Motorcycle repair continued: the saga of the frozen screw

It's been quite an experience working on the motorcycle. The process is so enjoyable. I generally work on it for about two hours a night when I hit some seemingly insurmountable snag. Then I come to it the next day with new information, or a recently purchased tool, or maybe just fresh eyes and that problem gets worked out. I've never worked on a carburetor before so this is all new. I'm figuring it out as I go. It's very rewarding that way. It took a lot of doing, but I pulled the carb off the frame.

Prior to carb removal

The tops of the released carbs

The carb came off fairly easily once I figured out how to create slack on the throttle and choke cables connecting it to the bike. I took it over to my work bench, a converted coffee stand in a previous life, and took off the air covers. I think that's what they're called. Whatever isn't the float bowl. I got a chance to crank up ye olde air compressor to push air through the jets. What a joy. Of all the tools available pneumatic tools are the coolest looking. They're made of shiny stainless steel and generally need to be oiled daily so they look cool for a long time. I only have a 3/8" ratchet and an air gun (ffft ffft!) but they're a lot of fun. The hilarious, ridiculous thing is that I have a whopping 15 gallon 150 PSI air compressor. It's overkill, but hey that's fine. If you ever need air in your tires and you're in the neighborhood you know what to do. But I digress.



The jets were cleared, the top of the carburetor isn't very compelling. It's the floats that gets all the action so it was time to crack those puppies open. I got through one screw. All the rest were frozen solid. The head on one screw was stripped out. This was definitely one of those stopping points. I asked around the office and got advice on how to drill out a stripped screw. Yep, drill out, whereby I would take a drill with a super strong bit and push it through the screw. Then I'd get my tap/die kit and tear out the rest of it hoping I didn't totally re-thread anything the wrong way. No problem right? ugh. I was nervous about this procedure so I went online and looked up alternatives. Apparently, there's this magical device called an impact driver which is like a special screw or bolt driver. Essentially you put the tool in the screw and smack the other end with a hammer. There's a spring and a revolving cylinder in between the bit and the impact area that turns as a result of the downward force. Further screw stripping is much less likely. This sounded much better to me than drilling into a delicate mechanical device so I rolled into Auto Zone and got myself one of these gadgets.

Behold the exposed float chamber!

It took a bit of doing, and I thought I wouldn't be able to get it at first, but eventually all the screws turned for the impact driver. The result is the picture here to the right. Look, Ma, no bowls. I'd like to take this time to point out that I love the vocab here what with all this talk about bowls, carbs, jets, and the like. Makes me feel like I'm in a head shop. I'm surprised by how clean the actual float bowls are though. They need to be de-gunked, but not by much. The seals need to be replaced, too. They were crusty when I gingerly pulled them out. I thought they'd snap on me. The relative good health of the carburetor concerns me a bit. If that's not what's been causing the bike starting issues, then what, pray tell could it be? Idunno. I guess I'll have to figure that out when I come to it.
In the meantime I need to figure out what kind of large, open mouthed glass container I'm going to dump this metal thing in along with highly combustible and toxic chemicals to remove the lacquer on ol' girl's respiratory/digestive system.

Random musings

It's been a disjointed couple days. Tuesday marked my return to hockey with practice at the sentimental and unpleasantly fragrant Pan Am. In all my warm recollections of hockey I'd forgotten about the bacterial infused facilities and terrible Zamboni work. But that's a part of it, I suppose. Pan Am is an old gal and could use a little TLC; an unlikely event as her existence is darkened by the shadow of the new stadium and what will be done with that real estate.

The team looks good, and it feels good getting back into the gear that's held up well although I've shrunk some in the last couple years. My shot is weak, but it was never really that good to begin with. I've always relied on one timers and dekeing goalies. No slappers for this gal.

I received a coupon today from Borders thanking me for shopping at a particular Waldenbooks and that it will be closing soon. What libel! I haven't shopped there as an adult. Is Waldenbooks even a real bookstore? I mean, they sell Harry Potter and whatever criminal/lawyer/stock broker/politico/CIA operative drama of the month, but I see them as a large news stand with materials that take a little longer to digest than the Post.

