I ran 4 miles on the treadmill at work (not uncommon these days) at a really fast clip, and tonight after work, I took the bicycle Sean gave me to use for triathlon training. I planned on going for a short spin, but (despite the hills, which are fashioned directly in hell) it was a very pleasant ride, and I ended up logging in around 15-20 miles. I'm going to have to retrace the route I took with my car, to see how many miles I actually biked, but I'm pretty sure of the figure.

Last night to get out of the house, I went to the enormous sporting goods store by the mall and bought myself a helmet, bike shorts, and a great big shirt to wear over the bike shorts (the town must be protected from the sight of me in bike shorts). Tonight, I felt like some sort of "real" bicyclist, heading out in all my gear.

Once I decided on a route, I headed out. Like I said, the hills were hellish, but the rest of the ride went fine. It's very different from the stationary bike, but in a good way. My legs burned a lot and my butt hurt a lot, but the wind was blowing, the scenery was great, and I had a good time.

I'm going to pay for it tomorrow morning. I stretched a lot, but I can feel the unused muscles tightening.

Tomorrow is going to be a day of upper-body working out, I have a feeling.

It was a slightly irritating day at work. I don't mind doing design-related work for the department, but when the software of choice doesn't do a damned thing, it gets irritating.

We use an "interface builder" for our web pages in the department, which is good for those who don't know HTML or how to work with web editors. However, the capabilities are very limited, which isn't a problem in itself, it's just when the limitations have limitations built into them, it causes me to want to pull out my hair.

I used the limited capacity of the program to make gorgeous pseudo-graphics for the header of each page. The fills were gradients, there were drop-shadows, and the whole thing just looked crisp and clean.

Damned if I know why that didn't translate onto the page. The boxes in the tables I had created shrunk down to nothing, the gradient was flattened into a single color, the borders disappeared, and there were no drop-shadows to be found. I tried every trick I could find, but to no avail. I could have created pictures and used them, but the boxes were headings, and would need to change frequently, and I didn't want to have to change that over and over again. Maybe I should have.

That plus a transcription that was evidently transcribed by someone who hadn't completed his "English as a second language" course added to the irritation of the day. The tape I was following began about 15 minutes into the conversation, so I had no idea who the players were; I just had to make guesses as to the respondents by voice. One of them was Jan, who I know very well. Another has a thick accent, so he was easy to spot. I'm still unsure if there was one or two other people speaking. Just as I had one "mystery man" figured out, someone else (possibly) would break in with a quick thought, but then disappear again. I think it was the same man, hopping in to add in more to what he had just said.

I don't have a dictaphone, so I did all this with a Walkman, stopping and starting fitfully throughout. I'm going to have to go back tomorrow and make all the badly-translated work into something coherent and interesting to the company at large, but that part is always more fun than playing "match the voice."

I just got an e-mail letting me know that my friend Rachel has been nominated for two EMACT "DASH" awards. I guess EMACT has a new system for rewarding good work onstage, and Rachel was not only one of the best supporting actresses (for our show) but one of the best actresses in the New England community theater scene.

"Honorable Mentions" went to Leslie and John, which were well-deserved. I think the whole ensemble deserved a nomination, but I think I'm a little biased.

Congratulations, Rachel!

Other than that, it's been a low-key day. The scale in the gym says I'm down to 209, which means I've lost six pounds in approximately three weeks. Considering that most diet programs strive for about a two-pound weight loss per week, I'll take that. I haven't been entirely faithful to my diet; late nights still find me snacking on sweets, but not as much as I used to, and I figure whatever I can get stuffed into my maw in an hour isn't going to ruin the whole day for me.

Two-thirds of the way through my bike ride, I stopped by Sean and Heather's house for a break and to thank Sean for letting me use the bike. Heather has been plagued by some sort of pain that's knocked her flat and rendered her unable to sleep. The doctors don't quite know what it is; they ruled out gallstones (she has them, but they're not blocking anything...I know how painful those can be, so she must be in a lot of pain!), and think it might be an acid reflux-related deal. She looked tired but was very gracious when I popped in unexpectedly to visit.

Sean was finishing up a dinner of crock-pot ribs, which it looks like he desperately needs. He's someone who forgets to eat and if he's busy, he loses weight (bastard). I didn't mention how thin he is to him, because it's a sensitive subject for him, but I would like to see a pair of pants on him that don't look like they're held up with Velcro.

Mom is knocking herself out with the little bathroom. I've offered to help skimcoat the walls, but since neither of us knows just what skimcoating entails, I'm not sure it's going to do any good. For such a little room, it's turning out to be a big pain in the ass.

And I just managed to watch possibly the worst movie with Paul Rudd in it I've ever seen. It's called Two Days, and it's based on the premise that an out-of-work actor is going to kill himself on film in two days' time. It's unrealistic, Rudd looks like he's sleepwalking through the movie, and the supporting cast is made up of people who look like they couldn't get work in industrials. Oh, and one character disappears halfway through the film, though we get cell phone calls from her throughout the picture (and her character is involved in a "pivotal" plot point), so I think the actress might have walked off the picture in the middle of filming.

It's good to know that there's crap like this being made out there. Somehow, it gives me hope that something I write is going to be picked up someday to be turned into a feature film or a television script. One day, when I was writing Parthenogenesis, I told Mom I didn't want it to sound like a "TV Movie of the Week," and she said, "Why not? Those make a lot of money, and they're sometimes really good."

She's right, of course. If someone wants to buy the rights to anything I've written, please contact me and we'll work something out. I'm always willing to sell out to the Man.

I'm all over the map here. I think all the exercise has made me more tired than I usually am at this hour, so I'll call it an early night.