Canned Angst

GOBA

I spent the last week on the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure. It has a little different atmosphere than my daily desk job.

I spend almost all of GOBA week outside and I usually spend time my non-vacation time indoors. I wear sandals instead of my usual sneakers. Without regular access to an AC outlet, I ditch my pda for a plain wristwatch.

The biggest change for the week is that I talk to strangers.

While can be obnoxious gregarious with people I know, I rarely strike up a 30-second conversation with someone I don't know at, say, the grocery store.

But on Monday morning I passed a rider named Mary who proceeded to draft me for a dozen miles. I didn't mind the ego boost, but eventually I petered out. She rode ahead and met up with a pair of riders named Dave and Dave from Buffalo. And they all met up with Jennifer and Andy from Wadsworth. They were riding with Nick whom they had met the last day of last year's GOBA.

The Daves thought I was with Jennifer and Andy because I had a matching jersey. Jennifer and Andy thought Mary was with me because she was referring to me in surprisingly colloquial terms. I thought the Daves knew Jennifer, Andy and Nick.

All of us (aside from Mary who really was with another group) set up camp together and we soon realized that none of us really knew each other but we went to dinner and spent the rest of the week camping and riding together. Total strangers. Very bizarre entertaining conversation too.

And if my new friends are reading this: send pictures!

Flower Child

Last weekend all three girls had their year end gymnastics presentation. I will spare you from the movie files.

It was the first time for 4-year-old Claire. To make it marginally more special, Chris bought a long-stemmed carnation to give to her after the meet.

For pictures afterwards, she constantly waved her hands with the participation trophy in one hand and the flower in the other.

One-by-one the flower sections broke off in the air.

We ended up with 5 short-stemmed pieces.

A Trusting Fairy

Katie lost one of her three loose teeth. It is somewhere in the family room. We ahve no idea.

But if Marissa could get away with it, Katie thought she'd try the promissory note too:

Piano Recital

The girl's had their piano recital this weekend.

Here are Katie (1.3MB wmv) and Marissa's (1.6MB wmv) performance.