On the work front, business hasn't been so good. I'm somewhat unaffected by it being in I.T., however, I'm still nervous from the grumblings and potential fallout. It's the not knowing that's rough. The best that can be said is this is a potential character building experience in that I'll be practicing going to work everyday under a cloud of press clippings fraught with insider commentary.

Last night I continued the saga of repairing ol' girl. Ol' girl is my '82 Honda CM 450 motorcycle and while she is younger than me I would have no age based qualms in dating her. That's an old motorcycle. I drained and removed the gas tank which took about forty minutes. Apparently, I left far more gas in the tank than I thought. Those carbs are going to look nasty! I drained and nearly removed the carburetor. I was going to remove the tops and have a look see in the jets, but after seeing the black ick drain out of the carbs I decided I might as well rip the whole thing out and have it bathe in carb cleaner. I have it loose, a minor miracle, but the choke and the throttle cables are still attached to it, and I've no idea how to get them unattached. The pins on the ends of the cables look like they were stamped after installation, but I'm sure that's not the case. I'll be scratching my head over this one for a while.

During all this I managed to spill gasoline everywhere. Under the bike, on the engine case, on my shorts and sandals. I walked into my garage this morning and experienced the reek extending to high heaven. I hope I can air that out before it gets inside the house. I have the excess gas (and some brake fluid, and yogurt... I reuse those glass jars) stored away, and I'll be disposing of that at a tox drop facility.

Cleaning out ye olde closet

I came home from an outing Sunday and was faced with the realization that my kitchen is covered in laundry. The laundry cabinet shares the same wall as my pantry, and I fold my clothes at the kitchen table, throw them in baskets and cart them off to my room. For work I have a slew of collared button downs that need ironing and so they get pulled out of the dryer lickity split and placed on the back of a chair. I tell myself that if they are in the same room as the ironing board then I'll actually iron them - a sloppy lie. My cotton polos wrinkle easily and so they get folded over a different chair. When I'm washing my laundry I generally like to do some other chore - or watch television - which tends to distract me as I have a limited attention span. So my kitchen generally gets overrun with a couple half full baskets of clean laundry around the table with a few piles of t-shirts, undies, and socks that have been rifled through on my way out the door to work.

For some reason this Sunday I decided that I didn't want to look at it first thing when I walked in the door any longer so I got to putting things away. Of course, it's not as simple as all that. I'm in between looks at the moment. Not uber butch, but that strappy evening dress just doesn't seem right anymore. As a result I've been buying a lot of clothes but holding on to the old ones. This leads to an input/output issue. I'm not tossing out all the dresses, but I have some outmoded shirts and trousers that need to go. And do I really need that bride's maid dress now three sizes too big for the wedding of the couple I wasn't really that close to? I've trimmed down what's in the closet to make room for what should be in the closet.

Before I completed the closet re-org project I moved on to the garage. I have a tendency to hop around, and the garage has been in my sites for some time. I finally threw out a pair of heavy, chrome, metal frame dark brown fabric armchairs. I bought them five years ago at a going out of business sale at a coffee shop and put them in the unfinished basement of my old place which served as my combination video game room, storage area, and laundry facility all under a single, bare, low watt bulb. It had its charms. In any case, I moved to my condo two years ago and these chairs have been piled up in the garage ever since taking up hot real estate in the corner. I threw these out last night, removed all the crap in that corner, and put my '82 Honda CM 450 where they were.

It's this item, my first motorcycle, that's pushed the mess in my garage to the front of my mind. It hasn't run in a year and a half, and has been literally stuck in place for some time. I sat on it for a while and remembered how much fun I had riding it around. Sure I was a little embarrassed of its age and small engine, but ol' girl is my first, and she's extremely comfy in comparison to my zippy sport bike. I need a winter project so this is going to be it. My goal is to have that bike running again. I've already started by removing the front brake last night. Ugh. It really wasn't a frozen clutch that was keeping it from moving. I've been working on that brake since I dropped that bike in '05. Sheesh. I think I'm going to just rip it off, put a drum brake on the front wheel and call it a day. It's not like the bike will cross the 70 mph threshold again. The point of the story is even though the tubed tires are rotten, and the gas in the tank hasn't been stabilized no doubt coagulating into petroleum based life forms in my carburetor I'm determined to resurrect ol' girl.

