I’ve been really busy at work, Lydia is getting adjusted to her new play school, and I’ve totally fallen off the wagon with my “getting ready for the Portland Marathon” program, because now my Amtrak train leaves Exton at 6:11 AM, and that doesn’t really leave any time for working out before I have to get on the train. At least I’ll try to get back on the “don’t eat large amounts of food” part of the program; luckily for me, my sister broke her ankle while training, and so I have a little bit of leeway to catch up to her now. Phew! Thank goodness for that aggravating and painful injury. I owe you one, sis!

Honey, why do the beans spell Baphomet?
Kate and I marked out and staked down some planters’ paper mulch in the back yard. Which, now that there’s four five-foot by five-foot squares of black paper staked down on the grass, I will switch to calling “the garden.” Next, we put two inches of compost on all four squares. By spring, this will have killed the turf, and all we’ll have to do is dig (goes the theory). We have exactly 100 square feet of garden, which makes the math fairly easy in determining that we need approximately EIGHT THOUSAND POUNDS of compost. Actually, it’s two-thirds of a cubic yard, or 666 pounds of manure. I have to be careful; if you carefully spread 666 pounds of shit in the right pattern, Very Bad Things probably happen. Fortunately, our garden is not laid out in a pentacle.

2006 Turkey Pro National

Bob hosted the 21st annual running of the Turkey Pro National motorcycle rally yesterday. My sidecar rig has developed electrical problems, so I drove up with Kate, Barb, and Lydia in a silver Honda accord. Kate knitted me a pair of incredibly awesome red cabled socks to wear under my big ol’ Red Wing motorcycle boots, too, so it was especially disappointing to not ride the sidecar — on an old, black, and greasy bike, with new, handmade, blazing red scratchy socks, I would have been approaching a new level of “I’m coming over to eat your caviar and kick your ass” Cossack cool. Oh well.

We arrived after the slow race had been run, and even after the trophy presentation (nuts!), but I still took a bunch of pictures, which you can see here. Or to read the full skinny on the Turkey Pro, you can read my 2001 writeup here. This has got to be the most mellow, diverse, and welcoming rally ever — when you mention that your bike isn’t running, murmurs of sympathy ripple through the crowd, and various people go and fetch North America’s pre-eminent experts on exactly your problem. They stand there with their hands in their pockets, listening attentively to exactly how the headlight relay makes that funny “BRRnnnn click” sound, and then they give you their motorcycle-garage card WITH ALL THE CORPORATE INFO CROSSED OUT to make it clear that this one is a personal favor, and they suggest some next steps to help. I swear to God, with this kind of support network, we could all be rocket scientists or neurosurgeons. Of course, most of the people there are rocket scientists or neurosurgeons, come to think of it.

I’m knitting a damn sweater!
My friend Michelle Stern is due in just a few weeks, and I have sworn a dark and bloody oath that I will knit a baby sweater for the new arrival. I have never knit before. But, as the husband of a badass knitter, I should know something about knitting besides just parroting the lingo. Plus (and more importantly), it’s going to be an awesome sweater for an awesome baby of a really good friend. So I’ve been checking the Alice Starmore patterns for a nice tiny aran in a twelve-color intarsia HA HA HA THAT WAS A KNITTING JOKE. SEE? NOW I’M A KNIT BLOGGER! I will be sure to post my progress.