On the Bike Again

My back is finally feeling better and I'm not sick, so we rode to dinner last night and I rode in this morning, including taking Rachel to school. The ride went really quickly, actually - both of the stop lights on the way were green for me, so I didn't have to stop as much. I felt pretty good and strong, in spite of how long it's been since I rode last, which is nice.

Dawn's out of town for a conference for a couple of nights. We'll miss her, but it might be a good break for her; we've both been having a really hard time keeping our tempers in check. Rachel's been very frustrating. We're sure it's because she knows the effect it has on us and she's just seeing how it works, but it's still hard. Dawn and I talked about it yesterday and we're going to try to back off a bunch and pick our battles more carefully. It remains to be seen how well the next couple of days will go since it's just me, but at least my parents will pick her up for me tomorrow afternoon.

This weekend was a bit mixed... I felt like crap on Thursday and stayed home from work after coming home early on Wednesday. Friday was OK and I went to the game with Chris, which was fun. Bonds hit a home run (though I was downstairs trying to call Rachel, so only saw it on the monitors) and the Giants won. They haven't won since, though I am optimistic that they will tonight since Schmidt is pitching. Saturday, Chris helped me put together the hutch that my father-in-law gave us, at long last. It's kinda nice, especially since we finally carted off all the cardboard we've had sitting by the garbage cans.

Next on the agenda was Daniel's BBQ picnic in the park. It was fun. Saw some high school (& even jr. high) friends I hadn't seen in ages untold. Matt and I held the finish line for the egg & spoon race... and moved when someone started getting close. Got to talk to Erica, Matt, Keiron... Anton and his girlfriend showed up at dinner at a Chinese place (as if we couldn't have made do with the BBQ food or the TON of additional food they had back at Daniel's cousin's apartment, which is where the party moved in the evening).

Family BBQ on Sunday. Grilled salmon for the first time, and it came out pretty well. Not overcooked, for once, which often happens on the BBQ. Discovered that the dressing we like to use for broccoli has MSG, so we tried another and it wasn't as good. Guess we'll just have to keep trying others until we find one we like! Didn't see any fireworks, but from what I hear no one else did either because of the weather, which was typical SF in July: cloudy, cool, foggy.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled work day.