And if that doesn't work out I'll dismantle her and sell the parts.

Sunday Football segment

The Colts beat the Texans today. It was a good game overall, however, the special teams scare me a little. Clint Session needs to get some tackling tips or something. From my amateur eye he looked timid. Big props to Hunter Smith for being such a gung ho tackler and a shake of the head to the rest of the guys on the field who left it to the kicker to stop the return. Seriously, I hope you're all thinking about that tonight. Manning threw well. Addai put on an air show flipping into the endzone, and Reggie Wayne had a show stopper catch, although I seem to recall that getting ruled incomplete. The refs were stingy about ruling a pass caught. But whatev. We won another division game, and join New England, Pittsburgh, and Green Bay in the 3-0 club. We'll be playing the Pats early in November here in Indy.

Before we do that though we'll be playing Monday night at Jacksonville on the 22nd of October, and I have tickets! My sister's boyfriend scored tickets for Monday night football, but he can't go so I'm flying down for the game! I'm so excited. I've never been to a Monday night game, and I haven't been to a pro game since... well high school when the Colts weren't all that awe inspiring. I need to come up with a catchy initialization for ESPN to put on a poster and get on TV. The only thing I could come up with is Eat Some Pussy Now, but I think my odds of getting that air time are low. It's a work in progress. I'll just let it come to me naturally. The faux will be done up in blue hair paint, temporary of course, and I'll don a jersey. I've got plenty of planning time. More to come.

What a difference a day makes

Oh gawd, I'm going through a sobriety flip-flop. I quit consuming substances a couple months ago. Last week I toyed with the idea of indulging in alcohol again. Well, Monday rolled around and I made up my mind. I tell myself it wasn't fair. I was convinced I had sex in my future if I could just drink a little. I was right. Alcohol really fuels the sex drive. Nothing gets a person into the mood quite like a chemically affected intimacy. And I told myself, no one likes to drink to fuck alone. And thus I was rewarded for drinking with sex. howza!

So then I decide this whole sobriety thing is for the birds. Why not just go back to what I've done, avoid going overboard, and see where that gets me? I've been sitting around with those thoughts today, and I've had a little trepidation over it. The fact is, I know where that takes me, and it's the place I've been bitching about for a long time now. Oh, why don't I ever write that novel? -or- I wish I could start a project and see it all the way through. -or- Why can't I get over my intimacy issues? I know this will eventually turn into -Why am I not in a relationship?

There's the rub. My most recent chemical binges were mandated by a need for personal buffer zones between me and the world. I couldn't possibly be in a relationship after the divorce. Even when I was technically in a relationship I still wasn't there. I presented a proxy of myself to this other and went about my business in my head. I'll tell you, the chemicals really aided this duality.

Last night I went out and drank. I had a few beers. It wasn't a big deal either way. Most of my encounters with alcohol go that way which seriously confuses the situation. I have all these scenarios where I can point to having drank without trying to fulfill a need in futility and tell myself I can do this. That's the thing. I can and I can't. As long as I have that crutch available I will *always* use it. What I need to do is break the circuit entirely. Clear out and see what it is to behave like a normal person for a couple years like I initially told myself I would.

So in any case, I was convinced that I was going to continue on the path of indulgence until tonight.
Tonight, I spoke with a good friend - well, worked with is really the phrase. I spent a lot of time in blissfully brutal honesty considering what it is that I'm really looking for when I drink and how I'm only achieving the opposite of what I want.

What sucks is that I just don't think I have the personal fortitude to continue to play rugby and remain sober. I feel bad about that. I feel like I'm missing out on something that I really wanted, but if I keep looking I see how rugby isn't all that great for me. I love my brain, and I am still feeling a bit dim after that shot to my jaw from last Saturday. Perhaps, it's better to bow out while I still have the ability to bend at the waist.

