from one city to another, or some of my friends were moving away.

Abby called last night around 10:30 but I was on my way out the door so I didn't pick it up. I think the next time she and I talk will be the call where we agree that we're no longer dating. That call will probably happen over the weekend. I'm sort-of looking forward to it in that I'm hoping I'll get some understanding of how things looked from her side. She definately has an intimacy issue and part of me really wants to know the source of the problem. On the other hand, whatever it is can't be good so maybe it's best that I never find out.

 
Kevin, an Ohio elementary school kid, has been suspended for having a plastic knife in his backpack. He had taken the knife from the cafeteria. The school's zero-tolerance policy says it's a weapon...

Kevin's parents have hired a lawyer, according to WLWT. And, if the school insists on upholding the suspension, his parents reportedly will seek criminal charges against the school for supplying weapons to children.

 
Who didn't see this coming? The new "highly trained" security agents are stealing from passengers.

The whole idea was that they would be better trained, better paid and their backgrounds more thoroughly checked. But it turns out many of the newly hired airport screeners got on the job without a complete background check. Some have turned out to have criminal records, and even been arrested for committing crimes while on the job.

 
A website called Boycott Hollywood has been threatened with legal action by the William Morris agency. The link has a copy of the letter that WM sent to the hosting service. WM was successful in getting the hosting service to drop the site which appears to have found a home with another hosting service. Is there a group on this planet with thinner skins than celebrities?

as Jonah Goldberg wrote....

Only Hollywood types believe that we should applaud speaking out as courageous but that those who speak out shouldn't face any consequences or criticism for what they say. Courage without risk isn't courage; it's play-acting. And - sorry, Madonna - a society where elites with huge fortunes and PR machines are immune from criticism isn't a democracy, it's an aristocracy for Hollywood know-nothings who spew nonsense whenever they open their mouths.

 
I'm a little slow. In the previous post I used the term "wuss". Until Sunday night I didn't know the genesis of that word. It's a blend of two other words that you wouldn't want to be called. How did I miss that all these years?

 
Bill Bennett (aka the Gambler) As an investor in a casino stock (MBG - Mandalay Bay) my first thought upon reading the evidence of Bennett's high-stakes gambling was to wonder how the reporters got access to such records. I doubt it's illegal for the casino to talk about a specific customer's gambling outcomes but it sure seems like a dumb move business-wise. Now every famous person who wants to remain anonymous while gambling in casinos will worry that they too will have their activities detailed to some reporter. Whichever casino did this should make sure the responsible parties are fired.

My second thought was "This guy plays high-stakes slot-machines? What a wuss. Real men lose their money at the blackjack, poker and craps tables.

 
Our military may be leaving Germany. This article suggests that some of our German-based troops won't be returning to Germany. I think that it's a great time to move the troops. They aren't needed in Germany anymore and moving them now sends the message to Germany's leaders that there's a cost to crossing us. It's okay to disagree with us, but Germany and France went beyond mere disagreement---they actively tried to screw things up for us.

 
This story about the rock climber cutting off his own arm is amazing. I'm surprised that you can do that with a small knife without passing out or going into shock before completing the awful task.

 
Bad Conference. I'm back from a 2 day conference. It was a small conference (around 100 participants) and was the worst I've ever attended. The presentations were awful except for the keynote speaker. The hotel was supposed to be upscale and although my room was nice the hotel's indoor pool was disappointingly cold and the food was mediocre.