Design Competition!

The last time this blog sponsored a contest, nobody participated. This doesn't surprise me, considering that only four people know about this blog. So here's the contest:

Design a Cereal Box

Now, this isn't just any cereal box. This is a very special cereal.

1. Think about a relationship that you have been or currently are in. What kind of cereal would that relationship be, and what would the cereal look like and taste like? You might want to talk this over with your significant (former?) other.
2. With that in mind, design the cereal box. Include the following items:
   1. The name of the cereal.
   2. A sketch of the box. What does the box look like? What's the color scheme? Include, the front, back, side, top, and bottom panels.
   3. Dimensions of the box. Is it square? Is it a cylinder? How big is it?
   4. Include all of the text on the box, the copy, the tag lines, the ingredient list, the nutritional information.

Remember, this cereal box represents a relationship, and every item of the box (and cereal) design should be a reflection of that relationship. Are you up for this project?

Send your entries to cerealbox@happydoodle.net before March 31, 2010. I'll share the entries here. I may dragoon some of you to help me judge what I know will be an avalanche of entries. The top three winning entries will be posted here, if indeed, I receive any entries. The winning entry will receive something really cool, that I would otherwise sell at a flea market this summer.

Southaven Nights

We're still in Southaven. Ron called the airlines this morning after discovering that our flight had been cancelled a second time. Our next attempted departure will be on Tuesday. That's a week we've spent here. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Today's adventure started with the tire indicator lit. So when we got to Mom's we checked the tire pressure and found a nail in the passenger-side rear tire. Alex got out her compressor (she has everything in her garage), and topped off the tire, and proceeded to top off the other rear tire. In the process, the valve head came out, so now I had two flat tires, instead of one. We proceeded to change the tire with the defective valve, and went in search of a place to change the other tire on a Sunday.

Walmart, what a marketplace delight, especially for people in need on a Sunday. I filled out an order, then we were off to a Chinese buffet for lunch. It wasn't bad. I didn't have intestinal discomfort afterwards. Ron and I went back to Walmart, but the car wasn't ready quite yet.

When it was ready, I was told that they hadn't done any work on it because the valve is a special valve only available from the dealer. I told them to go and install a regular valve. At this point, I don't care about the rental car or contract; I need a car to drive. The guys quickly repaired both tires, and we came back to the hotel.

The problem, then, is what to do for dinner. We were invited over to Larry and Sherri's to eat and watch the Super Bowl. Ron and I are actually a lot gayer than that. We called Alex and politely declined, then went for a walk, had a nap, and ended up at the Olive Garden for dinner. We had a nice glass of wine, some bread sticks, some pasta, and a nice evening of looking each other in the eye and thinking what a nice evening to be together with you.

Memphis Barbeque

Okay, after that last whiny blog entry I should be ashamed of myself. Tonight, we took Mom to the Olive Garden to meet up with Ron's sister, Alex, and have dinner. Well, 6:30 on a Friday night in Southaven, Mississippi is the time when the natives all go Italian. The place was packed, and we were shunted off to a very smoky bar. I wasn't too keen to spend 45 minutes there to be seated for dinner.

Alex suggested that Ron and I go somewhere else to eat if we didn't want to wait for dinner, and that she and Mom would eat at the bar. After a few indecisive moments, Ron and I headed for the door, jumped in the bright red minivan, and headed down Airways Boulevard in the direction of Scooter's Barbeque.

We had seen Scooter's when we first got into town on Tuesday, but I didn't think that we'd actually have a chance to eat there. It's a very down-home unpretentious carryout/restaurant. The video was playing some great rockin' blues and the smell from the kitchen was 100% barbeque, a wonderful smoky aroma that let you know you were in the right place for some great food.

I'm a fan of pulled or chopped pork sandwiches. For dinner tonight, I had a chopped pork sandwhich with slaw, barbeque beans, potato salad, lemon cake, and iced tea. It set me back $4.95. The barbeque spoke to me with its vinegary smoky-sweet goodness. The meat was moist, tender, and most of all smoky, but not assertive or bitter. It is some of the best 'que I've ever eaten.

