Tuesday
Angus was very snuggly this morning.
During lunch on Chelsea pier, Rusty a black lab munched my nearly completed lunch. His owner Viva was mortified.
It turned out that I was not as busy at work as I expected I might have been and so met KD for a walk home from work. It rained, but we shared a Rootbeer ice from Rita’s. We were both tired from the day and relaxed in the kitchen working on food and websites. One bit of good news was a webdesign project to bid.

Wednesday

Tuesday – unexpected bike repairs, tapped for Hot Pockets pitch, picnic in Mill Pond park with Rebecca

Wednesday -at the moment i so don’t remember, wait I was removed from the HP Pitch. Wednesdy was hot. So hot I think my brain was baking as I rode my bike to and fro work.

Thursday was a long day at work filled with Faces of Influenza site im working on. I was working on documentation to submit the site on Friday to MLR review. Long long day of notes ad screen captures. Chris our neighbor was to come over for drinks, but he had friends down from Poughkeepsie for the Yankees game. Only there was a 3 hour rain delay so they hung out at his apartment till nearly 11.

Friday – spent al day at work going over the documentation and makingy updates to the Faces site before the submission. It was a lovel day out and i could not wait to leave. Regardless of my intentions i was at work till nearly 7. On the up side KD, Thurmin, Billy, Lucy and myself went to a little vietnamese restaurant on 193rd street near Jerome. Tasty stuff!

Monday followed a day of nearly 22 hours of travel lost luggage and storm delays after landing in Tampa.  Kitties were happy to no longer be alone.

Tuesday began an attempt to wrangle the laundry and set a new schedule in hopes of getting more things under wraps…

The remainder of the week was filled with activities such as a few biking adventures, new tires for the bike (blue!!!), and dinner out at Bowled and Pepin.

Thursday was lots of fun as I uncovered the subtleties of changing tires on Angharad – three inner tubes later I was feeling much more accomplished!

On a very positive note I made $.42 from my writing. Wahooo!  Not bad for three days work

I did spend some time working on a few writing projects, touched up the resume,  and also focused on getting some of my client sites modified and taking care of a few trouble tickets.  All in all that really seems like about everything.  A lame week.  Maybe I’ll remember something else in the future.  but for now that’s all that happened this past rainy week.

Tuesday Fresh Market was much the same as it ever was.  Leslie and I spent much of our time working on the last details for the approaching Gulfport Goes Green.  Leslie also let me borrow a motivational book by Wing Fu Fing.  It’s going on my wish list!

Wednesday I drove up to Clearwater for the in person interview with PODS for a contract position.  I felt it went well.   In the morning I went for a bit of a ride and saw what felt was a lovely framing of the sun coming through the clouds to the water.

Thursday was a lovely chat with my friend Maria.   There is hope that she and her man will get the chance to travel south to Tampa for a great  fourth of July weekend.  Angus earned a new designation “Destroyer of shoes”  The litany when I introduce him is going to take hours at this rate.    Rest of the day was cleaning and prepping for the trip to Sanibel as soon as Shelley got home.  She had to take MooseB8 to the shop for some upkeep and restoring of the fuel gauge.($84 when you run out of fuel is a little expensive)

On Tuesday my fixed gear GT-Gutterball bike was christened Angharad. My time at the market went well.. the last few things were planned for Gulfport Goes Green just under two weeks away.. Rain delayed my return home..

Wednesday saw me leave Ecco, twitter sms message delivery failed, and I deleted files from Kayaknature during an upgrade process. So a mixed box overall.

On Thursday there was a job interview for a contract position with P.O.D.S.

I was back to Gulfport on Friday to check out a boat and pick up my last check from Ecco. Yay for $$ to pay my phone bill The boat was not really what I wanted and I think very overpriced… I’m looking for something more of a blue water capable craft. A good point for the day was that I was finally able to restore KayakNature’s deleted files.

So it felt like a turbulent week. Weather, activities and general things that happened. It took too many days to write this after the week concluded.. so either need to take better daily note, white it sooner or hope for a less turbulent week in the future

I finally fixed my bike pedals on Tuesday before heading to the Gulfport market. Leslie and I planned out some work for future markets and her online store. From there I bounced to training at Ecco and then over to the Gulfport merchant’s meeting to discuss the events I’ve been planning on their behalf.

The restaurant opened on Wednesday… Wow… not the smooth opening wanted and even rougher than I imagined. I had a 10 person table whose bill came to $120… but who can blame them when it took 2.5 hours to get them salads let alone appetizers or entrees. Luckily the owner waved the alcohol for the diners so that helped keep most of them in a good mood. Tips however still sucked. Earlier in the day I had ridden past the bay and it was so hazy out and the water so calm it was hard to tell where sky and water joined.

I made two trips to Gulfport on my bike. Thursday’s first trip was a meeting with LocalShops1 to set up some collaborative work on Gulfport Goes Green and LS1′s upcoming birthday Gala. Trip 2 to Gulfport was for restaurant work. It was much smoother today, in part I think due to fewer customers and also the better ticketing system with the kitchen. However the owner pulled me aside at the end of the night and gave me a “weeks vacation” due to complaints from the ten person table the night before. Spent an hour talking to the floor manager after it closed to figure out next steps…

Vacation day 1 = Friday which worked well for me as it was Shelley’s day off too. So we caught up on chores and I added some more content to some sites. Lastly I decided on a netbook, Eee PC 901 and from Amazon the total bill came to $279. It comes with free 2 day shipping. Hurry up Monday. The weekend came early at 1 pm we left for Titusville to catch shuttle launch STS-127!

