What has your wife done for you lately?

So as some of you know, our friggin' AC is busted, happened some time Saturday. We tried replacing the fuse and fixing some wires but they didn't help. Finally we tried some other things today, but to no avail. Jess is a message board hound and can figure out solutions to anything, how to get the best price on anything and the best of anything, anywhere. She is downright awesome at research like that. Well today as I am watching Seinfeld, Jess gets back to the message board. I figured it was in desperation, that we blew a circuit board or something like that. She then says that chipmunks often time can chew through wires. I haven't seen a chipmunk on our property forever but I have seen Chili. I go out back and look, sure enough, chewed up and exposed wire. Funny too, on Saturday and Sunday Chili was sick, is it possible he got zapped by the electrical wire and made him sick? Anyways, we figured it would cost $200 for an electrician to fix the wiring. Jess came up with a mathmatical equation (we shut off some power and pulled a kill switch) that factored in the odds of her death versus the value of her life and it came out to under $200, so she got out this handy electrical stuff we thought we'd never use and got to work. Some splicing and cutting and taping later, she was done. We hook all the power back up and go inside, put in a new fuse, and it didn't even blow when we turned it on. In fact, it turned on! The windows have been shut, the A/C has been resumed and my comfort has been saved! My wife=my hero! Because of her we didn't spend $200 and we can use the AC, tonight! You should see a well rested and less grumpy Mark tomorrow!

Stupid Boxer!

And all I've done lately is take an area that was 1/3 covered in grass and make it about 1/2 covered in grass.

And for those who are worried, I e-mailed the guy who sold us bum Yankees tickets at a different e-mail address. He replied in 15 minutes with a refund and an offer of free future Yankees tickets. So if you are in NYC and want to check out a game, please let me know!

I am down 1100 riding miles from where I was last year…and last year I hadn’t even hit my stride yet, scary how much I rode last year.

Last night was cool. We played in the park where I saved Kieran from certain peril (no need to mention why he was in peril in the first place.)

Oh yeah and while I am enjoying my quiet time at the park, two jackasses had to play on some balance beam thing.

The jackass that lost however decided to do a wheelie in the parking lot on his road bike. 2 second later we hear the sound of elbow on asphalt. He laid there for two minutes making sure everyone stayed away. Seems like a routine event. No pictures exist of this occurrence however so you’ll just have to take my word for it happening. After returning home from a park that is ¼ mile from the Great Dane, we got in the car to drive to the Great Dane. Good eats and good times! Stayed up too late watching the Brewers.

Today has been a drag. I did however complete, in entirety, the Wisconsin State Journal Crossword puzzle, for only the second time this year. All from the top of my head, no internet or dictionaries or none of that. The upside of this week is a hopefully exciting weekend of this and that and some of this.

Wicky, wicky weekend.

Weekend was good. Friday after work we went to the dog park. It’s weird how different the dog park is in the spring compared to the summer. In the spring, the same dogs are always there, in the summer you never know what you are going to get but you certainly get a lot more timid dog owners who are afraid of other dogs or they have dogs with issues that in turn don’t like other dogs. It can be frustrating at times. After that, we went with some friends (names withheld to protect the innocent) to dinner at Abuelos. Abuelos is awesome. The food fills a void long missing in Madison, decent chain-style Mexican food, as Pedros dominates this market but their food sucks. So if you miss Chi-Chi’s, don’t worry, this is similar but much, much better! Afterwards I was a participant in a 4-player Uno game that lasted over an hour.

Saturday I got up way too early. It was Tour De Cure day. Unfortunately the Tour started really early so no basketball for me. We got there and signed in and I got some coffee. We were ready for 100k. I told Jess that I was going to try and go out with a fast group if there was one and then I’d wait at the first rest stop like 16 miles in. So I got to the front and wasn’t riding very hard and I rode everyone off my wheel. I waited and a couple guys started riding and I decided at that point that if that was going to be the fast group, well there wasn’t a point. 12 old guys on $5000 tri bikes isn’t a very fun pack. I didn’t wait long though, Jess is a hammer this year and I got we all got in a good ride. The course is pretty boring and almost an out and back so the last 25 miles were into some form of a 20mph headwind. I pulled hard and felt pretty good and the Wolf pulled pretty hard as well. About a half hour after we were done though, I felt awful and my asthma flared up, first time in a long time I had to recover myself with the inhaler. Congrats to Dennis and Cheri and Jess and Hez, all doing some of their longest rides ever. It was a fun day with awesome people.

We went home and chilled, then called up a couple friends for some euchre and Bohnanza. It was a nice relaxing evening and I stayed up too late. Oh yeah on Saturday at some point our furnace blew out, more than just a fuse, so now we have no AC. As much as I like fresh air, sleeping with the windows open messes with my allergies and I’ve been kinda stuffy ever since. Sunday we got up too early. Didn’t do much all morning and went out to Jess’ cousins’ house in the afternoon for a nice family event. Good eats and more good people and fun times! Sunday night was zone time. Watched the Simpsons and Family Guy for the first time in ages.

Today has been blah! Lots of work. I’ve been commuting to work every day on one of my bicycles but today I decided to take it to the next level and run errands by bike. Rode 3 or 4 miles over to Great Clips and got my hair cut and then over to Walgreens and then back to work, all in less than an hour and probably about 7 miles. I am sketchy as hell on my fixie though. After work the bark park was lame. Went out and rode with the Longs and Danielsons and then went to the Dane for a bite. A pretty decent evening, especially on a Monday. The Brewers are on now and Prince just rocked the house!

So it sounds like WORS season is well under way. I honestly thought I’d miss it more than I do, but I hardly gave it more than a fleeting thought yesterday and when I did it was mostly wondering to myself how Jerry and the others did. Jerry is tearing things up this year on the road and it sounds like that is now translating into some solid mountain biking. All in time for him to move away. And he's even getting some good pub (scroll down on the link.) Two people I've ridden with in one link!

One more link, this is the offical desert of the Larson household. Check the nutrition information once, it has far less calories and fat than other ice creams for the same serving size, these taste like overloaded blizzards and aren't nearly as bad as you'd think. Awesome!