Fiber Fool

This is what it looked like when I left work yesterday to go to yoga. Not good! I was indeed smart to not bike to work today either. They’ve issued an official outdoor advisory due to all the particulates in the air. Not to mention my throat is raw from allergy drainage and my eyes are burning like mad. I definitely do not want to be outdoors any more than absolutely neccessary. And in fact, if I had the option to move where I’m sitting so I wasn’t immediately by the most used door in the facility I would do so. Everytime someone comes or goes it gets smokier around my desk.

This is what it looks like just a bit ago before a tiny shower came through. We can’t really tell cloud from smoke. But it is DARK out there now. As in after sunset dark.

The fire is now over 5000 acres and has directly impacted several recreational areas that are popular for Fort Collins residents. Just this morning it crossed over a ridge into Gateway Natural Area (formerly Gateway Mountain Park).

On a happier note? The columbine are all in bloom in the garden!

Well, I’m glad I lunched when I did. Not even ten minutes after I left the deck out back and got to my desk smoke from the Hewlett Gulch fire started wafting in whenever anyone came in or out of the building. The fire is about 20 miles outside of town on the opposite side from work. I wasn’t expecting to smell it over here.

The wind has really picked up and the skies look overcast, but for the most part it is just smoke. I’m thinking biking to work tomorrow is probably not in the cards. I took precautions yesterday, being sure I showered and shampooed my hair as soon as I got home to get smoke out of my hair before bed and what not. But my eyes are red and stinging and my throat is sore from drainage. Even if the wind has changed in our favor by morning there is no telling if it will remain so.

I’m a little worried how bad it is at our house (about 6 miles closer to the fire than work) and how hot the house got today as we won’t be able to open windows to cool things down this evening :-/

Once again it was human caused. I really wish people respected our dry climate and used common sense more often.

As for things that need done this spring. There are probably many more than we can realistically accomplish. So this will be more of a spring bucket list of things I’d like to get done, but I’m pretty doubtful many of them will happen.

1. Prep and plant the garden beds. Many of the them require partial emptying and shoring up. That means means we can work good stuff in even deeper which is a good thing, but it also means much more work which requires more time and it hasn’t been started yet.

2. Thin the set fruits - especially the peaches given their small, young branches, but the apples really need it too. The plums I think might be okay (they were the size of kalamata olives last week!).

3. Weed the patio, lay down the outdoor carpet and get the chairs set up.

4. Check the lines on the grill and the gas level so we can start enjoying weekend breakfasts on the patio (we have a griddle insert that is great for making pancakes and french toast).

5. Pick new yarn for my sweater design.

6. Sew more skirts that are bike friendly, mostly by upcycling my old tees I didn’t donate.

7. Drop off another car load full of donations and take a handful of higher end stuff to one of the consignment shops.

8. Clean the fans in preparation for needing to run them all night here soon. That includes ceiling and box/tower fans.

9. List my old Raleigh bike on craigslist again and see if I get any real interest other than ridiculously low-ball offers and flakes who never bother to come see it when they say they are going to.

10. Do some running outside, off of the treadmill.

I could go on. But I won’t. What are you wanting to get done this spring?

I rode my bike to work again today! My plan is to do so on Tuesdays and Thursdays for sure. Lately I’ve been doing weights on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays at the gym which means leaving much before the sun is out and would require leaving even earlier if I were to bike to the gym. Then there is all the extra shwag that needs toting for getting ready at the gym that would then need toted all day. Not to mention there was that whole overtraining syndrome issue I got late last summer that I don’t really want to repeat. That means I’ve also dialed back on the cardio warmup before lifting from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. Though I’m mixing up what equipment I use for those 10 minutes.

I tried a little different route this morning then last Thursday and cut about a mile or so off the ride and reduce the amount of foot and other bike traffic I have to deal with. It also meant I had to be a big girl and ride on a busy street. For less than 1/2 a mile though so it wasn’t too bad. I think I’ll be using that route fairly regularly.

I’m seeing the strides I’ve made over the winter more now. I had a mile stretch this morning above 20 mph that was all a low grade climb and at the end of my ride! And my legs weren’t burning - and didn’t burn with my 10 minute elliptical yesterday either (they had previously started about 2 minutes in, but I hadn’t been on in many months). My legs are finally making some progress! Yay!

School’s out for the summer. Although that meant DH’s nose was to the research all weekend - at least when we wasn’t out celebrating with the graduates. I holed up in the studio for a good share of Saturday after I made some baked “buttermilk” doughnuts with lemon glaze (I did the 1/3 greek yogurt to 2/3 milk in place of the buttermilk).

I was working on turning an old tee shirt and turtleneck into a pencil skirt with a ruffled hem. I used a blog tutorial and a youtube video and ended up with large hip wings. I don’t know if I just really can’t measure my own hips or what. It was awful. I refined with pins and it works now, though my master pattern piece is junk. I’m unsettled on how to add the ruffle at the hem so I haven’t gone any further at this point. The tee had a super deep V neck so the skirt is much too short without adding additional material from another source. I’ll let it swim around in my head and perhaps finish it up next weekend.

Most of Sunday was spent editing photos. 842 photos are *a lot* of photos to go through. The worst part, everything is only roughly edited. But, good enough that decisions can be made about which ones need full editing treatment. During it though I discovered that my laptop battery is DEAD. Nada. Nothing. That meant several times hair got pulled when a shift of position or an anxious dog pulled on the cord and caused the computer to also go dead. Ugghhh!

It was a weekend. And today has been a Monday…. I feel like I shouldn’t go to knitting tonight as I’m a bit of a grump. I guess I’ll need to decide soon…

Well, I made it home last night. Though my butt wanted to quit about 1/2 way there and about 3/4 of the way I was seriously tempted to double check with DH to make sure he really didn’t care to go to a get together that was being held there. I totally could have gone if it meant loading the bike on the Jetta for the rest of the journey home :-) But me and my sitz bones continued on out of shear stubborness.

On the ride to work my bike computer wasn’t working properly. The sensor seems to get messed up whenever it is taken in and out of the garage so I need to start paying closer attention to that before I get on. But the ride home was about 7.25 miles. I didn’t run MapMyRide so I don’t know the elevation change. I decided the ride wasn’t easy enough yet to want to know that. I do know it is over 250 ft as that is the change from campus to home. All told, I biked on the order of 17 miles or so and burned over 800 calories! Not too bad to get that kind of exercise just getting to/from work!

My sitz bones are killing me though. Most of the evening was spent on my side/hips. Anyone know if arnica cream helps reduce that? If I had a donut pillow I would have been really tempted to bring it to work. I now wish even more that I had a standing workstation :-)

I don’t know if there will be any biking in my weekend. The sitz bones may need a bit more time. We’ll have to see. I still really want to bike to Vern’s this summer and I now know that is a totally realistic ride if I don’t fear really narrow and graveled shoulder. It is less than 7 miles one way! There are some relatively serious climbs in there though. With CSU graduation this weekend it might be good to hole up at home for the duration.