And here we are, two months later. Spring has been eager to get a few words in now that winter seems to have run its course. The past week has mostly been absolutely beautiful. Beautiful enough that I have once again mounted that trusty steel steed, urged my buttocks not to clench too hard at the memory of those long days last summer, and pedaled my way to and from work several times, and sometimes simply for fun. Today was the longest by far in one go, probably doing better than 25 miles along the lakefront.
As I type this, my legs are reminding me that while the memory of the seat is all too fresh in that asinine physical memory, the details are a bit more fuzzy when it comes to extended bouts of pedaling. This of course is in conjunction with the occasional protests from my fingers and forearms, proclaiming that they, too, have been abused beyond their function. "Why?" they ask, "What would drive you to knowingly support your entire body weight by grasping small protrusions on a rather abrasive wall? We thought you'd come to your senses when you stopped that foolishness nearly a year ago!" Alas, the lure of climbing was too strong. Alas, I pay.
In other news, I just spend Friday and Saturday in Madison, WI staying with Andrea and Brandon and seeing Mitch, Amber, AND Nate! Thus the climbing. It's been very nice having Goshen friends around here in Chicago to hang out with, but it was still great to hang out with them again. I'm afraid there are no pictures of the weekend, but it mostly would've involved sitting on couches (apart from when they toured the vet school while I stretched out on the bathroom floor occasionally sitting up to regurgitate whatever my stomach could find in itself along with a few swear words; but then I took a nap and got all better before they came back). It was also nice to get out of the city for the first time since I came here three whole months ago. City life isn't bad - I'm not suffocating or anything, but it was a good change of scenery.
Work continues to get more and more interesting as I delve further into the world of being a lab rat. Sometimes it consists of staring at a computer program until it finally gives up and shares its secrets with me, but sometimes it just means giving the monkey some peanuts. And maybe craisins, too.