The one thing I want to impart to all those who read this blog is that I love you, big drinkers! I like being sober around you while you're drunk. I like hanging out with you anyway you are. You are great, and I have never felt uncomfortable not drinking in your presence. You are good fun! I'm not confused as to who has the chemical problem. That's all me, my babies, and I'm not into making my problems the problems of others. I guess this is really for Romeo's benefit. Kisses, babe!

I imagine I'll have some more spills, slips and slides as I check out this whole sobriety thing over the next couple years. Stay tuned.

First game

More on the rugby front. Thursday night I found out that I'm terrible at tackling. I kept getting deked by my teammates during my first tackling drill ever. I was pretty nervous since our first game was coming up in a couple days and tackling is a flanker's bread and butter. How is it that I could suck so much at something I thought I would take to like a duck to water?

I got some outside help from veterans on the team. I was dropping my head way early when I shouldn't be doing it at all, and I was aiming too high. Essentially, I was to focus in on my opponent's pelvis and crush it. No worries.

Friday night I went out with the gals for the Friday night ride. I went home at around midnight avoiding the bars. I had woken up that morning feeling a bit sick, and I didn't want to coax an oncoming cold.

I was nervous when I hit the field Saturday morning. I was getting last minute instructions and advice yelled at me prior to the kick off, and I was feeling less than confident that I would do well. I didn't even know if I was going to play. But as it turned out I started at flank with a strong vet helping me out. She was strategically placed at weak side, in my mind, so that she would have to cross my path to get to the action. In case I was in the wrong place she would know it and usher me to the correct position. Plus she's faster than me. It worked out well.

We lined up against Depauw. The ref informed us that they were petrified and requested that our front row work with their front row prior to the game to work out any possible issues. We were also urged to give them advice throughout the game. Even with this information I was still concerned about my own performance for the test. I didn't calm down until the ball was kicked (not to me thankfully) and we charged down the pitch with authority.

As it turned out this was an uneven match up. We held possession about 90% of the match and kept Depauw out of our 22 the entire game. That wasn't so great for working on tackling, but it helped me get comfortable with the offense which I still find bewildering. We scored try after try I don't think anyone kept score. I've never played a game so team oriented before. I scored a try, but it is nothing like scoring a goal in hockey or soccer. I was pleased, but I thought, "Well yeah, anyone would have done that who was where I was." It wasn't spectacular or anything. No the spectacle comes at the next social. When someone scores their first try it's tradition to "go zulu" at the social. The social is a beer bonging bash the home team throws for both teams and running zulu means I'm getting nekid and running around the party. I hope they have a privacy fence. Hoo Rah! I had to miss this social to run off to a wedding, but I'm sure I'll be making the run at the next event.

The game itself felt only slightly physical. I got banged up a little throughout and stepped on a couple times, but I was fine until late in the second half when I took a tremendous shot to the jaw during a tackle. I think it was with some girl's head or elbow. It was something very hard and bony. I was hit with a wave of pain that was followed by nausea. I heaved enormous gulps of air for a couple minutes, and felt a lot of concern about concussions. My jaw is still a little swollen, but I don't have any bruising on my face which is nice. For the most part the headache is gone though. I think my fears were overblown.

So that was my first rugby test. I'm pretty psyched for the next one.

Cool evening cool on the job

It is a crisply fabulous evening, cool and fresh. I smell autumn around the corner. I can't wait to crawl into bed tonight. This is some mighty fine sleeping weather. Windows open, naturally. If I'm not careful I'll snooze till ten.