The sides were good country cooking, too. The beans were sweet, but not too, with chunks of barbequed pork. The potato salad would have made any of my aunts proud to say it was there own. The lemon cake was just the right way to end this memorable meal. Scooter's should be on your list of places to visit when you get tired of Graceland or the Orpheum. Head for Southaven, and the corner of Airways and Goodman.

Snow Daze

Ron and I are sitting in Mom's kitchen with Ron's Mom. It's an exasperating experience. She is experiencing memory loss, and it's getting worse. Right now she is quite lucid, but it's not going to last. Ron is far more patient than I, but I'm pretty sure that it makes him a little nuts, too: the endless questions, the crying, the paranoia, and the frustration. She's often angry and sullen. Yesferday she was certain that we were going to poison her.

Of course, the situation changes minute by minute. It takes nothing to set her off. She lives in a very looking glass world. Life inside these walls is not always what it seems.

Oh, the snow. Because of the weather in DC, our flight was cancelled. We are rebooked for day after tomorrow. The next 48 hours will be extremely time dilated. I had to change the hotel and car reservation. While changing the car contract, I realized that my driver's license was missing. My license wasn't in my wallet, my jacket, the hotel room. I eventually found it in the car underneath the beverage holder. Maybe I'm the one with memory loss. I also called the snow guy to clear our steps and walk. We're getting back to DC about 10 p.m. Sunday evening, and I didn't want two and a half feet of snow outside our front door looking for a shovel. We've made our arrangements. Let it snow (brave words, here).

Groundhog Day

If that little, fierce, furry creature had popped its head out of its hole yesterday, we'd have six more weeks of winter. Today, however, the sky is overcast, and depending on when that awful rodent makes its appearance, we may just have six more weeks of winter.

I'm pretty sure that Ms. Groundhog doesn't affect the weather at all, and what happens if it doesn't see its shadow? Is the temperature suddenly going to rise, and we're going to have the warmest February on record? It would also ruin my Caribbean trip, if I were to fly to the sunny South, only to have it be all comfy up North.

No, I don't like winter, just like the next guy, but when I go on my winter vacation, it better be cold back home. And that little furry beast better show up, and it better see its shadow, too. I wonder if ground hogs taste good?

Elder Think Tank

Yesterday, I attended a meeting of the Elder Think Tank. It's a program sponsored by the Metro DC GLBT Community Center. The Elder Think Tank recently elected new leadership, and that was evident at the first meeting.

The Elder Think Tank is focused on aging issues for the LGBT communities. Many of the people around the table are experts on LGBT aging issues. Others are activists who have specific interests around these issues. I'm one of the latter.

I want to get involved because I believe that LGBT people have unique needs that can't be adequately satisfied within the current way of caring for aging people. Even "gay-friendly" institutions are no substitute for LGBT people caring for each other. I also believe that we can't wait for the government or the healthcare industry, or communities of faith to take care of our needs. Our communities need to clearly define their needs for our aging members, AND the primary responsibility for satisfying those needs must come from our communities. We need to build the institutions and the social infrastructure to take care of ourselves.

Here are some ideas on how to do that

• Examine our needs.

Whether its a focus group, a survey, or conversations within our communities, we have to explore the needs of aging LGBT people. I believe that LGBT communities have unique social, health, and safety needs that are not immediately apparent to our families and "gay-friendly" service providers. Our communities are in the best position to articulate our distinctive needs.

• Engage our communities.

Our communities do not have the infrastructure, yet, to take care of a huge increase in their aging populations. Groups like the Elder Think Tank need to find effective means to have conversations with social groups, the bar crowd, pick-up sites, religious communities, political groups - in short in every venue where aging LGBT people find themselves. We can't be quiet, because if we live long enough, all of us will need assistance.

• Take care of ourselves.