Wine tasting at the restaurant Monday.  All the wines tasted really young to me. Most were 2008 vintage and not close to the quality that you would find in an SF corner store.  Seriously a wine so sugary that it smells cloying?  Whose claim to fame is that is it made by a woman living in Washington for those wanting to transition from the sugarty taste of white zinfandel? Blech.. it was nasty NASTY! The whole tasting felt like it was the wine mechant pushing a collection of his high profit margin bottles at use under the guise of a well rounded varietal and geographic selection. We tried nearly 15 wines…  I see no reason to offer the patrons so many choices especially when the staff demonstrated no knowledge of how a good wine should taste.  

Fortunately I escaped and headed to meet Shelley at Beaks Old Florida for dinner (after some meet up confusion)… i tried their margarita… and well not again.  The key lime pie was awesome and for the life of me I can’t recall my entree.   GEtting home after dinner I located a copy of Quicksilver, where Kevin Bacon plays the role of a bicycle messenger in San Francisco circa 1986.

Other things that happened on Monday were that I began using the MapMyRide application for the iPhone to track my speed and distance traveled.  I’ve noticed that my average speed has increased nearly 5mph since I was riding the mountain bike.  I also made some progress on June’s Gulfport Goes Green, we will now have a book swap, clothing swap, Blood Drive, Computer recycling, and battery recycling.  Oh and MooseB8 came home!

Tuesday I was back in Gulfport for the Tuesday Fresh Market.   I arrived very early to begin taking phots of the empty vendor pads as the next step I’m working on is an interactive map for participants and spectators alike.   Shelley scored tickets to the Rays vs Royals game.   Our first baseball game in Florida.  Rays won despite the stadium less than half full (13,500 in attendance) 

My Wednesday was filled with the spirit of Jimmy Buffett – a late morning ride where preening pelicans were the star followed by a midday margarita and then writing.  I have finally started adding content to a few of my other sites.  I also set up an interview for the next day.

Thursday’s interview consisted of a  20 mile ride to meet with a recruiter who was trying to fill a position at a company I’d interviewed with nearly a year ago.  why didn’t I get the job?  I live to far away.  Granted I am now in St. Petersburg, but 5 miles off a 60 mile commute through the worst traffic in Tampa Bay may not be enough to sway the hiring manager.  During a later in the day bike ride  the chain came off my bike.  It was a little scary and I’m glad I did not crash.  Fixed Gear bikes are a s strange beast.   With the restaurant deciding not to open for Friday’s Artwalk in Gulfport I was told not to come in so Shelley and I rode to get margarita supplies (we were running low on lime juice) 

Thursday night I had a surprise call from a dear friend to let me know that her boyfriend is now her fiance!!  The wedding is set for next year and I cannot tell yet as she is still making the personal calls.  Soon as she updates her facebook status you’ll be reading all about it on Perez Hilton!

I ducked off to Gulfport on Friday morning to finish my photo shoot of the empty vendor spaces and [ick up my check from the restaurant.  $130 for 20 hours work.  Next on the list was taking Shelley to the airport for her flight to San Francisco.  She is going for Frank and Robyn's wedding (and trader joe's)  On the way back from the airport I met up with Isabel and dropped off her two laptops I had been working on.  One was salvageable the other was simply too old. (Pentium 166 running an older version of Win 2k)  I walked away with a little cash and 2 freshly picked mangoes direct from Miami.   I stopped for a smoothie at Tropical Smoothie Cafe and the first one they made was a mass of crushed ice with hint of mango (by hint I mean it had the color.. and none of the taste)  The store manager remade it to the tasty (and sweetener free) beverage I wanted (and I did get confirmation from the TSC tweet stream that it is 1/4 cup of sugar and not a full cup that goes into the beverages) With that fiasco concluded I parked MooseB8 and grabbed the bike destination - Gulfport Artwalk for the start of the weekend!

Tuesday’s Fresh Market in Gulfport went very well and I’ve excited to begin seeing rewards from my work. I’ve also begun working evenings at a new restaurant to open in Gulfport next month. (More on that soon) and there was a really good bike ride to and fro the Market I felt super speedy. The low point of the day was a visit to Joe’s Crab Shack where I totally lost my cool at being seated and then ignored for 20 minuets (and that includes searching for our waitress 10 minutes in.) It was good to dine on Dungeness crab again. On the way home Shelley stopped off for some Becherovka and she and Sara enjoyed the Czech spirit.

Wednesday began with taking Sara to the airport for her return to SF picking up Isabel & Michaels Laptops, down to Gulfport for a little work at the restaurant, practicing on riding my bike backward and then falling over, watching the latest episode of Deadliest Catch and then dining out at a new restaurant, Beaks.

The daily storms moved to the morning on Thursday so no bike ride for me. I did get my exercise in by pushing MooseB8 when it ran out of fuel and would not restart. It takes a little fancy priming to get fuel into the system once the tank runs dry. I did get a fabulous haircut before heading to the restaurant for the first public tasting.

Friday morning began with rain that passed more quickly than the day before so Shelley and I had a chance to go on Adventure Ride Part 1. I had a recruiter call me about a possible job… I have a tendency not to trust a recruiter that calls on the last day of the month to set up an appointment for a job that seems to fit me almost perfectly. This would make the 4th time it has happened… and I am reluctant to jump to fill their need of a quota… Dinner tonight was at Chattaway a more relaxed place than last Friday (and with no late night trip to the hospital I hope)

So here ends the week. Weekend started 15 min ago… gotta run