Reasonable weekend

...despite the general efforts of entropy.
With J away at Capricon, I had intended to try to catch up on housework, especially vacuuming and the LONG overdue cleaning of the carpets, which I don't like doing with others in the house. I took Friday semi-off (monitoring things at work from home, but not really WORKING).

Of course, a series of events occurred, some scheduled, some not, including a communications meltdown at the IRS just past when they stopped answering the phones for the weekend, and I didn't get 1/2 the stuff done I was hoping to.

But in the end I got at least some headway on Sunday, got my workstation cleaned and reconfigured, the PVR seems to be working pretty well now, I at least vacuumed around the traffic areas, scrubbed and mopped, even cleaned under the fridge (oh, YUCK), watched some History Channel during lunch/dinner breaks, etc.

T and I went to the Cub Scout Blue and Gold dinner, which was decent and didn't seem as long as before. A friend's kid crossed over from Cubs to Boy Scouts. They're both heavily into the leader thing, so I pushed their camcorder around for them while they all did their things.

Also the new freewheel on my bike is performing very nicely, adding to my general feeling of things being OK. The new low gear is a lot less low than the old one, and so is usable.

Oh, MUCH better

The new gearset on my bike is MUCH better than the stock one. Not better quality, just a better range. It's identical excapt the lowest gear isn't as low; it's just right for the hills towards the end of my ride; with the stock set the low gear was way too low, and too big a jump from 2nd gear, so I never used it, and 2nd is just a tad too high, especially with a headwind, and I wound up really mashing it too hard and fatiguing my legs too much with a mile or two up a long low grade left to go.

Also having a brand new chain and a brand new freewheel is pretty smooth; I guess I never noticed that the shifting had gotten a bit slow and cranky; it's sweet now to shift and have it SNAP! into gear.

Now to see how long it lasts. Hopefully I've learned my lesson and won't try to keep using a chain through a whole winter of sandy crap when it's already > 2000 miles old.

What would be sweet would be to have the power washer available in the winter when I really need it on the drivetrain. Taking the chain off to wash it is such a PITA, especially without the ability to hang it outside in the sun to dry.