The primary responsibility for ensuring a successful fade to black rests with all of us. It's more than financial planning or long-term care insurance. It means reaching out to aging LGBT peers, to family members, and establishing networks that encourage preventive health care, socialization, physical activity, good nutrition, continuing education and travel, and compassionate care.

Many of us don't have strong family ties; we can't count on children or siblings to help out. But we can build robust social networks among our peers that can encourage practices and a life that we can live out in our own homes among our friends. The keys are cooperation and compassionate care.

Our communities should also use appropriate technologies to reach each other, to work with care providers, and to provide community resources. Whether it's on the Internet or the iPhone, we can make a presence that builds a necessary infrastructure to strengthen and enrich the lives of aging LGBT people.

• Look to care providers.

Where we as communities or networks of friends cannot take care of each other, we have to engage care providers. I hope that many of these care providers can come from our own communities, and that they will know our needs. In any case, we want providers, facilities, and institutions - an infrastructure - that are compassionate, knowledgeable, and accountable. We live our lives differently, and our providers must understand and be flexible to the familial, legal, and social hurdles that affect our communities.

Office Pictures

Here's a peak at the de-cluttered office. It looks a little weird to my eyes.

Here's the earlier blog entry that has all the before pictures. The new look is a definite improvement. We want to sell (or give away) the computer desk.

For the Record

I'm pleased to announce that the clutter in the office is gone. Stay tuned for pictures.

The Mormon Thing

Strange doings are happening in the Mormon kingdom. I remain fascinated by the Mormon tradition, and am still part of it. I belong to a gay Mormon group, Affirmation, and I recently joined a Yahoo group, Reform Mormonism Discussion Group (see their web site). None of this is to say that I want to go back to church, but I'm very curious about some winds that are sweeping the Mormon landscape.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has policies that limit the participation of members who are attracted to the same gender or are gender variant. Affirmation was formed to help lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender members of the LDS Church resolve the spiritual conflict that many such members felt in the church. The group offers support, fellowship, education, and sanity in the midst of personal crises created by a church and its teachings that demand individual perfection and strict adherence to church teachings.

Reform Mormonism began in 2002 to reform the LDS and FLDS (fundamentalist) branches of Mormonism. The reformers appear to be reacting to the increasingly patriarchal line of the other two churches, and the reformers are also going back to many of the early teaching of the founding prophet, Joseph Smith. The Reform Mormons are a home church. They are also a creedless church, and cast an exceedingly wide doctrinal net, hewing to the traditions and teachings, but radically reinterpreting the teachings, structure, and prophetic teachings of Joseph Smith.

Finally, the other major strand of Mormon thought is the Community of Christ. The Community of Christ was formerly called the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS). Like the LDS and FLDS churches, the C of C, has prophets, apostles, seventies - a priesthood structure. Unlike the other churches, the priesthood is open to women. Also, the church is governed as much by consensus as it is by direct revelation from the prophet.

The Community of Christ is undergoing a deep doctrinal rethinking in light of its revelation, the Doctrine and Covenants, section 163. The revelation was received in 2007 by President Veazey, and is beginning to have a large impact in the thinking of the church. The church's world conference in April of this year is expected to provide consensus and guidance on a number of social issues including same-sex marriage, and acceptance into membership without a C of C baptism.

You may wonder why I am interested in any of this. Although I do not follow the Mormon faith, it has a deep hold on my culturally. My own spiritual life is a little vague, and reading and discovering these changes within the Mormon tradition is heartening. I have hope for my brothers and sisters in the faith. I have hope that their leaders will find the means to heal the deep wounds that various churches within the Mormon tradition have inflicted on women, on lesbian and gay people, and on gender variant people.

The LDS church continues to turn a blind eye to its members' needs. The suicides among lesbian and gay members in that church are blood that stains the doctrines, practices, and attitudes of many members of that church. Affirmation will continue to bear witness to the plight of LDS church members in need. I don't believe in God, but I do believe in hope. I believe in thoughtful reflection, in prayerful communication, in witness for change and truth.

