after a long day at the tour de fat a few weeks ago, i took off my front wheel so that i could put my bike in a friend’s car. this evening i put it back on and realized that it was rubbing both sides of the brakes. being a newbie to the world of bike repair, i had heard of truing a bike wheel, but i wasn’t exactly sure what that meant so as my only idea about how to fix the scrubbing, i looked it up in my “essential bicycle” book. eureka!! truing the wheel was indeed the solution to my problem.

i looked up a few how too videos on youtube and ta da! i trued my wheel all my myself. thankfully i purchased a mutli-tool a few weeks ago that came with 4 different sizes of spoke wrenches. a couple of the nipples on my spokes are stripped so i’ll have to get those replaced i suppose.

it was extremely refreshing to a) teach myself how to do something new and to b) do something so tactile. now i’m finally starting to get excited about fixing up my sister’s old bike. i want to turn it into a single speed… maybe with a flip flop hub. it also needs new brakes. i found that out the hard way.

(so apparently i have  neglected cute and nerdy for about 6 months… time to rectify that)

since my last blog post I have:

• moved to austin (i love it!! i’ve even made some good friends)
• been promoted to director, client services at work
• dated a pedicab driver (makes for great stories)
• ridden my first century (yes, i rediscovered my love for biking)
• purchased 2 new bikes (total = 3)
• signed up for 3 more half marathons (will make total = 10)
• broken up with said pedicab driver
• been hanging out with my best friend from 9th and 10th grades that lives here in austin
• have purchased plane tickets to go do disneyworld with my family for thanksgiving
• taken a rather spur of the moment, 10-day trip to europe with a few friends
• been taking a PHP class at austin community college
• laid by the pool enough to have a better tan more freckles than ever before
• discovered that i have much love for pearl light

now that everyone is up-to-speed, carry on.  more to post very, very soon.

since i started working remotely, i IM way more than i used to. i’m also on the phone about 4 hours on average. And on tuesday’s i video conference with all the other offices for staff meeting.

it’s great and usually it’s super easy (when the imac in DC isn’t acting up). video conferencing is so much easier than just yelling at some box with holes in it (the phone, on speaker usually) while staring at someone’s IM avatar!

tomorrow, i’m headed to sxsw interactive in austin and almost as soon as i get back i turnaround and head to dc for a few days. really looking forward to seeing a few of my favorite coworkers in austin and meeting new folks too (hopefully a few from the Dallas area). mostly, i’m just excited to prove to my coworkers that i really do shower everyday, not just tuesday.

i’m amazed at what idiots marketers are sometimes! check out the ad I was just served.  ok cool -  +1 for serving it to the right demographic (single, female, etc), but -100 for the picture itself.

i don’t need to read your stinkin’ report to find out why. i know why he stopped calling -  probably because his wife found out.  check out that ring finger.  IDIOTS!

after a recent trip to DC, I realized that apparently there were some small pieces of me that got lost in my transition to TX.  now granted, while i may have lost a few things along the way I did manage to pick up a rather unhealthy obsession with House and a knack for making cakeballs.

so thanks to my recent enlightenment there are a few things in the new year that I’m going to make sure and not lose or lose sight of:

• taking care of myself
• my thoughts on conscious consumerism
• my ability to not put up with “crap”
• my ability to keep my blog up-to-date
• how much i enjoy riding my bicycle
• how skilled i am at riding in traffic (and not being scared.  apparently i became a wuss when i moved)
• the need to socialize
• my love of exploring and doing things on my own

i’m sure that more will come to me as time passes, but i figure putting this stuff on the interweb is the one way i can make sure i don’t forget about it.

all you nerds, geeks and crafters out there – any suggestions on how to explain the maker faire to someone who’s totally out of the loop?

i heard it refered to as a “do-it-yourselfer convention” recently and  thought that was amusing.  for me, it brought up images of folks in home depot aprons running all over the place.  nice!

today, i’m like a little kid on christmas eve!! i’m heading to austin this afternoon for the maker faire.

if you know me at all it probably won’t surprise you that i’ve already printed off the schedule (which they seem to be updating every 5 mins) and have highlighted the stuff i want to go to.  i’m super excited about some of the how to demonstrations.

i’ll take lots of pictures and will probably blog about my trip over at the work blog.  can’t wait!

before moving, I did my due diligence and researched biking and running trails.  I remember finding a map of all the trails in the city of allen pretty easily.

now that i’m actually here, i’ve been trying to hunt down the map which seemingly disappeared from the city’s and the county’s websites.  today, i called the parks and recreation department.  keith was super helpful – he emailed me the map.  it’s quite possibly the most difficult to read map ever, but it should make biking a bit more fun.

i’ve made it to texas and i’m finally all situated.  furniture is in place, boxes are unpacked and i’m back in thegrind at work as well.

now while there are a LOT of differences between DC and texas, mostly i’ve come across things recently that only happen in DC that you’ll never see many other places.

you know?  big protests, snipers on the top of the building across from you, the climate ride, the capitol building — those sorts of things.

i’ve started to discover quite a few things in texas that you’ll never see in DC.  parking lots for one, but last weekend i came across the best so far….

james helped a family friend out last week who hosts a hobie race every year on lake tawakoni.  i spent the day with my family, but james invited me to join him out at the lake on saturday evening because the host family insisted that stay to listen to the cover band and to drink cold beer.

i got out to Mimleach Beach which was actually a very nice little place.  i’ve never really been around any boat racing crowds, but i do know these folks have a decent amount of smarts and dough in order to own and race their own boats. smart people?  yes, we have those in dc, but wait…

james and i are listening to the band and having a few miller lights.  there are a few middle-aged women dancing by the stage which are quite amusing, but all of the sudden one of them leaves the dance floor.  she walked behind us up to where most of the cars are parked so we didn’t pay much attention.  that is, until she came back with a tambourine.

i know very little about tambourine’s, but this was no church choir tambourine.  we couldn’t quit laughing.  she was playing along with the band and actually doing a good job at it.  but who does that?  seriously!  are there BYOT parties that i’m unaware of.

we were talking about it later at my house because james and my dad decided they both need tambourines.  i mean, what party doesn’t get better with the addition of a tambourine?  and seriously, no one is gonna mess with a guy carrying a tambourine.  my dad had the best line of all though as to the possible reasoning behind her tamobourine… “you just can’t play a sad song on the tambourine.”  which unlike willie nelson’s song “you just can’t play a sad song on the banjo” is totally, totally true.

in case you missed my:

• tweet
• facebook status
• previous blog post

it’s 2008, people.  there won’t be any change of address cards going out in the mail, but there might be a mass email.  i’ll keep you posted.