Last night brought a hard practice and a late start to sleep. I was a bit groggy today, which worked out more or less since the 2,000 or so employees that make up my company were carted off to Deer Creek (aka Verizon Wireless) music center for a four hour "Hooray for us!" meeting. This is a silly affair, and ultimately surreal for hump day. For the most part we dutifully donned our corporate branded apparel and shivered in the shade of the pavilion at the amphitheater watching a photo/video presentation set to music full of candid pictures of us cube jockies. We heard a speech from our CEO, a bit disappointing with all the stuttering but otherwise painless, after which was a hurried Q&A segment followed by an award ceremony for a few ass kicking employees. I work with one of the recipients, and he is in fact an ass kicker. This was followed promptly by lunch which was edible but full of starch. Back to the pavilion to watch the finalists of our own version of America's Got Talent which we use as a fund raising carrot for the United Way. I got to witness a co-worker sing some baritone aria a cappella, another sang terribly karaoke style to some Christian song that involved such enraptured love imagery I imagined it was originally written for a bride of Christ. Yet another group got up and played short selections with hand bells - only they were more like pitched cow bells. I can't explain it. Just imagine hand bells playing "When the Saints Come Marching In" only very clunky - now multiply whatever clunk you imagined by ten. Yes it's possible. Someone in middle management graced us with some wicked break dancing moves set to JT's "Sexyback" and finally we were treated to a group of line dancers grooving to this song I hear at The Ten all the time, but I have no clue what it's called. Ultimately, it was harmless, and I suppose it's good to recognize good work. It's good to get people together off site for a pat on the back, too. But the average I.T. cube monkey isn't concerned with that. At least, I'm not. I would have preferred an afternoon shooting pool or bowling or something that didn't involve sitting in the shaded outdoors. It was all very high school.

A lot about my job reminds me of high school. Not the actual work, but the mechanics of me attending my job. It's certainly not as strict, but every day I stream into a large building with a coffee in my hand and computer bag on my back. I sit in my chair and work at my desk until I have to go to a meeting which will range in utility from highly productive to worse than useless, but for the most part falls under the category of functional. I am glad that I can say my company doesn't fall into the trap of habitually scheduling meetings that do little but waste time. I occasionally pop my head up for light interaction with my co-workers. So really it's like high school meets college. I have a lot more freedom than I did in high school, but I'm still physically stuck in the same location every day until I'm released. I don't enjoy sitting still. At least I don't enjoy sitting still staring at grey/oatmeal colored cubical walls at a desk that just doesn't seem to fit right. Maybe some decorating is in order.

Today, when I got back to the office I was beat from all the extra food and wasted rah rah rah. When 5 o'clock rolled around I was crawling out the door.

It's been go go go just about every day for me for the past two weeks so I decided tonight would make a great night to do nothing but eat an enormous cheeseburger, watch a movie, and defragment my hard drive. File maintenance is like going to the dentist. I should probably do it twice a year, but I just can't be bothered. My hard drive was so full I spent an hour selecting and deleting MP3 files before I could even run the defrag. If it wasn't for this new beast of a packet analysis tool I have to install on my work laptop I'd be blissfully operating with only 3% of my hard drive free.

All this lackadaisical computing occupies me just enough to notice little else but the crickets outside my window which brings me back full circle to the weather, my clean sheets, and how these two components are going to intersect in a heavenly fashion at the Me axis. I feel my nerves along my arms and legs stretch out for that anticipated comfort. No sense in delaying this gratification.

World cups a poppin'!

The 2007 Rugby Union World Cup is on, and I've only just watched my first test. Games can be viewed, after a twenty-four hour delay, online on the official ruby world cup website (rugbyworldcupvideo.com) for $3 a pop. Or one can opt to purchase all 48 games for $50. There's another package that's much pricier that includes some sort of premium content. I'm contenting myself with the pay per view route. So far so good. Streaming occasionally gets choppy. I haven't bothered to wait for an entire download. I'm assuming the servers are in the UK. I've been watching Scotland pummel Portugal. The English announcers have handled Portugal at once charitably and condescendingly. I don't know how an announcer manages to say the phrase, "Please, if you're from Portugal don't take offense, but when you have a match up between a rugby union heavyweight and a rugby minnow..." with deference but somehow the gentleman managed.

It's been fun to watch Scotland blow out a team, but my next game will have to be a closer contest. Perhaps featuring New Zealand's All Blacks. I want to see how the US do, but I'll skip their opener against England where they lost the test and a player for the rest of the tournament after he committed a dangerous tackle. I'll be interested to see how they do against Tonga tomorrow who is supposed to be a much more even match. Also we have 4 players on the US side who were born in Tonga one of whom is the nephew of the Tonga head coach. Rugby Union has a lot more nation swapping than say the soccer World Cup or the Olympics.