I've said many times in the past that you can kick the boy out of the church, but you can't kick the church out of the boy. And that's about as spiritual as I can get.

sparkle

A paradox of time unfolded.
A messy catapult exploded
lovers' reveries of distant stars,
querulous quantum leaps so tiny
a billion billion billion fit inside my heinie
squatting on a beach quite cold
inside my trunks some sparkles bold, and
instantly my buttocks warmed quite brightly;
a vibration, cosmic, shuddered from the planet Mars,
a broken thought bent in a jaundiced eye
of pain-ed hearts, of tears, and lines unsightly.
Looking back from future time I picked a scab
I felt a stab. I knew the emptiness, the scars
from family, friends, and lovers, now acquaintances
dismembered by a messy, passing comet,
their faces silent, contorted by the time compression.
My heinie now a hillock and each memory
a flower growing growing growing and exploding
in ten thousand thousand silicon dioxide
integrated circuits, parsing passing reveries
of Mars of bars of stars of lovers and their lips
of my organic, vegan boyfriend and his hips
writhing on a beach and pulling down my trunks
playing with my heinie and a messy catapult
exploded sparkles bold and buttocks warmed.

A Little Resolve Around Here

Here's a preliminary list.

1. Okay, I intend to write in this blog more often. That is a threat!
2. I'm going to be slimmer in 2010. The love handles will still be there, just a tiny bit harder to grab onto.
3. I'm going to review C-1 square dance calls at least once a week. Tim will keep me honest.
4. I'm going to be as heartless about clutter as Ron is (I'm trembling, already).
5. I'm going to crack my Portuguese phrasebook.
6. I'm going less for sex and more for camaraderie this year (present blog readers excluded).
7. I'm going to get back to my civic software project.
8. I'm going to write at least one poem a month.
9. I'm going to write at least one short story, and share with my readers (both of you).
10. I'm going to visit the Smithsonian at least six times this coming year.

None of these are earth shattering, but are some little things I really want to do, which should improve the quality of my interior planet considerably. As I lay in bed this morning, reveling in this New Year, I felt so grateful and happy, so alive to this arbitrary moment of made up possibilities. It was a perfect morning for a new year.

Love Handle Example

The Office

Okay, The Office is about the personal miserable lives of employees at a paper company. I have a different tale. It's also about a lame life (mine), and although it doesn't take place at a paper company, paper plays a big role in the misery.

I finally got tired of the mess. Ron asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I told him a visit from Clutterbusters. It didn't come to pass. Instead, he offered to help me clean up the office, so he and I have been tackling it, pile by pile for the past week. Progress has been slow but steady. Here are the BEFORE pics.

The mess has been growing since 1994, the last documented archaelogical dig that took place at this location. Lots of dust has accumulated, and some organic compounds have broken down over the years. Lots of computer technology crap has accreted over the years, much to my hidden shame.

Ron took on as his special project to tidy up the bookcase. The bookcase had turned into another lateral storage and retrieval area. Unfortunately, it was becoming a lot easier to store than to retrieve. I became quite frustrated with the office, and really haven't used it for a couple of years, and I was angry with myself for wasting valuable space in my home with an ugly mess.

We're not done yet, and we'll be sorting crap for a while, and storing "stuff" for a flea market sometime in the spring. But we are making tangible progress. Here is what that looks like so far:

The corner consisted of boxes of papers that I had not looked at for fifteen years. I threw out the papers and saved the photos, because a picture is worth a thousand words, or something like that.

This corner contained records of a group that no longer exists. I shredded hundreds of address and lists, and threw out all the paper, flyers, announcements, and detritus that collects in an office when you are its co-chair. It's gone!

So far, we've removed sixteen grocery sacks full of paper wasted and six garbage bags of computer disks, drag, radical faerie costuming, plastic bags, and evidence of a life that needed some organizing skills.

We aren't done yet, but we're making progress!

