These are the drawings done in class three. I’m starting to forget now which one was done first. If I recall, the darker one was done first and was an exercise again in negative space, then the other was drawn based on what we had learned.
It was a little bit of a scary week on the kitty front. One of Marcella’s kitties, Angus, who hasn’t been eating well for several weeks, finally seemed like he might be in pretty bad shape.
Marcella took him to the vet on Wednesday. The short story is he’s in some stage of Kidney failure, and our efforts at home to fiddle with his diet were just insufficient. We left him overnight for two nights while they gave him subcutaneous fluid injections and monitored his progress before being allowed to bring him back home.
The rub is that we’ve got to continue to give him these subcutaneous fluid injections, and I think I can honestly say that we haven’t yet fully figured out the procedure. It seems really simple when you see it done, but I think there is a little bit of an art involved that can only be learned with experience, and experience only comes with sticking the poor kitty with a needle; so it is experience that only comes with poor Angus’ pain and discomfort.
Ah, we’ll learn eventually, but in the meantime there’s a daily stress-fest as we collect Angus and start preparing a needle.
Here I am sitting on my ass. The weather reports weren’t looking promising last night before bed, plus my knee started bothering me right at the end of the evening. I’m not sure what that was about. Plus my Dad and Barbara are supposed to be coming into town today to visit. I don’t expect them until the afternoon sometime, but figured there was tidying up to be done about the house so I didn’t even set the alarm for my usual Sunday ride. I’ll have to really make an effort to get in some weekday evening rides this coming week.
The morning was chilly, but beautiful. I nearly made it to Hagan Stone Park, but I think I took a wrong turn. I’ll have to look at the map again, but I know I was in the vicinity. The ride was tough though. I pushed the mileage up another notch, and I’m pretty sore and I was experiencing a little bit of cramping in my left leg near the end of the ride. I made it home with a little over 42 miles.
I guess tomorrow morning looks like it will be a bit chilly again; chillier than today anyway. So I guess I should prepare myself mentally. I am looking forward to when things get a little warmer and I don’t have to put on the extra layers anymore to go for a ride.
I went by the REI today over at Friendly Center where I worked briefly about a year and three months ago; nice place with some nice people. Some of those people are still there. It was kind of fun to see Travis and Strayer, and doubly nice that they remembered me. Strayer was hollering my name out from the moment I walked in the door. I mean, I really only worked there for a pretty short time before bailing on them. I always felt bad about that, but I had to do what I had to do. So, it’s nice when people remember you that much later—that quickly—after only a short time spent around each other.
While I was there I picked up a new chain for my bike, but they didn’t have the specific cassette I was looking for. So I came home and ordered the cassette from their website. They’ll deliver to the store which allows for free shipping and gives me an excuse to go back to the store and browse another time. When that arrives I’ll plan on doing the installation and also some serious cleanup and overhauling of the derailleurs and so forth. I’d like to replace the chainrings too, but that’s a bit out of my range for the moment. But the biggest wear has been on the chain and rear cassette. I’m pretty sure I’ve put over 4000 miles on that chain and over 6000 miles on the cassette, closer to 7000. It is time for a change, and I should have changed the chain multiple times in that interval and perhaps the cassette would still be in better shape.
31.7 miles this morning. It was warmer than last week, and I debated removing the sleeves from my jacket, they zip off separately, but I left it all intact.
The difficulty this week was the wind. Like usual the wind seemed to work with me heading out, and then turned into a brick wall returning home. Why is it that I always end up riding into the wind during the second half of the ride? It seemed like even going downhill I couldn’t generate any speed the wind was so insistent. From checking the weather reports it seems the wind was gusting to over 20 mph. That’ll do it.
Anyway, I was very tired by the time I made it home. It was a hard work outing.