A good day!

Once again, yesterday was a fabulous day. I awoke on Darlene's couch, as Jimi was getting ready to leave to go... somewhere? Lounged around for a little while longer--cleaned a bit of my ridiculously smeared make up from the night before off my face, and then headed home. Ambitiously, I got my stuff and headed to Quack's to get some work done, but after browsing listlessly online for about an hour and a half, I realized that was the farthest thing from anything I wanted to do. I needed to do work, I should do work--Fullbright app's are due on Monday!!! but... it was beautiful outside... I looked out the window. Well. Fuck it. I wasn't going to do any work, and my day was going to be amazing.

I rode home (on Dolly), where I locked her up and loaded Eileen onto my new trunk bike rack (best gift ever), then headed to my parents. I hadn't been riding her at all since the seat was waaay too low, and the way that the reflector was attached made it impossible to undo the nut with my cheap little wrench. I knew I needed a ratchet for the job, and I was feeling inspired since Corey had moved my back wheel back a little bit to make my chain fit better. And hell, I might as well shower while I'm at my parents', since my tub is still dripping hot water, so my hot water heater is still off.

I get home, and neither of my parents are home. It's about 12:30, so they would normally be home from church by now. I figure they went out to lunch by now. My dad has the same sort of boundary issues that I do--he doesn't care if people use his things, he just wants them to ask first (and put them back when they're done), so I hung out for a while to see if they'd make it back, watched about half an hour of Jezebel on TCM, then decided fuck it, if my dad got mad, I'd deal with his wrath.

Well, I found a ratchet set and got to work... the 1/2 inch head fit the nut perfectly... but the ratchet was turning in the wrong direction. Well, I didn't know how the fuck to make it change directions, so I went back into the garage and found another ratchet set. This one was going in the right direction... but the 1/2 inch head was too small, and the 9/16 inch head too big. Well, fuck. And the heads of the two different ratchets were incompatible. Lucky for me, after delving back into the depths of the garage, I was about to find a third ratchet set. This one was going the right direction, and the 1/2 inch head fit the nut. Everything was perfect. I unscrewed the seat, took off the God awful reflector, raised the seat, and took a little spin around driveway.

Well, I also wanted to tilt the seat further down, and this required the use of a regular wrench. Fortunately, in my excessive ratchet searches, I'd located my dad's wrench collection, and I dove into it with gusto, looking for the 1/2 inch wrench. It wasn't there. Well, I thought I'd try the 9/16... too big. 7/16... too small. Fuck. After some more frenetic searching (you know, ten minutes or so), I locate the 1/2 inch wrench... in a box of screwdrivers. So I try it on the nut... too small. Well, fuck. I figured I'd move onto metric. 11 mm was too small... I found a 14 mm... too big. I began to pull out each wrench, one at a time, hoping for a 12 mm or 13mm... and found a 13, which was right on the money. I adjusted the seat, resecured it, and took her for another spin. Perfect... except the tires needed air. Pumped 'em up, and I was ready to ride her anywhere (in spite of the rear brake not working). All in all, it only took about an hour to raise and adjust my seat. Ha.

anyways, I took my shower, drove home, and decided to go for a ride... and ride I did, for about two and a half hours. I took Eileen all the way down to Barton Springs, then rode over and back across the river at First street, down 2nd, over to... Trinity, I think; took Trinity to 13th, and rode around the capital for a while, before heading down the other side of 13th back to Nueces, rode back up to 27th, skipped two blocks West and rode Rio Grande to 3oth, down that wide road that runs through back there, coming out on 34th; crossed back over Guadalupe, to Speedway, the rode up and around in Hyde Park, evenutally up past North Loop and all the way to Koenig before winding back down North Loop, past the IM fields, and then home. It was a really nice ride... and I was pretty tired at the end. I probably would have kept riding if it hadn't gotten dark. Nicely, the only thing sore today is my shoulders, which is kind of weird.

Anyways, I rented movies--Disk 2 of Mad Men was finally in, so Fidel came over to watch Eps 4 and 5 (we still have 6!), as well The Front Page. I've been going through an extended Billy Wilder phase--which originally started when I saw The Lost Weekend in all it's alcoholic glory--and I'm fearing that it's going to turn into a full-blown Jack Lemmon phase. He's just so charming. I watched Avanti! last week, and I aboslutely loved it. The Wilder/Lemmon/Italy combination just pushed all my "happy" buttons, or something, but I've been generally happy of late anyways, so I'm not sure what correlation there really is.

Anyways, today has more promise, as I'm going to swim and grill with Corey, and because I'm supposed to be getting my tub drip fixed, and a keyless deadbolt installed on my door. Thanks, Landlord. You're a pal.