The Elf Man Cometh

T'is the woolly season of fashion gone awry, and mysterious men ending up in the living room under bad lighting conditions. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la! la! la! So much for gay apparel.

Santa's Little Lost Elf....

War and Peace

I'm grateful that I'm not President Obama. Peace Prize, indeed! I'm going to have to read the text, but (taking a cue from some "conservative" pundits (those are called Palin quotes)) I feel that I can confidently comment on the presidential remarks without having a clue as to what he actually said. One thing that the "conservatives" have added to the rhetorical context is the implicit permission they give to all other commentators to mindlessly and stupidly remark about the sad and disastrous state of the world.

Earlier today, I heard Andy Williams sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. My thoughts about the President's speech somehow got caught up in the lyrics of Julia Ward Howe's hymn. Her God brooks no nonsense, and He's well-armed. That sounds similar to the U.S. military in Afghanistan, and we may be engaged in a holy war, although not perhaps the war that Ms. Stowe imagined, or the President intends. Ms. Stowe's war killed 600,000 soldiers, a whole generation of America.

Fight a war to keep the peace? Is God on our side? Does might make right? I pray for our President.

Thanksgiving: Revised

Wow, I had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend, thanks to my friends and family, some great cooks, stunning conversationalists, and unintended irony from foreign nationals. For what could I lack? Of course, it was a wonderful holiday!

I had some misgivings about my vegetarian cornbread dressing, but when it came out of the oven, I knew it was a winner: too bad I didn't write down the recipe. Cornbread dressing is, perhaps, my favorite seasonal affective disorder medicine. It also cures rabies and erectile dysfunction, honestly, it does. It's the perfect accompaniment to anything on the holiday table, including very dry gin martinis.

Ron made some Road Kill Cabbage (okay, Rodkaal), a Danish delight that will undoubtedly grace our table in the future. Ron has a remarkable touch when it comes to cabbage; he's quite a Brassica oleracea Linne chef. The great thing about cabbage is its anti-inflammatory properties, as well as a source of vitamin C and Riboflavin. That's why I eat cabbage. I'm thankful for cabbage.

Most importantly, I'm thankful for my friends. We shared Thanksgiving, and the day after with friends, and had a wonderful time, talking and eating - two activities that complement each other. I love to eat. I love to greet, and I love Thanksgiving.

Persimmon Bread, Anyone?

Two and a half weeks ago, I went to the farmers' market in Silver Spring, and purchased a couple of persimmons. Although I have seen pictures of persimmon, and my mother had a wooden persimmon in bowl of wooden fruit, I had never tasted a persimmon.

The farmer who sold the persimmons told me that they still needed to ripen some (they were rock-like), and I looked up persimmons on the web, and found out all kinds of interesting information, such as they usually ripen and fall off the trees, then they are harvested. They are not usually picked from the tree. They are also supposed to be very soft before you cook them or eat them. Because my persimmons were granitic at the time, I was just thinking that I had made an uneducated consumer's purchase.

So I let them sit for a long time. The fruit's bright orange color nicely set off the bananas and mangoes on top of the microwave (the only place to ripen fruit in our kitchen). Each day, I'd lightly squeeze them, much like the witch probably squeezed Hansel, and for the same reasons. Finally, yesterday they reached the point where I figured they would be ripe enough.

I rinsed them off, cut them into eighths, and poached them in a small amount of water for about 10 minutes. After that dirty deed was done, I ran the persimmons through a food mill, and ended up with about two cups of pulp.

That solved the problem of what to do with the persimmons, but only created another problem: what to do with the persimmon pulp. If you type "persimmon pulp" into a search engine, you get all kinds of weird processes on how to make persimmon pulp - like squeezing persimmons with nylon stockings. Next, I typed in persimmon cake, and that was a little more productive. It seems like the good people of Indiana eat, drink, and bathe in persimmon pulp, and the rest is turned into cake. Who knew?

