Been working at home all week, which has turned out pretty well. I don’t think I’ll have house fever before our trip this weekend.

I got in one bike ride from Tracy Owen park to Redmond because it looked like a sunshiny day. Unfortunately most of the ride was in a cold fog and I popped an inner tube after running into some glass. I met some nice folks and learned that a lot of people use a ~15 mph pace with an early start and a pace line to do STP in one day. I also saw again the horse trainer that I met on Ted’s rides, she had a very fancy heart rate monitor and was doing all right with the longer rides.

I also tried using the crock pot to cook a big $5 piece of beef from Costco. I cooked it for a couple of hours on high, and ended up with a tough piece of meat. I’ve since then let it cook on low for many more hours, and it has finally gotten tender.

Last night I went to dinner at Mark and Alyssum’s place. Raymond, Keshav and Kerry were also there. I had some very nice Oregon desert wine that Kerry brought, and learned about brewer’s yeast being the topping of hippies. At some point Alyssum will introduce me to hippy popcorn. Later we all played celebrity taboo and watched Buck Rogers.

Had a pretty busy weekend, Friday night was the our holiday party, which was pretty decent once my headache went away and I could enjoy the band. The Dancing Heads room was especially enjoyable. They use green screen technology to get a video of just your head and then overlay it on to a video of headless dancers keyed to a the playing of a popular song. The results are VERY amusing.

Saturday I woke up and joined a cascade cycle ride for what should have been a 40 mile 17-18 mph ride. The end result was a 48 mile ride at 19-20 mph. That small difference in speed plus the cold weather really kicked my butt. It went from Redmond, over Sammamish plateau over to fall city, up to the falls, and then back to Redmond by way of 202 and union road. Along the trip we saw the extra dramatic Snoqualmie falls, accompanied with mist drenching everything out to the parking lot). During the ride back on 202 we saw an entire vally plus roads under water.

Saturday night was dinner and a Hanukah party hosted by the Goldmans. Had fun, played with Ryan and ?, ate lakes.

Sunday was the Darkside bike ride. I saw a Neon flip over on a wooden bridge. The driver was all right, but his car looked like it was in pain. Later in that ride I did 11mph uphill (2/3% grade) in to a heavy wind. That same wind gave me 18mph without pedaling on the way back. With pedaling I hit ~43 mph. We ate some food in a North Bend bakery. I’ll have to go back there more.

Decent weekend, Friday night was dinner at Mediterranean Kitchen and some shopping at the Bon. Saturday we went to Keshav and Kerrie’s pre-Christmas party. Unfortunately I slept through the first part of it, but I did get to play a bit of halo 2 co-op and watch Keshav show off the new Grand Theft Auto game. Sunday, pam and I went on an 8 mile bike ride through a small snow storm, meeting our ride leader Ted. Pam’s phone didn’t survive the trip. We did a bunch of chores around the house, finally cleaning up Halloween. Later we went and bought some new ski clothing (since we both have loss weight from the last time we bought that type of thing. The new Snoqualmie Chinese place in the grocery market wasn’t all that good. I wish I knew what they did wrong, because their cooking was very similar to my stir-fry results. This week I continue to try to keep up my spinning class and cardio (I did four workouts last week).