Having spent most of the weekend eating the peanut butter cookies Shirley made on Friday, I didn't do so well this morning at Velocity. The workout was 3 rounds of: 20 chest passes with a semi-bouncy 10# medicine ball, 10 shuttle sprints, 20 backward over-the-head ball tosses, 10 shuttle sprints, 20 sideway tosses (each side), 10 shuttle sprints, and 20 ball slams. I managed the first round with the 12# medicine ball, but could barely lift the ball for the second round.

My last set of sprints were pathetic in speed, but fairly okay in my starts.

I did manage to finish the workout, but I think that was more due to the fact I didn't have to duck out early to shower before catching the train. Mom's picking me up from the train station.

On the way to the station, as Kris was dropping me off, I commented, "Too many cookies, not enough exercise this weekend."

"Yeah, restraint isn't exactly in your vocabulary, is it?"

When it comes to Shirley's peanut butter cookies? Absolutely not.

Having spent most of the weekend eating the peanut butter cookies Shirley made on Friday, I didn't do so well this morning at Velocity. The workout was 3 rounds of: 20 chest passes with a semi-bouncy 10# medicine ball, 10 shuttle sprints, 20 backward over-the-head ball tosses, 10 shuttle sprints, 20 sideway tosses (each side), 10 shuttle sprints, and 20 ball slams. I managed the first round with the 12# medicine ball, but could barely lift the ball for the second round.

My last set of sprints were pathetic in speed, but fairly okay in my starts.

I did manage to finish the workout, but I think that was more due to the fact I didn't have to duck out early to shower before catching the train. Mom's picking me up from the train station.

On the way to the station, as Kris was dropping me off, I commented, "Too many cookies, not enough exercise this weekend."

"Yeah, restraint isn't exactly in your vocabulary, is it?"

When it comes to Shirley's peanut butter cookies? Absolutely not.

Coal Creek hike with Mom yesterday. We took a wrong turn and almost finished the hike in 45 minutes. I set us straight, we back back-tracked on the trail to go the long way. 3 hours later, and Mom was too tired to be angry with me.

I really should realize that not everyone is an ultimate player with a start-stop-start-stop all day fitness mode.

Then maybe Mom wouldn't need to be mad at me.

At one put a couple weeks ago, when we were driving from Andy's house to 280, Andy commented there was a new restaurant along the route named Merlion. "Merlion?" one of us asked. "Is that like a cross between a lion and a fish?"

"Yes it is," was Andy's answer.

And, sure enough, when we drove by, there, standing proud, was a statue of a lion with a fish tail, spewing some water into the pool around its feet.

We had to go.

Yesterday, I asked Andy if we was up for going to Merlion with Mom, Kris and me. When he said yes, I made reservations, and the three of us, Mom, Kris, and me, went to pick up Andy last night to check out the new place.

The first thing we noticed was that the door you think is the front door, the one on the side nearest the big-ass Merlion statue-fountain along the major busy road, isn't.

The first door we went to said "go to the next one over." The next door over said, "go to the next door that way" without giving a direction associated with the "that." We eventually wandered all the way around the building, going the long way past the Potsticker King, before encountering the baby Merlion: a statue merely half the size of the fourteen foot statue we'd seen from the street and wandered past, twice, on the way around the building to the front door.

We entered, and were greeted by another Merlion, this one as big as the first, but not quite as spiffy: it was blind. Don't know what I mean? Go to the Merlion on Steven's Creek and see. Or don't. It can't see you.

So, we ordered our meal, after debating whether or not to order the $900 bottle of wine, eventually opting for the $40 bottle of wine instead (what's $840 among family and friends?).

Behind us, a large group was gathering. The tables were pushed together, and people hurried in to sit before the guest of honor arrived to celebrate his birthday.

Before the birthday boy could arrive, just after Mom had her meal set down in front of her, the lights went off.

We looked around, slightly perplexed. Power going out in a restaurant is never good. We figured if the power didn't come on in a few moments, candles would arrive for mood lighting.

Before long, the restaurant manager came up and apologized for the lights being off. The whole complex had lost power, not just their building. We didn't care much, as the rest of our meals were arriving. We had enough light to eat by, so eat we did.

As we ate, we noticed the place start to fill up with smoke. The power loss had, unsurprisingly, stopped the overhead fans in the open kitchen, though the grill was still on to finish cooking the orders placed before the power went out. When the birthday boy arrived a short time later, he and his brood of 30 were out of luck for ordering meal.

As we continued to eat our meals, the manager stopped by to apologize to us for the loss of power. We still didn't care since we had our food, so we kept shooing him away. Eventually, however, it became clear that he was concerned because, with the power out, he had no way to process credit cards, we'd have to pay cash.

Darn, Andy commented, why didn't we order the $900 bottle of wine. They can't expect us to carry $900 in cash with us to a restaurant, can they?

For some unknown reason, I happened to have a $100 bill on me, and was able to pay for the meal in cash. I have no idea what prompted me to bring that bill, as I normally have less than $25 in cash on me at any time, $20 of that being the emergency $20 that should be for emergencies only, but seems to be spent whenever.

We left our Merlion adventure shortly thereafter, passing the birthday boy brood trying to figure out where to take 30+ people at 8:00 on a Friday night without reservations. As we left, Andy turned to Kris. "Potsticker King next time?"

One of the tasks on Mom's "list of things to do when at Kitt's house" is my long time favorite: clean out the garage.

This has been on my list since, oh, forever? When Kris and I first moved in, my car went into the garage every night. I had the more expensive car at the time (come to think of it, I still do. hmph), so it made sense to park it in the garage.

Sometime between move in and now, around maybe 2 years ago, the amount of crap in the garage has become so overwhelming that there are the narrow paths through the junk piles. Many of the boxes in those piles are full of paper of some sort: blank paper, art paper, or printed paper with pages I read at some point and thought they were important enough to keep.

Yeah.

Right.

Shirley needed to make some money doing manual labor (ooooo, and making me peanut butter cooooooooooookies), so she came over today to help.

Mom and I needed it.

We had bags and boxes of crap to throw out. We had bags and boxes of crap to donate. And we had bags and boxes of crap to put back on the shelves. The amount in the latter category was, thankfully, less than the amount we took off the shelves, but it was still a lot of crap to put back.

One of the good things about cleaning out the garage is that the low-hanging fruit, the easy pickings, is gone. In that "gone" is a lot of crap I'm quite happy to be rid of. I'm frustrated, though, that there is still so much left. We piled all my "to go through" boxes onto one shelving unit (well, on one and a lot next to it). Kris' pile of "to go through" boxes consisted of 2 boxes, one of which was full of computer games.

Sigh.

Having one of everything is tough sometimes.