I couldn't find a persimmon cake recipe that I could use. They all required far more pulp than I had cranked out of my two persimmons. The fallback recipe for any quick bread is banana bread, so I searched for a banana bread, and used it to make my persimmon cake. I have a KitchenAid mixer in the basement, because it's too big to stay on the kitchen shelf. I lugged it up to the kitchen, and proceeded to make my persimmon cake.

Using a KitchenAid is sexy - smooth lines, a sleek enameled body to fall in love with. So making this cake was a labor of love, as well as an excuse to mess up the kitchen. The banana cake recipe said that the preparation time was ten minutes. Forty minutes later I was scraping the bowl to shepherd the last clinging strands of batter into the loaf pan for baking. Maybe I've lost my touch in the kitchen.

And sixty-five minutes later, a golden persimmon cake emerged from the oven. Ron inquired whether I was making the cake for some occasion, or whether it was for us. We had some after dinner, and it tastes pretty good. In fact, I'm having a piece right now.

More Odds and Ends

Check out the Swartzentruber sisters. They make quilts, beautiful quilts in Holmes County, Ohio. Ron and I spent a day in Amish country, and had the privilege to visit their home and see the quilts. You should see them, too. Mrs. Swartzentruber asked us, "Where are your wives?" I told her that we weren't married, but I'm not sure if the situation sunk in.

The family reunion was nice. It was a pleasure meeting Davita. I hope that we didn't all scare her off. Joe and Karen's condo renovation project turned out fabulous. The view of downtown Chicago and the lake is unbeatable. Gracie and CJ love the unimpeded living room, and use it as an exercise room.

Coming over the Alleghenies, we saw some pretty colors. While we were in Holmes County, it was pretty rainy. Crossing the rest of Ohio and Indiana was anticlimactic, much like the leaden sky, overhead. In Chicago, Ron and I stayed at the Inn at Lincoln Park. Joe told me later that the hotel was slated for demolition so that developers could build a high rise and retail space, but when the property market crashed, the hotel gained a new lease on life. Pity.

The hotel was a little strange. Qualitywise, it's like an aging Quality Inn. You might want to stay on the lower floors, because the water on the upper floors wasn't always hot. The elevator is very European, as was the help, and the service. Very strange, indeed, in the heart of Chicagoland. The big plus was the bed. It was comfy.

Friday, we did some sightseeing with the family. Friday night ate at Bubba Gump's on Navy Pier. Saturday was at Karen and Joe's so that we could all see the new place. Sunday, Grace hosted a cookout. I made my famous Norwegian Potato Salad. Darryl is turning into quite a griller. We met his girlfriend. Karen, Joshua, and kids also came to the cookout. It was very nice seeing them.

This morning, Ron and I went to Millennium Park to see the shiny peanut. That place is classy. The fountain wasn't working, but the weather was beautiful, and we took a nice walk throughout the park and environs. From there it was out of Chicago, and on the road to Cincinnati, and we're holed up here in the Fairfield Inn.

My Latest Exploits

This blog is suffering from neglect, mainly because of Facebook and ManHunt. I'm not proud to admit that. Neither of those sites requires the intellectual curiosity nor the skillful storytelling that this blog demands. In a weird economic way, the base drives out the precious and this blog turns to dross. Oh well. I should get used to that.

The biggest new thing for me is cycling. I sit in a more gingerly fashion than I did in the past. I've been assured that my butt will eventually toughen up. In the meanwhile, I've been exploring the bike trails about town. Jerry and I went on another bike ride, this time to Mt. Vernon, then back through Rosslyn. I'm slowly increasing my mileage. And I'm having a lot of fun doing it. The bike riding weather has been beautiful, and I'm enjoying the bike immensely. Thanks, Jerry, for your inspiration.

I'm back in the groove with Big Bang Theory. Season 2 has arrived from Netflix. Those boys should all earn a Nobel Prize in Physics. And don't miss Modern Family. Wow, what a Costco moment. I'm embarrassed and empowered in the same instant. If this is what it means to be gay. I'm all for it.

