New Year

Since the office is going to be empty, I decided to take this whole week off as vacation, even though I didn't have any plans. The hope is to get some R&R and also in hopes of doing some long neglected house work. On Monday I rode through the hill country to pick up a final few ABCs. I wound up having to alter my route and kind of double back a bit because the sign marking the Gillespie/Kendall county line was missing. I also got Wimberley, which should give me 66 points for the year, the top level, but well short of being at the head of the field. Maybe one year I'll have enough time to travel the world and get over 100 points. I got home in the afternoon, loaded the pictures onto my computer and then had them printed at the HEB on the corner. I picked up the pictures and then went to the post office to mail them in to Harley. There were way more people there than I expected, and I had to wait in line just to use the automated machine, and the line for an actual person was ridiculous. The only postage the machine could print covered where I'd written the address, so I had to rewrite it, but I couldn't find a pen in the place, so I had to get one from my car. I finally got it off, hopefully it'll actually get there. I then went and had dinner at Twin Peaks.
Tuesday I rode my bicycle downtown and had lunch at the Shady Grove, which was pretty crowded and I had to wait about 10 minutes to get a table. I took a spin along the hike-and-bike trail, then started home. I was fatigued at that point and it seemed like I used the last of my energy on the first hill on Lamar, riding in the bike lane. I managed to keep going, but decided to stop at the bicycle shop where I bought the bike for a bit of a rest. They had a bunch of stuff on sale, so I picked up a few things, then rode the rest of the way home. I pretty much just vegetated the rest of the afternoon and evening. That night I had a really terrible night's sleep. Even though I'd taken some nasal spray before bed, my nose didn't clear up and I couldn't breathe through it. Breathing through my mouth eventually makes my mouth completely dry, which is rather uncomfortable and it wakes me up.
Wednesday I had lunch at Tacodeli and then went for a hike along the Barton Creek Greenbelt. It was pretty nice, I went at a fairly leisurely pace, stopping briefly a couple places to check out the people rock climbing the sheer limestone cliffs. I went as far as Mopac and went to check out the building my company is going to be moving to. Since I was on the wrong side of the creek, I walked across the dry bed and then scrambled up a hill to get to the street level. I wandered around a little bit, and sat for a while and got the rocks out of my shoes. My feet were already hurting at that point and I kind of wished I could have gotten a ride back to my car, but that wasn't exactly an option, so I walked back the roughly 3 miles along the greenbelt, sticking with a pretty decent pace the whole time. I got back to my car about 4, got a Dr Pepper and a snack from the convenience store there, and then went home. I fortunately managed to take about a 45 minute nap. I didn't do anything too interesting to celebrate the new year, just dinner at TX Roadhouse and pool and drinks until midnight at Stardust with Jimmy and Rene.
I didn't do much of anything interesting today. I fell asleep on the couch for a little while early this afternoon after taking some antihistamines. I went over to Jimmy's for a meal including black eyed peas, which are supposed to give you luck if you eat them on New Year's Day.
At the end of 2008, the Fat Boy's odometer was 91958 miles, and Night Train was at 6062, for a total of almost 18000 miles for the year.