It's strange watching an international sport that's more or less dominated by anglophones. New Zealand and Australia are always strong contenders with Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, and South Africa putting in strong appearances. Other teams are strong, France for instance has been pretty much on the leaderboard for some time

The US men's rugby team ranked 15th are coming off of a loss from England, but people are offering their tenacious performance as evidence for their favored status in their upcoming match against 14th ranked Tonga tomorrow.. This should be a close match - and freaky. The US side has four players who were born in Tonga and one of them is the nephew of the Tonga head coach. Bum bum buuum. The US

The US Women's Soccer team went up against N. Korea and tied 2-2. It was raining cats and dogs in China where the match was held. I don't place too much on any result under such conditions - the weather, not the nation. Their next match is against Sweden on the 14th. The fourth team in this bracket is Nigeria. Ugh. It's not a cake walk. Especially since whatever happens in the US Sweden game will pretty much determine who gets to move on. Commence nail biting.

As mentioned the women's cup is held in China this year so the games come on at 5 or 8 in the morning EST. I don't have cable anyhow so it's not like I'd be able to peep them all that much. I'm looking for games online, but the offerings are slim. I've seen some sketchy deals touting satellite tv through the internet where I can watch 1,000s of satellite television stations for a one time cost of 49.95. I'll tell you whenthe first question in the FAQ is "Is this legal?" and the answer is an unsupported "Yes." I have to keep on surfing. However, it just occurred to me that ESPN is merely doing a bad job of marketing their merch without driving up page counts for google. I've been searching women's world cup matches online without a single peep from the network that carries the games, but a quick hop to their site shows me that they're airing the games for free on ESPN360. Hurrah! Now I'll have something to do tomorrow morning at work.

In my own rugby news, my first game (ahem "test") is this Saturday. I'm psyched and nervous. I'm excited to finally get on the field and see what this is really all about. Practice is one thing, but we don't engage in a lot of contact so that we might keep our bodies fresh - although tonight we did some tackling and some dropping and I managed to be clumsy around some injured teammates. At any rate, I don't have a true understanding of how much I'm going to limp afterwards. Then I'm flying off to a wedding so I'll be missing the post game fete. After every rugby match there's a social where both teams get together and drink a shit ton of beer generally hosted by the home team. Crazy.

Observations at a bar

I find that I have just enough eventfulness to keep me from being overwhelmed by activity, but not enough is happening that stands out for to blog. Just enough to keep me busy from getting productively introspective.

This Thursday I watched the Colts annihilate the Saints in the NFL season opener. Looks like the Colts are still a second half team. I caught the game at Downtown Ollie's, Indy's gay sports bar, and noticed that the old gal has had some work done. The wall behind the enormous projection TV where I watched many an episode of The Price Is Right has been replaced by glass, and the windows facing Illinois have been de-blacked and now let light in. There are flat panel televisions posted everywhere, including the entrance. It looks like the main dining area carpet has been replaced, and now in one corner there is an electronic mini grand piano. Still a gay bar.

I met up with DeeDee and some ladies she knows. A gal from my rugby team showed up with a friend, and much fun was had by all. Conversation flowed. Flirty mingling was the medium of the evening. My teammate was hilarious and tres cool. Sometime during the third quarter we decided to leave the Colts to play with their food and head off to The Ten. There I received more attention in one evening than I believe I have in the past four months. Crazy. It was as if I was wearing super cosmically strong lesbian cat nip. I've been going over what caused this in the hopes that I may reproduce it. I've come up with the following list.

1. I'm not interested in getting involved with anyone. I've closed the store for an inventory audit, but as long as the lights are on and the door is locked it looks like shoppers just can't wait to get inside. I've heard it before. The second you stop looking is the second people dart for your door. I'm not particularly thrilled with this phenomenon, but what can I say? Unavailability is irresistible.

2. I was rolling with a group of attractive women. The most attractive thing to other people is for an individual to be around attractive people. I consider myself to be attractive. Depending on how I'm dressed I'm either cute, mildly hot, or at the very least presentable. But apparently being attractive requires some extra qualifiers, like attractive friends. Just how attractive is that hot chick up at the bar? Apparently, you can tell as soon as she reunites with the people she walked through the door. It's like cruising with silent visible references.