Today, Ron took all of our closet "treasures" to a flea market held at the Wheaton Ice Rink. Imagine a vast sea of crap, but floating on top of that sea, a table filled with startling treasures, tastefully arranged, and priced to sell. And that's exactly what Ron did. He toiled from early morning to mid afternoon, and very little was left on the table, as he closed down at the end of the market. I'm very grateful that Ron took on organizing our forgotten crap, and turning it into shining treasures that a lot of people decided they couldn't live without. Well done!

In September, Ron and I attended a studio show of Joe Jacobs, a local artist in Gaithersburg. I found a painting I couldn't live without, and proceeded to purchase it. Yesterday, Frames by Rebecca called and told me to come pick up the painting. So I did today after visiting the farmers market in Silver Spring. The painting is beautiful, and now hanging quietly on the wall, like a poem ready to be read.

Always for the First Time

I Have a Sore Butt

Jerry came over today for a bike ride. I have never seen a guy so organized. His bike bag has a place for everything, and everything in its place, not at all like mine. Maybe neatness comes with wisdom, or something like that. The plan was that Jerry would pedal over here from Arlington, then we pedal to the Udupi Palace buffet in Langley Park, because a lad gets hungry from all that pedaling. I'm never one to turn down Indian buffets.

We pedaled all the way down the Sligo Creek Trail to New Hampshire Avenue. From there we picked up the Langley bike route, which dumped us out on University Avenue, just a couple of blocks from Udupi Palace.

The route wasn't particularly tricky, although you can easily miss parts of the trail, because it zigs and zags a lot, and isn't particularly well marked in places, but that's part of the fun of taking it. The parkway is beautiful, and today was a wonderful day to be out riding. We carried on a lively conversation, as well, which kept my mind off of my increasingly sore posterior.

We had a wonderful lunch. Jerry is not a big person, but he can pack away a lot of food at a buffet. The food was very good, several different curries, some breads, sambar, and various condiments. I only made three trips to the line, before ending with a dish of rice pudding. Jerry did at least as much damage.

During lunch we solved the energy crisis and global warming. I'll be sending President Obama our recommendations in a day or so. Afterwards, we headed to the Indian market next door to Woodlands, another Indian restaurant. Jerry needed some bulk black pepper. As food critics, we agreed that perhaps Woodlands has a slightly better lunch buffet, but we'll probably have to return at least four or five more times, just to be sure.

We then came back up the Sligo Creek Trail, back to 2101 Bucknell Terrace. I had saved a couple of Metro Weekly magazines that had an article about Jerry, and I wanted to give them to him before I forgot. Our final bout of pedaling involved getting back on Sligo Creek with Jerry, and he took me through Silver Spring to the trailhead for the Georgetown Branch Trail, which provides access to the Capital Crescent Trail, and to trails in Rock Creek Park. Jerry gave me a hug, and headed back to Arlington. I pedaled back to Wheaton.

I have lots of exploring to do. And I guess I'll just continue to have a sore butt.

Riding My Bike

It might not seem like a big thing to you, but to me it is: I've started riding my bike after being away from it for twenty years. I notice that my balance isn't quite as steady as it used to be, and the rearview mirror is a little challenging because my near-distance vision is shot, but other than that, it's jumping on the bike and heading off somewhere.

I dug the bike out of the basement about two weeks ago and took it into the shop. They fixed it up, and I picked it up last Thursday while Tim was having his colonoscopy. After picking up the bike, I took it out for a seven-mile ride, before returning home to get the car and pick up Tim. Today, I went out for about a twelve-mile ride. I don't pedal very fast, but I get to where I'm going, which is what counts for me.

I went up the Sligo Creek trail to Wheaton Regional Park, cycled around the park, then went down the trail to downtown Silver Spring, before returning home. I hadn't been to some of the places on the bike trail since I quit running, so it was wonderful reacquainting myself with the bike path. The weather was not too warm, and it was a delightful ride. I didn't run over anyone, and nobody ran over me, either.