Very Full Days

Charmaine and I like to joke that we have uncommonly full days. We do.

Yesterday morning I rode a hilly 70 miles in 4 hours and 6 minutes. Later in the evening I participated in three hours of 5th grade homework with my darling, maddening, and seriously behind-in-her-schoolwork daughter. Care to guess which was more difficult?

This is a blog post of the less structured variety, more just checking in since I realize it has been almost two weeks since my last post. So what have I been up to in the meantime?

Well my post entitled "Space" earned itself a link on the widely read and highly respected blog of poet Ron Silliman, so that was nice. Other than that it has been the usual books, bikes and parenthood.

My form is building on the bike, and I am climbing much more strongly than I ever have in early Spring, so that's a plus. I am looking forward to the start of racing season--which for me will be on March 28th at the low key but high quality Johnny Cake Lane spring series--but I am more optimistic, less anxious; more confident, less stressed about the start of racing season then I ever have been before. Maybe it's the fact that this will be my 5th season of racing bikes and I'm just a little more accustomed to the rhythm of the seasons, good luck and bad, the ebb and flow of my form, etc. Or maybe it's the fact that I know I have been working hard on the bike and I'm quietly confident. Whatever the cause, I am feeling excited and relaxed about racing bikes this year, and I feel like my attitude can only lead to good results. So there's my positive outlook for this morning.

Today's immediate excitement is that Char is doing a poetry reading tonight here in Albany and I am thrilled to play the part of sound system handling, book selling, supportive boyfriend. Apart from the fact that she's my partner and I am supposed to say nice things abut her, I really admire Charmaine's craft as a writer. Before we were a couple I remember picking up her book in a bookstore once and reading some of the poems and thinking to myself how I wished I knew that girl better. And now I do, lucky me. Objectively, though, I find her work ethic as a scholar and poet pretty damned inspiring (it certainly gives me a nudge away from my natural tendency toward slackness) and I am looking forward to hearing her send her little poem babies out into the ether tonight.

And I seem not to be behind in my reading, as per meetings with my two respectively distinguished adviser's last week. So it looks like I'll be scheduling my comprehensive exam for early May or so, and then I'll have a Master's degree. Me. Cool.

Plus today I get a new battery in my Honda, Ellie. She'll be so zippy and happy I can hardy wait to drive her home.

Cheers,

-n