3. I spiked my hair. Normally it's in the fauxhawk - which I feel may be a little intimidating or goofy. I'm not certain how much this actually weighs in the grand scheme of things, but it's about the only factor that originates with me so my vanity is including it as a possibility.

4. I was dancing with the aforementioned group of women. Not only was I hanging out with them but I had the chance to a) demonstrate my strong hip work on the dance floor and b) demonstrate that we all pretty much find each other hot enough to dance with. Not to mention the possibility that I might have actually made up my mind for the evening. Scarcity mentality sets in for the ladies around and the reaction involves making a move to at least take a chance for the evening. Ah, for once this actually worked in my favor rather than me being the one making the panicky play for fear of missing my opportunity. Well, it almost worked in my favor. I'm not interested in getting involved with anyone so all the other points are moot.


All in all it was a good evening. I met some new people and got better acquainted with people I've previously met.

Muscle armor

As I'm playing what many regard to be a brutal sport that does not indulge in anything more protective than a mouth guard I've decided to take some precautions. I want to keep from getting my block knocked off in a game so I decided to hit the gym today and lift for the first time in years. Lightly building up muscle in vulnerable places will reduce my risk of injury. Well, that and an unwavering focus on flexibility. And I can enjoy the dual purpose of becoming a more effective tackler by getting stronger. For these goals I've taken the suggestion of focusing on my shoulders. I expect my shoulders to make a lot of contact. At least that's the goal.

If anyone has any good rotator cuff protection strategies or delt building exercises I'm all ears. I did shoulder raises, lat raises, shoulder presses, and something simply called a raise where the weight travels along the sides of my trunk. I don't want to be the gal who injures herself training to get strong before gameday so I didn't go beyond ten pounds per hand. I have to thank H's recent injury for this essential caution. This, core work and some lunges (If I'm going to have lift day then I can't skip lunges) rounded out my workout. It feels good. I'm tired, but I don't feel strained. I only did two sets of ten for each shoulder exercise. Perhaps I should stick to the weight I'm at and add a set. Suggestions? I don't need to bulk up. I just need to get the muscles that I do have nice and strong. And I cannot risk pushing myself too hard in the gym.

Only time will tell if any of this will be effective. I may be playing as early as next weekend depending on game time, but I'll definitely be playing the following weekend. I can't wait to get out there on the pitch.

Middlemarch read

I enjoy words spelled identically, but pronounced differently like read (red) and read (reed).

I've been avoiding the blog as I've been fervently reading Middlemarch to the end. Eliot's broad spectrum of characters is only outstripped by the depth of each individual portrayal. The plot is gripping and yet bordering inconsequential. Because of its size, large cast, and time period I keep wanting to draw comparisons to War and Peace. I imagine Eliot saying, your Russian strife is all fine and good, but look what I can do with a little Victorian intrigue. It would be fantastic since they were published so closely together. I don't want to give the impression the story lines of Middlemarch are insubstantial, but the political aspects of the novel are handled quite lightly although undeniably present.

All this is doing is forcing me to actually take another look at War and Peace. Ugh. I think I'd rather not... but I'll follow a laugh just about anywhere. I'm intrigued by Eliot's depiction of kind and slightly doddering Mr. Brooke running for office. I once saw a Monty Python add describing "upper class nitwittery". As a result my mind turned to Monty Python often when Mr. Brooke spoke.

I recommend this book to anyone who is amused by scandals centered around questionable lineage, religious hypocrisy, bird's eye views into the minds of participants in strained marriages, and passionate idealism. (Dorothea ranks on my short list of all time favorite characters). I had been tipped off to the very element I enjoyed most about the book so I looked for it. Eliot treats all of her characters with care while making true to form individuals. The foibles of human nature aren't lamented but expressed and evenly so. The book is full of great quotes, but a rather popular one is, "People are almost always better than their neighbours think they are." That is the overarching sentiment of the book consistently displayed.